The Burning Girl Thorne 4

by Mark Billingham

  billingham, mark - the burning girl

  private-school accent and a pony. Now, I'm a slightly better-paid legal secretary with less of an accent and no pony. And I'm still out of it. But."

  "But?

  She grinned, picked up her drink. "I've still got a few friends who are very much in it." She drained her glass. "We'll have a girls' night out a couple of times a year. You know the kind of thing family-run restaurant, shed-loads of booze on the house, I complain about work and they complain about how long their husbands and boyfriends are getting sent down for."

  "Sounds like a fun evening ."

  "One or two of them may or may not know certain police officers pretty well and can call in a favour if they're asked nicely. Getting a copper's phone number is hardly rocket science."

  "I should be shocked," Thorne said, 'but I'm too busy thinking about another round."

  She picked up Thorne's empty glass and pushed back her chair. "Another one of those ?"

  For the next hour or so they talked about the difficulties of doing, or not doing, what was expected of you. It was soon obvious that this was something they both knew a great deal about.

  Thorne told her that if he were the sort to do what was expected, or at the very least encouraged, he wouldn't be there drinking with her. Alison told Thorne about her reluctance to do bugger all and sit on her arse spending her old man's money. She told him about upsetting her mother by refusing the offer to set her up in a business.

  "Sounds like you were trying to distance yourself," Thorne said. "From the money. From everything that made the money. Like you blamed it for what happened to Jessica."

  Her pale complexion flushed a little. "If my dad hadn't been who he was, what he was, then it wouldn't have happened. That's not a delusion ."

  They both took a drink to fill the short pause that followed. By now, she'd moved on to white wine. Thorne had moved on to his next Guinness.

  "Why did you marry Billy Ryan?" he asked. She thought about it for a few seconds. Just rising above the buzz and burble of pub chat, the voices of the latest boy-band drifted through from the jukebox in the bar next door.

  "It sounds like I'm joking," she said, 'but it really did seem like a good idea at the time."

  "He must have been . what? Mid-thirties?"

  "Older. And I was only eighteen."

  "So who the hell thought that was a "good idea"?"

  She smiled. "Not my mum, for a start. She thought the age difference was too big. But Dad was all for it. I think there were a few people who thought it was a good thing, you know, some of the old boys who'd been around a bit. Even though Dad had been out of it a few years by then, and Billy was running the show, some people thought it was a good way of... building bridges, or something. The old guard and the new guard."

  "You make it sound like it was arranged." She shook her head. "I wish I had that as an excuse. I'd like to say I married him to make everybody else happy. And I knew that I was, to some extent. But the simple fact is that I loved him." She paused, but looked as if she needed to say something else. She searched for the right words. "He was impressive, back then." Thorne thought about the Billy Ryan he'd so recently encountered. There would be some who might still describe him as impressive, but lovable was not a word that sprang to mind. "What went wrong?" She took a good-sized slurp of wine. "Nothing ... for a while. But there were two sides to Billy."

  Thorne nodded. He didn't know many people without at least a couple.

  "There was part of him', she said, 'that just wanted to have fun. He liked to have friends over or go out to parties. He used to take me into all the clubs. He wanted to dress up and show off and hang around with actors and pop stars. People writing books. He loved all that."

  "I bet the actors and pop stars loved it as well."

  "When it was just the two of us, though, he could be a whole lot different. If it was just him and me and a bottle of something, he became somebody else, and I was on the receiving end. Maybe he was still having fun, I don't know ."

  Thorne saw her eyes darken and knew what she meant. He remembered the feet, dainty inside highly polished shoes, but also Ryan's shoulders, powerful beneath the expensive blazer.

  Two sides. The dancer and the boxer.

  "It's a pretty good reason to leave someone," he said.

  "He was the one who left."

  "Right."

  "He said he couldn't cope with the problems I had. All the stuff with Jess I was still trying to deal with."

  Thorne had to fight to stop his mouth dropping open. Problems? Stuff?

