"It's not vital information," Thorne said. "I'm just curious. Either way, you were clearly just passing messages backwards and forwards. Popping in to see Rooker, playing the part of the harmless tear away who used to shag his daughter, giving him messages from Memet." There were still a great many questions that needed answering, but Thorne had worked one thing out: whatever deal Rooker had been trying to strike with him, he had been busy setting up another with Memet Zarif. If he was going to hand over Billy Ryan, Rooker had clearly decided to play it very safe indeed.
"Rooker told us you were a car mechanic. Is that bollocks, Wayne?
Would you know a big end from a Big Mac? You certainly convinced my DC when he interviewed you."
"You're Thorne."
"Spot on. And you're fucked."
Through the gap between the seats, Thorne watched Brook house's hand slide across, reaching for something on the passenger seat. Thorne leaned forward, grabbed a good handful of Brook house's hair and pulled his head back.
"Own, Jesus!"
Thorne looked and saw that Brookhouse had been reaching for a mobile.
"Look, I was just pretending to be a visitor," he said. His voice had risen an octave or two. "Like you said, I was just delivering a bit of information, nothing important, I swear. I know fuck all about fuck all, that's the truth."
Thorne stared at the tiny mobile phone, small and shiny, nestled in the folds of a dark blue anorak that had been neatly laid across the seat. Wayne Brookhouse had posed as a car mechanic, and as the ex-boyfriend of Gordon Rooker's daughter. Thorne suddenly wondered if he might not have played another role.
"Now you can pull over," Thorne said. "Anywhere."
"What for?"
Thorne barely registered the cry as he dragged Wayne Brook house's head a little further back. "I need to make a call. ." Chamberlain reached for the phone, both eyes still on the TV programme she was trying to lose herself in.
Thorne's voice concentrated her thoughts.
"Oh, hello, Tom."
Thorne spoke quickly and quietly, and her expression changed when she heard the edge in his tone. From his armchair, Jack looked across at her, concern in every line of his face. He pointed the remote control, turned down the volume on the TV.
Thorne told her to listen.
Chamberlain smiled at her husband and shook her head. It was nothing.
Thorne pressed the handset hard against Brook house's ear until he began to moan in pain.
"Now, say it again," Thorne said. "Like you mean it." Brookhouse winced and took a deep breath. "I burned her." Thorne yanked the phone away, his fingers still clutching Brook house's hair. Something in the near silence on the line, a horror in the gentle hiss, told him that Carol Chamberlain had recognised the voice.
"Carol?"
"There's a train from here in less than fifteen minutes," she said. "I can be there in an hour and a half."
Thorne felt a second or two of doubt, but no more. He had been fairly sure what Chamberlain's reaction would be as soon as he'd decided to make the call. "Give me a ring when you're coming in," he said. He flicked his wrist sharply to one side, smacking Brook house's head against the window. "There'll be a cab there to meet you."
THIRTY
Wayne Brookhouse's face open and attractive beneath the mop of thick, dark hair broke into a smile. He looked relaxed and happy. Only the redness, livid around his right ear, and the expressions on the faces of the two people sitting opposite him indicated that anything might be out of the ordinary.
"How much longer we going to carry on with this?" Brookhouse said. It was not far short of midnight, and in the two hours since Thorne had first confronted him, in the time spent waiting for Carol Chamberlain to arrive and travelling back to Thorne's flat, Brookhouse had recovered his confidence.
"Hadn't really thought about it," Thorne said.
"That much is fucking obvious."
Chamberlain looked at Thorne. They were sitting next to each other on kitchen chairs. Brookhouse was a few feet in front of them in the middle of the sofa. "I don't think there's any time limit, is there?" she said.
Thorne shook his head, stared for a few seconds at Brookhouse before speaking. "Tell us how it worked between you, Rooker and Zarif."
Brookhouse's smile didn't falter. "They clearly aren't paying you enough," he said, looking around. "This place is shit."
"Why were you pretending to be responsible for the attack on Jessica Clarke?"
Thorne knew this was not going to be easy. In the time that Brookhouse had honed his cocky act, Thorne had put a few pieces of the puzzle in place. He was now working up to the really important questions by asking a few to which he already knew the answers.
