Bloodline

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Right. “I think I used to be Marie Antoinette”, all that.’

  ‘They reckon this bloke got some witness to come up with a number plate she’d forgotten. I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Jesus.’ Thorne never ceased to be amazed at what people could waste resources on in an effort to make a splash. ‘Things are rough when you get bumped off a case for Paul McKenna.’

  Chamberlain smiled. For a while they sat in silence, watched the comings and goings. A skinny, rat-faced teenager was moving among the groups on the grass, asking for money, meeting each refusal with a glare. A chancer. He looked at Thorne, but showed no inclination to try his luck.

  ‘Someone who’s definitely not happy to see you,’ Chamberlain said.

  She asked about the hunt for Andrew Dowd, Simon Walsh and Graham Fowler, and why they had not turned to the media for help. Thorne told her what Brigstocke had said about the emphasis being on catching their man, and Kitson’s theory that they were using Debbie Mitchell as bait.

  ‘Nothing surprises me,’ Chamberlain said. ‘It’s all about the result, right?’

  ‘They’ll get one they really don’t like if they’re not careful,’ Thorne said. He explained that they were doing their best to trace the missing men through conventional channels - credit cards, mobile-phone records, good old-fashioned donkey-work - and getting nowhere. ‘Dowd’s away trying to find himself, if his wife is to be believed. The other two are off the radar altogether. Homeless, maybe; drifting for sure. All of them have got . . . problems.’

  ‘Sounds like they’ve all got one very big problem.’

  Thorne nodded, watched the rat-faced kid arguing with a community support officer who was trying to move him on. ‘It’s not really a shock, though, is it? That they’re all screwed up in one way or another.’

  ‘We all carry our pasts with us,’ Chamberlain said.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe that hypnotherapist’s on to something.’

  ‘Carry them around like bits of crap in our pockets.’ She sat very still, patted the handbag on her lap. ‘We know that better than most, don’t we?’

  Thorne didn’t look at her. The skinny teenager was wandering away now, shouting and waving his arms. The CPSO laughed, said something to one of the people lying on the grass. ‘How’s Jack?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘We had a cancer scare,’ Chamberlain said. ‘Looks like we’re OK, though.’ She glanced across at Thorne and spoke again, seeing that he was struggling for the right thing to say. ‘What about Louise? You know, I’m not convinced you haven’t been making her up.’

  Chamberlain and Louise had never met. Thorne himself had not seen Chamberlain in over a year, although he made a point of trying to call her as often as he could. He felt oddly guilty.

  ‘She’s busy,’ Thorne said. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Two coppers together. Always a big mistake.’

  It suddenly struck Thorne that he had no idea what Chamberlain’s husband did; or used to do, before he retired. There was no way to ask without making it obvious. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said.

  They sat for another minute or two and then, with a nod to each other, got up and moved through the square, walking out towards Greek Street and into the heart of Soho.

  ‘I’ll send over all the stuff later,’ Thorne said. ‘And a copy of the original Garvey file.’

  ‘A nice bit of bedtime reading.’

  ‘What is it normally, then, Catherine Cookson?’

  She flashed Thorne a sarcastic grin, then slowed to stare through the window of an arty-looking jeweller’s. She leaned in close, trying to make out the prices on the labels, then turned to Thorne and said, ‘Thanks for this, by the way.’

  ‘It’s not a problem.’

  ‘I know you could have found someone closer to home.’

  ‘I couldn’t think of anyone better.’

  ‘I presume you mean that the nice way,’ she said.

  ‘Do you want me to walk you back?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  Chamberlain was staying at a small hotel in Bloomsbury at which the Met maintained a constant block-booking of half a dozen rooms. It was used for visiting officers from other forces, relatives of victims who had nowhere else to stay, and occasionally a high-ranking officer who, for one reason or another, did not fancy going home.

  ‘Be nice staying in a hotel for a while,’ Chamberlain said.

  ‘Make the most of it,’ Thorne said. He felt himself redden slightly, remembering the last night he had spent in a hotel; the misunderstanding at the bar.

