Bloodline

by Nigel McCrery

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

From the creator of BBC drama Silent Witness, comes the gripping sixth instalment in the acclaimed DCI Mark Lapslie series. When Isabel, a British university student, travels to a remote Spanish town it isn't only to enjoy the atmosphere. It's also to trace how and why her family name might have derived from the town, a quest her father, Sebastian made nine years ago, not long before his death in a car accident. But as Isabel, aided by local guide Mauricio, starts digging into her family's possible links with Alarcon, she's unprepared for the dark secrets uncovered; secrets that the current ruling nobility of Alarcon are keen to keep buried. Ten days into her stay in Alarcon, Isabel mysteriously disappears, presumed dead. Inspector Mark Lapslie and DC Emma Bradbury are sent out to investigate alongside the local Spanish police. A possible gangland link is suspected - Isabel's stepfather in Valencia is a retired British gangster and a mob-hitman from Malaga is identified in Alarcon at the time of Isabel's disappearance. But Mauricio, suspects the Mayor's son, Dario, is the real culprit - to uncover the truth, Lapslie and Bradbury must delve into the murky, chequered past of Isabel's gangland stepfather while also following in her footsteps through Alarcon's dark and tempestuous history.

Release date: December 13, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

1

Isabel, then

Isabel Alarcon looked over the rim of her coffee cup as she took her first sip. ‘Do you act as tour guide for all the young girls you meet on the bus coming into town?’

‘Only the pretty ones,’ Mauricio said jokingly, her sole companion at the table. Then he shrugged. ‘And, of course, the ones named after the town itself.’

Isabel responded with a sly smile, unsure which category she fell into: the pretty, or those who carried the name of the town. Probably both from the engaging smile aimed back at her by Mauricio as he raised his cup in a silent ‘cheers’.

They were sitting on the terrace of the only café overlooking Alarcon’s Place Marie, the town’s main square, named unimaginatively, Café Marie. Though the café owner looked as far from a Marie as possible, more like Bluto, Isabel thought to herself. Mauricio had informed her that the proprietor’s name was in fact Ignacio. Thick-set, with three-day stubble, and the last inch of a fat cigar tucked in one corner of his mouth. She knew that Health and Safety rules had banned smoking combined with serving food and beverages in Spain yonks ago – but then Alarcon was one of those places frozen in time, in more ways than one. Opposite the café was a stone-built Town Hall with a clock above its main arched entrance, and at the far end a medieval church complete with a bell-tower.

It looked the sort of square that women and children would scurry from into hiding as Mexican banditos rode into town. Except for the solid stone cobbles – not exactly typical of a Western.

The same stone cobbles continued through the town to the menacing edifice of Alarcon Castle two hundred yards away. It was Alarcon’s main tourist attraction.

The castle dominated the town with ramparts and interspersed turrets meandering down the steep ravine to one side, through which a tributary of the River Júcar flowed. The raised ramparts and turrets were like a mini-version of the Great Wall of China; the ravine the area’s mini Grand Canyon.

It was a sight that was in equal parts dramatic and daunting, and would have made a good stage-set for Game of Thrones, Isabel had always thought.

Although it was her first visit to Alarcon, she knew the landscape and some of its history from the various books on the town and castle which had held pride of place on the coffee table and bookshelves at home when she’d been growing up.

‘And is it your family’s connection with the town that has brought you here now?’ Mauricio asked.

‘Yes, more or less. My finals at uni are all finished and it was one of the first things I wanted to do – delve into my family’s dark past.’ She smiled and took a sip of her café con leche. ‘Well, third thing to be exact. A week in Barcelona, two weeks in Valencia, then here.’

Mauricio lifted a brow. ‘Isn’t that the wrong way around – Barcelona being the more important city? There is more to see, no?’

‘I suppose. But my godparents live in Valencia, and it’s home now. I’ve lived with them since my father died eight years ago.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘That’s okay. It was as tough as hell to take at first. Sudden road accident in Kent. I’d just turned fourteen, and suddenly I’d lost my father.’ She pushed a bittersweet smile. ‘My godfather, Terry, was a big help in getting me through that. My mum fell apart, and so I stayed with him and his wife Barbara at their house in Marbella. Then my mum died too, a year or so later – she never really got over my father’s death, I guess. So, Terry and Babs practically brought me up, got me into English school there. Then a couple of years back they moved up the coast to Valencia.’

Mauricio looked about to say something, then decided against it, perhaps deciding it was too light or inconsequential to interfere with her heartfelt family history.

