Bloodline

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Well, I’m having way more than one,’ Thorne said. ‘So we’d best go to my local. I’ll give you a lift.’

  Hendricks nodded, let his head drop back and closed his eyes. Thorne had given up trying to find any decent country music and had tuned the radio into Magic FM. It was nearly ten o’clock, and 10cc were winding up an uninterrupted hour of easy-listening oldies.

  ‘He brought his own bag,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bag he used to suffocate her. He knew what he was doing. You can’t just grab some carrier bag out of the kitchen - they’re a waste of time. Most of them have got holes in, so your vegetables don’t sweat or whatever. You want something air-tight, obviously, and it needs to be a bit stronger, so it won’t get cut to ribbons by your victim’s fingernails, if she’s got any.’ Hendricks tapped his fingers on the dash in time to the music. ‘Also, with a nice, clear polythene bag, you can see the face while you’re doing it. I think that’s probably important.’

  ‘So, he was organised.’

  ‘He came prepared.’

  ‘He didn’t bring the vinegar bottle, though.’

  ‘No, I’m guessing that was improvised. First thing he could grab hold of to hit her with.’

  ‘Then he gets the bag out once she’s down.’

  Hendricks nodded. ‘Might even have hit her hard enough to do the job before he had a chance to suffocate her.’

  ‘I suppose we should hope so.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Hendricks said. ‘You ask me, the bottle was just to make sure she wasn’t going to struggle too much. He wanted to kill her with the bag. Like I said, I reckon he wanted to watch.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I’ll know tomorrow.’

  The windows were beginning to steam up, so Thorne turned on the fan. They listened to the news for a couple of minutes. There was nothing to lift the mood even slightly and there was nothing in the sports round-up to get excited about. The football season was still only a month or so old and, with neither of their teams in action, none of the night’s results proved particularly significant.

  ‘Six weeks until we stuff you again,’ Hendricks said. A committed Gunner, he was still relishing the double that Arsenal had done over Spurs in the north London derbies the previous season.

  ‘Right . . . ’

  Hendricks was laughing and saying something else, but Thorne had stopped listening. He was staring down at the screen of his mobile, thumbing through the menu and checking he hadn’t missed a message.

  ‘Tom?’

  Making sure he still had a decent signal.

  ‘Tom? You OK, mate?’

  Thorne put the phone away and turned.

  ‘Is Louise all right?’ Hendricks waited, saw something in Thorne’s face. ‘Shit, is it the baby?’

  ‘What? How d’you know . . . ?’ Thorne pushed back hard in his seat and stared straight ahead. He and Louise had agreed to tell nobody for the first three months. A good friend of hers had lost one early on.

  ‘Don’t be pissed off,’ Hendricks said. ‘I forced it out of her.’

  ‘’Course you did.’

  ‘To be honest, I think she was desperate to spill the beans.’ Hendricks looked for a softening in Thorne’s demeanour but saw none. ‘Come on, who else was she going to tell?’

  Thorne glanced across, spat it out. ‘I don’t know, her mother?’

  ‘I think she might have told her as well.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’

  ‘Nobody else, as far as I know.’

  Thorne leaned down and turned off the radio. ‘This was why we agreed we wouldn’t say anything. In case this happened.’

  ‘Shit,’ Hendricks said. ‘Tell me.’

  When Thorne had finished, Hendricks began telling him that these things usually happened for good reasons, that it was better now than later on. Thorne stopped him. Told him he’d heard it all already from the woman who’d done the scan and that it hadn’t helped too much then, either.

  Thorne saw Hendricks’ face and apologised. ‘I just didn’t know what to say to her, you know?’

  ‘Nothing much you can say.’

  ‘Need to give it time, I suppose,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Tell her to call me whenever she likes,’ Hendricks said. ‘You know, if she wants to talk about it.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘She will.’

  ‘You, too.’ He waited until Thorne looked over. ‘All right?’

  They sat in silence for a minute. There was still plenty of activity at the front of the house - vehicles coming and going every few minutes. Half a dozen spectators were crowded on the opposite side of the road, despite the best efforts of the uniforms to keep them away.

  Thorne let out an empty laugh and smacked his hand against the steering wheel. ‘I told Lou I was going to get rid of this,’ he said.

  ‘Your precious Beemer?’ Hendricks said. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a major concession.’

  Thorne’s 1971, ‘Pulsar’-yellow BMW had been a cause of much amusement to many of his colleagues for a long time. Thorne called it ‘vintage’. Dave Holland said that was just a euphemism for ‘knackered old rust-bucket’.

  ‘Promised I’d get something a bit more practical,’ Thorne said. He tugged at the collar of his jacket. ‘A family car, you know?’

  Hendricks smiled. ‘You should still get rid of it,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Hendricks pointed to the front door, to the metal trolley that was emerging through it, being lifted down the step. ‘Here we go . . .’

  They got out of the car and walked slowly across to the rear of the mortuary van. Hendricks talked quietly to one of the mortuary assistants, ran through arrangements for the following morning. Thorne watched as the trolley was raised on its concertina legs and the black body-bag was eased slowly into the vehicle.

