The Burning Girl

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Right,’ said Tughan. ‘Game on. I think we’ve got ourselves a war…’

  Tughan’s Irish accent could switch between syrupy and strident. Today, it went right through Thorne. He remembered the scrape of Gordon Rooker’s chair across the floor of the visiting room at the Royal.

  Tughan leaned against the desk in a vain effort to make his superiority appear casual. He held up a piece of paper inside a transparent plastic jacket. ‘This was found among the dead man’s paperwork. There are photocopies for each of you.’

  Brigstocke and Kitson already had their copies. Holland, Stone and Thorne moved forward and took theirs from the desk.

  ‘This letter isn’t dated,’ continued Tughan, ‘but, according to the son, it was delivered by hand five or six weeks ago.’

  ‘Late Christmas present…’ Stone said, looking for the laugh, a little too full of himself, as usual.

  Tughan ignored him, pressed on. ‘It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Subtler than some I’ve come across–lots of stuff about the dangers facing new businesses. But basically it’s a simple protection scheme. Only problem is they were moving in on someone who was already protected.’

  ‘ “They” ’, Thorne said, ‘being Billy Ryan.’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, yes.’

  ‘The “best of your knowledge”?’

  Tughan smiled thinly and turned away from Thorne. ‘We’re moving forward on the basis that this letter originated from the Ryan family, or from criminals closely associated with them.’

  Thorne let it go, but it still bothered him. It wasn’t like threatening letters were sent out on headed notepaper. How could Tughan be so sure that this one came from the Ryan family?

  Thorne caught Brigstocke’s eye, but the DCI did not allow him to hold it for very long. Brigstocke’s attitude to the entire SO7 operation basically involved keeping his head down until they disappeared. Thorne had a lot of time for the man–he was hard and principled, caught far too often between those above and below him–but he still had an irritating predilection for hedging his bets. At the same time, of course, Thorne was well aware that his own refusal to do the same thing had often landed him in plenty of trouble…

  Yvonne Kitson was less afraid than some to speak her mind. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense,’ she said. ‘They send a threatening letter. They send the bully boys round to chuck a bin through the window. Then they have the owners killed?’

  Holland looked up from the letter. ‘Right, that’s quite an escalation, sir.’

  ‘It’s not complicated,’ Tughan said. His smile took him way over the line that separated informative from patronising. ‘This was a straightforward campaign of intimidation. It might well have got nasty eventually, but it wouldn’t have gone as far as killing. Then the Ryans discovered that the video shop was protected by the same people responsible for the murder of Mickey Clayton and the others. The same people that are paying the X-Man.’

  ‘A bit coincidental, isn’t it?’ Holland asked.

  Tughan had been waiting for this. ‘I don’t think so…’

  ‘It was the letter,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s what started everything.’

  ‘It was probably the letter.’ Tughan couldn’t keep the irritation off his face at having his thunder stolen. ‘It doesn’t really matter now how it started…’

  Thorne took Tughan’s expression as his cue to get stuck in. ‘Whoever was protecting Izzigil’s business took major offence at the Ryans trying to move in.’

  ‘Major offence?’ Holland said. ‘That’s putting it bloody mildly. They’ve had four of Billy Ryan’s top men killed.’

  Brigstocke agreed: ‘Whatever happened to breaking somebody’s legs?’

  ‘It’s about a lot more than territory now,’ Thorne said. ‘It probably always was. We’re presuming they’re Turks, right? Whoever’s been hitting the Ryans…’

  ‘We can’t presume anything,’ Tughan said. ‘The fact that the video business was Turkish needn’t be significant.’

  ‘It needn’t be, no. But I still think it is.’

  ‘We’ve heard nothing from the NCIS…’

  ‘They’re not infallible. We’re probably talking about somebody relatively new here. Maybe an offshoot of an existing gang.’

  ‘Granted, it’s a Turkish area, but other groups might still try their luck.’

  ‘They’d be idiots if they did…’

  ‘The Ryans did.’

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said. ‘And look what they got for their trouble.’

