Bloodline-9 (26 page)

But not very far . . .

He considered Emily Walker’s husband, and Catherine Burke’s good-for-nothing boyfriend. The father of Greg and Alex Macken and the parents of Chloe Sinclair.

Anthony Garvey’s other victims.

For reasons he could not fathom, Thorne imagined them strung along a rope, like life-sized beads on a living necklace. Stuck fast and twisting in the cold and dark, the bodies of their loved ones bloodless alongside them. One dead, one as good as, one dead, one as good as . . . the vast necklace straining with the weight of them, yet plenty of room stil on the creaking rope.

Thorne turned up the music, put his foot down when the road opened up a little.

However their loss had caused each of them to behave - absurdly polite or obstreperous; howling or struck dumb - Thorne knew that the relatives of those Anthony Garvey had murdered were looking in his direction for a particular sort of comfort. Strong arms and warm words were easy enough to come by, but finding the man who was responsible for their pain was down to him and his sort. It would be one step, no more than that, but the
first
step to easing them from the knotted thread of grief.

He drove through Camden and Archway, up into Highgate as the rain started, then down into Finchley, passing within a few streets of where Emily Walker’s body had been found a little over two weeks before. Ten minutes later, approaching Barnet, he turned off the Great North Road, and shortly after that, on to the street where Nina Col ins lived.

Thorne showed his ID to the officers in the patrol car that had been stationed outside since Debbie Mitchel had moved in with her friend, and rang the bel .

Col ins came to the door and stared at him. ‘Wel ?’

‘Everything OK?’

She nodded towards the patrol car, flicked her cigarette into the bush at the side of the narrow path. ‘Apart from having to check with Starsky and Hutch every time I want to go and buy a packet of fags, yeah.’

‘It’s al right, Nina.’ Debbie Mitchel appeared behind Col ins, who sighed and let her past before disappearing back inside.

‘I was just passing,’ Thorne said.

‘Good of you.’

‘Thought I’d check, you know . . . see how you were getting on.’

‘Wel , I can’t go anywhere, and Jason’s missing school. Can’t be helped, though, right?’

‘I’m sorry, but you’ve always got the option to come into protective custody. It would probably be the best thing.’

She shook her head.

‘OK, wel you can cal if you’re worried about anything, you know that?’

Debbie Mitchel nodded and folded her arms. ‘Any joy?’

Thorne took a second or two. ‘We’l let you know, I promise.’

Plenty of room still on the creaking rope.

Thorne’s mobile rang in his pocket. ‘Sorry.’ He saw the cal er ID and walked a few steps away from the front door. ‘I need to take this.’

Hol and was a little breathless, speaking from inside a fast car, raising his voice when necessary above those of the other officers travel ing with him.

‘Where?’ Thorne asked, when Hol and had said his piece. Listening, he glanced back towards Debbie Mitchel and saw the look on her face reacting to the expression on his own, saw her arms fal to her sides. ‘Sorry, Dave, say again.’

The rain was getting heavier, and as Thorne opened his mouth to talk, he heard her say, ‘There’s been another one, hasn’t there?’

He turned to look at her, with Hol and stil passing on the details, and spotted Jason Mitchel creeping through a doorway down the hal , peering past his mum to see what was happening.

Hol and said, ‘Sir?’ and Debbie Mitchel said something else before taking a step back, out of the rain. For a few seconds Thorne remained silent. He could not tear his eyes away

from the boy in the hal , wide-eyed and shiny-lipped in red-and-white pyjamas, his teeth sliding back and forth across his bottom lip.

MY JOURNAL

10 October

Not sure if they’ve found him yet, but if they haven’t, it can’t be very far away. My money’s on someone walking a dog. How many times do you read that? Or kids, playing where they shouldn’t. I was thinking that, if I had the chance, if I could somehow find out when it was going to happen, I might pop down to have a look at the fun and games.

