Bloodline-9 (35 page)

Best not keep them waiting any more.

I don’t suppose I’l see the miserable old sod again, but I should set about giving my old mate the newsagent a few more headlines.

I wonder if the Sun’s got a typeface big enough?

THIRTY-THREE

When Thorne stepped out of the shower, Louise was standing in the bathroom. She was wearing a T-shirt under the thin, linen robe she’d bought in Greece. She handed him a towel and sat down on the lid of the laundry basket.

‘Early start,’ she said.

‘I’ve got to go into town, pick up the car.’

‘After such a late night, I mean.’

‘I had a few drinks after the shift,’ Thorne said. He could just remember heaving himself into a dodgy-looking minicab in the early hours. Getting increasingly annoyed as he was forced to give the driver directions. Trying to stay awake.

‘I know.’ Louise stood up and walked to the basin, stared at herself in the mirror, opening her eyes wide. ‘I woke up in the night and I could smel it on you.’ She turned and watched Thorne drying himself. ‘You feeling al right?’

Thorne nodded. ‘OK . . . surprisingly.’ He could not remember ever having drunk so much and feeling so wel on it, and was grateful he had been on white, rather than red, wine. There was a headache, and it felt like one of those that would grumble on for a while yet, but in spite of it he was looking forward to the day ahead, the days and weeks. He could remember everything he had told Carol Chamberlain the night before. There was a twinge of embarrassment to go with the bad head, but no more than that. Their conversation might wel turn out to be something else they never mentioned again, but he was hugely glad that he had said what needed saying.

He rubbed the towel across his chest. The stone had gone.

‘You want me to do you some breakfast?’ Louise asked. ‘A bit of scrambled egg or something?’

‘Just some tea. I’m a bit pushed.’

‘It’l be ready by the time you’re dressed.’ She walked out, cal ing back as she moved towards the kitchen, ‘You can eat it in five minutes.’

‘Thanks.’ He cal ed after her: ‘Lou . . .’

‘What?’ After a few seconds, she reappeared in the bathroom doorway.

Thorne had wrapped the towel around his waist, and stood there with his toothbrush dangling from his fist. ‘What that woman said, about not feeling better until your due date . . .’

Louise pushed her hands into the pockets of her robe.

‘It’s probably crap anyway,’ he said. ‘But even if it’s not, it wouldn’t apply if you were pregnant again before then, would it?’

She looked at him for a few seconds. ‘No . . .’

‘Wel , then?’

She nodded, like it was no big deal, but her face told a different story. ‘We could always skip the scrambled eggs,’ she said.

‘I certainly don’t have time for
that
.’

‘You sure? It doesn’t take that long normal y.’

An hour later, he was leaving Russel Square Tube station and a few minutes after that, he was walking past Chamberlain’s hotel. He thought about cal ing her, then decided it was probably a bad idea. It wasn’t eight o’clock yet, and although he had no idea what time she was planning to pay Sandra Phipps a visit, he guessed she had as much to sleep off as he had. He would talk to her later.

He handed over £27.50 at the NCP, making sure to check his change and ask for a receipt. The cashier was brisk and seemed disinclined to chat, which suited Thorne perfectly, a grunt of thanks being about al either man could manage.

‘I think I prefer you a bit hung over,’ Louise had said. ‘It’s a lot quieter.’

Thorne smiled, remembering the look on her face as he’d closed the front door, and wondered about stopping somewhere for breakfast, seeing as he’d never got his scrambled eggs. He tuned the car’s radio into Magic FM, turning up an old Wil ie Nelson track that he liked as he steered the BMW out of the car-park’s gloom and into an unexpectedly bright October day.

A day that would grow considerably darker as it wore on, as Thorne learned exactly what Anthony Garvey was planning. As he saw a son outstrip his father.

A day on which more people would die.

When Debbie heard the phone ring, she was busy in the kitchen trying to feed Jason. Before she had a chance to reach it, she heard Nina clattering into the hal , swearing and complaining about being woken so early.

Debbie had already been up an hour or more, but she knew that her friend had been working until late and shouted, ‘Sorry!’ as she struggled to clear up the mess Jason had made.

She listened, wiping up egg and juice and toast crumbs. Once she heard Nina start shouting, it did not take long to work out who was cal ing.

