Love Like Blood Read online

  Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Crime Novel of the Year, and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller. Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Thorne, and a new series based on the novels In the Dark and Time of Death will be broadcast on BBC1 in 2017. Mark lives in north London with his wife and two children.

  Visit Mark’s website at www.markbillingham.com or follow him on Twitter @MarkBillingham.

  Also by Mark Billingham

  The DI Tom Thorne series

  Sleepyhead

  Scaredy Cat

  Lazybones

  The Burning Girl

  Lifeless

  Buried

  Death Message

  Bloodline

  From the Dead

  Good as Dead

  The Dying Hours

  The Bones Beneath

  Time of Death

  Other fiction

  In the Dark

  Rush of Blood

  Die of Shame

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Little, Brown

  978-0-7515-6690-1

  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.

  Copyright © Mark Billingham Ltd 2017

  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.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  LITTLE, BROWN

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Love Like Blood

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Mark Billingham

  COPYRIGHT

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: A PERFECT TEAM

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  PART TWO: WORSE THAN WORDS

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  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

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  PART THREE: FROM CHAOS

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  PART FOUR: SOMETHING BRIGHT

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For Claire.

  And in memory of Banaz Mahmod

  and Rahmat Sulemani.

  What is honour? A word. What is in that word ‘honour’? What is that ‘honour’? Air…

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY IV PART I

  The conversation stopped as soon as the woman they had come for arrived.

  They watched Nicola Tanner’s car slow, stop, then reverse expertly into a parking space a few houses down from her own. They watched the woman get out and retrieve something from the boot. They held their breath as she locked the car with a remote and began walking towards her house; saw her lit for a second or two as she passed beneath a streetlamp.

  ‘Good, she’s got bags.’

  ‘Why is that good?’

  ‘She’s got her hands full. She’ll be distracted.’

  ‘OK.’

  Their whispered breaths were briefly visible, eyes on the woman as she stepped to avoid a slick of leaves on the pavement and hitched her shoulder bag a little higher.

  ‘What do you think’s in the bags?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘They look heavy.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  They moved out of the shadows and across the road as the woman turned on to her front path. Quickly, but not too quickly, trying to time it right; heads down and hooded, ready to turn and walk casually away should anyone come along. A dog walker, a nosy neighbour. Emerging from between cars, they were coming through the gate as the woman pushed in her door key and one of them was calling out her name as she bent to pick up her bags from the step.

  They had the water pistols out by the time she turned round.

  She opened her mouth, but the words, the scream, were quickly silenced by the twin jets of bleach, and a few seconds after she staggered back, blinded, and fell into her house, they were on her.

  Inside.

  The water pistols were shoved back into pockets and the bags that had been dropped just over the threshold were kicked aside, so that the door could be shut. Folders and files spilled out on to the hall carpet, a bottle of orange juice, a notebook, pens. They stood and watched as the woman spluttered and kicked out at them, inching herself across the floor towards the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Where does she think she’s going?’

  ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

  The woman continued to kick and shuffle until she reached the bottom stair and tried to sit up. One hand was pressed across her face while the other clutched at the carpet. She moaned and thrashed, frantic as her eyes and mouth burned, and the scream that resurfaced was strangled by the bleach that had run down her throat.

  ‘She looks like a crab or something.’

  She moved one hand from her face, gasping as she struggled to open one eye. She squinted and sobbed.

  ‘Can she even see us?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘Seriously though, you reckon she can?’

  The woman froze when the knife was produced, as one of them moved to kneel down next to her.

  ‘Yeah, just about,’ he said.

  PART ONE

  A PERFECT TEAM

  ONE

  Who wouldn’t welcome an unexpected smile?

  At that moment, standing where he was, Tom Thorne was seriously c
onsidering the question. There weren’t too many smiles flying about in court, as a rule. When the person doing the smiling was the one being escorted from the dock, having just been convicted of murder – in large part thanks to Thorne – it was, to say the least, mildly disconcerting.

  Thorne smiled back, raised two fingers for good measure, then left the courtroom as quickly as possible.

  The trial had made the front page of the Standard and had been deemed worthy of a few minutes on the local TV news, but there wasn’t a large crowd outside the Old Bailey. No lawyers reading prepared statements before clusters of microphones, no scrum of cameramen jostling for position. No carefully chosen words about justice, or grief. Just a few members of the prosecution team shaking hands, and the victim’s father, talking to a woman Thorne recognised.

  He watched the awkward hug, then saw her turn and walk in his direction.

  She was somewhere in her mid-thirties and a little below average height. Her round face was framed by brown hair styled into an unfussy bob, the fringe a little straggly. The dark blue skirt and blazer were as practical, as efficient, as Thorne had been led to believe the woman herself was, though of course it might simply have been a case of choosing clothes that were suitable for the occasion. Thorne himself was wearing the dark suit that was only ever dragged out and dry-cleaned for funerals or court appearances. As the woman approached, Thorne adjusted his waistband and told himself that, though he was happy enough to give the funerals a miss, he might need to cut down on the takeaways if he wanted to carry on giving evidence.

  He shifted from one foot to another, waited.

  ‘Good result,’ the woman said, when she finally reached him.

  Thorne had been preparing to shake hands, but the woman clearly preferred to skip the formalities. ‘Down to you,’ he said.

  ‘Only to begin with.’

  ‘You did all the legwork.’

  ‘Well…’ She seemed content to accept the acknowledgement and stood looking anywhere but at Thorne, as though putting off the moment when she would have to say what was actually on her mind.

  ‘Course you did,’ Thorne said. ‘I just came on at the end. Super-sub.’

