PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES: a gripping crime thriller (Camden Noir Crime Thrillers Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES

  John Yorvik

  (Book 1 of The Camden Noir Trilogy)

  First published 2013

  Joffe Books London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

  ©John Yorvik

  BOOK 2 of The Camden Noir Trilogy is available now

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIVINE-gripping-thriller-Thriller-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00VDR7IXQ/

  http://www.amazon.com/DIVINE-gripping-thriller-Thriller-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00VDR7IXQ/

  Lishman thought he had his life back. He was wrong.

  Contents

  Part One: The Chase

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two: The Changing

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part One: The Chase

  Spring 2002

  Chapter One

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” said a skinny youth in a black hoodie, spitting out a ball of chewing gum so it landed at my feet.

  “Go in there and you’re dead, mate,” said his friend, a black lad with a golden crew-cut, drawing a finger across his throat.

  “Just ignore them. They’re nothing,” slurred the girl by my side, gesticulating dismissively with the bottle of red we’d swiped from the pub.

  “Seriously, bruv. Go in there and you’re dead,” repeated the crew-cut, “and you, bitch. You’re dead, too.”

  I didn’t fancy being set upon by a gang of street raptors, so I hesitated a few yards in front of them. They’d sensed our vulnerability. We’d been too drunk, and too focussed on the promise of sex, to notice we were walking into a trap. And now, surrounded by predators, I was to take a beating. Next time I’m offered a night of easy sex with a beautiful stranger without doing any groundwork, I should remember there was always a price. It was simple. When something seemed too good to be true, it was. And fate was smirking now.

  But she saw it differently. She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the entrance, tutting as she went. And as if her blindness to reality was enough to put the raptors in their place, they let us by without a whisper. When we’d got past them, they re-animated and returned to their posturing and shouting.

  We waited for the slow lift in the vandalised lobby with the raptors taunting us and the girl barely able to stand up straight. Stepping into the lift, a bottle smashed at our feet. I kicked the debris back into the lobby and gave an ironic wave to the raptors. One of them rushed towards me just as the doors were closing.

  “The neighbours?” I asked, when we were safely on our way.

  “England’s future,” she said. Then she got closer and started unbuttoning my shirt.

  “We’re doomed,” I said, finding her lips on mine as I spoke the last word.

  When the doors opened on the fourteenth floor, she had her hand inside my trousers. I’d rucked up her skirt and pushed her against the cold metal wall of the lift. As she bit my neck I was suddenly struck by the thought of the raptors calling the lift and meeting them again in flagrante. Like all humans, I was naturally fascinated by sex and danger. However, I didn’t like mine served up on the same plate, so I stopped, adjusted myself and walked out of the lift. She followed behind, a little pissed off. I returned to grab the bottle we’d left on the lift floor.

  She took out her keys and unlocked the door of her apartment, stepping inside, but then barring my way.

  “No man crosses the threshold clothed,” she said.

  “Do you get many visitors?” I asked.

  “Take off your clothes,” she ordered, with more of an accent than she’d had before. I was guessing Polish or Hungarian.

  She began to undress me. I helped her and soon all my clothes were on the floor. I kicked them inside the flat. Then before I could react she said goodnight and swung the door in my face. It took a split second to realise how fucked I was if the door closed, naked and drunk in a tower block guarded by Pentonville thugs. I tried to react but wasn’t fast enough. However, when the door did close, it was not with a bang, but a muffled thud.

  I looked for the cause and saw that one of my orange socks, an unwanted gift from an ex, was stuck between the door and the frame preventing it from locking. There was still a chance. I threw my shoulder at the door and it flew open. I stumbled inside the flat, picking up my clothes as I went.

  “Ah, there you are, Simon,” she said, coming out of the bathroom, naked herself. She took the clothes out of my hands and threw them on the floor.

  “It’s Lishman.” I was by now completely disorientated.

  She grabbed me by the cock and said “This way, Lishman,” pulling me towards the bedroom, where we fell onto her bed kissing.

  A minute or two later she broke off and sat up, her head rolling a little. “Too drunk,” she managed to say before slumping over.

  I grabbed her face. “Hey, hey. Wake up!” I said.

  I pulled back an eyelid. She was out cold. I got up, ran into the living room and punched the wall.

  “Fuck!” I screamed, shaking my hand.

  I ran my hand under the cold tap in the bathroom. It ached, but it didn’t feel broken. I washed my face in cold water, studied myself in the bathroom mirror and wondered where the rage had come from.

  I looked around the flat for something to replace the sexual urge. I grabbed the bottle of wine, which I remembered I’d left just outside the front door, and then found a packet of cigarettes and some matches on a small table next to the sofa. The death wish was always easier to satisfy. I returned to the bedroom and sat on the bed. I lit up and inhaled deeply, the inebriated stranger breathing gently beside me, her unconscious face displaying the doll-like features of a noir starlet.

