Blood Relative

by David Thomas

  That’s when I discovered that I was wrong. There was not just one intruder in the house. There were two shadowy figures, dressed from head to toe in black, their trousers tucked into boots, their faces masked and their forms rendered oddly robotic by lights that shone at the very centre of their foreheads.

  One of them was sitting on the leather sofa, just as Andrew must have been on the night he died.

  The other was standing over him, holding something in his right hand, some kind of tube, maybe thirty centimetres long: not far off the total length of a kitchen knife. With calm, deliberate movements, the second figure was raising his hand and bringing the tube down onto the upper legs and torso of the other man.

  They were recreating the killing.

  I opened my mouth to shout at them but I could not make a noise emerge from my throat, still less form any coherent words. My legs were shaking so much I had to take one hand off the bat-handle and grip the handrail to keep myself upright.

  It was the calmness of the exercise that was so eerie and yet so mesmerizing. After a number of blows had been struck, the one on the sofa held up a hand to pause the exercise and fractionally altered his position. Then the second one repeated the slow-motion stabs, but this time the one on the sofa got up and staggered towards his mock assailant.

  This cool, calculating re-enactment of my brother’s death sparked the anger I needed to overcome my fear and inhibition. My shout when it came was little more than a strangled, ‘Hey!’ but it was enough to get their attention. The two little lights turned as one towards me. They remained still for a couple of seconds as I advanced towards the stairs. Their stillness conveyed an impression of absolute confidence. I might panic, but they would not. They knew that they were in full command of the situation.

  Then the one who’d been playing Mariana’s role, the smaller of the pair, turned to the other as if to give or receive instructions. The light on his forehead briefly illuminated the shoulder of his companion’s black, military-style combat jacket, a black balaclava and a small, burka-like glimpse of the face beneath. He turned back and raised his right hand, holding the tube out towards me, apparently about to shoot.

  I scrabbled backwards, trying to escape, but it was not a bullet that hit me but a dazzling beam of light, strong enough to force me to screw up my eyes. I tried to feel my way along the handrail towards the stairs, but the beam followed me, still focused on my eyes so that I could not open them fully or see what was happening below me. Then, as suddenly as it had struck me, the torch was switched off. I opened my eyes but could see nothing: the dazzle had destroyed my night vision. If the two men attacked me now I would be completely helpless. But there was no rushing patter of rubber-soled boots on the stairs. In fact, the only noise I heard was that of the front door being opened and then closed.

  I could see a bit better now and was able to negotiate the stairs. Somewhere in the distance a car engine started. I turned on the lights. The house was empty. There was no sign whatever that anyone had been there. The invasion was over.

  For the second time in less than a week I dialled 999, this time asking for the police. No, I said, the intruders were not still on my premises. No, I had not been harmed. No, they had not appeared to be carrying any weapons. Nothing seemed to be damaged or stolen.

  ‘Well, then, there’s nothing we can do,’ said the operator. ‘If you do discover that there has been any damage or loss to your property, call the station on Monday morning, make a formal report and you will be issued with a case number for insurance puposes.’

  ‘But I think this may be linked to a murder enquiry. It’s being conducted by Chief Inspector Yeats.’

  ‘In that case, sir, I suggest you call him. Goodnight.’

  24

  ‘Thanks,’ said Yeats when I called his mobile number a few hours later. ‘You just made me a hundred and forty quid.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Taking a call out of hours gives me an automatic four hours’ overtime. Great stuff. So, how can I help? Have you had another email?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s something else, something real this time.’

  I ran through the events of the night before, adding a discovery I had made when I’d finally risen from another, equally restless couple of hours’ sleep: ‘Someone had a look at my laptop. It was in the studio where I worked. I’m sure they were in there before they came in the house. I left it closed, I’m certain. But it was open when I went in there just now.’

  ‘Maybe, but looking at someone else’s computer isn’t exactly a capital offence. These intruders don’t seem to have committed any crime that’s worth investigating, not the way our budget and manpower are at the moment.’

