There was amusement in Memet's voice, but also genuine confusion and curiosity. "Why are you taking all of this so .. personally?" Suddenly, Thorne felt helpless, like the tiny, impotent figure that he'd imagined his father to be. The words he wanted to say were vast and deafening. They were made to be roared or screamed. To be sucked up and spat like powerful poison. Instead, Thorne heard them departing from his mouth as little more than murmurs, half hearted and sullen.
"Because you don't stop where other people do," he said. He looked at the floor as he spoke, sweat stinging his eyes. He stared at the strip of grubby mastic where the tiles met the base of the Jacuzzi. "Because you don't have a line."
There was a long moment of silence, of stillness, before Memet heaved himself on to the edge of the bath. Water gathered in thick droplets on his round shoulders. It ran through the dark hair clinging to the fat on his chest and belly.
"I will talk to those with some influence in the community."
"Don't start with that "pillar of the community" bollocks." Thorne wasn't murmuring now. "I heard enough of it at that hotel."
"My family has done all that was asked of us."
"Does Mrs. Zarif know about these lunchtime hand-jobs, by the way?"
"You're starting to sound very desperate."
"Whatever it takes."
Memet sat and dripped.
"Talk to me about what you do," Thorne said. "Here and now, come on. Tell me about the killing, and the buzz or whatever it is, that you get from controlling people's lives. It can't just be about the money." He paused as Memet climbed to his feet and stared at him, a defiance in his stance, some strange challenge in his nakedness.
"There's nobody worth hiding from in here, is there?" Thorne said. The water was cooling, but the room seemed to be growing hotter by the second. "It's just the two of us. I'm not writing anything down, my memory's not what it was and I haven't got a tape recorder in my pocket, so it stays in this room. Every bit as discreet as everything else that goes on in here. Talk to me about it honestly. Just once."
Slowly, Memet reached for the towel that was draped across the arm of the sofa and began to dry himself. "That day in my father's cafe," he said. "You told me to make a wish, remember?" Thorne remembered the lamps hanging from the ceiling, the cigarette smoke dancing around them like a genie. He recalled his parting shot as he'd walked out of the door. "So, did you make one?"
"I made one, but it didn't come true." Thorne beat Memet to the punch line. He smiled, but felt the sweat turn to ice at his neck as he spoke. "Because I'm still here."
TWENTY-EIGHT
"I knew I should have got a toy or something."
"Don't worry, I'm sure we can exchange them."
"You'll be lucky. I've chucked the bloody receipt away." They spoke quietly, conscious of the baby asleep in a Moses basket beneath the window.
"We can just hang on to them, you never know." Thorne had known as soon as he'd clapped eyes on Holland's baby that all the clothes he'd bought were far too small. Holland was holding up the tiny outfits, trying and failing to find something positive to say about them.
"What, are you going to have another baby?" Thorne asked.
"Well. ." Holland laughed and sipped from a can of lager. Thorne, furious with himself, eventually did the same.
"Sophie's had to nip out and see a mate," Holland said. "She'll be sorry she missed you. Said to say "hello"." Thorne nodded, feeling himself redden slightly. He knew very well that Holland was lying, that his girlfriend would have done her level best to make herself scarce on learning that Thorne was coming round. For all he knew, she might have been hiding in the bedroom, waiting for him to leave.
They were sitting on the sofa in Holland's living room. The clutter made the first-floor flat seem even smaller than it was. Thorne looked around, thinking that if the rest of the place was as cramped, then Sophie wouldn't have had the room to hide.
Holland read his thoughts. "Sophie thinks we should find a bigger flat."
"What do you think?"
"She's right, we should. Whether we can afford to is a different matter."
"Rack up that overtime, mate."
"Well I was. God knows whether there'll be any on the cards now." Though Thorne had brought the beer, he didn't feel much like drinking. He leaned over, put his can down by the side of the sofa. "Don't worry about it, Dave. The SO7 thing might have gone, but there'll be some nutter out there somewhere putting a bit of work our way soon." Holland nodded. "Good. I hope he's a real psycho. We could do with three bedrooms."
