Bloodline-9 (12 page)

Brigstocke had an even stronger reason. ‘Several of them say they saw the brother talking to a man in the bar who he may have left with later on.’

‘Sounds promising,’ Hol and said.

‘Wel , I don’t know how sober any of them were, but between them, there’s a chance of getting a proper description. With luck . . . we might do even better than that.’

Thorne looked at Hol and. ‘Cameras.’

‘Smart-arse,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Yeah, Yvonne’s going down to see if there’s any deccent CCTV.’

‘Probably have to wade through hours of students throwing up on the stairs and shagging in dark corners,’ Hol and said.

Thorne laughed. ‘I’m sure there’l be plenty of volunteers.’

‘I think I’l save that footage for myself,’ Brigstocke said, before he hung up. ‘Keep it to show the wife when my eldest starts banging on about going to university.’

A few miles further on, the traffic thickened approaching the turn-off for the M25 and Thorne had to take the BMW down into first gear. He smacked the wheel harder than he might in time to the song on the radio.

‘Why don’t we shoot up the hard shoulder?’ Hol and asked.

Thorne explained that they would be through the jam quickly enough once they got past the junction. That the students weren’t going anywhere, and that he didn’t
really
fancy getting done by one of the cameras and spending weeks writing letters to prove that he was on legitimate police business.

‘Just an idea,’ Hol and said.

Thorne checked his mirror and eased the car into the inside lane, thinking about it, knocking the wipers up a notch as the rain grew heavier. Coming down in needles suddenly, from a sky the colour of wet cement.

Bearing in mind what they looked like now, pale and half dressed with hair like shit, Thorne could barely imagine how the students sitting in front of him had looked when uniformed coppers had banged on their doors at seven-thirty that morning. Even as he thought it, watching while Hol and took down their names, Thorne could hear Louise making some crack about him turning into his father. Back before his dad had died, of course, and before the Alzheimer’s had real y kicked in. Back when the old man could stil string a sentence together without upsetting too many people.

Louise had never met Thorne’s father, but she knew enough about the man to enjoy teasing Thorne about how much his habits and attitudes were now becoming like those of his dad.

Thorne tried fighting his corner, but could never muster a great deal of conviction.

A few weeks before, she’d said, ‘It’l probably get even worse, now that you’re actual y going to be a sodding dad!’

‘Greg doesn’t come in here much, not normal y.’ The speaker was a young woman with blonde hair cut very short and a ring through her bottom lip that Phil Hendricks would have been proud of. ‘Don’t think I saw him in here at al last term.’

‘I saw him
once
.’ A tal , skinny boy with a scrubby beard. ‘Didn’t look like he was enjoying himself much.’

There were nods and murmurs of agreement from the rest of the group. Seven of them were gathered in a corner of the main bar at the Rocket Club: four girls and three boys. A few stared into takeaway coffees and three of them passed a large bottle of water between them. The place stank of beer and the uncarpeted area of the floor around the bar itself was sticky with it.

‘Greg preferred to stay at home and study,’ Hol and said. ‘That it?’

The skinny boy shrugged. ‘Yeah, he worked pretty hard, but he wasn’t mental about it or anything. I think he just hated the music in here.’

‘He liked jazz,’ the blonde girl said. ‘Weird Scandinavian stuff. We used to take the piss ’cause it sounded so shit.’

Thorne tried to hide a smile. A taste in music that others thought dubious was something he and Greg Macken had obviously shared. ‘So, why was he here on Saturday?’

‘And the Saturday before that,’ the boy said. ‘Been in here a few times, since the start of term.’

‘Right. So what was different?’

There were a few seconds of silence, save for some slightly awkward shifting of feet and slurpings of coffee. An overweight Asian girl with a purple streak through her hair smiled sadly as she reached forward for the bottle of water. ‘He had the hots for this bloke,’ she said.

‘The man some of you saw him talking to?’

A few of them nodded.

Thorne wel understood the hesitation. It was strange how the stuff of everyday gossip became something far harder to discuss when the person it concerned had been murdered.

Thorne wel understood the hesitation. It was strange how the stuff of everyday gossip became something far harder to discuss when the person it concerned had been murdered.

‘You saw him in here with the same bloke before last Saturday?’ he asked.

