The Burning Girl-4 (18 page)

Thorne shook his head. "No, I don't mean that. Do you think it's the same man who set fire to Jessica Clarke twenty years ago?"

There was no quick answer. "He didn't look .. . old," she said. "I know you couldn't see his face. It was more the way he held himself, I suppose."

"You're thinking about Rooker, about somebody like he is," Thorne said.

"I know .. ."

"Suppose this man was in his early twenties back then. He'd only be in his early forties now."

"It was seeing him run away. It seemed wrong, somehow, for the man I was imagining."

"He jogged away," Thorne said. "Even if he was in his fifties, or sixties even, that's not out of the question, is it?"

Hendricks carried his glass across the room and topped it up. "Just jogging away, casual y, like he did, makes a lot of sense. It's the right thing to do if you don't want to draw attention to yourself, if you don't want to look like you're legging it away from something .. ." From the kitchen, the timer on Thorne's cooker suddenly buzzed. Hendricks put down his wineglass and went to do whatever was necessary.

"If it is him," Chamberlain said, 'is Bil y Ryan behind what he's doing now?"

"God knows, but, if he is, I haven't got the first idea why."

Hendricks swore loudly. Either dinner was ruined or he'd burned himself.

"You al right in there, Delia?" Thorne shouted.

There was another bout of slightly more subdued swearing.

Chamberlain laughed. "It smel s good, whatever it is." She drained her glass, glancing at her watch in the process.

"Listen, why don't you stay the night?" Thorne asked. "We can sort out a bed .. ."

"No, I'm going to get the last train. If you can give me a taxi number .. ."

"It's no trouble, real y. I'm sure Jack can make his own breakfast."

She shook her head and took a step towards the kitchen.

Thorne put a hand on her shoulder. "When we get Ryan, he's going to tel us who took his money twenty years ago and burned Jessica. He's going to give me a name." He pointed towards the VCR. "If it was this bloke, I'l get him. If it wasn't this bloke, and whoever it was is stil alive, I'l get him. Then, I'l get this bloke as wel . That's a promise, Carol.. ."

When Chamberlain looked at him, her expression a mixture of gratitude and amusement, Thorne realised that his hand had moved from her shoulder. In his effort to reassure her, he'd been gently rubbing her back in smal circles. She raised her eyebrows comical y. "So, this offer to stay the night," she said. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

Ian Clarke sat on the sofa, his arm around his wife. He stared across the room in the direction of the television.

He cried once a year on his first daughter's birthday. The day that was also the anniversary of her death. For the rest of the time, everything was kept inside, squashed and pressed inside, his ribs, like the bars of a cage, holding in the thoughts and feelings and dark desires.

He sat stil , going over the details of Thorne's visit, the things that were said, feeling as if his ribs might crack and splinter at any moment.

His wife laughed softly at something on the television and nestled her head into his chest. His hand moved automatical y to her hair. He stared at a smal square of white wal a foot or so above the screen. From time to time, he could hear a gentle thud on the ceiling as his second daughter moved around upstairs.

Thorne lay awake in bed, wondering if it was simply indigestion he was suffering from, or something a little harder to get rid of.

Enjoyable as the evening had been, he'd been happy to see Carol cal for a cab. And he'd been relieved when, later, Hendricks had decided to leave the clearing up until the morning and get an early night.

The uncertainty that surrounded every aspect of the Bil y Ryan/ Jessica Clarke case had squatted next to him al evening, like an unwanted dinner guest. Now he felt it pressing him down into the mattress as he stared up at the Ikea light fitting he hated so much.

Not knowing was the worst thing of al .

In the course of some of the cases he'd investigated over the years,

Thorne had learned things, seen things, understood things that, given the choice, he'd have preferred to avoid. Stil , in spite of al the horrible truths he'd been forced to confront, he preferred knowledge to ignorance, though the dreadful weight of each was very different.

Beneath the duvet, his hand drifted down to his groin. He fiddled around half-heartedly for a few minutes, then gave up, unable to concentrate.

He began to think about the photos of Jessica Clarke, out in the hal way inside his leather jacket. He pictured the image of her blasted and puckered face pressing against the silk lining of the pocket. He thought about the diary in his bag, waiting for him.

