Bloodline

by Mark Billingham

  ‘So, you didn’t get married again?’ Chamberlain asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re still using your maiden name.’

  Duggan laughed. ‘It’s a bloody good job you retired. Married again and divorced again.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Don’t worry, this one wasn’t a serial killer or anything.’ She took a slug of wine, swallowed it fast. ‘Just a selfish pig.’

  Chamberlain did not know how to react, so said nothing and they stared at the traffic and the shoppers for a minute or more until Duggan said, ‘Ray never laid a hand on me, do you know that?’

  Once again, Chamberlain had no reply.

  ‘Surprising, isn’t it, considering what happened later? He was a good husband, more or less. Good at his job, too.’ She looked away. ‘Good at killing, as it turned out.’

  Chamberlain thought about the tumour, about the notion that it had changed Raymond Garvey’s personality. Could she and Thorne be wrong in dismissing the possibility so easily? ‘So, would you say that what he did was out of character?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t . . . shocked,’ Duggan said. ‘When these things happen, they talk to people, neighbours, whatever, and they always say, “I’d never have believed it” and “He seemed like such a normal bloke” and all that stuff. But when they told me what Ray had done, I just nodded. I remember the coppers’ faces, how they looked at each other, and for a while I’m sure they thought I’d known what he was doing, you know? Looking back, I think there was just something in him . . . a dark side, which I knew was there but wasn’t willing to face up to. Not that I had any bloody idea where it would lead, mind you.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known that.’

  Duggan smiled, grateful. ‘Like I said, there were plenty who thought I did, but how much do you ever really know? I mean, you hear about these cases, horrible stuff, men hiding children underneath the house and what have you, and I’m as bad as anyone, thinking the wives must have known what was going on. No smoke without fire, you know?’

  ‘Did you know he had a son?’

  It took Duggan a while to say anything. Chamberlain stared at her, saw an expression of surprise that was no more than fleeting, and knew she was seeing an echo of the reaction from fifteen years before, when Jenny Duggan had been told that her husband had brutally murdered seven women. She could understand why officers at the time had been suspicious.

  ‘I knew there were always other women,’ Duggan said, finally. ‘I knew . . . but I pretended I didn’t. Told myself I was just being stupid.’ She removed her sunglasses and laid them on the table. ‘You can understand that, right?’

  Chamberlain nodded. The less than lovely lies they told themselves and each other.

  ‘He kept all that out of the house, at least. He always came home.’

  ‘We’re looking for someone who would have been born around thirty years ago,’ Chamberlain said. ‘So . . .’

  ‘Just after we got married.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Duggan nodded, thinking back, staring down at the last of the wine in her glass. ‘When we were trying for kids ourselves.’

  Chamberlain waited.

  ‘There was a group of women he worked with at British Telecom,’ Duggan said. ‘A couple of them were married themselves, but they were a right bunch of slags. I went to a few nights out early on, but it was obvious partners weren’t really welcome. I wondered back then if he might be knocking around with any of them.’

  ‘Can you remember any names?’

  Duggan said she couldn’t, even when Chamberlain pressed her. But she said that she knew someone who might be able to help and told Chamberlain about a friend of Raymond Garvey from when he’d first joined BT. ‘Malcolm Reece was a wanker,’ she said. ‘He used to come round and sit there while I waited on him and Ray, making sandwiches and fetching them beer from the fridge. Sometimes I’d catch him smirking, like he knew something I didn’t, and once I got so angry I deliberately spilled tea in his lap.’ She smiled, enjoying the memory, but not for long. ‘Even then I told myself I was imagining it, you know, about there being other women. Convinced myself that it was only Malcolm who was up to that kind of thing. He really fancied himself. I remember one time he grabbed my arse when Ray wasn’t looking.’

  ‘Sounds like a charmer,’ Chamberlain said.

  Duggan nodded and drained her glass. ‘Malcolm never went short of female company, that’s for certain.’ She sat back, leaned back and let the sun wash over her face. ‘If anyone knows what Ray was up to back then, who with, I mean, he will.’

