Blood Line

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘I tell you what I’m looking for. Often at the end of a season or the end of a group teaching course, ’cos they pay for ten or twenty lessons at a time, I get a class photo and sell them copies. I would say that the photo you’ve got of him was taken by a bloke I’ve met. He ear ns a buck or two . . .’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Helen asked.

  ‘It was Sammy – yeah, Sammy Marsh. I say was ’cos he did a moonlight last year owing rent and Christ knows what else. I think he disappeared to Florida, but he’s not been seen since.’

  He produced a slightly creased photograph and scrutinised it.

  ‘Yep, I’m right – at least, I think I am. Isn’t that the same bloke in the middle?’

  Sal passed the photograph over. There were four men, all suntanned and athletic-looking, wearing wetsuits. The two at the end of the line held up surfboards with S One and S Eight written on them. They all had their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling to the camera.

  Paul and Helen glanced at the photograph. Turning it over they saw it had a faded stamp, Sammy Marsh, with his phone number.

  ‘Do you recall the names of the other surfers with Alan?’ Paul asked.

  ‘You must be joking! That was taken years ago, and like I said, the guys come and go every summer.’

  ‘Do you mind if we keep this?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s no use to me.’

  Paul stood up to shake Sal’s hand. The latter’s grip was so strong it made him wince.

  ‘Thanks for your help.’

  Driving back to the station, Helen jotted in her notebook.

  ‘You know something strange?’ Paul said thoughtfully. ‘It was obvious that Alan liked surfing, but we’ve not found any wetsuits, flippers or whatever they use, and no surfboard at his flat.’

  ‘Well, Sal said he hired one of his,’ Helen noted.

  ‘That was a few years ago, right – and he also said that Alan went off to take in other bays. He had to have become very proficient so he could have bought his own board.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The other thing: we should look into any information we can find about where he stayed in Cornwall. There’s nothing in his address book, is there, but if he went there regularly, wouldn’t you think he’d have contacts? I have when I go to Wales. I rent a cottage and I’ve got loads of addresses and phone numbers.’

  ‘Yeah, we can have a nose around. Also, from what Alison said, you know how careful he was about money, saving to buy a property – same scenario with Tina Brooks, saving to buy a flat of their own. So we have this careful guy saving his pennies for what seems like years before he lived with Tina.’

  ‘Yeah? So what. I’ve been saving all my adult life and I’ve not got a pot to piss in,’ Paul said.

  ‘He earns good money as a mechanic, fixes up vintage cars and sells them. The Merc is one, right?’ Helen asked.

  ‘True. Apparently he made a big profit when he sold the cars. Cash in hand as well.’

  ‘I doubt Tina puts every client through the salon books, so with his money from doing up the cars . . . I guess saving the seventy thousand between them wouldn’t have taken long.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe not.’

  ‘In fact there could be more somewhere if it’s cash. How much rent did he pay?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  Helen closed her notebook and stared at the back of the photograph.

  ‘Maybe we should run a check on this Sammy Marsh.’ She turned it back to look at the four surfers. ‘Handsome-looking guys. I might think about a holiday in Cornwall.’

  Paul laughed. ‘You’re not the only one. I was thinking of doing that myself.’

  ‘Do you surf?’

  ‘No. I’m not that interested in the surfing.’

  ‘Honestly,’ she giggled, punching his arm.

  Anna had been waiting in reception at Michael Phillips’s company, Aston & Clark, for fifteen minutes. The receptionist eventually said that he could see her. She passed Anna the security badge and repeated that she should go to the fourth floor.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I remember,’ Anna said curtly.

  The same secretary was waiting as the lift opened and she led Anna down the corridor, this time to a different room, but with an identical table and the same offer of coffee and tea placed on a sideboard with two flasks of hot water.

  ‘Please help yourself. Mr Phillips shouldn’t be a moment.’

  ‘I hope not.’ Anna sat down, not bothering with refreshments.