  ‘I’ll get some sleep at least,’ Chamberlain said.

  ‘You never know, you might pull.’

  ‘Jack’s snoring’s been driving me batty.’

  ‘With a bit of luck there might be some Ovaltine in the mini-bar.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  It was ‘winner stays on’ at the pool table in the upstairs room of the Grafton Arms, and it took the best part of an hour before Thorne and Hendricks got a game against each other. The table was being dominated by an oikish type in a rugby shirt, who beat both of them easily before losing to Hendricks by knocking in the black halfway through the frame. Hendricks beat the rugby player’s mate, then showed no mercy to a teenage Goth, who stared admiringly at the pathologist’s piercings and looked as though she didn’t know one end of a pool cue from the other.

  ‘You’re ruthless,’ Thorne said, as Hendricks fed in the coins.

  ‘I think she fancied me,’ Hendricks said. ‘It clearly put her off her game.’

  ‘Pool’s not the only thing she knows sod all about, then.’

  ‘Fiver on this, fair enough?’

  Thorne fetched a couple more pints of Guinness from downstairs while Hendricks racked the balls. The bar was rammed, even for a Saturday night, but it was only two minutes’ walk from Thorne’s flat and the familiarity was comforting. The Oak was a Job watering-hole, and, as such, would never be somewhere he could completely relax. It wasn’t as though anybody in the Grafton knew his name, and there were no wry philosophical types propping up the bar, but Thorne enjoyed the nod from the barman and his step towards the Guinness tap without having to be told.

  ‘I’m in the wrong job,’ Hendricks said, bending down to break. ‘A bloody lecture tour?’

  Thorne had told him about the email from Nicholas Maier. ‘You teach, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, and what I make in a month wouldn’t pay for a weekend in Weston-Super-Mare.’

  ‘You do it for the love.’

  Hendricks had knocked in a spot. He moved around the table, chalking his cue. ‘Maybe I should write this one up as an academic study: “Man kills children of his father’s victims, the pathological implications then and now”, that kind of thing. I could get something like that published anywhere, I reckon. America, definitely.’

  ‘Go for it,’ Thorne said. He knew Hendricks didn’t mean it. He looked down at his friend’s heavily tattooed forearm as Hendricks lined up a shot and remembered it pressed across the throat of that insensitive CSI. ‘If you need someone to carry your bags on the lecture tour, you know . . .’

  It was Thorne’s turn at the table. Hendricks took a drink, smiled across the room at the Goth girl, who was sitting in the corner with two friends. ‘The bloke’s book any good?’

  Thorne had spent the afternoon reading Battered, with one ear on the radio’s football coverage. ‘Nothing that isn’t in any of the others, as far as I can make out. Nobody interviewed that hasn’t said their piece plenty of times before. Usual pictures: Garvey and his bloody rabbits. That’s what most of these books do, just rehash old material. Money for jam.’

  ‘Not going to trouble the Booker Prize judges, then?’

  Thorne missed a sitter and went back to his drink. ‘Why do people read this stuff?’

  Hendricks knocked in a couple of balls. ‘Same as all these misery memoirs,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the table. ‘You go into Smith’s, it’s wall-t
o-wall books about kids who’ve been locked in cellars, people who’ve had eighteen types of cancer or whatever.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘People enjoy knowing there’s someone worse off than they are. Maybe it makes them feel . . . safer, or something.’

  ‘It’s cheap thrills, if you ask me,’ Thorne said. He watched as Hendricks fluked his penultimate ball. ‘You jammy bastard.’

  ‘Pure skill, mate.’

  Hendricks left the final spot over a pocket with the black placed nicely in the middle of the table. With four balls still to pot, Thorne tried to do something clever and nudge the black on to the cushion. He made a mess of it, leaving Hendricks with a simple clearance.

  ‘Maybe people read these books to find out why,’ Hendricks said. ‘The ones about Garvey and Shipman and the rest of them. They want to know why those things happened.’

