The Burning Girl-4 (30 page)

Why do people presume I'm interested?

Why do people always presume?

I've been frantic for days, wondering how to tel M & D that I'd rather die than go to this party they've been so busy planning for tomorrow. First birthday since the recovery, since the final op. It's like it's such a big deal and I know they just want me to have a good time and do normal things and I can't make them understand.

I don't want a party. I don't want the attention. The falseness of al that.

When I get angry they just fucking smile at me. They indulge me al the time and it makes me want to scream and smash something. While AH and the others would be getting grounded or whatever, I get treated with kid gloves.

Like al of me's scarred. Like none of me can be touched.

I want to be shouted at and punished. I want to tel them to stick their party up their arses just to see them lose their tempers for once and tel me that the whole thing's off. Whenever I do start being a bitch, they just stare at each other and they have this look that kil s me, as if they're thinking that this behaviour's acceptable and should be forgiven. You know, black clothes and black moods, like it's al perfectly normal for your average, horribly disfigured teenage girl.

When I try to tel them how I feel about this birthday, I know they think it's just some trauma I'm having, some understandable reaction after everything I've been through, and that I don't real y mean it.

I do real y mean it.

This party, just the thought of it, makes me sweat and makes me ache. Nobody has a clue. Even AH doesn't seem to get what I'm talking about. She keeps tel ing me that it'l be a laugh, that I'm just being a stroppy cow, and asking me if there's going to be any tasty men there.

I know M & D have probably spent a fortune on hiring the hal and the disco and everything, and I love them to death for doing it. If I thought for a second that I could get through it, I wouldn't be making a fuss. Watching my mates dance and drink and get off with people sounds great, but I know bloody wel what would happen.

I know that, eventual y, someone would want to say something.

I've imagined it for weeks now, ever since they told me. Ever since they announced that they wanted to throw a party and looked a bit upset when I told them to throw it as far away from me as possible. Sometimes I imagine it's Dad and other times it's one of my friends, usual y AH. The music stops and there's this howl from the speakers as they grab the DJ's microphone. They start to make this speech. They say something about bravery and make some crap jokes and people pretend to find them funny. Then there's that awkward few seconds of silence that you get after a speech. Then they al start to clap and everyone stares.

Everyone. Stares.

And the pale half of my face, the smooth half, reddens until the blush becomes the colour of the scar. Both halves matching as I burn al over again.

Singing "Happy Birthday', and Mum and Dad are hugging each other and a few of my mates are crying, and they're al watching me standing in a circle of light in the centre of the room, with looks on their faces like I'm six years old.

Like I'm special.. .

Thorne closed the diary, lay back and pressed it to his chest. He opened it again, took out the photograph he'd been using as a bookmark. Pictured her slipping away into the darkness on a bleak November night.

The music, a Wham track, fading behind her as she walks away from the hal , from the party, moving towards the lights of the town centre.

Unmissed stil . Her friends dancing, shouting to one another above the music while she climbs.

The smel of exhaust fumes and the sound of her shoes echoing off the grey concrete stairwel s.

A voice of concern, the first few worried looks from her friends as, half a mile from them, she steps out into the cold. Into fresh air. The desperate rush of the black towards her. The night kissing both sides of her face as she tumbles through it... Thorne jumped slightly when the phone rang, the sudden movement sending Elvis careering from the end of the bed. Thorne looked at the clock: 4.35.

Brigstocke wasted no time on pleasantries. "We're getting reports of an incident at an address in Finchley .. ."

Thorne was already out of bed. "Ryan's place?" he said.

"Right. Uniform are on the scene, but there's some confusion. At least one person injured, by al accounts, but beyond that we don't know much."

"Zarif sent the X-Man after Ryan, you think?"

"You know as much as I do, mate .. ."

Thorne was moving quickly around the bedroom, snatching up socks and underpants, grabbing at a shirt. "Are you on your way up there?"

"Tughan's got it," Brigstocke said, 'but you live a lot nearer than he does, so I reckon you'l probably beat him to it."

"Cheers, Russel . I'l cal you when I get there .. ."