  It was another fifteen minutes before Michael Phillips finally swept into the room full of apologies. He was wearing the same suit as before, but with a pink shirt with a white collar and cuffs, and a blue silk tie.

  ‘I am so very sorry, but I had an important meeting and I couldn’t leave. You should really have made an appointment as I have meetings almost back to back today. I’m afraid I will have to make this short.’

  ‘Really?’ Anna was fuming. ‘Well, Mr Phillips, that can easily be done. I am simply here to ask if you would be willing to give us a DNA sample.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can come to the police station at a time convenient to you, but the sooner the better as it is very important.’

  ‘What do you want it for?’

  ‘I am investigating a murder, sir, and I need to eliminate you from my enquiry.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on – murder? I don’t understand.’

  ‘We now believe that Mr Alan Rawlins . . .’

  ‘But I thought he was missing – right?’

  ‘Yes, but we have found evidence that leads us to believe he may have been murdered.’

  ‘But I don’t even know him!’

  ‘Nevertheless, Mr Phillips, as you are a very close neighbour we require your DNA to eliminate you from my enquiry.’

  ‘That’s all I bloody am, for Christ’s sake – a neighbour. I didn’t know him and I find this all very intrusive, never mind inconvenient.’

  ‘I would be most grateful if you would agree.’ Anna was trying to keep calm.

  ‘But I don’t have to?’

  ‘No. That is your prerogative, but as I said it would assist my enquiry if you would agree.’

  ‘I don’t. If you want anything from me, you get it via my lawyer because I find this outrageous. I did not know Alan Rawlins.’

  ‘What about Tina Brooks?’

  ‘No. I have already told you. Of course I do know of her – it’s obvious as we are neighbours – but that is as far as my relationship with either of them goes.’

  ‘So you are refusing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anna pursed her lips, trying to be controlled. ‘You must be aware that by refusing to assist my investigation it appears to be very suspicious.’

  ‘It can appear, but I am still refusing.’

  Anna picked up her briefcase. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Phillips.’

  She walked out, leaving him sitting in the centre of the board room, where he remained for some time before returning to his office.

  Anna was still seething by the time she returned to her office. She knew that without any implicating evidence against him, Phillips could legally refuse to give a DNA sample.

  By now, Paul and Helen had returned from their interviews and were marking up the incident board with their details. They pinned up the photograph of the group of surfers. Brian Stanley came back and he too wrote up a report. He tapped the photograph.

  ‘I still say Alan Rawlins was a shirt-lifter. Very friendly with each other, aren’t they?’

  Paul bit his tongue, refusing to rise to the bait. Stanley continued, ‘I’ve been at that pansy gym – load of wankers there. First they wouldn’t even let me look in Rawlins’s fucking locker.’

  ‘We’d already checked it,’ Paul said stiffly.

  Stanley turned on him and produced a bag with the bottle of aspirin.

  ‘I took this. I want Forensic to check out if they really are aspirin. I think the guy might be o
n steroids.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Paul demanded.

  ‘Because the muscle rippers there are using – I’d put money on it. One of them is a weight-lifting idiot that got right up my nose.’

  ‘He could see you as competition, could he?’ Paul said sarcastically, looking pointedly at Stanley’s beer gut.

  At this moment Helen signalled to Paul. She had run a check on Sammy Marsh and it proved to be interesting. He had previous convictions for possession with intent to supply and supplying cannabis, for which he spent a short spell in jail. He was also currently wanted by the Devon and Cornwall Drug Squad for importing and supplying cocaine.

  ‘He did a runner just before he was about to be arrested. They found a substantial amount of ecstasy tablets and skunk cannabis plants, and two guys already under arrest implicated him in a six-kilo cocaine deal. Street value, quarter of a million.’

  Paul looked over the printed sheets. ‘They got any idea where he ran to?’

  ‘Nope. Possibly Florida, just as Sal told us, but that was last summer and there’s been no sighting of him since then.’

