The Burning Girl-4 (9 page)

Rooker's head dropped and stayed down as he stubbed out what was left of his cigarette. He ground the butt into the ashtray until there appeared to be nothing left of it at al . For a moment, Thorne wondered if he'd palmed it, like a magician. When Rooker final y looked up, the cockiness had gone. The lines in his face had deepened. He seemed suddenly tense.

He looked like a frightened old man.

"I didn't burn the girl," he said. "It wasn't me."

Thorne saw Chamberlain's hands clench into fists on the table, white across her knuckles as she spoke. "Don't piss me about. Don't you bloody dare piss me about.. ."

Rooker licked his lips and repeated himself.

And Thorne believed him. It real y was that simple. Al that struck him as odd was that Rooker seemed so reluctant, so hesitant about his denial. Surely things were arse about face.

Thorne remembered how, a week before, the man sitting opposite him had admitted to setting a fourteen-year-old girl on fire as easily as he might own up to nicking lead off a roof.

Now, he was taking it back, denying he'd had anything to do with it, and it was as if it were the hardest thing in the world.

It was like he was confessing his innocence.

Dave Hol and and Andy Stone got along, but no more than that. A year or so ago, when they'd first begun working together, Hol and had resented Stone's easy charm, and bridled at his place as the young pretender pretender to what he was never sure feeling threatened. They'd kicked along wel enough since then, though there were stil times when the ease with which his fel ow DC told a joke or wore a suit made him want to spit.

"I feel like shit warmed up," Stone said.

Hol and looked up from the computer screen and smiled. "Caning it again last night, were you?"

"Stil sweating Carlsberg and Sea Breezes."

Hol and raised an eyebrow. "Cocktails?"

"I was with a very classy lady, mate .. ."

Hol and was at least self-aware enough to admit that now, with a baby to think about, his resentment had distil ed into plain, old-fashioned jealousy.

"I bet I stil had more sleep than you, though," Stone said.

"Right.. ."

Hol and had more or less grown used to the physical fatigue. He could happily nod off at pretty much any time, and was not beyond catnapping in the Gents' after a real y bad night. It was mental y that he was stil finding things tough. There was a fuzziness about his thinking these days, a reluctance to go in any direction other than the path of least resistance. There was a time, back before the baby and the rough patch they went through even before that, when Sophie would badger him about being the kind of straightforward, head-down, career copper that his old man had been. She didn't have to bother these days, and she knew it. Hol and didn't have the mental energy to do a great deal else.

And there was the way the baby made him feel: the sheer, fucking size of the love and the terror. Looking down at her sometimes, he could feel his heart swel and his sphincter tighten at the same time.

Hol and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He could remember so vividly the first time he'd walked into aCID suite. He could recal virtual y every moment of that first case he'd worked on with Tom Thorne. He saw in perfect detail the clothes he'd been wearing on a particular occasion in Thorne's car, or in the office when they got a break in the case. It was only the excitement of it, which he knew had been intense, that seemed suddenly distant and hard to imagine .. .

"Where's that plum from SO7, anyway?" asked Stone. "He's never here when he's needed, is he?"

They were going through the paperwork and computer data relating to what had quickly emerged as the less than legitimate business activities of Muslum Izzigil's video shop. When one or two members of Brigstocke's team had expressed surprise that video piracy was stil big business, they had been subjected to Tughan at his most patronising: "Five thousand copies from one stolen master tape, knocked out at a couple of quid a pop. You might be looking at half a mil ion per year per film. It's not quite up there with heroin, but there's a damn sight less risk and you don't tend to get put away for so long."

Some, notably Thorne, had remained sceptical. Then again, Thorne was sceptical about everything that came out of Tughan's mouth, and there was certainly evidence that pointed towards a sophisticated smuggling operation. There was no such evidence leading them to whoever was running it; whoever Muslum Izzigil among many others in al likelihood had been fronting for; whoever had reacted so aggressively when Bil y Ryan had tried to muscle in on their territory.

Whoever was paying the X-Man .. .

There was a DC from SO7 who, theoretical y at least, was supposed to be working with Hol and and Stone, but whenever there were paper-trails to slog through, urgent meetings would materialise back at Barkingside, or mysterious sources would suddenly need chasing up on the other side of London.