Thorne moved into the living room to find that Hendricks was already sitting up in bed. Thorne told him what was happening.

"Want me to come along?" Hendricks asked.

Thorne had gone into the kitchen. He came out shaking his head, gulping down a glass of water.

"You sure? I can be dressed in one minute .. ."

Thorne picked up his jacket, felt in the pockets for his keys. "No point. We don't know exactly what's happened yet," he said. "But I wouldn't bother going back to sleep, if I was you .. ."

The streets were al but deserted as Thorne drove up towards the Archway roundabout and turned north. He knew he might be over the limit to drive, but he felt clear-headed and focused. He was seeing the tail-lights early, anticipating the few cars that were coming at him from side-streets. Thinking a long way ahead.

He chose the route through Highgate, avoiding the road that ran paral el, that would have taken him under Suicide Bridge. The iron footbridge that had long since replaced John Nash's viaduct the original "Archway' was the preferred jumping-off point for many of the city's depressed. Thorne did his best to avoid it when he could, unable to drive beneath it without unconsciously bracing himself for the impact of a body on the roof of the car.

Tonight, he was in a hurry, but with the pages of a dog-eared diary stil dancing in front of his eyes, he would have done almost anything to avoid the bridge.

His mobile rang again as the car flashed across a red light and on to the North Circular. Thorne checked the display, saw "Hol and Mob' flashing .. .

"I know," he said. "I'm on my way to Ryan's place now."

Hol and laughed. "I'l see you there .. ."

If the Zarifs had hit Ryan, there was no way of knowing how things would pan out. Thorne guessed that Stephen would take up the reins, and he didn't seem the sort to forgive and forget.

Then again, from what Thorne had seen, there might be nothing to Bil y's son and heir except a temper. He might go to pieces, leaving Ryan Properties to implode and the Zarifs with new possibilities for expansion. The whole messy business might have started out as a reaction to Ryan's firm moving into their territory, but Thorne couldn't believe that Memet and his brothers would have gone to al the trouble they had without wanting something substantial out of it. Whichever way things went, there were likely to be big changes ahead. Messy changes .. .

Thorne reached the Finchley conservation area within fifteen minutes. He swung the BMW hard around the green and recal ed his encounter there with Bil y Ryan a fortnight before. He didn't know what he was going to find when he reached Ryan's house, but something told him that somebody else was going to be walking the dog for a while.

It was a three-storey detached house at one corner of the green. There were two squad cars parked outside, but no sign of an ambulance. Thorne showed his warrant card to the PC at the door and stepped inside. He was looking at the trail of blood that snaked along the hal carpet when a second uniformed officer appeared in front of him.

"I'm DI Thorne. Where's the ambulance?"

"It came and went away empty, sir. The victim was already dead when they arrived. Dead when they were cal ed, if you ask me .. ."

Thorne wondered if Hendricks had got himself dressed yet. "Where?"

The officer pointed to a doorway down the hal .

Thorne moved towards it, wishing he'd taken some gloves from his boot. "Any ID?"

"Yes, sir. According to Mrs. Ryan, the dead man is her husband, Wil iam John Ryan."

Thorne stepped careful y around the bloodstains that grew bigger as he neared the doorway. The door was ajar. He nudged it al the way open with his shoe.

Ryan was on the kitchen floor, curled close into a corner, one hairy forearm streaked with red and propped up oddly against a cupboard. His white shirt was sopping dark patches soaking through the silk at the shoulder and beneath the arm. The good-sized gash in his neck stil wept a little blood, the lines of grout running red between the terra cotta floor-tiles.

You didn't need a medical degree .. .

Thorne was aware that the uniform had joined him at the door. He glanced at him, then looked back to Bil y Ryan. "So, what's the story?" he asked.

"The story's a bloody odd one. She just walked in and stuck a knife in him, by al accounts. Over and over again."

Thorne swung around, stunned. "His wife kil ed him?"

"No, sir. Not his wife." The uniform turned, nodded towards the doorway from which he'd first appeared. "The other woman .. ."