It was reading he'd postpone until another night.. .

Reaching across for his Walkman, he pul ed on the headphones and pressed play: The Mountain, Steve Earle's 1999 col aboration with the Del McCoury Band. He rubbed at the tightness in his chest, deciding that it almost certainly was indigestion.

It was impossible to stay down for too long, listening to bluegrass.

THIRTEEN

"You're looking a bit better, Gordon," Hol and said.

Rooker grunted. "It's al relative, isn't it?"

"OK then," Stone said. "You look better than a bag of shit, but not quite as good as Tom Cruise. How's that?"

The prison officer who had been standing behind them took a step forward, leaned down. "Can we hurry this up?"

They were gathered around a table in the smal office-cum-cubicle in a corner of the visits area. A TV and VCR had been set up. Hol and was stabbing at a button, trying to cue up the tape.

Without looking at him, Stone waved a piece of paper towards the prison officer. "Don't worry, it's not a long list." The paper was waved in Rooker's direction. "He isn't exactly your most popular guest, is he?"

This was part of the checking-up that Thorne had spoken about to Tughan when the doubts about Rooker were first raised. While Stone and Hol and had headed into HMP Park Royal, others on the team were looking at those who had recently moved in the opposite direction; those who might have associated closely enough with Gordon Rooker to do him a favour on the outside .. .

The list Stone was brandishing contained the names of al those who had been to the prison to see Rooker in the last six months. If the man who had made the cal s to Carol Chamberlain, and perhaps been responsible for the attack in Swiss Cottage, had cooked up something with Rooker, chances were the plans would have been hatched in the visiting area. Something could have been organised via the telephone, but it was highly unlikely. As a Category B prisoner, any cal s made by Gordon Rooker would, at the very least, be randomly monitored. If Rooker had an accomplice, Thorne felt sure that his name would be on the visitors list.

"It's easy to check names and addresses," Thorne had told Hol and, 'but I want you to go through them with Rooker in person, get any extra information you can from him. See how he reacts when you show him the pictures. Let's make absolutely sure we're not being pissed about.. ."

Copies of the visiting area's security tapes had been requested from the prison, sifted through and edited until the team was left with a sequence no more than a few minutes long. This was the tape which Hol and, Stone and Rooker were about to watch .. .

"Here we go," Hol and said, leaning back from the video recorder.

Stone patted Rooker on the shoulder. "This is very much a highlights package, Gordon. And we want you to provide the commentary, al right?"

Rooker picked up a pair of glasses from the table and inched his chair a little closer to the screen.

Out of the screen-snow came a series of clumsily cut-together shots, the images jumping disconcertingly from one to the next: half a dozen individuals walking into the visiting area, depositing bags and coats on or beneath chairs and sitting down. Each a different size in frame, sliding or slumping behind the narrow tables not a single one of them looking particularly pleased to be there .. .

"Cath, my eldest daughter." Rooker pointed and spoke while Hol and scribbled. On the screen, a dark-haired woman in her late thirties sat down. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt. If she'd been wearing a bib, she might have been a prisoner. "Her son's being taken on by West Ham .. ."

A jump-cut replaced the woman on the screen with another. In her early seventies, probably. A buttoned-up green overcoat. Handbag clutched in front of her on the table. "My mother's youngest sister, Iris. Pops by every now and again to tel me who's died .. ."

A man, around the same age as Rooker. Arms moving animatedly as he spoke. Dirty grey suit and hair the same colour. "Tony Sol inger, an old drinking mate. He got in touch with Lizzie out of the blue, told her he wanted to come in. Insisted on tel ing me he had cancer, for some fucking reason .. ."

A woman, anywhere between fifty and seventy. Hair hidden beneath a patterned headscarf. Saying little. "Speak of the devil. The wife .. . the ex-wife, as near as dammit, on her annual visit.. ."

From somewhere on the wing behind them came a sudden howl of what might have been rage, or pain, or neither. Hol and and Stone both turned. The prison officer didn't so much as raise his head.

