Not the cheapest, but one of the best: that was what he wanted people to think. All anyone really wanted was to believe they were getting value for money, wasn't it? Everyone loved a bargain. A lorry's horn blared as it rumbled by him. He pulled out into the stream of traffic, accelerated, and overtook it within seconds. Rooker was standing. Maybe he thought it gave him some authority. "We had an agreement," he said.
Thorne leaned back in his chair. He knew exactly how much authority he had. "I'm a police officer, and, unless I'm much mistaken, you're a convicted felon. This is a prison, not a gentleman's club, and the only part of you I'd ever consider shaking is your neck. Are we clear?"
Rooker ground his teeth.
"Any agreement you might have thought you had is worth precisely less than fuck all," Holland said.
Thorne shrugged. "Sorry."
Rooker sloped across the room, dragged back his chair and sank on to it. He pushed a palm back and forth across white stubble, the loose skin beneath his chin shaking gently. "There's stuff I know," he said.
"Stuff about plenty of people. I told some of it to DCI Tughan's boys, but there's other bits and pieces. There's a few things I kept back."
"Why was that, then?" Thorne asked.
"Because I wasn't sure you lot were being completely straight with me."
Holland laughed. "Straight with you?'
"I was right as well, wasn't I?" Rooker smiled thinly. His tongue flicked the spit away from his gold tooth.
Thorne could well believe that Rooker hadn't told them everything. He could equally well believe that Tughan had kept a few pieces of information back from the team himself. Thorne didn't really give a toss on either score.
"Whatever you may, or may not, have told SO7, the deal was based on you helping to put Billy Ryan away."
Holland took over. "Now that he's been put away for good, you're not a great deal of use."
"I want to talk to Tughan."
"You can talk to whoever you like," Thorne said. "I'm sick of listening to you." He reached behind for the leather jacket that was draped across the back of the chair.
Rooker slid a hand forward, slapped a palm down on the scarred metal tabletop. It was a gesture of frustration as much as anger. "I need to get out. I was supposed to get out."
"You'll be out soon enough," Holland said. Rooker spoke as if his mouth were filled with something sour, with something burned. "No. Not soon enough."
"Unfortunate turn of phrase, Holland." Thorne pulled on his jacket.
"Without your say-so I'll never get through the DLP next week. Those evil bastards'll make sure I die inside."
"You'll get out eventually," Holland said. "Think how much more enjoyable it'll be. Things are always better when you've looked forward to them for a while."
Thorne tried to catch Rooker's eye. The irises, green against off-white, darted around like cornered rats. "Especially now you don't have to worry about Billy Ryan paying someone to put a bullet in your spine."
"Well you certainly won't be worrying about it," Rooker said. Holland stood, tucked in his chair. "I reckon you've probably still got time to do something useful," he said. "Why not squeeze in a quick degree? Come out with a few letters after your name.?" Rooker muttered curses.
Thorne watched as he snatched the lid from his tobacco tin, dug into it. "Why are you so very keen to get out, Rooker? Got a little something stashed away?"
Rooker spat back the answer without so much as raising his head. "I told you before."
"Right. Some desperately moving crap about fresh air and wanting to watch your grandson play football."
"Fuck you, Thorne."
"You never know, Gordon. If the pair of you avoid injury, you might be out in time to watch him score the winning goal in the FA Cup Final. Although, with him playing for West Ham." The motorcyclist idled the bike, steady against the kerb, waiting out the final minute.
Trying to focus. Deciding to go half a minute early, to take into account the probable wait for a gap in the late afternoon traffic. Trying to clear his head. Trivial thoughts intruding, sullying the pure white horizon of his mind in the final few moments. They'd need to set aside enough for school uniforms. They weren't cheap when you needed to buy four or five of everything. Did the all-inclusive package in the Maldives include booze? He'd need to check. That could make a big difference.
