Mark Billingham: Bloodline

‘Why?’

‘You had the kid on the bridge,’ Kitson said. ‘We need to spread the misery around a bit.’

Now, the misery was being duly dispensed and the Garvey murders were someone else’s to worry about. Another team was responsible for wrapping things up and even though there would be no trial, there was still a mountain of paperwork to scale in preparation for those inquests still to be carried out.

Graham Fowler. Brian Spibey.

Rob Gibbons had been luckier – the knife had missed every major internal organ – though he would not be returning to work any time soon.

Simon Walsh, who called himself Anthony Garvey and later posed as Andrew Dowd, had been cremated quickly and quietly, with only Sandra Phipps and her daughter in attendance. Thorne wondered if there would be many more at the service for Debbie Mitchell in two days’ time. He had already booked the morning off, taken his black suit in to the dry cleaner’s.

Brigstocke had raised an eyebrow when Thorne had told him why he was booking himself out. ‘Time to move on, Tom,’ he’d said.

Thorne had said, ‘I know,’ and imagined walking away from the funeral with Nina Collins’ spit running down his jacket.

‘It’s our job to clean up the shit,’ Brigstocke had said. ‘That doesn’t mean walking about with bits of it stuck to us afterwards.’

Time to move on…

Carol Chamberlain had been round for dinner a few nights earlier, with Phil Hendricks making up an unlikely foursome. He’d arrived with the bottle of vodka he’d promised Thorne and unsavoury tales of the good-looking Swede he’d finally found on his last night.

It had been an enjoyable evening, with everyone drinking a little more than they should, especially Chamberlain. Thorne was pleased at how well she had got on with Louise, but was surprised that she hadn’t gone straight home to her husband as soon as she had the chance. She had told him that she would be going back to Worthing in a few days; that she liked to see things through to the ‘bitter end’. Thorne had not been convinced, but hadn’t pushed it.

She’d held him tightly and thanked him before climbing into the taxi she was sharing with Phil Hendricks. Thorne had told her not to be stupid, that he was the one who owed her. ‘All debts are cleared, Tom,’ she’d said. ‘OK?’

‘OK,’ Thorne said.

Then she had lowered the taxi window and nodded towards Hendricks. ‘If your friend was ever likely to turn, do you think he might go for an older woman?’

Thorne had wished her luck.

Afterwards, he had put on a Laura Cantrell album while he and Louise did their best to clear up. He sang along to her cover version of ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ while he ferried cups and plates through to the kitchen and Louise loaded the dishwasher.

Ten minutes later, with only half the clearing away done, they were in bed, neither of them willing to get up and turn off the light they’d left on in the hall and the song still rattling around in Thorne’s head.

‘This baby business,’ Louise said.

Thorne turned over, leaned up on one elbow.

‘There’s no reason to rush things, is there?’

He did not know what the right answer was, settled for a hesitant ‘no’.

‘We can just wait and see what happens.’

Thorne nodded and they looked at each other for a while. Then he turned over again and lay awake, with the words of the song outstaying their welcome as he waited for sleep to take him.

And all that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Life and love and murder, kids, whatever.

It was more or less all you could do, he thought.

Wait and see what happens.

I am hugely grateful to Dr Brian Little, who opened my eyes in more ways than one, and to Dr Bob Bradford for his patience and expertise. Both helped to make the complex workings of the human brain a little clearer to my own less than perfect one.

As always, I owe an enormous debt to everyone at Little, Brown, whose support and enthusiasm make the publication of each book more enjoyable and exciting than the last.

Thanks, as always, to Sarah Lutyens, Wendy Lee and Neil Hibberd.

To Peter, the better half of Will Peterson.

And to Claire, of course. For the title and so much more.

Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001.

Sleepyhead was an instant bestseller in the UK. It has been sold widely throughout the world and will be published in the USA in the Summer of 2002.

Though still occasionally working as a stand-up comic, Mark now concentrates on writing the series of crime novels featuring London-based detective Tom Thorne. The second novel, Scaredy Cat is published in July 2002 and will be followed in 2003 by Lazybones…

Mark lives in North London with his wife and two children.