about it. Why hadn't Tughan told him? It was a fucking good question.
The answer wasn't particularly satisfactory: 'It wasn't deemed necessary, or prudent.'
'Talk English,' Thorne said. He turned to Brigstocke. He and Tughan had both stood up when Thorne had come marching into the office without knocking. 'Russell, did you know?'
Brigstocke nodded. 'It wasn't to go below DCI level,' he said. 'That was the decision.'
Tughan sat back down again. Thorne could see a copy of the Murder Investigation Manual on the desk in front of him. 'Moloney's role as an undercover officer was strictly on a 'need to know' basis,' he said, as if he'd just read the phrase in the book.
Thorne sighed, leaned back against the door. 'Did he have a wife? Kids?'
Brigstocke nodded again, just once.
'Have they been told he was carved up and shot in the head? Or is that on a 'need to know' basis, too?'
'Close the door on the way out,' Tughan said, looking away.
'A few things suddenly make a lot more sense, though,' Thorne said. 'I wondered how you could be so certain that the Izzigil murders were down to Ryan. How you knew where that threatening letter had come from. Obviously you had a hotline.'
Tughan slammed a piece of paper on to the desktop. 'Why the hell is everything always about you, Thorne? An officer has been killed. You just said it: 'carved up and shot in the head'. The fact that you hadn't been told that he was a police officer is pretty fucking unimportant, wouldn't you say?'
Brigstocke was no great admirer of Tughan himself, but his expression told Thorne that he thought the DCI had a point. And as Thorne calmed down, he could see Tuchman's point too. He felt a little ashamed of the outburst, of the sarcasm. He walked across the office, dragged a spare chair over to the desk and dropped into it. He was relieved to see that Tughan didn't object.
'How long had Moloney been in there?'
'Two years, more or less,' Tughan said.
Thorne was amazed it had been so short a time. 'He got where he was in the organisation pretty bloody quickly.'
Tughan nodded. 'He was bright, and Billy Ryan liked him. Stephen Ryan treated him like an older brother.'
'He was doing a pretty good job,' Brigstocke said. Tughan corrected him: 'He was doing a very good job and, with him dead, it's all been worse than useless.'
'Hang on,' Thorne said. 'In two years he must have put together a fair bit of evidence against Ryan.'
'More than a 'fair bit', but Moloney was the key witness. He would have been the one standing up in court. All the evidence was based on conversations he'd had, things he'd seen, or been told. We've got sod all that'll stand up without him.'
'What about the Izzigil killings? He knew about that, right? There must be something.'
Tughan picked at something on his chin. He was freshly shaved, rash-red from the razor, but Thorne could see a small patch of sandy stubble that he'd missed to the left of his Adam's apple. 'He knew about it afterwards. He knew something was being planned a few days before it happened but couldn't find out who was being hit or who'd been given the contract.'
'It was true Ryan liked to have Moloney around,' Brigstocke said. 'But there were others he trusted to get the really dirty work done.'
'Stephen?' Thorne suggested.
'Yeah, Stephen,' Tughan said, 'and others.' Thorne thought about how hard it must have been for DC Marcus Moloney. Once the killings had started, he'd been caught in an impossible position. He'd have wanted to dig around, to try to find out the names of the people Ryan was planning to have killed so that he could tell his colleagues at SO7. He'd also have known full well that if he did go sniffing around after information he wasn't meant to have, he ran the risk of exposing himself and ruining everything. And later after Muslum and Hanya Izzigil had been killed had he felt somehow responsible?
'We can still get Ryan,' Thorne said.
The other two men in the room looked at him with renewed interest. This was what Thorne had been putting off, but now was the perfect moment. He'd told Chamberlain on the way in that he was going to have to come clean about what they'd been up to. He hadn't realised it was going to be quite this important.
'How?' Tughan asked.
'I've got a witness.'
Tughan smiled. It was the perfect moment for him, too. 'Is this where you tell me about Gordon Rooker?'
Thorne just about stopped his jaw dropping. 'What?'
'You must think I'm fucking stupid, Thorne. All that crap when we saw Billy Ryan about 'barking up the wrong tree'. You have been, but only by treating me like a mug.'
'Hang on.'
'I did some homework, none of it particularly taxing. I know all about your trips to Park Royal, both alone and with ex-DCI Chamberlain.' Thorne glanced at Brigstocke, got a look back that said he'd known about this as well.
'It had nothing to do with this case,' Thorne said. 'There was no connection.'
'There is now, though, right?'
'That's what I'm trying to tell you.'
'Which is why you were hassling Billy Ryan outside one of his arcades last night?' Tughan seemed to enjoy watching the puzzlement that Thorne knew was spreading across his face. 'I knew about it while it was happening.'
Thorne cast his mind back to the previous evening. He remembered Moloney walking away from them, talking angrily on his mobile. Thorne had thought he'd been calling for the car.
'Right, let's hear it.'
So Thorne told them the whole story, ancient and modern. He told them about the calls to Carol Chamberlain and about his visits to Gordon Rooker. He told them about Jessica Clarke and about Rooker's revelation regarding her attacker. He told them about Rooker's offer.
'Why's he waited twenty years?' Brigstocke asked. It was the first of many questions all of the obvious ones which Thorne had asked himself, and Gordon Rooker. He gave the answers he'd been given: tried to explain why Rooker had confessed to such a heinous crime; why a man like him was able to survive better inside than on the street; why he had decided that he had to make sure Billy Ryan would not be waiting for him on the outside.
'So, we get him out, offer him witness protection, and he will testify against Billy Ryan for the attempted murder of Jessica Clarke?'
'Rooker knows all sorts of stuff,' Thorne said. 'He'll tell us everything, and he'll tell the court everything.' Rain was starting to come down outside. The drops were heavy but not yet concentrated. For a few moments the noise of their sporadic tapping against the window was the only sound in the room.
'Who's making these calls to ex-DCI Chamberlain and getting creative with lighter fuel in her front garden?' Tughan sounded sceptical.
'We're presuming he's the man who really set fire to the girl, are we?'
'I don't know,' Thorne admitted.
'It's a bit bloody coincidental, don't you think?'
'Rooker denies all knowledge of it.'
'There's a shock.' Tughan looked to Brigstocke. 'Russell?'
'Some crony of Rooker's? An ex-con, maybe? Someone he's been in contact with…?'
Thorne tried not to sound impatient. 'We've got time to check all of this,' he said. 'Look, Billy Ryan as good as killed that girl, and we've got a chance to nail him for it. Christ knows, he's done plenty of other things, but we can get him for this. It's got to be worth considering.'
Thorne stopped himself adding: We should do it for Marcus Moloney. But only just…
The rain was falling harder now, beating out a tattoo against the glass.
'Obviously, people a damn sight higher than me are going to be doing the considering,' Tughan said. 'A
