‘Falls are top of the list, if I remember rightly. “Impact accidents”, they’re called. Electrocution’s another good one. Fire, obviously. Choking, suffocation, DIY incidents…’
‘Why didn’t you give them my number to call?’
His father continued to count off, but began mouthing the words silently. After half a minute or so he stopped, and went back to poking about among the coils and circuits scattered across the table.
Thorne watched him for a while. ‘I’ll stay the night,’ he said.
The old man grinned and got to his feet. He reached into his pocket and produced a crumpled five-pound note. He held it out, waved it at Thorne. ‘Here you go. Here’s some…bugger…’ He closed his eyes, struggling to find the word. ‘A piece of the stuff people buy things with…’
‘What do I want money for?’
‘Money!’
‘What do I want it for?’
‘To nip down the road and get us some chips. I still haven’t had my fucking dinner yet…’
He lay awake in the dark, thinking about the burning girl.
He’d never really stopped thinking about her, for one reason or another, not for any significant length of time, but lately, for obvious reasons, she’d been on his mind a great deal. The colours and the smells, which had understandably faded over the years, were suddenly more vivid, more pungent than they had been at any time since it had all happened. Not that he’d had much more than a second or two back then to take it all in. Once the flames had taken hold, he’d had to be away sharpish, down that hill towards the spot where he’d parked the car. He’d moved almost as quickly as the girl herself.
The rest of it–the girl’s face and what have you–had been filled in afterwards. He’d seen it, swathed in bandages, splashed across every front page and every television screen. Later, he’d seen what she looked like with the bandages off; it was impossible to tell how her face had been before.
It was funny, he thought. Ironic. If he had seen her face that day at the playground, he would have realised she wasn’t the one. Afterwards, of course, nobody would mistake her for anyone else ever again.
He drifted, eventually, towards sleep. Thoughts giving way to fuzzy pictures and feelings…
He remembered her arms flailing in the instant before she began to run, as though it were nothing more serious than a wasp. He remembered the sound of her shoes on the playground as he turned away. He remembered feeling like such a fucking idiot when he realised she was entirely the wrong girl.
Thorne spent most of the night writhing across nylon sheets, sinking into the ludicrously soft mattress in his father’s spare room and dragging back the duvet which had slid away from him down the natural slope of the bed. He felt like he’d only just got off to sleep when his phone rang. He checked his watch and saw that it was already gone nine-thirty. At the same instant that he began to panic, he remembered that he’d called Brigstocke the night before to tell him what was going on. They wouldn’t be expecting him at the office.
He reached down towards where the phone lay chirping on top of his clothes. His neck ached and his arms were freezing.
It was Holland. ‘I’m in a video shop in Wood Green,’ he said. ‘We’ve got two bodies, still warm. And that’s not the title of one of the videos…’
FOUR
The uniformed constable who’d been first on the scene was sitting at a small table in a back room, next to a teenage boy whom Thorne guessed was Muslum Izzigil’s son. Thorne stared across at them from the doorway. He couldn’t decide which of the two looked the younger, or the most upset.
Holland stood at Thorne’s shoulder. ‘The boy ran out into the street when he found them. Constable Terry was having breakfast in the caff opposite. He heard the boy screaming.’
Thorne nodded and closed the door quietly. He turned and moved back into the shop, where screens had been hastily erected around the bodies. The scene of crime team moved with a practised efficiency, but it seemed to Thorne that the usual banter–the dark humour, the craíc–was a little muted. Thorne had hunted serial killers; he had known the atmosphere at crime scenes to be charged with respect, even fear, at the presentation, the offering up, of the latest victim. This was not what they were looking at now. This was almost certainly a contract killing. Still, there was an odd feeling in the room. Perhaps it was the fact that there were two bodies. That they had been husband and wife.
‘Where was the boy when it happened?’
‘Upstairs,’ Holland said. ‘Getting ready for school. He didn’t hear anything.’