  Stanley did his irritating raised finger gesture.

  ‘Here comes the boss.’

  Anna perched on a desk listening to Paul and Helen’s accounts of their afternoon and then to Brian Stanley’s. When they had finished, she asked what they felt was a positive outcome. She looked to Paul first.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about outcome, but what we discussed between us was the possibility that Alan had more money saved somewhere, even though we’ve found no evidence of this at his flat. We also have found no surfing equipment, wetsuit or board, which if he was a keen surfer he should possibly have. The other thing is that we might try to trace these other guys in the photograph and also check out possible places where Alan might have stayed when he was in Cornwall. Again, from his address book we have no contact numbers for there. We now know that the man who took the photograph, a Sammy Marsh, is a convicted drug dealer who’s on the run from the local police.’

  Anna took a deep breath. All the new information could give them a clue to where Alan Rawlins could be, if he was alive. She picked up on the detail that his ex-girlfriend, Alison Bisk, had noticed a remarkable change in Alan on his return from his surfing holiday.

  ‘It could be that the very clean-living Alan Rawlins had an introduction to drugs there, but we have no evidence of that.’

  Stanley did his usual finger.

  ‘He might have come out of the closet there as well – good reason to leave his girlfriend.’

  ‘I don’t really buy that. He went to live with the very strident Tina, so whether or not you think he might be a latent homosexual, and—’

  Stanley pointed to the surfers’ photo. ‘All very cheesy-looking blokes,’ he said.

  Paul was about to explode, but Anna nipped it in the bud.

  ‘No evidence that they were, as you say, “cheesy” guys. They all look very heterosexual to me, but let’s see if we can track them down. That will mean going to Cornwall, but it would be easier if we had some evidence that Alan did have a usual place he stayed at. So . . .’ She sighed. ‘We found no indication of anything connected to Cornwall at his flat, but I think we might have to check with his parents. He was a regular visitor, so maybe he kept details there. That needs to be sorted.’

  ‘What about Michael Phillips?’ Stanley asked.

  ‘He has refused to give us a DNA sample. However, if we find any evidence that shows he is lying to us then we can arrest him and if necessary take his DNA by force. Have we any news, Brian, on the mobile phones? Any calls back and forth to Tina Brooks?’

  ‘Nope, but I’ve not got all the billing details yet.’

  ‘Make it a priority, please. What about the Asda CCTV?’

  ‘I’m waiting for the manager to get back to me.’

  ‘Well, chase it up. Tomorrow we should get Liz Hawley using the Luminol test at the flat and we are waiting on the new sample from Alan’s mother to hopefully identify the blood from the flat as his.’

  Anna called it quits for the day and returned to her office as her desk phone rang. It was Liz Hawley and it wasn’t good news.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but we are unable to give you a positive result. Mr and Mrs Rawlins are not the biological parents of the person whose blood was found at their son’s flat.’

  ‘Shit,’ Anna muttered.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Anna replaced the phone. This was not good news. They still had not confirmed the victim’s identity from the blood. She couldn’t believe it. If their son was adopted, why didn’t they say so? It didn’t make any sense. But if it wasn’t Alan Rawlins’s blood, then whose was it? She was just about to leave the office when her phone rang again. This time it was Mr Rawlins asking if she now had proof that their son had been murdered. Anna chose her words very carefully, saying that there was a delay, but she would like to talk to him. He told her that he was not working the following morning and he could see her at his home.

  ‘How is your wife?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s calm now, but she got into a dreadful state. She doesn’t understand, you see. In fact, it’s very difficult. She told me that Alan had been to see her. She doesn’t remember that she hasn’t seen him for nearly two months now.’

  ‘I am so sorry, but I also wanted to ask you, did Alan keep any papers or belongings at your house?’

  ‘Yes, in his bedroom. I told the officers who took the original missing persons report about his room. They had a quick look in it before they left.’