  ‘But it has to be linked to Andy’s death. I mean, they were acting it out in front of my eyes. And this happens a couple of days after someone sends him a threatening email. There has to be a connection.’

  ‘Possibly, but it could just be a coincidence. I mean, I can see how this must all be very disturbing to you, so soon after you’ve suffered a very traumatic loss, but I still don’t think it has any relevance to my investigation. Nothing you have told me has any bearing on your wife’s case. There’s no new relevant evidence. And those intruders could just have been a couple of crime freaks out on a jolly.’

  ‘Breaking into someone’s house and acting out a murder – what kind of jolly is that?’

  ‘Not one you or I would consider, maybe. But you’ve got to understand, Mr Crookham, a lot of people have very strange ideas about crimes and criminals. Women write fan mail to rapists. Sadistic killers on the run get help to hide them from the police. So would it surprise me if a couple of idiots decided to sneak into the house and re-enact a murder they’d read about in the papers? No, not at all. And if they gave you a nasty surprise, it was probably no worse than the one they got seeing you appear at the top of the stairs. Chances are they thought the house was still empty.’

  ‘What about my computer, then?’

  ‘I don’t know … maybe they hoped they’d find some snaps of your wife they could flog to the paper. If you can show me that a crime has been committed, of course I will take appropriate action. Until then I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.’

  I drove down to Kent that afternoon, stopping for coffee every fifty miles or so, desperately trying to stay awake as the endless motorway rolled out in front of me. All the way down I tried to think of a better explanation for the identity of the intruders than Yeats had come up with, but without any joy. Why on earth would someone who had made threats to Andy, thinking that he was alive, then try to act out his murder? It was madness, but then so was everything else. So far as the police and the lawyers were concerned, my wife had killed my brother out of the blue, for no reason that anyone could explain. All the evidence appeared to agree with them. The sheer insanity of that was still more than I could handle. I could barely drive straight, let alone think straight.

  I was due to meet Vickie at the gastropub where I’d booked a room for the night, just to give her Andy’s belongings and talk through arrangements for Andy’s funeral the following morning.

  Vickie was everything Mariana was not, in ways that had once seemed to put her at a disadvantage, but now looked more like qualities to be admired. She was a redhead, and shorter and plumper than Mariana, with bright-blue eyes hidden behind glasses because, as she had told me on one of the few occasions we’d met, ‘Contact lenses are much too fiddly for my sausage fingers and I’m bloody well not having laser-guns fired at my eyes.’

  That was Vickie all over: practical, energetic, down-to-earth and, under any remotely normal circumstances, full of warmth and good humour. She’d never dieted in her life, could not give a damn about the latest fashions, and was totally unimpressed by wealth or celebrity. For a man like Andy – completely focused when he worked, but completely hopeless in everyday, practical living – she must have been the perfect partner.

  There wasn’t much sign of
good humour about her now, though. Her hair was tied back in a straggly, unwashed ponytail and the eyes with which she looked at me with such bitter suspicion were red-rimmed with too much crying and too little sleep.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, struggling to find the words to make things better. ‘You know, for …’

  For what, exactly? I’d committed so many offences so far as Vickie was concerned, I didn’t know where to begin. ‘For everything …’

  Vickie said nothing, but just by the look on her face the message was unmistakable: you can do better than that. I took a deep breath: ‘I know I screwed up. Not just in the past few days – though that was bad enough – I mean for years.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ she replied. Then something seemed to distract her. I followed her line of sight and saw that there was a mirror on the wall behind me. Vickie had seen her own reflection.

  ‘I look such a mess,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not exactly at my best right now, either,’ I replied. ‘Here, let me get you a drink.’

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, rubbing a hand across her eyes. ‘I’m not really in the mood for it.’

  ‘Sure? Well, we’d better get this over and done with, then. Andy’s stuff is all in the back of my car.’

