Bloodline-9 (7 page)

‘We should arrest
him
anyway,’ Kitson said. ‘For crimes against acting.’

Thorne looked up at Hol and.

‘Had a cal I think you might be interested in,’ Hol and said.

‘Don’t tel me. The kil er looks like someone in
Emmerdale
.’

Hol and dropped a scrap of paper on to Thorne’s desk: a scribbled name and number. ‘He’s a DI in Leicester. Someone up there saw Jesmond on TV last night talking about the Walker murder and thought it sounded familiar.’

‘Sounded
what
?’

‘So, this DI was cal ing to check the details we didn’t give out to the press. See if they matched up with a murder they caught a few weeks back.’

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Kitson said.

Thorne was already dial ing . . .

Once the pleasantries were out of the way, DI Paul Brewer told Thorne that the body of Catherine Burke, a nurse aged twenty-three, had been discovered three weeks earlier in the flat she had shared with her boyfriend, on a quiet street behind Leicester City’s footbal ground.

She had been struck on the back of the head with a heavy ornament and then suffocated with a plastic bag.

‘It was the suffocation bit that got the old antennae twitching,’ Brewer said, the East Midlands accent not as thick as Thorne had been expecting. ‘When your superintendent mentioned it on the box. Wasn’t me that saw it, but as soon as I heard I thought it would be worth fol owing up. You know, just to make sure.’ He sounded pleased with himself. ‘Looks like I was spot on.’

‘Three weeks ago, you said?’

‘Right.’

‘And?’

A chuckle. ‘And . . . brick wal , mate. We’ve got a description of a bloke she was seen talking to outside the hospital the day before, but we’ve had sweet FA off that. She was an occasional drug user, tablets mostly, nicked them from her own hospital as it turned out, but that’s led us nowhere. To be honest, it was al going stone cold until your one turned up.’

‘Stroke of luck,’ Thorne said.

Brewer said something else, but Thorne was too busy mouthing obscenities at Kitson and Hol and.

‘What about forensics?’

‘That was the easy bit,’ Brewer said. ‘Looks like she scratched him when he had the bag over her head. We dug plenty of blood and skin from under her nails, so we can match the bastard up as soon as we make an arrest.’

Thorne scribbled ‘GOT DNA’ on the piece of paper and pushed it across the desk for Hol and and Kitson to see.

‘You stil there?’

‘So, how are we going to work this?’ Thorne asked.

‘Not a clue, mate,’ Brewer said. ‘I know it won’t be anything to do with me, so it don’t matter what I think. My guv’nor’s probably on the phone to your guv’nor as we speak, carving it up.

Politics, budgets, al that shit. We just do what we’re told, right?’

‘Right . . .’

‘Just so you know . . . I’m not bothered about territory, anything like that,’ Brewer said. ‘No need to worry about any of that crap. We can sort out who gets the credit once we’ve caught him, fair enough?’

Thorne knew that, whatever opinion he was rapidly forming about DI Paul Brewer - Job-pissed and probably disliked by al his col eagues - he was going to have to get along with him.

He thanked him for his help, praising his initiative and insisting that the credit would most definitely go where it was due. He cal ed him ‘Paul’ as often as he could manage without gagging, promising him a night on the town when they eventual y got together and trying to sound pleased when Brewer promised to take him up on the offer.

‘It’s from an X-ray, by the way,’ Brewer said.

‘What is?’

‘The piece of plastic in her hand.’ Brewer sounded pleased with himself again. He waited. ‘There
was
a piece of plastic, right?’

‘An X-ray of what?’

‘They can’t tel us that just yet. There’s a few letters and numbers on it but they can’t make sense of them. If we’re lucky, your piece might help.’

When Thorne looked up he saw the expressions of confusion from Hol and and Kitson who had only heard his side of the conversation.

‘X-ray?’ Kitson whispered.

Thorne put a hand over the mouthpiece, told them he’d be another minute. Brewer was saying he was on his way into a meeting but that he’d try to cal again later. That his was a large Scotch and water.

‘Just before you go,’ Thorne said. ‘Is Catherine’s mother stil alive?’

‘What?’

‘Her mother.’