The Asian girl said that she had. ‘I think he came in the first couple of times to keep an eye on his sister, you know? Then he saw this guy he fancied, so he kept coming back.’

‘You saw them talking before?’

‘No, not talking. Not until Saturday.’

‘What happened on Saturday?’

‘I think it just took Greg that long to pluck up the courage.’

‘He wasn’t exactly . . .
confident
.’ The girl with the lip-ring started to cry. The boy with the beard moved his chair closer and draped an arm around her shoulders. ‘Probably needed to get a few drinks inside him first.’

Thorne nodded. Gay or straight, eighteen or eighty, he knew how that worked. But whatever shyness had held Greg Macken back until Saturday evening, Thorne was struck by just how confident his kil er had been. Happy enough to stalk his victim, then wait for
him
to make the first move.

‘Was Greg drunk, do you think?’ Hol and asked. ‘By the time he left?’

The Asian girl shook her head. ‘A bit of Dutch courage, but that’s about it. I spoke to him half an hour before I noticed he’d gone and he sounded fine.’ Her head dropped. ‘He was . . .

excited.’

The post-mortem would tel them how much Greg Macken had drunk on the night he died. Thorne was also interested to see what the toxicology report had to say. It had been suggested that the kil er might have slipped something into Macken’s drink - Rohypnol or liquid ecstasy maybe - though Thorne wondered, if that were the case, why the kil er had felt the need to smash Macken’s head in before bringing out the plastic bag.

‘So, did anyone see them leave together?’

The blonde girl said that she couldn’t swear to it. ‘But, you know, Greg wasn’t here and neither was the bloke he’d been talking to.’

‘I saw them by the door,’ the skinny boy said. ‘Next time I looked, they’d gone, so I just assumed . . .’

Thorne held up a hand to let them know that it didn’t matter too much. If the CCTV panned out, it wouldn’t matter at al . ‘Tel me about this bloke,’ he said.

‘He was older than most of the people in here,’ the Asian girl said. ‘Thirty-ish, I reckon.’

Thorne asked if that was unusual, and the students explained that anyone could pay to come in on nights when there were bands playing. Besides, there were always a few mature students around.

‘He looked . . . sure of himself,’ the blonde girl said.

The skinny boy agreed. ‘I thought he looked like a right cocky sod, to be honest.’

The Asian girl said he’d seemed relaxed, happy even, and eventual y admitted - though she couldn’t look anywhere but at the floor as she did - that if Greg hadn’t been so obviously interested, she might have made a move herself.

The students began to give a more detailed physical description; the three who had got the best look at the man edged closer to the table as Hol and took notes. While they argued about the colour of the man’s shirt and how far off the col ar his hair had been, Thorne took a seat next to a girl who had not spoken at al .

She had long dark hair and wore a sensible coat. She looked about fourteen.

‘I take it you didn’t see much,’ Thorne said.

‘I wasn’t here,’ the girl said. Her voice was quiet, Home Counties. ‘I’m a friend of Alex. We were next door watching the band.’ As soon as she’d said the name, her lip had begun to tremble and Thorne was reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket for tissues. The girl beat him to it, pressing a crumpled wad into the corner of each eye and speaking through delicate, childlike sobs. ‘We were supposed to be having lunch on Sunday,’ she said. ‘A bit optimistic, considering how hammered we both were by the time we’d left, but that was the plan. A big Sunday roast in some pub somewhere. Alex could have eaten for England, you know?’ She dropped her hands into her lap, squeezed the tissue between them. ‘I felt so rough the next day that I never even got round to cal ing her.’

‘Come on,’ Thorne said. He didn’t bother tel ing her that any such cal would have gone unanswered.

‘Then, you know, she didn’t come in on Monday morning. I never spoke to her again.’ Her hands moved back to her face, and when she final y took away the sodden lump of tissue there was a shiny string of snot between her nose and her fingers. She kept very stil as Thorne leaned across and wiped it away.

Once a consensus of sorts had been reached on the description, the students were al owed to go, with a reminder for them to get in touch should they remember anything else. As they trooped slowly out, they passed Yvonne Kitson on her way in, and Thorne saw her entrance earn more than a casual backward glance from the skinny boy with the scraggy beard.

Kitson saw it too, and did not seem displeased.

