Love Like Blood

by Mark Billingham

Normally it was up to them, how they did things. Once in a while a job came with special instructions – ‘make sure she doesn’t suffer’, or now and again, ‘make sure she does’ – but most of the time they were free to improvise and that was always the bit Muldoon liked best.

  Mixing things up a bit.

  He reached behind him and undid the buckle that had fastened his belt to the batten at the base of the headboard. The girl hadn’t been mad keen about all that, either, had squeaked a bit when he’d tied it around her wrist. Fair enough, Muldoon had thought. Not everyone wanted to improvise.

  Witch hazel. That was what it was called, the stuff for bruises.

  The nurse had it in the cupboard at school and his grandmother was always dabbing it on him. He could still remember the bloody awful stink…

  As West Ham and Sunderland ground out a tedious draw, he lay back and thought about the old woman who’d died almost ten years before, who he’d spent so much time with growing up. Three husbands she’d had, and there’d been a fair few adventures before any of them. She’d happily tell him all about the stuff she used to get up to, the men she’d been with; cackling and chain-smoking Players and giving him little nips of Bushmills.

  They were great stories, no more than that.

  There might have been a few whispers around the town back then, some graffiti on a toilet wall, but that was the only price his grandmother ever paid for having fun and she didn’t much care one way or the other. Her good, God-fearing parents might not have liked it, but that was as far as it went.

  They hadn’t sent men to kill her, had they?

  There was no shortage of good reasons for killing someone, he knew that better than most. Money, obviously, which was why he was doing it. Sex, revenge, the usual stuff.

  Plenty of good reasons, but this… nonsense wasn’t one of them.

  Still, he was making a living, wasn’t he? Muldoon smiled, remembering the look on the face of the girl who’d just left, who was probably dropping her knickers for someone else already and thinking much the same thing.

  Now he came to think about it, they had a fair old bit in common.

  Difference was, his job paid a lot more and he was the one doing the hurting.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Neither of them, had they been inclined to talk honestly about it, would have claimed it was the best sex they had ever had, but both would have said they had enjoyed it. They were tired, that was all, and nobody had been in the mood for gymnastics or looking to break any records. While managing to avoid waking Alfie, who was asleep in the next room, both of them had got what they needed.

  It had done the trick.

  Thorne lay staring at a crack across the ceiling rose while, next to him, Helen re-read a page of the novel she had been struggling with for at least a month. Some paperback thriller Thorne had seen people reading on the Tube.

  ‘Are you actually enjoying that?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really.’ Helen turned the page, turned it back again. ‘I can’t get into it.’

  ‘What you reading it for, then?’

  ‘It’s not going to beat me.’

  Thorne laughed. ‘I thought reading was supposed to be fun. Why don’t you just wait for the film to come out?’

  ‘It’s probably really good,’ Helen said. She held the book in front of her as though she’d never seen it before.

  ‘Yeah, sounds riveting.’

  ‘I can’t concentrate when I’m this knackered, that’s all. I read a few pages, then fall asleep and when I pick it up again I’ve forgotten what I’ve read.’

  ‘Knock it on the head then,’ Thorne said. ‘Read a magazine or something.’ Thorne had certainly given up on more books than he’d ever finished, but there were not a great many of either and it probably had more to do with attention span than high standards. Phil Hendricks, who devoured dark fantasy novels almost weekly, had told Thorne that perhaps he should try books with fewer long words in them. Or more pictures. ‘There’s some great books for kids around, you know. What about one of them pop-up ones?’

  There was a cobweb dancing around the ceiling rose; a few strands, like an old lady’s hair moving underwater.

  ‘She’s pissed off because apparently I’m not what she thought I was,’ Thorne said. ‘Tanner.’ He turned towards Helen, but she carried on reading. ‘“Didn’t think you were such a good boy”, she said. Like I was letting her down. Because I wasn’t charging around like an idiot or tearing up the rulebook or calling the DCI a twat.’ He lifted his head, punched the pillow good and hard into a more comfortable shape. ‘I don’t know what she thinks I can do. What she’s expecting me to do.’

