Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘So, when are we talking?’ Fowler asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘“When all this is over.” When you catch him, right?’

‘Right. I don’t know.’

‘How long’s a piece of string, sort of thing?’ He nodded eagerly, without waiting for an answer. ‘Listen, pal, you just keep the methadone and the Special Brew coming, you can take as long as you bloody like.’ He laughed, then pulled up short when he saw the look on Thorne’s face. ‘Joke, mate, all right? Joke.’

‘With a bit of luck, we’ll be kicking you out of here before they get a chance to change the sheets,’ Thorne said.

Fowler stood up and tossed his cigarette butt out of the window, agitated again suddenly. ‘Why’s he doing this, anyway? Nobody’s said.’

Thorne saw no reason to keep him in the dark. If patients had a right to see their medical records, then a man deserved to know why someone wanted him dead. ‘He thinks that the man who killed your mother should not have been convicted.’

‘Garvey?’ Fowler spat the word out like abuse.

‘He believes that Raymond Garvey was not in control of his actions. That it was all because of a brain tumour, and if it had been spotted earlier, he would not have died in prison.’

Fowler shook his head, taking it in. ‘So, why not go through the courts or whatever? Why do this?’

‘Because he’s seriously disturbed.’

Fowler thought about that for a while, then lowered himself gingerly back into the chair, as though he were aching. ‘Well, when you catch him, I’ll make sure I stop by for a chat. Sounds like we might have a fair bit in common.’

Thorne realised that he had not touched his drink. He picked up the mug, drank half the lukewarm tea in one go. ‘I don’t suppose you were aware of anyone following you over the last few weeks? Anyone you didn’t recognise hanging around?’

Fowler shook his head. ‘Sorry. I’m not very observant at the best of times.’

‘Anybody asking after you?’

‘Not as far as I know. You could ask some of the boys, if you can find them. Strangers are pretty easy to spot. There’s a… look, on the street, you know?’

‘Can you give me any names?’

‘I can tell you where to try and find them.’

Thorne had known that was the best he was likely to get. When it came to those dossing down or shooting up in the shadows every night, there was no such thing as a full name and address. ‘That’d be good, thanks.’

‘Say hello from me, will you?’ Fowler said. ‘Tell them I’ve won the Lottery.’

Thorne assured Fowler that he would. He stared at the uneven grin, the slightest of tremors around the mouth, and thought that, as far as luck went, the good sort was clearly something that happened to other people.

A few minutes later, he was in the corridor outside, waving at one of the CCTV cameras mounted on the wall. He was on the verge of marching back downstairs and mouthing off about security when he heard Brian Spibey’s distinctive burr echoing in the lobby beneath him.

‘I’m coming, all right, I can bloody see you! Just I’ve got a bugger of a sudoku going here…’

Andrew Dowd’s apartment was much the same as Graham Fowler’s – bland and comfortable – and though Dowd himself seemed a little more at ease than his neighbour, and was certainly better dressed, in khakis and an open-necked shirt, in another respect his appearance was equally shocking.

‘You look… different,’ Thorne said, remembering the photo Dowd’s wife had provided and which the newspapers had printed the previous Friday.

‘This?’ Dowd shrugged and ran a hand across his shaved head. Thorne noticed the expensive watch around his wrist. ‘Lots of things are different,’ he said. ‘Lots of changes.’

‘Not just a walking holiday, then?’

‘I did plenty of walking.’

Thorne nodded, leaned back on a sofa identical to the one he had been sitting on a few minutes earlier. ‘I’ve always fancied going up there myself.’

‘It’s nice.’

‘A good place to get away?’

‘I needed to get my head straight.’

‘Well, you can certainly see more of it,’ Thorne said.

Dowd smiled, showing a few more teeth than Graham Fowler had.

When Thorne arrived, Dowd had been reading a newspaper, with the radio on in the background. Where Fowler had been jumpy and mercurial, Andrew Dowd appeared relaxed and resigned to his situation, but Thorne guessed there was plenty going on beneath the surface. Shaving his head might just have been a radical grooming decision, but coupled with what Thorne had gleaned about his troubled domestic situation, he was pretty sure that the man had suffered some kind of nervous breakdown.

Not one of Anthony Garvey’s victims, but still one of Raymond’s.

‘Apart from just checking to see how you’re getting on,’ Thorne said, ‘I wanted a word about your wife.’

‘Well, “bitch” is usually the first one that springs to mind,’ Dowd said. ‘But I’ve got plenty more.’

Thorne summoned a smile to accompany the thin one Dowd had flashed before he’d spoken. ‘We want to go and see her.’

Dowd’s face darkened for a second or two. ‘Good luck. Make sure you take some garlic and a wooden stake.’

Plenty going on beneath the surface…

Having spoken to the officers who had escorted him back from Kendal, Thorne was not surprised by Dowd’s attitude towards his wife, but the venom was startling none the less; more so, as he spoke so calmly, without losing his temper.

‘He didn’t even want to see her,’ one officer had said. ‘Just told us to take him straight to the station.’

Dowd had been adamant that he wanted no contact with his wife. That he would not go home with them to pick up some clothes and that he definitely did not want her informed of the address where he would be staying. He even went so far as to say that, if he’d had his way, she would not have been informed that he’d been found in the first place.

‘It might have done her some good to worry,’ he’d said. ‘And I would have had something to keep myself amused.’

Now, Dowd sat back and closed his eyes, apparently uninterested. But curiosity got the better of him after a minute or two. ‘Why do you want to see Sarah?’

‘Obviously, you know we’re looking for a man who calls himself Anthony Garvey.’

‘I should hope so.’

‘We think he got close in some way or another to the people he’s killed so far.’ Thorne stopped, saw that Dowd had picked up on the final two words. ‘To the people he killed.’

‘Slip of the tongue?’ Dowd said.

Thorne pressed on, feeling himself redden a little. ‘We’re fairly sure he was known to them. Probably no more than casually, but known. That he put time into making sure they would be relaxed around him, let him into their homes, whatever.’

‘How did he do that?’

‘We know he picked one of them up in a bar,’ Thorne said. ‘He may have got to know another through the hospital where she worked. We’re still putting all that together, if I’m honest, but we’re pretty sure he gets involved in their lives somehow.’

‘You think he’s involved in mine?’

‘Well, it might be that he just hadn’t got round to you yet-’

‘Jesus…’

‘But yes, it’s possible. Can you think of anyone who you might have met in the last few weeks?’

‘I’ve met lots of people,’ Dowd said. ‘When I was up at the Lakes there were other walkers, people in pubs.’ He raised his hands, like it was a stupid question. ‘We meet people all the time. Don’t you?’

‘OK, someone you might have seen a few times. A new neighbour, maybe. A window cleaner.’