The Burning Girl-4 (39 page)

"Fine," Brookhouse said. "It's probably the only way this can end up, right?"

"That's up to you .. ."

Brookhouse sat up straight. "It's OK with me if it means we can get this shit over with. I'l take a pasting if I have to, but I'l hurt you at the same time, man, I swear." Another nod towards Chamberlain. "She going to have a crack as wel , is she? "Cos I tel you, I've got no fucking problems with giving her a slap as wel ."

The confidence vanished for a second as Chamberlain stood suddenly and stepped towards him, shouting: "No fucking problems with trying to set fire to a young girl at a bus stop, either, have you?"

"No idea what you're on about.. ."

Thorne knew now that the attack in Swiss Cottage had been made to up the stakes, had been the only option left when it looked like Rooker's offer had been rejected. It had certainly done the trick, leaving the police no option but to agree to Rooker's deal.

"That was you, too, wasn't it, Wayne? At that bus stop?" Chamberlain stood, red-faced, above him. "That's attempted murder, and you're looking at the same sentence Rooker got.. ."

Brookhouse stared at her, calmly bringing up his hand to wipe her spittle from his cheek.

"Jack of al trades, aren't you?" Thorne said. "Are you the only one Memet's got who can do al these things? Or has the family blown al its money on hookers and expensive hitmen?"

Brookhouse said nothing .. .

Thorne leaned forward. This was an important one. "Who put the cross on my door, Wayne?"

The answer came at the back end of a yawn. "Piss off.. ."

Thorne's fingers curled into fists at the exact moment that Chamberlain turned to him, suddenly composed again.

"Have you got any handcuffs knocking about?" she asked.

Gordon Rooker was shopping.

He'd spent a lot of money already. He'd splashed out on smart new clothes and several pairs of fashionable shoes. He'd got drinks in for a bar-ful of strangers who were now his closest friends. He'd bought the latest mobile phone, a nice radio and a massive flat-screen TV that he'd seen in a magazine and planned to put in the corner of his new living room. He didn't know where that living room was going to be yet, or how much money he'd have to buy al these things when he real y got the chance, but he relished the planning. He savoured the dream of owning again, the joy of the notes passing through his hands.

Lying on his bunk in the dark, he tried to imagine the future. This was something he'd done countless times before, of course, when there was even a sniff of hope that he might be let out, but this time it was different. He could taste, smel and touch the freedom that was no more than a few days away.

He ate an expensive meal three courses and a fancy bottle of wine in a restaurant that was almost certainly no longer in business. He left a large tip and walked out of there feeling like his shit would taste of sugar .. .

Money had been mentioned back when Ryan was stil alive. It had been part of the deal then, even though they'd been a bit coy about exactly how much. He was likely to cop for a bit less now than he would have done original y, but they stil had to give him something, surely. They couldn't just dump him in a strange town or city, point him towards the nearest dole office and tel him to get on with it, could they?

He'd tried getting some straight answers out of that bastard Thorne, but it had been like trying to piss up a rope. There was stil so much that was unsettled, and it was disconcerting after twenty years of routine, but he could live with it. A release date, in black and white, was al the certainty he needed.

He bought books, dozens of them: spy thril ers and biographies. He'd learned to lose himself in them and looked forward to choosing his own.

He bought a season ticket at Upton Park. Wherever he ended up, he'd sneak back now and again to watch his grandson play.

And he bought himself a woman. Inside, you developed strong wrists, but cash handed over to lie back and watch a tart doing the work could only be money wel spent.

In his cel , Rooker drifted towards sleep thinking about big, soft beds, and about flesh beneath his fingers that was not his own.

THIRTY-ONE

Thorne hadn't known Wayne Brookhouse for long, of course, but this was definitely a look he'd not seen before. The eyes bulged. The face seemed stiff and yel ow as old newspaper.

Thorne knew Chamberlain's features far better, but they were distorted by an expression that to him was equal y as strange.

"This is 50 ... fucking .. . out of order," Brookhouse said. He panted out the words, his head twisting from side to side, the bed shaking as he fought against his restraints.

One wrist was cuffed to the metal bedstead, the other lashed to it with a black tie which Thorne normal y only dug out for funerals. Thorne was sitting across his prisoner's legs, holding tight to the rail at the foot of the bed to avoid being pitched off as Brookhouse struggled and bucked.