  All of them, all of it, the result of what her husband had done. Alison saw the look on Thorne's face, took it as no more than mild surprise. "I did have some bloody awful mood swings, I know I did. Billy wasn't exactly what you'd call supportive, though. He kept saying I was neurotic . that I needed help. He kept telling me that I hated myself, that I was impossible to live with, that I needed to get over what had happened when I was in that playground."

  When a man paid by Billy Ryan had come to her school to kill her. When flames had devoured her best friend in front of her eyes.

  "No," Thorne said. "Not exactly supportive." She swirled around the last of her wine in the bottom of the glass. "He was right about me needing help, of course, but I needed a damn sight more after a couple of years with Billy. I got through a bit of that money my mum had been offering then. Pissed a lot of it away paying strangers to listen. Any number of the buggers at fifty quid an hour."

  Thorne stared at her.

  Her eyes widened when they met his. "I'm all right now, though," she said.

  "That's good ."

  As she downed her drink, she contorted her face into a series of deliberately comical twitches and tics. It wasn't particularly funny, but Thorne laughed anyway.

  She put down the glass and reached for her handbag. "Let's go and get something to eat."

  Rooker stared at a spider on the ceiling, wishing things were noisier. It was always noisy in prison, always. Even asleep, five hundred men could make a shitload of noise. During the day, it could be unbearable. The pounding of feet in corridors and on stairs, the clank of metal -buckets and keys, the slash and smash of voices echoing from cell to cell, from landing to landing. Even a tiny noise a fork on a plate, a groan in the night was magnified somehow and charged. It was like the anger floating around the place had done something to the air itself, made it easier for sound to move through it and carry. Distorted, deafening. It was something you got used to. It was something Rooker had got used to.

  Here, though, it was like the bloody grave.

  Even the relative peace of the VP wings he'd been on was like a cacophony compared to this. There, the shuffling nonces made noises all of their own. Same thing went for the old fuckers they got lumbered with. They always stuck the very old fellas on the VP wings. The stroke victims and the doolally ones, and the ones who had problems getting around. They were no trouble, most of them, but, Christ, once the lights went out, the hawking and the coughing would start, and he'd want to put pillows over all their pasty, lopsided faces. He missed it now though. The silence was keeping him awake. He allowed himself a smile. There would be plenty of noise in a few weeks when he was out when it was all over and he was home, wherever that would be. There would be silence when he wanted it, and noises he hadn't heard in a very long time. Traffic, pubs, football crowds. When it was all over .

  The sessions with Thorne and the rest were wearing him out. Thorne especially had a way of digging at him, of pushing and pushing, until the effort of remembering and repeating it over and over again was like shoveling shit uphill. He knew it had to be done, that it would be worth it, but he'd forgotten quite how much he hated them. Even when you were supposed to be helping them, when you were supposed to be on the same side, the police were a pack of mongrels. He felt a familiar flutter in his gut that was coming often now, whenever he thought about life on the outside. It was like a bubbling panic. He'd ima
gined being out for so long and now that it was within his reach he realised that it scared the living shit out of him. He'd known plenty of cons who'd done a lot less time than him and couldn't hack it on the outside. Most were fucked up on booze and drugs within a year. Others all but begged to be sent back to prison, and, eventually, they made sure they got what they wanted. It wasn't going to be easy, he knew that, but at least with Ryan out of the way he would have a chance. He would have the time to adjust. If he ever felt a moment's doubt, wondered about changing his mind and telling Thorne and the rest to stuff it, he just had to remember that night in Epping Forest, one of the last times he'd ever clapped eyes on Ryan. He just had to remember the look on Ryan's face. Getting out scared him, but Billy Ryan scared him more. Rooker turned on to his side to face the wall, wincing at the jolt of pain in his belly. It was still sore. On balance, he preferred the pain to the panic, but still, he decided that once he'd got out and away, once he'd let the dust settle, he'd do some ringing round. He'd call in a favour or two and get that shit bag Fisher sorted out. Thorne looked across at the clock on his bedside table. 5.10 a.m. Only ten minutes later than the last time he'd looked. He turned and watched Alison Kelly sleep.