‘Yeah, right, but does it have to be so bloody early? . . . No, we’ve al been murdered in our fucking beds, what do you think?’

Nina was stil grumbling and shaking her head when she walked into the kitchen. She switched on the kettle and sat down at the table opposite Jason. He grinned at her and got the flicker of a smile in return.

‘Thorne’s only doing his job,’ Debbie said.

Nina pul ed faces at Jason as she spoke. ‘If he’d been doing it properly, there wouldn’t stil be a police car outside the front door.’

‘He seems an OK bloke, though.’

‘I know what coppers are like,’ Nina said. ‘I’ve done plenty in my time.’ She got up to make the tea. ‘Come to think of it, I wonder if either of those two out there fancy a quick one.’

They both laughed and Jason laughed in turn. Debbie finished wiping the surfaces and final y sat down. Nina dropped a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, sniffed the milk.

‘Listen, I’ve got a job on this afternoon, is that al right?’

‘Does that mean you can take the night off?’

‘Maybe. I’ve done this bloke a few times, that’s the thing. He always cal s me whenever he’s down from Manchester, and he always gives me a bit extra, so . . .’

‘You’d be stupid not to,’ Debbie said.

‘I need to start putting a bit aside as wel , you know, if we’re going to get away.’ Nina bent down and nuzzled the back of Jason’s neck. ‘You want to go on holiday, sweetheart?’

Debbie smiled, knowing very wel where every penny would be going, and said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’

‘We should get some brochures,’ Nina said. ‘I’l pick some up on the way back from this bloke’s hotel. You fancy Majorca?’

Debbie nodded. ‘Be good if you
could
give it a miss tonight, though. We can have a night in front of the box. I’l make us spaghetti Bolognese or something.’

Brian Spibey was on the breakfast run. He’d dropped off a bacon and egg McMuffin at Fowler’s apartment and was on his way along the corridor with coffee and an almond croissant for Andrew Dowd. The smel s were making him hungry, and he was keen to get stuck into the bacon sandwich he’d bought for himself that was getting cold down in the lobby. It was funny, he thought, how everyone liked different things for breakfast. That hobbit-fancier Gibbons had been peeling the lid off some poxy pot of muesli when Spibey had headed upstairs.

Thorne had cal ed while Spibey was queuing in McDonald’s. He’d apologised for not phoning the night before as promised, explained that he’d been stuck in a meeting until late.

Spibey had reassured him that everything was fine, that their guests were alive and kicking, and had tried to sound jokey when he’d told Thorne that there was no need to check up every five minutes.

‘I’ve been doing this a bit longer than you have,’ he’d said.

Thorne had sounded jokey enough himself. ‘I doubt that, Brian, but you certainly look as though you have.’

Cheeky sod.

He wasn’t sure that Thorne had altogether approved when he’d walked in on their card school. Funny, he’d never had Thorne down as any kind of stickler, and it would be a bit rich, bearing in mind some of the stories Spibey had heard about him over the years. Yes, by rights, he and Gibbons should both be sitting downstairs, glued to the security monitors, but Spibey liked to think he had got to know the two men in his charge pretty wel and that he knew the best way to keep them relaxed and happy. They both had good reason to be stressed out, after al , and neither was the type for praying or settling down with a good book, he was sure about that much.

He entered the code for Dowd’s apartment, knocked and waited. ‘Grub’s up, Andy.’

Dowd opened the door and took the cup and paper bag.

‘They better find this bloke soon,’ Spibey said, ‘else you two are going to end up as a right pair of fat bastards. Me an’ al , come to that.’

Dowd didn’t seem to see the funny side and shook his head. ‘I don’t think Graham could put weight on even if he wanted to. The drugs have screwed up his metabolism.’

‘Right, fair enough,’ Spibey said, after a few seconds. ‘I’l leave you to it.’ He took a few steps away, then turned as Dowd was about to close the door. ‘Listen, you up for another game of cards a bit later? Only Graham said he fancied it.’

Dowd had already bitten into his croissant. ‘Yeah, why not? Least he’s got some money to play with now.’

‘I’l have that back, don’t you worry,’ Spibey said.

‘We’l see.’

‘I’m tel ing you mate, I feel lucky.’