"It smells as well," Brookhouse said. "It stinks of curry." Whoever had put the idea together and right now Thorne's money was on Gordon Rooker had been intent on putting the ball into the police's court. Drawing the police to him. And, like mugs, they'd come. Brookhouse had made the calls and, sent the letters and sure enough, eventually some idiot had gone along to have a word with Gordon Rooker and started the ball rolling. They'd pressed Rooker until, finally, he'd confessed his innocence, and told them about Billy Ryan. Then he had them.
Some idiot.
"So, Rooker was sorting out a deal with us, and at the same time making sure he had a slightly different kind of protection from Memet Zarif, right? Is that right, Wayne?"
"You came to my house." Chamberlain crossed her legs, smoothed down her skirt.
Thorne glanced at her, imagining for a bizarre moment that the two of them were interviewing Brookhouse for a job.
"You stood in my front garden and looked up at me, didn't you?" Brookhouse stretched out his legs, knocked the toes of his trainers together. "This is so fucked up," he said. He nodded towards Chamberlain. "Look at her. She's not a copper. She's like my fucking auntie or something."
"I'm a copper," Thorne said.
"So? You wouldn't be with her if this was anything official. It's obvious you aren't going to arrest me. This is something. private. Right?"
Thorne shrugged. "So what are you going to do, Wayne? You want to call the police?"
Brookhouse leaned forward, his forearms braced across his knees. "I might call a solicitor, yeah."
"The phone's by the front door."
The man on the sofa held Thorne's stare for a few seconds, then, slowly, the smile reappeared. "You can't do shit to me." He started to laugh softly in short, high-pitched bursts, and Thorne could see that the amusement was real. The little fucker really found the situation funny. He genuinely believed that they could not touch him, that he was protected.
"You're absolutely right, Wayne. This is private, which means that I won't lose my job if I come over there and kick your balls up into your throat."
Thorne's threat, or perhaps it was his expression as he made it, was enough to stop the laughter, but no more than that.
"Fine," Brookhouse said. "It's probably the only way this can end up, right?"
"That's up to you."
Brookhouse sat up straight. "It's OK with me if it means we can get this shit over with. I'll take a pasting if I have to, but I'll hurt you at the same time, man, I swear." Another nod towards Chamberlain.
"She going to have a crack as well, is she? "Cos I tell you, I've got no fucking problems with giving her a slap as well." The confidence vanished for a second as Chamberlain stood suddenly and stepped towards him, shouting: "No fucking problems with trying to set fire to a young girl at a bus stop, either, have you?"
"No idea what you're on about."
Thorne knew now that the attack in Swiss Cottage had been made to up the stakes, had been the only option left when it looked like Rooker's offer had been rejected. It had certainly done the trick, leaving the police no option but to agree to Rooker's deal.
"That was you, too, wasn't it, Wayne? At that bus stop?" Chamberlain stood, red-faced, above him. "That's attempted murder, and you're looking at the sa
me sentence Rooker got." Brookhouse stared at her, calmly bringing up his hand to wipe her spittle from his cheek.
"Jack of all trades, aren't you?" Thorne said. "Are you the only one Memet's got who can do all these things? Or has the family blown all its money on hookers and expensive hitmen?" Brookhouse said nothing.
Thorne leaned forward. This was an important one. "Who put the cross on my door, Wayne?"
The answer came at the back end of a yawn. "Piss off." Thorne's fingers curled into fists at the exact moment that Chamberlain turned to him, suddenly composed again.
"Have you got any handcuffs knocking about?" she asked. Gordon Rooker was shopping.
He'd spent a lot of money already. He'd splashed out on smart new clothes and several pairs of fashionable shoes. He'd got drinks in for a bar-full of strangers who were now his closest friends. He'd bought the latest mobile phone, a nice radio and a massive flat-screen TV that he'd seen in a magazine and planned to put in the corner of his new living room. He didn't know where that living room was going to be yet, or how much money he'd have to buy all these things when he really got the chance, but he relished the planning. He savoured the dream of owning again, the joy of the notes passing through his hands. Lying on his bunk in the dark, he tried to imagine the future. This was something he'd done countless times before, of course, when there was even a sniff of hope that he might be let out, but this time it was different. He could taste, smell and touch the freedom that was no more than a few days away.
