Bloodline

by Mark Billingham

  Walking up to the house, Chamberlain could see rowing boats and steamers moored on both sides of the river, and a pair of swans treading water in mid-stream while a group of kids threw bread from the far bank, trying to spin the slices, like frisbees.

  ‘Got him, right in the neck,’ one of them shouted.

  ‘See if you can do it again . . .’

  Chamberlain had already decided that, should the worst happen, she would move, a little nearer to London maybe, and that this was the kind of place she would choose. She loved being near the water, and though this stretch of river had a little less character, it was probably a damn sight cleaner than the English Channel.

  And some of the people here were under fifty.

  The door was opened by a surly-looking girl, aged fourteen or so, who stared at Chamberlain, careful not to open the door too far. Chamberlain remembered her notes. This would be Nicola, Sandra’s daughter by her third husband, who would be at work as manager of the local Tesco’s. Chamberlain toyed with freaking out the sour-faced little cow by using her name, but instead she just produced her photo ID and asked the girl if her mother was at home.

  After a few seconds, the girl backed away from the door, then pushed it until it was almost closed again before disappearing. While Chamberlain waited, hearing the girl’s footsteps on the stairs followed by a muffled conversation, she started to believe that this was all going to work out the way everybody wanted. She wondered if the girl knew anything about a half-brother twice her age, a serial killer who might well have babysat her.

  The woman apologised as she yanked the door wide. ‘Sorry . . . she’s not very chatty at the best of times,’ she said. ‘And she doesn’t like to see me upset.’

  ‘Oh, right. Is everything OK?’

  The woman cocked her head. ‘I don’t understand. She said you were police.’

  ‘I’m working with the police, yes, but—’

  ‘So, you haven’t come about . . .’ The woman gave a small shake of her head, seeing the confusion on Chamberlain’s face. ‘Sorry, I just presumed. We’ve had a death in the family and I thought that’s why you were here.’

  ‘Oh . . . I’m sorry,’ Chamberlain said. ‘What happened?’

  The woman leaned her head against the edge of the door. ‘One of those things, love. Poor bugger was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all, ran into some nutter. We weren’t exactly close, if I’m honest, but still, it’s a shock.’

  Chamberlain waited.

  ‘My nephew,’ the woman said, nodding. ‘Not even thirty! God only knows when they’ll let me bury him, mind you.’

  Chamberlain cleared her throat and the woman’s eyes flashed to hers. ‘Well, apologies if this is an awkward time, but I actually wanted to have a word with you about Raymond Garvey.’

  The woman blinked and slowly straightened.

  ‘A name from the past, I know,’ Chamberlain said. ‘And this is probably a bit out of the blue.’

  ‘Well, yes and no.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  The smile was somewhere between relief and resignation, and it remained in place as Sandra Phipps took a step back into her dimly lit hallway. ‘I’d better make us both a drink,’ she said.

  Gibbons brought up sandwiches and cold drinks for lunch, moaning about being a glorified waiter and looking horrified when Spibey invited him to join the game. Before he left, he pointed out that at least one of them needed to stay on duty downstairs. ‘You know, do the job we’re being paid for.’

  Now that one is a stickler, Spibey thought.

  After an hour or so, Dowd was well ahead, with several well-organised stacks of chips in front of him, and was even able to sub Fowler, who had lost heavily early on to both the other players. Taking the last game into account, Spibey was still down overall, and was keen to exert a little more pressure. Luck was one thing, he thought, but he was far and away the most experienced player at the table. On top of which - he smiled to himself - neither of them was exactly playing with a full deck.

  ‘Just to remind you,’ he said. ‘Brag is different to poker and a run beats a flush. You both clear about that?’

  Fowler laughed and tossed a few more chips into the pot. ‘Yeah, fine, but I don’t believe you’ve got either.’

  ‘Mind games,’ Dowd said. ‘It’s the sort of crap they pull on people in interview rooms.’ He pushed enough chips across the table to match Spibey’s bet. ‘Call . . .’

