Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘Sometimes it was good,’ Thorne said. ‘With my dad, you know? There was this one afternoon we were all playing bingo on the pier and he just lost it. Started swearing and shouting, proper filth, and everyone was upset, but I was pissing myself. And he knew it was funny. I could see it in his face.’

‘I’m glad it wasn’t all gloom and doom,’ Kambar said. ‘How was it at the end?’

Thorne suddenly found his appetite again. He had discovered only recently how the fire in which Jim Thorne perished had started; the part he had played in the death of his own father. He had not even felt able to share the truth with Louise. He heard Kambar from the other side of the table telling him that it wasn’t a problem, that he had not meant to pry.

Thorne started slightly when Kambar’s beeper went off. He got up and shook the doctor’s hand when it was offered. ‘You’ve been a great help. Thank you.’

‘I wish I could tell you I was off to perform some vital brain surgery,’ Kambar said. ‘But the truth is I’ve got a squash game.’ He reached inside his jacket and rubbed his stomach. ‘Should have eaten lunch a bit earlier.’

‘That was my fault.’

‘It’s not a problem.’

‘Someone’s killing the children of his victims,’ Thorne said suddenly.

‘Sorry?’ Kambar pulled his cryptic crossword face again.

Thorne could see a small blob of sauce at the edge of the doctor’s moustache, a thin streak of it just below his collar. ‘The children of the women that Raymond Garvey murdered.’ Thorne suddenly felt a little dizzy and guessed he’d stood up too quickly. He took a couple of seconds, hoping that Kambar would think the pause was for his benefit. ‘Whoever had those fragments of Garvey’s brain scan has already killed four people.’

Kambar looked as though he wished he had never asked. He puffed out his cheeks, said, ‘Fuck.’

The surprise was clearly evident on Thorne’s face.

‘It’s a medical term,’ Kambar said. ‘One you reserve for when you hear something that makes you feel like a hopeless quack with a pocketful of leeches.’

‘I use it pretty much the same way,’ Thorne said. ‘Just more often.’

‘There are so many things that can mess up the brain, but most of them we can do nothing about.’ Kambar shook his head, the resignation etched in lines around his mouth. ‘Sometimes the damage is… invisible.’

‘Enjoy your game,’ Thorne said.

When the doctor had gone, Thorne walked over to the counter again. He bought a coffee and a thick slice of cheesecake, took them back to the table. From the window, there was a spectacular view across the flat, green fenland: Grantchester huddled a little to the north; the spires of Cambridge just visible a few miles away to the east; and the pulsing grey vein of the M11 halfway to the horizon.

Thorne looked out, savoured his dessert and tried to remember exactly what his father had shouted that day on the pier. Based on what Kambar had told him, his father could probably have committed murder with a fair chance of getting away with it. It’s a shame his dad had never known that. He was a crotchety and unforgiving old sod sometimes, especially in the last few years. He’d probably have drawn up a decent-sized hit list.

‘Garvey’s son thinks his father was wrongly imprisoned, and that the tumour might have been found earlier if he hadn’t been in prison. So he blames the world and his wife for his father’s death.’

‘I’m still not convinced this nutcase is Garvey’s son,’ Thorne said.

‘Sounds like Garvey was, though.’

‘OK, for the sake of argument…’

‘So, the child of the killer starts killing the children of the victims. It makes a kind of sense when you think about it.’

‘Sense?’ Thorne said.

‘You know what I mean.’

Thorne was walking slowly around the small branch of WH Smith at Cambridge station, waiting for the 15.28 to King’s Cross and driven back inside by the wind knifing along the platform. He kept the phone close to his mouth as he talked, so he could whisper when he and Brigstocke got to the meat of it.

‘Twenty-six Anthony Garveys in the UK,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Could be better, but could be a hell of a lot worse.’

Thorne had spoken to Brigstocke earlier in the day, after the initial meeting with Kambar. Holland had also checked in with the DCI, having met with the governor at Whitemoor, so now it was Thorne who needed bringing up to speed.

‘I think we’re wasting our time,’ Thorne said.

‘You’re not convinced. Yeah, you said.’

‘Even if he is Garvey’s son, I think the name is dodgy. If it was genuine, there’d be records. We would have known about it.’

‘Still got to check them out, Tom.’

‘I know,’ Thorne said. He was sure that, whoever this man was and whatever his parentage, he himself had chosen the name he had used when visiting Whitemoor and pestering Pavesh Kambar. But he also understood that, as far as the investigation went, arses always had to be covered, and it was easy to criticise when you weren’t the senior investigating officer.

‘We’ve discounted half of them since you and I spoke earlier,’ Brigstocke said. ‘So it shouldn’t take too long.’

‘What about the potential victims?’

‘Not doing quite so well there. Still missing those three.’

‘Missing?’

‘One is apparently on a walking holiday, but his wife can’t tell us much more than that, or doesn’t want to, for some reason. The other two have both slipped off the radar thanks to one thing and another. We’ll find them, though.’

‘As long as we find them first,’ Thorne said.

There was a pause, voices in the background. Thorne had stopped in front of the men’s magazines, and his eyes drifted from Mojo and Uncut, past Four Four Two, to the covers of Forum and Adult DVD Review on the higher shelves.

‘What do you think about this personality change business?’

‘Have a guess,’ Thorne said.

‘But Kambar didn’t deny that it was possible?’

‘Anything’s possible.’

‘Right.’

‘Right, and we shouldn’t discount the possibility that Garvey was actually a werewolf, or maybe the unwitting victim of a gypsy’s curse. For Christ’s sake, Russell…’

‘Look, a man who’s already murdered four people believes it, so what we think doesn’t really matter.’

‘You haven’t said what you think.’

‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ Brigstocke said. ‘You should try it some time.’

‘It wasn’t you that put Garvey away, so I don’t know why you think you’ve got to sit on the fence.’

‘Steady, mate.’

‘Sorry-’

‘It’s our motive, Tom, so we need to take it seriously. OK?’

Thorne picked up a copy of Uncut and wandered towards the till. There was a small queue, but he still had five minutes before the train was due. ‘I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,’ he said.

‘What time do you get into King’s Cross?’

‘Half four-ish.’

‘Go straight home,’ Brigstocke said. ‘You had an early start and you wouldn’t get back here until after five anyway. Just make sure you’re the first one in tomorrow.’

‘You sure?’

‘It’s up to you. I mean, if you want to spend a couple of hours ringing up our dozen remaining Anthony Garveys…’

‘See you in the morning.’

‘I’ll call if anything turns up.’

Right, Thorne thought. Like the body of one of the three missing victims-in-waiting.

Thorne took another swig from the can of beer which, thanks to Brigstocke, he had been free to purchase and enjoy. Opposite him, a young woman, blonde with bad skin, was leafing through a copy of heat. Every so often she looked up from the glossy pages and stared at the beer in Thorne’s hand, as though the consumption of alcohol on a train was right up there with smoking crack or getting your dick out on a list of unacceptable public behaviour.