  Helen put her book down and took off her reading glasses. ‘You think you should have gone with her tonight? To that meeting?’

  Thorne said nothing. Shrugged. Then: ‘It’s like I told her, I’m working both ends of it. Doing that stupid appeal, wasting my breath with an Honour Crimes outfit that’s as much use as tits on a fish and all I’m getting is grief. I’ve got Brigstocke on my back one minute and her having a pop at me the next and it isn’t like I’m not on her side, is it?’

  Helen smiled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You sound like a whiny teenager.’

  ‘Do I hell as like.’

  ‘It’s so unfair.’

  ‘Oh, cheers.’

  ‘Come on, nobody made you get into this, did they?’

  ‘Phil said —’

  ‘You’d have done it anyway,’ Helen said, ‘you know you would. You can’t resist it.’ She turned on her side to face him. ‘If you ask me, what’s really getting under your skin is the accusation that you’re being a goody-two-shoes. I’m right, aren’t I?’

  Thorne said, ‘You’re such a smartarse,’ but now he was smiling too.

  ‘I mean, we all know that the truth is you’re exactly what she wants you to be and you’re just frustrated because you haven’t had much of a chance to show her yet. Yeah, you’ve been playing fast and loose with Brigstocke a bit, being economical with the truth and whatever, but that’s just an average day at the office for you, isn’t it? Bending a few rules… you’re not even trying, are you? Bending rules is for lightweights. You wouldn’t be the you we all love if you didn’t smash a few.’ She left it a few seconds. ‘I say we; obviously I’m just talking about me and Phil.’

  Thorne moaned with the effort of moving closer to her. He rubbed his foot against hers. ‘It’s a bit bloody rich, that’s all I’m saying. Because she’s the one who isn’t what it says she is on the tin. Little Miss Paperwork with her nice neat folders and her expenses forms. I’m betting she hasn’t given Professional Standards too many sleepless nights.’

  ‘Most of us don’t,’ Helen said, giving him a little kick.

  ‘Now she’s all “whatever it takes”, you know? Tearing around and not giving a toss if what she’s doing might be dangerous, for herself or anyone else. Not caring about whose toes she steps on. Not thinking.’

  Helen thought, and said, ‘Grief changes people.’

  Thorne nodded, stubble rasping against the pillow. ‘I suppose. Your priorities or whatever.’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Did it change you? After Paul?’

  ‘Oh God, yes.’ She thought for a few seconds, as though unsure how much to reveal. ‘Obviously, it’s like part of you dies, and that’s horrible for a while, but it’s weird, because what’s left actually feels more alive. I suppose it’s like you say and loads of things seem stupid and unimportant, but it’s like you’re in a hurry and you suddenly get greedier about stuff, you want it more. Basically, you’re not the same person you were before. I certainly wasn’t.’ A smile began to form, then died quickly. ‘Actually, I’m not sure you’d have liked me very much.’

  ‘It feels wrong,’ Thorne said. ‘Having a dead person to thank. Obviously if Paul hadn’t been killed, we wouldn’t be here.’

  Something tightened around Helen’s eyes. She swallowed and said,
‘I’m happy, really. You need to know that. But I want to be honest with you, and if I could go back and stop him being killed, I would. I’d do anything to have Paul alive again.’ She laid a hand on Thorne’s shoulder. ‘This is great… you and me and Alfie… but I want you to understand that.’

  ‘Course,’ Thorne said.

  Helen nodded. ‘And Nicola’s the same. You need to understand that, too. How she’s acting… it might not be who she really is, or who she was, but she can’t stop herself. It’s a part of her that’s come to life.’

  They lay together in silence for half a minute and then shifted apart, though it was impossible to say which of them moved first.

  When they were still again, Thorne said, ‘Why wouldn’t I have liked you? Before?’

  But Helen had already picked up her book again.

  Haroon Shah liked being the one who locked up.

