Love Like Blood

by Mark Billingham

  ‘If I didn’t know what a heartless bastard you were, I might think you were worried about her.’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘Worried about myself, mate. Any trouble and I’m going to end up copping for it.’

  ‘Right,’ Hendricks said. ‘Course.’

  Before Thorne could say any more, an officer he had worked with a few years before wandered over to chat. Something about a DCI they had both served under, a scandal of some sort. It was pretty clear that the man wanted to share his gossip and was itching to join them, but Thorne offered no invitation and very little in the way of conversation.

  When the officer had ambled back to the bar, Hendricks said, ‘So how did the appeal pan out?’

  ‘Badly. By which I mean very well.’

  ‘Ah… the helpful general public.’

  ‘More than a dozen sightings, one of which was just outside Brighton, annoyingly. So, plenty more dicking about on the cards.’

  Hendricks nodded and took a swig of Guinness. ‘I’m just being devil’s avocado here, mate… but there is more evidence that Kamal’s alive than there is to suggest he’s dead.’ He saw the look on Thorne’s face, held up his hands. ‘Just saying.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘Not about sides, is it?’

  ‘Yeah, I think it is, now,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You know me, I’m above all that. I wield the sword of truth and justice. Well, the scalpel of truth.’ He took another drink, enjoying himself. ‘And the rib-cutters of justice.’

  Thorne looked up to see Russell Brigstocke approaching the table with a plate of food. ‘Try wielding a bit on him, would you?’

  Brigstocke pulled back a chair and laid down a plate of steak and kidney pie. He grabbed his cutlery then saw that Thorne was watching him. He pointed with his fork.

  ‘Don’t say a word.’

  Thorne shook his head. He was remembering what Kitson had said only a few hours before; her advice to keep on the right side of their boss. ‘Actually, I was just thinking you could probably afford the odd blow-out, sir. I reckon you’ve lost a few pounds.’

  Brigstocke studied him.

  Thorne tried and failed to look convincing. The ‘sir’ had probably been overdoing it.

  ‘Piss off,’ Brigstocke said.

  Hendricks laughed. ‘Didn’t know you ate dinner in here?’

  ‘Wife’s doing fish and salad,’ Brigstocke said. ‘I hate bloody fish.’

  He ate the rest of his meal without speaking, while Thorne and Hendricks talked about football. There was an Arsenal–Spurs fixture coming up in a few weeks and they agreed that it would be great to go, though both knew the chances were very slim. Job demands meant that they had not been to a game together in over a year.

  ‘Last time you went, Tottenham were title contenders, weren’t they?’ Hendricks grinned. ‘Wasn’t Jimmy Greaves still playing then?’

  Brigstocke finally pushed his plate away and sat back. The look on his face told Thorne that the DCI was not there purely for the food and certainly not for the pleasure of their company.

  ‘Heard you had Kamal Azim’s father in this morning.’

  ‘Yeah. He wanted to show off his new range of designer T-shirts.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Thorne explained. ‘There’s a boxful in my office if you fancy wearing one.’

  Hendricks said, ‘What are you, Russell, a small? Medium?’ but neither Thorne nor Brigstocke was interested in joking about it any more.

  ‘Look, it’s… understandable.’ Brigstocke leaned forward. ‘He wants to know what’s happened to his son.’

  ‘He knows.’

  Brigstocke shook his head, unwilling to go in the direction Thorne was pushing him. ‘It’s the same reason Amaya Shah’s father is on the phone to me every day. Their kids are dead or missing, so I wouldn’t expect them to act any other way.’

  ‘Which is exactly why they’re doing it,’ Thorne said. ‘Come on, Russell.’

  ‘Come on, what?’ Brigstocke was becoming tetchy. ‘We’re simply pursuing a line of inquiry suggested by solid evidence. That’s what we do, Tom. It’s what we’re supposed to do.’

