Love Like Blood

by Mark Billingham

  She drummed the steering wheel and told herself she was being stupid.

  How many people got to say anything that actually mattered? Like, ‘I’m sorry’, or ‘I should tell you that I love you more often’, or ‘I don’t know how the hell you can stand to live with me’.

  Those things they wished they had said.

  She glanced down at the crisp packet then back up at the shopfront she had been watching since first thing this morning, and wondered what Amaya Shah’s last words to Haroon had been. It was hard to imagine they had been… loving. Or perhaps they had, and Amaya’s last words to her brother had been a lie.

  The shop was doing pretty good business – on a busy road with plenty of footfall – so Tanner almost missed seeing Haroon Shah leave, strolling out into rare September sunshine in jeans and a baseball cap. Tanner checked her watch. It was just after twelve thirty, so he was probably heading to get some lunch from one of the many fast-food places within a few minutes’ walk. Then she saw him reach into his jacket for what she guessed were car keys and jog across the road. She started her car as she watched him climb into a battered-looking Fiat Panda, and half a minute after Shah had pulled out and turned on to the main road, Tanner was sitting a few cars behind him.

  She turned the radio off and sat up straight. She folded her collar across the seat belt.

  She had attended a weekend vehicle pursuit course a few years before and, as with the umpteen other courses she had completed in her time, she’d listened and learned, while a good many of her colleagues had been there simply to tick it off, treating the weekend like a mini-break and flirting or blowing their expenses in the bar.

  Tanner had no trouble hanging back, while keeping Shah’s Fiat in plain sight.

  This was not an area of the city she knew very well. Besides living in west London, she normally worked out of a station in Belgravia, catching cases in Pimlico or Chelsea, or across the river in Battersea now and again. Murders with a more attractive postcode and a decent deli within walking distance of the crime scene. It was one of the reasons – a minor one, admittedly – why she’d approached Tom Thorne. He might currently be living south of the river – a situation that she sensed he was not altogether happy with – but this part of London was his patch and local knowledge would always come in handy. Contacts with those on local teams.

  She followed the Fiat as Shah sped up a little past Arnos Grove tube station and on to the North Circular. A mile or so further on, he swung on to Green Lanes, and once he had turned right on to the next major road his destination became obvious enough.

  Tanner could see the copper-coloured minaret above the trees, the crescent mounted on top.

  Dipak Chall had yet to come back to her with any further information about Haroon, but in the notes that he had put together after the disappearance of Amaya and Kamal there had been no indication that the Shahs were regular visitors to a mosque. Not significant in itself, of course. She knew that even the most devout of Muslims could pray at home and that the shop kept both Haroon and his father busy. It would have made a visit for even one of the five daily prayers difficult, which left Tanner to draw one of only two conclusions.

  Haroon Shah was squeezing in a quick salah on his lunch break. Or he wasn’t going to the mosque to pray.

  She drove slowly past the many worshippers arriving on foot and turned into the large car park in time to see Shah reversing into a space at the far end. Tanner quickly found a space of her own; one that was far enough away from the Fiat, but still gave her a good view of the main entrance.

  She watched Haroon get out of his car, replace his baseball cap with a dark kufi and join the crowd heading inside. She saw him walk past two men on their hands and knees near the door, working hard with brushes and buckets, scrubbing at the brickwork.

  The call to prayer echoed around the car park. Tanner could not tell if it was live or pre-recorded. She knew there would be a second one just before the prayers began, but had no idea how long the service would last.

  Half an hour? More?

  She turned the radio on again, pulled her phone out and opened the camera app. She took some pictures before settling down to wait.

  The exterior of the building. A few number plates. The crisp packet nestled in her footwell.

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘So, when am I going to see this glass of wine?’

  Thorne looked up from his computer screen to see DI Yvonne Kitson standing in front of his desk. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The drink I was promised for agreeing to hand over the Amaya Shah case.’ Kitson turned and walked across to her own desk on the other side of the office they shared. ‘A deal’s a deal.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘So what about a quick one later on? You can settle up.’

  Thorne grunted and looked back to the file on his desktop. An all-forces alert regarding the search for Kamal Azim – a new photograph, a more detailed description – to be circulated nationwide. He had been staring at it for the previous ten minutes, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, reluctant to do as he had been instructed first thing and send it out. To do exactly what was expected by those calling the shots on either side.

  An impatient DCI. A pair of killers.

  Hendricks had been right to point out that Thorne was not usually the sort to worry overmuch about waste; money, manpower or time. In the past, he had been guilty of wasting all three when it had suited him. Barking up a forest’s worth of decidedly iffy trees, unwilling to accept that he had been wrong.

  ‘It’s fine to think you’re the only one who’s right,’ Hendricks had said once, ‘when it comes to liking cowboy music or a particular football team. I mean, obviously you’re not right, but it’s OK to think you are. When there’s bodies involved though, lives at stake… sometimes you just have to put your hand up and say “I’m an idiot.”’