  Chamberlain wrote down the name, along with the name of the street where Malcolm Reece had been living in the 1980s. She thanked Duggan for her time, especially as it had involved her taking the morning off work.

  ‘I told them I’d got someone coming round to fix the boiler,’ Duggan said. ‘I’ve got used to telling lies over the years.’

  As she put her notebook back in her bag, Chamberlain said, ‘Why didn’t you and Ray have kids?’

  ‘We wanted to. I couldn’t.’ Duggan’s tone was matter of fact, but Chamberlain could see the pain slide into her eyes before she let her gaze drop to the tabletop. Even after so many years, hearing that Raymond Garvey had fathered a child with someone else had obviously hurt. Chamberlain neglected to say that others had paid a far higher price for her ex-husband’s infidelity.

  ‘Do you fancy getting some lunch?’ Duggan asked. She pointed across the road to a small Italian restaurant. ‘I mean, you probably need to get back.’

  ‘Well, I’m not in a mad rush.’ Chamberlain was hungry, and she had thought to buy an open return. And, insignificant as it was in the scheme of things, the pain had not quite left Jenny Duggan’s eyes.

  Kitson had made an appointment to see Dave Spedding, the DCI on the Chloe Sinclair murder. He was now a superintendent based in Victoria, so after leaving the Sinclair house in Balham, Thorne dropped Kitson off, then carried on towards the Peel Centre.

  Driving north through the centre of town, he could not stop thinking about the horribly mixed emotions with which Miriam and Alec Sinclair had discussed their daughter. He’d seen enough grief to know that time would eventually tip the balance, that the good memories would one day outweigh the dreadful ones. Slow but steady, it had been like that - was still like that - with his father. There would come a day - though with the man responsible for her death still at large, he had not felt able to tell her parents - when Chloe’s name need not be whispered and when mention of her would not drive the air from their lungs like a sucker punch.

  When cardigans would not need to be pulled tight on warm days.

  In slow traffic on the Euston Road, Thorne flicked through the radio channels, looking for something that would not annoy him too much. He stopped at a classical station, let his finger hover above the button, then moved it away. He could barely tell Beethoven from Black Sabbath, but the music was pleasant, and, despite the car’s stop-start progress, his mind began to drift.

  But not very far . . .

  He considered Emily Walker’s husband, and Catherine Burke’s good-for-nothing boyfriend. The father of Greg and Alex Macken and the parents of Chloe Sinclair.

  Anthony Garvey’s other victims.

  For reasons he could not fathom, Thorne imagined them strung along a rope, like life-sized beads on a living necklace. Stuck fast and twisting in the cold and dark, the bodies of their loved ones bloodless alongside them. One dead, one as good as, one dead, one as good as . . . the vast necklace straining with the weight of them, yet plenty of room still on the creaking rope.

  Thorne turned up the music, put his foot down when the road opened up a little.

  However their loss had caused each of them to behave - absurdly polite or obstreperous; howling or struck dumb - Thorne knew that the relatives of those Anthony Garvey had murdered were looking in his direction for a particular sort of comfort. Strong arms and warm words were easy enough to come by, bu
t finding the man who was responsible for their pain was down to him and his sort. It would be one step, no more than that, but the first step to easing them from the knotted thread of grief.

  He drove through Camden and Archway, up into Highgate as the rain started, then down into Finchley, passing within a few streets of where Emily Walker’s body had been found a little over two weeks before. Ten minutes later, approaching Barnet, he turned off the Great North Road, and shortly after that, on to the street where Nina Collins lived.

  Thorne showed his ID to the officers in the patrol car that had been stationed outside since Debbie Mitchell had moved in with her friend, and rang the bell.

  Collins came to the door and stared at him. ‘Well?’

  ‘Everything OK?’

  She nodded towards the patrol car, flicked her cigarette into the bush at the side of the narrow path. ‘Apart from having to check with Starsky and Hutch every time I want to go and buy a packet of fags, yeah.’