  Thorne put his pint glass down a little harder than he intended. ‘Right. And I suppose that after Kamal raped and murdered Amaya Shah then vanished for a bit, he popped back to rape Sarah Webster.’

  Brigstocke straightened the cutlery on his plate. ‘Well, as it happens the chief superintendent did mention that we shouldn’t be ruling that out as a possibility.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Thorne said. He looked to Hendricks for support. ‘Why the hell would he rape Sarah Webster?’

  ‘Why the hell would he murder his closest friend?’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘Look, he knew Sarah Webster,’ Brigstocke said. ‘We know that. There’s simply a suggestion, and it’s no more than that, that he might have attacked her because he was afraid of what she might tell the police.’

  ‘So, why not kill her?’ Thorne threw up his hands. ‘Have you any idea how ridiculous this all sounds? There is no motive for Kamal Azim to do any of this. It’s just nice and convenient, you know… to clear another offence while we’re putting him in the frame for murder.’

  ‘You can tell the chief superintendent that.’

  ‘You want to talk about motive? Let’s talk about Amaya Shah, murdered because she didn’t want the life that had been planned out for her and decided to marry her best friend instead. Let’s talk about Kamal, running away with her because he didn’t want to marry the girl back home and didn’t want Amaya to marry someone she’d probably never even met. Oh yeah, and because he was gay.’

  ‘It’s hard to accept that these are motives.’

  ‘Because they’re not,’ Thorne said. ‘Not to you or me or to anyone else with an ounce of sodding humanity. The people we’re dealing with here have different… standards. A different code. If you can kill your own flesh and blood because something they’ve done means you don’t think you can hold your head up in a temple or in some poxy neighbourhood café… Jesus, I think I understand serial killers better than I understand that. I’m never going to understand that.’

  He let out a long breath.

  He picked up his beer and sat back.

  Brigstocke nodded slowly. He looked exhausted suddenly, as though he were finally admitting defeat. Accepting that he was fighting a losing battle with Thorne, and with the part of himself that knew, that had always known, Thorne was right.

  The fight between the copper and the politician.

  Brigstocke looked at Hendricks. ‘You helping him out with this, are you? Egging him on.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ Hendricks said. ‘As a completely impartial observer, though, I think he’s right. And I’m speaking as the man who found Kamal Azim’s semen inside the body of Amaya Shah.’

  Brigstocke nodded again. He sighed and said, ‘Ever felt like drinking and drinking until you forget all the shit you have to deal with? Until you don’t give a toss about anything any more?’ He reached for his wallet. ‘Ever thought about knocking it all on the head?’

  Hendricks grinned. ‘Existential crisis, Russell?’

  ‘Shut it, Phil.’ Brigstocke drew out a twenty-pound note and glanced towards the bar.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about drinking and drinking,’ Thorne said. ‘But I could certainly handle another pint.’

  As Brigstocke walked away from the table, Hendricks said, ‘There you go. One more on your side.’

  Thorne nodded and watched the DCI pushing through the crowd to get to the bar. He said, ‘I feel quite sorry for him.’

  Hendricks shrugged and downed what was left of his drink. ‘He’s always got the magic to fall back on.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  One by one, the majority of Helen’s colleagues had left, but she was not watching the clock or thinking about the overtime she was earning. She was thinking about Alfie. Though she had taken care to make the necessary
arrangements for her sister to pick him up from the nursery, though she knew he would be safe and well cared for and that Jenny would bring him home later on… sitting alone in front of that computer screen, she was thinking about her son.

  How could she not?

  The boy on the video was nine years older than Alfie, but he was still a child.

  You could disassociate all you liked, you had to, and Helen had always thought she was better at that than most, but still there were times when it was impossible to hold that question at bay; to prevent it from worming its way in and doing its insidious worst.

  What if…?