  I led her back outside. As I opened up the back of the Range Rover I reached in to get the two bags and then stopped. There were a few unanswered questions left over from Andy’s Berlin notes: things I’d never got round to following up. I handed Vickie the bin-liner containing his overnight bag then said, ‘I’ve got his computer with me too, but is it OK if I hold on to it, just till tomorrow? There are a couple of things from his trip to Berlin that I just want to check. I’ll give it back to you right after the funeral, I promise.’

  She shrugged disconsolately: ‘Yes, I suppose so. I mean, of course – whatever you want.’

  ‘I’m afraid that doesn’t smell too good,’ I said, nodding towards the bin-liner that was now sitting between us on the tarmac. ‘Do you want to open it up?’

  ‘Might as well,’ Vickie said. ‘God knows what he’s got in there.’

  She bent down, gingerly undid the knot and then recoiled as the full, pungent blast hit her. ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ she almost shrieked. ‘It smells disgusting, like … urgh! … antiseptic, really cheap scent and one of those pine fresheners people hang up inside a car.’

  I laughed rather nervously at her description, not sure whether she would appreciate any sign of humour on my part. ‘I was thinking fag ends and beer myself, but you’ve obviously got a better nose than me.’

  Now Vickie gave a hesitant smile, a tiny echo of her usual vivacity. She raised her nose, gave the purse-lipped sniff of a snobbish wine connoisseur and said, ‘I detect a hint of … mmm … gentleman’s urinal, too.’

  This time we both laughed, cutting through the tension that had stood like a wall between us. As the sound died away, Vickie grimaced. ‘Oh, that’s terrible. I shouldn’t be joking at a time like this.’

  ‘Of course you should,’ I reassured her. ‘Andy would hate it if you didn’t. You know how he always liked a really good laugh.’

  The back of the car was still open, so I lifted the overnight bag out of the bin-liner and perched it at the edge of the boot. ‘So, are we brave enough to go in?’ I asked. ‘All right then, here goes … Whoa! That is pungent!’

  The smell rasped my nose and throat. Vickie wrinkled up her face: ‘My eyes are watering!’

  ‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘What’s he got in there, mustard gas?’

  I turned to one side, took a deep breath of clean air, then plunged my hand into the bag. It came back up carrying a small, slightly damp cardboard box, decorated with a picture of Chinese ivory chess pieces set against a brown background. On the front of the box were the words ‘PRIVILEG After Shave Lotion’. On the side there was more writing in both German and a script that looked like Russian and then, in English, the words, ‘Made in German Democratic Republic’.

  Inside stood a spectacularly ugly brown bottle with a pseudo-ivory top that had been screwed on loosely enough that some of the contents had leaked.

  ‘That,’ I declared, holding the bottle up for Vickie to inspect, ‘is genuine communist aftershave.’

  ‘Yuck! I pity the women who had to snog men smelling of that.’

  ‘I doubt the girls smelled much better.’

  Vickie smiled to herself. ‘Andy told me he’d got something in Berlin he wanted to surprise you with, but he never said what it was. He probably knew I’d only tell him to throw it away, horrible muck like that.’

  ‘That’s Andy, though, isn’t it? Going all the way to Berlin and that’s what he comes back with. Bet he didn’t remember to get a present for you.’

  She shook her head, beginning to laugh again. ‘No.’

  ‘Not even something from the Duty Free?’

  ‘Not a thing!’

  ‘But he does track down the nastiest aftershave in the entire history of mankind.’

  ‘Good thing he never went to North Korea,’ she said. ‘God knows what he’d have found there.’

  It wasn’t the funniest line anyone had ever come up with, but to the two of us in that cold, damp, gloomy car park it didn’t matter. We staggered about like drunks, helpless with the giggles, letting go of all the accumulated tension and pain and letting a small scintilla of joy back into our shattered lives.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, getting my breath back and wiping my eyes. ‘Let’s go and have that drink.’