Mind you, unless you don’t have a television or you’re living in a cave, it’s not hard to imagine what it would be like. Dozens of them swarming about in their plastic masks and paper suits, lights and tents and tape, and some chain-smoking detective standing off to one side, shouting at his sidekick or moaning about his boss.

I can’t help thinking that if they’d made that sort of effort fifteen years ago, they might have figured out what was real y happening a lot quicker. They might have saved a few women’s lives and might even have worked out that their ‘vicious kil er’ was a man who could not help himself. Who was as much a victim as any of them.

They might have prevented al this.

Even if I did have the chance to get down there and join the gawkers, I’d almost certainly not get to see the body being brought out, but I bet they have an easier job shifting it than I did. It’s only when you’ve tried to move one that you discover why they cal it a ‘dead weight’. Lugging him into and out of the car was a nightmare, so it was amazing to watch him slip into the water a bit later, when I’d found the right spot. Then, he looked almost weightless, drifting down into the murk. Graceful.

I’m not real y sure why I’d like to go, if I’m honest. It certainly wouldn’t be about gloating, nothing like that. I suppose I just want to feel that I’m part of it. That might sound odd, considering that none of this would be happening were it not for me, but it’s easy to feel . . . removed from what’s going on. Stating the bloody obvious, I know, but I have to be one step ahead of the game and I can hardly pour my heart out to some stranger in the pub, can I?

It always makes me laugh, reading about ‘crazed loners’. Wel , yes, and there’s usual y a pretty good reason for it! Not that it isn’t a major drawback when it comes to humping those ‘dead weights’ around, mind you.

It’s not like I’m desperate for attention. I know, so what am I putting al this down on paper for? Wel , I suppose that when everything’s final y wrapped up, I just want there to be some basic understanding of the whys and wherefores. Not that I’m expecting a great deal on that score, to be honest. There’s always the ghouls and the academics, I suppose, and the odd religious nutcase who comes on side with blather about forgiveness. But apart from them, the reaction wil be so hysterical that almost nobody wil give a toss about the reasoning.

Al the more reason for me to get it down in black and white then, yes? Besides which, when the Nick Maiers of this world sit down to write their blockbusters, they’l have a little more to go on than usual.

Hopeful y they’l make a better job of it than they did last time.

Shock, horror: it’s al gone very quiet in the newsagent’s these days. He’s too worried about keeping children out of his shop and it doesn’t take much to knock a story off the front page. Too many kids stabbing each other, too much sleaze. A celebrity scandal or a decent terrorist story wil trump an honest-to-goodness murder every time.

Once they find this latest one, though, he’s bound to kick off again, waving his rol ed-up tabloid like some sword of justice and ranting about how the streets aren’t safe. I’d better make a point of going in as soon as I can. With a bit of luck, the self-righteous old bugger might burst a blood vessel while he’s handing over my Bensons.

TWENTY-FOUR

‘On top of which, the victim appears to have had a sex change quite recently, and been murdered with a priceless, jewel-encrusted cross-bow. ’

‘What?’

‘Good, so you’re stil with us, then?’

‘Sorry, Phil.’

Thorne was feeling the il effects of sleep deprivation. He had not got home from the crime scene until late the night before, Louise dead to the world when he got in and dead to the world when he’d crept out again, into a street no less dark and damp than it had been four hours earlier.

By eleven in the morning he was ready to go back to bed, a heaviness having settled in his arms and legs. The cold, metal slabs of Hornsey Mortuary were looking every bit as inviting as the comfiest Slumberdown.

‘Pro-Plus is good,’ Hendricks said. ‘Or Red Bul , though I wouldn’t recommend the two together.’

‘Unless you’ve got a few cans stashed in one of your fridges, you’re not helping.’

‘It’s il egal in France, did you know that?’

‘What is?’

‘Red Bul . And in Norway and Denmark.’

‘The French drink absinthe. Doesn’t that stuff kil you?’

