The Burning Girl

by Mark Billingham

  ‘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. ‘Really. I want to get them all, 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 Village, 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 really 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 filled, but it also sold, for no reason Thorne could fathom, catering-sized packs of peanuts past their sell-by date, motor oil, crisps, and other stuff not seen before or since in a place you normally went for pills 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 small places could no longer afford to specialise. Maybe shopkeepers just wanted to keep life interesting. Whatever the reason, Thorne knew a number of places where the astute shopper could kill 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 small shop near the Nag’s Head which had seemed to sell 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 ceasefire.

  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 finally realised that, though disposable nappies would be useful, they were really 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 really 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 kill 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 sullied 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 grille rolled 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. All right, love?’

  She nodded and walked slowly back into the living room.

  The paper on the walls 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-filled boxes trying to drag the truth out of murderers.

  She stared at the watercolour 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 pulled her stockinged feet under her and told herself that these walls she’d once coveted so much weren’t closing in quite as quickly as they had been.

  What had Thorne said?

  ‘Billy 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 actually 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, all those years before.

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

  Jack called through from the kitchen, ‘Shall 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 hou
r 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 called while Thorne was still 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 till had been replaced, for a few seconds, by curiosity.

  ‘Some items for lists I’m putting together, maybe for a…thing. Bollocks. 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 till was staring at her watch. It was already five minutes after closing time and there were no other customers in the shop. He was still 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…’

  ‘Refill…’

  ‘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’ll call you when I get home, Dad, all right? I can go online later and get all the answers.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Woolworth’s…’

  ‘Like the killer…’ his father had said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was the Woolworth’s Killer who did Sutcliffe in Broadmoor. Remember? He’d killed 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’ all. I’ll 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 all 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 well, then the frustration must have been unbearable. He imagined his father as a tiny, impotent figure, raging inside his own skull. He imagined him standing next to a pair of enormous speakers that blared out the word he was unable to speak. Dwarfed by its illuminated 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 wall. 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 tallest buildings in the world. He’d call his father in the morning, give him all the useless information he’d asked for.

  ‘The Job can’t see us getting too much more out of this…’

  Thorne leaned back in his chair, cradled his coffee cup and thought about the team celebrating that night in the Oak. Tughan would have made a speech, rather more fulsome than the one he’d given in the office. They’d have drunk toasts to their results. Arms thrown around shoulders as they lifted glasses of lager and malt whisky, and drunk to lies. To what they’d been told to settle for.

  He pictured other glasses being raised elsewhere, by those who really had something to celebrate. Those who would be extremely happy if they knew–and there was every reason to think that they would know–that for the time being the police were off their backs.

  Thorne had only a mug of lukewarm coffee, but he raised it anyway.

  To some of the police…

  He reached forward to turn the computer off but then paused. He typed ‘immortal skin’ into the search engine and waited. Eventually, a site appeared that gave all the details Ian Clarke had told him about. The page was dense with information, closely typed, difficult to read.

  Thorne’s eyes closed and he dreamed for a few minutes, no more than that, of holes in flesh that healed. Of scars fading like the words written in sand, and of lines etched into skin that vanished; the X replaced by smooth, fresh flesh that smelled of babies…

  When he jolted awake, the screen had frozen. He swore at the computer for a few seconds, then pulled out the plug.

  And went to bed.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The car containing Memet and Hassan Zarif pulled away from the traffic lights at Stoke Newington station and accelerated across the Stamford Hill Road.

  Sitting three cars behind them, Thorne was still unsure where the brothers were heading. They were driving in the general direction of the restaurant and minicab office, but it wasn’t the route Thorne would have chosen. They were a little too far south.

  Thorne made it through the lights with a few seconds to spare. He turned up the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and sat back. Wherever the Zarifs were going, he was along for the ride.

  He’d tried the minicab office first, but none of the brothers had been around. The same surly individual he’d encountered on his first visit there had shaken his head and invited Thorne to search the premises. The man had shrugged and drawn phlegm into his mouth when Thorne had turned to walk back out of the door.

  Outside, Thorne had stood for a moment, considering where to go next. A smart black Omega had pulled up and one of Zarif’s drivers had asked if he needed a lift. Thorne had shaken his head without giving the driver a second glance. His decision made, he’d marched towards his car. Looking through the windows of the restaurant as he’d passed, Thorne had seen Arkan Zarif and his wife moving about in the half light, setting up the tables for lunch.

  The cars crossed the Seven Sisters Road at the bottom end of Finsbury Park, heading north again.

  Memet Zarif’s BMW was somewhat newer than Thorne’s, and now, sitting no more than fifty feet behind it, he wondered if its occupants were aware that they were being followed. His car was fairly distinctive–both in shape and colour–and if they knew where he lived, the chances were they also knew what he drove.

  Thorne decided that it didn’t really make a fat lot of difference. They’d be stopping somewhere eventually and he only needed a quick word…r />
  After leaving the minicab office, he’d driven a mile or two east, to Memet Zarif’s home address. It was an ordinary-looking, semi-detached house in Clapton, with a view across the River Lea to the Walthamstow Marshes beyond. There were plenty of pricier places around, but Thorne guessed that, somewhere, Zarif had other property they were as yet unaware of.

  Thorne had spent forty minutes loitering with a newspaper, then watched as the front door eventually opened, and Hassan Zarif had emerged. His arm was in a sling, the only visible sign of the bullet that had shattered his collarbone. As Hassan had waited on the drive near the car, his elder brother had appeared, a wife and child next to him on the doorstep. Memet had kissed his family goodbye, and Thorne had walked back towards the side-street where he’d parked up.

  When the dark blue BMW had moved past him a few minutes later, Thorne had eased his car slowly out and fallen into the stream of vehicles behind it.

  They moved through heavy traffic into Stroud Green and then dropped down towards the somewhat better-preserved environment of Crouch End. This was an area popular with creative types who were not quite in the Highgate and Hampstead league. Despite the lack of a tube station, property prices had gone through the roof in recent years, and the place was crammed with trendy restaurants and bars. The majority of its better-than-averagely heeled shoppers tended to ignore the handful of less salubrious establishments: the adult magazine shop; the working men’s caff; the massage parlour…

  The main road divided either side of the clock tower, and Thorne watched as Zarif took the right-hand fork, then pulled sharply across and parked on a double-yellow line. Thorne cruised past as the brothers stepped out of the car, and swung into a side-street as they crossed the pavement towards a door.

  The sign in the window flashed red after dark. At half-past eleven in the morning, the letters spelled out ‘sauna’ in grime. The girl on reception probably looked a little better herself once the daylight had disappeared; a little less pasty and pissed off. The smile she’d slapped on when Thorne came through the door became a scowl as soon as he produced his warrant card.