Bloodline Read online

  Bloodline

  MARK BILLINGHAM

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE - BRAND NEW HEARTACHE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  PART TWO - CRITICAL INCIDENTS

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  PART THREE - A GAME OF SKILL AND STRATEGY

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  PART FOUR - ALL THAT REMAINS . . .

  FORTY-FOUR

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Mark Billingham

  IN THE DARK

  The DI Tom Thorne series

  SLEEPYHEAD

  SCAREDY CAT

  LAZYBONES

  THE BURNING GIRL

  LIFELESS

  BURIED

  DEATH MESSAGE

  www.markbillingham.com

  Bloodline

  MARK BILLINGHAM

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2009

  Copyright © Mark Billingham Ltd 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 1146 6

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-4087-0068-6

  This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE

  Little, Brown

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette UK Company

  For David Shelley

  PROLOGUE

  Debbie and Jason

  ‘Come on, pigeon! Let’s go blow at the trains.’ Debbie Mitchell tugs at her son’s arm, but he pulls hard in the opposite direction, towards the chocolate Labrador the old woman is struggling to control. ‘Puff-puff,’ Debbie says, blowing out her cheeks. ‘Come on, it’s your favourite . . .’

  Jason pulls away harder, strong when he wants to be. The noise he makes is somewhere between a grunt and a whine. Anyone else might think he were in pain, but Debbie understands him well enough.

  ‘Dog,’he says. ‘Dog, dog!’

  The old woman with the Labrador smiles at the boy - she has often seen the two of them in the park - then makes the same sad face as always when she looks at his mother.

  ‘Poor thing,’ she says. ‘He knows I’ve got some treats for Buzz in my pocket. He wants to give him a few, don’t you?’ The dog hears this, pulls harder towards the boy.

  ‘Sorry,’ Debbie says. ‘We need to go.’ She yanks at Jason’s arm, and this time his cry is one of pain. ‘Now . . .’

  She walks fast, glancing over her shoulder every few steps, urging Jason along. ‘Puff-puff,’ she says again, trying to keep the terror from her voice, knowing how easily he picks up on such things. The boy starts to smile, the dog quickly forgotten. He runs alongside her making chuffing noises of his own.

  The dog is barking somewhere behind Debbie as she hurries away. The old woman - what was her name, Sally? Sarah? - meant well, but on any other day Debbie would have said something. She would have smiled, concealing her irritation, and explained that Jason was nobody’s poor anything. That there was no happier child alive, no child more cherished.

  Her precious boy. Nine next birthday, with hair on his legs already and an extra-large Arsenal shirt. Who will almost certainly never be able to feed or dress himself.

  ‘Train,’ Jason says. Tries to say.

  She hurries across the lower field, past the bench where they usually sit for a while, where they have an ice-cream sometimes in hot weather, then Jason runs ahead as they move on to the football pitch. They’ve been coming here for a couple of years and, as she hurries towards the familiar tree-line that borders the railway tracks, it strikes her that she doesn’t even know what the place is called; if it even has a name. It’s not Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park - there had been a flasher active for weeks the previous summer and sometimes the local kids lit fires at night - but it was theirs.

  Hers and Jason’s.

  She checks behind again and keeps moving. Walking, fighting the urge to run, fearing that if she does, someone will see and try to stop her. Seeing no sign of the man she’s watching out for, she picks up her pace to catch Jason. He’s stopped in front of the goalposts to take an imaginary penalty, same as always. He does it whether there’s a game on or not, and the boys who play here are used to seeing him charging on to their pitch and flapping around by the goal, waving his arms about like Ronaldo. Sometimes they cheer and none of them laughs or pulls faces any more. Debbie could kiss each one of the little sods for that. Brings them cold drinks now and again, or a few cut-up oranges.

  She takes Jason’s hand and nods towards the bridge, a hundred yards ahead and to the left.

  They move quickly towards it.

  Normally they’d have come the other way, through the entrance opposite her own place, which would have taken them across the bridge on the way in. There would not have been any climbing on plastic chairs and scrambling over her friend’s garden fence.

  But this was not a normal day.

  When she looks around again, she can see the man on the far side of the football pitch. He waves and she fights the urge to shit herself on the spot. He couldn’t reach them in time, she thinks, even if he ran. Could he? The fact that he is just walking, though, the confidence in his easy stride, terrifies her more than she ever thought possible. Convinces her that she is doing the only thing she can. She had known even before she’d heard him talking on the phone. She’d seen it in his eyes and in the dreadful red stain beneath his jacket.