"They're taking the piss, aren't they?"

Hol and found it hard to disagree with Stone's assessment. He was about to chip in with a comment of his own when something on the screen caught his eye. He stared at it for a few seconds, scrol ed back to check something else, then held up a hand, beckoning Stone from the other side of the room. "Come and look at this, Andy."

"What?"

"A name." He highlighted two words on the screen for Stone to look at, moved to a different page and highlighted the same words again.

Stone stared down at the screen from behind his shoulder. "Just a name," Hol and said. "Nothing to tie it to anything dodgy, as yet."

"There wouldn't be. These fuckers are too clever for that."

"Maybe .. ."

"Definitely. We won't catch 'em with Windows 2000, I can tel you that."

Hol and grunted. "Wel , whoever they are, their name just keeps cropping up .. ."

"I was a dead man," Rooker said.

Chamberlain leaned back in her chair, waiting. Thorne moved in the opposite direction. "Don't get existential on us, Gordon. Keep it simple and keep it honest. Al right?"

"I was fucked, al right? That simple enough? Whoever did the girl made it look like me. I was known for stuff like that, wasn't I? For using lighter fuel.. ."

'"Whoever did the girl". I take it you can't tel us who that was?"

"I can tel you who paid for it. I can tel you whose idea it was to kil a kid."

"We knew that. We knew it was one of the other firms who .. ."

"You knew fuck al ."

Next to him, Chamberlain sat stock stil , but Thorne could feel the tension radiating off her. He asked the question slowly: "So, who was it then?"

This was Rooker's big moment. "It was Bil y Ryan. That's why I can give him to you. Bil y Ryan put the contract out on Kevin Kel y's little girl-'

A pause, but nothing too dramatic before Thorne asked the obvious question: "Why?"

"It wasn't complicated. He was ambitious. He wanted to take on the smal er firms, but Kel y wouldn't have it. He thought things were fine as they were. Bil y reckoned Kevin was losing his edge."

"So he tried to take over?"

"Bil y wanted what Kevin had. More than Kevin had. He'd tried to get him out of the way earlier but fucked it up."

Thorne remembered Chamberlain's gangland history lesson: the failed attempt on Kevin Kel y's life a few months before the incident at the school. "Were you anything to do with that, Gordon?"

"I'm not getting into anything else. Point is, the Kel y family thought I was."

"So, Bil y targets his boss's daughter, but whoever he's paying tries to kil the wrong girl."

"Yeah, that got fucked up as wel , but it stil worked. Kevin Kel y goes mental, wipes out anybody who's so much as looked at him funny, then hands the whole fucking business over to Bil y Ryan and walks away. It couldn't have gone better."

Thorne saw Rooker flinch slightly when Chamberlain spoke. "I'm not sure Jessica Clarke or her family would have seen things in quite the same way."

"How come you know any of this?" Thorne asked.

"Because Bil y Ryan asked me to do it, didn't he? I was the perfect person to ask. I'd done a bit of freelance stuff for one or two people, a few frighteners and what have you .. ."

"You're tel ing us that Ryan offered you money to kil Kevin Kel y's daughter."

"A lot of money .. ."

"And you turned the job down."

"Fuck, yes. I don't hurt kids."

Chamberlain groaned. "Jesus, this stuff makes me sick. It always comes down to this "noble gangster" bol ocks. "We only hurt our own", and "it was only business", and "anybody who touches kids should be strung up". He'l be tel ing us how much he loves his mum in a minute .. ."

Rooker laughed, winked at her.

The room wasn't warm, and up to this point Thorne had kept his leather jacket on. Now he stood and dropped it across the back of his chair. Chamberlain stayed where she was. Thorne guessed that her smart, grey business suit was new. He thought she might have had her hair done as wel , cut a little shorter and highlighted, but he'd said nothing.

"I hope this isn't an obvious question," Thorne said. "But why did you confess?"

"Bil y Ryan made sure that every face in London thought I'd done it. I was wel stitched up. That lighter they found by the fence was left there deliberately." He looked at Chamberlain. "You saw what Kevin Kel y did to the people he guessed were responsible. Imagine what he'd have done to me. I had Kel y after me for what he thought I'd tried to do to his Alison, and Bil y after my blood because I was the only person who knew who'd real y set it al up." He turned back to Thorne. I was a marked man."

