'Hunkar begendi! Zarif stabbed at the menu again. 'This is a dish I make very well. Diced lamb in white sauce. This means 'the Emperor loved it'.'
'Did he love it as much as the priest?' Zarif didn't get the joke. 'All names mean something, but some have bad translations. Funny translations, you see? We have English customers who ask why the names are always in Turkish. I tell them if they were in English, my menu would have dishes called rubbish kebab and stuffed prostitute!
Thorne laughed.
'No, really this would put people off.'
'Only some people,' Thorne said. 'Others might come in specially.' Zarif laughed loudly, slapping his chest again, the drink spilling over the edge of his glass.
Thorne suddenly thought about his father. He thought about how much he would have enjoyed this conversation. He pictured him laughing, scribbling down the names of the dishes…
'What about people's names?' Thorne said. 'Do they always mean something?'
Zarif nodded. 'Of course.'
Thorne had finished eating and pushed away his plate. 'What does Zarif mean?'
The old man thought for a few seconds. 'Zarif is… 'delicate'.' Thorne blinked and saw a breath of blood across Anaglypta wallpaper. The body of Mickey Clayton bent over a kitchen chair. Gashes across his back…
'Delicate?' he asked.
Zarif nodded again. He waved to get his daughter's attention, and, when he had it, spoke quickly to her in Turkish. The scowl grew more pronounced as she moved across to a small refrigerated cabinet to one side of the counter.
'Now, my first name, Arkan? This is the best joke of all. It has two meanings, depending on where you are, how you say it. It means 'noble blood' or 'honest blood'. This sounds nice, you see? But it also means 'your backside'. It means 'arse'.' Thorne laughed, swilling the last of the beer around in the bottle. 'My name means different things to different people as well.'
'Right.' Zarif waved his fingers in the air, searching for the words.
'A thorn is small, spiky.'
'Irritating.' Thorne drained the bottle. 'And it can be difficult to get rid of.'
Sema arrived and put down a dish in front of Thorne. He looked at Zarif for explanation.
'That is suklac. On the house.'
It was a simple rice pudding set thick, creamy and heavily flavoured with cinnamon.
'This is gorgeous,' Thorne said.
'Thank you.'
Thorne saw the old man's expression change the second he heard the door open. He half turned and from the corner of his eye saw two men enter. The look on Sema's face told him that the two Zarif brothers he had yet to meet Memet and Tan had popped in to introduce themselves. Arkan Zarif stood and walked over to the counter, where the men took it in turn to lean across and kiss their sister. They began talking in Turkish to their father. Thorne watched them while pretending to look around. He stared at the ornate arrangements of tiles, mounted and hanging on the walls next to Health and Safety certificates in cheap clip-frames.
Both brothers, unlike Hassan and their father, had very little hair. Memet, who Thorne put somewhere in his early forties, had a receding hairline and had chosen to wear what little he had left very short. He also had a goatee, thicker than Thorne's, but also more clearly defined, and like Thorne's, failing to hide a double chin. Tan, younger by maybe fifteen years, was shorter, and whip-thin. He wasn't losing his hair but had shaved it anyway aping his eldest brother, Thorne guessed. He too had facial hair, but it was little more than a pencil-line running along his top lip and around the edge of his chin, in the style George Michael had worn for a while until someone pointed out that it looked ridiculous. Tan clearly fancied himself as something of a hard man and stared across at Thorne while Memet did all the talking.
Knowing that Thorne wouldn't understand, Memet Zarif made no attempt to lower his voice as he spoke to his father. He smiled a lot and patted the old man's shoulder, but Thorne could hear a seriousness in the voice.
At the mention of his name Thorne glanced up. He remembered what Carol Chamberlain had said when she'd been talking about Billy Ryan. About these people knowing as much about you as you did about them. Knowing more… Thorne returned Tan's thousand-yard stare for a second or two before going back to his pudding.
It was disconcerting, exciting even, to think that one of these men – Thorne was putting his money on Memet Zarif – had probably given the order to have Mickey Clayton and the others executed. If he, or his brothers, thought that the law was going to go easier on them because they hadn't wielded the gun or the knife themselves, they hadn't learned as much as Thorne presumed they had. And, though Thorne had his own ideas, the received wisdom was that the Zarif brothers were also responsible for the death of DS Marcus Moloney. Whatever he thought of Nick Tughan, Thorne knew that he would make Memet, Hassan and Tan pay for that.
When Thorne looked up from his suklac again, Memet and Tan were at the table.
'What is it you want?' Memet Zarif asked. Thorne took another mouthful, then loaded his spoon again. When he answered the question, it was as if he'd just that second remembered he'd been asked it. 'I wanted some dinner, which I'm actually still having, so maybe you should think about being polite and leaving me in peace to finish it. If you want me to get as annoyed as I should be and cause a scene in your father's restaurant you know, maybe turn over a table or two I suggest you carry on with the attitude.' He turned to the younger brother. 'And if that look is supposed to be intimidating, you'd better get a new manual, son. You just look like a retard.' Thorne turned away before the two men had any chance to react. He leaned round them, caught their sister's eye, and scribbled in the air the universally accepted gesture when asking for the bill.
Memet and Tan walked to a table in the corner, where they were quickly joined by another man, who came scuttling from the back of the room. Sema brought them coffee and biscuits dusted with sugar. They lit cigarettes and spoke a mixture of Turkish and English in hushed voices.
Arkan Zarif carried Thorne's bill across on a plate. 'You will stay for some coffee..?'
Thorne took a piece of Turkish delight from the plate and examined the bill. 'No, thank you. Time to go, I think.' He dug around in his wallet for some cash.
Zarif looked towards the table in the corner, then back to Thorne. 'My sons are suspicious of the police. They have bad tempers, I know that, but they stay out of trouble.'
Thorne chewed the sweet, and decided that the old man's thinking was only marginally less divorced from reality than that of his own father. He dropped a ten and a five on to the plate. 'Why the suspicion of the police?' he said.
Zarif looked uncomfortable. 'Back in Turkey, there were some problems. Nothing serious. Memet was a little wild sometimes.'
'Is that why you left and came here?'
Zarif waved his hands emphatically. 'No. We came for simple reasons. All Turkish people want is bread and work. We came to this country for bread and work.'
Thorne stood and picked up his jacket. He thanked the old man, praised the food, then walked towards the door, thinking that you could work for bread, or you could just take somebody else's. Common sense told his feet to keep on walking past the table in the corner, but another part of his brain was still thinking about names. Irritating. Difficult to get rid of.
The three men at the table fell silent and looked at him. The blue-grey smoke from their cigarettes curled up towards the ceiling, floating around the hanging lamps like the manifestation of a dozen genies.
Thorne pointed upwards at the swirls and strands of smoke, then leaned down to address Memet Zarif. 'If I was you, I should start making wishes.'
He was still smiling as he made his way back to the car, taking out his mobile and dialing the number as he walked.
'Dad? It's me. Listen, I've got a great one for you. Actually, we can do a whole list, if you like, but I think you should do this one as a trivia question first. Right, have you got a pen? OK, what sort of… No, make that: where would you be if you ordered a stuffed prostitute?'