  The man waves at her again and starts to jog.

  On the bridge, Jason stops at his usual spot and waits for her, knowing that she will help him see the train when it comes. He looks confused when she moves to his side. He puffs out his cheeks and waves his arms.

  There was a metal safety-barrier once upon a time, but bit by bit it had been pulled down, as soon as those with nothing better to do had covered every inch of brickwork with graffiti.

  Who had shagged who. Who was a poof
. Who had been there.

  She puts a hand on Jason’s shoulder, then starts to drag herself up, ignoring the pain as her knees scrape against the bricks, and carefully inches her belly across the top. She takes a few fast breaths, then slowly lifts one leg at a time, up and over until she is sitting. She doesn’t dare look down; not yet.

  She looks around to make sure that nobody is watching and it is then that she hears the voice of the real policeman. He is somewhere nearby on the far side of the bridge, coming from the other direction. His voice is cracked and raw as he shouts her name, and she can tell that he is running. He keeps on shouting, searching, but Debbie turns away.

  Too late, she thinks. Much too late.

  She reaches down to pull Jason up, her heart lurching at his smile of excitement. She’s always lifted him before, just high enough so that he can see over the edge, watch the train as it thunders beneath them.

  This is a whole new adventure.

  She cries out with the effort of hauling him up and fights back the tears as he settles down, dangles his legs and snuggles up close to her. He feels the vibration before she does, lets her know in a series of gulps and shouts.

  Debbie feels her guts turn to water and looks up to see the train rounding the bend in the distance. The southbound Tube from High Barnet. She knows it will slow a little just before the bridge as it approaches Totteridge and Whetstone station. Still fast enough, though.

  Debbie scrabbles for her son’s hand and squeezes. She leans down and whispers soft, secret words, knowing - despite any number of expert opinions - that he understands her. He points and yells as the train gets closer, louder. That smile that kills her.

  Debbie closes her eyes.

  ‘Puff-puff,’ Jason says, blowing at the train.

  PART ONE

  BRAND NEW HEARTACHE

  ONE

  ‘. . . is not viable.’

  The woman let her words hang for a few seconds, having passed across the thick roll of kitchen towel, switched off the machine, then turned back to pass on the news while Louise was still wiping the gel off her belly.

  There were a few statistics then: percentages and weeks and numbers out of ten. Some stuff about how common this was, and how it was far better happening now than further down the line.

  Thorne hadn’t really taken much of it in.

  Not. Viable.

  He’d watched Louise nod, blinking slower than normal and buttoning her jeans while the woman talked for a minute or two about practicalities. ‘We can go through the details a bit later on,’ she’d said. ‘After you’ve had some time to yourselves.’

  Was she actually a doctor? Thorne wasn’t sure. Maybe some kind of ‘scanner technician’ or something. Not that it really mattered. It obviously wasn’t the first time she’d said those words; there hadn’t been a pause or even a hint of awkwardness, and he would not have expected one. It was probably best for all concerned to be businesslike about these things, he’d thought. He should know, after all. Best just to say what needed saying and move on, especially with back-to-back appointments and plenty more happy couples waiting outside.

  That phrase though . . .

  Afterwards, they sat in the corner near the water-dispenser, facing away from the main part of an open-plan waiting area. Four plastic chairs bolted together. A nice, lemon-coloured wall and children’s drawings tacked on to a cork board. A wicker table with a few magazines and a box of tissues.

  Thorne squeezed Louise’s hand. It felt small and cold inside his own. He squeezed again, and she looked up; smiled and sniffed.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  Thorne nodded, thinking that, as euphemisms went, it was a pretty good one. Bland yet final. Probably softened the blow for most people, which was, after all, the point.

  Not viable.

  Dead. Dead inside you.

  He wondered if he should try it for size himself, trot it out the next time he had to meet someone at a mortuary or knock on some poor sod’s door in the middle of the night.

  Thing is, your husband ran into some drunken idiot with a knife in his pocket. I’m afraid he’s . . . no longer viable.

  Fine, so it made the victim sound like an android, but that detachment was important, right? You needed the distance. It was that or a few more empty wine bottles in your recycling bin every week.

  Softening the blow for you just as much as for them.

  I’m sorry to have to tell you that your son has been shot. Shot to non-viability. He’s as non-viable as a doornail.

