Love Like Blood

by Mark Billingham

  Had it been much of an effort?

  ‘One of yours? The PM?’

  ‘Not as it stands.’

  ‘Can you make it one of yours?’

  ‘Might be nice if you told me why,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Remember you thought it would be a good idea if I helped Nicola Tanner out?’

  ‘The night we played pool, right? Five–one, as I remember.’

  ‘Bit of a break, you said.’ Thorne brought Hendricks up to speed as quickly as he could. The meeting at Nicola Tanner’s house. The disappearance of two teenagers that had now become a murder; one they believed was down to the pair of contract killers Tanner had been talking about.

  ‘So, where’s the boy?’

  ‘God knows,’ Thorne said. He doubted that the body of Kamal Azim would ever be found. The kind of random sex-attacker that the killers – and those paying them – wanted Amaya’s death pinned on did not routinely go around murdering young couples. ‘I’m betting they’ve taken a lot more care getting rid of him.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll have a look,’ Hendricks said. ‘Any particular reason you want me to do it? I mean it goes without saying I’m the best.’

  ‘There you go then.’

  ‘So, nothing to do with the fact that it might be better for you in the long term if you’ve got a mate involved?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘Right. Only I’m looking at the paperwork and this isn’t actually your case.’ Hendricks waited, enjoying himself. ‘This is one of Yvonne Kitson’s.’

  ‘I’m about to get that sorted,’ Thorne said.

  DCI Russell Brigstocke had changed a lot in the fifteen years or so that Thorne had worked with him. What had once seemed a stylish quiff now appeared to have been an attempt to draw attention away from the onset of baldness. Though he still occasionally produced a pack of cards in the pub, the passion for magic tricks appeared to have waned; gone the same way as the brief fixation with Pilates, the hill-walking and the moped. The man’s endearing enthusiasms, watered down little by little as he had moved, albeit unwittingly, from the job of detective to one that was closer to that of a politician, or CEO.

  His feelings for Tom Thorne had gone largely unchanged, though, even if the mix was never the same from one day to the next. Admiration and anxiety in wildly varying measures.

  Both were there in his expression as he sat and listened.

  ‘Have you spoken to Yvonne about it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Thorne said. ‘But I’m sure she won’t mind. I thought I should check it with you first.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ Brigstocke sat back and folded his arms. A theatrical pose of surprise at Thorne following procedure which any other officer would have considered standard. Compulsory. ‘Well, thanks for… running it by me.’

  ‘Come on, Russell. What difference does it make whether it’s me or Kitson? Anyway, I think she’s got more on her plate right now than I have, so…’

  ‘It’s her case, because she caught it. I know you’re not a fan of systems, but we do need to have one. It’s not like we can just put names into hats any time we catch a murder. We can’t let people pick and choose.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘So why should I give it to you?’

  ‘I should have it because I think it’s connected to an old case of mine. Four years ago.’

  ‘Which case?’

  ‘Meena Athwal.’

  Brigstocke repeated the name. He closed his eyes and took a few seconds’ thinking time. ‘Raped and strangled, right? Unsolved.’

  Thorne nodded. He was pleased to see that it had not taken Brigstocke long to recall the case. A politician’s poise when it came to sitting on the fence and a CEO’s flair for a budget, but a detective’s memory. ‘If you let me have the Amaya Shah case, I think I might be able to solve it.’

  ‘So, what? Same killer, you’re saying? A serial?’

  ‘Not a serial,’ Thorne said. ‘Well, not really… and two killers.’

  Brigstocke blinked. If he was trying to hide the genuine curiosity on his face, he was making a poor job of it. He said, ‘I’m listening.’

  The DCI’s expression changed several times as Thorne told him about Nicola Tanner; the theory about honour killing that she – and now Thorne too – had come to believe was the truth. It darkened as Thorne explained Tanner’s very personal connection to the men they were after; he shook his head when Thorne talked him through the interviews with the parents of Amaya Shah and Kamal Azim, and his eyes widened in disbelief at the description of the encounter at the AHCA meeting the previous evening.

