Mark Billingham - Bloodline

She had long dark hair and wore a sensible coat. She looked about fourteen.

‘I take it you didn’t see much,’ Thorne said.

‘I wasn’t here,’ the girl said. Her voice was quiet, Home Counties. ‘I’m a friend of Alex. We were next door watching the band.’ As soon as she’d said the name, her lip had begun to tremble and Thorne was reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket for tissues. The girl beat him to it, pressing a crumpled wad into the corner of each eye and speaking through delicate, childlike sobs. ‘We were supposed to be having lunch on Sunday,’ she said. ‘A bit optimistic, considering how hammered we both were by the time we’d left, but that was the plan. A big Sunday roast in some pub somewhere. Alex could have eaten for England, you know?’ She dropped her hands into her lap, squeezed the tissue between them. ‘I felt so rough the next day that I never even got round to calling her.’

‘Come on,’ Thorne said. He didn’t bother telling her that any such call would have gone unanswered.

‘Then, you know, she didn’t come in on Monday morning. I never spoke to her again.’ Her hands moved back to her face, and when she finally took away the sodden lump of tissue there was a shiny string of snot between her nose and her fingers. She kept very still as Thorne leaned across and wiped it away.

Once a consensus of sorts had been reached on the description, the students were allowed to go, with a reminder for them to get in touch should they remember anything else. As they trooped slowly out, they passed Yvonne Kitson on her way in, and Thorne saw her entrance earn more than a casual backward glance from the skinny boy with the scraggy beard. Kitson saw it too, and did not seem displeased.

‘Careful,’ Holland said. ‘That’s only a notch above kiddie-fiddling.’

‘Is it?’ Kitson’s face was the picture of innocence. ‘So neither of you fancied the blonde?’

Neither of them said anything.

Kitson smiled and sat down. ‘Right, we’ve got no cameras in the bar, unfortunately, but they’re on all the staircases, in the main lobby and at the front door. So, we should have something to go through by late afternoon.’ She reached into her handbag and began reapplying lipstick. ‘Did we get a decent description?’

‘We got one,’ Thorne said. ‘Different from the one the Leicester boys were given, and different from the one we got from Emily Walker’s neighbour.’

‘So, they’re all unreliable.’

‘That’s always a possibility.’

‘Or we’ve got someone who makes an effort to change his appearance. ’

Holland looked from one DI to the other. ‘What’s that all about, then? Part of the kick he’s getting, do you reckon?’ He shook his head as though he were answering his own question. ‘Maybe it’s one of those multiple-personalities things.’

‘No chance.’ Kitson shook her head and dropped the lipstick back in her bag. ‘Let his defence team try that kind of cobblers on when the time comes. He probably just enjoys pissing us about.’

‘Fine with me.’ Thorne picked up the empty cups from the floor and placed them on the table. ‘They’re usually the ones who get careless. ’

‘Like Garvey,’ Holland said. ‘He slipped up eventually.’

‘Yeah, but there were seven bodies by then,’ Kitson said.

Thorne stood, dug into his pocket for the car keys. Said, ‘This one’s more than halfway to that already.’

Louise had sent him a text when he was halfway between Leicester and London: drive safe. you might still be pissed! Thorne had called at lunchtime, after they’d wrapped things up at the Rocket, but she was busy and a little brisk on the phone. Another text arrived just before five, as he and Holland were walking into Brigstocke’s office to review the CCTV footage: sorry about earlier. another takeaway 2nite? can’t be arsed 2 cook. early night? Taking his seat next to Brigstocke, Thorne sent back a smiley face that almost matched his own.

It was the best he had felt all day…

While Thorne had been in Leicester talking to Jamie Paice and in Holloway interviewing students, the team had been following those lines of enquiry that had become pressing since the link between the victims had been determined beyond all doubt. All checks thus far had eliminated any of Raymond Garvey’s former friends and established that he had no living male relatives, with an elderly uncle in a care home in Essex the only blood relative of any kind that anyone had been able to trace.

They talked through possibilities, while Kitson set up her equipment. ‘So, some kind of copycat then?’ she suggested.

‘They’re not copies,’ Holland said. ‘Not exactly. Garvey bludgeoned all his victims to death.’

‘You know what I mean, Dave.’

‘All killed outside as well.’

‘Some twisted, fucking… homage then, whatever you want to call it.’

‘Yeah, feasible, I suppose. I mean, it’s easy enough to find out who all Garvey’s victims were.’

‘It’s a piece of piss,’ Kitson had said. ‘There were at least two documentaries and there’s loads of books out there.’

Kitson and Holland had looked at Brigstocke. Brigstocke looked at Thorne.

‘Maybe,’ Thorne had said.

He had seen plenty of these books, their garish jackets – black and blood-red the favoured colours – jumping out at him on that first trawl through the websites devoted to Raymond Garvey and others like him. He had already returned to one such site and ordered a couple of the less sensational volumes. Could it really be that simple, though? Was the man responsible for four brutal and meticulously planned murders just some wannabe psycho looking to emulate one of his heroes? A killer trying to inspire a few garish jackets of his own. ‘Maybe…’

Now, they were going to get their first look at him.

Kitson had spent the afternoon transferring the tapes from the Rocket Club on to DVD; trawling through hours of footage; highlighting any clips that might be useful; and finally burning them on to a separate disc. With Thorne and Brigstocke ready to watch, she picked up the remote from the trolley on which she’d wheeled in the TV and DVD player.

‘Right, we’ve got three clips of Greg Macken and the man he picked up in the bar of the Rocket Club on Saturday evening.’

‘I think Greg was the one getting picked up,’ Thorne said.

‘Either way.’

‘You don’t look overly thrilled,’ Brigstocke said.

Kitson pressed the button and moved to one side. ‘See for yourself.’

The footage was black and white, silent, with a time code running across the top of the screen.

‘It’s a pretty good picture,’ Holland said.

‘They’ve just had all their equipment upgraded,’ Kitson said. ‘The picture’s not the problem.’

They were looking along a corridor, with the edge of a staircase on the left-hand side of the screen and a stone banister spiralling down out of the frame.

‘These are the main stairs down from the bar on the first floor,’ Kitson said. A group of four girls came towards the camera, heads nodding, enjoying themselves. ‘Obviously there’s music coming from the room where the band were performing. The girls turned on to the stairs and disappeared out of shot. ‘Here we go.’

They watched as Greg Macken and another man moved out of the shadows at the far end of the corridor and walked straight towards the camera. Thorne could not make out the faces, but he could see that Macken’s companion was talking. Macken laughed at something the other man said. Thorne moved his chair towards the screen in anticipation of his first good look at the killer.

‘Don’t get too excited,’ Kitson said.