  ‘Tom?’

  Thorne glanced up at the small nudge from Louise, watched as the woman who had performed the scan came across the waiting area towards them. She was Indian, with a wide streak of red through her hair. Somewhere in her early thirties, Thorne guessed. Her smile was perfect: sorrowful, but with a spring in its step.

  ‘OK, I think I’ve managed to find you a bed.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Louise said.

  ‘When did you last eat?’

  ‘I’ve not had anything since breakfast.’

  ‘That’s good. We’ll try to get the D and C done straight away.’ The woman handed Louise a sheet of paper, told her how to get to the ward she needed. Then she looked at Thorne. ‘You might want to go home and pick up a few things for her. Nightdress, whatever . . .’

  Thorne nodded while the woman talked about Louise needing to put her feet up for a couple of days. Kept on nodding when she said that they should both take things easy, that there were phone numbers on the sheet for people they could talk to, if that was what they wanted.

  He watched her walk back towards her room, turning to call the next couple inside when she was at the door. There was a TV mounted high on the wall in the opposite corner. A middle-aged couple was being shown round a villa in France or Italy, the wife saying something about how colourful the tiles were.

  ‘D and C?’

  Louise was studying the instructions on her piece of paper. ‘Dilatation and curettage.’

  Thorne waited, none the wiser. It sounded horrible.

  ‘Scraping,’ Louise said, eventually.

  A thin woman in green overalls pushed a trolley stacked with cleaning equipment along the corridor towards them. She stopped alongside the wicker table, took a rag and plastic spray-gun from her trolley and squirted one of the empty chairs. She looked across at Thorne and Louise as she wiped.

  ‘What are you crying for?’

  Thorne studied the woman for a few seconds, then turned to Louise, who was staring at the floor, folding the paper over and over. He was very hot suddenly, could feel the short hairs prickling at the back of his neck and the film of sweat between his hand and Louise’s. He nodded to the sign on the door of the Antenatal Scanning Suite, then snapped his head back to the cleaner.

  ‘Take a fucking guess,’ he said.

  It took Thorne nearly fifteen minutes to drive the mile or so from the Whittington Hospital to Kentish Town, but at least the journey gave him time to calm down a little. To stop thinking about the heave in Louise’s chest when that cleaner had spoken to them. About wanting to stuff that rag in the woman’s stupid mouth.

  She’d looked at him like he was being rude, for Christ’s sake!

  Back at the flat, he threw some food into a bowl for Elvis and stuffed the things Louise had asked for into a plastic bag: a clean T-shirt; bra and knickers; a hairbrush and a few bits of make-up. He stopped at the door on his way out, needing to lean on the wall for a few seconds before walking back into the living room. He dropped on to the sofa hard and sat there, staring into space, for a while, with the plastic bag cradled on his lap.

  It felt cold in the flat. Three weeks into September and high time the heating was put back on. Time for the petty squabbles to start again, with Thorne nudging up the thermostat and Louise nudging it back down again when she thought he wasn’t looking. Secretive readjustments of the timer. The constant fiddling with radiators.

  The silly sit-com stuff that Thorne lov
ed, despite the bickering.

  They had been arguing - rather more seriously - since Louise had first learned she was pregnant, about what their long-term living arrangements would be. Though they spent most of their time at Thorne’s place, Louise still had her own flat in Pimlico. She was reluctant to sell it, or at least reluctant to accept the assumption that she would. Though they were both keen on sharing a place somewhere, they could not agree which property to put on the market, so they had started talking about selling both flats, then buying somewhere new together, as well as maybe a one-bedroom flat they could rent out.

  Thorne stared at the fireplace and wondered if all that would be put on hold now. If lots of the things they’d discussed - some more seriously than others - would be shifted quietly on to the back burner, or become subjects that were simply never mentioned again.

  Moving a bit further out of the city.

  Getting married.

  Quitting the Job.

  Thorne stood up and collected the phone from the table near the door, carried it back to the sofa.

  They had been talking hypothetically when most of those things had been mentioned; certainly the stuff about weddings and leaving the Force. Just stupid talk, that was all, along with the jokes about not wanting ginger kids and the barmy baby names.

  ‘What about Damien?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Wasn’t his name “Thorne” in the film?’

  ‘Without an “E”. Anyway, who says he’s going to be a “Thorne”. Why can’t he be a “Porter”? Come to think of it, who says he’s going to be a “he”?’