In Her Blood Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The First Day

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  The Second Day

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  The Third Day

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  The Fourth Day

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  The Fifth Day

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  The Sixth Day

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  The Seventh Day

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  The Tenth Day

  Chapter 84

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  On a bone-chilling February morning, Catherine Berlin, investigator with the Financial Services Agency, finds the almost-headless body of her informant, ‘Juliet Bravo’, rolling in a shallow reach of the Thames. That Juliet Bravo’s death is linked to an investigation of local loan shark Archie Doyle is no surprise to Berlin, but when Berlin’s own unorthodox methods are blamed for the murder, she realises bigger predators are circling.

  To start with, it looks as though Berlin will pay only with her job. And then, on a routine trip to her GP (one of a dying breed who will still prescribe heroin to long-term addicts), she stumbles across a second body.

  Suspended, incriminated, and then blackmailed into cooperation by the detective leading the murder investigation, Catherine Berlin has seven stolen days of clarity in which to solve the crime – and find a new supplier.

  About the Author

  Annie Hauxwell was born in London and emigrated with her family to Australia when she was a teenager. She abandoned the law to work as an investigator for a private firm, and after working as a screenwriter she turned her hand to novels. She now lives in Castlemaine, Victoria, and travels to London frequently. In Her Blood is her first book.

  For my sister

  The great white shark never sleeps. It must keep moving or sink to the bottom and drown. It has a number of adaptations that make it an efficient killer and the first bite is frequently a death blow.

  Wikipedia

  What hath night to do with sleep?

  ‘Paradise Lost’, John Milton

  The First Day

  1

  CATHERINE BERLIN GAZED down at the blue flesh swaying in the grey water, the outline of the woman’s remains softened by a bone-chilling February mist. The backwash from a water taxi on the river rippled into the lock. Berlin felt her own body rock gently with the swell that roiled the corpse, exposing a deep, serrated gash at the throat, as if someone had taken a bite. With faint bewilderment, she recognised a quickening of her heart. So this is what it took to move her. Someone would pay.

  The case conference with the Murder and Serious Crime Squad was perfunctory. The men at the table regarded Berlin with indifference. She was just a civilian investigator with a regulatory agency. At fifty-five her lean frame was tending to look wasted. Her hair, once blonde, was now a dirty melange of grey, streaked with tarnished gold.

  The squad boss, Detective Chief Inspector Thompson, was about her age and seemed long past throwing his not inconsiderable weight around. He put down his bacon roll, slipped on his glasses and read from a notebook: ‘“A bite or a tear. A wound from some kind of serrated edge or teeth, anyway, which perforated the neck, almost severing the head.” We’re waiting on forensics. In the meantime, Ms Berlin, are you able to provide us with any more intelligence about this source of yours?’

  He didn’t look at her as he spoke, but his tone was mild and she sensed his apparent indifference towards her arose from professional disinterest rather than arrogance.

  Berlin went through it again as the others shuffled their papers. ‘She called the hotline and identified Archie Doyle as an illegal moneylender. Our first meeting was at Starbucks about four months ago. The date’s in the file. She was well spoken, plausible, but nervous. I needed to win her confidence. We arranged another meeting. In the meantime further inquiries were made, approval was obtained for surveillance, and observation commenced.’

  A cocky young officer spoke up. Berlin had seen him before, but couldn’t recall where. She knew he recognised her too, but simply as a soft target. He wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.

  ‘So was she a concerned citizen, a disgruntled girlfriend or a victim? I mean, as I understand it, if the moneylender hasn’t got a licence and is arrested, the debt is wiped, yeah? Big incentive.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Berlin. She held his gaze, barely able to summon the energy to play this game. She remembered his name was Flint. The little weasel was a detective constable.

  ‘So which was she? Citizen, squeeze or vic?’ asked Flint.

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘No name, no address,’ said Flint.

  ‘She wanted to use an alias. Juliet Bravo.’

  Flint looked blank. Clearly it didn’t ring a bell.

  ‘On the telly. Before your time,’ murmured Thompson.

  Flint’s nod was curt. He was on a roll now. ‘You had a mobile number for her, and that was it? I take it she was registered as a CHIS. You know what that is, don’t you? A Covert Human Intelligence Source.’ He said it very slowly.

  ‘No,’ said Berlin.

  ‘No, you don’t know, or no, she wasn’t registered?’ asked Flint. Berlin caught Flint’s quick scan of his colleagues, to make sure they were picking up on his clever sarcasm.

  ‘She wasn’t registered,’ she said.

  Flint shook his head and threw down his pen, a pantomime of incredulity. Berlin cleared her throat.

