Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘Mental exhaustion,’ Thorne said. ‘Exercising a brain the size of mine takes it out of you, not that you would know. It’s a bit harder than helping with the geography homework and making sure your kids have got the right packed lunches.’

Brigstocke laughed. ‘You wait until you’ve got one, mate.’

Thorne studied the dents along the metal edge of the desk, the dust on the shelves of the plastic in-tray. When he looked up again, Brigstocke was pushing a pile of newspapers towards him. ‘What?’

‘We’ve finally got pictures,’ Brigstocke said. He pointed as Thorne flicked through the early edition of the Evening Standard. ‘Page five… and they’ve gone into all the nationals as well. Working on London Tonight as we speak.’

Thorne looked at the black-and-white pictures of Graham Fowler and Andrew Dowd. Above, a headline read ‘POLICE HUNT FOR MISSING MEN’, while below were a few deliberately vague words about an ‘ongoing inquiry’ and a contact telephone number. The first picture was blurry and long out of date and the second, though it had been provided that day by Dowd’s wife, was hardly a definitive portrait. Thorne wondered if they would be of any use at all. Then again, he knew that, barring weddings, few people ever had professional photographs taken and that, if Louise were ever asked to provide a picture of him, there would be not much more than passport shots and a few holiday snaps.

He tossed the newspaper back on to the desk. ‘Nice that the superintendent finally saw sense. Bit late for Simon Walsh, mind.’

‘As a matter of fact, Jesmond was still against it.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘And a couple of the others who are always up his arse. Way he saw it, to run the pictures now, after Walsh has been killed, is almost an admission that we screwed up. Something people might focus on once everything’s done and dusted.’

‘We screwed up?’

Brigstocke raised a hand. ‘Luckily, Johns overruled him, so now we can all relax and keep our fingers crossed.’

‘Is that the best we can do?’

‘It’s not like we’ve got leads coming out of our ears, is it? We’re no further on after the Walsh murder, and I can’t see it panning out with your mate Carol.’

Chamberlain had called an hour earlier. Once Thorne had told her about the discovery of the latest body, she’d described her meeting with Ray Garvey’s ex-wife and told him about Malcolm Reece, the old friend she was already trying to track down. Thorne had said he would come to the hotel and catch up in person if he could find the time. He had encouraged her, as gently as he could, to work a little quicker.

‘Maybe you should pay me a bit more.’ Chamberlain had sounded miffed. ‘Or get me an assistant.’

‘We’re stretched for cash as it is,’ Thorne had said. ‘It was you or the hypnotherapist…’

Brigstocke stood and walked around his desk. He gestured towards the pile of newspapers. ‘I reckon those phones are going to go mad this afternoon.’

‘Let’s just hope we don’t have too many nutters ringing.’

‘We should get a decent lunch inside us,’ Brigstocke said. ‘It might be a long day.’

Thorne nodded. He had not eaten breakfast and needed something to soak up all the coffee he had been pouring down his throat.

‘With any luck, the Oak might have that lamb casserole on again.’ Brigstocke opened the door. ‘The one you snaffled the other day.’

Thorne said that sounded good, but thought they should probably be eating something a little less solid. Something that could be taken through an eyedropper, straight down the neck.

There had been plenty of calls that afternoon; and, despite Thorne’s worst fears, a few had sounded promising. There had been more than one sighting of Graham Fowler, two within half a mile of each other in the area between Piccadilly and Covent Garden. A woman who ran a bed and breakfast in Ambleside, a market town ten miles south of Keswick in the Lake District, claimed that a man who might have been Andrew Dowd had been staying with her for a few days earlier that week, before moving on suddenly. She seemed more interested in the as-yet-unsettled bill than anything else.

There had been no shortage of work, the mood in the office a little more positive, but Thorne still managed to get back to Kentish Town before seven and was pleased that Louise had managed to do the same. She was brighter and more talkative than she had been all week. She told him about the latest developments in the case she was working, while he made them both poached eggs and opened the bottle of wine he’d picked up on the way home.

They watched half an old episode of The Professionals on G.O.L.D. while they ate, then listened to The Essential George Jones – her choice – while Thorne cleared up and Louise leafed through a couple of reports for the following day. If she was still feeling fragile, she was showing no sign of it. She hummed along to ‘Why Baby Why’ and ‘White Lightning’ and seemed happy enough during ‘The Door’ – one of several George Jones numbers that Thorne himself could rarely listen to without swallowing down the lump in his throat.

When they were getting ready for bed, she said, ‘I had a long chat with Lucy Freeman today.’

The pregnant woman in Louise’s office. Thorne threw his dirty shirt into the laundry basket, sat on the edge of the bed to remove his trousers.

‘I told her I’d got a friend who’s just lost a baby.’

‘What did you do that for?’

Louise shrugged; she didn’t know or it didn’t matter. She sat in front of the small mirror on the dressing-table in just knickers and a T-shirt. ‘Lucy was really… nice, actually.’

‘That’s good.’ Good that the other woman was nice. Good that Louise had the conversation and that it went well.

‘Your hormones get all mixed up afterwards, which is why I’ve been getting upset, moody, whatever.’

‘You’ve every reason to be upset.’

‘I’m just saying. That’s what Lucy was talking about. She’s also got a friend who lost a baby-’

‘One in four pregnancies, that’s what it said in your leaflet.’

‘And she didn’t feel right again until her due date.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Not properly, anyway. Lucy said that it only really changes once the date you were due to have the baby comes and goes. Said it was just like a switch being thrown. That’s when you can… move on.’

Thorne nodded, doing the maths as he removed his underpants.

‘Thirty-one weeks and I’ll be right as rain.’

Thorne heard something in her laugh; enough to know that he should go to her. ‘Come here…’

She got up and turned into his arms, pressed her face into him. He could feel the tension in her, the effort to keep it together.

‘It’s my fault,’ she said. Her mouth moved against his chest. ‘She was only trying to help.’

‘She didn’t though, did she?’

‘Not a lot, no.’ The half laugh again, and then her face was open and moving towards Thorne’s, and by the time they were on the bed she was already pulling the T-shirt up over her head.

‘Things are still a bit… delicate downstairs,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to find other things to do.’

Thorne grinned.

‘Not that,’ Louise said.

There was nothing too soft or subtle about the things they did to please each other, and despite the emotion that had been crackling between them, it still felt closer to sex than making love.

Like something they both needed.

The ringing of Thorne’s mobile pulled him from a dream in which he was moving fast across the surface of very blue water. He looked at his watch in the light from the small screen: 6.12 a.m. It was Russell Brigstocke’s name on the display.