  She was dead to the world, and had barely stirred since she'd finally drifted off for the second time. Thorne knew he would have no such luck. He had scarcely blinked since being woken nearly three hours before by the sobbing.

  He watched her sleep and thought about what he'd told her . For a while, he'd been unable to get a word out of her. Every attempt at speech caught in her throat, was strangled by the heave of her chest that seemed to shake every inch of her. He'd held her until she'd calmed a little, then listened as it began to grow light outside, and the tears and snot dried on his arms and on his neck. She'd asked some of the questions he'd already heard, and others he'd seen in her eyes when she'd spoken about her past. The whispers and the sobs had added a desperation he'd heard before only in the voices of the recently bereaved, or from the parents of missing children. What could she have done differently?

  Why did Jessica burn?

  When was she ever going to stop feeling like she was burning herself?

  So, Thorne had held on hard to her, and finally given her the only answer he had, hoping that it might serve as the answer for all of her questions.

  The tears had stopped quickly after that, and she'd seemed to grow suddenly so tired that she couldn't even hold up her head. She'd dropped slowly down on to the pillow, her face turned away from him, and Thorne had no idea how long she'd lain staring at his bedroom wall. He'd known it would be wrong to ask, even in a whisper, if she was still awake .

  Now, staring up at his cheap lampshade, he wasn't sure why he'd told her. Maybe it was what she'd said in the pub about Ryan. Maybe it was a simple desire in him to give something. Maybe it was a belief in the plain goodness of fact, in its power to smother the flames of doubt and guilt. Whatever the reason, it was done. Thorne knew he'd moved into strange territory and he wasn't at all sure how he felt about it. Knowing that he would not get back to sleep, he eased himself to his feet and moved towards the door. Standing on Alison's side of the bed, he looked down at her face. He saw half of it, pale in a wedge of milky light bleeding into the room through a crack in the curtains. The other half was in darkness, where shadow lay across it like a scar.

  6 June 1986

  We all drove out to a country pub today. The weather was nice enough to sit outside, which was probably a good idea. It was crowded in the pub anyway and I didn't want to put anyone off their ploughman's lunch. I don't think I'm ever really going to be great with lots of people around.

  Mum and Dad let me have half a lager, which was another very good reason to be outside!

  There were lots of wasps buzzing around the food, which was pissing everyone off. I kept perfectly still, hoping that one might settle on me, settle on the scar. I wanted to know what it felt like, or even if I could feel it at all. But Dad was flapping his arms around and swearing and none of them came near me.

  Dad had brought his new camera along and insisted on taking loads of pictures. We both smiled like always, like it was perfectly normal and I pretended that I was fine about it so Dad wouldn't be upset. Afterwards I made a joke about the woman at Boots getting a nasty shock when she developed the photos and Mum went a bit funny for a while. Ali rang later to tell me she's got to dress up and help out at some swanky dinner party her parents are having. She says she's dreading it. She says there's probably going to be several hardened criminals sitting around trying to make polite conversation and eating Twiglets. That made me laugh and I wanted to tell someone, but Mum and especially Dad have still got a real problem with Ali and her family. I don't even tell them when me and Ali are meeting up outside school. Shit Moment of the Day.

  In the pub garden, there was a family a few feet away from us, on one of those wooden tables with a bench attached on either side. They had a teenage boy with them, and a girl of four or five, and she stared at me for ages. I pulled faces at her. I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue down behind my bottom lip. I kept trying to make her laugh, but she just looked frightened.

  Magic Moment of the Day.

  I was in the kitchen after tea and we had the radio on. Mum was out in the garden having a fag, and Dad was drying up. The new Smiths single came on, and I was singing along. I was waving my arms around like Morrissey, wailing in a stupid high voice and messing around. When I got to the bit about knowing how Joan of Arc felt, Dad looked across at me with a tea towel in his hand. There was a pause and then we both just pissed ourselves laughing.