  ‘Sorry, they seem to have left that out of their report. Would I be able to take a look?’

  ‘Yes, of course. He used it sometimes when he stayed over. It’s always been his room.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Rawlins. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She dropped the receiver back, leaving her hand resting on it. Looking through the blinds she could see the remainder of the team packing up for the evening. In prime position was the photograph of Alan Rawlins with the surfers. Handsome, smiling, tanned and fit, he also looked relaxed and happy. Was it his blood? Did the gentle and calm Alan Rawlins really have another side to him, perhaps another life that had resulted in murder?

  Anna shut off her office light and made her way out to the car park to head home. Preoccupied and troubled, she went over in her mind all the new information. Although she was unaware of it, this was the first time she wasn’t thinking about her own situation, about Ken. Her commitment to work was slowly eroding the pain. She also felt hungry for the first time in quite a while and decided to stop off and buy a hamburger and chips.

  With her takeaway still in the carton, Anna poured herself a glass of wine. When she shook up the tomato ketchup and squirted it over the French fries, it didn’t make her think of whose blood oozed into the carpet. That came later as she tried to sleep. She had no body. She had a murder and no identification of the victim. Her original suspect, Tina Brooks, was no longer top of the list, but was now on the back-bur ner, along with Michael Phillips . . .

  It was the first night she did not use sleeping tablets, just a couple of glasses of wine. She wanted her brain to work as it used to, on a sort of automatic pilot knitting the evidence together to produce an insight into the case. Drifting into her subconscious was a photograph she had seen in the Rawlinses’ lounge. It was of Alan’s mother standing in a garden, shading her eyes as she smiled to camera. She was obviously pregnant. Anna couldn’t understand why the tests seemed to indicate otherwise, but she would find out – and it was not a meeting she was looking forward to.

  Chapter Seven

  Anna rang the bell to the Rawlinses’ terraced house. She had begun the day at Tina’s flat watching Liz Hawley setting up her equipment. She’d then had to rush off for this meeting just after nine. But now she had to wait a while before the door was answered. It turned out that Rose had an emergency at her home and so Anna was greeted by a close frie
nd of Mrs Rawlins. Freda Jackson was a woman of about the same age as Kathleen, but rather more smartly dressed, and she introduced herself before asking Anna to go into the lounge. Along with Rose having an emergency, Freda also informed her that Edward had been called to replace someone at court.

  ‘It’s this wretched flu,’ she said as she indicated for Anna to sit down and then closed the door. ‘And I don’t think Kathleen is really up to talking to you. She’s been very confused.’

  ‘It’s extremely urgent that I see her, even if only for a moment . . .’

  ‘I really don’t advise it. And Edward insisted that we should arrange the meeting for another time.’

  Anna stood up as Freda herself now sat down.

  ‘I know what this is about,’ the woman said. ‘Edward told me.’

  ‘Then you must realise the importance of clearing the situation regarding their blood tests. It is imperative we find out if it is their son who is the victim.’

  ‘This is a very delicate and personal matter and I want you to know that I only have both their interests at heart. I have been Kathleen’s friend for many years. We grew up together and in many ways we have been like sisters, which makes her present predicament even more distressing. In some ways it is best for Edward not to be present.’

  Anna slowly sat down again.

  Freda wore a pleated skirt and nervously ran her fingers along the sharp creases.

  ‘I obviously want you to regard what I am going to tell you with the utmost confidentiality. Would you agree to that?’

  ‘Do you mind if I call you Freda?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Well, Freda, this is a murder enquiry. I will do my best to, as you ask, treat whatever you tell me with confidentiality. However, if it also has connections to my investigation then I can only promise that I will try to respect your request.’

  The doorbell rang and Freda stood up.

  ‘I think that’ll be Rose. She said she would try and get here as soon as possible. I’ve given Kathleen her breakfast, but she needs changing and . . . excuse me.’