He let one car pass, two cars, a push bike before accelerating away hard from the kerb and swinging the machine across both lanes in a wide U-turn. He pulled up outside a dry cleaner's, two doors along from the address he would be visiting. Then, within fifteen seconds, the moves he'd gone over in his mind a hundred times or more in the last few hours.
He flicked the bike on to its stand, left the engine running. He walked quickly to the box on the back. It had been left unlocked. He reached inside, withdrew his hand as soon as it had closed around the rubberised grip of the gun, and turned away from the street. The arm swung loose at his side as he walked, quickly but not too quickly from kerb to shop front Without breaking stride, he turned right into the open doorway of the minicab office. He was two large paces towards the counter before the man behind it looked up and by then the gun was being leveled at him. A man in an armchair in the corner lowered his newspaper and executed a near-perfect double-take before crying out. Hassan Zarif cried out too as a bullet passed through him. The spray of blood that fell across the calendar behind him was somewhat over dramatic in comparison with the gentle hiss from the weapon that had caused it. The motorcyclist fired again and Zarif fell back, dropping behind the wooden counter. The gun bucked in his hand, but only slightly. No more than it might recoil had it brushed the surface of something hot to test the temperature.
As he strode forward, his target having disappeared from sight, the door to the right of the counter burst open, and the motorcyclist turned just as the gun in Tan Zarif s hand began to do its work. The bullet smashed through the plastic of the darkened visor. By the time the first passer-by had spilled his shopping, and others who knew very well that a car was not backfiring close by were starting to run, the man in the leathers had dropped, with very little noise, on to the grubby linoleum.
For a few seconds inside the tiny office, there was only the ringing report of the unsilenced gunshot. The high-pitched hum of it rose above the deep rumble of a bus, passing by outside on its way towards Turnpike Lane.
Tan Zarif shouted to the man in the armchair, who jumped up and ran past him through the doorway that led to the rear of the office. Zarif stepped smartly across to the body. And it was a body, that much was obvious: the ragged hole in the visor and the blood that poured along the cushioned neck of the helmet and down, made it clear that the man on the floor would not be getting up again.
It didn't seem to matter.
The man who had been sitting in the armchair, the man who was now behind the counter bending over the bloodied figure of Hassan Zarif, clapped his hairy hands across his ears as Hassan's younger brother emptied his gun into a dead man's chest.
The first part of the drive back had been pleasant enough. They'd moved through the Wiltshire and Hampshire countryside quickly, but with enough time to enjoy the scenery, to laugh at the signs to Barton Stacey and Nether Wallop. Once they'd joined the M3, however, things had quickly become frustrating. It was one of those journeys where drivers had decided to sit there, beetling along at seventy or below in all three lanes. As usual, Thorne sat in the outside lane, grumbling a good deal and damning those ahead of him for the selfish morons they were. He never for a moment entertained the possibility that he might be one of them.
A couple of weeks into spring, and summer weather seemed to have come early. The BMW's fans were chucking out all the cold air they could, but even in shirtsleeves it was stifling inside the car. Holland took a long swig from a bottle of water. "Still pleased you bought this?"
Thorne was singing quietly to himself. He reached across, turned down the volume of the first Highwaymen album.
"Say again?"
"The car." Holland fanned himself theatrically. "Still think it was a good move?"
Thorne shrugged, as if the fact that they were all but melted to the leather seats was unimportant. "When they made these, cars didn't have air conditioning. It's the price you pay for a classic'
"I'm surprised they had the wheel when this thing was made."
"Good one, Dave."
"And what you pay to keep this on the road for a year would buy you a car with AC."
Thorne drew close to the back of a Transit van and flashed his lights. He slammed his palm against the wheel and eased his foot off the accelerator when the signal was ignored.
"Rooker's not easy to like, is he?" Holland said.
"Probably the right reaction, considering you're one of the Met's finest and he kills people for a living. Not that I haven't met plenty of murderers I could sink a pint or two with. and more than a few coppers I'd happily have beaten to death."
"Right, but Rooker's an arse hole whichever way you look at it."