He ate an expensive meal three courses and a fancy bottle of wine in a restaurant that was almost certainly no longer in business. He left a large tip and walked out of there feeling like his shit would taste of sugar.
Money had been mentioned back when Ryan was still alive. It had been part of the deal then, even though they'd been a bit coy about exactly how much. He was likely to cop for a bit less now than he would have done originally, but they still had to give him something, surely. They couldn't just dump him in a strange town or city, point him towards the nearest dole office and tell him to get on with it, could they?
He'd tried getting some straight answers out of that bastard Thorne, but it had been like trying to piss up a rope. There was still so much that was unsettled, and it was disconcerting after twenty years of routine, but he could live with it. A release date, in black and white, was all the certainty he needed.
He bought books, dozens of them: spy thrillers and biographies. He'd learned to lose himself in them and looked forward to choosing his own.
He bought a season ticket at Upton Park. Wherever he ended up, he'd sneak back now and again to watch his grandson play. And he bought himself a woman. Inside, you developed strong wrists, but cash handed over to lie back and watch a tart doing the work could only be money well spent.
In his cell, Rooker drifted towards sleep thinking about big, soft beds, and about flesh beneath his fingers that was not his own. THIRTY-ONE
Thorne hadn't known Wayne Brookhouse for long, of course, but this was definitely a look he'd not seen before. The eyes bulged. The face seemed stiff and yellow as old newspaper.
Thorne knew Chamberlain's features far better, but they were distorted by an expression that to him was equally as strange.
"This is 50 ... fucking out of order," Brookhouse said. He panted out the words, his head twisting from side to side, the bed shaking as he fought against his restraints.
One wrist was cuffed to the metal bedstead, the other lashed to it with a black tie which Thorne normally only dug out for funerals. Thorne was sitting across his prisoner's legs, holding tight to the rail at the foot of the bed to avoid being pitched off as Brookhouse struggled and bucked.
Chamberlain finished unbuttoning Brookhouse's shirt and reached towards the bedside table. The appliance she picked up was plugged into a red extension reel, which in turn ran to a socket in the corner of the room. She flicked the cable aside as she took a step towards the head of the bed. "It's funny," she said, 'because, normally, I bloody hate ironing."
Brookhouse spat out a string of curses. He was doing his very best to appear unafraid, to make the fear look like rage, and he wasn't making a bad job of it. Maybe it would have been harder to disguise if Thorne had been holding the iron. Perhaps, much as he was struggling, Brookhouse found the sight of a woman in her mid-fifties playing amateur-hour torturer faintly ridiculous.
To Thorne, the only ridiculous thing was that Brookhouse wasn't a damn sight more scared. Thorne could see something in Carol Chamberlain's eyes that he'd never seen before. Or maybe something that was usually there was missing.
"Tell us about the X-Man," Thorne said. Brookhouse screwed his eyes shut. "I can't." Chamberlain lowered her arm. The face of the iron was no more than six inches above Brookhouse's chest. "This is heavy," she said. Thorne stared at Chamberlain. They were bus king this. He couldn't tell whether she meant it, so Brookhouse certainly couldn't. "Come on, Wayne."
Brookhouse winced. It was obvious, though the iron was not touching him, that he was starting to feel its heat. "He's gone, he's gone." He began to shout, to gabble his words. "He got out of the country. All right?"
"Where?" Thorne asked.
"I don't fucking know, I swear. Serbia, maybe. I think he was a Serb."
"Give me a name."
"I don't know his name, I never met him." He tensed as the iron dropped another inch. "Look, I saw him in the cafe once, that's all. He was just sitting on his own in the corner, smiling. Dark hair, you know, same as they all fucking look. Smile like a film star, loads of fucking teeth, I remember that."
Thorne remembered the man in the car outside his flat. He remembered that smile. He wondered how close he'd come to feeling a blade against his back; the brightness of its edge, teasing before the blackness of the bullet.