  Spibey nodded thoughtfully, but was unable to contain a broad grin as he laid down ace-king-queen. The grin became a chuckle as Fowler and Dowd groaned in disbelief and threw away their hands. Spibey gathered in the chips. ‘You’ve got coppers all wrong,’ he said. ‘We’re the honest ones.’

  Dowd had collected the cards and was already shuffling. ‘So, tell us honestly then, do you normally catch this kind of killer?’

  ‘Nothing normal about this bloke.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Spibey was stacking his winnings. ‘Look, I’m just on babysitting duty. I don’t really know the ins and outs of it.’

  ‘Come on . . .’

  ‘You’d be better off talking to Thorne.’

  ‘Would he be honest?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘You going to deal or not?’ Fowler snapped.

  Dowd raised an eyebrow at Spibey. ‘How long since you had your medicine, Graham?’

  Fowler stared for a few seconds, unblinking across the table, then calmly reached for his cigarettes. ‘I’m having all that, mate.’ He pointed at Spibey’s stack. ‘Every last chip.’

  ‘Easy to say when you’re not playing with your own money,’ Dowd said.

  ‘You’ll get it back.’

  ‘What, you going to sell a few Big Issues?’

  Fowler smiled, his mood appearing to change again suddenly. ‘When they set us up with these new identities, they’ll have to give us a bit of cash, won’t they? Something to get us started.’

  ‘Look, it’s all academic,’ Spibey said. ‘Because you won’t be winning jack-shit.’ He reached for his cards. ‘I’m telling you, I’ve hit a lucky streak.’

  Fowler lit his cigarette. ‘It’ll change,’ he said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Sandra Phipps was not a short woman, but she still showed every pound of the excess weight she carried. Round-faced and having done nothing to disguise the grey in her hair, she moved slowly, ushering Chamberlain into a small, overheated living room. ‘You’re welcome to have tea,’ she said. Her voice was flat and there was the hint of a wheeze in her breathing. ‘But I think I might need something a bit stronger, so . . .’

  ‘Tea’s fine for me,’ Chamberlain said.

  ‘It’s a bit early in the day, but what the hell.’

  The woman hovered in the doorway, as though she were waiting for Chamberlain to change her mind. Chamberlain smiled, saw a flash of what might have been fear in Sandra Phipps’ eyes and, for the first time since she’d accepted Tom Thorne’s offer to get involved in the investigation, began to feel excited.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Chamberlain said.

  While she waited for Sandra to return, Chamberlain sat in a well-worn but comfortable armchair and took in the room. The tops of the television, sideboard and corner cupboard were cluttered with knick-knacks and photographs. A TV listings magazine lay open on the sofa and a chick-lit paperback was on the small table next to it. A tropical-fish tank had been built into an alcove, its gentle bubbling just audible above the frantic bass-line that had begun to bleed down from an upstairs room. There was certainly no sign that this was a family in mourning: no flowers or sympathy cards on display. The daughter had been wearing black, but even with her limited knowledge of teenagers, Chamberlain guessed it was probably the colour Nicola Phipps chose to wear most of the time anyway. The scowl was probably a permanent feature, too.

  When Sandra returned - with a mug of tea and a half-empty bottle of wine - there were a few minutes of chi
t-chat, each woman getting comfortable in her own way. Sandra was horrified, she said, at how unsafe the streets had become in recent years. Chamberlain told her she agreed, and made the right noises when Sandra complained about the extortionate cost of funerals.

  Then, Chamberlain got down to it.

  She had found it hard to gauge the other woman’s reaction to the mention of the name ‘Raymond Garvey’. A long-distant ex-boyfriend was one thing, but when he also happened to be a notorious mass murderer, there were few precedents. Sandra’s reaction to the name ‘Malcolm Reece’ was a little easier to read.

  ‘They were a right pair,’ Sandra said, laughing. ‘Him and Ray, swanning around like they were God’s gift.’

  ‘Sounds like a few of you fell for it.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ She shrugged. ‘Young and stupid, I suppose.’

  ‘How long were you and Ray an item?’

  ‘I don’t think we were ever “an item”. We were both married, so . . .’