  After emptying the tills, his mother and father had gone upstairs fifteen minutes earlier and he enjoyed this time last thing every night, when he would walk the length of the shop checking that all was in order. Turning out lights, his father’s bunch of keys heavy in his hand.

  He liked the responsibility, the feeling of being in charge. At the same time, as he moved up and down the aisles, he liked to imagine that he was the one taking the money upstairs, with a wife to make him tea and a son downstairs doing the locking up. Checking that everything he’d worked for was safe and secure. Not this place, obviously. Somewhere bigger, one of many, and a lot more money to bank at the end of the week.

  Two sons, maybe three.

  Each one as strong, as ready to step up and be a man, as he had been.

  He turned the key to lower the metal shutters on the shopfront and it was only when the clang and clatter had finished that he heard his phone ringing.

  The number was withheld.

  The voice was not one that Haroon recognised. The man on the other end did not bother to introduce himself, did not even say hello. He just waited for Haroon to answer and said, ‘Listen, that problem you have, the one you’ve been talking about. It’s already being taken care of.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  The call had come in late the night before. A woman, convinced she knew the two men from the footage shot on the underground; the picture that had been in the papers a few days earlier. With the hunt for Kamal Azim now top priority, nobody had been awfully excited, but Thorne had quickly volunteered to follow it up.

  A break that he and Tanner could certainly do with.

  ‘Probably nothing,’ he had said, already on his way out of the office, taking no notice of the knowing smirk from Yvonne Kitson. ‘Can’t be seen to be ignoring the public though, can we? We have been asking for their help, after all.’

  Now, he and Tanner were driving towards Earl’s Court. Though Tanner had been pleased about this new information – if indeed there proved to be any – she clearly had other things on her mind.

  ‘What the hell was he doing there?’ She had told Thorne about Hassani being at the meeting the previous evening as soon as he had called.

  ‘A concerned citizen?’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Maybe someone at the meeting has a connection with a case he’s working.’ He looked across and saw that Tanner was every bit as unconvinced by the suggestion as he was himself. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he was just curious.’

  Tanner stared out of the window at the houses and office blocks that bordered the A4, the multicoloured blur of warehouses and megastores. ‘He wasn’t there by accident,’ she said. ‘He went because I did.’ She looked at Thorne. ‘So I’d love to know how he knew I’d be there.’

  ‘Unless he was just as surprised to see you. He might be sitting in his office right now trying to figure out how you knew he’d be there.’

  Tanner thought about that, then shook her head; dismissed it. ‘He told me he’d seen you. Said you were difficult. A “difficult customer”.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it.’

  ‘So was I.’

  Thorne glanced across. ‘A bit closer to what you were expecting, right?’

  ‘What I need,’ Tanner said.

  They didn’t say much else until Thorne had turned off the Cromwell Road and pulled up on a side street opposite the old exhibition centre.

  Tanner nodded towards the CD player. There had been music in the background ever since Thorne had picked her up. ‘What is that, anyway?’

  ‘It’s country,’ Thorne said. ‘Well, sort of. Sturgill Simpson.’

  Tanner grunted. ‘Susan liked country.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘I think that’s what it was anyway. Taylor Swift?’

  Thorne tried to hide his reaction as he turned the engine off. ‘What do you like?’

  Tanner undid her seatbelt. ‘Nothing, really. It’s all just background noise, isn’t it?’

  The Palm Court hotel was one of several similar establishments in the street. Guest houses with ideas above their station, they had probably done regular business before the exhibition centre, which was currently being demolished, had been sold off. These days, the Palm Court and places like it were probably grateful for customers of any sort, but were clearly not getting enough to maintain themselves. Losing what few AA stars they might have had hand over fist.

  In unexpected September sunshine, Thorne and Tanner stood and stared at the cracked and flaking sign outside. A picture of a palm tree above the room rate and a smaller sign that showed VACANCIES. The word might just as well have been painted on permanently.

  ‘Forty quid a night,’ Thorne said. ‘Can’t argue with that sort of value.’

  Tanner was already climbing the steps to the glass doors. ‘It’ll cost you more than that in antibiotics afterwards.’

