bile wasn't rising into her mouth. 'Would Mr. Ryan prefer to sit here and be insulted?' he said.
Ryan didn't bother looking up. 'Fuck you, Thorne.' Thorne turned innocently to Jesmond. 'Should I write that down?'
'I want to get two messages across to you this morning,' Jesmond said.
'The first, and I want there to be no mistake about this, is that, as far as the murders I have already mentioned are concerned, we are in no way scaling down any of those investigations.'
'No way,' Thorne repeated.
Jesmond glanced at him, nodded. 'Some of you will already know this, but DI Thorne is one of the officers actively involved in seeking those responsible.'
Thorne was tempted to give a little wave.
'The second message is by way of a direct appeal.' Jesmond removed his glasses, slid them into his top pocket. 'We want this level of consultation to continue, for everyone's benefit. On behalf of the Commissioner, I'm appealing to you directly. We want you to use your influence. As businessmen. As important members of your communities. We want you to do whatever you can to prevent further loss of life.' Thorne's pen moved across the paper. He was struggling to keep up with Jesmond's speech. He sat there, hot and headachey, fighting the urge to doodle.
Fifteen minutes later, the waitress knocked and entered. She asked if the biscuits needed replenishing, but the meeting was already starting to break up. Ryan and Zarif left a minute or two apart, each chatting animatedly with his adviser.
Jesmond gathered up his papers. 'How would you say that went, Tom?' He didn't wait for the answer, perhaps guessing that it would be a long time coming. 'I know. These kind of meetings are buggers to get right.' He snapped his briefcase shut. 'Let's just hope we get something out of it.'
With the possible exception of writer's cramp, Thorne doubted it. Methodical in this, as she was in everything up one aisle then down another, missing none of them out Carol Chamberlain steered her way past a small logjam near the checkouts, and turned towards detergents, kitchen towels and toilet roll.
Jack appeared, grinning at the side of the trolley, and dropped large handfuls of shopping into it. 'Do we need dog food?' he asked. Chamberlain nodded, then watched her husband head up the aisle and disappear round the corner. She moved on slowly, picking things off the shelves. Reach, drop, push. Methodical, but miles away.
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!
Thorne had made her a promise. He'd told her he was going to find the man who'd been responsible for what had happened twenty years before. He'd told her that he was going to put right her mistake. He'd told her what he thought she wanted to hear. That had been more than a fortnight ago, round at his flat, and she hadn't seen Thorne since. She hadn't spoken to him on the phone for almost as long. She knew he was busy, of course, knew that he had far better things to do than keep her up to date.
Reach, drop, push.
Her cold case from 1993, the murdered bookie, was going nowhere. There was nothing in it to get the blood fizzing in her veins. Nothing to distract her.
Naturally, it was how Jack preferred it. He relished the calm at the end of the day, the fact that she had nothing, of any shape or form, to bring home. He was happier now that she rarely needed to be away from home at all. She loved him fiercely, knew that he felt as he did only because he loved her just as much. She'd have been lost without him, helpless without the anchor of his concern. But, feeling as she felt now, as she'd felt since this had all begun, that anchor was starting to pull her down.
She wanted this to be over.
Reach, drop, push.
Tom Thorne was the man in whom she'd placed her hopes. She'd had no choice but to do so. Much as Chamberlain liked and respected him, she hated feeling beholden. Hated the fact that it was out of her hands. Hated it.
She wanted to load up her trolley, pile it high with heavy bottles and tins, and charge, shouting, down the aisle. She wanted to watch the families and the shelf-stackers scatter as she ran at them. She wanted to hear the rattle of the trolley and the squawking of two-way radios as she burst past the tills and flattened the guards, and rushed at the plate-glass windows.
Jack came hurrying towards her, clutching cans of dog food to his chest. As soon as they'd tumbled noisily into the trolley, she reached out and slid her arm around his. They moved together towards the next aisle.
23 August 1986
The new Smiths album is awesome. It's got 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' on it and Dad still puts his head round the door if he hears it, and laughs when it gets to the 'Joan of Arc'line. Ali's got a boyfriend! She met him at some club. I don't know when she went clubbing, or who she went with, but apparently this bloke just walked up to her and asked if she wanted a drink. I met him the other day and he seems nice enough, but when he said hello to me, like everything was normal, he kept looking at AH, so she could see how 'sensitive' he was being, like he was checking to see what she thought of him.
I don't know if they've really done anything vet. There's another bloke who she says she's got a big crush on as well. AH has a crush on somebody different every week. This one's much older than she is, which is why she's so keen, if you ask me. Also, he used to work with her dad, which means that he's probably got a nickname like Ron 'The Butcher or something. AH always used to joke about trying it on with one of those blokes, one of her dad's friends. You know, flirting with them and saying, 'Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? Oh, it's a gun.' There's another song on the album called 'I Know It's Over'. I was listening to it on my headphones and there's a bit where Morrissey is singing about feeling soil falling over his head. Like that's how it feels when this relationship he's been in has finished, when he's been dumped or whatever. I was trying to imagine it. Like I'd been with someone and he'd finished with me. I was lying there with it on loud and my eyes closed, putting myself in that position. For a while, it made me feel deep and romantic, like some poet or something.
Then, suddenly, I started feeling angry and stupid and I couldn't stand to listen to it again. I always skip that track now. The words and the melody were making me cry, making me want to cry, but the feelings weren't real. The emotion behind it was fake. I'd thought that pity from other people was painful enough, but when I start pitying myself, that's just about as bad as it gets.
I'm not likely to have a fucking relationship, that's the simple truth, and if by some miracle I did, you wouldn't need to be Mastermind to figure out why it might not work. Unless I got it together with some other Melt-Job, of course. You know, our eyes meet across a crowded plastic surgeon's waiting room.
No chance of that. Just because Hook like I do, doesn't mean I have to fancy other people who look the same, does it?
Being dumped wouldn't make me sad. It would make me want to kill whoever I'd been having the relationship with for being such a wanker. Such a cowardly shithead.
I don't want to have a relationship anyway.
Reading all that back, it sounds so pathetic. Like I'm some brat and I'm pretending that I want to be on my own because I'm really feeling so sorry for myself. I can't help how it sounds. I know what I think.
Shit Moment of the Day.
Decided not to bother with this any more because it's stupid. Magic Moment of the Day
Ditto.
TWENTY
'Tell me again about the meeting with Ryan. Tell me what he said that night in Epping Forest.'
Rooker was wreathed in cigarette smoke. His sigh blew a tunnel of boredom through the fug. 'Is there nothing else you could be doing?' he asked. 'It's not as though I'm suddenly going to remember something I haven't already told you, is it?'
Thorne stared at the tapes in the twin-cassette deck. Watched the red spools spinning. 'I don't know.'
'Not after twenty years. Do you not think I've had enough time to remember?'
