Bloodline

‘You had your chance, mate.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘Well, I’d been hoping for wall-to-wall Vikings and bars full of men who look like Freddie Ljungberg.’

‘I was talking about the seminar.’

‘Equally disappointing.’

‘So, these men…’

‘More like Freddie Krueger.’

Thorne laughed, remembering the last time he had done so, and thought about describing his conversation with Louise that morning, perhaps even telling Hendricks about the one he’d had with Carol Chamberlain the night before.

He never got the chance.

‘I’m guessing there’s no joy on Garvey, then?’

‘Well, he hasn’t killed anyone else, not as far as we know, anyway, so it’s not like things are any worse.’

‘I was thinking about the one in the canal.’

‘Walsh?’

‘Right. Remember you asked me why I thought he’d attacked him from the front? Why it was so much more brutal?’

‘You said something about him getting cocky or angry.’ Thorne tucked the phone between his chin and shoulder, began sorting through the mass of unread paper on his desk. ‘Being in a hurry, maybe.’

‘Maybe.’

Thorne heard something in the silence. ‘What?’

‘What if he wasn’t in a hurry?’ Hendricks asked. ‘What if he deliberately took the trouble to make the victim unrecognisable? There’s still been no formal ID, has there?’

‘No, but-’

‘Can we get a DNA sample from that aunt, do you think? Make sure.’

‘We know who he is, Phil. The stuff in his pocket?’

‘Who the hell carries an old driving licence around? An old letter?’

‘Maybe someone who’s off his face on God knows what and is trying to hang on to who he was.’ Thorne balled up a sheaf of papers he no longer needed, tossed it at the waste-paper bin. Missed. ‘Walsh was virtually living on the street, as far as we can tell.’

‘I was thinking about that, too,’ Hendricks said. ‘The drugs that showed up in the body weren’t what I’d expected.’

Thorne told Hendricks to hang on while he found the relevant file on his computer and called up the toxicology report. He opened the document, said, ‘OK.’

‘I mean, where does the average dosser get hold of antidepressants?’

Thorne looked through the report. Alcohol had been found – beer and whisky – and a partially digested final meal, chips and a pie of some description. He scrolled down and studied the list of drugs, traces of which had been found in Simon Walsh’s body. Diazepam, Prozac, Wellbutrin. ‘You can get hold of anything,’ Thorne said.

‘Isn’t it normally smack and Special Brew?’

‘There comes a time when you’ll take whatever you can get your hands on, mate.’ Thorne remembered the boy called Spike, his eyes glazing over and starting to close even before the needle had slipped from his vein and clattered to the pavement. ‘I remember one bloke who got off shooting up cider.’

There was a pause, then Hendricks said, ‘Sorry. Spending too much time sitting in hotel rooms thinking.’

‘Just thinking?’

‘Well, I have to admit you get a better class of porn on the in-room movie system.’

Thorne laughed again and glanced up to see Sam Karim standing in the doorway. Karim asked if Thorne was speaking to Hendricks, then if he could have a quick word.

‘Hang on, Sam wants you…’

Thorne handed over the receiver and rose from his desk. He thought about Simon Walsh’s face, what had been left of it. Listened as Karim asked Hendricks if he’d seen a moose yet, and if he would mind bringing him back some duty-free cigarettes.

Fowler was drunk.

He struggled to focus, swiping wildly at the ash that dropped from his cigarette on to the table, as he told Spibey, a little louder than was necessary, that he’d been right about the policeman’s lucky streak coming to an end.

‘Brag’s not a game of luck,’ Spibey said. ‘It’s a game of skill and strategy.’

Dowd laughed. Said, ‘Where are all the chips?’

‘Yeah,’ Fowler said, triumphant. ‘Where are all the fucking chips?’ He clapped his hands and pointed theatrically at the large piles of chips in front of himself and Dowd, then at the few that remained in front of the policeman.

Shuffling the cards, Spibey just about managed a weak smile, but he knew that Fowler was right. Since lunchtime he hadn’t seen a hand, or, if he had, he’d run hard into a better one. He’d watched as Fowler and Dowd had struck lucky time and again and his stack had dwindled to almost nothing.

‘You’d better ask your mate downstairs if he can pop out to a cash-point for you,’ Dowd said.

Fowler cackled, said, ‘cashpoint’ and knocked a pile of his chips to the floor as he leaned across to high-five his friend.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Spibey muttered.

Fowler bent to retrieve his chips while Dowd told Spibey he should just deal the next hand.

Spibey doled out the cards and was delighted to see that he was holding an ace and two queens, a premium three-card brag hand. He raised big and Dowd quickly folded, but Fowler was content to play blind, which enabled him to call the bet with only half what Spibey had staked. Spibey was all-in and turned over his cards. He watched as Fowler snuck a peek at his hand then began to laugh before sliding them face down across the table to Dowd.

Dowd shook his head and shrugged. ‘Not your day, Officer,’ before showing Spibey the 7-8-9 that Fowler had been holding.

Spibey slammed the flat of his hand on the table and Fowler had to lurch forward to stop his beer can toppling over.

‘Sorry,’ Spibey said. ‘But that’s just ridiculous.’

Dowd nodded. ‘It’s a bad beat.’

‘Bad?’

‘I need a piss,’ Fowler said, dragging the chips towards him.

Dowd pushed back his chair. ‘Who wants tea?’

Spibey had his back to the open window. The sun was warming his neck. Once Dowd had gone into the kitchen area and Fowler had blundered into the small bathroom on the other side of the room, Spibey turned to take a few breaths of fresh air, the creamy fug of cigarette smoke drifting past him before being whipped away on the breeze.

He turned back into the room, reached for his wallet and dug out a twenty-pound note to buy his way back into the game. ‘Bollocks,’ he said, quietly.

As he sat shuffling, waiting for Fowler and Dowd to return, Spibey thought about how quickly he had come to despise the two men he’d been forced to babysit. How a couple of hours’ harmless gambling could show people in their true light. Only a few days earlier, he had considered them both victims, rootless and terrified. But today, watching, listening to them whine and bray, he had come to realise that they were little more than spongers. Mental cases, the pair of them, taking the piss and living it up at the taxpayer’s expense, while the likes of him ran around after them like skivvies.

Christ, as though either of them copping it would be any great loss to society.

Dowd, who clearly thought he was a bloody comedian, had become unbearably smug; and Spibey wasn’t convinced that Fowler was half as drunk as he was pretending to be. What had he put away, four cans of supermarket-strength lager? It was an old card player’s trick, and Spibey was starting to wonder if Fowler was not quite the novice he’d claimed to be.

He smoothed out the twenty on the table in front of him, stared down at it. He’d start again, build it up nice and easy into forty, eighty, more. He’d clean the two of them out before the relief shift came on at six.

Arseholes.

He heard the footsteps and glanced up, waved his twenty pound note in the air, then reached for the cards again, focusing on them as he continued to shuffle. ‘Skill and strategy,’ he said.

What he felt, saw, heard – the sensations that assaulted his body and brain in the last thirty seconds of his life – did not come in the order that Spibey might have expected. He saw the blood first – or perhaps he had blacked out for a few moments and it was just the first thing there when he opened his eyes – spattered across the cards that had tumbled on to the table. Red as diamonds and hearts. Then he felt it, soft against his scalp as his fingers fluttered to the wound on the back of his head, and then the pain as the second blow shattered his hand, and the wash of nausea after the third strike, and then the cool of the tabletop against his cheek.