Bloodline-9 (19 page)

Thorne thought about Jason Mitchel , the concentration and the quiet ‘chuff-chuff ’ as he pushed his train back and forth. The smile, sudden as a slap. He couldn’t tel if the boy even knew he was smiling and wondered where in his brain the problem lay.

White, pink or blue?

Would somebody like Pavesh Kambar be able to point to his handy multi-coloured plastic model and say, There,
that’s
where the trouble is, that’s where the wiring is faulty? Or perhaps he would say that it wasn’t faulty at al , that it was a different kind of wiring he hadn’t been trained to deal with, one that he simply couldn’t fathom. A feeling-useless moment, maybe. Time to pul out that rarely used F-word.

White, pink or blue.

Pil ar-box red against black-and-white squares. Brown specks on the carpet and wal paper by the window yel owing and greasy, like the business side of a sticking plaster when you’ve torn it off.

The CD finished, so Thorne got up, removed the disc from the player and put it away. The phone was on its cradle near the front door. He picked up his wal et from the table, took out a card and dial ed the number scribbled on it.

‘Hel o?’ The voice was wary, cracked.

He checked his watch: just after nine, not too late to cal . He wondered if she was alone. ‘It’s Tom Thorne.’

‘What do you want?’

The words sounded as if they’d taken some effort, like she’d just woken up or been drinking. He looked at the can of lager in his own hand and pushed the thought from his mind. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ he said. ‘With the pictures.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘Al right, but just enough to make you leave.’

‘
Just enough
? Like you can measure it?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘They made me feel sick. What if Jason had seen them? Have you any idea . . . ?’

‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ Thorne said. ‘I got into trouble for it, if that makes you feel any better.’

There was a pause. ‘It does a bit.’

Thorne laughed, expecting her to join in, but she didn’t. ‘When are you going to Nina’s?’

‘First thing tomorrow,’ Mitchel said. ‘I’m trying to pack.’

‘It’s a bloody nightmare, isn’t it?’

‘This isn’t a fortnight in Majorca, though, is it?’

Thorne was starting to wish he hadn’t cal ed, wondering what on earth had possessed him. Not that he had imagined Debbie Mitchel would give him an easy ride. ‘You on your own?’

‘Yeah. Nina’s . . . at work.’

‘He
will
come, you know?’ Thorne took a sip of beer. ‘If we don’t catch him. You’ve done the right thing.’ He heard the click of a lighter, the pause as she inhaled.

‘I suppose.’

‘Listen, you can always cal if—’

‘Are you going to catch him?’ Her voice no longer sounded tired. ‘“If we don’t catch him,” you said. How likely is that, d’you reckon, this bloke getting away with it?’

‘We’re doing everything we can.’

‘On a scale of one to ten?’

Thorne thought about it. Five? More? Said, ‘How’s your hand?’

‘Sorry?’

‘It was bleeding earlier.’ Thorne looked up at the sound of keys in the front door. ‘I think you caught it on Jason’s teeth.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I was trying to say you can cal if you’re worried about anything.’

‘What? You, or just 999?’

‘Me. If you’re . . . anxious, whatever.’ He could hear the inner door opening as he gave Debbie Mitchel his mobile number, then heard it close while he waited for her to write it down and read it back to him.

‘Anyway . . .’

‘Right, I’l leave you to your packing,’ Thorne said.

‘OK.’

Louise came through the lounge door. Thorne raised a finger, mouthed, ‘One minute,’ as she walked past him towards the kitchen. He thought about saying something like, ‘Say hel o to Jason,’ but decided it would sound cheesy and insincere, so he just said, ‘Bye, Debbie.’

He fol owed Louise into the kitchen and was about to say, ‘You caught me on the phone to my girlfriend’ when she turned from the fridge with a bottle in her hand and he saw her expression.

‘What?’

‘Nothing, it’s fine.’

‘I thought you’d be a bit later,’ Thorne said. ‘Obviously not much of a celebration.’

She poured herself a large glass of wine and leaned back against the worktop. ‘Obviously.’ She held out the bottle towards him, asking the question.

He raised his can, answering it. ‘That snotty DCI turned forty again, did she?’

Louise took a drink, like she needed it. ‘It wasn’t a birthday.’

Thorne shook his head. ‘I just presumed . . .’

‘Lucy Freeman’s pregnant,’ Louise said. Another drink, the swal ow giving way to a wobbly kind of smile. ‘She kept it very quiet. Like you’re supposed to.’

‘Shit.’

‘No, real y, it’s OK. I’m happy for her.’ She stared past him, swil ed the piss-coloured wine around in her glass. ‘I
need
to be happy for her.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I mean it. I just need to crack on, you know? I can’t get stupid every time I see a pushchair outside a shop or feel upset if I run into someone who’s up the duff.’

‘I know,’ Thorne said, not knowing at al .

‘It’s just . . . hard. It’s like when you’re a teenager and you get dumped and every song on the radio feels like it’s about you.’

Thorne nodded. ‘Al By Myself ’ by Eric Carmen had torn his heart out when he was fifteen. ‘I Know It’s Over’ by the Smiths did it again ten years later. Hank Wil iams singing ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ could stil do it.

‘I’l deal with it,’ Louise said. ‘I’l have to, won’t I? She sits at the next desk, for God’s sake. I’ve got a big pile of baby magazines I can take in for her.’

‘Don’t.’

‘A pack of three newborn Babygros she can have as wel . Shouldn’t have bought them real y, but I couldn’t resist.’

Thorne stepped across to her and took the glass from her hand. ‘Come here.’