"So, prison was a preferable option, was it?"

Rooker took the lid off his tobacco tin. He put the cigarette together without looking down, and spoke as if he were trying to explain the mysteries of calculus. "I thought about running, pissing off to Spain or further, but the idea of spending years looking over my shoulder, shitting myself every time the doorbel went.. ."

Chamberlain shook her head. She glanced at Thorne and then looked back to Rooker. "I'm not buying this. You'd be just as much of a marked man in prison."

Rooker put down his half-finished rol -up. "Do you think I didn't know that?" He reached down and gathered up the bottom of the bib and the sweatshirt underneath, then hoisted them up above sagging, hairy nipples to reveal a jagged scar running across his ribs. "See? I was a marked man from the moment I walked into Gartree, and Belmarsh, and this place .. ."

"So why not just take your chances outside?"

"It's on my terms in here. I'm not scared of it." He pul ed down the sweatshirt, smoothed the bib across his bel y. "On the outside it could be anyone who's on a big pay-day to take you out. It's the bloke who wants to know the time. The bloke taking a piss next to you, asking you for a light, whatever. In here, I know who it's going to be. I can see it coming and I can protect myself. I've had a couple of scrapes, but I'm stil breathing. That's how I know I did the right thing."

Thorne watched Rooker's yel ow tongue snake out and moisten the edge of the Rizla. He rol ed the cigarette, slid it between his lips and lit up. "You did the right thing by Bil y Ryan as wel . You never grassed him up."

"I wasn't a complete fucking idiot."

Chamberlain drummed her fingers on the table. "That "honour among thieves" shite again."

"So why now?" Thorne asked.

"Listen, it was you who came to see me, remember. Started me thinking about this. Started people round here whispering."

' Why now, Rooker?

Rooker removed the cigarette from his mouth, held it between a nicotine-stained finger and thumb. "I've had enough. I'm breathing, but the air tastes of stale sweat and other men's shit.

I'm arguing with rapists and perverts about whose turn it is to change channel or play fucking pool next. I've got a grandson who's signing forms with West Ham in a few weeks. I'd like to see him play." He blinked slowly, took a drag, flicked away the ash. "It's time."

Chamberlain stood up and moved towards the door. "That's al very moving, and I'm sure it's just the kind of stuff the parole board loves to hear."

Rooker stretched. "Not so far, it isn't. That's why I need a bit of help .. ."

"I stil don't see why you confessed to the attempted murder of Jessica Clarke. You could have got yourself safely banged up by putting yourself in the frame for any number of things.

That security manager you tied to a chair and set light to, for instance. Why claim that you tried to kil a fourteen-year-old girl?"

Thorne had the answer. "Because you're less of a marked man on a VP wing. Right, Gordon? You're harder to get at."

Rooker stared, and smoked.

There was a knock, and the prison officer put his head round the door, offered tea. Thorne accepted graceful y and Chamberlain declined. The officer bristled a little at Rooker's request for a cup but disappeared quietly enough at the nod from Thorne.

"So, who was it?" Chamberlain said.

Thorne knew that she was thinking about the letters, about the cal s, about the man she'd thought was smiling up at her from her front garden.

"If it wasn't you who took Bil y Ryan's money, you must have some idea who did."

Rooker shook his head. "Look, I haven't got a clue who this nutter is who's been pestering you .. ."

"Who burned Jessica Clarke?" Chamberlain asked.

"I haven't got the faintest, and that's the truth. I don't know anyone who would have done it. Who could have. Over the years, I've started to wonder if maybe it was Bil y himself.. ."

They sat in the car for a minute, saying nothing. When Thorne leaned forward to turn the key, Chamberlain suddenly spoke.

"What did you make of al that?"

Thorne glanced at her, exhaled loudly. "Where do you want to start?"

"How about with Rooker getting himself put away for something he didn't do?"

"I've heard similar stories once or twice," Thorne said. "I suppose if you've got a head case like Bil y Ryan on your back .. ."

"Twenty years, though?"