Chamberlain finished unbuttoning Brookhouse's shirt and reached towards the bedside table. The appliance she picked up was plugged into a red extension reel, which in turn ran to a socket in the corner of the room. She flicked the cable aside as she took a step towards the head of the bed. "It's funny," she said, 'because, normal y, I bloody hate ironing .. ."

Brookhouse spat out a string of curses. He was doing his very best to appear unafraid, to make the fear look like rage, and he wasn't making a bad job of it. Maybe it would have been harder to disguise if Thorne had been holding the iron. Perhaps, much as he was struggling, Brookhouse found the sight of a woman in her mid-fifties playing amateur-hour torturer faintly ridiculous.

To Thorne, the only ridiculous thing was that Brookhouse wasn't a damn sight more scared. Thorne could see something in Carol Chamberlain's eyes that he'd never seen before. Or maybe something that was usual y there was missing .. .

"Tel us about the X-Man," Thorne said.

Brookhouse screwed his eyes shut. "I can't.. ."

Chamberlain lowered her arm. The face of the iron was no more than six inches above Brookhouse's chest. "This is heavy," she said.

Thorne stared at Chamberlain. They were bus king this. He couldn't tel whether she meant it, so Brookhouse certainly couldn't. "Come on, Wayne .. ."

Brookhouse winced. It was obvious, though the iron was not touching him, that he was starting to feel its heat. "He's gone, he's gone." He began to shout, to gabble his words. "He got out of the country. Al right?"

"Where?" Thorne asked.

"I don't fucking know, I swear. Serbia, maybe. I think he was a Serb .. ."

"Give me a name."

"I don't know his name, I never met him .. ." He tensed as the iron dropped another inch. "Look, I saw him in the cafe once, that's al . He was just sitting on his own in the corner, smiling.

Dark hair, you know, same as they al fucking look. Smile like a film star, loads of fucking teeth, I remember that.. ."

Thorne remembered the man in the car outside his flat. He remembered that smile. He wondered how close he'd come to feeling a blade against his back; the brightness of its edge, teasing before the blackness of the bul et.. .

"When did he leave, Wayne?"

"A while ago. A few weeks after he did the last one. After the copper."

Moloney.. .

So, Thorne had been wrong about Bil y Ryan having Marcus Moloney kil ed. It had been Memet Zarif who had ordered the kil ing, without realising he was targeting an undercover officer.

The murder of Moloney had, in Thorne's mind, been one more thing Ryan had paid for with his own death. One more thing that had justified Thorne tel ing Alison Kel y what he'd told her.

Now, Thorne had to take Moloney's death off that list, but it didn't make much difference. There were stil plenty of things Bil y Ryan had needed to pay for ... "If he's gone," Thorne said,

'who put the "X" on my door?"

"It could have been anyone." The sweat left a stain on Thorne's sheets when Brookhouse turned his head. "It was just to put the shits up you a bit, that's al ."

"Who ordered the kil ings?" Chamberlain asked. "Was it Memet?"

Brookhouse shook his head.

"Is that a "no"?" Chamberlain moved the iron to her left hand, shook out the right for a few seconds, then moved it back. "Or a "no comment" .. .?"

Thorne steadied himself as Brookhouse's knees jerked up into his backside. He rode out the struggle, thinking about the dead and about those who had taken money to arrange their deaths. Those for whom knives and guns were the tools of their trade: the butcher who had murdered Mickey Clayton, Marcus Moloney and the others; the man who had shot Muslum and Hanya Izzigil; whoever who had gunned down Francis Cul en and the two stil unidentified immigrants who had been dragged from the back of his lorry and had tried to run for their lives.

The men who'd got away with it.

Like a man whose tools had been a naked flame, and a can of lighter fuel .. .

Thorne looked at Brookhouse, wondering just how close he might have got to Gordon Rooker. Rooker probably trusted him a damn sight more than he'd ever trust a police officer.

Thorne asked himself how much Rooker might have had to reveal, how much he'd had to give up before his arrangements with Memet Zarif were finalised. It couldn't hurt to ask.

"Who burned Jessica Clarke, Wayne?"

Thorne saw something flicker, just for a second, in Brookhouse's eyes. A spark of something, that he immediately did his best to hide, like a smal boy caught stealing and jamming the booty far down into his pocket. Thorne glanced at Chamberlain and knew immediately that she'd seen it, too.

