Mark Billingham - Bloodline

They were sitting in the train’s ‘quiet’ carriage, but it wasn’t as if he was drinking particularly noisily.

Raising the can to his lips, Thorne caught another dirty look and toyed with offering her a drink. Or belching as loudly as he could. Or letting her know just what he thought about every stick-thin brain-dead waste of DNA in her magazine, and that any moron who enjoyed gawping at photos of paparazzi fodder stumbling out of nightclubs or climbing out of limos with no knickers on was in no position to pass judgement on anybody. Then he thought about what Louise would say. He remembered that she occasionally flicked happily through OK and heat, albeit while she was having her hair done or sitting in a doctor’s waiting room.

He waited until the woman glanced up again, then smiled until she quickly dropped her eyes back to the magazine.

Makes a kind of sense.

People dying because of who their mothers were; killing because of who their fathers might have been. Thorne swallowed his piss-weak lager and supposed that it made as much sense as anything else in a world where being famous counted for so much. Where what you were famous for didn’t matter at all. A world where couples who weren’t fit to look after hamsters dragged six kids round the supermarket. Where some women popped out babies like they were shelling peas, while others didn’t find it quite so straightforward.

‘Any more tickets from Cambridge?’

Thorne had missed the inspector first time round while he’d been busy at the buffet. As soon as his ticket was punched, he stood up to make a return trip, crushing his empty can as noisily as possible as he squeezed out of his seat. Then tossing it back on to the table.

At the end of the carriage, a man was jabbering into his mobile. He was laughing, a hissy half cough, and telling someone how something was ‘just typical’ of someone else. It wasn’t loud so much as annoying.

Thorne stopped at the man’s table and snatched the phone from his hand, nodding up at the sign: a picture of a mobile with a red line through it. He pushed the button to end the man’s call, and reached round quickly with his other hand to take out his wallet. The man said, ‘What the fuck do you-?’ then stopped when he saw the warrant card.

Thorne walked on towards the buffet car in a far better mood.

Louise didn’t get home until an hour after Thorne.

‘You know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘You take a couple of days off and there’s shed-loads to catch up on.’ She told him she was enjoying getting stuck into things, having something else to think about. She was in a good mood.

Thorne suggested that she should put in for some overtime, as work was so obviously agreeing with her.

‘It’s about getting things in perspective,’ she said.

Louise made them spaghetti with bacon, onions and pesto and afterwards they sat in front of the TV for a while. She said, ‘I do want to talk about what happened, you know. I think we should.’

‘We have talked about it.’

‘No, we haven’t. Not how we feel about it.’ She smiled. ‘It’s been bloody deafening, tell you the truth.’

‘What?’

‘The sound of you walking on eggshells.’

Thorne stared at the television.

‘How do you feel?’ Louise said.

‘I don’t know,’ Thorne said. ‘How you’d expect. Upset.’

‘You’ve not said anything.’

Thorne felt uncomfortably warm. ‘I don’t think I’ve had enough time to… process things.’

‘Fine. Good. That’s OK.’

They watched a little more television, then went to bed. They lay and cuddled, and when Louise fell asleep Thorne read for a while; a few more chapters from one of the true-crime books he’d bought online.

Raymond Garvey had supported Crystal Palace and kept pet rabbits as a boy. He had enjoyed tinkering with motorbikes and had battered his first victim to death with half a house-brick.

When Thorne had switched the light out, he turned on to his side, feeling Louise come with him, pressed soft into his back, and the guilt bubbling up in him like acid reflux.

H.M.P. Whitemoor

‘I can’t get over how hard they make it getting in here.’

‘It’s a damn sight harder getting out.’

‘They take everything off you, check your stuff. All these doors you have to go through.’

‘So you don’t smuggle anything in.’

‘Like what?’

‘Cigarettes is the main thing. Drugs. People still manage it, though.’

‘OK.’

‘Sorry for… staring. I can’t believe you’re really here.’

‘Did you not believe me, when I said I was coming?’

‘It’s just so out of the blue, you know? I never expected… I never thought you’d find out.’

‘I wasn’t meant to. Nobody would have told me.’

‘So, how-?’

‘There were some old letters in the loft, some official stuff, at my auntie’s place. I asked her and she started to cry, so I knew it was true.’

‘And how did you feel when you found out?’

‘Pissed off. With her, I mean… with Mum, for not telling me.’

‘She never told me, either. About you.’

‘I know. I found the letter you wrote to my auntie. I know why you did what you did.’

‘Oh, Jesus…’

‘It’s fine, really. I know how it made you feel, Christ-’

‘It’s not fine.’

‘I think I’d have done the same thing.’

‘I always presumed you’d hate my guts. That’s why I never tried to get in touch or anything.’

‘From when I was six or seven or whatever, she said you were dead. That my “father” was dead. Told me he was an engineer. How could she do that?’

‘I was an engineer, for British Telecom. Before…’

‘I’m not sorry she’s dead. You don’t have to worry.’

‘You look different to the photos you sent.’

‘God, they’re ancient. From when I was at school. I’ll send you some more recent ones, if you want.’

‘You not at school any more?’

‘What’s the point?’

‘Long as it’s not got anything to do with me, with finding out who I was, I mean. If you’ve got exams, anything like that, you should probably finish them.’

‘You look different, too. I saw a few pictures on the internet, some old newspapers. There’s that one they use in all the books.’

‘Everybody piles on the weight in here. I don’t get as much exercise as other prisoners… normal prisoners.’

‘That’s really unfair.’

‘They keep the special ones apart from the rest. Ex-coppers, nonces, all that sort.’

‘You’re not that sort.’

‘It’s fine, I’m used to it.’

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘It’s funny, she never told you about me, then she goes and gives you my middle name.’

‘No, she didn’t. She gave me a stupid name. I changed it as soon as I found those letters. Not legally or anything, but I’ll probably get round to that.’

‘Up to you.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’m Anthony from now on, whatever.’

‘It’s nice.’

‘Second name too: Anthony Garvey.’

‘That’s got a ring, definitely.’

‘Tony’s all right, I don’t mind that.’

‘Sounds good. Younger, like.’

‘So, you don’t mind if I visit again?’

‘Are you going already?’

‘No, don’t worry, there’s ages yet. I was just checking it would be OK.’

‘Better than OK.’

‘For me too.’

‘Yeah… Tony sounds really good…’

Brigstocke was upbeat at the morning briefing, but then he did not have a great deal of choice. Progress – unspectacular yet tangible – was being made, but the DCI’s mood would have been much the same even if it were not. As senior investigating officer and team leader, he could never be seen banging his head against the wall, telling the troops that the investigation was going nowhere and that everything was turning to shit.