  ‘You’re giving them way too much credit.’

  ‘I’m not saying they know that’s what they’re doing, but it makes sense if you think about it. It’s the same reason they turn these people into monsters, talk about “evil” or whatever. It makes it easier to forget they’re just builders and doctors and the bloke next door. It’s not the killers themselves anyone’s really frightened of. It’s not knowing why they did it, where the next one’s coming from, that terrifies people.’

  Hendricks had yet to play his shot. Thorne was aware that the next player up, a spiky-haired kid sitting on the Goth girl’s table, was looking daggers from the corner, waiting for them to finish talking and wrap up the game. ‘They can read about Ray Garvey all they want,’ Thorne said. He was remembering the conversation with Carol Chamberlain. ‘No “why” with him. He didn’t even kill any of his pet rabbits.’

  When Hendricks had polished off the frame, the spiky-haired kid stepped forward and picked up his coins from the edge of the table. Hendricks laid down his cue, told the kid he was taking a break, and followed Thorne back to their table, leaving the next player in the queue to take his place.

  ‘So, maybe there’s something in this tumour business? The personality change.’

  ‘Kambar says not.’

  ‘Hypothetically, though,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘It’s rubbish.’

  ‘Let’s say you’ve got some severe tic or whatever, something that makes you thrash around.’

  ‘I think you’ve finally lost it, mate.’

  ‘You accidentally hit someone in a crowded bar. They smash their head open, die from a severe bleed on the brain. That can’t be your fault, can it?’

  ‘It’s not the same thing.’

  ‘I know, I’m just saying. It would be . . . interesting, legally.’

  ‘If by “interesting” you mean it would make a lot of smart briefs a shitload of money, then yes, probably. Like they don’t make our lives hard enough as it is.’ Thorne drank and watched the pool for half a minute. ‘Anyway, like I told you, Kambar reckons it’s rubbish.’

  ‘Well, he’s the brain man,’ Hendricks said.

  The spiky-haired kid cleared the table. The rugby player came forward, took the cue from the loser and fed his money in without a word.

  ‘Even if there was anything in it, Garvey’s son hasn’t got a sodding tumour.’

  ‘Maybe he thinks he has,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘There’s plenty of research suggesting that some of the factors contributing towards the development of certain tumours can be inherited.’

  ‘You’re winding me up.’

  Hendricks shook his head, drained the last of his pint. ‘Mind you, there was also a study that said being left-handed might be a factor, so . . .’

  ‘That’s all we bloody need,’ Thorne said. ‘Some slimy brief requesting that his client’s murder charge be thrown out on the grounds that he’s cack-handed.’

  Hendricks bought another round, after insisting that Thorne hand over the money he’d just won off him. They shared crisps and pork scratchings, watched the rugby player sink two long balls in succession.

  ‘I used to be good at this game,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You’ve lost your edge, mate. That’s what domestic contentment does for you.’

  It was the first time that anything pertaining to Louise had entered their conversation. Hendricks had spent the afternoon with her, wandering around the shops in Hampstead and Highgate before lunch at Pizza Express. Thorne had stayed at home with Maier’s book and Five Live for company. Spurs had lost to a needless, last-minute penalty and Thorne’s frustration had been only marginally tempered by the smug message he had been able to leave on Yvonne Kitson’s answering machine, about the bet he had wisely failed to take.

  ‘You and Lou have a good time today?’ Thorne asked.

  Hendricks stared at him. ‘Didn’t you ask Lou?’

  ‘Yeah, she said she enjoyed herself.’

  ‘So, why—?’

  ‘There wasn’t much chance to talk when she got back, you know. Not in any detail. She said she was tired, just wanted to crash out.’

  ‘We did do a fair bit of walking,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  Hendricks stared again.

  ‘Jesus.’ Thorne banged his almost empty glass down on the table. ‘I can’t believe I’ve got to sit here asking you how Lou is.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You could go mad and ask her.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘She says she’s fine, but I’m not sure I believe her. This woman at work getting pregnant must have really cut her up, but she’s making out like it’s not a big deal.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t,’ Hendricks said. ‘She’s tough as old boots is Lou. Well, you know.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know anything,’ Thorne said. He finished his beer. ‘What do you think, Phil?’