  ‘OK. For how long were the pair of you sneaking into the stationery cupboard for a quick one?’

  Sandra smiled, reddening a little. ‘There was a hotel room once in a while. The odd weekend away.’

  Chamberlain waited.

  ‘Six months or so, I suppose, on and off. Until he met my younger sister.’ She smiled again, cold this time, then took a drink. ‘Frances.’

  ‘He started seeing your sister?’

  Another shrug. ‘She was prettier than me.’

  ‘Malcolm Reece said something about a baby.’

  If Sandra heard what Chamberlain had said, she chose to ignore it. ‘They kept their affair even quieter than me and Ray did,’ she said. ‘I only found out by accident and, to be honest, I didn’t really want to know too much about it. I was jealous, I suppose, and pissed off with my sister. We didn’t talk to each other for quite a while.’

  Chamberlain said she could understand.

  ‘I even gave Malcolm Reece a bunk-up once or twice, stupid cow that I was. Trying to get my own back at Ray, I suppose.’

  ‘So, what about this baby?’

  ‘Not mine,’ Sandra said.

  ‘Your sister’s?’

  Sandra took her time, then nodded. ‘A little boy. Frances and Ray had already broken up for a while by that time. I think Ray’s wife was starting to cotton on.’

  Chamberlain grunted agreement. She remembered Jenny Duggan telling her she’d always known about Garvey’s other women.

  ‘Took her long enough, mind you.’ Sandra drained her glass. ‘You OK?’

  Chamberlain stared at Sandra Phipps, suddenly stunned by the echo of a coin dropping hard. ‘Frances?’

  Sandra nodded again, and seemed to be wondering what had taken Chamberlain quite so long. ‘Frances Walsh. The stupid thing is, we never really made up properly.’

  Chamberlain blinked, pictured the pages of notes she’d been studying on the train: a list of Anthony Garvey’s victims and a list of the women, long since murdered, who had given birth to them. ‘Frances Walsh was Ray Garvey’s third victim,’ she said.

  Sandra shook her head. ‘First victim. They found her third, but she was the first to be killed.’ She leaned forward and picked up the wine bottle. ‘You sure you don’t want one of these?’

  Chamberlain shook her head.

  Sandra said, ‘Suit yourself,’ and began to top up her glass.

  Hendricks breathed heavily for a few seconds then spoke, nice and slowly, in the huskiest voice he could muster. ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘You must be really bored.’

  ‘Bloody hell, how much more miserable could you sound?’

  ‘Give me another hour or so,’ Thorne said.

  When the lack of progress on a case cast heavy shadows across every brick, rippled black in each pane of its dirty glass, Becke House could quickly turn a good mood bad and a bad mood ugly. Thorne had been more than halfway there, sitting in his office and trying in vain to recapture a little of the morning’s optimism, when Hendricks had called.

  ‘Fancy a beer or six later?’

  ‘Tricky,’ Hendricks said. ‘I’m in Gothenburg.’

  ‘Right. Shit.’ Thorne had completely forgotten about his friend’s seminar. Analysis of something or other.

  ‘You had your chance, mate.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Well, I’d been hoping for wall-to-wall Vikings and bars full of men who look like Freddie Ljungberg.’

  ‘I was talking about the seminar.’

  ‘Equally disappointing.’

  ‘So, these men . . .’

  ‘More like Freddie Krueger.’

  Thorne laughed, remembering the last time he had done so, and thought about describing his conversation with Louise that morning, perhaps even telling Hendricks about the one he’d had with Carol Chamberlain the night before.

  He never got the chance.

  ‘I’m guessing there’s no joy on Garvey, then?’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t killed anyone else, not as far as we know, anyway, so it’s not like things are any worse.’

  ‘I was thinking about the one in the canal.’

  ‘Walsh?’

  ‘Right. Remember you asked me why I thought he’d attacked him from the front? Why it was so much more brutal?’

  ‘You said something about him getting cocky or angry.’ Thorne tucked the phone between his chin and shoulder, began sorting through the mass of unread paper on his desk. ‘Being in a hurry, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Thorne heard something in the silence. ‘What?’

