Thorne drove along streets bustling with Saturday morning shoppers. Noisy with the cries of greeting, the shouts of traders in the markets. And every few hundred yards, a look on a face or a hand thrust into a pocket that Thorne recognised as the signs of an altogether different kind of business.
Here, as in a dozen other boroughs, street-crime was out of control. Phone-jacking was virtually a form of social interaction and if you walked around with a personal stereo, you were a tourist who couldn't read a street map.
These days, the highwaymen prowled in gangs.
So the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom and desire for good press, were targeting areas like Hackney, piloting schemes that would involve the youth of an area. Thorne had read a report of one such scheme involving a couple of earnest young officers trading in the blue serge for hooded tops, and getting down with the kids in a local community centre. One had asked a thirteen-year-old gang member if he could think of ways he might avoid getting into trouble with the police. The kid had answered without a trace of irony. 'Wear a balaclava.'
It was a small place, sitting between a minicab firm and a locksmith's. The shop front was pleasingly old fashioned; the window display minimalist, the name painted in a green, creeping ivy design on a plain cream background.
BLOOMS.
Inside, the shop was lit by candles. There was classical music playing quietly in the background. There wasn't a single flower Thorne recognised…
'Are you looking for something in particular?' A man, thirty or so, with a paperback in his hand, stood behind a small wooden counter. Thorne moved towards him, smiling. 'Do people not buy daffs any more? Roses, chrysanthemums…?'
A woman carrying an enormous assortment of flowers stepped through a door at the back of the shop. She looked to be in her mid thirties. As soon as she spoke, Thorne recognised the voice – gabbling, confident, amused. It was clear that Eve Bloom had recognised him as well.
'Well, we can get that sort of specialised stuff in if you want, Mr. Thorne, but it will be very expensive…'
He laughed, sizing her up in a few seconds. Though her hands stayed busy among the stems she was carrying, he could tell that she was doing the same.
She was short, maybe five feet two, with blond hair held up by a large wooden clip. She wore a brown apron over jeans and a sweatshirt. Her face was dotted with freckles, and the smile revealed a gap between her two top teeth.
Thorne fancied the pants off her on sight.
The man behind the counter had picked up a notepad. 'Shall I put in an order, Eve? For the roses and those other things…?'
She put down the arrangement, lifted the apron over her head, smiled gently at him. 'No, I don't think so, Keith.' She turned to Thorne. 'I thought we could go to this great little tea-room just around the corner. Cream teas to die for. What do you think? We've got the weather for it after all. We can pretend we're in Devon or somewhere…'
As they strolled, she talked virtually constantly. 'Keith helps me out on a Saturday morning. He's fantastic with flowers, and the customers are very fond of him. Rest of the week I can manage the place on my own, but Saturday, early, that's when I have to make up most of the wedding arrangements, get ahead on the paperwork, accounts and what have you. Anyway, sod it! Today, Keith can keep an eye on things for an hour or so while we pig out. He's not a genius, bless him, but he works his socks off for.., well, for bugger all, if I'm honest.'
'What does Keith do the rest of the time?' Thorne said. 'When you're not exploiting him.'
Eve smiled and shrugged. 'Don't really know, to be honest. I think he has to look after his mother a lot. Maybe she's well off, because he never seems to be short. He's certainly not working in my shop for the money, not on what I can afford to pay him. God, I am so gasping for a cup of tea…'
The tea-room was kitsch beyond belief, with check tablecloths, art deco tea-sets and Bakelite radios dotted around on shelves and window ledges. The cream tea for two arrived almost instantly. ' Eve poured Earl Grey for herself, monkey tea for Thorne. She lathered jam and clotted cream on to her scone, grinned across the table.
'Listen, when I'm eating is probably the best chance you'll have to get a word in, so I should take your chance if I were you. I know I talk way too much…'
'The man who left the message on your answering machine, has he been in touch with you again?' She looked at him, confused. 'Follow up question,' Thorne explained. 'Justify the expenses claim, like you suggested. Bit of a long shot, but it seemed as good a question as any…
She cleared her throat. 'No, Detective Inspector, I'm afraid that I never heard from the man again.'
'Thank you. If you think of anything else you will get in touch, won't you? And I needn't tell you that we'd prefer it if you didn't leave the country…'
She laughed and pushed the last piece of a scone into her mouth. When she'd finished it she looked straight at him, raising a hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight that streamed in through the picture window. 'I take it you haven't caught him yet?' Thorne looked back at her, still eating. 'Did he kill somebody?'
Thorne swallowed. 'I'm sorry, I shouldn't…'
'I'm just putting two and two together, really.' She leaned back in her chair. 'I know it's a man, because I've heard his voice, and you told me you were with the Serious Crime Group, so I'm guessing that you're not after this bloke because he hasn't taken his library books back.'
Thorne poured himself another cup of tea. 'Yes, he did kill some body. No, we haven't caught him yet.'
'Are you going to?'
Thorne poured her a cup…
'Why me?' she said. 'Why did he pick me to order the wreath from?'
'I think he picked a name at random,' Thorne said. They'd found a tattered Yellow Pages in the cupboard beneath the bedside table. It had been covered in fingerprints. Thorne doubted any belonged to the killer. 'He just let his fingers do the walking.'
She pulled a face. 'I knew I shouldn't have stumped up for that bloody box-ad…'
Though she talked twice as much, and ten times as quickly as he did, Thorne still talked more, and more easily, in the hour or so that followed than he could remember doing to almost anybody for a long time. To any woman, certainly…
'When's the wedding?' Eve asked, as their plates were cleared away. Thorne was struck then by how much ground they'd covered and how quickly. 'A week today. God, I'd rather stick needles in my eyes…
'Do you not get on with your cousin?'
Thorne smiled at the waitress as she popped the bill down on the table. 'I barely know him. Probably wouldn't recognise him if he walked in here. Just family dos, you know…'
'Right. You choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives.'
'Yours as bad as mine, then?' '
She brushed a few stray crumbs from the tabletop into her hand, emptied it on to the floor. 'Is he the same sort of age as you? Your cousin?'
'No, Eileen's a lot younger than my dad, and she had Trevor pretty late. He's still only early thirties, I think…'
'What are you?'
'How old, you mean?' She nodded. Thorne opened his wallet, dropped fifteen pounds on top of the bill. 'Forty-two. Forty-three in… fuck, in ten days.'
She clipped up a few stray hairs that had tumbled loose. 'I won't say that you don't look it, because that always sounds so false, but looking at you, I'd say that they were forty-three pretty interesting years.'
Thorne nodded. 'I'm not going to argue, but just so you know… I don't mind about the sounding-false thing.'
She smiled, put on a pair of small, almond-shaped sunglasses.
'Forty then. Late thirties at a push.'
Thorne stood up, pulling his leather jacket from the chair behind him. 'I'll settle for that…'
Back at the shop they swapped business cards, shook hands and stood together, a little awkwardly, in the doorway. Thorne looked around.
'Maybe I should get a plant or something…'
