Bloodline

There was no way she could tell her friend how frightened she was. She’d decided years before that the only way to keep it together was never to let anyone see how scared she was. No man, however handy he might be with his fists, not any of those pinch-faced bitches from Social Services, and certainly not Jason. Ever since the police had first come knocking with their serious faces, warning her, she’d been thinking about what it might be like to be separated from him. Not just for a few weeks, but for ever. She watched him sleeping, or stared at the back of his head as he knelt in front of the TV screen, and it made her want to be sick.

She got up and pressed her ear to the lounge door, held back the tears as she listened to her son puff-puffing and humming to himself. I’m the Fat Controller, she thought, and Thomas wouldn’t know what to do without him.

The Fat Controller can’t be shit-scared.

THIRTY-ONE

When Thorne entered the lobby of Grass-up Grange, DS Rob Gibbons was sitting behind the desk, reading a paperback. Thorne glanced at the cover: some fantasy rubbish.

‘Dragons and hobbits, all that kind of stuff?’ he asked.

Gibbons smiled, clearly unimpressed. ‘Not really.’

‘Where’s Spibey?’

‘Upstairs with the Gruesome Twosome,’ Gibbons said.

Walking up, Thorne wondered which of the stock answers he could give to Fowler and Dowd when they asked the inevitable question about how the inquiry was going. It was a reasonable question, all things considered, but such conversations were never easy.

Have you found the man who killed our mum/dad/brother/sister?

Why is this taking so long?

When are you going to catch him…?

We’re doing our best. We’re making progress. There have been several significant developments. Whichever version of ‘no’ and ‘I don’t know’ he trotted out, Thorne was always left feeling slightly grubby. He’d talked about it to Louise more than once, and they’d agreed that there was nothing that could be done about it, and besides, wasn’t it better to give people who were grieving something to hope for? Perhaps, but it didn’t make lying to them any easier.

Any day when a case moved in the right direction was a good one, but they were few and far between, and the really good days, when an arrest – the right arrest – was made, gave hen’s teeth and rocking-horse shit a run for their money. Even then, of course, the possibility of a great day lay with the courts. A less than foolproof legal system meant that the best anyone could do at that stage was cross their fingers, move on to the next case and try not to worry.

‘If they screw up,’ Hendricks had said once, ‘it doesn’t mean you did.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Thorne had said. Because it wasn’t tricksy barristers or incompetent judges who had to face the toughest question of the lot, was it?

How could that happen?

Thorne stepped on to the top-floor landing. He could hear laughter coming from Graham Fowler’s apartment.

So, any chance we might get out of here soon, that you might catch this bloke? You know, the one who’s trying to kill us. Not for the first time, Thorne resolved to be as honest as possible, knowing that when the time came he would probably bottle it.

Forensically, they had about all they were ever going to get, and the phone number provided by Sarah Dowd had proved to be as useless as Thorne had feared. Her information, together with the sightings reported by Yvo

Thorne walked along the corridor, past the open doors of the vacant apartments. Each one looked clean and ready, should it be needed, and there was the faintest tang of new paint. Thorne wondered if Grass-up Grange was expecting a particularly fussy gangland informant, and then – for no good reason – if it was true that the Queen thought the world smelled of fresh paint. Hers was certainly a sweeter-smelling world than the one he and Phil Hendricks lived in.

The poor old soul did have a lot of waving to do though…

He knocked on the door of Fowler’s apartment. Said, ‘Brian, it’s Tom Thorne.’ Spibey gave him the four-digit entry code and Thorne walked in to find him at a table with Fowler and Dowd, a scattering of poker chips just visible between the takeaway cartons and beer cans. The room stank of curry and cigarettes.

Spibey, who was seated with his back to the door, held up his cards so that only Thorne could see. He was holding two kings and a jack. ‘Three-card brag. Fancy a few hands?’

Thorne said that he couldn’t as he was only stopping by on his way to an appointment.

‘Go on,’ Dowd said. ‘You might change my luck, help me get some money back off this jammy bastard.’

‘Pure skill,’ Spibey said.

‘Where’s all the money come from anyway?’

Fowler nodded at Dowd. ‘Well, I came in here with about forty-six pence, but Andy’s subbed me.’

‘And I’m the only one losing,’ Dowd said.

Fowler slowly pumped his arms in the air, began tunelessly singing ‘Things Can Only Get Better’. It was clear that the empty cans were down to him.

Dowd looked at Thorne, shaking his head. ‘Like I told you, it’s a sick world.’

Thorne asked if everything was OK, and Spibey told him it was. Fowler and Dowd nodded their agreement, the two of them sitting there as if it were the most ordinary situation imaginable.

Neither seemed inclined to ask Thorne any difficult questions.

‘Go on then, sod off,’ Spibey said. ‘I’m about to clean these two out.’

‘Oh right, your pair of kings.’

Fowler and Dowd threw their hands down immediately.

‘Bloody hell!’ Spibey said.

Thorne gri

Spibey caught up with him at the door. ‘Listen, Tom, I just thought this would take their minds off things, you know? Any problem?’

‘Not as far as I can see,’ Thorne said. Both men had been far more relaxed than the last time he had seen them, and a few hours’ harmless gambling had certainly got Thorne himself off the hook. If it worked with men whose lives had been targeted, he wondered if the chance of a quick flutter might be the key to diluting those awkward moments with desperate relatives.

I’m so confident that we’ll catch the man who killed your husband/wife/hamster that I’ll give you ten to one against us catching him. Stick a te

He decided to bring up the idea next time he saw Trevor Jesmond. See if the twat thought he was joking.

‘Have you eaten?’

Thorne suddenly felt guilty. ‘I grabbed a burger on the way over. Sorry. I thought you’d have had something.’

‘I can grab a sandwich later,’ Chamberlain said. ‘It’s fine.’ She held up her glass of wine. ‘I’ll probably need something to soak this up.’

The bar of the hotel in Bloomsbury was nice enough, but no bigger than a large sitting room, so Thorne and Chamberlain, once they’d got beyond the chit-chat, had needed to keep their voices down. The other occupants, a pair of blousy Midlands girls on the lash, were showing no such discretion. Thorne had twice come close to marching across and letting them know he had no interest in their jobs or boyfriends and suggesting that they might like to take their Bacardi Breezers somewhere else.

‘You’re turning into a miserable old git,’ Chamberlain said.

‘I was always a miserable git,’ Thorne said. ‘I just used to be younger.’

‘You think it’s the Job?’

‘Not really.’

‘That you’d be any less miserable if you worked in Currys?’

‘Christ, no.’

‘Well then.’

‘A week of that and I’d hang myself with one of their reasonably priced extension leads.’