"You do know that bit about "the Met's finest" was ironic, don't you?"
Holland opened his window an inch, turned his face towards it.
"Absolutely."
"Rooker was a touch more likeable when I had something he wanted," Thorne said. "And he'd probably say the same thing about me." He pulled across into the middle lane but was still unable to get ahead of the Transit van. It had a sticker on the back that read: "How am I driving?" Thorne thought about calling the phone number that was given and swearing at whoever was at the other end for a while.
"Tell me about some of them," Holland said. "The murderers you got on with."
Thorne glanced into his rear-view mirror. He saw the line of cars snaking away behind him. He saw the tension, real or imagined, around his eyes.
He thought about a man named Martin Palmer; a man who, in the final analysis, had killed because he was terrified not to. Palmer had strangled and stabbed, and his final, clumsy attempt at something like redemption had been made at a tragic price. He had changed Tom Thorne's thinking, not to mention his face, for ever. Thorne had not 'got on' with Martin Palmer. He had despised and abused him. But there had been pity, too, and sadness at glimpsing the man a murderer could so easily have been. Thorne had been disturbed, was still disturbed, by feelings that had asserted themselves; and by others that had been altogether absent when he'd sat and swapped oxygen with Martin Palmer.
Then there was last year: the Foley case.
The murderers you got on with.
"I don't really know where to start," Thorne said. "Dennis Nielsen was all right if you got to know him, and Fred West was quite a good laugh, till he topped himself. Talking of which, I remember one night, I was playing darts with Harold Shipman. Harry, I used to call him .." Holland let out a loud, long-suffering sigh. "If you're going to try to be funny, can you turn up the music again?" They drove on, the car barely getting into top gear for more than a few minutes at a time. The monotony yielded only briefly to drama when Thorne spent too long watching a kestrel hovering above the hard shoulder, and came within inches of rear-ending an Audi.
"How's Sophie and the baby?" he asked.
"They're good."
"What is she now?"
"Nearly seven months. It feels like we're getting our lives back a bit, you know?"
Thorne shook his head. He had no idea at all.
"There's not so much panic," Holland explained. "I mean, it's still bloody scary, and we're knackered all the time, but we know more or less what we're doing." He paused, glanced across at Thorne. "Well, Sophie always did, but now I know, more or less what I'm doing. You should come round and see her."
"So, you're fine with it all, then? The dad bit. I know you had some worries." Thorne remembered a conversation they'd had the previous summer. Bizarrely, it had been on the very day he'd bought the BMW. Holland had been drunk, had confessed to feeling terrified. He'd told Thorne he was worried that he might resent the baby when it came, that Sophie might make him choose between the baby and the job.
"I was being stupid," Holland said. He turned to Thorne, grinning.
"Chloe's brilliant. She's into everything, but she's fucking brilliant."
"I'm glad it's working out," Thorne said.
"Tell you the truth, the last couple of weeks have been great. A chance to recharge the batteries, you know? The only problem is that Sophie's starting to get used to having me around again." The officers on the investigation had all been spending more time with loved ones in the fortnight or so since the Ryan murder. The job had recently involved a lot of paperwork, much of it from other cases, and a good deal of time sitting on arses waiting for somebody -Stephen Ryan in particular to get off theirs. To make a move. The investigation had wound itself down, or spiraled into chaos, depending on your point of view.
"D'you reckon Stephen Ryan is going to do anything?" Holland asked. Thorne grunted, but only with pleasure as the Transit van finally indicated and moved inside. Thorne swerved back into the fast lane and powered past it, gaining a pointless thirty feet but enjoying it nonetheless.
He had no idea that, twenty miles ahead of him, uniformed officers were taping off the area around a minicab office on Green Lanes. Others were gathering witnesses and starting to take statements. Phil Hendricks was already on his way to the crime scene, while an ambulance was moving in the opposite direction, its services clearly not required.
Stephen Ryan had made a move.