Thorne nodded. The killer had used a silencer. ‘This one’s a little less showy than the X-Man,’ he said.
Muslum Izzigil was sitting against the wall between a display of children’s videos and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Lara Croft. His head was cocked to one side, his eyes half-open and popping. A thin line of blood ran from the back of his head, along freshly shaved jowls, soaking pink into the collar of a white nylon shirt. The body of his wife lay, face downwards, across his legs. There was very little blood, and only the small, blackened hole behind her ear told the story of what had happened. Or at least, some of it…
Which one had he killed first? Did he make the husband watch while his wife was executed? Did the wife die only because she had tried to save her husband?
Thorne looked up from the bodies. He noticed the small camera in the corner of the shop. ‘Too much to hope for, I suppose?’
‘Far too much,’ Holland said. ‘The recorder’s not exactly hard to find. It’s over there underneath the counter. The shooter took the tape with him.’
‘One to show the grandchildren…’
Holland knelt and pointed with a biro to the back of the dead woman’s neck. ‘Twenty-two, d’you reckon?’
Thorne could see where the blood was gathering then. It encircled her neck like a delicate necklace, but it was pooling, sticky between her chin and the industrial grey carpet. ‘Looks like it,’ he said. He was already moving across the shop towards the back room. Towards what was going to be a difficult conversation…
Constable Terry got to his feet when Thorne came through the door. Thorne waved him back on to his chair. ‘What’s the boy’s name?’
The boy answered the question himself: ‘Yusuf Izzigil.’
Thorne put him at about seventeen. Probably taking A levels. He’d gelled his short, black hair into spikes and was making a decent enough job of growing a moustache. The hysteria which Holland had mentioned, which had first alerted the police, had given way to a stillness. He was quiet now, and seemingly composed, but the tears were still coming just as quickly, each one pushed firmly away with the heel of a hand the instant it brimmed and began to fall.
He started to speak again, without being asked. ‘I was getting ready upstairs. My father always came down just after eight o’clock, to deal with the tapes that had been returned in the overnight box. My mother came down to help him get things set up once she’d put the breakfast things away.’ He spoke well, and slowly, with no trace of an accent. Thorne realised suddenly that the maroon sweater and grey trousers were a uniform, and guessed that the boy went to a private school.
‘So you heard nothing?’ Thorne asked. ‘No raised voices?’
The boy shook his head. ‘I heard the bell go on the door when someone opened it, but that isn’t unusual.’
‘It was a bit early, though, wasn’t it?’
‘We often have customers who come in on their way to work, to pick up a film that’s been returned the night before.’
‘Anything else…?’
‘I was in the bathroom after that. There was water running. If not, I might have heard something.’ His hand went to his face, pressed and wiped. ‘They had silencers on their guns, didn’t they?’
It was an odd thing to say. Thorne wondered if perhaps the boy knew more than he was telling, but decided it was probably down to seeing far too many of the shitty British gangster movies his father kept
on the shelves.
‘What makes you think there was more than one of them, Yusuf?’
‘A week ago two boys came in. About the same age as me, my father said. They tried to scare him.’
‘What did they do?’
‘Pathetic stuff, threats. Dog mess in a video case. Throwing a litter bin through the window.’ He pointed towards the shopfront, where a thick black curtain now ran across the plate-glass window and front door, rigged up to hide the activity within from the eyes of passers-by. ‘There was a letter first. My father ignored it.’
‘Did he keep the letter?’
‘My mother will have filed it somewhere. She never throws anything away.’
The boy realised what he’d said, and blinked slowly. The hand that went to his face stayed there a little longer this time. Thorne remembered the sign he’d seen stuck to the front of the till: You are being recorded. ‘Did your father get it on tape? The incident with the two boys?’
‘I should think so. He recorded everything, but it won’t be there any more.’
Thorne asked the question with a look.
