'These are just excuses.'
Tughan turned over another page.
'You're just pissed off because I came up with a way to nail Billy Ryan.'
'I think you should get back to work.'
'Same thing with the idea that it was Ryan who killed Moloney. Is anybody actually pursuing that line of inquiry?' The colour began to rise above Tughan's button-down collar. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Ryan had the perfect cover. He knew exactly what the X-Man did to his other victims. His men found two of the bodies, for fuck's sake.'
'I know all this.'
'All he had to do was make sure that whoever killed Moloney used the same type of gun and carved the X. It was a piece of piss.'
'We're looking into it.'
Thorne snorted. 'Right, but not too hard. Because it came from me.' Tughan slammed the manual shut. It sounded as though he was trying hard to keep his voice down. 'Me again. There's over fifty officers working on this case.'
'Don't give me that fucking 'team player' speech.' Thorne leaned forward, gripped the edge of the desk. 'It's all well and good as long as you're the captain of the team. That's the truth.'
'I'm not going to stand here and listen to this.' Tughan picked up the manual and waved it angrily at Thorne. 'Who do you think you're talking to?'
Thorne stepped back from the desk, laughing in spite of his anger.
'What? Are you going to throw the book at me?' For a few seconds, Tughan glared. Then, he dropped his eyes, gave a smile some room on his face. He opened the manual again and leafed through it until he found the page he was looking for. 'Maybe just a bit of it,' he said. Tughan snatched up a pen, dragged it hard across the page, and tore it out. He hesitated for just a second before stepping forward and pressing it hard against Thorne's chest.
'Something to think about.'
Thorne grabbed at the torn-out sheet while Tughan stamped out of the room. Tughan had underscored one section hard enough to go through the paper.'.
'The modern-day approach to murder recognises the fact that there is no longer the place for the 'lone entrepreneur' investigating officer.' Hendricks was working late. For the second night in a row, Thorne sat alone in front of the TV, trying to regain some equilibrium. It rankled that Tughan was choosing to ignore perfectly sound ideas, but, more than anything, Thorne couldn't cope with the idea that Ryan was going to get away with it. Yes, Tughan might nail him one day for drugs of fences or fraud, or bloody tax evasion. Who knew, perhaps even the Zarifs would get him?
But he wouldn't have paid for Jessica Clarke. Thorne brooded for most of the evening, then shouted at a TV chef for a while until the sourness began to dissipate and he started to feel better. Fuck it, February was almost over and spring was around the corner. He was thinking about maybe picking up his dad, driving down to Eileen's place in Brighton for the weekend, when the phone rang.
'Are you watching ITV?' Chamberlain asked.
'I was going to call you. The Rooker thing's a non-starter.'
'Put it on,' she demanded.
Thorne reached for the remote, changed the channel and turned up the volume.
A female reporter was talking straight to camera. Thorne watched, not clear what he was supposed to be seeing, until the camera cut away from the reporter and the story was told in a series of related shots. An empty playground. A group of schoolgirls gathered at a bus stop. A can of lighter fluid.
Thorne felt his guts jump.
'He tried to do it again,' Carol Chamberlain said. 'He tried to burn another girl.'
MARCH
THE WEIGHT OF THE SOUL
TWELVE
Thorne pulled up outside the house and sat for five minutes. It felt like the longest pause for breath he'd taken in a while. The time had passed in a flurry of activity, mindless and otherwise: seven days between the attempt to kill one young girl, and this, a visit to the father of another who had died almost twenty years earlier. Seven days during which the powers-that-be had quickly changed their minds about Gordon Rooker's offer.
Thorne waited until the engine had ticked down to silence and it had begun to get cold in the car before he got out and walked towards the house. It was in the centre of a simple Victorian terrace on the south side of Wandsworth Common, not far from the prison. Thorne rang the bell and took a couple of steps back down the path. There were lights on in most of the houses: people settling down to eat, or getting ready for a Friday night out. The place would probably fetch around half a million. It was certainly worth much more now than it had been fifteen years ago, when the Clarkes had moved back here from Amersham. Back from where Jessica had gone to school.
The man who answered the door nodded knowingly while Thorne was still reaching into a pocket for his warrant card. 'Don't bother,' he said, stepping away from the door. His voice was thin, and a little nasal.
'What else would you be?'
Ian Clarke had been on the phone within an hour of that first news report. He'd sounded angry and confused. He'd insisted on being told the details, had demanded to know exactly what was being done. Thorne sensed that he'd calmed down a little during the week that had followed.
'Thanks for coming. There might be some tea on the way, with a bit of luck.'
'That'd be great.'
'We've got some Earl Grey, I think.'
'Monkey tea's fine.'
The tea delivered, Mrs. Clarke announced that she had work to do. She smiled nervously as she stepped out of the room. She was wearing what, to Thorne, seemed like the look people gave to seriously ill patients before closing doors behind them in hospitals.
'Emma runs her own catering business,' Clarke said. He pointed towards the ceiling. 'She's got a small office at the top of the house.'
'Right. What about your daughter?'
There was the shortest of awkward pauses before Clarke responded.
'Isobel?'
Thorne nodded. The second daughter.
'Oh, she's around somewhere.'
Clarke had split from his first wife in 1989, three years after Jessica's death and almost immediately after they'd moved back to London from Buckinghamshire.
Thorne had seen it plenty of times with bereaved parents. It was often impossible to deal with the guilt and the anger and the blame. Impossible to look into the eyes of a husband or wife and not see the face of a lost child.
'No more news, then?' Clarke asked. He ran a hand across his skull. He'd lost a fair amount of hair and cut the remaining grey brutally short. It emphasised the chiseled features and lively, blue eyes that belied his age. Thorne knew that he had to be in his early fifties at least, but he looked maybe ten years younger.
Thorne shook his head. 'Only the same stuff rehashed to sell a few more papers. None of it's coming from us, I'm afraid.'
'Witnesses? Descriptions? It was a busy street, for God's sake.'
'Nothing's changed since I last spoke to you on the phone. I'm sorry.'
'I know I don't really have a right to be told anything at all. I'm grateful.'
