Bloodline

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Not to mention—’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Your own mother, Tony.’

  ‘She asked for what she got.’

  ‘None of them asked for it.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. It was the tumour. It explains the other women, can’t you understand that? You had no control. Not even with her.’

  ‘I’m not up to this. Any of it.’

  ‘I’m up to it, OK? You don’t have to worry about anything.’

  ‘Just having my brain cut open.’

  ‘I’ll be there when they put you under, OK? And I’ll be there when you wake up.’

  ‘If . . .’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just . . .’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘I’m grateful, really I am.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. It’s what families do.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Debbie was stepping back from the door before the officer’s warrant card had been fully raised. Instinctively, she reached behind her, her hand flapping, beckoning Jason from where she had left him at the foot of the stairs. Her heart lurched; fear, excitement, both.

  ‘Did you get him?’

  The detective shook his head and looked away for a second or two, searching for the words. ‘There’s been a . . . development, that’s all.’

  She shouted her son’s name, without turning round.

  ‘There’s no need to panic, Miss Mitchell.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We just think it’s better if someone stays with you for a while. Is that OK?’

  Debbie took a tentative step forward, craning her neck to see past the man on her doorstep, looking up and down the street. The nosy cow opposite was watching through a gap in her curtains. She probably had the copper down as one of Nina’s clients. Debbie stuck two fingers up.

  ‘Is that OK, Debbie?’ The detective’s warrant card was slipped back into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Can I come in?’

  Debbie took a few seconds, then nodded and turned back into the house, looking for Jason. She heard the front door close as she walked into the sitting room, moving quickly to where her son was now hunched over a picture book next to the sofa. She knelt down beside him, feeling her heart rate slowing a little as she watched him turning the pages, listened to him mutter and grunt.

  ‘Is there someone else in the house?’

  She turned to look up at the figure standing behind her in the doorway. He nodded towards the open door that led through to Nina’s kitchen.

  ‘The radio,’ she said. ‘It’s a play.’

  The detective nodded and listened to the voices for a few moments. It sounded like an argument. ‘Pictures are better, right?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘They say that, don’t they?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Plays and what have you. That’s why they’re always so good on the radio.’ He tapped a finger against the side of his head. ‘Because the pictures are better.’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

  Debbie turned back to Jason, but she supposed that the detective was right. She usually had the radio tuned into Capital or Heart FM. She was no great fan of the DJs, but she liked most of the music they played and Jason seemed to like it too. She occasionally caught him dancing, though few other people would have called it that. If there was a play on, though, she’d always try to sit and listen. She’d make a coffee and work her way through a packet of biscuits while Jason was glued to his video. Even when it was one of the weird ones, or some old rubbish set in India or Iraq or wherever, it was usually easy enough to get into the story and an hour would fly by without her really noticing.

  Because the pictures are better.

  They were certainly better than the ones that had been filling her head of late. The man who was coming for her. Nothing in there suitable for a nice, cosy afternoon play . . .

  She heard the detective walking across the carpet and turned just as he squatted down next to her. His knees cracked loudly and he laughed and shook his head.

  ‘Bloody hell, listen to that,’ he said.

  He smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’

  ‘This is Jason,’ Debbie said.

  For half a minute or more they both watched Jason moving his fingers across the pictures in his book.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He’s eight.’

  If the officer was surprised, he did not show it. He just watched silently for a few more seconds, then nodded and pushed himself back up to his feet. At that moment, Jason looked up from his picture book and smiled at him.

  The detective smiled right back.

  THIRTY-NINE

  They had already cordoned off both ends of the street by the time Thorne and Holland reached Euston, and a small crowd had started to gather. Residents and passers-by had quickly become members of an attentive audience. They fired questions at the officers keeping them at bay and spread rumours among themselves when their enquiries went unanswered. Thorne played equally dumb. He climbed out of the car, keeping his head down, and flashed his warrant card before jogging away up the street towards Grass-up Grange.

  There were a dozen or more emergency vehicles parked haphazardly along the street: vans and cars, marked and unmarked; an ambulance. Someone had already called up a tea wagon, which was never a good sign. As Thorne got close, several armed officers walked towards him, ominously slowly, while others stood at the open doors of a van, handing in weapons and stripping off their kit.

  Their presence unnecessary.

  Thorne was no great fan of CO19 - he’d always found too many armed officers to be cocky sods. Of course, most of them had been a little less full of themselves since Jean Charles de Menezes, and he knew, from the looks that were being exchanged - the heavy steps and the slumped shoulders - that he would have no over-inflated egos to deal with today.

  He watched a squat and surly CO19 officer toss his helmet on to the grass and start pulling off his body-armour. As Thorne approached, the man took a cigarette packet from his back pocket and said, ‘Fuck me!’ His face was the colour of candle-wax.

  ‘How bad?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘As bad as it gets.’

  They both turned as a stretcher was carried out through the open doors and on towards the ambulance. There was a blanket across the body and an oxygen mask was being pressed to the face, but Thorne still recognised the figure of DS Rob Gibbons. He studied the grim expressions of the paramedics, looking for some clue as to the officer’s chances, but saw none. Then he hurried towards the building.