‘Because he used the same few tapes over and over again,’ Yusuf said. ‘Changed them half a dozen times every day, and recorded over them. He was always trying to save money, but this business with the videotapes was really stupid, considering that we sold the bloody things. Always trying to save money…’
The boy’s head dropped. The tears that came were left to run their course, the hands that had been wiping them away now clutching the countertop.
‘You’re not a child, Yusuf,’ Thorne said. ‘You’re far too clever to buy any of my bullshit, so I won’t give you any, all right?’ He glanced back towards the screens, towards what lay behind them. ‘This is not about an argument, or an affair, or an unpaid bill. I’m not going to tell you that I can catch whoever did this, because I don’t know if I can. I do know I’m going to have a bloody good try, though.’
Thorne waited, but the boy did not look up. He gave a small nod to Terry, who stood and put an arm on Yusuf’s shoulder. The constable said something, a few murmured words of comfort, as Thorne closed the door behind him.
He arrived back in the shop in time to see the black curtain swept aside and DCI Nick Tughan stepping through it like a bad actor.
‘Right. What have we got?’ Tughan was a stick-thin Irishman with less than generous lips. His short, sandy hair was always clean, and the collars crisp beneath a variety of expensive suits. ‘Who’s filling me in…?’
Thorne smiled and shrugged: Me, given half a chance, you tosser. He was happy to see Holland walking across to do the honours, clearly not relishing the task, but knowing that he’d earn himself a drink later. A pint sounded like a good idea, even at eleven o’clock in the morning. Including the Izzigils, there were a dozen people inside the small shop, which, combined with the heat coming off the SOC lights, had turned the place into a sauna very quickly. Keen to get some air, Thorne stepped towards the front door, just as another person pushed through the curtain. This one was dressed from head to foot in black himself.
‘What happened to you last night?’ Hendricks asked.
Thorne sighed. He’d completely forgotten to call and tell Hendricks he’d be stopping over at his old man’s. ‘I’ll tell you later…’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Yeah, fine…just my dad.’
‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s a pain in the arse…’
‘I stayed up. You should have called.’
‘Oh, that’s sweet.’ It was Tughan’s voice. The DCI was standing over the bodies of Muslum and Hanya Izzigil, a mock-sweet smile on his face. ‘No, really, it’s very touching that he’s worried about you…’
Thorne was still spitting blood ten minutes later when Holland joined him on the pavement outside the shop.
‘If ever there was an incentive to solve a case…’
‘Right,’ Thorne said. ‘Get shot of the slippery bugger.’
‘Mind you, he had a point. It was touching…’
Thorne turned, ready to let off some steam, but the broad grin on Holland’s face softened the scowl on his own. He let out a long, slow breath and leaned back against the shop window. ‘You look rough, Dave…’
Thorne had seen DC Dave Holland do a lot of growing up in recent years, no more so than since his daughter had been born. The floppy blond hair had been cut shorter recently, which put a couple of years on him, and the lines around his eyes had added a few more. Thorne knew that very few coppers stayed fresh-faced for long. Those that did were lucky or lazy, and Holland was neither of those things. He’d saved Thorne’s life the year before, and the circumstances–the dark, depraved intimacies which the pair of them had witnessed and experienced–had rarely been talked about since the resulting court case.
‘I’m utterly knackered,’ Holland said.
Thorne looked at the gingerish stubble dotted across the pale and slightly sunken cheeks. Maybe the change in him was due to responsibility as much as experience. A few years ago, and particularly during his girlfriend’s pregnancy, Holland hadn’t shown a great deal of either.
‘Is it the baby?’
‘Actually, it’s Sophie,’ Holland said. ‘It’s probably hormones or something, but she’s at me three or four times a night demanding sex.’
‘What?’
‘Of course it’s the baby! Have you had a sense-of-humour bypass?’
‘I didn’t get a lot of sleep myself. I was staying at my dad’s place.’
‘Sorry, I forgot. How’s he doing?’
‘I reckon he’ll be the death of me before he manages to kill himself.’