She guessed that he was about four or five years older than her, dark-brown hair and light-brown, soft eyes, a total contrast to her own blonde hair and blue eyes. He was slim and quite attractive. But she suspected it was his outgoing personality that endeared him to girls – and she could imagine that his quasi-tour-guide chat-up lines had been spun with many a visitor as they’d approached on the bus from Valencia to Alarcon. She’d discovered that Mauricio was one of two regular bus drivers on that route, but his family home was in Alarcon – which was why he knew practically everything about the town.

‘I’ll fill you in some more of its history, if I see you around.’

‘It’s a date,’ she’d said with a smile, flushing slightly as the alternate meaning of what she had said struck her. But then he was quite attractive.

Then on her second day in town, she’d bumped into him again as she’d come out of a shop and they’d arranged this café meeting now. Only three-hundred yards square – it was difficult not to keep bumping into the same people in Alarcon. On that second meeting, he’d discovered her Spanish was quite good – almost as good as his English from giving history snippets to visiting tourists – and so now they alternated between the two.

‘Los cuento,’ Isabel said. ‘Here I am prattling away about my own personal history – when you’re supposed to be telling me more about Alarcon’s history.’

‘Okay. Where do you want to start?’

‘I don’t know. You’re the guide today. I’ll leave it to you to decide.’ She smiled at Mauricio as she leaned back.

Mauricio thought for a moment. ‘So, let’s start with the fable of the blood in the castle walls. Then, in comparison, the rest of the town’s history might not seem so dark and macabre.’

2

Lapslie and Bradbury, now

‘Sir. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’

DS Emma Bradbury caught Inspector Mark Lapslie in the corridor shortly after the lunch break. She knew she wouldn’t see him in the canteen, it was far too active and noisy, and the main local pubs and cafés were out for the same reason. Usually he’d either go to a couple of pubs half a mile from Chelmsford police HQ that weren’t so busy and tuck himself in a corner, or have a quiet take-out soup and sandwich in his office.

‘Yes, what is it?’ Lapslie turned to her with a tight smile. Slight impatience in his voice, but over the years Emma Bradbury had learnt that this was his normal tone. Her boss had a condition called synaesthesia, which converted sounds into tastes and smells, and it grated constantly on his nerves – thus the quiet pubs and venues away from the throng, and he didn’t do social graces well either. Many of her colleagues thought he was just difficult and anti-social, but she was one of the few on the Chelmsford force that had known him long enough and well enough to know different.

She glanced each way along the corridor. ‘Might be a bit difficult here, sir.’

‘Ah, yes . . . of course,’ he said, finally picking up that it was a private matter, something she didn’t want to discuss openly. He gestured towards his office. ‘Come in.’

Emma waited for Mark Lapslie to settle into the seat behind his desk and let a brief silence settle. She knew his concentration would be better then. ‘It’s something Dom mentioned to me last night.’

Lapslie’s brow knitted. ‘Not problems with him again, I hope?’

‘No, no. Everything’s fine on that front.’ Emma knew that Lapslie didn’t approve of her boyfriend, a retired gangster, and felt that the association would impinge on her work. Then last year when she’d admitted seeing someone else on the side, Lapslie had shown real concern, worried that Dom might react violently if he found out. ‘In the end, I took your advice and stopped seeing Peter.’

‘The college lecturer?’

‘Yes.’ She’d told Lapslie about Peter, started to explain how his softer, more intellectual side had appealed to her, then stopped herself short. She wasn’t even sure how and why it had answered a need within herself, let alone explaining to anyone else. But Lapslie’s basic concern was simply that Dom was being cheated, and how he’d react; who she was seeing or why was by-the-way. ‘I haven’t seen him for over six months now.’

Lapslie pushed a tight smile. ‘That’s good to hear.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’ Emma bit at her lip. Good to hear. So, while Lapslie still might not approve of her relationship with Dom, he at least appeared to be taking solace in the fact that his advice had helped her avoid an incident with Dom. ‘It was more to do with an old friend of Dom’s, Terry Haines. Or, more specifically, his goddaughter, Isabel. She disappeared six days ago. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of her.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Twenty-one. Just finished her finals at university.’

‘Twenty-one?’ Lapslie smiled wryly. ‘She’s probably just gone off with some friends and forgotten to make contact. And godfather, you said? So, he’s not even her real father – even less reason that she should notify him.’

Bradbury shook her head. ‘I went through exactly the same routine with Dom when he first told me, and no, it’s not like that at all. Isabel’s father died in 2010, and her mother died a year or two later, after having been committed for mental health issues. So, rather than her being fostered out by social services, Terry and his wife, Barbara, stepped in – took Isabel in. They’ve been her main family since, she’s practically like their own daughter. And Dom tells me that she was always very good with time-keeping and letting them know where she was. She would phone and tell them if she was going to be even a few hours late, let alone six days. You know the type of girl and arrangement.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Lapslie sighed. ‘But you know how it works, Emma. We have trouble mobilising anything effective for even a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old – because most of them are runaways who simply turn up a week or two later. What could we possibly do for someone of twenty-one?’