‘God knows, but it makes the heart grow fonder.’

It took Thorne a second or two to get it; even then, a sarcastic smirk used up a lot less energy than laughing.

Outside the post-mortem suite, Thorne studied the health and safety posters on the wal . A yawn provided the cover for an unusual y delicate fart, as he read up on the ways to avoid AIDS and MRSA, while Hendricks stripped off his protective gown and surgical scrubs and tossed them into a communal bin. Then they walked along the narrow corridor towards the coroner’s office, which the pathologist on cal could use whenever he was in the building.

‘Silent but deadly,’ Hendricks said.

For a few seconds, Thorne thought that his friend was talking about MRSA, but then he saw the grin. ‘Sorry.’

‘Dirty bastard . . .’

The office was fractional y larger than Pavesh Kambar’s but a lot more chaotic. A stack of green lever files was piled up on one of the three desks, and there were sticky notes on each computer screen. Hendricks pul ed out a chair for Thorne, then dropped into his own. The Arsenal ‘Seventies Legends’ calendar above the desk was the sole demarcation of territory in the shared space, and Thorne could see that a fortnight from now Hendricks would be attending a seminar on ‘gene regulation’. The date was highlighted in red, beneath a picture of Charlie George, flat out after scoring the winner in the 1971 Cup Final.

Hendricks gestured towards the other desks. ‘Most of the people who work in here have pet hates as far as the “customers” go, and it’s always been water for me. What it does to the body. I’d take a jumper or a decent car accident any day.’

Thorne could not remember too many lovely murder scenes, but on arriving at the canal bank the previous afternoon even he had been grateful that he had not found time for lunch.

They had pul ed the body out of the water near Camden Lock, within spitting distance of the shops and bars of the sprawling market, though as yet it was impossible to tel where it had gone in. It lay on the bank beneath a hastily erected tent: one hand formed into a fist, stiff around the expected sliver of X-ray; the other, pale palm upwards and purplish fingertips, as though the victim were black but wearing white fingerless gloves; a shoe missing, a bracelet of weed around the foot; and the bel y straining with gas against a waterlogged denim jacket.

There was stil a little water trapped inside the plastic bag, which now lay plastered to the man’s face, distorting what was left of it even further. Thorne thought it looked like an old cushion. The sodden stuffing leaking out, the material ragged and rotten.

‘Somewhere around thirty-six hours in the water,’ Hendricks said now. ‘Not that it would have been very pretty beforehand.’

‘Definitely dead before he went in, then?’

‘You saw his face, mate. That wasn’t the fish.’ Hendricks sat back in his chair. ‘And dead for a few hours before that, I reckon. Four or five at least.’

‘So he was kil ed somewhere else?’

‘Wel , I don’t think the kil er battered him, stuck a bag over his head and then stood around on the canal bank waving at passers-by.’

Thorne acknowledged the inanity of his question with a nod, already thinking that their best chance of working out where he was kil ed would normal y have been provided by forensics.

But that was virtual y a dead end, those thirty-six hours in the water having ruined more than just the victim’s good looks. He blinked away an image of the tattered flesh inside the plastic bag. ‘Doesn’t seem much point in a personal ID,’ he said. ‘No birthmarks or anything, and I can’t see anyone
recognising
him.’

Hendricks shook his head. ‘Good job we don’t need one.’

‘First piece of luck we’ve had,’ Thorne said. ‘Mind you, he was only ever going to be one of three people.’

The treatment meted out to the dead man’s face made even a check of dental records tricky to say the least and the chances of getting any fingerprint or DNA samples from a reliable source to match with his corpse were almost non-existent. So, the items found on the body itself were liable to be as close as they would come to identify Anthony Garvey’s latest victim as Simon Walsh: an old driving licence in the back pocket of his jeans; a barely decipherable letter from his aunt tucked inside the protective wal et.

‘The aunt’s the next of kin, right?’

Thorne nodded.