Bloodline-9 by Mark Billingham Page B

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