Bradbury nodded solemnly. The intensity of any alert and search went down incrementally with age. A three- to seven-year-old and you could get half the nation’s police mobilised. But by the time they reached fourteen and the number of temporary runaways increased drastically, those searches would be tempered accordingly. Over eighteen, they were adults, so if they wanted to run away from their families and never make contact again, that was their choice.

‘You mentioned she was at university,’ Lapslie said. ‘Was that a local one? Wivenhoe Park or Southend Essex?’

‘No, she’d been at Cambridge. Trinity College.’

Lapslie’s brow furrowed even more deeply. ‘And Terry and Barbara Haines. Do they live locally – was she staying with them?’

‘No. They live in Valencia, Spain. Moved there four years ago.’

‘And previously? Were they local then?’

‘No, they were in Marbella for another twelve years before that. They haven’t been resident in England for sixteen years – though, yes, at that time they were local, lived in Southend.’

Lapslie started shaking his head. ‘And the girl? Please tell me that at least she disappeared around here? That the last time she was seen was in Essex?’

Emma sighed. ‘I’m afraid not, sir. She was last seen in a town called Alarcon, in Spain about a hundred miles from Valencia. She was supposed to go out there just for ten days, but she never returned.’

The head shaking continued, and now Lapslie closed his eyes briefly – a ‘give me strength’ expression – before opening them again. ‘The girl isn’t local, nor are her de-facto parents–guardians, and what’s more she disappeared in Spain. It’s clearly a matter for the Spanish police. We wouldn’t be able to get involved.’

‘Terry has been on to them already. They’ve been hopeless. That’s why he’s asked a personal favour through Dom to see if we might be able to help.’

‘We’d still be tied by those same constraints. No link at all to pin it locally.’ Lapslie gestured helplessly. ‘And even if I did personally want to do something to help Dom’s friend out – how on earth would I get it rubber-stamped by Rouse?’

Emma Bradbury nodded. Chief Inspector Rouse, their hawkish department head at Chelmsford HQ, was a stickler for protocol. ‘Terry had a bit of a theory he passed to Dom that might help on that front.’

‘Yes, please . . .’ A tired tone, Lapslie’s patience rapidly waning. ‘Pray tell me this theory.’

‘Terry is convinced Isabel’s disappearance is connected with a run-in he had years back with another ex-gangster in Marbella. Part of the gang wars and feuds endemic back then, which was why Terry moved his family to Valencia four years ago.’

‘And how would this possibly help with the specific situation we face with Rouse and Chelmsford force’s involvement?’ His patience was now completely gone.

‘Because the man Terry Haines had a run-in with was no less than Vic Denham.’

*

‘Vic Denham? Are you sure?’ Chief Inspector Rouse looked keenly across his desk at Lapslie. ‘Because that’s not a name to bandy around lightly. Especially . . .’ Rouse’s voice trailed off.

‘That was the name passed on through Bradbury.’ Lapslie nodded solemnly. He knew that gap could be filled in with ‘here at Chelmsford’ or ‘with me’, and they’d amount to the same. For over twenty years Vic Denham had been the bane of Rouse’s life.

Tim Sayle, one of Rouse’s fellow rookies when he’d first joined the Chelmsford squad, had confronted what he had thought was the last of a balaclava’d gang exiting a NatWest bank. But there’d been one more lagging behind that Sayle hadn’t seen. The man knocked Sayle to the ground with two heavy cosh blows, which would have been bad enough, but the man then lashed out with a flurry of kicks to the kidneys and spine when Sayle was down. And it was those extra kicks which put Tim Sayle in a wheelchair permanently when he came out of hospital two months later.

They had Vic Denham picked out from a photofit by an eye-witness who’d seen them changing cars two miles away, balaclavas removed, but that witness’s reliability was tested on the stand due to their short-sightedness, and the gang got off.

But everyone internally knew that it was Denham because of his increasingly notorious MO. Rival gang whispers were circulating that Denham’s stock-in-trade was almost kicking to death those who rubbed him the wrong way. ‘Knock him down, so I can deal with him.’ A henchman would deliver a side-swipe, then Denham would move in with a pair of specially crafted shoes with pointed silver-plated steel toe caps on the outside. Victims would see those shoes glinting as they knifed towards them. As a result, he’d gained the gangland moniker of ‘Vic the kick’.

Denham was linked to at least three other armed robberies in the area, but they’d never had enough to even get a case-file supported by the CPS. And when one case did finally heat up and start to look worrying for Denham, he high-tailed it to Marbella.