  When Thorne had finished, Brigstocke sat back and took off his black hornrims. He said, ‘Jesus.’

  Thorne waited. It wasn’t clear if his boss’s expletive was one of shock or horror. Or if it simply meant that he thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Thorne picked at the torn fabric of his chair. He stared out of the window at the ragged line of cranes above the trading estate on Aerodrome Road; the railway line, and the grey ribbon of the M1 just beyond it. He said, ‘Why don’t I dig out the Meena Athwal file? A witness talked about Meena seeing two men —’

  Brigstocke raised a hand, put his glasses back on. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You can take the Shah case, but only if it’s OK with Yvonne Kitson.’

  Thorne nodded, guessing that would cost him no more than a large glass of wine in the Royal Oak at the end of the shift.

  ‘And keep me informed, obviously.’

  ‘Goes without saying.’

  ‘And I don’t even want to hear about you working with an officer who’s officially on compassionate leave.’

  ‘I haven’t been,’ Thorne said. ‘I won’t. I mean, obviously I can’t stop her if she decides to show up and make a nuisance of herself, but I’ll definitely let you know if that happens.’ Trying to suppress a smile, he stood up and walked towards the door. ‘You know very well how I feel about coppers who won’t do as they’re told.’

  Thorne fetched himself a coffee from the recently upgraded machine in the corner of the incident room and took it back to the office he shared with DI Yvonne Kitson. She wasn’t around, but that suited him.

  He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone.

  He would certainly need to talk to Kitson about the new arrangements as soon as possible, but before he got round to writing Amaya Shah’s name on his whiteboard he wanted Nicola Tanner to be the first to know. It would be the first piece of good news she’d had in a while.

  FIFTEEN

  The post-mortem suite was more or less the only place where Phil Hendricks took things seriously. The work he was there to do, at least. It was as if the necessary combination of focus, compassion and skill engaged a part of his brain that filtered out the sarcasm and the smartarse remarks. If that was not the case, then he certainly kept them to himself until the job was finished.

  Then it was game on, as always.

  Thorne watched his friend work, struck, as usual, by the delicacy with which he employed the often gruesome-looking tools of his trade. The graceful movement around the steel slab, so at odds with his physical appearance: the tattoos and shaved head; the multiple studs and rings in ears, lips, nose and quite probably several other places that Thorne tried his best not to think about.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Hendricks said, glancing across at him, the Mancunian accent, often so blunt and abrasive, softened as it always was within these sterile, white walls; the voice flat, though not matter-of-fact, as he reached for the hand-held recorder and dictated the latest set of findings for the report he would be writing later on.

  Tissue samples, microscopy, organ retention.

  Thorne dry-swallowed and stole a look at his watch. The PM suite was far from warm, but there was still sweat where the plastic of the blue apron made contact with the back of his neck. He had already been given the headlines, told the things he most needed to know, more than half an hour earlier. But he would not be going anywhere until the job was finis
hed.

  His job was to observe, whatever that felt like, and bailing out once information ceased being useful would have felt… disrespectful to Phil, somehow.

  To Amaya Shah.

  ‘OK, we’re about done.’ Hendricks gave final instructions to his assistant, who was still taking photographs and whose job it would now be to sew up the corpse’s chest cavity. The pathologist walked towards the doors and Thorne followed, the two of them removing their aprons and letting out a long breath in sync with one another.

  Tanner was waiting for them outside.

  ‘Ay ay, it’s your secret helper,’ Hendricks said, tossing his gloves and apron into a biohazard bin.

  Thorne looked to Tanner for a reaction. If an experienced detective inspector was at all offended at being thought of as anybody’s ‘helper’, she didn’t show it. Not that Hendricks had been right, of course. Though Thorne was now nominally the lead investigator on the case, while Tanner had no official role at all, he still wasn’t altogether sure who was going to be helping who.

  Thorne’s knowledge of the most famous detective double act of all time was based purely on a few episodes of the TV series, but there had been enough moments already when he felt rather more like Watson than Holmes.