  She had watched the video all the way through once already, but this time she was making notes. Jotting down anything that occurred to her as she watched, that she thought might be important. It was normal procedure. Pausing and playing; rewinding several times and watching sections through repeatedly, to be sure she hadn’t missed anything or confirm that her reaction to something she had seen or heard was sound.

  Evasive or naturally shy?

  Liking for fantasy films/TV shows etc.

  Where did that anger come from?

  This was one of several initial interviews already carried out by a social worker Helen had worked with for several years and trusted implicitly. The woman had done her job brilliantly, as patient and sensitive with her subject as always. If, after police and social services had put their heads together, they decided that further inquiry was warranted, Helen would probably end up interviewing the boy herself.

  Close enough to see the bruises.

  It was a standard young persons’ interview suite. Comfortable chairs and colourful paintings on the walls. Helen knew that in the locked cupboards behind the boy there were toys and games that would be used with younger children. Male and female dolls that were rather more anatomically correct than those you could buy from Toys ‘R’ Us.

  No need to open that cupboard, not for this one.

  The boy and his brother were already too old and evidently too anatomically aware for any of that.

  There was drawing equipment – felt-tips and large sheets of paper – on the red plastic table and Helen had already seen some of the pictures the boy had produced during an earlier session. As far as Helen was concerned, they in themselves had been enough to merit continued investigation. She knew what to look for by now. The boy had not exactly drawn a juvenile version of The Scream, but there was plenty of pain and violence.

  Plenty of things there should not have been.

  The social worker had agreed. It was pretty much textbook.

  Staring at her screen, she watched the boy shift awkwardly on his chair then sit on his hands. He had already got up several times and walked around the room for a few minutes, muttering to himself. He had been talkative enough to begin with, as the social worker had eased him into the conversation; football, TV, where his trainers were from.

  Getting him to talk about his family was proving a little more difficult.

  Did he and his big brother see much of their grandfather? Yes? That must be fun. Did they spend a lot of time alone with their father? How well did they know any of his friends?

  Still, as she watched the video again, Helen could not identify what it was about the case that was making her uneasy. That had bothered her enough to discuss it a few nights earlier with Tom. Perhaps it was merely down to the fact that since she had finally talked about what had happened to her as a child – to Tom, to her superiors, in a courtroom – something had shifted; had attuned her to subtleties hidden within cases like this one that she was, as yet, unable to identify.

  Or perhaps she had simply lost that ability to disassociate and was letting empathy cloud her judgement.

  Thinking about Alfie when she shouldn’t.

  Thinking this was not quite as textbook as the social worker believed it to be.

  She glanced at the clock. Her sister would probably be giving Alfie his tea around now; the promise of staying up past his normal bedtime, which Helen knew was the real reason he was always mad keen to spend time at Auntie Jenny’s house.

  She couldn’t really give her a hard time about it though. Not when Jenny was doing her a favour and certainly not if she wanted to hang on to the option of free babysitting.

  Nearly six o’clock…

  She knew that the sooner she left, the sooner she could call Jenny and have her bring Alfie home, but she didn’t think another half an hour would make a lot of difference.

  Watching a bit more TV wouldn’t hurt him, and Helen wanted to take one more look at the interview with the older brother.

  FORTY-SIX

  Tanner saw no reason to lurk in the car park as she had done the first time she had been here, so instead she stood waiting outside the main entrance to Palmers Green mosque. A little after seven o’clock, and though it was not as warm as it had been that morning, it was, thankfully, still dry. Darkness was beginning to settle across the adjacent football pitch, but the exterior of the building was illuminated by uplighters: blue and white columns rising over the ornate brickwork towards the bronze dome, its crescent outlined against the charcoal sky.

  The lights also clearly showed the tracks left by a paint-roller; an attempt to cover up the latest slew of abusive messages. Hate from a spray can. The outline of several words remained, just visible through the whitewash.

  ISLAM… SHIT… PRIDE

  She leaned against a wall and sent texts to both her brothers. She spent a few minutes checking her email. When the doors opened to indicate that the Salat al-Maghrib – the sunset prayer – had finished, she moved to watch the worshippers come out.