‘Careful,’ Hol and said. ‘That’s only a notch above kiddie-fiddling.’

‘Is it?’ Kitson’s face was the picture of innocence. ‘So neither of you fancied the blonde?’

Neither of them said anything.

Kitson smiled and sat down. ‘Right, we’ve got no cameras in the bar, unfortunately, but they’re on al the staircases, in the main lobby and at the front door. So, we should have something to go through by late afternoon.’ She reached into her handbag and began reapplying lipstick. ‘Did we get a decent description?’

‘We got one,’ Thorne said. ‘Different from the one the Leicester boys were given, and different from the one we got from Emily Walker’s neighbour.’

‘So, they’re
all
unreliable.’

‘That’s always a possibility.’

‘Or we’ve got someone who makes an effort to change his appearance. ’

Hol and looked from one DI to the other. ‘What’s that al about, then? Part of the kick he’s getting, do you reckon?’ He shook his head as though he were answering his own question.

‘Maybe it’s one of those multiple-personalities things.’

‘No chance.’ Kitson shook her head and dropped the lipstick back in her bag. ‘Let his defence team try that kind of cobblers on when the time comes. He probably just enjoys pissing us about.’

‘Fine with me.’ Thorne picked up the empty cups from the floor and placed them on the table. ‘They’re usual y the ones who get careless. ’

‘Like Garvey,’ Hol and said. ‘He slipped up eventual y.’

‘Yeah, but there were seven bodies by then,’ Kitson said.

Thorne stood, dug into his pocket for the car keys. Said, ‘This one’s more than halfway to that already.’

ELEVEN

Louise had sent him a text when he was halfway between Leicester and London:
drive safe. you might still be pissed!
Thorne had cal ed at lunchtime, after they’d wrapped things up at the Rocket, but she was busy and a little brisk on the phone. Another text arrived just before five, as he and Hol and were walking into Brigstocke’s office to review the CCTV footage:
sorry about earlier. another takeaway 2nite? can’t be arsed 2 cook. early night?
Taking his seat next to Brigstocke, Thorne sent back a smiley face that almost matched his own.

It was the best he had felt al day . . .

While Thorne had been in Leicester talking to Jamie Paice and in Hol oway interviewing students, the team had been fol owing those lines of enquiry that had become pressing since the link between the victims had been determined beyond al doubt. Al checks thus far had eliminated any of Raymond Garvey’s former friends and established that he had no living male relatives, with an elderly uncle in a care home in Essex the only blood relative of any kind that anyone had been able to trace.

They talked through possibilities, while Kitson set up her equipment. ‘So, some kind of copycat then?’ she suggested.

‘They’re not copies,’ Hol and said. ‘Not exactly. Garvey bludgeoned al his victims to death.’

‘You know what I mean, Dave.’

‘Al kil ed outside as wel .’

‘Some twisted, fucking . . .
homage
then, whatever you want to cal it.’

‘Yeah, feasible, I suppose. I mean, it’s easy enough to find out who al Garvey’s victims were.’

‘It’s a piece of piss,’ Kitson had said. ‘There were at least two documentaries and there’s loads of books out there.’

Kitson and Hol and had looked at Brigstocke. Brigstocke looked at Thorne.

‘Maybe,’ Thorne had said.

He had seen plenty of these books, their garish jackets - black and blood-red the favoured colours - jumping out at him on that first trawl through the websites devoted to Raymond Garvey and others like him. He had already returned to one such site and ordered a couple of the less sensational volumes. Could it real y be that simple, though? Was the man responsible for four brutal and meticulously planned murders just some wannabe psycho looking to emulate one of his heroes? A kil er trying to inspire a few garish jackets of his own.

‘Maybe . . .’

Now, they were going to get their first look at him.

Kitson had spent the afternoon transferring the tapes from the Rocket Club on to DVD; trawling through hours of footage; highlighting any clips that might be useful; and final y burning them on to a separate disc. With Thorne and Brigstocke ready to watch, she picked up the remote from the trol ey on which she’d wheeled in the TV and DVD player.

‘Right, we’ve got three clips of Greg Macken and the man he picked up in the bar of the Rocket Club on Saturday evening.’

‘I think Greg was the one getting picked up,’ Thorne said.