  Tughan seemed to decide suddenly that a physical barrier between himself and Thorne might be a good idea. He moved behind the desk and slid into the chair. He looked at his computer, affecting an air of thoughtfulness, but, to Thorne, it seemed more like regrouping.

  ‘We’re assuming that on one side we’ve got the Ryans, right?’ Thorne continued quickly before Tughan had a chance to pull him up: ‘If we assume that on the other side we’ve got an as yet unknown Turkish operation, it all starts to add up. If you’re a newish gang, looking to establish yourself, you don’t go up against the big Turkish gangs that have already got the area sewn up. Not if you want to be around in six months’ time. You so much as start sniffing around one of those big heroin operations and they’ll wipe you out, right?’

  If anybody disagreed, they were keeping quiet about it.

  ‘What makes more sense, if you’re looking to make a splash, is to go up against somebody else completely. Somebody unconnected with local business or local territory. When that letter dropped on to the doormat in that video shop, somebody saw an opportunity to expand in a different direction altogether; to send out a message to the gangs around them without getting anybody’s back up. This lot, whoever the hell they are, probably see the Ryans as a soft target.’

  Tughan had been typing something. He raised his eyes from his computer screen and smiled. ‘Somebody should tell Billy Ryan that.’

  There wasn’t a trace of a smile from Yvonne Kitson. ‘And the Izzigils…’

  ‘So who are they?’ Stone asked. ‘If we want to stop a war, we’ll need to know who’s up against who.’

  Tughan stabbed at a key, leaned back in his chair. ‘I think DI Thorne might well be right when he suggests that we’re dealing with a Turkish–or possibly Kurdish–group here. I’m liaising with the NCIS, specifically the Heroin Intelligence Unit…’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘I told you, I can’t see that this is about heroin. This is about not shitting on your own doorstep.’

  ‘Is that a technical term?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘I must have missed that seminar.’

  Thorne smiled. ‘I’ve seen a couple of Guy Ritchie films.’

  Tughan raised his voice a little, bridling slightly, as always, at any exchange that rose above the funereal. ‘I’m confident that we will establish the identity of this gang quickly. We will find something connecting them to the video rental business, or we might get a lead from Turkish community leaders in the area…’

  ‘Only the ones with a death wish,’ Brigstocke said.

  ‘One way or another, things are much clearer now than they were.’ Tughan brandished the letter whose implied threats had probably been the catalyst for at least six deaths. ‘We’ve made a real breakthrough today.’

  Thorne’s mood blackened in an instant. He remembered the film of tears across a pair of dark eyes, red around the rims.

  A real breakthrough…

  He doubted that Yusuf Izzigil would see things in quite the same way.

  They drove back from the restaurant in virtual silence.

  As always, Jack stayed well within the speed limit as he steered the Volvo through streets that were still slick after an early evening downpour. The short journey was one that they tried to make at least once a month–sometimes more if there was a birthday or anniversary to be celebrated. Jack always drove, always stuck to half a bitter while they waited for the table, and a glass of wine with the meal.

  ‘A
re you cross with me?’ Carol said, eventually.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I was just worried.’

  ‘It’s like I spoiled your evening.’

  ‘You couldn’t help it. What happened, I mean. You didn’t spoil my evening.’

  Carol turned away from him and stared out of the window. She could still taste the vomit at the back of her throat. Instinctively, she looked again to make sure there was none on her blouse.

  ‘You must be coming down with something,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll call the quack first thing.’

  Carol nodded without shifting her gaze from a scratch on the car window, from the darkness moving past it.

  It had come over her from nowhere as she was digging into her spaghetti–a heat that had prickled and spread quickly–until she’d had to throw down her fork and rush to the toilet. She’d emerged ten minutes later, pale and with a weak smile that had fooled nobody: not the manager, who offered to call a doctor and assured her that the meal was on the house, and least of all her husband. Jack had shrugged at the waiters and smiled. He’d taken her arm: ‘Come on, love. You’re white as a sheet. We’d best make a move…’

  Carol knew full well what the trouble was. This was the first physical symptom of a virus that had been lurking inside her, waiting for the chance to blossom since the day she’d handed over her warrant card. She’d tried to ignore it on other occasions, when an unfamiliar reaction to something had forced her to ask the question.