  Emily Walker.

  Thorne glanced towards the onlookers: a teenager in a baseball cap shuffling his feet; an old woman, open-mouthed.

  Not viable.

  THREE

  Louise called from a payphone in the Whittington at a little after 8 a.m., just as Thorne was on his way out of the door. He felt slightly guilty at having slept so well, and did not need to ask how her night had been.

  She sounded more angry than upset. ‘They haven’t done it yet.’

  ‘What?’ Thorne dropped his bag then marched back into the sitting room, like he was searching for something to kick.

  ‘There was some cock-up the first time it was scheduled, then they thought it would be late last night, so they told me there was no point in me going home.’

  ‘So when?’

  ‘Any time now.’ There was some shouting near by. She lowered her voice. ‘I just want it done.’

  ‘I know,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I’m bloody starving, apart from anything else.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you where I’m off to this morning, if you like,’ Thorne said. ‘That should kill your appetite for a while.’

  ‘Sorry, I meant to ask,’ Louise said. ‘Was it a bad one?’

  Thorne told her all about Emily Walker. As a detective inspector with the Kidnap Investigation Unit, Louise Porter was pretty much unshockable. Sometimes, she and Thorne talked about violent death and the threat of it as easily as other couples talked about bad days at the office. But there were some aspects of the Job that neither wanted to bring home, and while there was often black comedy to be shared in the grisliest of stories, they tended to spare each other the truly grim details.

  Thorne did not hold back on this occasion.

  When he had finished, Louise said, ‘I know what you’re doing, and there’s really no need.’

  ‘No need for what?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘To remind me there’s people worse off than I am.’

  Two hours later, as unobtrusively as possible, Thorne reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and checked to make sure that it was switched to SILENT.

>   ‘I think we’re ready.’

  There were times when you really didn’t want a mobile going off.

  The mortuary assistant drew back the sheet and invited Emily Walker’s husband to step forward.

  ‘Are you able to identify the body as that of your wife, Emily Anne Walker?’

  The man nodded once and turned away.

  ‘Can you say it, please?’

  ‘Yes. That’s my wife.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The man was already at the door of the viewing suite, waiting to be let out. It was customary, after the formal identification, to invite the next of kin - should they so wish - to stay with their loved one for a while, but Thorne could see that there was little point on this occasion. Suffocation could do as much damage to a face as a blunt instrument. He couldn’t blame George Walker for preferring to remember his wife as she had been when she was alive. Presuming, of course, that he wasn’t the one responsible for her death.

  Thorne watched Walker being led down the corridor by two uniformed officers - a man and a woman. He saw the slump of the man’s shoulders, the arm of the female officer sliding around them, and remembered something Holland had said the day before: ‘I’ve got no bloody idea what’s happening inside their heads . . .’

  As if on cue, Dave Holland came strolling around the corner, looking surprisingly perky for someone about to attend a post-mortem. He joined Thorne just as Walker was turning on to the staircase and heading slowly up towards the street.

  ‘I know you said you wanted him in later for a chat,’ Holland said. ‘But I reckon we can leave it a while.’

  ‘Oh, you do?’

  ‘He’s still all over the shop, and we should really let him have a bit of time with his family.’

  It was at such moments that Thorne wished he had to ability to raise one eyebrow, like Roger Moore. He had to settle for sarcasm. ‘I’m listening, Sergeant.’

  Holland smiled. ‘We got a result with the curtain-twitchers.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘Old bloke across the road claims he saw someone coming out of there an hour or so before Emily’s husband got home.’

  ‘And he’s sure it wasn’t Emily’s husband.’

  ‘Positive. He knows George Walker by sight. The bloke he saw had a much narrower build, he says. Different colour hair, too.’

  ‘You got him knocking us up an E-fit?’

  Holland nodded. ‘Gets the husband off the hook, you ask me.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Thorne said. ‘But it’s a fair point. We’ll have him in tomorrow.’

  A door opened halfway along the corridor and a familiar-looking, shaved head appeared around it. ‘In your own time,’ Hendricks said.

  Thorne nodded and loosened the tie he’d put on for the identification.

  Holland wasn’t looking quite so chirpy as they walked towards the open door.

  Other places had different arrangements, but at Finchley Coroner’s Mortuary a narrow corridor ran between the Viewing Suite and the Post-Mortem Room, so the bodies could be moved quickly and privately from one to the other. From soft furnishings and a comforting colour scheme to a white-tiled room with stainless-steel units where comfort of any description was in short supply.

  However much its occupants could have done with some.

  Hendricks and Holland caught up a little, having been too busy for chit-chat the night before. Hendricks asked after Holland’s daughter, Chloe, about whom he seemed to know more than Thorne did. Thorne found this rather depressing. He hadn’t exactly been holding his breath when it came to Holland and his girlfriend choosing a god-father, but there had been a time when he’d sent presents and cards on birthdays and at Christmas.

  Thorne listened to the pair of them rattling on - Holland telling Hendricks how big his daughter was getting, still only pushing four, and Hendricks saying what a fantastic age that was, while he moved the scissors and skull-key to within easy reach - and it niggled him. He was still trying to remember the date of the girl’s birthday when Hendricks began removing Emily Walker’s clothing.