The joke was funny only because of the dark truth that fuelled it. Thorne knew all too well that in a world of uncertainties, in a city of shocking contrasts and shifting ideas, some things were horribly reliable. House prices climbed or tumbled; Spurs had bad seasons or average ones; the mayor was a visionary or an idiot. And the murder rate went up and up and up .. "What d'you reckon about the operation just getting called off like that?" Holland asked. "I know you and the DCI weren't exactly best mates, but still." Thorne didn't fancy rehashing the conversation he'd had with Tughan the day before. Instead, he told Holland how he'd spent the morning.
"I reckon they'd booked the entire massage parlour for themselves."
"Like when they close Harrods so some film star can go shopping," Holland said. "Only with prostitutes." Thorne described the confrontations in the lounge and the V.I.P Suite, playing up the comedy in his exchanges with Hassan and Memet Zarif. He exaggerated the moments that had felt like small victories and glossed over those that were a little more ambiguous.
He left out the fear altogether.
"Will it do any good, d'you think?" Holland said.
"Probably not." Thorne looked across at the baby. He watched for a few seconds, counted the breaths as her tiny back rose and fell. "But we can't let these fuckers just. swan about, you know? Most of the time, they'll run rings round us, I know that, but every so often we've got to give them a decent tap on the ankles, just to let them know we're still there."
Thorne lifted his eyes to the window, saw that it was rapidly darkening outside. "I thought it would do me some good," he said.
The baby began to stir, crying softly and kicking her pudgy legs in slow motion. Holland moved quickly to her and squatted down next to the basket. Thorne watched as he pulled the dummy from his daughter's mouth, gently pushed it back in, and repeated the action until she was peaceful again.
"I'm impressed," Thorne said.
Holland returned to the sofa. He picked up his beer. "Can I ask you something?"
"As long as it doesn't involve nappies."
"There's a rumours going around."
Thorne hadn't bothered taking his jacket off. It was warm in the flat, but he'd been unsure how long he would be staying. Suddenly, it felt as stifling as it had been standing next to that Jacuzzi a few hours earlier.
"Right." Thorne said.
"Did you have a thing with Alison Kelly?" A variety of images, hastily constructed denials and straightforward lies flashed through Thorne's head in the few seconds before he spoke.
Where had the rumours come from? It didn't really matter. There was only a headache to be gained from worrying about it, or trying to work it out. .
Thorne didn't want to deceive Dave Holland. He didn't want to look him in the face and make shit up. In the end, though, he chose to tell the truth because he couldn't be arsed to lie, as much as anything else. "I slept with her, yes."
Holland's expression rapidly changed from shock to amusement. Then it became something different, something ugly, and that was when Thorne decided to tell him everything else. He wouldn't stand for Holland sitting there looking impressed.
When Thorne had finished the story, when the words had moved from the simple repetition of things said over a pub table to those that best described Billy Ryan's body, bleeding on a kitchen floor, they sat and watched Chloe Holland sleep for a minute or two. Holland drained his can, then squeezed it very slowly out
of shape.
"Are we just talking here? This is off duty, right?"
"If you mean "Can we forget about rank?" then yes."
"Right, that's what I mean."
The sick feeling that came with thinking he shouldn't have said anything was, for Thorne, becoming horribly familiar. "Don't forget that it's only temporary, though, or that I can get pissed off very quickly, all right?" He was smiling as he spoke, but hoped that the seriousness beneath was clear enough. He knew that Holland thought he was every bit as much of a fucking idiot as Carol Chamberlain had, but he didn't want to hear it again.
Holland weighed it up and did what Thorne had repeatedly failed to do. He kept his mouth shut.
