The Burning Girl-4 (35 page)

Tughan spoke to the pin board scratched at a smal mark on the lapel of his brown suit. "They divvy up the men and they dole out the money as they see fit. It goes where they think it's most needed, and where they think it might get a return. It's not rocket science, Thorne .. ."

"So, which deserving cause came out of the hat this time?"

"We're shifting direction slightly, looking towards vice. The Job wants to crack down on the foreign gangs moving into the game: Russians, Albanians, Lithuanians. It's getting nasty, and when one of these gangs wants to hit another operation they tend to go for the soft targets. They kil the girls .. ."

Thorne shrugged. "So, Memet Zarif and Stephen Ryan just go about their business?"

"Nobody's giving them "Get out of Jail Free" cards."

"Talking of which .. ."

"Gordon Rooker wil be released by the beginning of next week."

Thorne had figured as much. "Right. He's one of those loose ends you were talking about."

"Rooker can give us names, a few decent ones, and we're going to take them."

"Define "decent"."

"Look, there'l be better results, but there'l be plenty of worse ones.

Right now, this is what we've decided to settle for." Even Thorne's sarcastic grunt failed to set Tughan off. He'd remained remarkably calm throughout the entire exchange. "You're a footie fan, right? How would you feel if your team played beautiful stuff al bloody season and won fuck al ?"

If Thorne had felt like lightening the atmosphere, he might have asked Tughan if he'd ever seen Spurs play. But he didn't. "You won't be offended if I don't hang around for the emotional goodbye later on?" he said.

"I'd be amazed if you did .. ."

Thorne pushed himself away from the door, took half a step.

"I'm the same as you," Tughan said. "Real y. I want to get them al , but sometimes .. . no, most of the bloody time, you've got to be content with just some of them. Not always the right ones, either -nowhere near, in fact but what can you do?"

Thorne completed the step, carried on taking them.

Thinking: No, not the same as me.

He'd found nothing suitable in Kentish Town and fared little better in Highgate Vil age, where there seemed to be a great many antique shops and precious little else. He'd carried on up to Hampstead and spent half an hour failing to find a parking space. Now, he was trying his luck in Archway, where it was easy enough to park, but where he wasn't exactly spoiled for choice in other ways.

Having decided with no idea what else to get for a seven-month-old baby to buy clothes, Thorne couldn't real y explain why he was wandering aimlessly around a chemist's. As it went, it was no ordinary chemist's and had quickly become Thorne's favourite shop after he'd discovered it a few months earlier. Yes, you could buy shampoo and get a prescription fil ed, but it also sold, for no reason Thorne could fathom, catering-sized packs of peanuts past their sel -by date, motor oil, crisps, and other stuff not seen before or since in a place you normal y went for pil s and pile cream. It was also ridiculously cheap, as if the chemist were just trying to turn a quick profit on items that had been delivered there by mistake. Thorne might have wondered if somewhere there wasn't a grocers with several unwanted boxes of condoms and corn-plasters, if it weren't for the fact that there were a number of such multi-purpose outlets springing up in the area.

Maybe smal places could no longer afford to speciali se Maybe shopkeepers just wanted to keep life interesting. Whatever the reason, Thorne knew a number of places where the astute shopper could kil several birds with one stone, even if it might not otherwise have occurred to him to do so. One of his favourites was a shop that sold fruit and vegetables .. . and wool. Another boldly announced itself as 'currency exchange and delicatessen'. Thorne could never quite picture anyone asking for 'fifty quid's worth of escudos and a slice of carrot cake' and was sure the place was a front for some dodgy scheme or other. He remembered a smal shop near the Nag's Head which had seemed to sel nothing much of anything during its odd opening hours. The owners, a couple of cheery Irish guys, appeared uninterested in any conventional definition of 'stock', and no one was hugely surprised when the place closed down the day after the IRA cease fire

It was easy for Thorne to imagine places and people as other than they seemed. It was in his nature and borne of experience. It was also, for better or worse, his job.

In the chemist's, Thorne final y realised that, though disposable nappies would be useful, they were real y no kind of a present. He looked at his watch: the shops would be shutting soon.

