Free Lazy Bones by Mark Billingham Page A

camera, straight to his PC. Piece of piss...'
    'Find out what you can, then. I want to know who the model is and who paid for the shoot.'
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    Bethel looked pained. 'Oh be fair, Mr Thorne. A bit of info is al
    wel and good, but that's like doing your job for you. Like being a bloody detective.'
    The waitress delivering Thorne's beer sniggered at Bethel 's despair
    ing squeak and hurried away. Thankful y Bethel didn't catch it.
    'Think of it as another string to your bow, Kodak. You might fancy
    a change of career. The force is always on the lookout for eager young
    lads like yourself...'
    'You can be a right sod sometimes, Mr Thorne...'
    Thorne leaned across the table and held a chopstick inches away
    from Bethel 's face. 'Yes I can, and just to prove it, if you don't make a decent fist of this for me, I wil come round to your dwel ing slash business premises, take your zoomiest zoom lens and stick it so far up your arse, you'l be taking pictures of your large intestine with it. Pass the prawn crackers, wil you...?'
    Bethel sulked for a few minutes. Then he picked up the photograph
    and slid it into the pocket of his combat trousers.
    'You real y should try ore of these duck's feet, Kodak,' Thorne said.
    'Did you know, they can actual y rr/ake you swim faster?'
    Bethel 's eyes widened. 'Are you winding me up, Mr Thorne...?'
    Welch was standing, waiting in the doorway when Caldicott appeared at the other end of the landing with the mail trol ey. As it got closer, agonisingly slowly, stopping at almost every door, it became clear that Caldicott's face stil hadn't healed properly.
    One side, from mouth to forehead, was shiny, like it was slick with sweat, and the colour of something that might have been skinned. Against the raw, weeping red, the lines of tiny white rings stood out clearly, the ones on what was left of his lips looking like a row of cold sores...
    The mail trol ey squeaked that little bit nearer. Caldicott grinning as best he could, the mail round a nice cushy number. A sweetener from the caring sharing screws on the VP wing, after the weeks spent in hospital.
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    A couple of morons from B-wing had caught him in the laundry room. They shouldn't have been anywhere near the place by rights, should have been banged up, but someone, somewhere, had turned a blind eye. Left a door open.
    One of Caldicott's women had actual y been a girl. A fourteen year-old. Caldicott had told Welch, sworn to him that he thought she was older, that he wasn't into meat that tender. Surely, Caldicott pleaded, surely he must be able to understand. He must have been in a similar position. I mean, come on, some of the girls around these days! Welch had admitted that, yes, he knew what Caldicott meant and he lzad been there himself, several times, and he mental y thanked his lucky stars that the girl he'd been caught for had been over sixteen, if not by a great deal. Caldicott had probably told them as wel , the animals down in the laundry room. He'd have pleaded, told them that he thought the girl was older, but they wouldn't have been interested in that kind of bol ocks from a nonce. These were men who dealt in facts.
    While one held Caldicott calmly by the cock and bal s, the other had emptied the dryer, dropping the laundry neatly into the red plastie bucket. Then, his screams unheard or ignored, they had bent Caldicott over and forced his head and shoulders into the massive steel drum, pressing his face down on to the red-hot metal...
    Caldicott holding out a letter, a smile pul ing the seared skin up and back across his yel owing incisors. Welch, thinking he looks like the phantom of the fucking opera, snatching the envelope and stepping quickly back behind the door...

    The envelope has been opened, of course, but he's long past caring about privacy or any of that. He has a few precious minutes alone and the chance to read her letter, the last one he wil be forced to read in a tiny room that stinks of his cel mate's shit.
    There's