  ‘That’s a football thing, right?’

  ‘Right…’

  Thorne knew who DI Nicola Tanner was, of course, though they had never met, and he had not been in court the day she had given evidence. Six months earlier, she had led the inquiry into the murder of a young woman named Heather Finlay and become convinced that the killer belonged to a weekly therapy group that Finlay had attended, together with other recovering addicts. With the investigation stalled, Thorne had been brought in undercover to join the group and, after several months of regular sessions, had been able to identify a prime suspect.

  The same suspect who, as of fifteen minutes earlier, was now a convicted killer.

  ‘Have you got time for a quick chat?’ Tanner asked.

  Thorne could not be sure at whose instigation they had begun to move, but as Tanner asked the question they were already walking away from the building, the golden figure of Lady Justice towering high above them, sword raised skywards as if to suggest that she was ready to hand out rather more than an ASBO. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  They turned along the main road towards Newgate Street. ‘Thank you,’ Tanner said.

  ‘No problem.’

  Once again, Thorne got the impression that the chat was not one Tanner was looking forward to. It made him a little nervous. Knowing something of her reputation, he wondered if he was about to be pulled up for some lapse in procedure during the latter stages of the Finlay case, or perhaps just told firmly that he needed a new suit.

  ‘Anyway, we should celebrate,’ Thorne said, ‘and there’s a decent pub round the corner.’ He nodded towards the Viaduct, a former gin palace that stood on the site of a debtor’s prison. There were usually a few too many legal types in there for Thorne’s liking, but the place had a nice selection of toasties and the beer was always good.

  A few steps further on, Tanner said, ‘Can we just go for coffee? Do you mind?’

  ‘Well, a latte isn’t my idea of a celebration, but if you’d rather.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Going back to the office?’

  Tanner was looking straight ahead. ‘I’m on compassionate leave.’

  Thorne took a breath and said, ‘Sorry,’ because he guessed there would be good reason to say it, but he worried it was lost beneath the growl of a passing taxi. So he said it again.

  Tanner took a few more steps, then stopped. The drizzle, which had been in the air all day, had begun to make good on its threat. She fished in her handbag for an umbrella. ‘My partner was killed.’ She unfurled her umbrella and looked up from beneath it at Thorne. ‘I don’t mean my work partner. She was murdered, two weeks ago.’

  It took Thorne a second or two to process the two very different pieces of information. ‘Jesus…’

  ‘Her name was Susan Best.’ Tanner smiled, just. ‘She was a teacher.’

  Thorne nodded. He had been aware of the case; the murder victim whose other half was a copper. It was the kind of news that went around, a Job-related homicide, though the name of the copper involved had never been mentioned. He thought about Helen, his girlfriend, and said, ‘Sorry,’ again, because he didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Obviously, I’m not allowed to be part of the investigation in any way,’ Tanner said. ‘I mean those are the rules and they’re there for very good reasons.’

  Thorne had heard enough about Nicola Tanner to know that rules were something she normally set a lot of store by. It was not a trait they had in common. ‘Frustrating though, good reasons or not.’

  Tanner’s look made it clear just how frustrated she was. ‘It’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Well, I’m not involved in it either.’ Thorne had begun to see where this could be heading and was keen to maintain a degree of distance. He might be willing to make the odd phone call as a favour, to pass on such information as he was able to glean, but he had enough going on as it was to do much beyond that. ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘Hammersmith. Susan was killed at our home. I know that’s outside your area, but it doesn’t really matter because none of this would be on the books anyway.’

  ‘None of what?’

  ‘I need to catch the people who killed her,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m sure the team that’s on it will catch them.’

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Hang on —’

  ‘They thought she was me.’ Tanner stared hard at Thorne, but only for a moment or two before she half turned away, to avoid the rain that was coming at her in gusts from the side, or perhaps because she did not want him to see what became of her expression. ‘She was driving my car. They killed Susan, but it was me they were after.’

  Now, Thorne looked away too. For a few seconds he watched the traffic crawling past towards St Paul’s, the chaotic procession of umbrellas, but he could feel the steady gaze at his back; the scrutiny of the golden figure staring down from the dome behind them. That sword at the ready to mete out punishment.

  He stepped across and put a hand on Tanner’s shoulder to urge her gently forward.

  ‘Pub,’ he said.

  TWO

  From the bar, Thorne glanced back to see Tanner sitting patiently at the table they had bagged in the corner. He watched her pick up her phone, swipe at the screen a few times, then set it back down. He watched her use the tips of two fingers to straighten the handset in line with the edge of the tabletop before sitting back and folding her hands into her lap.

  A few seconds later, she moved the phone again.

  Failing to catch the eye of the barman, Thorne looked around at the pub’s lavish Victorian interior: ornate marble columns, gilded mirrors and decorated glass. Fine, he supposed, if you liked that kind of thing, though his own taste ran rather more towards spit a
nd sawdust. A wooden sign listed the rules for those entering the old ‘gaol’, while another inside the door proudly boasted that the pub was among the most haunted in the city and a regular stop on London’s ghost tours. Thorne wondered if the spirits were all those of customers who had died while waiting to be served.

  ‘Look at the arse on that last one.’

  Thorne turned to see the barman pointing towards a row of large paintings on the far wall. Three women wearing togas – Thorne supposed they would be called ‘maidens’ – in various wistful poses. With a statue, what looked like a sheaf of wheat…

  ‘Agriculture, business and the arts,’ the barman said. ‘What they’re meant to be. Represent, whatever. The one at the end’s got a dirty big hole in her rear end, though… see?’