  Inside, the lobby was buzzing with activity. The tea wagon would not be needed for a while. The CSI team were already moving around purposefully, the rustle of their body-suits competing with the squawk of radios and the barked orders of senior officers doing their best to keep a lid on the panic.

  Thorne walked across to where the remaining members of the paramedic team were gathering their equipment together at the foot of the stairs. Holland was only a few steps behind him, and the two of them stood quietly watching for a moment; staring at the long-bladed knife that lay on the bottom step and the blood that had spread, shiny against the marble floor.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Holland asked.

  ‘We had him,’ Thorne said. ‘We had him all the time.’

  ‘Had who?’

  ‘Anthony Garvey.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that.’ Thorne had done his best to explain as the car had raced from Colindale. Holland had listened, open-mouthed, as Thorne told him what Carol Chamberlain had discovered, spelling out its implications as he urged the driver to put his foot down. ‘But who?’

  Instinctively, Thorne raised his head, looked up towards the rooms where he’d visited the last two men on a killer’s list. Where he’d visited the killer himself.

  ‘Sir?’

  Thorne turned and nodded at the nervous y
oung woman who had walked across to them. Nodded again, impatient as she introduced herself as the DI with the on-call Homicide Assessment Team, her name going out of his head immediately. ‘Let’s have it,’ he said.

  ‘Two bodies upstairs.’ Her eyes flicked momentarily to a notebook. ‘Detective Sergeant Spibey and a man named Graham Fowler.’

  ‘Christ,’ Holland said.

  Thorne said, ‘Show me.’

  The woman chatted as they walked up the stairs, the nerves still evident in her voice. She explained that Superintendent Jesmond was on his way, as was the pathologist who was running later than he might have been, having got caught in traffic. There had been some kind of mix-up, she said, as to exactly who was covering for Doctor Hendricks. Thorne thought of his friend, happily oblivious in some Gothenburg watering-hole, and felt a stab of envy. He looked at Holland. ‘So, now we know.’

  Holland nodded. ‘Dowd.’

  ‘The man pretending to be Dowd,’ Thorne said.

  They stood in the doorway of the room at the far end of the corridor, so bland and utilitarian until Anthony Garvey had gone to work. They took in its grisly new design.

  Spibey was still in his chair, head down on the slick tabletop. On the other side of the room, Graham Fowler was slumped against the wall, one knee oddly raised, as if he were resting casually, though the blood and brain fragments caked to the side of his face told a very different story. A few feet away, a crude circle had been sprayed on the carpet around a stained and splintered mug-tree, and the three small branches that had broken from it; snapped clean off as it had been brought down repeatedly on to the heads of the dead men.

  Thorne watched, his fists clenching and unclenching while the stills photographer moved in as close as he was able to the bodies. He listened as one of the CSI officers said something about the murder weapon, cracked a feeble joke about tea.

  Whistling in the dark had never sounded so shrill.

  ‘The superintendent’s going to go mental,’ Holland said.

  Thorne nodded, half listening. Thinking back over his conversations with the man they had all thought was Andrew Dowd. Wondering if he had missed something.

  ‘They’ll be wanting heads to roll, and sure as shit Trevor Jesmond’s won’t be one of them.’

  Thoren had put the man’s behaviour down to stress and medication. To some kind of breakdown caused by his predicament and the business with his wife. Christ, he’d been an idiot. Been made to look an idiot. ‘Are you going to catch this bloke?’ Dowd had asked, looking him in the eye, right where Thorne was standing. He turned to the female detective, who was standing behind them, talking quietly to one of her junior officers. ‘We need a description out there now,’ he said.

  She stepped towards him. ‘It’s done.’

  ‘Every car in the area, right?’

  ‘Like I said—’

  ‘House-to-house as well, nearest half a dozen streets.’ He glanced back into the room. ‘Bastard’ll be covered in blood, so he can’t have got far without somebody seeing him.’

  ‘We think he took DS Spibey’s jacket,’ the woman said. ‘We can’t find it, anyway.’ She glanced back towards her colleague, looking for a little moral support before continuing. ‘There’s no sign of his car, either. I checked and Spibey definitely drove in, so . . .’

  Thorne stared at her.

  ‘We have to assume our suspect’s taken it.’

  ‘What about a briefcase?’

  It was the woman’s turn to stare.

  ‘Briefcase, bag, whatever,’ Thorne said. ‘Is Spibey’s stuff missing?’

  ‘I’ve not seen anything.’

  ‘Look. For. It.’

  She turned and headed back down the stairs, but Thorne knew it was pointleess. He began shouting as he lurched forward and followed her. At anyone who would listen. At himself. ‘The killer is almost certainly now in possession of sensitive case-notes and documents.’ His voice echoed as he got close to the lobby. ‘Details of surveillance and protection operations. Names and numbers . . .’ He froze for a second and almost stumbled, used the momentum to take the remaining stairs two at a time.

