'The Kelly's' were based in and around Camden Town. There were other firms, other families in Shepherd's Bush and Hackney, and they sorted things out between them most of the time. There was the occasional bit of silliness a couple of shootings a year but it was no worse than it had ever been. Then, in 1983, someone took a pop at Kevin Kelly.'
'Put out a contract?'
'Right, but for one reason or another they didn't get him. Whatever message they were trying to send wasn't understood. So, they went after his daughter.'
'And didn't get her either. Jesus.'
'Kelly got the message this time though. A dozen people died in the three weeks after the Jessica Clarke incident. Three brothers from one family were shot in the same pub one night. Kevin Kelly more or less wiped the opposition out.'
Thorne picked up his cup. The coffee was stone cold. 'Leaving Mr. Kelly and his friends with most of north London to themselves.'
'His friends, yes, but not Kelly. It was like the attempt on his daughter knocked the guts out of him. Once the competition was out of the way, he retired. Upped sticks, just like that. He took his wife, his daughter and a couple of million, and walked away from it.'
'Sounds like a good move.'
Chamberlain shrugged. 'He dropped dead five years later. Just gone fifty.'
'So, who ran things once Kelly joined the pipe-and-slippers brigade?'
'Well, it was really just a family in name only. Kelly had no brothers or sons. He handed his entire operation over to one of those friends we were talking about: a particularly nasty piece of work called William Ryan. He was Kelly's number two, and…' Chamberlain saw the look on Thorne's face and stopped. 'What?'
'When you've finished the history lesson, I'll bring you up to date.'
'Fair enough.' Chamberlain put down the teaspoon she'd been fiddling with for the past ten minutes.
Thorne pushed back his chair. 'I'm going to get another cup of coffee. Do you want anything?'
They'd met in a small, Greek cafe near Victoria Station. Chamberlain had caught the train from Worthing first thing that morning, and was planning to get back as quickly as she could.
Standing at the counter, waiting to order, Thorne glanced over at her. He thought that she'd lost a little weight. Ordinarily, he knew that she'd have been delighted, but things seemed far from ordinary. The lines across her face were undisguised. They showed when she looked up and smiled across at him. An old woman suddenly… and frightened. Thorne carried a tray back to the table: two coffees, and a baklava for them to share. He got stuck in straight away and, between mouthfuls told Chamberlain about the SO7 operation. About the present-day organised-crime set-up in north London. About the as-yet-unidentified challenge to a powerful gangland boss named Billy Ryan.
'It's lovely to hear that Billy's done so well for himself,' Chamberlain said.
Thorne was delighted at the sarcasm and the smile. That was more like the Carol Chamberlain he knew. 'Oh, he's done very well. And Ryan's certainly is a family firm: brothers and cousins all over the shop, and a son and heir, Stephen. He's a winning individual, by all accounts.'
Chamberlain had picked up the spoon again. She tapped it against her palm. 'Billy married Alison Kelly at one point.'
'Kevin Kelly's daughter? The one who…?' She nodded. 'The one who Gordon Rooker meant to set fire to. The one he mistook Jessica Clarke for. Her and Billy Ryan got married just before Kelly died, if I remember rightly. It made the old man happy, but it was never going to last. She was a lot younger than he was. Just turned eighteen, I think. He'd have been mid-thirties.' Thorne pointed his spoon towards the last piece of baklava. 'I'm eating all of this. Don't you?' She shook her head and he helped himself. 'Tell me about Rooker,' he said.
'There's not a huge amount to tell. He confessed.'
'That always helps.'
By now, the smile was long gone. 'Seriously, Tom, it was about as simple a case as I ever worked on. I was the DI. I took his first statement.'
'And what did you think?'
'It seemed to fit. Rooker wasn't unknown. What he did at that school, to that girl, was well out of the ordinary, admittedly, but he was someone who'd do pretty much anything, or anybody, if the price was right.'
Thorne had come across far too many people like that. He was coming across more of them all the time. 'Did he say who was paying it?'
'He never went as far as to name anyone, but he didn't have to. We knew that he'd worked for a few of the smaller firms before. He may even have been involved in the failed contract on Kevin Kelly. Also, we knew that Rooker liked to burn people. It hadn't been proved, but he was in the frame for a contract job in 1982. Someone, probably Gordon Rooker, tied the boss of a security firm to a chair and emptied a can of lighter fluid into his hair.'
'What a charmer.'
'Actually, he was. Or thought he was. Bastard was flirting with me in that interview room.' She stopped, swallowed, as if trying to take away a sour taste. 'Like I said, it was simple. Rooker pleaded guilty. He got life. And, as of yesterday, when I called to check, he was still in Park Royal Prison.'
Thorne stretched out a hand and placed it over hers for a few seconds.
'He was still there about three hours ago. When I called.' The smile returned for a moment, but it looked a little forced.
'Thanks, Tom.'
'What about Jessica?'
Chamberlain's eyes flicked away from Thorne's face and she stared past him, out of the cafe's front window. 'The burns were major. It was a year before she could go back to school.'
'What about now? What does she…?' She shook her head, her voice barely above a whisper. 'You didn't really expect a happy ending, did you, Tom?'
'One would be nice,' Thorne said after a few moments. 'Just occasionally.'
She turned back to him and her face softened, as if he were a child asking for something that she couldn't possibly afford.
'She threw herself off a multi-storey car park on her sixteenth birthday.'
Muslum Izzigil had been swearing pretty solidly for ten minutes when the two boys walked into his shop.
He was working his way through an enormous pile of tapes, all returned the night before and each one needing to be rewound. People returning videos without bothering to rewind them were the bane of his life. He took a tape out of the machine, slammed it into a box, reached for another. 'Lazy bastards.'
He glanced across at the two boys who were flicking through the boxes in the used for sale' bins near the door. He held up one of the tapes and pulled a face. 'How hard is it to rewind? Huh?' One boy looked blankly back at Izzigil, while his friend whispered something and began to laugh. Izzigil hit the rewind button for the umpteenth time and leaned back against the counter. He looked up at the screen, watched a minute or two of an Austin Powers movie, then turned his attention back to the boys.
'New releases over this side,' he said, pointing. 'We haven't got it, film is free next time. Same as Blockbuster.' The two boys were pulling display boxes from racks in the adult section, leering at the pictures on the back. One boy rubbed a box against his crotch, stuck out his tongue and licked his lips.
'Hey.' Izzigil began to gesture. 'Don't mess.' The boys quickly pulled a couple more boxes from the rack, carried an armful across to the counter and dropped them down. One was almost a foot taller than his mate, but they were both stocky. They wore baseball caps and puffa jackets, the same as Izzigil saw the black kids wearing, hanging around Shopping City on a Saturday afternoon… 'Got anything with Turkish birds in?' the taller boy asked. The other boy leaned on the counter. 'He likes women who are really hairy.'
Izzigil felt himself redden. He said nothing, began to gather up the display boxes that the two boys had dropped and piled them up.
'Whatever you've got, I hope it's a damn sight better than this.' The shorter boy reached into his jacket, produced a plain black video box, and slammed it down hard on the counter. 'I rented this from you the other day.'