"You know, don't you?" she said.

Thorne watched as Chamberlain let the iron fal a little further. He could see the tendons stretching on the inside of her forearm as she took the weight of it, the concentration on her face as she moved it, as slowly as she could.

"You won't.. ." Brookhouse said.

Thorne watched, compel ed, as Chamberlain reached down and turned the dial on the iron to its highest setting. A drop of water fel from it on to Brookhouse's chest. He flinched as if it were boiling.

"You're imagining the pain as something quick," Chamberlain said. "A moment of agony as I press the iron down and then release it. Just a second or two of hissing and then it's over, right? OK, I want you to think about how it would be if I let the iron go. If I just left it sitting there on your chest. Sizzling on your chest, Wayne. How long do you think it would take to start sinking in .. .?"

When Brookhouse took his eyes from the iron and looked at Chamberlain's face he started to talk. "Jesus, how fucking thick are you people? There was no other man. There was only me, pretending to be him."

"Pretending to be the man who real y burned Jessica .. .?"

"Him. Rooker. Rooker was the man."

And Thorne could see it: bright as a flame and certain as a scar. In the walk and in the fucking wink of him, and in the cunt's fingers moving through his greasy, yel ow hair. In the tongue that slid across a gold tooth and in that sly smile before Gordon Rooker bent to snap the lid from his tobacco tin ... Thorne had known from the moment he'd recognised Brookhouse that Rooker had been lying. But not about this. It was obvious that Brookhouse couldn't have burned Jessica, but Thorne had never presumed that the man making the cal s the man on Chamberlain's front lawn had been the real attacker. He'd always thought that there was someone else, and that Rooker had probably known who he was .. .

"Tom .. .?"

Everything had been built upon the belief, his belief that Rooker had been innocent. Wasn't it him that had put the pressure on Rooker in the first place, forced him to admit that he wasn't the one?

Chamberlain had raised the iron and stood looking at him, waiting for something. Guidance, perhaps.

The vast, dreadful stone of his own stupidity crashed onto the floor of Thorne's gut. Its weight exactly equal ed the elation of knowing, of final y getting the name. He felt hol ow and bloated; cancel ed out.. .

Almost every single thing that Rooker had told them was true. He'd only changed one, tiny fact. When Bil y Ryan had asked him to kil Alison Kel y, he'd said yes.

"He was perfect.. ."

Chamberlain stil hadn't got it. "What?"

Rooker had almost certainly been involved in the earlier attempt to get rid of Kevin Kel y. Bil y Ryan, as Kel y's number two, had a very good reason to want Rooker dead. It made him the ideal choice to carry out a contract on Kel y's daughter .. .

"Maybe Ryan offered to lift a contract he had out on Rooker," Thorne said. "In return for Rooker doing him one smal favour."

Chamberlain looked unconvinced, but it didn't real y matter either way. What was beyond dispute was Rooker's fear of Bil y Ryan, a fear based on the knowledge that Ryan did not forgive those who fucked up. It had driven Rooker to confess, to condemn himself to prison and to a life spent with only the fear itself for company. It grew with every attack, with every beating in the showers, until it dictated everything Rooker did. Fear was what drove him. It was what eventual y gave shape to a scheme that might protect him when he final y came to start life again outside prison.

Which he would be doing just a few days from now .. .

Thorne decided that Brookhouse could kick as much as he wanted. He swung his legs around and slid off the bed. "What's Rooker's arrangement with Memet Zarif?"

Again something flashed in Brookhouse's eyes. This time, there was no mistaking genuine terror.

"A lot more scared of Memet than he is of us," Chamberlain said.

Thorne watched Brookhouse's eyes dart to meet his own. He saw the tears begin. He saw the hope that their meaning might not be understood. Thorne began to suspect that he may have been wrong about which of the Zarif brothers was pul ing the strings.

"Not Memet?" Thorne asked.

There was a moan which seemed to come from Brookhouse's bel y as he started to thrash around on the bed.

"Hassan .. .?"

Thorne repeated the name, raising his voice over the noise Brookhouse was making to blank him out. There was stil no response. Thorne nodded to Chamberlain, who moved the iron back into position. "Who is it, Wayne?"