Mark Billingham - Bloodline

Dowd thought for a few seconds. ‘There’s this bloke Sarah found who comes round once a week to wash the cars. He’s got one of those little vans with a generator in it, you know?’

‘Since when?’

‘A couple of months now, I think.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I barely spoke to him, to be honest,’ Dowd said. ‘You’d be better off asking Sarah.’

‘Like I said, we were planning on talking to her anyway.’

Dowd grunted and looked away, drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. The sky outside Graham Fowler’s window had been clear, but glancing out of this one, Thorne could see that a blanket of grey cloud was slowly moving to darken the day.

‘What’s the problem with you and your wife, Andrew?’ Thorne asked. When Dowd looked up sharply, he said, ‘Look, I won’t even try to pretend it’s got anything to do with the case, but…’

Dowd began fingering the collar of his shirt. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘There’s no point me kidding you. I’m not the easiest person in the world to live with, all right?’

‘You and me both,’ Thorne said.

‘I’m on a fair few tablets which don’t help matters. Been on all sorts, more or less since I was a kid.’

Thorne remembered the relevant chapter from one of the books he’d been reading. Since Raymond Garvey caved your mother’s head in, he thought. Since he dumped her on a patch of waste ground behind a bus station in Ealing.

‘But Sarah knows how to push all my buttons. She’s a bloody expert at it. It’s like she enjoys pushing them… pushing one in particular. You know how some women just get off on winding you up? Sometimes, I think it’s the only time she actually feels anything, feels properly alive. Like she thinks her life’s shit and the only way she can get her blood pumping is to push and push and push until she gets a reaction. Until she forces me to push back. Well, I’m sick of pushing. I just need to get to a place where she can’t reach me, do you understand? Not just in my head, I mean.’

Thorne nodded, guessing that he was the first person Dowd had ever said this to, but that he’d been rehearsing it. He suddenly had a vision of the man tramping around the Lakes all day, working out what he’d say to his wife when he had the chance. Getting pissed in the pub each night, trying to forget why he was there. Going back to some damp B &B and reaching for the scissors and the razor.

‘One button in particular, you said.’

‘Kids,’ Dowd said quickly. ‘She wanted them and I absolutely didn’t.’

Thorne blinked. ‘Tricky.’

‘Oh, yes. A few days before I buggered off she got pissed and started talking about finding someone who did want them.’ He folded his arms and dropped his head back. ‘Maybe that bloke who washes the cars would oblige. A couple of quick squirts…’

‘Sorry,’ Thorne said. He wasn’t, not particularly, but it felt like the right thing to say.

When he stood up to leave, Thorne saw Dowd’s confident mask slip a little, saw something like disappointment that the conversation was over. There was fear in his eyes, too, as he followed Thorne towards the door.

‘You will catch this bloke, right?’

‘We’ll do our best.’

Dowd nodded fast. ‘’Course, yeah, sorry. So, talk to Sarah. See if it leads anywhere. You know, this car-washer business.’

‘I’ll let you know how we get on,’ Thorne said.

When Thorne was reaching for the door, Dowd stepped close to him. Said, ‘Why would anyone want to bring kids into a world like this? A sick world.’

Certainly a weird one, Thorne thought a little later, as he walked back to the car. When one man asks you to pass on his regards to his mates in the soup queue while another has nothing to say to his own wife.

‘How do people get like that?’ Louise asked. ‘Why would they stay together for that long if they hate each other so much?’

‘Easier than being on their own, maybe?’

‘No…’

‘Or it’s like he said and some people just enjoy conflict. Doesn’t light my candle, but what do I know?’ Thorne had told her about his conversation with Andrew Dowd, about the dysfunctional nature of his marriage. He had not bothered mentioning the central disagreement that Dowd claimed lay at the heart of it. That one button in particular.

Louise shook her head. ‘If it doesn’t work, you should get out.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

‘Good. Because if you start pissing me off, I’ll just trade you in for a younger model.’

Thorne was on the sofa with a beer. He had been looking through his copy of Nick Maier’s book on the Garvey killings, rereading those sections that dealt with the deaths of Andrew Dowd’s and Graham Fowler’s mothers, and the harrowing chapter that detailed the murder of Frances Walsh, the mother of Simon. Her body was the third to be discovered, though it was later determined that she had been the first victim.

A spot of light entertainment after dinner.

Louise lay on the floor, making a fuss of Elvis, moving a finger back and forth under the cat’s chin. Elvis closed her eyes and stretched her neck towards her new best friend. Thorne watched, thinking that Elvis was rarely that affectionate with him. She had been owned by a woman before Thorne got her – albeit one who didn’t know the cat was a she – so perhaps that was the reason. Or maybe it was something to do with pheromones, whatever they were. Or maybe the cat just enjoyed winding him up.

‘Seriously, though,’ Louise said, ‘life’s too short.’

Thorne glanced down at the cover of the book on the sofa next to him. He wasn’t arguing.

‘That’s one of the things that strikes you when something like this happens. You know, losing the baby. At first you think you’ve been unlucky, but you can look at it the other way too, start to appreciate what you’ve got.’

Thorne nodded, felt that lump in his chest.

‘You OK?’

He picked up the book again. ‘Just thinking about this stuff, sorry.’

‘That’s another thing,’ Louise said. ‘Since it happened, work doesn’t seem to have as much effect on me. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had more important things to think about, or if it’s just not getting to me in the same way. Do you know what I mean?’

She said something else after that, lying there stroking the cat, but Thorne caught only half of it. It was hard to follow a train of thought with the Garveys rattling around inside his head.

Father and son.

According to Maier’s book, the detective leading the investigation had described the murders as some of the nastiest he had ever had to deal with. He talked about the level of violence meted out, how it must have been motivated by an incomprehensible level of hatred.

One powerful bloody tumour, Thorne thought.

It might not have been hatred that was motivating the son, but his killings had been every bit as brutal, and Thorne’s desire to find him and put him away was the equal of anything he had felt in many years.

Louise was talking softly now, to Thorne or the cat.

Anthony Garvey might have seen the newspapers, but there was no way he could know that both Fowler and Dowd had been found, or that Debbie Mitchell was safely tucked away. He would still be out there somewhere; searching, growing increasingly frustrated. That might just give me the edge over him, Thorne thought.

Louise sat up, pulled Elvis on to her lap. ‘This cat loves me,’ she said.

Thorne smiled and put down the book.

Or it might just make him more desperate.

H.M.P. Whitemoor

‘The ex-police officer again, was it?’

‘What?’

‘Your face?’