After a few words with the woman behind the counter, who he was seriously starting to fancy, Thorne stepped out on to the street.

He stood for a minute, and then another, letting people move past him as the day began to wind down. It wasn't that he had any grand moral notions about serving these people. He didn't imagine for one second that he, or the thousands like him, could real y protect them.

But he had to side with those of them who drew a line .. .

He knew from bitter experience that some of them might one day be his to hunt down. Some would think nothing of hurting a child. Some would wound, rape or kil to get whatever it was they needed.

That was a fact, plain and terrible.

Most, though, would know where to stop. They would draw a line at round about the same place he did. Most would stop at cheating the tax man or driving home after a few drinks too many. Most would go no further than a raised voice or a bit of push and shove to blow away the cobwebs. Most had a threshold of acceptable behaviour, of pain and fury, of disgust at cruelty that was close to his own.

These were the people Thorne would stand with.

The lives of these people, to a greater or lesser extent were being affected every minute of every day by the Ryans and the Zarifs of the world. By those who crossed the line for profit.

Some would never even know it, handing over a cab fare or the money for a burger without any idea whose pockets they were lining. Whose execution they might unwittingly be funding.

Some would be hurt, directly or through a loved one, their existence bumped out of alignment in the time it took to lose a child to drugs. Twisted by those few moments spent signing the credit agreement. Smashed out of existence in the second it took to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They worked in banks and offices and on buses. They had children, and got cancer, and believed in God or television. They were wonderful, and shit, and they did not deserve to have their lives sul ied while Thorne and others like him were being told to step away.

Thorne thought about the woman he fancied in the chemist's and the bloke who lived in the flat upstairs, and the man passing him at that very second yanking a dog behind himself. He remembered the Jesus woman and the reluctant security guard who'd thrown her out of the supermarket.

I suppose there are worse crimes.

The lives of these people were being marked in too many places by dirty fingers ... He turned as the chemist stepped out of his shop and pressed a button. They both watched as a reinforced metal gril e rol ed noisily down over the door and window. Thorne looked at his watch again and remembered that the Woolworth's across the road sold a few kids' clothes.

He couldn't remember whether it closed at five-thirty or six.

TWENTY-SIX

Chamberlain stood in the doorway watching Jack at the cooker. She loved her husband for his attention to detail and routine. He wore the same blue-striped apron whether he was making a casserole or knocking up cheese on toast. His movements were precise, the wooden spoon scraping out a rhythm against the bottom of the pan.

He caught her looking at him and smiled. "About twenty minutes. Al right, love?"

She nodded and walked slowly back into the living room.

The paper on the wal s came from English Heritage a reproduction of a Georgian design they'd had to save up to afford. The carpet was deep and spotless, the colour of red wine. She let herself drop back on to the perfectly plumped cushions and tried to remember that this was the sort of room she'd always dreamed of; the sort of room she'd imagined when she'd been sitting in dirty, smoke-fil ed boxes trying to drag the truth out of murderers.

She stared at the water colour above the fireplace, the over-elaborate frame suitably distressed. She'd pictured it or something very like it years before, while she'd stared at the photos of a victim; of the body parts from a variety of angles.

She pul ed her stockinged feet under her and told herself that these wal s she'd once coveted so much weren't closing in quite as quickly as they had been.

What had Thorne said?

"Bil y Ryan. Jessica Clarke. You've got to let it go?

She was trying, but her hands were sticky .. .

As it went, she knew that Ryan would quickly become little more than the name on a headstone.

She could keep on trying, but Jessica would always be with her.

And the man who'd stood looking up at her bedroom window the flames dancing across the darkness of his face would become, if he were not actual y the man who had burned Jessica, a man who they were never going to catch. In her mind, he was already the one who had touched the flame to a blue cotton skirt, al those years before.

In the absence of cold, hard fact, imagination expanded to fil the spaces. It created truths al of its own.

Jack cal ed through from the kitchen, "Shal we open a bottle of wine, love?"

Fuck it, Chamberlain thought.