  ‘What if he wasn’t in a hurry?’ Hendricks asked. ‘What if he deliberately took the trouble to make the victim unrecognisable? There’s still been no formal ID, has there?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Can we get a DNA sample from that aunt, do you think? Make sure.’

  ‘We know who he is, Phil. The stuff in his pocket?’

  ‘Who the hell carries an old driving licence around? An old letter?’

  ‘Maybe someone who’s off his face on God knows what and is trying to hang on to who he was.’ Thorne balled up a sheaf of papers he no longer needed, tossed it at the waste-paper bin. Missed. ‘Walsh was virtually living on the street, as far as we can tell.’

  ‘I was thinking about that, too,’ Hendricks said. ‘The drugs that showed up in the body weren’t what I’d expected.’

  Thorne told Hendricks to hang on while he found the relevant file on his computer and called up the toxicology report. He opened the document, said, ‘OK.’

  ‘I mean, where does the average dosser get hold of antidepressants?’

  Thorne looked through the report. Alcohol had been found - beer and whisky - and a partially digested final meal, chips and a pie of some description. He scrolled down and studied the list of drugs, traces of which had been found in Simon Walsh’s body. Diazepam, Prozac, Wellbutrin. ‘You can get hold of anything,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Isn’t it normally smack and Special Brew?’

  ‘There comes a time when you’ll take whatever you can get your hands on, mate.’ Thorne remembered the boy called Spike, his eyes glazing over and starting to close even before the needle had slipped from his vein and clattered to the pavement. ‘I remember one bloke who got off shooting up cider.’

  There was a pause, then Hendricks said, ‘Sorry. Spending too much time sitting in hotel rooms thinking.’

  ‘Just thinking?’

  ‘Well, I have to admit you get a better class of porn on the in-room movie system.’

  Thorne laughed again and glanced up to see Sam Karim standing in the doorway. Karim asked if Thorne was speaking to Hendricks, then if he could have a quick word.

  ‘Hang on, Sam wants you . . .’

  Thorne handed over the receiver and rose from his desk. He thought about Simon Walsh’s face, what had been left of it. Listened as Karim asked Hendricks if he’d seen a moose yet, and if he would mind bringing him back some duty-free cigar
ettes.

  Fowler was drunk.

  He struggled to focus, swiping wildly at the ash that dropped from his cigarette on to the table, as he told Spibey, a little louder than was necessary, that he’d been right about the policeman’s lucky streak coming to an end.

  ‘Brag’s not a game of luck,’ Spibey said. ‘It’s a game of skill and strategy.’

  Dowd laughed. Said, ‘Where are all the chips?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Fowler said, triumphant. ‘Where are all the fucking chips?’ He clapped his hands and pointed theatrically at the large piles of chips in front of himself and Dowd, then at the few that remained in front of the policeman.

  Shuffling the cards, Spibey just about managed a weak smile, but he knew that Fowler was right. Since lunchtime he hadn’t seen a hand, or, if he had, he’d run hard into a better one. He’d watched as Fowler and Dowd had struck lucky time and again and his stack had dwindled to almost nothing.

  ‘You’d better ask your mate downstairs if he can pop out to a cash-point for you,’ Dowd said.

  Fowler cackled, said, ‘cashpoint’ and knocked a pile of his chips to the floor as he leaned across to high-five his friend.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Spibey muttered.

  Fowler bent to retrieve his chips while Dowd told Spibey he should just deal the next hand.

  Spibey doled out the cards and was delighted to see that he was holding an ace and two queens, a premium three-card brag hand. He raised big and Dowd quickly folded, but Fowler was content to play blind, which enabled him to call the bet with only half what Spibey had staked. Spibey was all-in and turned over his cards. He watched as Fowler snuck a peek at his hand then began to laugh before sliding them face down across the table to Dowd.

  Dowd shook his head and shrugged. ‘Not your day, Officer,’ before showing Spibey the 7-8-9 that Fowler had been holding.