had located, and removed, the gun. He opened his eyes when he heard the door open, craned his head round to watch as the man moved behind the car.
The gunman tapped on the driver's side window with the gun. He took a step away from the car as Moloney opened the door. 'Move over to the other side,' he said.
Moloney did as he was told, gasping in pain as he lifted himself up and over the gear stick. 'Why?'
The man slid into the driver's seat. He closed the car door behind him. 'Because I'm right-handed,' he said. Then Moloney felt his guts go, and everything began to happen very quickly.
The gun was in his ear again, and a hand was twisting him over on to his front, pushing his head across the back of the seat. The hand was reaching down, scrabbling for something, and the seat suddenly dropped back until it was almost flat. The hand began gathering up Moloney's jacket and the shirt beneath and pushing it up his back.
'You're making such a fucking mistake.' Moloney said. Then, in a rush, the breath was sucked up into him, as the man with the gun began to cut.
Thorne woke with a start, disorientated. He could hear music, and Hendricks was looming above the bed in his boxer shorts, holding something out to him and mouthing angrily.
As he tried to sit up, Thorne realised that he'd fallen asleep with his headphones on. He turned off his Walkman, blinked slowly and moaned:
'What time is it?'
'Just gone three. It's Holland, for you.' Thorne reached out for his mobile, the ringing of which he'd been unable to hear, but which had clearly woken Hendricks up.
'Thanks,' Thorne said.
Hendricks grunted and sloped out of the bedroom.
'Dave?'
Holland began to speak, but Thorne knew without being told that there was another body. Holland just needed to tell him which side it belonged to.
Thorne had no way of knowing it, but as he steered the BMW through the deserted streets towards the murder scene, he was following almost exactly the same route as the dead man had done a few hours earlier. Down to King's Cross and then east. Along the City Road and further, through Shoreditch and into what, forty years before, had been Kray territory. The streets of east London were much safer then, if some people were to be believed.
Marcus Moloney might well have agreed with them. The car was parked on an area of waste ground, no more than a hundred yards from the Roman Road. Here, the Grand Union Canal ran alongside a rundown piece of parkland called Meath Gardens and the railway line divided Globe Town from Mile End.
A man, asleep on a narrow boat moored further up the canal, had heard the gunshots. He'd come along five minutes later with his dog to investigate.
Thorne parked the car, walked across to do some investigating of his own.
The silver Jag was brightly lit by a pair of powerful arc-lights that had been set up on either side of it. Its doors were open. Thorne didn't know whether that's the way they had been found.
'Sir.'
Thorne nodded as he passed a DC from SO7 walking quickly in the opposite direction. As he got nearer to the car, he could make out the shape of the body, folded across the front seat, like a suit carrier. Every few seconds, the white hood of a SOCO bobbed into vision through the rear windscreen. Stepping to the side, Thorne could see Holland and Stone huddled near the front wing. Holland glanced up, threw him a look he couldn't read, but which definitely didn't bode well. There were more SOCO's working in the foot wells and on the back seats. There were stills and video cameramen. There were three or four other officers with their backs to him, talking on the edge of the canal bank.
The lights showed up every scratch, every mark on the car windows, every speck and gobbet of brain matter glued to the glass with blood. Thorne grabbed a body suit from a uniform who was handing them out like free gifts. 'Dave.'
Holland made to come over, then stopped and nodded towards the group of officers who were now walking back in the direction of the car. There were three men in suits of varying quality: Brigstocke, Tughan and a senior press officer called Munteen. It was the man in uniform who Thorne was most surprised, and horrified, to see there. He couldn't recall the last time he'd encountered Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond at a crime scene.
Jesmond pulled his blue overcoat tighter around him. 'Tom.'
'Sir.'
Thorne broke the short but awkward silence that followed. He nodded towards the car. 'The Zarifs have really upped the stakes now. Marcus Moloney's in a different league from Mickey Clayton and the others. It's going to get a bit tasty from here.' He looked at Russell Brigstocke, and received the same look he'd got from Holland.
'The stakes have certainly been upped,' Jesmond said, 'but not for the reasons you're assuming.'
'Oh?' Thorne glanced at Tughan, who was studying the gravel. Jesmond looked as drawn, as defeated, as Thorne had ever seen him.
'Marcus Moloney was an undercover police officer,' he said.
TEN
Thorne left the Moloney murder scene as the sun was coming up and drove through streets that were showing the first faltering signs of life. He spent a couple of hours at home showered, changed and had some breakfast but he was still getting through on what little sleep he'd managed before being woken by Hendricks with the phone call. Driving towards Hendon, he couldn't decide whether the heaviness he felt was due to the lack of sleep, the wine from the night before or the memory of the atmosphere on that canal bank. The change in those who hadn't known the truth about Moloney was clear to see as soon as word had got around. The volume had fallen; the movements in and around the Jag had become a fraction more delicate. Bodies were always accorded a measure of respect, but that measure tended to vary. Dead or not, a gangland villain was treated by the police a little bit differently to a fellow officer.
Thorne hated that 'one of our own' nonsense, but he understood it. The life of a police officer was clearly worth no more or less than that of a doctor or a teacher or a shop assistant. But it wasn't doctors, teachers and shop assistants who had to pick up the bodies, inform the next of kin and try to catch those responsible. Yes, sometimes the self-righteous anger when a policeman died could make his skin crawl, and the speeches made by senior officers could sound horribly false, but Thorne told himself he could see it all for what it really was. There was nothing false about the relief and the fear, nor about anger at feeling both of those things.
Nothing false about 'there but for the grace of God'. It was early, but Thorne knew Carol Chamberlain would be up and about. She needed to know that everything had changed. He called her as he hit the North Circular and told her about Marcus Moloney.
'Well, he certainly had me fooled,' she said.
'Me too,' Thorne admitted. And neither of them was stupid. Moloney was clearly a committed and brilliant undercover officer, but still, it bothered Thorne that he hadn't sensed something. Anything. There was a lot of crap talked about 'instinct', but if there was one thing Thorne was certain of, it was that instinct was unreliable. He certainly possessed it himself, but it came and went, failing him at all the wrong moments, as inexplicable as a striker's goal drought or a writer's block. And it had landed him in the shit plenty of times over the years.
Occasionally, Thorne felt like he could look into a killer's eyes and see exactly what was on his mind. See all those dark imaginings that Hendricks had been talking about the night before. Sometimes, Thorne thought he could spot a villain by the way he smoked a cigarette. Other times, he wouldn't know the enemy if he was wearing a ski-mask and carrying a sawn-off shotgun.
'How come you didn't know?' Chamberlain asked. 'About Moloney?' Thorne didn't have an answer, and by the time he hung up on Chamberlain and pulled into the compound at Becke House, he was extremely pissed off
