Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘Pool’s not the only thing she knows sod all about, then.’

‘Fiver on this, fair enough?’

Thorne fetched a couple more pints of Guinness from downstairs while Hendricks racked the balls. The bar was rammed, even for a Saturday night, but it was only two minutes’ walk from Thorne’s flat and the familiarity was comforting. The Oak was a Job watering-hole, and, as such, would never be somewhere he could completely relax. It wasn’t as though anybody in the Grafton knew his name, and there were no wry philosophical types propping up the bar, but Thorne enjoyed the nod from the barman and his step towards the Guinness tap without having to be told.

‘I’m in the wrong job,’ Hendricks said, bending down to break. ‘A bloody lecture tour?’

Thorne had told him about the email from Nicholas Maier. ‘You teach, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, and what I make in a month wouldn’t pay for a weekend in Weston-Super-Mare.’

‘You do it for the love.’

Hendricks had knocked in a spot. He moved around the table, chalking his cue. ‘Maybe I should write this one up as an academic study: “Man kills children of his father’s victims, the pathological implications then and now”, that kind of thing. I could get something like that published anywhere, I reckon. America, definitely.’

‘Go for it,’ Thorne said. He knew Hendricks didn’t mean it. He looked down at his friend’s heavily tattooed forearm as Hendricks lined up a shot and remembered it pressed across the throat of that insensitive CSI. ‘If you need someone to carry your bags on the lecture tour, you know…’

It was Thorne’s turn at the table. Hendricks took a drink, smiled across the room at the Goth girl, who was sitting in the corner with two friends. ‘The bloke’s book any good?’

Thorne had spent the afternoon reading Battered, with one ear on the radio’s football coverage. ‘Nothing that isn’t in any of the others, as far as I can make out. Nobody interviewed that hasn’t said their piece plenty of times before. Usual pictures: Garvey and his bloody rabbits. That’s what most of these books do, just rehash old material. Money for jam.’

‘Not going to trouble the Booker Prize judges, then?’

Thorne missed a sitter and went back to his drink. ‘Why do people read this stuff?’

Hendricks knocked in a couple of balls. ‘Same as all these misery memoirs,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the table. ‘You go into Smith’s, it’s wall-to-wall books about kids who’ve been locked in cellars, people who’ve had eighteen types of cancer or whatever.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘People enjoy knowing there’s someone worse off than they are. Maybe it makes them feel… safer, or something.’

‘It’s cheap thrills, if you ask me,’ Thorne said. He watched as Hendricks fluked his penultimate ball. ‘You jammy bastard.’

‘Pure skill, mate.’

Hendricks left the final spot over a pocket with the black placed nicely in the middle of the table. With four balls still to pot, Thorne tried to do something clever and nudge the black on to the cushion. He made a mess of it, leaving Hendricks with a simple clearance.

‘Maybe people read these books to find out why,’ Hendricks said. ‘The ones about Garvey and Shipman and the rest of them. They want to know why those things happened.’

‘You’re giving them way too much credit.’

‘I’m not saying they know that’s what they’re doing, but it makes sense if you think about it. It’s the same reason they turn these people into monsters, talk about “evil” or whatever. It makes it easier to forget they’re just builders and doctors and the bloke next door. It’s not the killers themselves anyone’s really frightened of. It’s not knowing why they did it, where the next one’s coming from, that terrifies people.’

Hendricks had yet to play his shot. Thorne was aware that the next player up, a spiky-haired kid sitting on the Goth girl’s table, was looking daggers from the corner, waiting for them to finish talking and wrap up the game. ‘They can read about Ray Garvey all they want,’ Thorne said. He was remembering the conversation with Carol Chamberlain. ‘No “why” with him. He didn’t even kill any of his pet rabbits.’

When Hendricks had polished off the frame, the spiky-haired kid stepped forward and picked up his coins from the edge of the table. Hendricks laid down his cue, told the kid he was taking a break, and followed Thorne back to their table, leaving the next player in the queue to take his place.

‘So, maybe there’s something in this tumour business? The personality change.’

‘Kambar says not.’

‘Hypothetically, though,’ Hendricks said.

‘It’s rubbish.’

‘Let’s say you’ve got some severe tic or whatever, something that makes you thrash around.’

‘I think you’ve finally lost it, mate.’

‘You accidentally hit someone in a crowded bar. They smash their head open, die from a severe bleed on the brain. That can’t be your fault, can it?’

‘It’s not the same thing.’

‘I know, I’m just saying. It would be… interesting, legally.’

‘If by “interesting” you mean it would make a lot of smart briefs a shitload of money, then yes, probably. Like they don’t make our lives hard enough as it is.’ Thorne drank and watched the pool for half a minute. ‘Anyway, like I told you, Kambar reckons it’s rubbish.’

‘Well, he’s the brain man,’ Hendricks said.

The spiky-haired kid cleared the table. The rugby player came forward, took the cue from the loser and fed his money in without a word.

‘Even if there was anything in it, Garvey’s son hasn’t got a sodding tumour.’

‘Maybe he thinks he has,’ Hendricks said.

‘Sorry?’

‘There’s plenty of research suggesting that some of the factors contributing towards the development of certain tumours can be inherited.’

‘You’re winding me up.’

Hendricks shook his head, drained the last of his pint. ‘Mind you, there was also a study that said being left-handed might be a factor, so…’

‘That’s all we bloody need,’ Thorne said. ‘Some slimy brief requesting that his client’s murder charge be thrown out on the grounds that he’s cack-handed.’

Hendricks bought another round, after insisting that Thorne hand over the money he’d just won off him. They shared crisps and pork scratchings, watched the rugby player sink two long balls in succession.

‘I used to be good at this game,’ Thorne said.

‘You’ve lost your edge, mate. That’s what domestic contentment does for you.’

It was the first time that anything pertaining to Louise had entered their conversation. Hendricks had spent the afternoon with her, wandering around the shops in Hampstead and Highgate before lunch at Pizza Express. Thorne had stayed at home with Maier’s book and Five Live for company. Spurs had lost to a needless, last-minute penalty and Thorne’s frustration had been only marginally tempered by the smug message he had been able to leave on Yvonne Kitson’s answering machine, about the bet he had wisely failed to take.

‘You and Lou have a good time today?’ Thorne asked.

Hendricks stared at him. ‘Didn’t you ask Lou?’

‘Yeah, she said she enjoyed herself.’

‘So, why-?’

‘There wasn’t much chance to talk when she got back, you know. Not in any detail. She said she was tired, just wanted to crash out.’

‘We did do a fair bit of walking,’ Hendricks said.

‘How’s she doing?’

Hendricks stared again.

‘Jesus.’ Thorne banged his almost empty glass down on the table. ‘I can’t believe I’ve got to sit here asking you how Lou is.’