  Have I stopped being a copper inside?

  She knew what the answer was. The cold-case stuff was Mickey Mouse; it was just playing at what she used to do for real. Now, she could feel doubt, worry, pain, anger. And fear. She felt them all in a way she never had for those thirty years she’d spent watching other people feel the same things. She felt like a civilian. And she hated it.

  She knew that this was all about Gordon Rooker. The reassurance that had come from Thorne’s visit to the Royal had lasted no more than a couple of hours. God, it was all so bloody stupid. After all, the facts were pretty obvious: Rooker was locked up; Rooker was guilty; whoever had been phoning her and sending the letters was some nutcase who, by the look of it, had probably stopped now anyway.

  It hadn’t been facts, though, that had made her throw up. She needed to deal with the feelings. She needed to deal with the panic.

  She needed to start behaving like a real copper again.

  ‘It’s definitely not the food,’ Jack said as he slowed to turn into their quiet crescent. ‘How many times have we eaten in that place over the years…?’

  Hendricks was already asleep by the time Thorne got in, just after eleven. As Thorne crept past the sofa-bed towards the kitchen, Elvis, his psychotic cat, jumped down from where she’d been curled up on Hendricks’ feet and followed him. While he waited for the kettle to boil, Thorne poured some cat munchies into a grubby plastic bowl and told Elvis one or two things about his day. He’d rather have talked to his friend, who was a marginally better conversationalist, but the snoring from the next room made it clear just how well away Hendricks was. Thorne didn’t want to wake him. He knew that Hendricks had probably had a fairly tough day himself.

  Up to his elbows in the cadavers of Muslum and Hanya Izzigil.

  Drinking his tea at the kitchen table, Thorne thought about those who would spend the coming night sleepless. Those with money worries or difficulties at work, or relationship problems. It was odd what could keep some people awake, while a man who dealt in death–usually one that had been anything but peaceful–could sleep like a baby. He thought about Dave Holland, bleary-eyed at 4 a.m., who would tell him just how ludicrous that expression was.

  Of course, he didn’t know what went on in Phil Hendricks’ dreams…

  Thorne hadn’t slept brilliantly himself since the night he’d come so close to death the year before. There had been nightmares, of course, but now it was just as if his body had adapted and required less sleep. Most nights he’d get by on four or five hours and then collapse into something approaching a coma when he took a day off.

  Having removed his shoes, Thorne carried them, and what was left of his tea, towards the bedroom. On the way through the darkened living room he picked up his CD Walkman and a George Jones album. He held the bedroom door open for Elvis, and watched as she hopped back up on to Phil Hendricks’ legs.

  ‘Sod you, then,’ Thorne said.

  He padded into his bedroom with his tea, his shoes and his music, and closed the door behind him.

  It was a sudden change in the light, no more than that.

  Carol Chamberlain saw it reflected in the dressing-table mirror as she sat taking her make-up off. She’d washed most of it off earlier, rubbing cold water into her face in the toilets at the Italian restaurant. Trying to stop the dizziness and to bring back a little colour to her cheeks.

  Jack was moving around downstairs. Locking up, pulling out plugs. Keeping them safe…

  She sat in her night-dress and stared hard at herself. It was time to sort her hair out, and maybe shift a few pounds though, at fifty-six, that was a damn sight harder than it used to be. She could try to get back to how she was when they’d taken the job away from her: her ‘fighting weight’, Jack called it.

  Leaning closer towards the mirror, cream smeared across her fingers, she saw the light change. A glow–pink at first, then orange–that crept through a gap in the curtains and lit up the room behind her. She opened her mouth to call out Jack’s name, then closed it and pushed back her chair. As she walked towards the window, she saw the glow reaching up and illuminating the bare branches of the copper beech at the end of the drive. She knew more or less what she was going to see when she reached the far side of the room and looked out. She wondered if he’d be there. She hoped that he would be…

  He was already looking up when she pulled back the curtains, standing motionless next to the car, the can of lighter fluid white against his gloved hand.

