Lazybones by Mark Billingham

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 had been there himself, several times, and he mentally 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 well, 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 bullshit from a pervert. These were men who dealt in facts.
    While one held Caldicott calmly by the cock and balls, the other had emptied the dryer, dropping the laundry neatly into the red plastic 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 onto the red-hot metal…
    Caldicott holding out a letter, a smile pulling the seared skin up and back across his yellowing 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 will be forced to read in a tiny room that stinks of his cellmate’s shit.
    There’s another photo. It’s the first thing he looks for and he almost shouts out loud when he feels it tucked down between the pages of the letter itself. He pulls it out and slaps it down flat on his chest without looking. Then slowly he lifts it up, little by little, moaning out loud as he catches his first glimpse of her. The hood has gone, but this time her back is to the camera, her head lowered. Just a glimpse of shortish hair, the face hidden. She is sitting on her heels, her wrists fastened securely behind her, the shadows falling across her shoulder blades and beautiful round arse…
    The door opens and he is not alone anymore. He quickly draws his knees up to hide the erection and presses the picture flat against his chest again. As his cellmate drops with a grunt onto the bed opposite, Welch is already closing his eyes, every last detail of Jane’s nakedness clearly recalled and perfectly visible on the back of his eyelids.
    Â 
    May 7, 1976
    â€œLadies and gentlemen, you may find this surprising, but I wish, for the next few minutes, to concentrate on the evidence of a witness called by the defense…I invite you to consider the evidence given here by Detective Sergeant Derek Turnbull. Sergeant Turnbull’s record as a police officer is exemplary and I believe we should set great store by his testimony. We should take seriously the words we have heard him speak during this very disturbing case.
    â€œI want you to remember these words…
    â€œWe should remember Sergeant Turnbull’s words about the interviews he carried out with the woman who accuses my client of this serious offense. He spoke about the ‘confusion,’ about the ‘lack of focus,’ he conceded under cross-examination that this woman’s thinking ‘seemed to be all over the place.’ I ask you, should an incident that was allegedly so distressing not be easy to recall accurately? Should it not be seared into the memory? Yes, of course. And yet this woman cannot be sure about exact times. There is no consistent description of what my client was wearing at the time of the supposed attack. Just a good deal of hot air and a lot of irrelevant nonsense about aftershave…
    â€œWe should remember Sergeant Turnbull’s words when he described the results of the physical examination. Nothing was found beneath this woman’s fingernails. Nothing was found to suggest any resistance whatsoever.