  It was entirely possible of course that the same thing was happening now and that simple pig-headedness was why Thorne believed Kamal Azim was never going to be found. His own and Nicola Tanner’s. Every few minutes he considered such a possibility and, every few minutes, he dismissed it. Tanner was by-the-book after all, Job-pissed; not a woman inclined to swim against the tide for the hell of it. Whatever her personal involvement might be, she had put the hours in on this already. It was her certainty that Thorne drew on to fuel his own, that kept him convinced they were right to ignore the evidence.

  The DNA, the email.

  He and Tanner were not the ones doing all the misguided barking.

  He quickly configured the mail options that would distribute the file to every major incident room in the country. That would see Kamal Azim’s name scrawled on whiteboards, mentioned at every shift briefing and scribbled in the notebooks of thousands of uniformed officers nationwide.

  ‘Stupid,’ he said.

  Kitson glanced up. ‘What?’

  If they wanted to find Kamal Azim, they’d be better off calling in cadaver dogs.

  Thorne pressed send and closed the file; found himself looking instead at the pictures of the Amaya Shah crime scene he had been studying before. A shallow grave left waiting to be found. The clods of black earth, a tangle of twigs laid out to one side for examination.

  Naked flesh, muddied and mottled.

  Leaves in her hair.

  He closed that file too and sat back. He could feel a headache coming, the first nagging stabs at the base of his skull. He said, ‘You can have a bottle of wine if you take it back. Two bottles.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Shah case.’

  Kitson looked across at him. ‘I thought it was sorted,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a prime suspect, haven’t you? Enough to put him away when he turns up. I wish the case I had was that easy.’ Getting no more than a non-committal hum, she stared at him for a few seconds. She narrowed her eyes and teased at a strand of brown hair in her recently styled bob. ‘Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?’
>
  Thorne stood up and walked across to close the door that Kitson had left half-open.

  Then he told her. From Susan Best’s death to the fake email.

  Kitson sat back and puffed out her cheeks. ‘Well, you’ve got a fair few balls to juggle, no question about that, but I can’t see that you’re actually in trouble just yet. No more than usual, anyway. I mean, you haven’t actually lied to Russell, have you?’

  ‘Depends how you define lying.’

  ‘There you go then. Put a few extra hours in, a couple of cans of Red Bull every day, I don’t really see the problem.’

  ‘You’d be rubbish on the Samaritans helpline,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Seriously. Look, you either catch this pair, in which case everyone’s happy. Or you don’t and you just bumble along like a good boy with the official line of enquiry.’

  ‘It’s not our line,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s theirs.’

  Kitson nodded. ‘Your hired killers.’

  ‘The one they want us to follow.’

  ‘Either way you come out of it smelling all right.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘You’ve certainly smelled a lot worse. It’s a win-win, mate.’

  ‘Not how it looks to me.’

  ‘Well, you’re not exactly the glass half full type, are you?’ Kitson turned her attention back to whatever was on the screen in front of her. Prodding half-heartedly at the keys, she said, ‘Let me know how it pans out, OK? Obviously I won’t say anything and I’m happy to pitch in if you start dropping balls.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Thorne knew that he could trust her. She had helped him out a good many times before; allowed herself to get dragged down into shit far deeper than this. He also knew that Yvonne Kitson was just about as cynical as anyone who’d done the Job a few years and was not prone to outbursts of unbridled optimism. She probably had a point, but it wasn’t doing much for the sinking feeling, the headache that was gathering strength.

  He guessed that the men who had already tried unsuccessfully to kill Nicola Tanner were not used to failure. He tried not to dwell on that too much, because even an idiot knew what the opposite of win-win was.

  Brigstocke walked in without waiting for his sharp knock to be answered.

  ‘I sent it,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Good.’ Brigstocke stared at him, sighed. ‘What are you wearing?’

  Kitson grinned. ‘It’s bit early for dirty talk, isn’t it?’

  Thorne glanced down at his brown leather jacket and denim shirt. A letter or two of the Willie Nelson T-shirt he was wearing underneath, just visible.

  ‘I’m sure you can find someone to lend you a suit for half an hour.’ Brigstocke tugged at his own crisp white cuff. ‘Almost everyone in the building seems to be wearing one, or maybe you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We’ve managed to get a slot on London Tonight. Another appeal for information as to the whereabouts of Kamal Azim.’ Thorne tried to interrupt, but Brigstocke was already opening the door. ‘It won’t go out until half six, but you’ll be shooting it this afternoon.’

  ‘You serious?’ Thorne was aware of Kitson smirking from the other side of the room. ‘Russell —’

  ‘Borrow a tie as well.’

  THIRTY

  It took Tanner a few minutes to spot Haroon Shah among the large crowd gathered just outside the main entrance. She lifted her phone and pointed, zoomed in and focused. A good many worshippers had headed to their cars immediately or begun walking away towards the road, keen to get home or back to work as quickly as possible. There were still several dozen milling around near the doors though, chatting, shaking hands.

  Men on one side, women on the other.

  Tanner watched, waiting eagerly to see just who Haroon Shah might fall into conversation with.