TWENTY-FIVE
Wednesday morning in the Major Incident Room. Two days after the fatal shooting at the Zarifs' minicab office. A team back on its feet, but yet to get the feeling back in its arse.
"We've had word from Immigration," Brigstocke said. "They think a few more from the lorry might have turned up. I say "think" because the individuals concerned aren't telling anybody very much."
"Where?" Thorne asked.
Brigstocke glanced at the sheet of paper he was holding. "A car wash in Hackney. One of those places where there's half a dozen of them on your car at once, you know? With sponges and chamois leathers, inside with vacuums."
Stone nodded. "There's one near me. Inside and out for a tenner. Plus a tip."
"The owner's being questioned," Brigstocke said. "So far, surprise, surprise, he's pleading ignorance. There'll be a connection to the Ryans somewhere down the line, but I don't think it'll be much different from the others."
A man and a woman, suspected of being from the hijacked lorry, had been detained the previous week in Tottenham, having been discovered working in a restaurant kitchen. Two men had been seized a few days before that from a shop fitting wholesalers in Manor House. In both cases an astonishing bout of amnesia seemed to have struck all concerned. Arrests had been made, but none would lead to anything other than deportation orders for the illegals and fines for their employers. There would be enough red tape to stretch back to where the people in the lorry had originated and nothing to incriminate those who mattered in the Ryan or the Zarif organisations. Tughan took over from Brigstocke. "Let's move on to the shooting in Green Lanes. What about the witnesses, Sam? Any luck?" Karim shook his head. "Hard to believe, I know, but we still can't find anybody who saw anything that contradicts Memet Zarif's story. We've even got a couple who conveniently noticed a man in a balaclava carrying a gun and running away after the gunshots had finished."
"Yeah, right," Thorne said.
Holland let out a grunt of laughter. "That's one couple who won't go short at Christmas, then."
According to Memet Zarif and the others in the minicab office at the time, the man in the leathers who had shot and wounded Hassan Zarif had himself been shot dead by a mysterious second gunman who'd followed him inside and fled once he'd killed him. The police knew it was cock and bull. They guessed that the 'second' gunman was Memet or Tan Zarif, but with no murder weapon or corroborating witness, there was little anyone could do to prove it.
"We are sure about one thi
ng, though," Tughan said. There was a certain amount of laughter, which he acknowledged with uncharacteristic good humour. "I know, I've already alerted the media. We have a name for the victim: the dead one, that is. He was Donal Jackson, thirty-three. A known associate of Stephen Ryan." This last fact came as no surprise to anyone.
"Is he the bloke who did the Izzigils, do we think?" Stone asked.
"Same gun?"
Tughan opened his mouth but Thorne was quicker. "No chance," he said.
"It's the same type of gun, that's all. Whoever was hired to kill the Izzigils was good. Clinical, you know? This idiot got himself killed and didn't even manage to take anybody with him." He trailed off, his mind focusing suddenly on the failed attempt to kill an innocent fourteen-year-old girl. Now, twenty years later, the son of the man behind that had fucked up a hit of his own.
"DI Thorne's probably right," Tughan said. "Word is that Jackson was pretty new to contract stuff. Picked up the job because he was Stephen Ryan's mate, because Ryan wanted to go a different way from his old man. Also, according to the people we've spoken to, Jackson was pretty cheap."
Stone snorted. "Pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
"You'd've thought shelling out for a decent hit man was pretty basic," Kitson said.
Others picked up on her sarcasm, mumbled their agreement.
"Haven't these people heard of a false economy?"
"You just can't get the staff."
"He'll pay for it in the end," Thorne said. "What he did, what he failed to do, is going to cost him."
"Think it's all going to kick off?" Holland asked.
"I think Ryan should have dug into his pocket and hired a trio of hitmen." Thorne was only half joking. "One for each brother. He should have done it properly and killed all three of them."
"This might be a good time to announce that in terms of the joint operation, we're going to be scaling things down a bit," Tughan said. Thorne stared at him. Surely he was joking. "You what?"
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