  ‘If I may explain, Detective Constable —’

  ‘Acting Detective Sergeant,’ snapped Fl
int.

  Berlin decided not to bother. ‘Look, I was waiting for her at the lock at the Limehouse Basin this morning. It was very cold, so I kept moving.’

  ‘It was a bloody early meeting,’ remarked one of the officers.

  ‘A late night,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Party girl,’ sneered Flint. Was he referring to her or the dead woman?

  ‘Insomniac,’ said Berlin, similarly ambiguous. In fact insomnia was a trait she had shared with Juliet Bravo.

  She waited until Thompson nodded that she should continue.

  ‘I walked around to the other side of the lock and something caught my eye. When I took a closer look I could see it was a body. At first I didn’t even realise it was her,’ she said.

  Thompson sat back in his chair and Flint appeared to take this as a signal he could have free rein.

  ‘Which of you wanted to meet at the lock?’

  ‘She did. I —’

  ‘Preferred Starbucks. Yes, we know. Who else knew about this meeting?’

  Berlin let his question hang out there. Like she would be, soon enough. Taken in an open cart from Newgate to Tyburn, hung for public amusement, cut down while still alive, then torn limb from limb. Quartered. Her daydreams echoed her nocturnal wanderings. Sometimes she couldn’t distinguish.

  ‘Why did you go alone?’ demanded Flint.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Surely you people have standard operating procedures which you ignored by meeting her alone. Am I correct?’ he tried again.

  It was purely rhetorical. She remained silent.

  He delivered the final blow. ‘Where is this shark Doyle now?’

  He knew, but he was going to make her say it. Now she remembered where she’d seen him before. And who he’d been with.

  ‘The surveillance was withdrawn,’ she said.

  The collective groan wasn’t even muted.

  Someone would pay.

  Making people pay was Doyle’s business. He had never believed in light-touch regulation. An undisciplined system gave weak characters the opportunity to get weaker. He’d learnt that from Frank.

  Doyle was a short, solid man with squirrel cheeks and a pale complexion. His eyes held a permanently hurt expression, as if he couldn’t believe you were doing this to him, again. He stared into the lock and fiddled with his heavy gold rings. Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes. Concrete boots. On the other side the police were still working under floodlights. He stayed well back in the shadows. Word had reached him that the grass had been fished out. He thought it a pity they hadn’t taken the opportunity to remove the rest of the rubbish. The canal was a disgrace.

  The tidal stain on the massive timbers of the lock bore testimony to the effort required to tame the sullen river and render it fit for trade. Doyle gazed into the dark eddies and saw the silent plea in the eyes of so many victims as they were consumed in the rush of water. It was a hard city and an unforgiving current that ran through it. He should know.

  When Doyle was a kid, Frank would announce that he was going to see a man about a dog. Sometimes he would take Doyle with him. His mum didn’t like it, but she daren’t make a fuss once Frank had his mind made up. At the age of eight Doyle had stood here and watched Frank dangle a bloke between the huge lock gates, limbs inches from the crushing pressure. He would never forget the screams.

  Doyle thought about the dead girl and sighed. No doubt she’d been badly brought up. Spoilt. No values. Learning the hard way hadn’t done him any harm. He spat into the filthy water. The sky was lightening and the police were switching off their floodlights and packing up their stuff. He should make himself scarce. He checked his watch. Time to go and see a man about a dog.

  2

  WHEN BERLIN HAD finished making her formal statement, Acting Detective Sergeant Flint directed a constable to see her off the premises. He stood behind the front counter with his mobile in his hand and watched her go, then made a call.

  From the steps of Limehouse Police Station Berlin turned left towards Canary Wharf, where another inquisitor awaited her. Crossing East India Dock Road, she took Westferry and kept walking under the bridge into West India Quay.

  Her route through Canary Wharf was monitored by 1750 CCTV cameras. So why didn’t she feel safe? She couldn’t shake the feeling that the footsteps of her dead informant were dogging her and any moment a cold, wet hand would grip her shoulder. Christ, it must be shock, she thought. I’m in shock. I need a drink.

  The wind shrieked as it swept the deserted squares and empty walkways, a mercantile labyrinth encircling the soaring glass towers of credit that had made it possible. Upmarket shops. Few customers now broke the silence in the gleaming malls. The seductive hum of muzak had been replaced by the sound of shutters coming down on boutique businesses as the bankers fled to Geneva and a more forgiving tax regime. Britain was bust.

  Berlin swiped her ID through three layers of security and finally reached the lair of the toothless tiger – the Consumer Affairs Branch of the Financial Services Agency, a non-departmental public body that sat, mostly on its hands, at the heart of the beast.