  Thorne wondered if Noreen Shepherd would have made quite so much effort had she not been expecting them. The manager of the hotel, who was somewhere in her early sixties, was dressed up to the nines in a print dress and pink silk jacket with bootblack hair that was stiffly lacquered and full make-up. It might well have been the kind of thing she wore every day, he decided. Perhaps she took such pride in her own appearance that there was none left for the place she ran. He remembered walking into a front room a few years before to find an elderly man sitting there in a collar and tie, his shoes like mirrors, seemingly oblivious to the movement of insects in his carpet and the moonscape of dog-shit in one corner.

  Shepherd showed Thorne and Tanner into a small office behind the reception desk.

  ‘There’s been a spot of thieving, you see.’ She sat down at a small desk and began slowly tapping at a computer keypad. ‘That’s why I was looking.’

  ‘It happens,’ Thorne said. ‘I blame the price of towels.’

  The woman looked at him. ‘No, I don’t mean stuff from the rooms. Well… that happens as well, obviously. No, I’m talking about…’ she nodded back to where a young girl was sitting at the reception desk, flicking through a copy of Heat; her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘the staff.’

  ‘That happens too,’ Tanner said.

  ‘She’s Romanian,’ Shepherd said, as though that explained everything. ‘Not that I’m saying it’s her, mind you. There’s a couple of other girls and I wouldn’t want to be unfair to anyone.’

  ‘Course not.’ Thorne looked around. There was a calendar with pictures of Jack Russell terriers, though the one that stared up at him from a basket next to the filing cabinet was rather less appealing than September’s dog of the month.

  ‘That’s Rascal,’ Shepherd said. ‘Don’t make a fuss of her, because she can be a bit snappy. She’s not got long left, bless her.’

  Thorne and Tanner exchanged a look.

  ‘So anyway, that’s why I put a camera in at the reception desk and I always have a look through the film last thing every night. Just to make sure everything’s above board, you know. Like I say, you don’t want to accuse anyone, do you?’

  She looked at Tanner who managed a smile, but Thorne
could see how impatient she was getting. Or perhaps she was still thinking about Hassani. Thorne had said little about it to Tanner in the car, but it was certainly of concern. Was the Honour Crimes officer keeping an eye on what they were up to? Was he trying to muscle in? He had seemed unthreatening enough, ineffectual even, but perhaps he wanted to appear that way when in fact he was every bit as difficult a customer as Thorne was.

  The manager was still typing, searching for the pictures Thorne and Tanner had come to see. ‘That was what rang a bell last night, see? Sitting here, looking through the footage from yesterday, I see these two checking in and straight away I remembered that picture in the papers. That thing on the underground train.’

  ‘They checked out this morning?’ Tanner asked.

  ‘First thing,’ Shepherd said. ‘Paid in cash. I did call last night though. I thought it might be important, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ Thorne saw Tanner shake her head. If these two men turned out to be the ones they were looking for, they had missed them by a matter of hours. If only Thorne had been on shift when Shepherd’s call had come in. If only whoever had taken the call had understood the significance and called him.

  This was what happened when you were working a case off the books.

  ‘Here you go.’ Shepherd pushed her chair away from the desk, inviting Thorne and Tanner to move closer and look. She nodded towards the reception desk. ‘That’s where they were, checking in, yesterday morning. That’s a different girl on the film, see?’ She pointed. ‘Estonian, I think, that one. I get confused about where they’re from.’

  Thorne and Tanner leaned in to watch.

  ‘Is it them?’

  Thorne nodded.

  The Asian and the Irishman were standing close together at the reception desk. There was no sound on the hotel’s cheap CCTV system, but the Asian seemed to be doing most of the talking. The girl handed him something and at one point he laughed at whatever she had said. The Irishman leaned in to speak just before they walked away from the desk and out of shot. The image was black and white and far from pin-sharp, but there could be no doubt that these were the same men who had abducted Amaya Shah and Kamal Azim; who had killed one and probably both of them.