  As I smoked and drank wine straight out of the bottle, I tried to piece the evening together to understand why I might have lost control. Had there been too much promise in the lead up? Outside AmBar, as I walked out the door, she was waiting for me, leaning against a metal railing playing with her hair like a flirty college girl. Here was a woman who left drinks with her friends to join a stranger on a drizzly Thursday night in Camden. And as far as I could tell from first impressions, she was the type who wouldn’t let the prissy mores of polite society get in the way of having a good time. At least that was what I’d hoped. In the next bar, she drank like she drank to forget. I liked that. I recognised it, because so did I. So did lots of people I knew. But, unlike the rest of us, she clearly wasn’t up to the job. So what was the problem? Lack of experience or lack of conviction?

  I took a drag and blew out the smoke with a sigh. Some nights ended like that, with a whimper, but I was enjoying life in London, its adopted sons and daughters stumbling drunkenly through unknown bedrooms just because they could. Histor
ically, such decadence signified the end of civilisations, but living it felt liberating, as a body decays, its elements find freedom.

  I propped myself up with a pillow and chain smoked a while, thinking about the battle-hungry youths in the doorway and our collective doom. And perversely, how much fun we could have on our journey back to the Stone Age, if only we had the courage, the stamina, to see it through.

  * * *

  I woke with a start. It was still dark. I got up and walked into the living room. It was six o’clock according to the DVD player. I gathered my clothes and got dressed. I couldn’t find my socks, so I put my boots on my naked feet. I searched around for some paper to leave a note. Instead I found a number of cards all bearing the same name and mobile number. I assumed they were hers, so I pocketed one and left the flat.

  I walked back up to Camden. The shutters were down on all the boutiques and kebab shops. In the early morning it was no longer the city’s alternative tourist magnet, but an ordinary drab street with discarded food wrappers, cigarette butts and broken glass.

  Walking past an old red phone box, I noticed someone had punched out a window and bled on to the pavement. I followed the blood trail with my eyes until it disappeared into the road. On the kerb was a blood-covered five-pound note. I left the money for someone else to find.

  I had that victorious, sleazy feeling you sometimes get the morning after a drunken conquest, although in reality, I was the vanquished: unfulfilled and back into the habit of smoking. Not to mention my swollen hand. Still, I’d connected with a stranger and, for some reason, that gave me hope. I went into the Underground station and picked up a newspaper. 9/11 hijacker suspects found alive and well in Morocco read the billboard.

  Ten minutes later I reached my flat in Chalk Farm. I put on Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 and ran the bath. I soaked in the hot water, reading the paper and sipping tea, until it was nearly time to go to work. I got out of the bath, fed the cat then started to shave. As I scraped the razor across my skin I felt a light paranoia fluttering like a moth at the edge of my consciousness. It was scar memory.

  * * *

  It was a long morning at work. I sat trying to find a story to fill North London Free Press’s monthly culture section. Mindlessly looking through websites for exhibitions of note or interest, I had an idea to alleviate the aimlessness of the activity. I fished around in my jacket pocket and pulled out a card.

  The design on the card was a white upside-down triangle on a light grey background. The name of the gallery was AmizFire. Underneath, ‘natasha rok’ was written in fashionable lowercase. I supposed Rok was a diminutive form of a hard to pronounce Eastern European surname. I typed in the URL and got a page with the same triangle, AmizFire was stencilled below in bleak grey-black. I clicked on the triangle and got a range of options laid out in the sidebar. I clicked on exhibitions.

  Twenty minutes later, having arranged an interview with the artist, Diane Thompson, I booked Dani, Free Press’s researcher/photographer, to join me on Saturday morning at AmizFire.

  I left the office at four o’clock with a raging hangover. I took the Underground back up to Camden Town and went to the Lock Tavern. I ordered a pint of strong lager and a brandy, and got a packet of Marlboro Red from the machine. My mobile was ringing. It was Marty. I let it go to answerphone. It started ringing again so I sent him back to answerphone and set the mobile on silent. There was someone knocking on the window. It was Marty holding his phone. He was laughing. I shrugged and waved him in.

  During our conversation in the AmBar Marty had told me he was working in a broker’s office as a financial systems operator. He told me he’d finally become that harmless guy with a shoulder bag you see on the Tube every day. And looking at him now, I was inclined to believe it, but with Marty you just never knew what the truth was.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t want to talk about it?” he said, walking up to the table. “What happened to your hand?”

  “It’s nothing. Caught it in a door last night. Anyway, what are you doing in Camden?” I asked, embarrassed he’d caught me out with the phone call. He ignored the question.

  “Smoking again? Give us one.”