  EIGHTEEN

  If Thorne were to make a list of the places he least liked to be beside, the seaside would come fairly near the top. Admittedly, British seaside resorts were marginally less attractive than those slightly more glamorous ones in Australia say, or Florida, but even then, Thorne was far from keen. The sea might be warmer, bluer, cleaner, but it had its own drawbacks.

  Margate or Miami? Rhyl or Rio? As far as Thorne was concerned it pretty much came down to a choice between shit and sharks. Having said that, what he'd seen of Brighton so far that morning hadn't been too unpleasant. A ten-minute taxi ride from the station to Eileen's house. A five-minute walk from there to the pub. Thorne's father, and his father's best friend Victor, had travelled down together from St. Albans the day before. Victor had rung while Thorne was getting ready to go out and meet Alison Kelly. They'd arrived in one piece, Victor had told him. His father was excited, but fairly well behaved. He was looking forward to a weekend away. Thorne had wanted to catch an earlier train, but getting himself together and out of the flat that morning had been complicated. Alison had caught him looking at his watch as they'd shared breakfast in the kitchen, and it had only heightened the awkwardness that hung between them, heavy as the smell of burned toast.

  What had been said in the early hours.

  That was far harder to deal with, and certainly to talk about, than what they'd been doing to each other a few hours earlier. The sex had been snatched at and sweaty, the two of them equally needy, physically at least.

  The morning did its job on them, muggy, thick-headed and cruel. It shone a fresh, harsh light on what was now unsay able Thorne belched, tasting last night's Guinness. Victor laughed. Eileen tried to look disapproving. His dad appeared not to have noticed.

  "Sorry," Thorne said. He knew that he was looking slightly rough, knew that Eileen could see it. "I had a bit of a night.. ." She sipped her tomato juice. "That explains why you got here so late."

  By the time Thorne had reached his aunt's house and got a cup of tea down him, there'd been nothing left to do except head off for a quick drink before Sunday lunch.

  "It won't be easy to get into a decent restaurant," Eileen said.

  "They'll all be full if we don't get a move on." Thorne said nothing. Eileen had been a life-saver since his dad's illness had kicked in, but she could be a bit prissy when she felt like it. He hoped she
wasn't in that sort of mood.

  "Beer or birds? "Jim Thorne said suddenly. Thorne stared at his father. "What?"

  "Your "bit of a night". On the beer or on the birds?" Thorne wasn't sure which was throwing him more, the question or the way it was couched.

  "Maybe both," Victor said. He grinned at Thorne's father and the two of them began to laugh.

  Victor was probably the only friend that Thorne's father had left. He was certainly the only one Thorne ever saw. He was taller and thicker-set than his father, especially now, as Jim Thorne was losing weight. He had much less hair, and false teeth that fitted badly, and the two old men together often reminded Thorne of some bizarre, over-the-hill double act.

  "Maybe," Thorne said.

  His father leaned towards him. "Always a good idea, I reckon. Get a few pints down you and even the ugly ones start to look... woss-name...the opposite of ugly?"

  Victor supplied the word his friend was searching for. "Pretty?

  Attractive?"

  Jim Thorne nodded. "Even the ugly ones start to look attractive." Thorne smiled. A bizarre double act: the straight man occasionally needing to provide a bit of help with the punchlines. He glanced across the table at Eileen, who shook her head and rolled her eyes. There wasn't too much wrong with her mood.

  Victor raised his glass, as if proposing a toast. "Beer goggles," he said.

  "The same goes for women, you know," Eileen said. "We can wear wine goggles." She pointed towards Thorne's father. "I reckon Maureen probably had a pair on the night she got together with you." Thorne watched his father. They hadn't talked much about his mother since her death. Almost never since the Alzheimer's. He wondered how the old man would react.

  Jim Thorne nodded, enjoying it. "I think you're probably right, love," he said. "Bloody strong ones an' all." He raised his glass until it covered the bottom half of his face. "I was stone-cold sober." Once the drink had been supped and the glass lowered, Thorne tried and failed to catch his father's eye. The old man's gaze was darting around all over the place.