Thorne pushed past him, moved down the corridor without a word. He could feel the breath rushing from his lungs, could hear a noise that grew louder in his head, like wasps trapped beneath a cup. He knew what he was going to see .. .

The two officers sitting on the sofa stood up, their faces grim-set, when Thorne entered the living room. The woman, handcuffed to one of them at the wrist, had little choice but to rise with him. A WPC on the other side of her stared at Thorne, waiting, her hand clasped tight around Alison Kel y's elbow.

Thorne opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. There was nothing he could think of to say. Alison looked at him for a second or two.

He was sure she gave him a smal nod before she lowered her head.

APRIL

IMMORTAL SKIN

TWENTY-TWO

A couple of years before, while driving to work early one morning, Thorne had been shaken by the sight of a horse-drawn hearse coming at him out of the mist. He'd pul ed over and stared as the thing had rattled by. The breath of the horses had hung in front of their soft mouths like smoke before drifting back through the black feathers of their plumes.

The genuine spookiness of that moment came back to Thorne now as he watched the undertakers slide the coffin from an almost identical glass-sided carriage. If there was one person The genuine spookiness of that moment came back to Thorne now as he watched the undertakers slide the coffin from an almost identical glass-sided carriage. If there was one person he would not wish to be haunted by, it was Bil y Ryan.

St. Pancras Cemetery was the largest in London. While not as wel known as Highgate or Kensal Green, and with fewer grand monuments or famous residents, it was nevertheless an impressive and atmospheric place. Thorne watched as the pal -bearers hefted the coffin on to their shoulders and began to move slowly away from the main avenue. The vast acreage, shared with Islington Cemetery, stood on the site of the notorious Finchley Common, once the kil ing ground of highwaymen Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. It was an appropriate place, too, Thorne decided, for Bil y Ryan to go into the ground and rot.

The hearse could go no further. The beautiful y tended beds near the cemetery entrance had given way quickly to overgrown woodland that in places was virtual y impenetrable. The elegant displays of daffodils, tulips and pansies had been replaced by nettles, brambles and a jungle of ivy that crept across the doorways of burial chambers and grasped the stone wings of smiling angels.

"Pardon me, sir .. ."

Thorne stepped aside to let one of the funeral directors pass. He and three others beside him were hurrying to catch up with their col eagues. They each carried vast floral tributes: crosses, wreaths, arrangements that spel ed out "DAD' and "BILLY'. Dozens more were already being lined up at the roadside. A great day for Interflora .. .

Thorne had glanced at the notice board near the entrance as the procession had swung in through the main gates. There were half a dozen other funerals taking place that morning.

Three were listed as being for babies, with the words "No Mourners' handwritten beneath their typed entries on the timetable.

The Ryan bash was definitely the main event.

Times had certainly changed for the Ryan family and those like them. There was stil a profit in vice and gambling, but the big money was in drugs. It was a dirty business in every sense and had only got dirtier since Johnny Foreigner had moved in and dared to stake a claim. The rule-book had been wel and truly torn up, but, though the good old gorblimey days when you could leave your door open in the East End and vil ains 'only kil ed their own' were long gone, some things remained the same.

They stil loved their mums and they stil loved an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned funeral: curly sandwiches and warm beer and wel -worn tales of plod, porridge and pul ing teeth for fun and profit.

The brown moss was damp and springy underfoot as the cortege made its way towards the centre of the cemetery. The crowd had thinned out. Only close family, friends and certain police officers would be present at graveside. Thorne looked at these people with whom he had spent the best part of the day: sniffing through the moving tributes in the church; processing slowly through Finchley; muttering about how pleased Bil y would have been with the turnout.

Thorne had watched from inside the dark, unmarked Rover at the back of the line. He'd stared as pedestrians had bowed their heads or tipped their hats, unaware to whom they were showing respect. Thorne had found it funny. Respect was, after al , very important to a certain type of businessman .. .

Those carrying Bil y Ryan's body moved awkwardly along the narrow grove, struggling to retain the necessary degrees of dignity and balance as they stepped across gnarled roots and around leaning headstones. One of their number walked two steps ahead of the coffin to push aside overhanging branches. The mourners fol owed gingerly, in single file.