Mark Billingham - Bloodline

‘Is there someone else in the house?’

She turned to look up at the figure standing behind her in the doorway. He nodded towards the open door that led through to Nina’s kitchen.

‘The radio,’ she said. ‘It’s a play.’

The detective nodded and listened to the voices for a few moments. It sounded like an argument. ‘Pictures are better, right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘They say that, don’t they?’

‘Say what?’

‘Plays and what have you. That’s why they’re always so good on the radio.’ He tapped a finger against the side of his head. ‘Because the pictures are better.’

‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

Debbie turned back to Jason, but she supposed that the detective was right. She usually had the radio tuned into Capital or Heart FM. She was no great fan of the DJs, but she liked most of the music they played and Jason seemed to like it too. She occasionally caught him dancing, though few other people would have called it that. If there was a play on, though, she’d always try to sit and listen. She’d make a coffee and work her way through a packet of biscuits while Jason was glued to his video. Even when it was one of the weird ones, or some old rubbish set in India or Iraq or wherever, it was usually easy enough to get into the story and an hour would fly by without her really noticing.

Because the pictures are better.

They were certainly better than the ones that had been filling her head of late. The man who was coming for her. Nothing in there suitable for a nice, cosy afternoon play…

She heard the detective walking across the carpet and turned just as he squatted down next to her. His knees cracked loudly and he laughed and shook his head.

‘Bloody hell, listen to that,’ he said.

He smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke.

‘Who’s this, then?’

‘This is Jason,’ Debbie said.

For half a minute or more they both watched Jason moving his fingers across the pictures in his book.

‘How old is he?’

‘He’s eight.’

If the officer was surprised, he did not show it. He just watched silently for a few more seconds, then nodded and pushed himself back up to his feet. At that moment, Jason looked up from his picture book and smiled at him.

The detective smiled right back.

They had already cordoned off both ends of the street by the time Thorne and Holland reached Euston, and a small crowd had started to gather. Residents and passers-by had quickly become members of an attentive audience. They fired questions at the officers keeping them at bay and spread rumours among themselves when their enquiries went unanswered. Thorne played equally dumb. He climbed out of the car, keeping his head down, and flashed his warrant card before jogging away up the street towards Grass-up Grange.

There were a dozen or more emergency vehicles parked haphazardly along the street: vans and cars, marked and unmarked; an ambulance. Someone had already called up a tea wagon, which was never a good sign. As Thorne got close, several armed officers walked towards him, ominously slowly, while others stood at the open doors of a van, handing in weapons and stripping off their kit.

Their presence unnecessary.

Thorne was no great fan of CO19 – he’d always found too many armed officers to be cocky sods. Of course, most of them had been a little less full of themselves since Jean Charles de Menezes, and he knew, from the looks that were being exchanged – the heavy steps and the slumped shoulders – that he would have no over-inflated egos to deal with today.

He watched a squat and surly CO19 officer toss his helmet on to the grass and start pulling off his body-armour. As Thorne approached, the man took a cigarette packet from his back pocket and said, ‘Fuck me!’ His face was the colour of candle-wax.

‘How bad?’ Thorne asked.

‘As bad as it gets.’

They both turned as a stretcher was carried out through the open doors and on towards the ambulance. There was a blanket across the body and an oxygen mask was being pressed to the face, but Thorne still recognised the figure of DS Rob Gibbons. He studied the grim expressions of the paramedics, looking for some clue as to the officer’s chances, but saw none. Then he hurried towards the building.

Inside, the lobby was buzzing with activity. The tea wagon would not be needed for a while. The CSI team were already moving around purposefully, the rustle of their body-suits competing with the squawk of radios and the barked orders of senior officers doing their best to keep a lid on the panic.

Thorne walked across to where the remaining members of the paramedic team were gathering their equipment together at the foot of the stairs. Holland was only a few steps behind him, and the two of them stood quietly watching for a moment; staring at the long-bladed knife that lay on the bottom step and the blood that had spread, shiny against the marble floor.

‘What the hell happened?’ Holland asked.

‘We had him,’ Thorne said. ‘We had him all the time.’

‘Had who?’

‘Anthony Garvey.’

‘Yeah, I know that.’ Thorne had done his best to explain as the car had raced from Colindale. Holland had listened, open-mouthed, as Thorne told him what Carol Chamberlain had discovered, spelling out its implications as he urged the driver to put his foot down. ‘But who?’

Instinctively, Thorne raised his head, looked up towards the rooms where he’d visited the last two men on a killer’s list. Where he’d visited the killer himself.

‘Sir?’

Thorne turned and nodded at the nervous young woman who had walked across to them. Nodded again, impatient as she introduced herself as the DI with the on-call Homicide Assessment Team, her name going out of his head immediately. ‘Let’s have it,’ he said.

‘Two bodies upstairs.’ Her eyes flicked momentarily to a notebook. ‘Detective Sergeant Spibey and a man named Graham Fowler.’

‘Christ,’ Holland said.

Thorne said, ‘Show me.’

The woman chatted as they walked up the stairs, the nerves still evident in her voice. She explained that Superintendent Jesmond was on his way, as was the pathologist who was running later than he might have been, having got caught in traffic. There had been some kind of mix-up, she said, as to exactly who was covering for Doctor Hendricks. Thorne thought of his friend, happily oblivious in some Gothenburg watering-hole, and felt a stab of envy. He looked at Holland. ‘So, now we know.’

Holland nodded. ‘Dowd.’

‘The man pretending to be Dowd,’ Thorne said.

They stood in the doorway of the room at the far end of the corridor, so bland and utilitarian until Anthony Garvey had gone to work. They took in its grisly new design.

Spibey was still in his chair, head down on the slick tabletop. On the other side of the room, Graham Fowler was slumped against the wall, one knee oddly raised, as if he were resting casually, though the blood and brain fragments caked to the side of his face told a very different story. A few feet away, a crude circle had been sprayed on the carpet around a stained and splintered mug-tree, and the three small branches that had broken from it; snapped clean off as it had been brought down repeatedly on to the heads of the dead men.

Thorne watched, his fists clenching and unclenching while the stills photographer moved in as close as he was able to the bodies. He listened as one of the CSI officers said something about the murder weapon, cracked a feeble joke about tea.

Whistling in the dark had never sounded so shrill.

‘The superintendent’s going to go mental,’ Holland said.

Thorne nodded, half listening. Thinking back over his conversations with the man they had all thought was Andrew Dowd. Wondering if he had missed something.