  Waiting for her.

  For a few long, still seconds they stared at each other. The flames were not spectacular, and the light danced only across the dark material of the man’s anorak. The blaze never threatened to break up the shadow, blue-black beneath the hood that was pulled tight around his head.

  The fire was already beginning to spread across the Volvo’s bonnet. It drifted down around its edges, into its mouldings, where the lighter fluid had run and dripped. Still, the words, sprayed in fuel and spelled out now in flame, were clear enough.

  I burned her.

  Carol heard locks being thrown back downstairs, and saw the man’s head turn suddenly towards the front door. He took a step away from the car, then looked up at Carol for another moment or two before he turned and ran. She had seen nothing, could see nothing of his face, but she knew very well that he had been smiling at her.

  A few seconds later, Jack burst out of the front door in his vest. He ran, arms raised and mouth gaping, on to the front lawn. Carol half-saw him turn to look up, at the same moment she moved away from the window and back into the heart of the room.

  FIVE

  Thorne had never conducted an interview alongside Carol Chamberlain before and, although this was in no sense official, he still felt slightly odd, sitting there next to her, waiting for Rooker to be brought in. He looked around the small, square room and imagined himself, for no good reason he could think of, as a father, sitting with his wife. He remembered the sobbing black woman he’d seen on his last visit. He pictured himself and Chamberlain as anxious parents waiting for their son to be marched in.

  The door opened and an officer led Rooker into the room. He looked angry about something until he saw Chamberlain; then, a broad smile appeared.

  ‘Hello, sexpot,’ he said.

  Thorne opened his mouth to speak, but Chamberlain beat him to it. There was an edge to her voice that Thorne could not recall hearing before.

  ‘One more out-of-order remark and I’ll come round this table and tear off what little you’ve got left b
etween your legs that hasn’t already withered away. Fair enough, Gordon?’

  Rooker’s smile wobbled a little, but it was back in place as he pulled back his chair and plonked himself down at the table. The officer moved towards the door. ‘Give us a shout when you’ve finished,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Thorne said, looking up. ‘I thought you’d retired, Bill.’

  The officer opened the door, turned back to Thorne. ‘Got a year or two left yet.’ He nodded towards Rooker. ‘Feels like I’ve been in here as long as this cunt.’ He quickly looked across to Chamberlain, reddening slightly. ‘Sorry, I didn’t…’

  Chamberlain held up a hand. ‘Don’t apologise. That sounds about right to me…’

  Rooker cackled. The officer stepped out of the room, letting the door swing shut, hard, behind him.

  ‘This is getting to be a habit,’ Rooker said. He produced a tobacco tin from behind the green bib and removed the lid. ‘Twice in a week, Mr Thorne. I don’t have family who come as often as that.’ He teased out the strands of tobacco, laid them carefully into a Rizla and rolled it pin-thin. ‘Nothing like as often as that…’

  In fact, it had been just over a week since Thorne had first encountered Gordon Rooker. And seven days since Carol Chamberlain had stared down from her bedroom window at the man who was claiming Gordon Rooker’s crime as his own.

  Rooker lit his roll-up. He picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue and looked across at Chamberlain. ‘I thought you’d retired,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Living out in the sticks with a houseful of cats, listening to The Archers…’

  ‘What do you know about where I live?’

  Rooker turned to Thorne. ‘If she’s not on the job any more, what are we doing here?’

  By ‘here’, Rooker meant the Legal Visits Room. It was normally reserved for confidential interviews, for meetings with police officers or solicitors, for official business. Thorne was content to keep things unofficial…for now. He had seen no real reason to go to Brigstocke and certainly not to Tughan. The connection between Rooker and Billy Ryan was twenty years old and tenuous at best to the SO7 inquiry, and he’d promised Carol Chamberlain that he’d try to sort things out on his own time. He’d discreetly pulled a few strings and called in a favour or two to ensure that he, Chamberlain and Gordon Rooker could discuss one or two things in private.