  Middle of September?

  While Hendricks worked, he related his findings into the microphone hanging above his head. Holland made notes. This précis would be all the investigation had to go on until the full report arrived, but often it would be more than enough for the likes of Tom Thorne, until and if the likes of Phil Hendricks were given their chance to go through the details in court.

  The science and the Latin . . .

  ‘Major laceration to back of head, but no fracture to the skull or sign of significant brain injury.’

  When Thorne was not being called upon to concentrate, when it was just about observing medical procedures he’d seen far too many times before, he did his best to zone out. To block out the noise. He’d long since got used to the smell - meaty and sickly sweet - but the sounds always unnerved him.

  ‘Damage to thyroid and cricoid cartilages . . . Major petechial haemorrhaging . . . Bloody froth caked around victim’s mouth.’

  So, Thorne sang in his head. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, whatever came to him. Just a chorus or two to take the edge off the bone-saw’s whine and the solid snap of the rib-cutters. The gurgle in the windpipe and the sucking as the heart and lungs were removed from the chest as one single, dripping unit.

  Ray Price today: ‘My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You’.

  ‘No indication of pregnancy . . . No signs of recent termination . . . Death due to manual asphyxia.’

  There’s people worse off than I am.

  Towards the end, with organs weighed and fluids collected, Thorne asked about time of death. When it came to finding a prime suspect, it often turned out to be the most important factor.

  ‘Late afternoon,’ Hendricks said. ‘Best I can do.’

  ‘Before five?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Between three and four probably, but I’m not swearing to it right now.’

  ‘That fits.’ Holland scribbled something down. ‘Husband claims to have arrived home a little after five o’clock.’

  ‘He out of the picture, then?’

  ‘Nobody’s out of the picture,’ Thorne said.

  ‘OK.’

  Thorne saw the expression on Hendricks’ face, and on Holland’s as he looked up from his notebook. ‘Sorry . . .’

  He’d been looking at the stainless-steel dishes that now contained Emily Walker’s major organs and thinking that she’d finally shifted those few extra pounds she’d been so worried about. His eyes had come to rest on her feet, bloated and pale; on the red nail varnish and the star above her ankle. When he’d spoken, he’d snapped without meaning to, the words sounding snide and spiky.

  Holland looked at Hendricks, stage-whispered conspiratorially: ‘Wrong side of the bed.’

  Thorne could feel himself growing edgier by the minute. He told himself to calm down, but it didn’t work, and walking out with Holland ten minutes later, he found it hard to control his breathing and the flush of it in his face. Sometimes, he felt fired-up coming out of a post-mortem, confused or just depressed more often than not, but he could not remember the last time he’d felt quite so bloody angry.

  He had been turning his phone back on before he was out of the post-mortem room and by the time he emerged through the mortuary’s main entrance on to Avondale Road, he could see that he had three missed calls from Louise. He told Holland he’d catch him up.

  It was the voice she used when she’d been crying. ‘They’ve still not done it.’

  ‘Christ, you’re kidding!’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.

  He turned away, looking across the North Circular and avoiding the stares from a couple at the bus-stop who had heard him shout. ‘What did they say to you?’

  ‘I can’t find anyone who can tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ Thorne said.

  She burst into tears as soon as she caught sigh
t of him, pushing through the doors at the far end of the ward. He shushed her gently, drew the curtains around the bed and sat down to hold her.

  ‘I just want it . . . out of me,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I know.’

  They heard the voice of the woman in the bed opposite coming from the other side of the curtain. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Do you want me to get someone?’

  Thorne leaned closer to Louise. ‘I’m going to get someone.’

  He prowled the corridors for five minutes until he found a doctor on the next floor up and told him that something needed to be done. After shouting for a minute or so then refusing to budge while the doctor made a couple of calls, Thorne was back at Louise’s bedside with a soft-spoken, Scottish nurse. She made all the right noises, then admitted there was nothing she could do.

  ‘Not good enough,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but this is standard practice.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your partner’s just been unlucky, I’m afraid.’ The nurse was flicking through the paperwork she’d brought with her. She waved it in Thorne’s direction. ‘Each time the procedure has been scheduled, another case has taken priority at the last minute. Just unlucky . . .’

  ‘She was promised it would be done last night,’ Thorne said. ‘Then first thing this morning.’

  Louise lay back on the pillow with her eyes closed. She looked exhausted. ‘Two hours ago they said I was next in.’

  ‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ Thorne said.

  The nurse consulted her paperwork again, nodding when she found an explanation. ‘Yes, well, we had someone come in with a badly broken arm, I’m afraid, so—’

  ‘A broken arm?’

  The nurse looked at Thorne as though he were simple. ‘He was in a considerable amount of pain.’

  Thorne returned the look, then pointed at Louise. ‘You think she’s enjoying herself?’

  Alex was stuffing a last piece of toast into her mouth when Greg came into the kitchen. He nodded, still tucking in his shirt. She grunted, waved, and went back to the story she’d been reading in the Guardian.