Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘Later,’ Kitson said.

Thorne picked up a beer-mat and began methodically tearing it into tiny pieces. ‘This case is breaking new ground,’ he said. ‘It’s a “who-didn’t-do-it”.’

Kitson smiled, happy to play along. ‘Go on then, who didn’t do it?’

‘Well, since you ask… It wasn’t a primary school teacher in Doncaster, it wasn’t a photocopier repairman and keen amateur boxer from Wrexham, and it certainly wasn’t a seventy-eight-year-old ex-merchant seaman who’s retired with his wife to Portugal. It’s lovely weather there today, by the way, he told me so several times. He and his wife were planning to have lunch out by the pool.’

‘Three of your Anthony Garveys?’

‘My morning so far.’

‘Got to be done.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m loving every vitally important minute of it. I’ve been eliminating people from my enquiries like there’s no tomorrow. Putting lines through their names and ticking them off, just to be on the safe side, you know? Eliminating all day long. I am… the Eliminator!’

Kitson sipped her drink. ‘Fine, but I didn’t hear you coming up with any bright ideas this morning.’

Thorne finished ripping up the beer-mat and nudged the pieces into a nice, neat pile. He had nothing much to say and even if he had, seeing Russell Brigstocke turn from the bar and wave at them, he would probably have kept it to himself. Using basic mime techniques, he and Kitson were able to transmit their desire for more drinks, and once Brigstocke had bought them, he joined them at the table.

‘Have you already ordered?’

Two nods.

Brigstocke took a long drink of sparkling water and sat back. ‘I just lost fifteen minutes of my lunch-hour thanks to Debbie Dozy-Bollocks. ’

‘Still being difficult?’ Kitson asked.

‘You know an FLO named Adam Strang?’

Thorne nodded, remembering the Scotsman from the Macken crime scene.

‘Well, he spent most of this morning trying to talk sense into her, but she’s not having any of it. She’s just point-blank refusing to go anywhere. ’

‘How much has she been told?’

‘Not everything, obviously. Enough, though, or at least it should be.’

‘What are the other options?’ Kitson asked.

Brigstocke shook his head, like he was sick of thinking about it. ‘I’m reluctant to stick a car outside twenty-four hours a day just because she’s being stupid.’

‘Can we install a panic button?’

‘Not enough,’ Thorne said. ‘I don’t think Emily Walker or Greg Macken would have had time to push one.’

‘So, what else can we do?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘Arrest her?’

Kitson flicked a bright red fingernail against the edge of her glass. ‘That shouldn’t take too long, looking at her record.’

A waitress arrived with the food: lamb casserole for Thorne and fish pie for Kitson. Brigstocke stared down unenthusiastically at the bowl of pasta he was given, then pointed at Thorne’s plate.

‘I fancied that, but somebody had just ordered the last one.’

‘The quick and the dead,’ Thorne said.

They ate for a minute or so without talking, until Thorne said, ‘Why aren’t we involving the press with this?’

Brigstocke swallowed quickly. ‘I thought we went through this earlier on.’ He looked to Kitson for validation.

She nodded. ‘Keeping quiet about the serial thing.’

‘Right,’ Brigstocke said.

‘I’m not talking about that,’ Thorne said. ‘Why aren’t we getting photos of Dowd and the others in the papers, on the box, whatever? We can get something out of them for a change.’

This time Brigstocke took his time swallowing and answered quietly. ‘That’s… tricky.’ He looked around. Many of the team were eating at nearby tables.

Thorne pushed his plate aside and leaned closer to Brigstocke, just as one of the trainee detectives chose that moment to come over and spend five minutes pumping all his loose change into the fruit machine. There was nothing more said about the case until he had finished. Thorne made a comment about the machine being tight and watched the trainee walk away. Then turned back to Brigstocke.

‘Tricky, you said?’

‘I was talking to Jesmond,’ Brigstocke said.

Thorne winced theatrically at the mention of the superintendent’s name. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Somebody has to. Anyway, there appears to be a strong feeling that using the press in the way you’re suggesting might not be a good idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it may alert the killer to the fact that we’re on to him.’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘They think it might be, if we want to catch him.’

‘So, we want to catch him more than we want to protect the people he’s trying to kill?’

Brigstocke sighed. ‘Listen, I know.’

‘That’s mental,’ Thorne said. ‘He must already know we’re on to him. He left the bits of X-ray, for Christ’s sake. He wants us to put it all together.’

‘I’m just letting you know what I was told, all right?’

‘On top of which, I can’t see this bloke just packing his bags and buggering off because he sees a few photos in the paper.’

‘Point taken.’

‘I don’t think he’s the type to stop.’

‘Look, there’s no point getting arsy with me. I’m just telling you, there’s a… tension, between the different… priorities.’

‘Surely the first priority has to be protecting the potential victims?’ Kitson said.

‘Tell that to Debbie Mitchell.’ Brigstocke turned to Thorne. ‘In fact, you can tell the superintendent, seeing as you feel so strongly about it. They’re talking about putting a critical incident panel together.’

‘I’d rather stick needles in my eyes,’ Thorne said. He had sat on such a panel a couple of times before, struggling to look interested while diplomats in uniform droned on about media strategy, and had sworn that he would never do so again.

‘Right, in which case you should get off your high horse and stop giving me grief.’ Brigstocke took one last mouthful of pasta and pushed back his chair. ‘Fair enough?’

Neither Thorne nor Kitson ate too much more after Brigstocke had left and let the waitress take away the plates the next time she was passing.

‘High horse?’

‘High-ish,’ Kitson said.

‘Come on, I’m right though, aren’t I?’

‘I don’t think he disagrees with you, but there’s not a great deal he can do about it. Rock and a hard place, all that.’

There was still fifteen minutes before either of them was due back at Becke House. Thorne drained his glass. ‘So, do you really fancy spending the rest of the afternoon ringing up people you know haven’t killed anyone and asking them if they’ve killed anyone?’

‘You finally had a bright idea?’

‘What you said about arresting Debbie Mitchell.’

‘I was only half joking.’

‘Let’s take a drive over there. You never know, if we push it, we might get her to assault one of us.’

Kitson took a compact from her handbag and reapplied her lipstick. ‘I’ll toss you for it in the car,’ she said.

Totteridge was a leafy north London suburb with a bona fide village at its heart, where men who owned or played for football clubs lived with their suspiciously expressionless wives. A few minutes away towards Barnet, however, you would find yourself in a noticeably less well-heeled area just shy of the Great North Road, where most of the footballers were the sort who kicked lumps out of one another on Sunday mornings, smoking in the centre circle at half time and heading straight for a fry-up at the final whistle.

Debbie Mitchell lived on the top floor of a three-storey block on the Dollis Park Estate, a sprawl of sixties and seventies mixed-tenure housing in the shadow of Barnet FC’s ground. From the window of the small, smoke-filled living room, Thorne could just make out the floodlights of Underhill, the corner of the stadium’s main stand.