Bloodline

THIRTY-EIGHT

Debbie was stepping back from the door before the officer’s warrant card had been fully raised. Instinctively, she reached behind her, her hand flapping, beckoning Jason from where she had left him at the foot of the stairs. Her heart lurched; fear, excitement, both.

‘Did you get him?’

The detective shook his head and looked away for a second or two, searching for the words. ‘There’s been a… development, that’s all.’

She shouted her son’s name, without turning round.

‘There’s no need to panic, Miss Mitchell.’

‘What?’

‘We just think it’s better if someone stays with you for a while. Is that OK?’

Debbie took a tentative step forward, craning her neck to see past the man on her doorstep, looking up and down the street. The nosy cow opposite was watching through a gap in her curtains. She probably had the copper down as one of Nina’s clients. Debbie stuck two fingers up.

‘Is that OK, Debbie?’ The detective’s warrant card was slipped back into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Can I come in?’

Debbie took a few seconds, then nodded and turned back into the house, looking for Jason. She heard the front door close as she walked into the sitting room, moving quickly to where her son was now hunched over a picture book next to the sofa. She knelt down beside him, feeling her heart rate slowing a little as she watched him turning the pages, listened to him mutter and grunt.

‘Is there someone else in the house?’

She turned to look up at the figure standing behind her in the doorway. He nodded towards the open door that led through to Nina’s kitchen.

‘The radio,’ she said. ‘It’s a play.’

The detective nodded and listened to the voices for a few moments. It sounded like an argument. ‘Pictures are better, right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘They say that, don’t they?’

‘Say what?’

‘Plays and what have you. That’s why they’re always so good on the radio.’ He tapped a finger against the side of his head. ‘Because the pictures are better.’

‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

Debbie turned back to Jason, but she supposed that the detective was right. She usually had the radio tuned into Capital or Heart FM. She was no great fan of the DJs, but she liked most of the music they played and Jason seemed to like it too. She occasionally caught him dancing, though few other people would have called it that. If there was a play on, though, she’d always try to sit and listen. She’d make a coffee and work her way through a packet of biscuits while Jason was glued to his video. Even when it was one of the weird ones, or some old rubbish set in India or Iraq or wherever, it was usually easy enough to get into the story and an hour would fly by without her really noticing.

Because the pictures are better.

They were certainly better than the ones that had been filling her head of late. The man who was coming for her. Nothing in there suitable for a nice, cosy afternoon play…

She heard the detective walking across the carpet and turned just as he squatted down next to her. His knees cracked loudly and he laughed and shook his head.

‘Bloody hell, listen to that,’ he said.

He smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke.

‘Who’s this, then?’

‘This is Jason,’ Debbie said.

For half a minute or more they both watched Jason moving his fingers across the pictures in his book.

‘How old is he?’

‘He’s eight.’

If the officer was surprised, he did not show it. He just watched silently for a few more seconds, then nodded and pushed himself back up to his feet. At that moment, Jason looked up from his picture book and smiled at him.

The detective smiled right back.

THIRTY-NINE

They had already cordoned off both ends of the street by the time Thorne and Holland reached Euston, and a small crowd had started to gather. Residents and passers-by had quickly become members of an attentive audience. They fired questions at the officers keeping them at bay and spread rumours among themselves when their enquiries went unanswered. Thorne played equally dumb. He climbed out of the car, keeping his head down, and flashed his warrant card before jogging away up the street towards Grass-up Grange.

There were a dozen or more emergency vehicles parked haphazardly along the street: vans and cars, marked and unmarked; an ambulance. Someone had already called up a tea wagon, which was never a good sign. As Thorne got close, several armed officers walked towards him, ominously slowly, while others stood at the open doors of a van, handing in weapons and stripping off their kit.

Their presence u

Thorne was no great fan of CO19 – he’d always found too many armed officers to be cocky sods. Of course, most of them had been a little less full of themselves since Jean Charles de Menezes, and he knew, from the looks that were being exchanged – the heavy steps and the slumped shoulders – that he would have no over-inflated egos to deal with today.

He watched a squat and surly CO19 officer toss his helmet on to the grass and start pulling off his body-armour. As Thorne approached, the man took a cigarette packet from his back pocket and said, ‘Fuck me!’ His face was the colour of candle-wax.

‘How bad?’ Thorne asked.

‘As bad as it gets.’

They both turned as a stretcher was carried out through the open doors and on towards the ambulance. There was a blanket across the body and an oxygen mask was being pressed to the face, but Thorne still recognised the figure of DS Rob Gibbons. He studied the grim expressions of the paramedics, looking for some clue as to the officer’s chances, but saw none. Then he hurried towards the building.

Inside, the lobby was buzzing with activity. The tea wagon would not be needed for a while. The CSI team were already moving around purposefully, the rustle of their body-suits competing with the squawk of radios and the barked orders of senior officers doing their best to keep a lid on the panic.

Thorne walked across to where the remaining members of the paramedic team were gathering their equipment together at the foot of the stairs. Holland was only a few steps behind him, and the two of them stood quietly watching for a moment; staring at the long-bladed knife that lay on the bottom step and the blood that had spread, shiny against the marble floor.

‘What the hell happened?’ Holland asked.

‘We had him,’ Thorne said. ‘We had him all the time.’

‘Had who?’

‘Anthony Garvey.’

‘Yeah, I know that.’ Thorne had done his best to explain as the car had raced from Colindale. Holland had listened, open-mouthed, as Thorne told him what Carol Chamberlain had discovered, spelling out its implications as he urged the driver to put his foot down. ‘But who?’

Instinctively, Thorne raised his head, looked up towards the rooms where he’d visited the last two men on a killer’s list. Where he’d visited the killer himself.

‘Sir?’

Thorne turned and nodded at the nervous young woman who had walked across to them. Nodded again, impatient as she introduced herself as the DI with the on-call Homicide Assessment Team, her name going out of his head immediately. ‘Let’s have it,’ he said.

‘Two bodies upstairs.’ Her eyes flicked momentarily to a notebook. ‘Detective Sergeant Spibey and a man named Graham Fowler.’

‘Christ,’ Holland said.

Thorne said, ‘Show me.’

The woman chatted as they walked up the stairs, the nerves still evident in her voice. She explained that Superintendent Jesmond was on his way, as was the pathologist who was ru