"When did he leave, Wayne?"
"A while ago. A few weeks after he did the last one. After the copper."
Moloney.
So, Thorne had been wrong about Billy Ryan having Marcus Moloney killed. It had been Memet Zarif who had ordered the killing, without realising he was targeting an undercover officer. The murder of Moloney had, in Thorne's mind, been one more thing Ryan had paid for with his own death. One more thing that had justified Thorne telling Alison Kelly what he'd told her. Now, Thorne had to take Moloney's death off that list, but it didn't make much difference. There were still plenty of things Billy Ryan had needed to pay for ... "If he's gone," Thorne said, 'who put the "X" on my door?"
"It could have been anyone." The sweat left a stain on Thorne's sheets when Brookhouse turned his head. "It was just to put the shits up you a bit, that's all."
"Who ordered the killings?" Chamberlain asked. "Was it Memet?" Brookhouse shook his head.
"Is that a "no"?" Chamberlain moved the iron to her left hand, shook out the right for a few seconds, then moved it back. "Or a "no comment"?"
Thorne steadied himself as Brookhouse's knees jerked up into his backside. He rode out the struggle, thinking about the dead and about those who had taken money to arrange their deaths. Those for whom knives and guns were the tools of their trade: the butcher who had murdered Mickey Clayton, Marcus Moloney and the others; the man who had shot Muslum and Hanya Izzigil; whoever who had gunned down Francis Cullen and the two still unidentified immigrants who had been dragged from the back of his lorry and had tried to run for their lives. Page
The men who'd got away with it.
Like a man whose tools had been a naked flame, and a can of lighter fuel.
Thorne looked at Brookhouse, wondering just how close he might have got to Gordon Rooker. Rooker probably trusted him a damn sight more than he'd ever trust a police officer. Thorne asked himself how much Rooker might have had to reveal, how much he'd had to give up before his arrangements with Memet Zarif were finalised. It couldn't hurt to ask.
"Who burned Jessica Clarke, Wayne?"
Thorne saw something flicker, just for a second, in Brookhouse's eyes. A spark of something
, that he immediately did his best to hide, like a small boy caught stealing and jamming the booty far down into his pocket. Thorne glanced at Chamberlain and knew immediately that she'd seen it, too.
"You know, don't you?" she said.
Thorne watched as Chamberlain let the iron fall a little further. He could see the tendons stretching on the inside of her forearm as she took the weight of it, the concentration on her face as she moved it, as slowly as she could.
"You won't." Brookhouse said.
Thorne watched, compelled, as Chamberlain reached down and turned the dial on the iron to its highest setting. A drop of water fell from it on to Brookhouse's chest. He flinched as if it were boiling.
"You're imagining the pain as something quick," Chamberlain said. "A moment of agony as I press the iron down and then release it. Just a second or two of hissing and then it's over, right? OK, I want you to think about how it would be if I let the iron go. If I just left it sitting there on your chest. Sizzling on your chest, Wayne. How long do you think it would take to start sinking in?" When Brookhouse took his eyes from the iron and looked at Chamberlain's face he started to talk. "Jesus, how fucking thick are you people?
There was no other man. There was only me, pretending to be him."
"Pretending to be the man who really burned Jessica?"
"Him. Rooker. Rooker was the man."
And Thorne could see it: bright as a flame and certain as a scar. In the walk and in the fucking wink of him, and in the cunt's fingers moving through his greasy, yellow hair. In the tongue that slid across a gold tooth and in that sly smile before Gordon Rooker bent to snap the lid from his tobacco tin ... Thorne had known from the moment he'd recognised Brookhouse that Rooker had been lying. But not about this. It was obvious that Brookhouse couldn't have burned Jessica, but Thorne had never presumed that the man making the calls the man on Chamberlain's front lawn had been the real attacker. He'd always thought that there was someone else, and that Rooker had probably known who he was.
"Tom?"
Everything had been built upon the belief, his belief that Rooker had been innocent. Wasn't it him that had put the pressure on Rooker in the first place, forced him to admit that he wasn't the one?
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