  Debbie Mitchell’s name.

  The address of Nina Collins’ flat.

  Coming out on to the street, he watched a patrol car pull up and saw two uniformed officers step out. He recognised their faces and felt a spasm in his gut. What had Nina Collins called them? Starsky and Hutch . . .

  ‘Why the hell aren’t you in Barnet?’

  The older one leaned back against the car, peered past Thorne at the comings and goings. ‘We were told to leave and get over here.’

  His colleague chipped in: ‘Yeah, he said it had all kicked off.’

  ‘Who did?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Spibey.’

  It felt like a punch, and Thorne was still reeling from it as he ran towards the marked BMW that was moving slowly towards him, its driver searching for a parking space. Thorne furiously signalled to the driver that he should turn the car around fast. He blinked to erase the picture in his head as he reached for his radio, shouting about blues and twos.

  Debbie Mitchell’s face peering through a plastic bag.

  FORTY

  The BMW raced through traffic in Camden and Kentish Town, then screamed north along the Archway Road. The thoughts were flying equally frantically around Thorne’s head as he braced himself against the dashboard, trying to keep his breathing under control and shouting obscenities at any vehicle that did not get out of their way quickly enough.

  Obscenities meant, in truth, for the man who had run rings round him.

  The body found in the canal must have been that of the real Andrew Dowd. It would be easy enough to get a DNA sample and make a positive ID. The conversation Thorne would soon be having with Dowd’s wife would be more difficult. He half expected the woman to sue them for incompetence.

  It would be a difficult case to defend.

  ‘Hang on.’

  Thorne gritted his teeth, trying to look unafraid as the car accelerated through a red light and swerved hard into a bus lane. He glanced across to see the speedometer’s needle touching seventy-five.

  ‘Ten minutes away, tops,’ the driver said.

  He remembered what Hendricks had said about the victim being killed elsewhere, then dumped. It was a fair assumption that Walsh - or Garvey, as he now called himself - had followed Dowd to Cumbria and killed him there, then travelled back to London to dispose of the body before heading up to Kendal again and handing himself in to the local police.

  As monsters went, this one was brilliant.

  The trick had been in not trying to make himself look like Dowd, in so radically changing the appearance of the man whose identity he had stolen. The shaved head had convinced everyone they were looking at a man who had been through a major breakdown and Garvey had used every ounce of knowledge he had gained about Andrew and Sarah Dowd’s private life to keep the wife out of the picture. Washing their cars. Watching and waiting for his chance, tucking away the information he would use when the time came. The troubled marriage gave him the perfect excuse once he’d ‘become’ Dowd to avoid any confrontation with the one person who would know he was not who he claimed to be.

  As a confidence trick, it was the equivalent of a shoplifter pushing a double bed out through the doors of a department store.

  With two people on his list that Anthony Garvey could not track down, he had let the police do the work for him. He had smuggled himself inside the investigation. Fowler had been there on a plate, holed up in the room next door. A sitting duck. It was one policeman’s weakness for gambling, the ease with which he had abandoned procedure that had provided Garvey with the opportunity he had been waiting for, the information he needed.

  Had led him to the last victim on his list.

  Despite the speed, the noise, the adrenaline fizzing through him, Thorne still tensed when his phone rang. As the car tore down into Finchley, he spent half a minute
shouting above the siren to Dave Holland, asking him to check the ETAs of the other units he had ordered to Nina Collins’ flat, hoping that they might get there quicker than he could.

  ‘We’ll get him,’ Holland said.

  The siren screamed again before Thorne could think of anything to say, so he just hung up. He was tucking the phone back into his pocket when he had the idea.

  Garvey had taken Spibey’s jacket and briefcase, his paperwork, the ID he had used when talking to the officers outside Collins’ flat. So, why not . . . ?

  He pulled his phone out again, searched through the memory and dialled the number he had called first thing that morning, the last time he had spoken to Brian Spibey.

  The mobile rang three times, four, then it was answered.

  ‘You took your time, Mr Thorne.’

  Thorne needed a moment to catch his breath. The casual tone, the lightness in the man’s voice, sent a shiver through his chest and shoulders. ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘You might need to be a little more specific.’

  ‘Look, I know what this is all about, Simon, and we need to talk about it.’

  ‘My name’s Anthony.’

  ‘Sorry . . . Anthony. We need to talk about what happened to your father. I think we can get the case looked at again.’ It was nonsense, but Thorne could think of no other way to reach the man. He winced at Garvey’s reaction, the playful mockery in his voice, which made it clear that he thought it was nonsense, too.

  ‘Really? You’d do that for me? After all these bodies?’

  Thorne’s mouth went dry. These bodies, not those. Was Garvey looking down at the body of Debbie Mitchell even as they were talking?

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m still here,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I suppose you’re tracing this.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Using cell-site location or whatever.’

  ‘No, really.’ There would not have been time, and there was no point when Thorne knew precisely where Garvey was.

  ‘It’s a lot more high-tech these days than when they were blundering around trying to catch my father.’