Thorne spent most of the drive back from the Elephant and Castle thinking about Alison Kelly. Bizarrely, it had not occurred to him until now, but he began to worry about whether she would say anything to anyone. He began to ask himself what might happen if she did. If she were to mention to her solicitor the conversation with a certain detective inspector, they would certainly recommend that she go public with the information. After all, it could only strengthen a diminished-responsibility plea. Wasn't it reasonable to conclude that the balance of a person's mind might be disturbed after they'd just been told that their ex-husband had tried to have them burned to death when they were fourteen years old? That he'd been responsible for setting fire to her best friend? Wouldn't that make most people go ever so slightly round the twist?
Mutterings from the public gallery and nodding heads among the jury.
Why on earth should the accused have believed such an outlandish tale?
Well, Your Honour, she was told it by one of the police officers who was investigating her ex-husband. Told it, as a matter of fact, in that very police officer's bed.
Gasps all around the courtroom.
In reality, Thorne had no idea what would happen to him were the truth to get out. He certainly felt in his gut that there would be some form of action taken against him, that he should probably resign before that could happen. Another part of him was unsure exactly what rule he'd broken. Maybe there were guidelines in that manual he'd never bothered to read. He could hardly go to Russell Brigstocke and ask. The more he thought about it, the simpler it became. Would she tell anyone? Would Alison Kelly, either alone or on the advice of others, sacrifice him in return for a lower sentence, or even a nice cushy number in a hospital?
He thought, as he drove across Waterloo Bridge, that she might well. Going around Russell Square, he decided that she probably wouldn't. By the time Thorne pulled up outside his flat, the only thing he knew for certain was that he would not blame her if she did. All thoughts of Alison Kelly flew from his mind as he approached his front door, then stopped dead with his keys in his hand. He stared at the scarred paintwork and pictured the face of Memet Zarif, the water running slowly through the heavy, dark brows. He stared at the gashes in the woodwork, at the ridges and clinging splinters picked out by the glow from the nearby streetlamp. He felt again the chill at his neck, and knew that Memet had made a decision. When wishes were not enough, action needed to be taken.
Thorne stared at his front door; at the ragged "X' carved deep into it.
TWENTY-NINE
Thorne was dragging the car around and flooring it back towards the main road within a minute, spitting his fury out loud at the windscreen as he drove. His heart was dancing like a maniac in his chest, his breathing as rapid as the baby's he'd been watching only an hour before.
It was important to try to stay calm, to get where he was going in one piece. He had to hold on to his anger, to save it up and channel it against Memet Zarif when he finally got hold of the fucker. He shouted in frustration and stamped on the brake, his cry drowning out the squeal as the wheels locked and the BMW stopped at the lights with a lurch. He watched his knuckles whiten around the wheel as he waited for red to turn to green.
Watching a taxi drive past. Feeling his chest straining against the seat-belt over and over. Listening to the leather move against the nylon, the spastic thumping of his heartbeat. . The realisation was sharp and sudden, like a slap, and Thorne felt the stinging certainty spread and settle across him. Slowly, he leaned forward and flicked on his hazard lights, oblivious to the cars snarling round him and through the traffic lights.
A taxi. . a minicab.
He recalled the face he'd barely registered that morning behind the wheel of a black Omega the driver outside Zarif's place on Green Lanes who'd asked if he needed a cab. He remembered where he'd seen that face before.
Thorne waited until the lights had changed again, turned the car around and cruised slowly back towards his flat.
Why was this man driving a cab for Memet Zarif? Would he still be working this late in the day? It was certainly worth a try. Thorne's mind was racing every bit as fast as it had been before, adrenalin fizzing through his system, but now a calmness was making its presence felt, too, flowing through him where it was needed. The calmness of decision, of purpose.
He was dialing the number before the BMW had come to a standstill outside the flat. He listened to the call going through as he stepped out on to the pavement.
The phlegm-hawker who answered was no more polite on the phone than he had been in person.
"Car service."
"I need a cab from Kentish Town as soon as you can," Thorne said.
"What's the address?"
"Listen, I need a nice one, a good-looking motor, you know? I've got to impress someone. You got a Merc or anything like that?"
