"We've had results, some good ones, but the fact is that the Job can't see us getting too much more out of this. We're wrapping it up." Thorne looked across at Brigstocke, eyes wide. The look he got back told him that there was nothing worth arguing about. This was for information, not discussion.
"Billy Ryan, one of our main targets, is no longer a worry, even if, sadly, we can't claim credit for that. In point of fact, from now on, there's not going to be much in the way of results that we won't have to share with Immigration or the Customs and Excise mob. There are one or two loose ends that we've yet to tie up and there'll be a few more arrests, but the pro-active end of it just isn't justified in terms of resources."
"How can we pull out of this now?" Thorne asked. "After what just happened?"
Tughan was already putting papers into a briefcase. "It was Stephen Ryan's last hurrah. He messed it up. It's a war he's going to lose, and then hopefully things will settle down again."
"Hopefully?"
"Things will settle down again."
"Meanwhile, we just look the other way. We do some paperwork and nick a few nobodies and let them kill each other?" Tughan turned to Brigstocke. "I want to thank Russell and his team for their cooperation and for their hospitality. We've done some good things together. We've achieved a lot, really, we have, and I think I'll be borne out on that in the weeks and months to come. Anyway, I'm sure you'll be looking forward to getting back to work on your own cases. To getting your offices back, at least." There was a smattering of unenthusiastic laughter.
"We'll have a pint or two later, of course, and say our goodbyes. Obviously, we won't be vanishing right away. Like I said, there are a few loose ends." And he was moving away towards the door. Brigstocke cleared his throat, walked a few paces after Tughan, then turned. He looked to Thorne, Kitson and the rest of his officers.
"I'll be getting together with DS Karim later. Re-assigning the casework." His parting words were spoken like a third-rate manager trying to gee up a team who were six-nil down at half time. "There's still plenty of disorganised criminals out there who need catching."
For a few seconds after Brigstocke had left the room, nobody moved or spoke. One of those uneasy silences that follows a speech. Gradually, the volume increased, though not much, and the bodies changed position, so that in a few subtle turns, half paces and casual shifts of the shoulder, the single team became two very separate ones. The officers from each unit began to huddle and look to their own, their conversations far from secret, but no longer to be shared. The members of Team 3 at the Serious Crime Group (West) stayed silent a little longer than their SO7 counterparts. It was Yvonne Kitson who sought to break the silence and change the mood at the same time.
"How's the philosophy going, Andy? Nietzsche is it this week, or Jean-Paul Sartre?"
Stone tried to look blank, but the blush betrayed him. "Eh?"
"It's all right, Andy," she said. "All blokes have tricks. All women too, come to that."
Stone shrugged, the smile spreading. "It works."
"Obviously you have to use whatever you've got." Holland lounged against a desk. "Only some of us prefer to rely on old-fashioned charm and good looks."
"Money goes down quite well," Karim said, grinning. "Failing that, begging usually works for me."
"Begging's excellent," Kitson said.
Holland looked to Thorne. He was six feet or so distant from them, the incomprehension still smeared across his face like a stain.
"What about you, sir?" Holland asked. "Any tricks you want to share with the group?"
Stone was laughing at his joke before he even started speaking. "I'm sure Dr. Hendricks could get his hands on some Rohypnol if you're desperate."
But Thorne was already moving towards the door.
"Can't you be predictable just once in your life," Tughan said. "I thought you'd be glad to see the back of me." Tughan stood in the doorway to his office. Brigstocke was nowhere to be seen.
"Look, we can't stand each other," Thorne said. "Fair enough. Neither of us loses a great deal of sleep about that, I'm sure, and once or twice, yes, I've said things just to piss you off. Right? But this he gestured back towards the Incident Room, towards what Tughan had said in there 'is seriously stupid. I know you're not personally responsible for the decision."
"No, I'm not. But I stand by it."
'"Ours is not to reason why". That it?"
"Not if we want to get anywhere."
"Career-wise, you mean? Or are we back to results again?"
"Take your pick."
Thorne leaned against the door jamb. He and Tughan stood on either side of the doorway, staring across the corridor at the wall opposite. At a pin board festooned with Police Federation newsletters and dog-eared photocopies of meaningless graphs. At an AIDS-awareness leaflet, a handwritten list of last season's fixtures for Metropolitan Police rugby teams, a torn-out headline from the Standard that said, "Capital gun crime out of control', at postcards advertising various items for sale: a Paul Smith suit; a scooter; a second-hand Play Station.
"It's the timing I don't understand," Thorne said. "Now, I mean, after."
"I think this decision was made before the shooting in the minicab office."
"And that didn't cause anybody to rethink it?"
"Apparently not."
Richards, the concentric-circles man, came along the corridor with a file that was, by all accounts, terribly important. Tughan took it with barely a word. Thorne waited until the Welshman had gone.
"When we found that lorry driver dead and those two in the woods with bullets in the backs of their heads, you were fired up. "This has got to stop," you said. You were angry about the Izzigils, about Marcus Moloney. You were up for it. There's no point pretending you weren't."
Tughan said nothing, clutched the file he was holding that little bit tighter to his chest.
"How do these people decide what we're going to do?" Thorne asked.
"Who we target and who we ignore? Which lucky punters have a chance when it comes to us catching the men responsible for killing their husband or their father, and which poor sods might just as well ask a traffic warden to sort it out? How do these people formulate policy?
Do they roll a fucking dice every morning? Pick a card?" Tughan spoke to the pin board scratched at a small mark on the lapel of his brown suit. "They divvy up the men and they dole out the money as they see fit. It goes where they think it's most needed, and where they think it might get a return. It's not rocket science, Thorne."
"So, which deserving cause came out of the hat this time?"
"We're shifting direction slightly, looking towards vice. The Job wants to crack down on the foreign gangs moving into the game: Russians, Albanians, Lithuanians. It's getting nasty, and when one of these gangs wants to hit another operation they tend to go for the soft targets. They kill the girls."
Thorne shrugged. "So, Memet Zarif and Stephen Ryan just go about their business?"
"Nobody's giving them "Get out of Jail Free" cards."
"Talking of which."
"Gordon Rooker will be released by the beginning of next week." Thorne had figured as much. "Right. He's one of those loose ends you were talking about."
"Rooker can give us names, a few decent ones, and we're going to take them."
"Define "decent"."
"Look, there'll be better results, but there'll be plenty of worse ones.
Right now, this is what we've decided to settle for." Even Thorne's sarcastic grunt failed to set Tughan off. He'd remained remarkably calm throughout the entire exchange. "You're a footie fan, right? How would you feel if your team played beautiful stuff all bloody season and won fuck all?"
If Thorne had felt like lightening the atmosphere, he might have asked Tughan if he'd ever seen Spurs play. But he didn't. "You won't be offended if I don't hang around for the emotional goodbye later on?" he said.
"I'd be amazed if you did."
Thorne pushed himself away fr
om 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 favorites 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 cease fire 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 water colour 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 stockinet 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 hour 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 li
sts 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."
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