Mark Billingham: Bloodline

Holland looked at Hendricks, stage-whispered conspiratorially: ‘Wrong side of the bed.’

Thorne could feel himself growing edgier by the minute. He told himself to calm down, but it didn’t work, and walking out with Holland ten minutes later, he found it hard to control his breathing and the flush of it in his face. Sometimes, he felt fired-up coming out of a post-mortem, confused or just depressed more often than not, but he could not remember the last time he’d felt quite so bloody angry.

He had been turning his phone back on before he was out of the post-mortem room and by the time he emerged through the mortuary’s main entrance on to Avondale Road, he could see that he had three missed calls from Louise. He told Holland he’d catch him up.

It was the voice she used when she’d been crying. ‘They’ve still not done it.’

‘Christ, you’re kidding!’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.

He turned away, looking across the North Circular and avoiding the stares from a couple at the bus-stop who had heard him shout. ‘What did they say to you?’

‘I can’t find anyone who can tell me what’s going on.’

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ Thorne said.

She burst into tears as soon as she caught sight of him, pushing through the doors at the far end of the ward. He shushed her gently, drew the curtains around the bed and sat down to hold her.

‘I just want it… out of me,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’

‘I know.’

They heard the voice of the woman in the bed opposite coming from the other side of the curtain. ‘Is everything OK?’

‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said.

‘Do you want me to get someone?’

Thorne leaned closer to Louise. ‘I’m going to get someone.’

He prowled the corridors for five minutes until he found a doctor on the next floor up and told him that something needed to be done. After shouting for a minute or so then refusing to budge while the doctor made a couple of calls, Thorne was back at Louise’s bedside with a soft-spoken, Scottish nurse. She made all the right noises, then admitted there was nothing she could do.

‘Not good enough,’ Thorne said.

‘I’m sorry, but this is standard practice.’

‘What is?’

‘Your partner’s just been unlucky, I’m afraid.’ The nurse was flicking through the paperwork she’d brought with her. She waved it in Thorne’s direction. ‘Each time the procedure has been scheduled, another case has taken priority at the last minute. Just unlucky…’

‘She was promised it would be done last night,’ Thorne said. ‘Then first thing this morning.’

Louise lay back on the pillow with her eyes closed. She looked exhausted. ‘Two hours ago they said I was next in.’

‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ Thorne said.

The nurse consulted her paperwork again, nodding when she found an explanation. ‘Yes, well, we had someone come in with a badly broken arm, I’m afraid, so-’

‘A broken arm?’

The nurse looked at Thorne as though he were simple. ‘He was in a considerable amount of pain.’

Thorne returned the look, then pointed at Louise. ‘You think she’s enjoying herself?’

Alex was stuffing a last piece of toast into her mouth when Greg came into the kitchen. He nodded, still tucking in his shirt. She grunted, waved, and went back to the story she’d been reading in the Guardian.

‘Hope you’ve left some bread,’ Greg said, flicking on the kettle. He heard another grunt as he walked to the bread-bin, then a mumbled request for an apology as he moved to the fridge. ‘Oh, right, as if you would have scoffed it all…’ He scanned the inside of the fridge, looking in vain for a yoghurt he knew had been there the day before. Kieron, the flatmate who had moved out at the end of the previous year, had a habit of polishing off the last of the communal bread, milk or whatever, as well as eating stuff that had never been his in the first place. Now Alex was shaping up to be almost as bad. But Greg was more inclined to forgive his own sister, and she did leave the bathroom smelling a lot nicer than Kieron had done.

She pushed the paper away when he finally brought over his tea and toast and sat down. ‘You’re going in early.’

‘Twelve o’clock lecture,’ Greg said. ‘Henry the sodding second. And it’s not really what the rest of the world would call early.’

‘Feels early enough to me.’

‘What time did you get in?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alex said. ‘Not stupidly late. But a bunch of us ended up in some place in Islington where they were necking these lethal-looking vodka shots.’

‘They were necking?’

Alex grinned. ‘Fair enough, I necked a few.’ She pointed as Greg shook his head and slurped his tea. ‘You can’t get all big brother-ish, matey. Not with some of the things you get up to.’

Greg blushed, which annoyed him, then he got even more annoyed when Alex giggled knowingly and he blushed some more. ‘Look, you’ve only been here two weeks, that’s all I’m saying.’ He cut her off when she opened her mouth. ‘And don’t tell me to “chillax” or whatever. You’re not twelve.’

‘I’m making friends,’ she said.

‘Well, you need to pace yourself. Oh yeah, and maybe do some work.’ He struck his chest theatrically. ‘I know, mental idea…’

‘Like you said, I’ve only been here two weeks.’ She reached across, tried and failed to grab a piece of his toast. ‘And, you know… it’s drama. It’s not like there’s a lot of work to do.’

‘How thrilled was the old man when you got a place here? When you told him you were moving in with me?’

She shrugged.

‘And how pissed off would he be if he knew you were caning it every other night?’

Just when it looked as though Alex was about to shout, or storm off, she produced the same butter-wouldn’t-melt smile she’d been turning on for eighteen years. ‘You’re just jealous because you got lumbered with a proper course, with proper lectures,’ she said. ‘Henry the sodding second.’

‘Dull as fucking ditchwater,’ he said.

They both laughed, and she made another, more successful grab for the toast. Greg called her a sneaky bitch. Alex called him a tight-arse, then got up to make them both some more.

‘You going to be in the Rocket tonight?’

Alex turned from the worktop, pulled a mock-horrified face. ‘After what you just said?’

‘I’m just letting you know I’ll probably be in there.’

‘Right. Probably.’ She pointed accusingly, with a knife smeared in butter and Marmite. The Rocket complex on Holloway Road was the student union of the Metropolitan University ’s north London campus. It was also home to one of the city’s trendiest clubs and until very recently had not been a place her brother had been known to frequent very often. ‘That’s three times this week.’

‘So?’

‘Making a bit of a habit of it, aren’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘The drink’s cheap.’

‘Right, so it’s not like you’ve got your eye on anyone, or anything like that?’

Greg blushed again and stood up. He told her he was running too late for more toast, that he needed to get ready. She shouted after him, told him he could eat it on the way. He shouted back: ‘Yeah, if I want to get killed…’

Five minutes later, he was wheeling his bike on to the pavement and doing his best to finish the toast Alex had thrust into his hand at the top of the stairs. That was often the way it went. However much their father thought Greg would be keeping an eye his little sister, she was the one who usually ended up doing the looking after. Fussing and checking up on him, and generally behaving like the mother they didn’t have.