  We ended up having supper together, swapping stories about Andy over a couple of bottles of wine. Right at the end of the meal, after I’d asked for the bill and made sure that Vickie had a cab home, she seemed finally to run out of energy, falling quiet and looking more sombre, more thoughtful.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure whether to tell you this,’ she said. But … it was just, well, Andy wanted you to be his best man.’

  ‘His best man – me?’ The possibility had never occurred to me. Had I thought about it at all, I’d have assumed Andy would have chosen a fellow-journalist or one of his pals down in Kent.

  ‘Yes. Andy was really proud of you, his big brother. He didn’t say this, but I think he was hoping, if you could get to know him a bit better, you’d be proud of him, too.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I said, wishing so much that I could have heard and accepted the offer. ‘He never said … I mean, I just didn’t know that at all.’

  25

  MONDAY

  A solitary magpie rose from the graveside at the sound of the funeral party’s approach, leaving its burden of sorrow behind. The bird was as monochrome as its surroundings: grey sky, black trees, white snow and black-clad mourners. The ground was hard with frost and the only sounds of life came from the cawing of crows. ‘A murder of crows’: that, it occurred to me, was the correct collective noun.

  After Andy’s body, death-cold, had been laid into the ground people milled around the graveyard for a while, stamping their feet, making jokes about the freezing temperature and waiting impatiently for instructions on how to get to the reception Vickie had organized in the pavilion of a cricket club, not far away, where Andy used to play. It was barely half past nine. A lot of the mourners had missed breakfast to get here and were in serious need of coffee. Amidst the surprisingly large turnout I recognized Andy’s agent, Maurice Denholm. He’d got Andy a couple of book deals: nothing block-busting, but proper hardbacks all the same, published by a respectable company and reviewed, albeit briefly, in the Sunday broadsheets. We’d met at one of the launch parties, seven or eight years ago.

  ‘Peter,’ Denholm said, putting on a suitably sombre expression and grasping my hand with one of his while the other squeezed my upper arm. ‘I’m so, so sorry … Must be terrible for you. If there’s anything I can do …’

  ‘Actually there is.’

  A momentary look of alarm flashed across Denholm’s fac
e as he realized his bluff had been called, instantly replaced by his usual air of professional affability. ‘Splendid! Just name it, dear boy, and it shall be yours.’

  ‘Did Andrew mention anything to you about any work he was doing on my wife, Mariana?’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you.’

  ‘He was doing quite a bit of research about her background. He’d flown to Berlin, started digging around there. I just thought that if he’d been planning a book or something, he might have told you.’

  As I’d been speaking Denholm took on a look of dawning comprehension, followed by genuine surprise and even excitement as he suddenly joined the dots of what I’d been saying. ‘So that’s what he meant!’ he said. ‘My word – he had been stirring, hadn’t he?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he told me he was working on a story about false identity, someone living their life on the basis of a lie. He said he didn’t know what to do with it, whether to tell it straight, as non-fiction, or use it as the basis of a novel. I tried to get him to tell me the details, but he became very coy about it. Now I see why. He was investigating his own sister-in-law.’

  Denholm narrowed his eyes at me: ‘So, did he have a hot story?’

  As I considered how to answer him I looked away for a moment, letting my eye wander over the churchyard. I’d arrived early and my Range Rover was parked quite close to the church gate. A man was standing beside it, dressed in a charcoal-grey coat. I frowned and screwed up my eyes, trying to make out his face in the gloom.

  ‘Andy’s story,’ Denholm repeated. ‘Was it any good?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, dragging my attention back to our conversation. ‘I’m still trying to work it all out myself.’

  Before we could continue the conversation, Vickie bustled up. ‘Ah, there you are!’ she said. ‘The two most important men in Andy’s life! We’re all leaving for the drinks now, so just join the convoy and it’ll take you straight to the cricket club.’