On the other side of the road, a small crowd had gathered to stare at the comings and goings at Izzigil’s video shop. The café from which Constable Terry had run to see what all the screaming was about had now become a convenient vantage-point. The owner was cheerfully scurrying around, serving coffee and pastries to those who wanted to sit outside and gawp.
Holland took out a packet of ten Silk Cut. He scrounged a light from a woman walking past with a pushchair.
‘How long’s that been going on?’ Thorne asked, nodding towards the cigarette. He hadn’t smoked in a long time, but would still happily have killed for one.
‘Since the baby, I suppose. It was fags or heroin.’
‘Well, you’re in the right place for that…’
North of Finsbury Park, Green Lanes straightened into a strut of what had become known as the Harringay Ladder. Looking at the bustle around its shops and businesses at that moment, it was easy to see the area for what it was: one of the busiest and certainly one of the most racially diverse areas of the city. Of course, that did not explain the presence of armed police on its streets. A fierce gun-battle in those same streets six months earlier had left three men dead, and shown the other side of the area only too clearly. Harringay was home to a number of gangs operating within the Turkish community. According to figures from the National Criminal Intelligence Service, they were in control of over three-quarters of the seventy tonnes of heroin that passed through London every year. They protected their investments fiercely.
‘Does Tughan think it’s about smack?’
Holland wasn’t listening. ‘Sorry…?’
Thorne pointed back to the shop. ‘The Izzigils. Does our gangland expert in there think this is a turf war?’
‘Actually, he thinks it’s the Ryans.’
‘Eh?’
‘He seems to think that this is a message from Billy Ryan to whoever’s been knocking his boys off. A “declaration”, he reckons.’
‘That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?’ Thorne said. ‘What’s he base that on?’
‘No idea. He seems pretty convinced, though.’
Thorne closed his eyes as smoke from Holland’s cigarette drifted across his face. ‘It makes sense on one level, I suppose.’
‘What?’
‘The Ryans were always going t
o work out who was after them long before we did.’
Thorne watched as two officers carrying body-bags moved towards the front door. Hendricks had obviously finished his preliminary examination. Thorne moved to follow the officers back inside, murmuring to Holland as he passed: ‘Listen, the fact that Hendricks is staying at my place…Are people making cracks about it?’
Holland was enjoying a long drag. He laughed so much that he began to choke.
Thorne had spent the last three years based at the Peel Centre in Hendon, and his familiarity with it, with Becke House in particular, had bred a good deal of contempt. The building–a dun-coloured, three-storey blot on an already drab landscape–had once housed dormitories for recruits. The beds had given way to open-plan incident rooms and suites of poky offices, but there were still plenty of fresh faces to be spotted around the place, with the Metropolitan Police cadets now housed in another building within the same compound.
It always struck Thorne as strange that the Serious Crime Group should be based where it was, hand in glove with a cadet-training centre. He remembered arriving back late one afternoon, a year or so earlier, and bumping into a uniformed cadet as he turned from locking his car. He’d spent the previous few hours trying to explain to an old woman why her son-in-law had taken an axe to her daughter and grandchildren. The look on Thorne’s face that day had stopped the cadet dead in his tracks, hacking off his cheery greeting mid-sentence and sending the blood rushing from his smooth cheeks…
The meeting was taking place in the office that Russell Brigstocke was reluctantly sharing with Nick Tughan. The SO7 Projects Team was based in a collection of Portakabins at Barkingside, where Tughan and his team still spent a fair amount of time, but since the joint operation had begun, there’d been something of a shake-up on the third floor of Becke House. Holland and DC Andrew Stone now shared their office part time with two DCs from Serious and Organised Crime, leaving the third office to Thorne and DI Yvonne Kitson. The latter spent most of her time in the Incident Room, collating information alongside office manager DS Samir Karim and their opposite numbers from SO7. So, more often than not, Thorne had his office, such as it was, to himself.
The Burning Girl Page 5