A few seconds later, she lifted her face from his neck when a phone started to ring in the next room. She started to pul away, but Thorne held her close.

‘It’s your mobile.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘Answer it.’

‘It’s fine.’

Louise broke the embrace and walked into the living room. Thorne lobbed his empty beer can into the bin. He heard her answer and say, ‘Just a minute.’ They crossed in the kitchen doorway, Thorne taking the phone as Louise held it out to him.

He recognised the cal er’s voice, the precision in it. ‘I was just thinking about you,’ he said.

Pavesh Kambar laughed. ‘Wel , obviously you were in my thoughts too, Inspector. Hence the cal . Great minds and al that.’

Thorne waited. The only other person he knew who used the word ‘hence’ was Trevor Jesmond. ‘Hence the importance of correct procedure. ’ ‘Hence the fact that I’m suspending you from duty . . .’

‘I thought of somebody you should speak to,’ Kambar said. ‘A writer.’

‘OK.’

‘The name is Nicholas Maier.’

‘Let me grab a pen . . .’ He found one on the table near the door, pul ed a scrap of paper from inside his wal et.

Kambar repeated the name, spel ing it out, and Thorne scribbled it down. Kambar told him that the writer had contacted him two years previously, a year or so after the death of Raymond Garvey, claiming to be doing research.

Another searing, true-crime masterpiece, Thorne thought. He didn’t recognise the name. Though he couldn’t remember who had written the two books he had sent away for and was currently reading, he was sure neither author was Nicholas Maier.

‘This chap was writing a book, or updating one he’d already written, something like that. He cal ed me several times, came to the hospital on more than one occasion. He certainly knew everything there was to know about Raymond Garvey’s condition and wanted to get my take on it.’

‘Your
take
?’

‘Did I think the tumour might have changed his personality?’

‘Same thing the son was banging on about?’

‘That’s why I’m cal ing real y,’ Kambar said. ‘He claimed to have got his information from the son.’

‘He’d been in contact with him?’

‘So he said. He talked as though he’d been commissioned as Raymond Garvey’s official biographer or something.’

Thorne was drawing a line under the name, going back and forth over it. ‘So, you refused to speak to him?’

‘Of course.’ Pavesh answered as though it was a particularly stupid question. ‘Once I knew what he wanted, yes, of course. He made substantial offers, but I told him what he could do with his money. He was sure I would come round eventual y. That sort always are, aren’t they? He left me his card. Would you like the details?’

Thorne took down phone numbers and an email address, then thanked Kambar for taking the trouble to cal .

‘It’s not a problem,’ Kambar said. ‘When we met, you seemed convinced that this man claiming to be the son was very important. Might wel be the man you are looking for.’

‘It certainly looks that way.’

‘In which case this writer is definitely someone you should be talking to.’

‘Maier told you he
knew
him?’ Thorne asked. ‘That they’d spoken?’

‘Oh yes, very definitely,’ Kambar said. ‘The way Mr Maier told it to me, he was more or less Anthony Garvey’s best friend.’

MY JOURNAL

3 October

It’s not always easy, certainly not in a city like London, where almost anyone can get lost without even knowing it, can become anonymous, but most people want contact with others. They crave intimacy. I probably crave it just as much as anyone else, but I gave up on al that a long time ago. The fact that everyone else seems to need it makes my job easier, that’s al I’m saying. It makes it simple to get close to other people’s lives. You just have to watch and figure out the best way in. If someone’s a nurse, for example, you can pretty much bet that they care. So you run into them a couple of times. Maybe you’re a junkie who’s trying to kick the habit and you know that they’l sympathise. You become a face they know, someone they trust, right until the moment they see the rock coming down or whatever. You watch. You get to know routines, patterns. What time Hubby comes home from school to have his lunch. When the time comes to pay a cal on the wife, you’re just that bloke who she’s spoken to in the supermarket or wherever a couple of times. She isn’t wary, like she should be. You’re a face across a busy student bar, or a man who cleans the family car once a week.

Eventual y you’re invited in for a coffee and you get familiar. You can figure out timings, habits, the fact that the man you’re after and his wife are fighting like cat and dog.

You find your angle.

It’s starting to get trickier now, but I always knew it would. I found the easy ones, got them out of the way first; geared myself up. Obviously, the police wil have put the pieces together by now (literal y, I should imagine) and wil have worked out what’s happening. That’s al fine, though. Now they can do the hard work for me. They can find the ones I stil haven’t been able to track down. Hopeful y, that’s the bit they haven’t worked out yet.

Dug into the cash again and moved into a new place, a fairly tidy one-room flat, near a station, same as the others, which makes it easier to travel. King’s Cross this time.

Even though it’s only for a few weeks at a stretch, I like walking around each area, getting to know the streets a bit. King’s Cross is supposed to be pretty rough, with the prossies and the drugs, but so far I like it. Nobody gives you a second look, which is fine by me. It’s like what I said before about people becoming anonymous. That’s what everyone seems like round here. It’s another thing which makes my life easier.

The newsagent was banging on about the Macken murders this morning, when I went in for fags. Stil loads of stuff in the paper. Family snapshots, al that. Nothing connecting it with the others, though, which is probably just the police playing their cards close to their chests. The bloke in the shop was getting al worked up. He didn’t quite get as far as saying they should bring back hanging, but near enough. They were so young, he kept saying, their whole lives ahead of them. Why does it matter how old they were? I just don’t get that. Like the young have any more right to life than anyone else. Like it’s more tragic than if some pensioner tumbles down the stairs.