  I gave him a cigarette and lit it and then lit another one for myself. I signalled to the barman for two more pints.

  “So how far did you get?” said Marty.

  “How far did I get?” I echoed, as if I was mystified by his question.

  But I knew very well what he was referring to. On Thursday night at AmBar on Camden Road, I was having a drink with Marty for the first time in five years. That’s when I noticed her looking at me.

  “Green army jacket, long bobbed hair, sitting under the orange light.”

  “Is she looking at you, or has she noticed you looking at her?” said Marty.

  “One of life’s great mysteries. Although, pub psychos are always convinced you looked at them first.”

  “It’s instinct. We scan every location for danger or sex.”

  “Or both, wrapped up in a neat little package,” I added. “I’m off to the gents. Check out what she does when I walk past.”

  “It’s your round,” said Marty, raising his empty glass.

  When I returned with the drinks, Marty was at her table talking to her. She glanced over quickly and smiled. Then Marty walked back across the chequered floor to join me.

  “You’ve got a date,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “She’s going to finish up with her friends and wait for you outside. It’s your move.”

  “Forget her, Marty. It’s been five years. We should make a night of it.”

  “We’ll have plenty of chances to catch up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If you travel down the path of least resistance, you know where you’ll end up?”

  “I’d always imagined somewhere like Antwerp.”

  “No, you’ll end up half the man you should be. I’ll call you on Saturday,” said Marty, smiling to himself, as he raised the pint to his lips and drank.

  “How far did I get?” I repeated, briefly reliving scenes from that night in my mind’s eye. “It’s been a long time since I heard that. Think the last time was watching Grease in 1978.”

  “Yes, but you remember what I’m talking about. Thursday night, AmBar. So how far did you get?”

  “A gentleman never tells.”

  “She was a lady then.”

  “Not exactly. She was a drunk.”

  “This is England. Who isn’t a drunk? Your place or hers?”

  “No place. We had a few more drinks then called it a night.” I didn’t want to get into girls with Marty. All the troubles between us came from women. In fact, he’d once threatened to kill me over a girl.

  “Not now, but sometime when you think that all this is forgotten. I’ll wake you up from your sleep with a knife to your throat.”

  “You’re joking?” I said.

  He sat stony faced for a minute before breaking into a weary smile.

  “Of course I’m joking, you prick.”

  It was a tense moment because I knew what he was capable of.

  When we were teenagers back in the North we were jumped by a local gang. I caught the worst of it having rolled into a ball after the first few punches — the nature of boys of that age being to kick balls. Marty somehow fought on in a blur of head-butts and elbows until the police drove by scattering the gang.

  I spent the next few weeks in hospital with bandaged ribs and a pin in my ankle. But Marty was unscathed and wanted revenge. One Sunday morning not long after the attack he slipped into the gang leader’s house, went up to his bedroom and held him at knife point. Marty said the boy got so scared he pissed himself as he begged Marty not to cut him. It was a risky strategy, but it worked. We were never troubled again.

  I never needed to develop that side of my personality because Marty was always there to do life’s difficult things for me. From the first day he turned up at school in
1981, a white-haired, wiry ten year old with a London accent, he’d taken me under his wing. Before he knew we’d end up living on the same street, before he knew we were both fatherless children, he’d singled me out for friendship.

  As we grew up, we began to look more and more alike. Marty’s hair darkened to my ash brown. I lost my puppy fat and grew tall and lean. Our eyes were always the same, pale blue. We were so close we’d begun to resemble each other. Inseparable for fifteen years. But then it happened. And it was down to a mistake on my part. A big mistake.

  “Called it a night?” Marty said with a hint of menace. He was being very persistent with this one. “C’mon. That can’t be true,” he continued. “A man with your reputation?”

  “I might call her next week. Time for another?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation into safer waters.

  “No mate, I’ve got some business to attend to. Let’s go out tomorrow. Saturday. Lads’ night out.”

  He stood up and downed the rest of his pint. Then he took out his wallet, left a twenty on the bar and walked back out onto the street.

  Chapter Two

  Saturday morning I got up early. It was grey and drizzly. I walked down Camden Road to a greasy spoon run by two old Polish brothers. The brothers themselves always stood at the till, gaunt and as white as their aprons, filling mugs of tea from a large urn. They kept food cooking on a steel hot plate all day and when you ordered something, one of them would turn round and immediately dish it out for you. Great service, but I’d never seen them smile, and today was no exception.

  I ordered a full English and sat down beside the window. I flicked through a copy of Time Out. A few wet-haired stall owners came in and ordered coffees. They talked about a flu epidemic and a spate of London murders. One of them said the police offered their daughters no protection and it was time to take the law into their own hands. His workmates fantasised about what they’d do to the killer if they caught him. Each one, outdoing the last. It was horrific.