  ‘Philip,’ Tanner said.

  Hendricks laughed as he stepped across to shake Tanner’s hand and he was still laughing half a minute later when they walked into the dismal office he shared with three other pathologists in the basement of Westminster Hospital.

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ he said. ‘Only my mother calls me Philip, and only then if she’s annoyed with me. You don’t always have to be quite so… formal.’

  Thorne was pulling chairs across. He knew that Hendricks had come close to using a word that was rather less flattering.

  ‘Fine,’ Tanner said.

  The three were forced to sit close together; closer than Tanner would have liked, Thorne suspected. He watched her draw her feet back, so that they wouldn’t make contact with anyone else’s.

  ‘Listen, Nicola.’ Hendricks looked embarrassed suddenly, as though regretting his earlier remark. ‘I just wanted to say about Susan…’

  ‘I know. You’re sorry for my loss.’

  Hendricks glanced at Thorne.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tanner said. ‘That came out a bit… snappy.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘People just get on your bloody nerves, sometimes.’ She looked at Hendricks. ‘Not you… just… it’s that stupid tone of voice, when they’re telling you how sorry they are, you know? The endless nods and the bloody murmuring. I know everyone means well and some of them even feel genuinely upset, but it always manages to sound so fake. They have this stupid way of cocking their head.’ She demonstrated. ‘Like they’re talking to a simpleton… and this simpering look all over their faces, and why do so many of them think it’s the done thing to touch your arm or your shoulder? Your arm, usually.’ She reached across to lay a hand on Thorne’s arm. ‘Like that. Like, “I’ll just touch the poor thing’s arm… actually, I might even stroke it… there there… because that’s bound to make her feel better.”’ She let out a long-suffering sigh. ‘Look, I know that’s how everyone does these things, probably exactly how I do them, but honestly, sometimes I just want to shout at people. Or punch them.’

  Hendricks nodded slowly, then sat back and held out his arms. He said, ‘Go on, have a pop.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Tanner was reaching for her bag. ‘I’m fine now.’

  ‘Go on, treat yourself.’ Hendricks leaned forward and stuck his chin out. ‘Do you the world of good.’

  ‘Thanks for volunteering, Phil.’ She opened her notebook, smiled as she looked down at it. ‘All those piercings, I’d probably just cut myself.’

  Hendricks laughed. ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t offer.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Thorne said.

  Tanner shifted in her chair and looked at them both. ‘Right then.’

  The pleasantries were evidently over with and Thorne took his cue to begin the unpleasantries.

  ‘Amaya was raped then strangled,’ he said. ‘The killer used his hands.’

  ‘What he didn’t use was a condom.’ Hendricks moved his chair to within reach of his computer and began typing. ‘So, we’ve got a good semen sample to work with.’

  ‘How soon can you get that off?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘I’m emailing the lab now,’ Hendricks said. ‘Telling them to expect it.’

  ‘Rush job.’

  Hendricks looked at him. ‘Brigstocke going to authorise that?’

  ‘We’ve got one dead teenager and another one still missing,’ Thorne said. ‘Rush job.’

  Hendricks carried on typing. ‘The killer’s strong too.’ He glanced back at Tanner who was scribbling in her notebook. ‘Hyoid broken, larynx crushed.’

  ‘Anything under her fingernails?’

  Thorne shook his head. It was unusual, as the victims of strangulation often clawed at the hands of their attacker.

  ‘No reason why there would be,’ she said. ‘There’s two of them, so easy enough for one of them to hold her down while the other one strangles her.’

  ‘We’ll get DNA from the semen, so —’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Tanner said. ‘Because you won’t get a match.’

  Hendricks looked at Thorne. That’s you told.

  ‘It’s the same as Meena Athwal, right?’

  Thorne nodded. Even if he had not gone back to the files just a few days earlier, he would remember the girl’s body; the state of it. The swollen tongue and the dried froth around her mouth.

  Tanner smiled grimly. ‘Pretty much identical, all of it. You didn’t get a DNA match then, so chances are we won’t get one now. This pair’s too clever. They won’t be in the database.’