"No mate, nothing like that."
Thorne leaned back against his car. "You must have something nice. A Scorpio, an Omega, that kind of thing. I don't mind paying a bit over the odds."
"We've got a couple of Omegas." The man sounded like he resented every syllable of the conversation.
"Yeah, that's great. One of those. Which driver is it?"
"What's the difference?"
Was there a hint of suspicion in the question? Thorne decided it was probably just a natural sourness. "I had one of your lot a couple of weeks ago and he wouldn't shut up."
Thorne was told the driver's name and felt the buzz kick in. "That's perfect," he said.
"What's your address, mate?"
Thorne stared at the "X' on his front door. There was no way he was going to give them an address they would clearly be all too familiar with. The very last thing he wanted was for the driver to know who he was picking up. He named a shop on the Kentish Town Road, told the dispatcher he'd be waiting outside.
"Fifteen minutes, mate."
Thorne was already on his way.
The fifteen minutes was closer to twenty-five, but the time passed quickly. Thorne had plenty to think about. He couldn't be certain that when the driver had spoken to him that morning outside the minicab office, he hadn't done so knowing exactly who he was. Thorne could only hope that the man he was now waiting for had simply been touting for business, and that he'd just been viewed as a potential customer. When the Omega pulled up, Thorne looked hard at the driver. He saw nothing that looked like dissemblance.
Thorne climbed into the back of the car, knowing full well that he'd been wrong about these things before.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
It was the one thing Thorne hadn't considered. "Hampstead Garden Suburb," he said. It was a couple of miles away from them, beyond Highgate. Thorne was hoping it was far enough away, that he'd have got what he needed well before they arrived.
The driver grunted as he steered the Omega into the traffic heading north along the Kentish Town Road.
They drove for five minutes or more in complete silence. Perhaps the dispatcher had mentioned that the customer was not fond of chit-chat. Perhaps the driver had nothing to say. Either way, it suited Thorne perfectly. It gave him a little time to gather his thoughts. He'd recognised Wayne Brookhouse had finally remembered his face from the CCTV tape of Gordon Rooker's visitors. He remembered Stone and Holland laying
out the black-and-white stills on his desk. Brookhouse, if that was his real name, wasn't wearing the glasses any more and his hair was longer now than it had been when he'd last visited Rooker. He was supposed to be the daughter's boyfriend, wasn't he? Or ex-boyfriend, maybe.
What had Stone said about Brookhouse after he'd been to interview him?
"A bit dodgy?" Thorne had good reason to believe that the young man driving him around was rather more dodgy than anyone had thought. The soft leather seat sighed as Thorne relaxed into it. "Busy day, Wayne?"
Brookhouse looked over his shoulder for as long as was possible without crashing. "Sorry, mate, do I know you?"
"Friend of a friend," Thorne said.
"Oh."
Thorne watched the eyes move back and forth from road to mirror. He could almost hear the cogs whirring as Brookhouse tried to work out who the hell he'd just picked up. Thorne decided to give him some help .
"How's your love life, Wayne? Still giving Gordon Rooker's daughter one? What's her name again?"
Thorne watched Brook house's back stiffen, felt him struggle to figure out what might be the 'right' answer, given the circumstances. Thorne was starting to doubt that Brookhouse had ever even met Gordon Rooker's daughter.
"Who the fuck are you?" Brookhouse said. He'd clearly decided that aggression was his safest option.
"You won't be seeing a tip with an attitude like that."
"Right, that's it." Brookhouse indicated and began to pull over to the kerb.
"Keep driving," Thorne said. His tone of voice made it obvious that he did not respond well to aggression.
Brookhouse swerved back towards the centre of the road and they drove on past the tennis courts at the bottom of Parliament Hill.
"Who put you up for the part?" Thorne asked. "I can't work out whether you were already one of Memet's boys and he suggested you to Rooker, or whether you did have some kind of connection with Rooker and he was the one who found you the job driving the cab." He waited for an answer. Didn't get one.
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