  ‘It’s all right, Nina.’ Debbie Mitchell appeared behind Collins, who sighed and let her past before disappearing back inside.

  ‘I was just passing,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Good of you.’

  ‘Thought I’d check, you know . . . see how you were getting on.’

  ‘Well, I can’t go anywhere, and Jason’s missing school. Can’t be helped, though, right?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but you’ve always got the option to come into protective custody. It would probably be the best thing.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘OK, well you can call if you’re worried about anything, you know that?’

  Debbie Mitchell nodded and folded her arms. ‘Any joy?’

  Thorne took a second or two. ‘We’ll let you know, I promise.’

  Plenty of room still on the creaking rope.

  Thorne’s mobile rang in his pocket. ‘Sorry.’ He saw the caller ID and walked a few steps away from the front door. ‘I need to take this.’

  Holland was a little breathless, speaking from inside a fast car, raising his voice when necessary above those of the other officers travelling with him.

  ‘Where?’ Thorne asked, when Holland had said his piece. Listening, he glanced back towards Debbie Mitchell and saw the look on her face reacting to the expression on his own, saw her arms fall to her sides. ‘Sorry, Dave, say again.’

  The rain was getting heavier, and as Thorne opened his mouth to talk, he heard her say, ‘There’s been another one, hasn’t there?’

  He turned to look at her, with Holland still passing on the details, and spotted Jason Mitchell creeping through a doorway down the hall, peering past his mum to see what was happening.

  Holland said, ‘Sir?’ and Debbie Mitchell said something else before taking a step back, out of the rain. For a few seconds Thorne remained silent. He could not tear his eyes away from the boy in the hall, wide-eyed and shiny-lipped in red-and-white pyjamas, his teeth sliding back and forth across his bottom lip.

  MY JOURNAL

  10 October

  Not sure if they’ve found him yet, but if they haven’t, it can’t be very far away. My money’s on someone walking a dog. How many times do you read that? Or kids, playing where they shouldn’t. I was thinking that, if I had the chance, if I could somehow find out when it was going to happen, I might pop down to have a look at the fun and games. Mind you, unless you don’t have a television or you’re living in a cave, it’s not hard to imagine what it would be like. Dozens of them swarming about in their plastic masks and paper suits, lights and tents and tape, and some chain-smoking detective standing off to one side, shouting at his sidekick or moaning about his boss.

  I can’t help thinking that if they’d made that sort of effort fifteen years ago, they might have figured out what was really happening a lot quicker. They might have saved a few women’s lives and might even have worked out that their ‘vicious killer’ was a man who could not help himself. Who was as much a victim as any of them.

  They might have prevented all this.

  Even if I did have the chance to get down there and join the gawkers, I’d almost certainly not get to see the body being brought out, but I bet they have an easier job shifting it than I did. It’s only when you’ve tried to move one that you discover why they call it a ‘dead weight’. Lugging him into and out of the car was a nightmare, so it was amazing to watch him slip into the water a bit later, when I’d found the right spot. Then, he looked almost weightless, drifting down into the murk. Graceful.

  I’m not really sure why I’d like to go, if I’m honest. It certainly wouldn’t be about gloating, nothing like that. I suppose I just want to feel that I’m part of it. That might sound odd, considering that none of this would be happening were it not for me, but it’s easy to feel . . . removed from what’s going on. Stating the bloody obvious, I know, but I have to be one step ahead of the game and I can hardly pour my heart out to some stranger in the pub, can I?

  It always makes me laugh, reading about ‘crazed loners’. Well, yes, and there’s usually a pretty good reason for it! Not that it isn’t a major drawback when it comes to humping those ‘dead weights’ around, mind you.

  It’s not like I’m desperate for attention. I know, so what am I putting all this down on paper for? Well, I suppose that when everything’s finally wrapped up, I just want there to be some basic understanding of the whys and wherefores. Not that I’m expecting a great deal on that score, to be honest. There’s always the ghouls and the academics, I suppose, and the odd religious nutcase who comes on side with blather about forgiveness. But apart from them, the reaction will be so hysterical that almost nobody will give a toss about the reasoning.