  ‘You always this bloody optimistic?’

  ‘We should talk to some of their friends,’ Tanner said. ‘Amaya’s and Kamal’s.’

  ‘I can’t see much point. Not when we already know who we’re looking for. We need to get those images out and about.’

  ‘I’m not arguing with that, but we might get some more on the parents, and remember that Meena Athwal’s friend had information about Meena being followed? We might get lucky with someone who knew Amaya, so it’s got to be worth doing.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Hendricks said. ‘What do I know, though? I just do the slicing and dicing.’

  ‘OK, I’ll send someone to talk to them,’ Thorne said.

  Tanner was already shaking her head. ‘We should do it ourselves. We know what we’re looking for. Plus, we’re good at it.’

  Thorne checked his irritation and reminded himself that, off the books or not, Tanner had a very personal stake in catching the men they were after.

  He guessed that she probably wasn’t invited to a lot of parties.

  He thought: Watson. Definitely Watson.

  SIXTEEN

  Danny Mirza worked at a fast-food restaurant in Holloway, close to where he lived with his parents, and only a mile or so away from where he and Kamal Azim had gone to school together. The cartoon chicken on the sign outside looked rather more cheerful than those coming out of the kitchen and was there, Thorne imagined, to prevent pissed vegetarians stumbling in by mistake and give the more obtuse carnivores a clue as to what they were in for. After letting Danny Mirza know that he had arrived, Thorne looked at the menu, complete with helpful pictorial guide, high above the counter. To be fair, the chicken appeared to come in as many different ways as any diner could imagine. As long as it involved frying.

  He ordered a basket of hot wings, took them to a table in the corner and waited for the boy to join him.

  ‘Is this going to take long?’ Danny asked, sitting down. ‘The boss is going to knock it off my lunch hour.’

  ‘Shouldn’t do,’ Thorne said. The wings weren’t as spicy as he would have liked, but he was hungry. ‘Just a few questions about Kamal.’

  ‘Y
ou won’t find him, you know.’

  ‘No?’ Thorne thought the boy was probably right, but he doubted that their reasoning would be quite the same.

  ‘He’s too smart, isn’t he? If he doesn’t want to be found, that’s it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he want to be found?’

  Danny looked at him. ‘Come on, you’ve spoken to his dad, right?’

  ‘He’s trying to get away from his parents.’

  ‘Yeah, well he didn’t want to, did he? It was only a last resort kind of thing, if it all kicked off. I suppose it must have.’

  ‘So why would it have kicked off?’

  Danny leaned a little closer in and lowered his voice. Looking around as he ate, Thorne could see that the majority of the other customers and staff were Asian. ‘There was this girl back in Bangladesh, lined up for him to marry. Years ago, right?’ He smiled, proudly. ‘My boy Kamal wasn’t having it, simple as that.’

  Thorne dropped a chicken bone into the basket. He licked his fingers. ‘Not simple though, is it? Not when your parents and everybody else are telling you it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘Not everyone. I told him not to do it.’ Danny shrugged. ‘It’s not like this girl was even fit or anything. I mean, you seen a picture?’ Thorne shook his head. ‘She was like two years younger than he was and she didn’t speak English or anything. Ridiculous, I swear.’

  ‘OK, but wasn’t it more because Kamal already had a girlfriend?’ The news of Amaya Shah’s murder had yet to be made public, and though the pictures from the YouTube video were being circulated to newspapers in connection with her disappearance, Thorne was happy to keep it that way.

  Danny smiled again, grinned. ‘Yeah, and I’ve seen her picture, too.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘Well, she’s gorgeous, isn’t she? God knows how Kamal managed to pull someone like her. Jammy bastard didn’t stop talking about her, showing me all these photos on his phone. You seen her?’

  Thorne said that he hadn’t. Only a white lie, because the Amaya he had seen, the marbled flesh shifting beneath a pathologist’s fingers, was not the one that Kamal Azim had fallen in love with.