money. If you start to enjoy the doing, if you start to get some sort of kick out of it, you're fucked.'
Thorne had to disagree. The X-Man clearly relished what he did, and he hadn't made too many mistakes yet.
'So what, then?' Thorne said. 'You just turn off? Go on to some sort of automatic pilot?'
'You focus. Your mind goes blank. No, not blank exactly. It's like it's fuzzy, and there, right in the middle, is a point of light. It's really sharp and clear. Cold. You relax and stay calm and move towards that. That's the target, and you don't let anything take you away from it.'
'Like guilt or fear or remorse?'
'You asked me, so I'm telling you,' Rooker said. 'It's the job.'
'You talk about it in the present tense.' Rooker put the completed cigarette into the tin. He snapped the lid back on. 'I'm still living with it.'
'A lot of people are still living with it,' Thorne said. Phil Hendricks was doing some teaching at the Royal Free, and Thorne had arranged to meet him after work. He'd caught the train to Hampstead and they'd eaten at a Chinese place a stone's throw from the hospital. Afterwards, they'd crossed the road to the nearest pub and sunk a couple of pints each inside fifteen minutes. Neither had said a great deal until the edges had been taken off. 'Don't let Rooker wind you up,' Hendricks said. 'He's trying to make it sound like some fucking Zen mind-control thing. He just killed people. There's no more to it than that.'
'I wasn't in the mood for him, that's all.' Thorne smiled, raised his glass. 'Just one of those days.'
One of those days that seemed to roll around every month or so. When, for no good reason, Thorne stopped and caught himself. When he saw what he did, looked at the people he was dealing with every hour of his life. When, after ticking along for weeks, doing the job without thinking, he was suddenly struck by the stench and blackness of it all. It was like waking up briefly only to find that real life was far worse than the nightmare.
Thorne decided that in some ways, when things became extreme, his own life was similar to his father's. There were times when he heard himself saying things to killers, and to their victims that were every bit as bizarre, in their way, as anything that his father ever said.
'Six and nine,' Thorne said, grinning at Hendricks. 'Your face or mine?'
It had become a running joke between them since Thorne had told him about what had happened in Brighton: they had been exchanging filthy bingo calls by phone and text message all week.
Hendricks got up to fetch another round. He grabbed his crotch, sniffed his hand as he turned towards the bar. 'AH the threes, I smell cheese.'
Thorne looked around. The place was busy, considering that it was only a Tuesday night. It's proximity to the hospital meant that the place was probably full of medics. Thorne knew very well that many of them would have their own edges to take off… He was trying, and failing, to think up another bingo call when a fresh pint was plonked on the table in front of him.
'You know that the body loses weight after death?' Hendricks said.
'This sounds good.'
Hendricks sat down, drew his chair closer to the table. 'Seriously. You weigh a bit less dead than you did when you were alive and kicking.'
Thorne picked up his glass. 'It's a bit drastic, don't you think? As diets go.'
'Shut up and you might learn something. You can lose anything from a fraction of a gram upwards. Sixteen grams or thereabouts is the average.' Hendricks shook his head, took a sip of lager. 'The students I was talking to today looked about as interested as you do.'
'Go on then, what causes it?'
'No one's a hundred per cent sure. The air in the lungs, probably. But, this is the good bit.'
'Oh, there's a good bit, is there?'
'People used to think it was the weight of the soul.' The phrase rang in Thorne's head. He nodded. Waited to hear more.
'In the eighteenth century they constructed elaborate scales, designed to weigh terminally ill patients in the moments just before and just after death.' Hendricks let the words sink in, relishing his tale. 'It was a big deal back then trying to measure the soul's weight as it left the body. Trying to isolate it. They were still doing similar things in America in the early 1900s, and there was a famous experiment in Germany just twenty-five years ago.'
Thorne was amazed. A century or more ago and it was easy to put such a theory down to lunatics in fancy dress, to mumbo-jumbo masquerading as science. But twenty-five years ago?
'But it's just the air in the lungs, right?'
'That's the best guess,' Hendricks said. 'Unless you go for the soul theory.'
Thorne smiled across the head of his beer. 'Did you start drinking before you finished work, or what?'
They drank in silence for a minute or more. Thorne was beginning to feel light-headed. He'd only had a couple of drinks and knew it was tiredness more than anything.
There were pictures forming, dissolving and forming again in Thorne's head. Bodies and scales. Men in wigs and duster coats loading vast weights on to wooden beams. Monitoring the death throes of the wheezing, whey- faced dying, and scratching figures into notebooks. Eyes wide, raised up from inky calculations and then higher, far beyond their primitive laboratories.
Thorne looked across at Hendricks. It was clear from the grin, and the faraway expression, that his friend had gone back to thinking about numbers, and rhymes and dirty jokes.
Hampstead Heath was only a couple of stops on the over ground from Kentish Town West. They were walking towards the station when Thorne's mobile rang.
'Tom.?'
Thorne looked at Hendricks, raised his eyebrows. 'Bloody hell, Carol, it's a bit late for you, isn't it?'
'I know, sorry. I couldn't sleep.'
'You haven't had any more calls, have you?'
'No, nothing like that.'
A huge lorry roared past and Thorne lost whatever Chamberlain said next. There was a pause while each of them waited for the other to say something.
'I just called to see how you were getting on.'
'I'm OK, Carol.'
'That's good.'
'Everything's OK. The case is more or less where it was the last time I spoke to you, but it's coming together.' He'd known straight away of course, that this was what she really wanted to know. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I meant to call.'
'Don't be daft. I know you must be busy. Listen, I'll leave you to it.'
'How's Jack?'
'He's fine. It's fine, Tom.'
Hendricks pointed to his watch: the last train was due in a few minutes.
Thorne nodded, picked up speed. 'Why don't we meet up next week?' he said. 'Come down and we'll go for lunch. I'll whack it on expenses.'
'Sounds great. I'll speak to you next week, then.'
'Take care, Carol. Phil says hello.' She'd already gone.
At the station, they sat on a bench, waiting for the westbound train. On the other side of the tracks, three teenage boys drifted aimlessly up and down the platform.
'Sixteen grams on average, you said?'
Hendricks looked blank for a moment or two, then nodded.
'Yeah.'
'That's for what? A man of medium height and weight?'
'Right. A woman of medium build would be around twelve grams, I suppose.'
So, a child would be less, Thorne thought. Three quarters as much, maybe eight or nine grams. That didn't make sense, though, did it?
Thorne's head was starting to spin. Surely the soul of a child would weigh more. It's only as we grow older that we become corrupted, soulless.
Eight or nine grams.
