Clarke handed over the photo with a small nod. Thorne took it with barely a glance, afraid of staring. Of being seen to stare. When he looked back at Clarke, it was clear from the man's expression that this was a reaction he'd seen a hundred times before.
'There were gangsters at her funeral,' he said. 'Murderers and drug barons and men who get paid to hurt people. They came to show their respects after she'd killed herself.' He spoke calmly, though the anger was clear enough, like something moving behind a muslin curtain.
'It was a gorgeous day when we buried her, a really stunning day. We all said how that was Jess's doing, because she loved the good weather so much, and then that lot turned up in dark suits and sunglasses like something out of Reservoir Dogs and ruined everything. Kevin Kelly and his tarty wife, and that other one who'd taken over. Ryan. A bunch of them. All standing there, sweating, with huge wreaths. One of them spelled out her name, for pity's sake. Hovering with tasteless fucking wreaths for my little girl, who'd died because her friend happened to be a gangster's daughter.'
Thorne was finding it hard to look at him. Rubbing his thumbs across the shiny surface of the photo in his hands. Nodding when it felt as though he should.
'We worked our arses off to send Jess to that school, to raise the money for the fees. What did Kelly have to do? How many people did he have to kill or rob to send that little… to send his little girl to that school?'
Thorne saw a figure appear on the landing at the top of the stairs: a teenage girl with long, ash-blond hair.
Clarke turned when he saw Thorne raise his eyes. 'Isobel.' Thorne was unsure whether Clarke was talking to the girl or introducing her. He couldn't help but wonder how much she looked like her half-sister. He wanted to look at the photo to check, but the picture on top was of Jessica after her attack, and Thorne felt unable to move it, to slide the photo of her unscarred to the front…
'Hello,' he said.
The girl tugged at a corner of her sweater, muttered a sullen greeting in return. Clarke gave Thorne a weary, parental shrug. 'She's thirteen,' he said by way of explanation. Then his face changed.
'She'll be fourteen in a couple of weeks.' He reached past Thorne to open the front door.
Thorne toyed with some cod response about kids growing up too fast, but before he had a chance to make it, Clarke stepped in close and lowered his voice. 'This man, whoever he is, attempted to murder Jess. You said that. You said it a couple of times, actually.'
'Sorry, I don't.'
'He didn't attempt to murder her, Mr. Thorne. He murdered her.' Clarke looked Thorne in the eyes as he spoke.
Thorne instinctively looked away, but then, ashamed, forced himself to meet Clarke's eyes again.
'It took a couple of years for her to die, but he murdered her.' There was little to say except 'goodbye', so they both said it, and let the front door close between them.
Thorne glanced back. Through the frosted squares of red, blue and green glass in the front door, he could make out the shape of Ian Clarke climbing slowly up the stairs towards his daughter. The crowd at the bus stop is just that at first: a crowd; massed, indistinguishable, and not just because of the quality of the film. A tight knot of people bunched on the pavement, bundled up against the cold weather or, in the case of the girls, huddled into a gang, a million things to talk about while they wait for the bus. There is no sound, but it isn't hard to imagine the screams, the shouts of anger and incomprehension.
The knot unravels in a moment, people wheeling or jumping away, revealing the man for the first time. An old woman points at him, pulls at the sleeve of the woman with the push chair standing next to her. Girls cling to one another, to blazers and bags, as the man, his face hidden inside the hood of a dark anorak, turns and jogs casually away up the street…
Hendricks appeared from the kitchen. 'The food'll be ready in a couple of minutes,' he said.
Thorne got off the sofa and ejected the tape from the VCR. While he was up, he grabbed the bottle of wine from the mantelpiece and refilled Carol Chamberlain's glass.
'Nothing from any other angles?' she said. Thorne shook his head as he swallowed from his own glass. 'These are the best pictures we could get.' CCTV footage seemed to play an increasingly large part in most investigations these days. Often, the cameras were no more than a deterrent, and a pretty unsuccessful one at that. The crack dealers on Coldharbour Lane and the heroin mules around Manor House knew exactly where they were and treated them with the same disdain they might accord a traffic warden. Most of the time, they would happily go about their business in full view of the camera, knowing just when to turn a head or angle a shoulder to avoid the incriminating shot, then wink at the lens when the deal was done. Once in a while, though, Thorne would find himself staring at more significant footage: grainy, black-and-white pictures of armed robbers, of killers, or, more disturbingly, of those about to become their victims.
In this case, a potential victim who got lucky.
'It doesn't make sense,' Chamberlain said. 'How did he ever think he'd get away with it? If, God forbid, he hadn't been rumbled. If that girl hadn't seen what he was doing with the lighter fluid and he'd managed to set her alight.'
'Even if he had, he might still have got away,' Thorne said. 'People would have been far more concerned with helping the girl. You know as well as I do that by and large people are afraid to do anything. They don't want to be the have-a-go hero who gets shot, or gets a knife stuck in him.'
Chamberlain stared into her glass. 'Why a bus stop, though? Why the different MO?'
'There's a lot more security around schools now,' Hendricks said.
'He'd've been lucky to find a school like Jessica Clarke's, where he could just march up to the playground.'
She shook her head. 'The middle of Swiss Cottage at four o'clock in the afternoon? It's stupid. The place was heaving.' Hendricks leaned his head back into the kitchen to check on something for a second. 'He obviously wanted to make a splash.'
'Do you think it's the same bloke?' Thorne stared hard at Chamberlain.
'Yes, I'm fairly certain. It looked like the same anorak.' 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, casually, 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 Billy 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 all right in there, Delia?' Thorne shouted. There was another bout of slightly more subdued swearing. Chamberlain laughed. 'It smells 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, really. 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 tell 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'll get him. If it wasn't this bloke, and whoever it was is still alive, I'll get him. Then, I'll get this bloke as well. That's a promise,
Carol.'
When Chamberlain looked at him, her expression a mixture of gratitude and amusement, Thorne realised that