‘Wel , you’re the only one round here who does,’ Dowd said.

THIRTY-FOUR

Her train arrived in Reading just before midday. A simple check of the voters’ register had revealed that Sandra Phipps - as she had been cal ed thirty years previously - was not working, and Chamberlain guessed that lunchtime would be as good a time as any to catch her at home. If there was nobody in, she would find some way to kil an hour or two, perhaps see what Reading had to offer in the way of retail therapy, and try again later.

How threatening could a middle-aged woman carrying a couple of shopping bags be?

Waiting on the platform at Paddington, Chamberlain had been aware that this was the place where Anthony Garvey had col ected the cash to fund his kil ing spree. Also where he had disposed of Chloe Sinclair’s body. She did not know if it was an il omen or a good one, but she had focused instead on the possibilities of the day ahead: a positive outcome to the interview; the breakthrough she hoped she would be able to pass on to Tom Thorne.

Looking through her notes on the train, she had been unable to stop thinking about their session the night before. She wondered how the state he had been in - might stil be in - had affected his ability to handle the inquiry. Had it weighed him down or fired him up? She knew that personal problems usual y had an impact one way or the other, and remembered a spel of a few months, twenty years earlier, when she and Jack had been going through a rocky patch. Afterwards, to satisfy her curiosity, she had checked and been amazed to see that her arrest record had been better than ever.

She hoped it worked out the same way for Thorne.

It was a short trip from Reading station to Caversham, a smal district a few minutes to the north of the town on the other side of the Thames. The taxi, whose driver gave a running commentary throughout the journey, crossed a large and ornate bridge into an area that looked more like the centre of a chocolate-box English vil age than a commuter suburb. He final y pul ed up - as per Chamberlain’s instructions - a hundred yards or so short of a tidy-looking terraced house set back from the road and within spitting distance of the river.

Walking up to the house, Chamberlain could see rowing boats and steamers moored on both sides of the river, and a pair of swans treading water in mid-stream while a group of kids threw bread from the far bank, trying to spin the slices, like frisbees.

‘Got him, right in the neck,’ one of them shouted.

‘See if you can do it again . . .’

Chamberlain had already decided that, should the worst happen, she would move, a little nearer to London maybe, and that this was the kind of place she would choose. She loved being near the water, and though this stretch of river had a little less character, it was probably a damn sight cleaner than the English Channel.

And some of the people here were under fifty.

The door was opened by a surly-looking girl, aged fourteen or so, who stared at Chamberlain, careful not to open the door too far. Chamberlain remembered her notes. This would be Nicola, Sandra’s daughter by her third husband, who would be at work as manager of the local Tesco’s. Chamberlain toyed with freaking out the sour-faced little cow by using her name, but instead she just produced her photo ID and asked the girl if her mother was at home.

After a few seconds, the girl backed away from the door, then pushed it until it was almost closed again before disappearing. While Chamberlain waited, hearing the girl’s footsteps on the stairs fol owed by a muffled conversation, she started to believe that this was al going to work out the way everybody wanted. She wondered if the girl knew anything about a half-brother twice her age, a serial kil er who might wel have babysat her.

The woman apologised as she yanked the door wide. ‘Sorry . . . she’s not very chatty at the best of times,’ she said. ‘And she doesn’t like to see me upset.’

‘Oh, right. Is everything OK?’

The woman cocked her head. ‘I don’t understand. She said you were police.’

‘I’m working with the police, yes, but—’

‘So, you haven’t come about . . .’ The woman gave a smal shake of her head, seeing the confusion on Chamberlain’s face. ‘Sorry, I just presumed. We’ve had a death in the family and I thought that’s why you were here.’

‘Oh . . . I’m sorry,’ Chamberlain said. ‘What happened?’

The woman leaned her head against the edge of the door. ‘One of those things, love. Poor bugger was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s al , ran into some nutter. We weren’t exactly close, if I’m honest, but stil , it’s a shock.’

Chamberlain waited.

‘My nephew,’ the woman said, nodding. ‘Not even thirty! God only knows when they’l let me bury him, mind you.’

Chamberlain cleared her throat and the woman’s eyes flashed to hers. ‘Wel , apologies if this is an awkward time, but I actual y wanted to have a word with you about Raymond Garvey.’