  All the more reason for me to get it down in black and white then, yes? Besides which, when the Nick Maiers of this world sit down to write their blockbusters, they’ll have a little more to go on than usual.

  Hopefully they’ll make a better job of it than they did last time.

  Shock, horror: it’s all gone very quiet in the newsagent’s these days. He’s too worried about keeping children out of his shop and it doesn’t take much to knock a story off the front page. Too many kids stabbing each other, too much sleaze. A celebrity scandal or a decent terrorist story will trump an honest-to-goodness murder every time.

  Once they find this latest one, though, he’s bound to kick off again, waving his rolled-up tabloid like some sword of justice and ranting about how the streets aren’t safe. I’d better make a point of going in as soon as I can. With a bit of luck, the self-righteous old bugger might burst a blood vessel while he’s handing over my Bensons.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘On top of which, the victim appears to have had a sex change quite recently, and been murdered with a priceless, jewel-encrusted cross-bow. ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Good, so you’re still with us, then?’

  ‘Sorry, Phil.’

  Thorne was feeling the ill effects of sleep deprivation. He had not got home from the crime scene until late the night before, Louise dead to the world when he got in and dead to the world when he’d crept out again, into a street no less dark and damp than it had been four hours earlier.

  By eleven in the morning he was ready to go back to bed, a heaviness having settled in his arms and legs. The cold, metal slabs of Hornsey Mortuary were looking every bit as inviting as the comfiest Slumberdown.

  ‘Pro-Plus is good,’ Hendricks said. ‘Or Red Bull, though I wouldn’t recommend the two together.’

  ‘Unless you’ve got a few cans stashed in one of your fridges, you’re not helping.’

  ‘It’s illegal in France, did you know that?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Red Bull. And in Norway and Denmark.’

  ‘The French drink absinthe. Doesn’t that stuff kill you?’

  ‘God knows, but it makes the heart grow fonder.’

  It took Thorne a second or two to get it; even then, a sarcastic smirk used up a lot less energy than laughin
g.

  Outside the post-mortem suite, Thorne studied the health and safety posters on the wall. A yawn provided the cover for an unusually delicate fart, as he read up on the ways to avoid AIDS and MRSA, while Hendricks stripped off his protective gown and surgical scrubs and tossed them into a communal bin. Then they walked along the narrow corridor towards the coroner’s office, which the pathologist on call could use whenever he was in the building.

  ‘Silent but deadly,’ Hendricks said.

  For a few seconds, Thorne thought that his friend was talking about MRSA, but then he saw the grin. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Dirty bastard . . .’

  The office was fractionally larger than Pavesh Kambar’s but a lot more chaotic. A stack of green lever files was piled up on one of the three desks, and there were sticky notes on each computer screen. Hendricks pulled out a chair for Thorne, then dropped into his own. The Arsenal ‘Seventies Legends’ calendar above the desk was the sole demarcation of territory in the shared space, and Thorne could see that a fortnight from now Hendricks would be attending a seminar on ‘gene regulation’. The date was highlighted in red, beneath a picture of Charlie George, flat out after scoring the winner in the 1971 Cup Final.

  Hendricks gestured towards the other desks. ‘Most of the people who work in here have pet hates as far as the “customers” go, and it’s always been water for me. What it does to the body. I’d take a jumper or a decent car accident any day.’

  Thorne could not remember too many lovely murder scenes, but on arriving at the canal bank the previous afternoon even he had been grateful that he had not found time for lunch.

  They had pulled the body out of the water near Camden Lock, within spitting distance of the shops and bars of the sprawling market, though as yet it was impossible to tell where it had gone in. It lay on the bank beneath a hastily erected tent: one hand formed into a fist, stiff around the expected sliver of X-ray; the other, pale palm upwards and purplish fingertips, as though the victim were black but wearing white fingerless gloves; a shoe missing, a bracelet of weed around the foot; and the belly straining with gas against a waterlogged denim jacket.