Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘Mitchell was terrified,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Poor woman’s shitting herself, according to her friend.’

‘That was the idea.’

‘Oh, thank Christ for that. There I was thinking you were showing her confidential photographs of all the murder victims because you were an insensitive idiot who was gagging to get back into uniform. Have you still got a pointed hat?’

‘Not all the victims,’ Thorne said.

‘What?’

‘It wasn’t all the victims. Just the Mackens.’

‘Well, that’s OK then.’

Thorne couldn’t prevent the faintest of smirks washing across his face. ‘Just a sample.’

‘Jesus, Tom…’

‘Did it work?’

Brigstocke stared at him for a few seconds, as though toying with one last cathartic bout of shouting, before walking behind his desk and sitting down. ‘Debbie Mitchell’s moving in with Nina Collins,’ he said. ‘It’s only a couple of streets away-’

‘Doesn’t matter, as long as she moves.’

‘She wants to stay close to the park, she says. It’s the kid’s favourite place, apparently.’

‘Well, she can forget about that for a while.’

‘Plus, the kid knows Nina, so there shouldn’t be too much disruption. I understand he doesn’t respond well to… upheaval.’

Thorne told Brigstocke he was right. He remembered the boy’s smile, how easily it appeared and how astounding it was, considering that upheaval was something he had lived with for a long time. ‘So, I’m not in the shit then?’

It was Brigstocke’s turn to smirk. ‘Oh, don’t worry, if Collins or Mitchell decides to make any sort of official complaint, I’ll give you up like a shot.’

‘You’re a pal,’ Thorne said.

‘Yes, I am.’ Brigstocke looked down to the papers on his desk, as though he were good and ready for Thorne to leave. ‘Or I would have given you up already.’

Thorne recognised a cue and turned for the door, but Brigstocke called him back.

‘You were wrong about Anthony Garvey,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Don’t know about the name, but we can be pretty sure he’s Raymond Garvey’s son.’

Thorne nodded. ‘The DNA…’

‘We had Garvey senior’s on file, obviously, so we ran a match with the sample we got from under Catherine Burke’s fingernails. We can be ninety-nine per cent sure they’re father and son.’

‘Ninety-nine per cent?’

Brigstocke knew that Thorne understood why they could not declare it a 100 per cent match, but he said it anyway, enjoying the moment. ‘To be certain, we need to know who the mother was.’ The look, before Brigstocke dropped his eyes back to his paperwork, said, ‘Now we’re done.’

Walking out into the car-park, Kitson – ten pounds richer – said, ‘You remember the argument with Brigstocke in the pub? That stuff about the “tension” between the need to catch the killer and the need to protect the potential victims.’

‘I think that’s when his bad mood started,’ Thorne said. ‘That, or the fact that I got the last lamb casserole.’

‘Seriously.’

‘What?’

‘I was thinking. Didn’t it seem like nobody was trying very hard to get Debbie Mitchell out of that house?’

‘Well, she certainly took some shifting.’

‘You managed it, though. How come nobody else did?’

It was cold and starting to rain. They waited under the concrete overhang outside the rear entrance to Becke House, Thorne’s car fifty yards to his left and Kitson’s further away in the other direction.

‘You saying they were happy to let her stay there as some kind of bait?’ Thorne asked.

‘Well, it wasn’t like they had to plan it or anything. I mean, she didn’t want to leave, so maybe someone thought, Let’s use this to our advantage.’

‘Then we can’t be blamed if it all goes tits up.’

‘Right,’ Kitson said. ‘They stick a few unmarked cars around the place, set up an observation point, cameras, whatever.’

Thorne was nodding, going with it. ‘And the brass are pissed off with me, not because of this business with the crime-scene photos, but because they had their next victim sitting there waiting for the killer on a plate, and I went and ballsed it up.’

‘Maybe.’ Kitson was wearing a grey hooded top under a leather jacket. She raised the hood, stared out into the drizzle. ‘I’m just thinking out loud. It’s been a long day.’

‘You’ve had sillier ideas,’ Thorne said.

‘You think so?’

‘For sure.’ Thorne turned to her and held the look to let her know that he meant it, before allowing the smile to come. ‘We’re definitely worth a point against Villa tomorrow.’

‘You should have taken the bet then,’ Kitson said.

The alert tone on Thorne’s mobile sounded. He fished the handset from his pocket. The text was from Louise: celebration drink with team after work. won’t be 2 late. X.

‘Fancy grabbing a drink?’ Thorne asked. Kitson looked at her watch, but he could see it was a gesture as much as anything. ‘Quick one in the Oak?’

‘I’d better not. The kids, you know.’

‘Why are you still talking to me?’

‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Not sure I’ll be in,’ Thorne said. He was pressing buttons on his phone, deleting the message from Louise. ‘Got a meeting in the centre of town mid-morning, so we’ll see how it goes.’

‘Monday, then…’

Thorne grunted a ‘yes’ and watched Kitson jog away towards her car. After a few moments, he stepped out into the rain and began to walk towards his.

Later, sinking into the sofa, his eyes scanned the living room, taking in the patch of damp by the side of the window and the bits on the carpet that were not the fleck in its weave. Not for the first time, he contemplated getting a cleaner. He listened to Charlie Rich singing ‘A Sunday Kind of Woman’ and ‘Nothing in the World’, letting his eyes close and his mind wander, the music fading into a mix that included the less tuneful voices of Russell Brigstocke and Yvonne Kitson, the hectoring rasp of Nina Collins and the scream of Martin Macken, howling like feedback against the sugary strings and soft waves of pedal-steel.

Thorne thought about Jason Mitchell, the concentration and the quiet ‘chuff-chuff ’ as he pushed his train back and forth. The smile, sudden as a slap. He couldn’t tell if the boy even knew he was smiling and wondered where in his brain the problem lay.

White, pink or blue?

Would somebody like Pavesh Kambar be able to point to his handy multi-coloured plastic model and say, There, that’s where the trouble is, that’s where the wiring is faulty? Or perhaps he would say that it wasn’t faulty at all, that it was a different kind of wiring he hadn’t been trained to deal with, one that he simply couldn’t fathom. A feeling-useless moment, maybe. Time to pull out that rarely used F-word.

White, pink or blue.

Pillar-box red against black-and-white squares. Brown specks on the carpet and wallpaper by the window yellowing and greasy, like the business side of a sticking plaster when you’ve torn it off.

The CD finished, so Thorne got up, removed the disc from the player and put it away. The phone was on its cradle near the front door. He picked up his wallet from the table, took out a card and dialled the number scribbled on it.

‘Hello?’ The voice was wary, cracked.

He checked his watch: just after nine, not too late to call. He wondered if she was alone. ‘It’s Tom Thorne.’

‘What do you want?’

The words sounded as if they’d taken some effort, like she’d just woken up or been drinking. He looked at the can of lager in his own hand and pushed the thought from his mind. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he said. ‘With the pictures.’