  Her so-called colleagues surreptitiously monitored her progress from the lift to Nestor’s office. Delroy, the only one she could rely on, didn’t seem to be around. Nobody acknowledged her except Senior Investigator in Charge of Operations Johnny Coulthard, who peered over the top of his workstation and gave her a smug, knowing grin. She responded with one undignified finger.

  She didn’t knock on Nestor’s door, just walked straight in. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. Through the immense window behind him Berlin could see the pale sun fracturing the surface of the river. Tower Bridge engraved against the slate sky. What kind of a man would choose to turn his back on that view? Only the slight, tight-lipped, desiccated creature before her. Watery hazel eyes absent of passion, mired in irony.

  In her mind’s eye she watched the portcullis of Traitor’s Gate rise. She knew what was coming.

  ‘We enforce licence provisions. We enlist the assistance of the police to execute warrants. We don’t run one-man, or one-woman, operations. We work as a team and follow process.’ Nestor’s voice never rose above a murmur, which required his listener to lean in and focus on him.

  ‘We protect the market for corporate lenders. At the same interest rates as the sharks. Or worse,’ she said.

  ‘Corporate lenders rarely break people’s legs,’ observed Nestor.

  There was a pause and Berlin waited for the axe to fall. But to her surprise Nestor softened his tone.

  ‘You are assiduous, Berlin, I know that. But why persist in the face of a direct order?’

  She stuck to name, rank and serial number. ‘I logged her intelligence, then arranged surveillance on the target, which, as you are aware, was aborted due to procedural difficulties. I later tried to reschedule, but the resources weren’t forthcoming. If you take my meaning.’

  For the first time she saw colour suffuse Nestor’s cheeks.

  ‘The resources weren’t forthcoming because the file was closed,’ he hissed.

  That wasn’t the reason, but there was no point in arguing the finer points.

  ‘There’s no basis for the assumption that her death is associated with our inquiries,’ she said without conviction.

  ‘Your inquiries,’ retorted Nestor. He raised his hand as if to slap it down on the desk. But didn’t. ‘For Christ’s sake, Berlin, this loan shark, Doyle, could have had enforcers watching her.’

  ‘She hadn’t borrowed from him. She wasn’t a victim.’

  Nestor picked up on it immediately and she realised she hadn’t entered this observation in the log. ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘She told me she owed him nothing.’

  Berlin remembered the way Juliet Bravo had made the remark. She hadn’t been talking about money.

  ‘What else did you fail to log?’ Nestor persisted.

  ‘My report covers everything,’ she said.

  His kn
uckles whitened. ‘You’re stood down with pay, pending an inquiry. It will be intrusive. If you take my meaning. And Berlin, let’s hope all this doesn’t come back to bite you.’ A small smacking sound escaped Nestor’s thin lips. ‘Now get out.’

  Not a mile from Canary Wharf there was a street where there weren’t any cameras because there wasn’t anything to protect – except the people who lived there, who weren’t worth much.

  A couple of lads were having a laugh. One of them posted a dog’s tail through the letterbox of number fifty-one, then together they sauntered back to the black Merc that Doyle preferred for conspicuous work. Sometimes the sight of the Merc cruising down the street was enough. But on this occasion Doyle had directed the lads to resort to sterner measures. He fancied himself quite creative in these matters; the dog had been his idea. He sat in the back seat now and waited for the inevitable scream. When it came, he grunted with satisfaction. The lads high-fived each other as they drove off. Job well done.

  Inside number fifty-one, Sheila Harrington staggered back against the wall and slid to the floor, sobbing, unable to touch the bloody stump on the doormat. The kids had had that dog since they were little. What was she going to tell them? Terrified cries from the garden told her she wouldn’t have to explain. Doyle and the lads had driven around the back and thrown the rest of the dog over the fence.

  3

  WHEN BERLIN LEFT Nestor’s office she strode to the lifts, pressed the call button, took the lift to the next floor down, got out and walked back up the stairs.

  She ducked into the ladies and waited until she was confident that Coulthard would have made his customary announcement – ‘Scoff!’ – and like a flock of sheep the lads would be following him down to the canteen. Nestor always ate his mid-morning croissant in his office.

  The request to revoke her computer access would have gone to the harried IT people, but the queue at the so-called Help Desk was always long. It was a fair bet that it would take them at least a few hours to get around to it. She never thought she’d be grateful for that delay.

  Keeping low behind the workstation partitions, Berlin made her way across the office to her desk, logged on to her computer and slotted a memory stick into the USB port. Protocol strictly prohibited their use and she knew it would leave a trace on the system. But no one would be looking.