"Sod it," she said. "Let's go mad .. ."

Thorne stared at the screen, his eyes itchy after an hour spent trawling the Net for useless rubbish. He wrote down the name of an actor he'd never heard of and reached for his coffee .. .

His father had cal ed while Thorne was stil in Woolworth's, struggling to make a decision.

"I'm in trouble," Jim Thorne had said.

"What?"

Thorne must have sounded worried. The impatience on the face of the girl behind the til had been replaced, for a few seconds, by curiosity.

"Some items for lists I'm putting together, maybe for a ... thing. Bol ocks. Thing people read, get in fucking libraries. A book. Other stuff, trivia questions driving me mental .. ."

"Dad, can I talk to you about this in a few ?"

"I was awake until three this morning trying to get some of these names. I've got a pen by the bed, you know, to jot things down. You saw it when you were here. Remember?"

Thorne had noticed that the girl on the til was staring at her watch. It was already five minutes after closing time and there were no other customers in the shop. He was stil holding two different outfits in his arms, unable to decide between them.

He had smiled at the girl. "Sorry .. ."

"Do you remember seeing the pen or not?" His father had started to shout.

The girl had nodded curtly towards the baby clothes Thorne was carrying. Her eyes had flicked across to an angry-looking individual standing by the doors, waiting to lock up.

"I'd better take both of them," Thorne had said. He'd handed over the clothes, returned to his father. "Yes, I remember the pen. It's a nice one .. ."

His father had spat down the phone. "Last night the bloody thing was useless. Needs a ... new pen. Needs a new bit putting in. Fuck, you know, the thin bit with fresh ink you put in ...

when the fucker runs out.. ."

"Refil .. ."

"I need to go to a stationer's. There's a Ryman in the town."

The girl had held out a hand. Thorne had put a twenty-pound note into it. "I'l cal you when I get home, Dad, al right? I can go online later and get al the answers."

"Where are you now?"

"Woolworth's .. ."

"Like the kil er .. ." his father had said.

"What?"

"It was the Woolworth's Kil er who did Sutcliffe in Broadmoor. Remember? He'd kil ed the manager of a Woolworth's somewhere, which is how he got the name, and then, when him and the Ripper were inside together, he stabbed the evil fucker in the eye. With a pen, funnily enough. A fucking pen!"

"Dad .. ."

"We got your bike from Woolworth's in 1973. Can't remember who did the Christmas advert that year. Always big stars doing the Woolies Christmas ads, you know TV stars, comedians, what have you. Always the same slogan. "That's the wonder of Woolworth's!" Fucking annoying tune went with it, an' al . I'l bet Peter bastard Sutcliffe wasn't singing that when the pen was going in and out of his eye."

Then his father had started to sing. '"That's the wonder of Woolworth's

The girl behind the counter had al but thrown Thorne's change at him. The security guard by the door had held the door wide and glared.

'".. . that's the wonder of good old Woolies .. .""

Thorne had just listened .. .

He'd bought the computer cheaply the year before, stuck it on a table underneath the window in the living room. One of the old-model iMacs, it was 'snow' white when he'd bought it, but was now distinctly grubby. Thorne listened to the low hum from the monitor and thought about the inside of his father's head.

Did the words get lost somewhere between the brain and the mouth? If they made it out of the brain, did they just take a wrong turn? If his father could hear the word he wanted inside his head, if he could see it perfectly wel , then the frustration must have been unbearable. He imagined his father as a tiny, impotent figure, raging inside his own skul . He imagined him standing next to a pair of enormous speakers that blared out the word he was unable to speak. Dwarfed by its il uminated letters, fifty feet high.

Swearing and shouting and a certain amount of public embarrassment under the circumstances, they were the very least you could expect. Jesus, Thorne was amazed his father hadn't smashed his own brains out against a wal . Bent down to finger the grey goo as it leaked from his head, and tried to pick those elusive words out of the soup .. .

A new page was downloading. Thorne waited for a list to appear on the screen, then scribbled down the names of the ten tal est buildings in the world. He'd cal his father in the morning, give him al the useless information he'd asked for.