Tim Sayle had stayed with the force, but had to take internal, deskbound jobs. Rouse had kept Sayle under his wing and got him the best promotions he could, but still it never seemed enough. On constant pills for the pain, Sayle suffered from severe depression and in the end had committed suicide six years ago.

It was the one soft spot Lapslie and others had seen in Rouse – his caring for Tim Sayle and how Sayle’s death had finally affected him. Many ventured that was why Rouse had been so understanding and accommodating with Lapslie’s synaesthesia; in Lapslie he partly saw a mirror image of his old friend, Tim Sayle. Soldiering on in the force despite an ailment.

‘So, he’s still down in the Marbella area?’ Rouse now asked.

‘Looks like it, sir.’

‘I saw that he was active down there seven or eight years ago.’ Rouse shrugged. ‘But I must admit, I haven’t checked since.’

Lapslie nodded, saying nothing. He wasn’t sure if that was true, given what Denham represented to Rouse. He had the feeling Rouse would have kept regular tabs on Denham’s activity.

‘And you’re sure it’s not a ruse, simply to get us involved?’

‘That’s a possibility I suppose, sir.’ Lapslie knew how much Rouse would love to have another shot at Denham, as did half of the Essex police and criminal fraternity as well. He shrugged. ‘But the source it has come through I judge as reliable. And I daresay we can’t possibly know unless or until we check it out.’

‘True.’ Rouse sank into thought for a moment. ‘I suppose we have a sufficient number of unresolved cases against Denham on our patch to warrant following up. Especially now with this girl having disappeared.’

Another mute nod from Lapslie. Rouse didn’t appear to need much encouragement. But Lapslie had hardly ever seen his boss so uncertain; normally his decisions were made stridently. Perhaps having this dumped back in his lap after twenty years, when he’d no doubt given up all hope of Vic Denham ever being brought to justice, had caught him off guard.

At length, a resigned exhalation from Rouse. ‘Okay. This is how I feel we should handle it. Work the case from your desk for two or three days. Phone the Spanish police and enquire about their progress. Speak to the girl’s godfather in Valencia too. If after that time she still hasn’t appeared and the Spanish police seem to be dragging their heels – then catch a flight out there with Bradbury. Start making your own enquiries.’

‘Thanks, sir. Will do.’ Lapslie got up and started making his way out, looking back thoughtfully from the doorway. ‘Obviously I’ll keep you up to date on my progress – particularly anything new on Vic Denham.’

‘First priority will be hoping this young girl shows up alive and well.’ Rouse smiled grimly. ‘Having waited twenty years for retribution against Vic Denham, I can wait a few days more.’

3

Isabel, then

‘Curious, to say the least,’ Isabel said, running one hand over the foot-square stone blocks and the mortar in between again.

The strange red and black spots were heaviest on the mortar, but some could be seen to have permeated into the stone blocks, giving them a pinkish tinge in parts.

Isabel looked back up at Mauricio from her crouched position. ‘And it’s meant to have been caused by blood, you say?’

‘Well, so the fable goes.’ Mauricio shrugged. ‘Though to tell the truth, nobody knows for sure. Like most old fables, it is difficult to tell how much has been added or invented over the years since. And that is not helped in this case by there being two possible accounts of what happened.’

Isabel nodded, straightened up. ‘Do you favour one?’

‘Not really. They both end the same way, with murder and blood. But the way they get there is different.’ Then his expression brightened, struck with a thought. ‘Why don’t I tell you both, then you can make up your own mind, decide which is the most likely?’

‘Like Cluedo?’ She watched Mauricio’s brow crease, and was reminded that some things didn’t translate, or were known by different names in Spain. ‘It’s an English murder-mystery game.’

‘Okay. A murder-mystery game.’ Mauricio nodded knowingly. ‘Seems very “fitting”, as you say. Is that the right term?’

‘Yes, that’s the right term.’ She chuckled, thinking to herself that British TV had a lot to answer for exporting endless Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey-style dramas.

They walked along the cobbled path bordering the perimeter wall as Mauricio spoke.

‘Both go back to one of the first nobleman-owners of the castle, Juan Alarcon, who had a very beautiful sister attracting other nearby noblemen, who were keen for her hand in marriage. One of those noblemen was particularly arrogant and aggressive, known for his bad ways, and his offer of marriage was rejected out of hand. In fable one, angry at the rejection, he returns to the castle late at night and rapes the sister, but is caught shortly after by the castle guards, and the brother orders the guards to kill him.’

‘And in fable two?’

‘The same approach and initial rejection. But in the second version, there’s no rape – he returns instead to kill the brother, thinking that’s the main obstacle to gaining her hand in marriage. The brother catches him out halfway through this plan, and the guards seize him and kill him.’

Isabel nodded. ‘And how does that then connect with the blood marks in the castle walls?’

‘As with their beginnings, both fables end the s. . .