Lazybones Read Online Free

He couldn’t smell anything.
    He dropped his briefcase by the hall table and walked toward the lounge. She probably hadn’t had time today. Wouldn’t have finished work until gone three and then she would have had shopping to do. There was only a fortnight until Christmas and there was loads of stuff still to get…
    The look on her face stopped him dead.
    She was sitting on the settee, wearing a powder-blue housecoat. Her legs were curled underneath her. Her hair was wet.
    â€œYou all right, love?”
    She said nothing. As he took a step toward her, his shoe got tangled in something and he looked down and saw the dress.
    â€œWhat’s this doing…?”
    He flicked it up and caught it, laughing, looking for a reaction. Then, letting the length of it drop from his fingers he saw the rip, waggled his fingers through the rent in the rayon.
    â€œChrist, what have you done to this? Bloody hell, this was fifteen quids’ worth…”
    She looked up suddenly and stared at him as if he was mad. Trying not to make it obvious, he began looking around for an empty bottle, making an effort to keep a smile on his face.
    â€œHave you been to work today, love?”
    She moaned softly.
    â€œWhat about school? You did pick up…?”
    She nodded violently, her hair tumbling damp across her face. He heard the noise then from upstairs, the crash of a toy car or a pile of bricks coming from the loft they’d turned into a playroom.
    He nodded, puffed out his cheeks, relieved.
    â€œListen, let’s get you…”
    He had to stop himself taking a step back as she stood up suddenly, her eyes wide and wet, folding herself over slowly, as if she were taking a bow.
    He said her name then.
    And his wife gathered up the hem of the powder-blue housecoat and raised it above her waist to show him the redness, the rawness, and the darker blue of the bruising at the top of her legs…

TWO
    Thorne lost his bet with Phil Hendricks.
    He answered the phone barely four hours after they’d found the body and within a few seconds he was lobbing his half-eaten sandwich across the office, missing the bin by several feet. He chewed what was left in his mouth quickly, knowing that his appetite was about to disappear.
    Hendricks was calling from Westminster Mortuary. “Pretty quick,” he said. He sounded extremely chipper. “You’ve got to bloody admit—”
    â€œWhy do you always manage to do this when I’m eating lunch? Couldn’t you have left it another hour?”
    â€œSod that, mate, there’s money at stake. Right, you ready? I’m going for time of death at somewhere around quarter to three in the morning.”
    â€œShit.” Thorne stared out of the window at a row of low gray buildings on the other side of the M1. He didn’t know if the window was dirty or if that was just Hendon. “This had better be worth a tenner. Go on…”
    â€œRight, how d’you want it? Medical jargon, layman’s terms, or pathology-made-easy for thick-as-shit coppers?”
    â€œThat’s cost you half the tenner. Get on with it…”
    Hendricks spoke about death and its intimacies with considerably less passion than he demonstrated for Arsenal Football Club. Being from Manchester and not supporting the dreaded Manchester United was far from being the only finger he stuck up at convention. Therewere the clothes in varying shades of black, the shaved head, the ludicrous number of earrings. There were the mysterious piercings, one for each new boyfriend….
    He might have spoken dispassionately, almost matter-of-factly, but Thorne knew how much Phil Hendricks cared about the dead. How hard he listened to their bodies when they spoke to him. When they gave up their secrets.
    â€œAsphyxia due to ligature strangulation,” Hendricks said. “Plus, I think it happened on the floor. He had carpet burns on both knees. I think the killer put