  They emerged over the next five or ten minutes, in small groups for the most part, and Tanner engaged happily with several of them as they lit cigarettes or checked their phones. She said, ‘As-salaam-alaikum,’ and exchanged a few words about the weather. Though there were one or two looks that bordered on the suspicious, everyone she spoke to was friendly and extremely polite.

  Happy.

  Keeping one eye on the door, Tanner wondered – not for the first time – what it was about organised religion that brought such contentment and joy to people, when it left her so completely cold. She watched another group emerge, saw the smiles on their faces. Was this true faith, or simply the demonstration of it? For some people, she suspected, attendance would be as much about duty as anything; about being seen to worship by others. She knew plenty of Jews and Christians who went regularly to church or synagogue because they thought they ought to, while cheerfully cheating on husbands and wives or scoffing bacon sandwiches when nobody was around to see it.

  Were these killings as much about duty as they were about conviction? Was it really rage and shame that had choked the life from Amaya Shah, or was it about being seen to do the right thing?

  Tanner told herself it didn’t matter and turned her eyes back to the door.

  It was not just the honour killings that had given her cause to consider such things recently, of course. When they finally saw fit to release Susan’s body, there would be a funeral to organise and she was not looking forward to that for all sorts of reasons.

  Susan had been every bit the heathen that Tanner was, but they had never sat down and talked about… arrangements. Tanner had tried to initiate a discussion on several occasions, to make Susan’s life easier as much as anything. After all, weighing up the risks inherent in their respective lines of work, it was Tanner who had been by far the more likely to go first. Susan had always dismissed it, told Tanner she was being ‘morbid’, when the truth was that she had only tolerated Tanner’s organisational leanings when it suited her. When there were forms to be filled in or accounts to be done.

  Susan’s lack of belief had led Tanner to start thinking about a humanist service. She wasn’t sure she could bear to listen to some vicar neither of them had known blathering on, or friends and family wailing their way through hymns they didn’t know the words to. A God in whom Susan hadn’t b
elieved sticking his beard in.

  Susan’s family, though. That was quite another question.

  That sort of thing was important to them; the show of it. They weren’t even churchgoers as far as Tanner was aware, but Susan’s mother had already made it clear what would be expected. It was convention, as much as anything else; Tanner knew that. They had accepted the fact that Susan was gay – she hadn’t given them a lot of choice – but that was as far as it went. It was rarely acknowledged and never discussed. They didn’t kid themselves that she and Tanner were just ‘good friends’ or – that hideous euphemism – ‘companions’, but it might well have been what they told their friends if the subject ever came up.

  ‘So, still no sign of your Susan getting married…?’

  Tanner and Susan had not seen much of them, not together. Christmas was always spent with Tanner’s family, and Susan’s mother sent them separate cards. They used to joke about going to stay with them and being made to sleep in separate rooms; sneaking across the corridor in the middle of the night like horny teenagers.

  Now, though, there were the funeral arrangements to navigate and Tanner knew that the wishes of Susan’s mum and dad would not be the same as hers. For them, the blathering vicar would do nicely. She should assert herself, she knew that, but as things stood she did not have the strength.

  They could bury Susan at sea and she would raise no objection.

  As soon as the man with the gold skullcap appeared, Tanner walked over and asked casually if she could have a quick word.

  ‘Do I know you?’ the man asked.

  Tanner produced her warrant card, ignoring the stares from several onlookers, which were not quite as friendly as they had been a few minutes before. She said, ‘I won’t keep you.’

  Up close, despite the fulsome beard, the man was younger than she had first taken him for. Early thirties maybe. He had soft brown eyes and flawless skin, and the smile he’d been wearing as he’d walked out of the mosque would not have been out of place on one of those absurdly handsome gurus whose portraits she had seen the night before.

  Though it had gone now.