‘No. Both parents dead, and an elder brother who was kil ed in a car accident a few years ago. Took us a while to trace a blood relative.’

‘How did she die?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How did the mother die, and when?’

‘No idea,’ Brewer said.

‘Could you find out and get back to me?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Cheers, Paul, I appreciate it. What kind of Scotch do you like?’

‘What’s al this about?’

‘Probably nothing,’ Thorne said. He looked up and locked eyes with Kitson. ‘Just covering my arse.’

Brewer had phoned back a few minutes before the briefing was due to start, and apologised for taking so long. He told Thorne that he’d spoken to Catherine Burke’s boyfriend, who had confirmed that her mother had died of cancer when Catherine was a young girl. Thorne had thanked him, unable to decide if he felt disappointed or relieved.

‘Oh, and by the way, any single malt wil do nicely,’ Brewer had said.

Thorne passed the news on to Brigstocke outside the door of the Briefing Room as the troops were filing in. The DCI glanced up from the notes he had been working on for the last hour.

‘Worth a try,’ he said.

Thorne watched as unfamiliar faces drifted past; nodded to one or two of those drafted in quickly from other teams. ‘So, how’s this going to pan out?’

‘We take it from here,’ Brigstocke said.

‘Real y?’

‘Wel , no, not official y, but in terms of money and manpower we’re way more capable of doing it than they are. So, off the record, we get to run things.’

‘And off the record, what happens if we mess up?’

‘Then, obviously, it was always a fifty-fifty operation and the blame for any operational glitches gets shared out equal y.’

‘Sounds fair,’ Thorne said.

Inside, it was standing room only. Muttered conversation no more than the preferred alternative to silence. One phone cal had changed the complexion of the case entirely and suddenly the atmosphere was as charged as Thorne could remember in a while.

There weren’t too many like this.

Loss of life was never treated lightly, not if you looked beyond the banter and the off-colour jokes to what was in the eyes of the men and women at a crime scene. Thorne had met clever murderers and profoundly stupid ones. Those who had lost it and lashed out and those who had enjoyed themselves. Some had made him angry enough to come close to murder himself, while for others he had felt nothing but pity.

There were as many shades of kil er as there were ways to end a life, but while it was Thorne’s job to catch them, the murderer was always taken seriously.

And when he murdered more than once . . .

‘Right, thanks for gathering so quickly,’ Brigstocke said. ‘There’s a lot to get through.’

From the back of the room, Thorne watched the notebooks open, heard fifty bal points click. He glanced at the door as a handful of late-comers hurried in, half expecting to see Superintendent Trevor Jesmond make a wel -timed and inspirational appearance.

‘As some of you know already, we received a cal this morning that has changed the focus of the Emily Walker inquiry. I’ve spent most of the day since then on the phone to various senior officers from the Leicestershire constabulary . . .’

While Brigstocke spoke, Thorne thought about control; the exercise of it. Emily Walker’s kil er had been meticulous in his preparation, in waiting to make his move and in the use of the bag to suffocate her. Now, there was every reason to believe that the same man was responsible for the death of Catherine Burke. She too had been discovered at home, with no sign of forced entry, so it seemed likely that he had planned her murder every bit as careful y as Emily Walker’s.

A man who waited and watched and then kil ed twice in three weeks.

‘So, the investigations into these two kil ings wil proceed separately for the time being,’ Brigstocke said. ‘With as much cooperation between ourselves and the boys in Leicester as is required . . .’

Thorne felt his mouth go dry. Twice in three weeks . . .
as far as they knew
.

‘. . . and if, as seems likely, they turn out to be linked, then we wil have the necessary protocols in place.’

By and large, the briefing was about practicalities from then on, as Brigstocke outlined the way forward. Neither force would want to risk the other screwing up their investigations, so it had been agreed that each would have ‘read only’ access to the other’s HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) account. As the Met team’s office manager, DS Sam Karim would be responsible for al case information inputted into their account and for liaising daily with his opposite number in Leicester.

‘Not a problem,’ Karim said.

‘Especial y not if his other half ’s a “she”,’ someone added.

It was a ‘delicate’ situation, Brigstocke said, and ‘potential y fraught’, but he trusted his team could handle it.