"You can see why people aren't queuing up to visit, though," Stone said. "It's hardly fucking Alton Towers."

The prison officer looked like he was laughing, but he did it without making any noise.

"Wayne Brookhouse," Rooker continued. "He used to go out with my youngest." A man in his early twenties. Dark, curly hair and glasses. Lighting a cigarette from the nub-end of another. "My daughter never bothers, so he comes in, tel s me what she's been up to. Supposed to be a mechanic, probably just a cut-and-shut merchant. Ducks and dives, but he's a decent lad .. ."

A black man, fortyish. Very tal and smartly dressed. A short-sleeved white shirt and dark tie. "Simons, or Simmonds, or something. Fucking prison visitor. I reckon deep down they're al after some sort of thril , but he's harmless enough. It's better than talking to some of the beasts in here .. ."

And final y, the most recent visitor. A broad-shouldered man, a little shorter than average. Hair greying at the sides. Sitting very stil and staring at the top of Gordon Rooker's bowed head.

Stone laughed, turned from the image of Tom Thorne and looked at Hol and. "Christ, this one real y looks like a nasty piece of work."

Then white noise, until the tape ended and began to rewind.

Hol and put away his notebook. Stone leaned back in his chair and turned to Rooker. "Five real visitors in six months. Looks to me like you've been al but forgotten, mate."

Rooker stood up. "That's what I'm hoping .. ."

He turned and walked out of the door. The prison officer calmly stood and fol owed, picking the dirt from beneath his fingernails with the edge of a laminated ID badge.

"It's gone very quiet around here," Kitson said.

Thorne had to agree. He knew that she wasn't just talking about the fact that many of the team had taken lunch early and gone over to the Oak. "I think, as far as the Swiss Cottage thing goes, it's going to get a lot bloody quieter," he said. "Things might pick up, if somebody makes a decision about Bil y Ryan .. ."

Since they'd changed their minds about Gordon Rooker, the joint operation had divided itself, somewhat less than perfectly, into two distinct strands. There was, understandably, a major emphasis being placed on catching the man who'd tried to set light to the girl in Swiss Cottage, but that investigation hadn't turned up anything within the al -important first twenty-four hours. In spite of the time and location of the attack, there wasn't a single useful description. The man's face had been hidden beneath the hood of his anorak, while witness accounts of height and build had varied as much as might be expected, bearing in mind the thick, cold-weather clothing and hunched posture of the attacker.

The girl herself was already back at school, while her mother was cashing in, discussing her daughter's lucky escape and the shocking ineptitude of the police on any TV or radio show that would have her. Her daughter had been selected, as far as anyone could ascertain, completely at random. Another brick wal . It wasn't that the leads weren't going anywhere. There simply weren't any in the first place.

Meanwhile, whether he was connected to what had happened in Swiss Cottage or not, there was stil Bil y Ryan. While a case against him was being built behind prison wal s, there was uncertainty about how those on the ground should proceed.

Nick Tughan was al for the softly-softly approach. There was stil the dispute with the Zarif brothers to be dealt with, and Tughan didn't think there was anything to be gained by confronting Ryan directly about Rooker, or about Jessica Clarke. For once, Thorne had been largely a spectator when things had come to a head in the middle of the previous week.

"We're working with Rooker," Tughan had said. "We're putting the evidence against Ryan together, but while that's happening there's stil the minor matter of a gang war going on. My first responsibility is to make sure there's no more kil ing."

Brigstocke had gone in studs-up. "Come on, Nick. This is hardly about saving innocent lives, is it?"

Tughan reacted angrily. "Tel me Hanya Izzigil wasn't innocent. Tel me Marcus Moloney wasn't."

Brigstocke had looked at his feet, then sidelong at Thorne. He hadn't got off to a very good start.. .

"We don't know what Ryan's going to do next." Tughan had wandered to the window then and looked out across the North Circular. "He tried to sort Rooker out and he screwed it up.

He's going to have to respond to Moloney's murder sooner or later. It's been nearly a fortnight .. ." He turned and held up a hand before Thorne could say anything. "Even if it was him who had Moloney kil ed, it's going to look bloody funny if he doesn't retaliate, isn't it?"