  He moved through the crowd, exchanging words with several men of his own age, including those she had seen scrubbing graffiti from the walls near the door to the mosque. There were smiles and outbursts of laughter, an embrace or two, and, though Tanner could not swear to it, something in the body language suggested that Shah’s friends were pleased to see him. Surprised. Moving on, he joined a more senior group, the majority dressed somewhat less casually than he was. It was hard to tell if it was purely down to age difference, but Shah’s demeanour during these formal-looking exchanges certainly seemed rather more reverential: hands clasped behind his back, head slightly bowed.

  The respect his faith demanded for elders, perhaps, no more than that.

  Tanner shot video on her phone, moved the camera around a little, but knew she was unlikely to be capturing anything of any real use.

  Not yet, at least.

  Skulking in the front seat of her car, needing a piss sometime very soon, Tanner knew that spying like some tabloid hack might well prove to be completely pointless. Perhaps Haroon Shah was here simply to praise his God. And if he had come for rather less… holy reasons, the conversations he would need to have were unlikely to be quite so public.

  Presuming he hadn’t simply picked up a phone and had them already.

  When it came to arranging the murders she had begun looking at months before with the Honour Crimes Unit, Tanner had quickly become convinced that, whatever the particular faith, there was always a middle man. Perhaps more than one. As she had explained to Thorne, it would probably begin with no more than a few pointed comments; a complaint about a young woman’s unacceptable behaviour, concern about the attitude of a dissenting wife. If this became something more serious and punitive action was demanded, then someone would have a word with someone else, until eventually, once the gravity of the complainant’s intention had been confirmed, the man who brokered such deals would make the necessary arrangements.

  Would contact the men who carried out the killings.

  Tanner wanted to catch those men, of course, the men who had taken Susan from her, but she wanted the broker most of all.

  She wanted to save lives as well as avenge them.

  She had briefly taken her eye from the gathering in front of the mosque, lost for a while in thoughts of her partner. The sight of her getting dressed that final morning, the smile as she had climbed into Tanner’s car, the hall carpet. Stains like rusted wings and a scattering of white spots.

  When she looked back, Haroon Shah had moved away from the older men and was talking to someone near one of the tables a few yards from the doors. The man appeared to be somewhere in age between Shah and the group he had been with a few minutes before: fortyish, maybe, and heavily bearded; a smart black jacket over a blue robe and a gold skullcap.

  The two men leaned close together, spoke with their heads lowered.

  Conspiratorial.

  Almost certainly innocent, of course, but all the same Tanner forgot how badly she needed the toilet and stopped worrying about how stupid she would feel if the meeting she was watching turned out to be of no real significance.

  Nobody could ever accuse her of being lazy, and sloppy was simply unthinkable, but as things stood, she could live with stupid.

  She began to take more pictures.

  THIRTY-ONE

  In the end, once it was established that Thorne would only be filmed from the waist up, he had only needed to borrow a jacket, shirt and tie. He had swapped with one of the civilian staff who was broadly the same shape and size, though the man had drawn the line at wearing Thorne’s somewhat sweaty T-shirt and had clearly never heard of Willie Nelson.

  Thorne and a humourless woman from the Media Liaison team had driven down to Colindale. The front of the police station would be more appropriate than Becke House, she told him, and would provide a ‘more suitable backdrop’.

  Thorne knew what she meant. Becke House might have been almost any anonymous office building. Still, it seemed a little over the top.

  ‘They’ll know I’m a police officer though,’ he had said, in the back of the car. ‘You know, because I’ll be talking about a murder.’
He’d smiled at her. ‘And there’ll be a caption.’

  The woman had not smiled back. ‘It’s better,’ she’d said.

  Thorne watched as the cameraman set up his tripod and an assistant positioned a folding reflector to utilise such sunlight as there was. The Media Liaison officer stood to one side with her phone pressed to her ear, while, sitting on a low wall, the reporter from London Tonight looked through her notes. Thorne could only admire her professionalism, or perhaps she was just new and still keen. He knew she was there simply to feed him a question or two that would never actually be used, because he would be talking straight to camera.

  Making his appeal directly.

  ‘Just be a few minutes,’ the cameraman said. ‘If you could just move six inches to your right.’

  Thorne stood where he was told and waited.

  Mentally rewrote the script he’d been given.

  He had done such things many times before, but this would be the first time he had asked the viewing public for help with a case knowing that it would be superfluous at best and, at worst, lead to a drain on resources that had already been needlessly stretched. Another flock or two of wild geese to be chased when there were murderers, sexual predators and terrorists demanding as much of their attention as was possible. Friends and families of missing persons who might actually be found.

  ‘You sure you don’t just want a bit of make-up?’ The young reporter stepped across and smiled. ‘I’ve got stuff in my handbag.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You look a bit pasty.’

  He was running through his last few lines when his phone rang and, after announcing that he’d try not to keep anyone waiting too long, Thorne walked away towards the car and took the call.

  He told Tanner that he didn’t have very long and explained why.

  ‘I just got a call from Sarah Webster,’ Tanner said.

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘Not brilliantly. She was raped last night.’