If his team needed any more reasons to
try
to make things work, Brigstocke waited until the end to give them the best one of al . He nodded, then turned to the screen behind him as the lights were flicked off. Many in the room had seen the picture of Emily Walker, but none save Brigstocke and his DIs had seen the photo of Catherine Burke that had been emailed across a few hours earlier.

The pictures had been taken from different angles, but projected next to one another, the similarity was evident . . . and horrifying. Though the limbs were splayed differently and there was a little more blood in one bag than the other, Thorne guessed that al eyes in the room would be drawn, eventual y, to the faces. To the shock and desperation etched into each woman’s chalk-white skin, just visible through plastic fogged with her dying breath.

When he had finished talking, Brigstocke left the lights out and waited for each officer to walk out past the pictures on the screen.

Thorne was the last to leave.

‘They’re nothing like each other physical y,’ he said. Brigstocke turned and the two detectives stood in the semi-dark, staring at the screen. ‘So, if we’re looking for a connection, it’s not like he’s got a type.’

‘
If
it’s the same kil er,’ Brigstocke said.

‘You think it might not be?’

‘I’m just saying we don’t know for sure.’

‘Come on, Russel ,
look
at them . . .’

Brigstocke gave it a few more moments, then turned away, walked across the room and switched the lights back on. ‘The forensics report came in,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to go through it properly, but they’re confirming that the cel uloid fragment is a piece cut out from an X-ray.’ He continued before Thorne could ask the obvious question. ‘No, they don’t know what it is either, but there are some very decent prints on it and they’re not Emily’s. We’ve got DNA, too. Some hairs on her sweater. Might not be the kil er’s, of course, but we’ve eliminated the husband, so if our sample matches the one from Catherine Burke . . .’

‘They’l match,’ Thorne said.

‘Sounds like you’re counting on it.’

‘He’s got plans, this bloke,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s probably the only way we’re going to catch him.’

‘As long as we do.’

Thorne leaned back against the wal and stared at the dozens of empty chairs. Already the men and women who had just left them would be settling down at computers and picking up phones; doing everything that could reasonably be done. But Thorne was beginning to sense that real progress was going to depend on the man they were after giving them something more to work with.

‘I might be wrong,’ Thorne said. ‘It might be piss-easy. One look at the stuff these Leicester boys have got and everything could get sorted.’

‘Christ, I hope so,’ Brigstocke said.

Thorne hoped so too, but he could not shake the feeling that this was one of those cases where a break would mean another body.

SIX

Thorne picked up a takeaway from the Bengal Lancer on his way home. He hadn’t bothered phoning ahead with the order, had looked forward to the cold bottle of Kingfisher, the complimentary poppadoms and the chat with the manager while he was waiting.

Louise was slumped in front of some celebrity ice-skating programme when he got back. She seemed happy enough, a fair way into a bottle of red wine.

‘Every cloud,’ she said. She raised her glass as though she were toasting something. ‘Nice to have a drink again.’

Thorne went through to the kitchen, began dishing up the food. He shouted through to the living room, ‘You should,’ then pushed the empty cartons down into the bin.

When he turned round, Louise was standing in the doorway. ‘Should
what
?’

‘Should . . . have a drink . . . if you want. Relax a bit.’

‘Get pissed, you mean?’

Thorne licked sauce off his fingers, stared at her. ‘I didn’t mean anything, Lou . . .’

She walked back into the living room and, after a moment, he fol owed her with the plates. They sat on the floor with their backs against the sofa, eating off their laps. Thorne poured himself what was left of the wine; a little over half a glass.

‘Whoever kil ed the woman in Finchley,’ he said. ‘Looks like he’s done it before.’

Louise chewed for a few more seconds. ‘That Garvey thing you told me about?’

‘Wel , that girl, yeah. She’s not his first.’

‘Shit . . .’

‘Right, al I need.’

She shrugged, swal owed. ‘Might be
exactly
what you need.’

The food was as good as always: rogan josh and a creamy mutter paneer; mushroom bhaji, pilau rice and a peshwari nan to share. Louise ate quickly, helping herself to the lion’s share of the bread. Almost done, she moved her fork slowly through the last few grains of yel ow rice. ‘Sounds like you’re going to be busy.’