  ‘I think . . . it’s only been, what, a week and a bit? I think she probably wants a bit of space. For you to stop treating her like she’s got a terminal illness.’

  ‘Did she say something?’

  ‘Yeah . . . that, basically.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘And she said the same thing about you. That you say you’re fine, but she doesn’t know whether to believe it.’

  The spiky-haired kid potted the cue-ball. The rugby player pumped his fist, bent to retrieve the white and lined up the first of his free shots.

  ‘Sorry you’re getting caught in the middle of this,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Not a problem, mate.’ Hendricks handed the empty glasses to a passing member of the bar staff. He turned back to Thorne. ‘Are you fine?’

  Thorne nodded, said that he was, but the look he received in return suggested that he’d been a little too quick about it. He could not be honest, not completely. He could not tell Hendricks, or anyone else, how he felt; that it tasted burned and bitter in his mouth. ‘You just get on with it, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘What about you? Any new piercings on the horizon?’

  It took Hendricks a few seconds. Things had been edgy between them - as far as this kind of conversation was concerned - for a while, since a case the previous year had driven a wedge between them. Hendricks had been targeted by the man Thorne was trying to catch and had almost been killed while cruising a series of gay bars. With Louise’s help, they had got back on a more or less even keel quickly enough, but Hendricks’ sex life had remained a touchy subject. ‘I’m doing all right,’ he said, eventually. ‘No permanent piercings.’ He smiled. ‘Just the odd clip-on.’

  He asked if they were going to get any more drinks and Thorne said he was about ready for the off. ‘You stay and have another one if you want,’ he said. ‘I’ll go back and get the sofa-bed ready. Louise might still be up, so . . .’

  Hendricks eyed the pool table again, where the game had finished and the winner was looking for anyone willing to take him on. He told Thorne he wouldn’t be long. ‘I can’t g
o without trying to beat that arsehole in the rugby shirt again,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t bother playing pool,’ Thorne said. ‘Just stick a couple of the balls in a sock and twat him.’

  ‘I’m seriously thinking about it,’ Hendricks said, getting to his feet. ‘Listen, if I’m not back in an hour, I’ve gone home with that girl who looks like Marilyn Manson, all right?’

  NINETEEN

  Nicholas Maier lived in Islington, on the ground floor of a terraced Georgian house in a quiet square behind Upper Street. Thorne parked in a residents’ bay and stuck a ‘police business’ badge on the dash of the BMW. The spell of good weather was holding.

  Thorne and Holland were shown through to a large sitting room while Maier went to fetch coffee. The carpet was gaudy but clearly expensive, and the bookshelves either side of the fireplace were well stocked, though on closer inspection several contained nothing but multiple copies of Maier’s own books. The room was immaculate. There were elaborate flower arrangements in matching Chinese vases on two corner tables and the vast plasma screen above the fireplace was gleaming and dust-free. Aside from a large ginger cat asleep on a chair next to the door, there was no sign that Maier shared the flat with anyone else.

  ‘And he had a pot of coffee on,’ Holland said. ‘I like it when people make an effort.’

  ‘No effort at all,’ Maier said, nudging the door open and carrying a tray across to a low table. His voice was deep and perfectly modulated, like a late-night radio host. ‘I only got back from the States last night, so I haven’t had a lot of time to run around tidying up. My office is probably a bit more cluttered than this, but I’m not generally a big fan of mess.’

  ‘It’s a nice place,’ Holland said.

  Maier pointed them both towards the sofa, began pouring the coffee. ‘Scribbling keeps the wolf from the door,’ he said.

  ‘Obviously.’ Thorne nodded, impressed, but shared a knowing look with Holland. He’d done some checking and knew very well that Nick Maier had inherited the property from his father, a wealthy businessman who had died while Maier was still taking his journalism degree.