Izzigil looked at the box, then shook his head. 'Not from here. My boxes are different, look.'
'You trying to stitch me up?' the boy said.
'We want our fucking money back, mate.' The smell reached Izzigil then. He almost retched, and let his hand drop below the level of the counter. 'You should go before I call the police.'
The taller boy picked up the box, opened it and shook the turd out on to the counter.
Izzigil stepped back. 'Christ!'
The taller boy began to laugh. His friend pulled a mock-serious face.
'That film's shit, mate.'
'Get the fuck out of my shop!' Izzigil reached beneath the counter, but before he could lay his hand on the pool cue the shorter boy had leaned across and a knife was suddenly inches from the shopkeeper's face.
'You were given a letter.'
'What letter? I don't know about a letter.'
'Some friends of ours gave you a fucking letter. You were offered the chance to behave like a businessman and you didn't take it. So, now we won't be wasting any more money on fucking notepaper. Clear enough for you?'
Izzigil nodded.
'Now we stop messing about. Next time we might stop by when you're upstairs giving your hairy old lady one, and your son's down here, minding the shop.'
Izzigil nodded again, watched over the boy's shoulder as his friend moved slowly around the shop, tipping display cases on to the floor, casually pulling over bins. He saw a customer put one hand on the door, then freeze and move quickly away when he glimpsed what was happening inside.
The boy with the knife took a slow step backwards. He cocked his head and slipped the knife into the back pocket of his jeans. 'Someone will pop round in the next week or two to go over things,' he said. Izzigil's hand tightened around the pool cue then. He knew it was much too late to be of any use, but he squeezed it as he watched the two boys leave.
On the screen above him, Austin Powers was dancing to a Madonna song as Izzigil came slowly around the counter and walked towards the front of the shop. He pressed himself against the window and looked both ways along the street.
'Muslum?'
Izzigil turned at his wife's voice and took a step back into the shop. He saw her eyes suddenly widen and her mouth drop open, and he turned back just as the black shape rushed towards the window. Just as the world seemed to explode with noise and pain and a terrible waterfall of glass.
They walked slowly back along Buckingham Palace Road, towards the station. It was the middle of the lunch hour, and people were queuing out of the doors of delis and coffee-shops. February was starting to bite and Thorne's jacket was zipped up to the top, his hands thrust right down into the pockets.
'How's Jack doing?'
Chamberlain stopped for a second to let a girl dart across the pavement in front of her. 'He's the same.' They moved off again. 'He tries to be supportive, but he didn't really want me to go back to it. I know he worries that I'm taking on too much, but I was going mental stuck in the house.' She looked at herself in a shop window, ran fingers through her hair. 'I couldn't give a shit about gardening.'
'I meant about these phone calls. That letter.'
'He doesn't know about the letter and he slept through all but one of the calls. I told him it was a wrong number.' She pulled the scarf she was wearing tighter around her throat. 'Now. I'm more or less hovering over the bloody phone all night long. It's almost worse on the nights when he doesn't ring.'
'You're not sleeping at all? It's been going on for a bloody fortnight, Carol.'
'I catch up in the day. I never slept much in the first place.'
'What's he sound like?' Thorne asked. She answered quickly and simply. Thorne guessed that she'd known the questions he would ask, because they were the ones she would have asked.
'He's very calm. Like he's telling me things that are obvious. Like he's reminding me of things I've forgotten.'
'Accent?'
She shook her head.
'Any thoughts as to his age?'
She carried on shaking it.
'Look, I know this is going to sound strange, but I'm not sure why you didn't just call the police.'
She started to speak, but Thorne stopped her.
'I mean the local lads. This is just some nutter, Carol. It's a kid pissing you about. It's someone who's read some poxy true-crime book and hasn't got anything better to do.'
'He knows things, Tom. Things that never came out. He knows about the lighter that was dropped at the scene, which brand of fuel was used.'
'It's someone Rooker spent time with inside, then. Rooker's told him to wind you up when he's got out.'
She shook her head. 'There's no reason for Rooker to send anyone after me. He confessed, remember. Anyway, Rooker bloody well liked me.'
'He had a relationship with you. You were the one who interviewed him. Which is why you 're the one being targeted now, and not whoever the SIO was.'
'I think it's just because I'm next in line. The DCI on the case left the force well before I did. He emigrated to New Zealand ten years ago. He'd be a damn sight harder to track down than I was.' It made sense, but Thorne had one other suggestion. 'Or maybe, whoever it is knows that you were affected by what happened to Jessica.' She looked up at him, concerned. 'How would anyone know that? How do you know?'
They walked on in silence for fifty yards or so before Thorne spoke again. 'Are you worried that you put the wrong man away, Carol? Is that what this is about?'
'No, it isn't. Gordon Rooker burned Jessica Clarke. I know he did.' They didn't speak again until they reached the station. Halfway across the concourse she stopped and turned to him. 'There's no need to bother waiting. I've got quarter of an hour until the next train back.'
'It's fine. I don't mind.'
'Get back to work. I like to potter about a bit anyway. I'll buy a magazine, get myself sorted. I'm a fussy old bat like that.'
'You're not fussy.'
She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. 'Cheeky sod.' Thorne sighed and broke their embrace. 'I don't quite know what you expect me to do about this, Carol. There's nothing I can do officially that anybody else couldn't.'
'I don't want you to do anything officially.' He saw then, despite the light-hearted tone and the banter of a few moments before, just how rattled she really was. The very last thing she wanted was to let the powers-that-be see it, too. He couldn't believe that they'd take her off the Cold Case Unit, but there were plenty who thought the Met should not be using people who'd be better off queuing up in the post office.
'Right,' Thorne said eventually. 'But it's OK for me to waste my time.'
Chamberlain pulled a large handbag on to her small shoulder and turned on her heels. 'Something like that.' Thorne watched her disappear inside WH Smith.
Walking back towards the underground, he thought about scars that you hid, and those that you showed off. Scars bad enough to make you jump off a car-park.
THREE
These rooms always had one thing in common. The size might vary, the style was usually governed by age, and the decor was dependent on the whim of budgets or the inclination of the top brass. But they invariably had the same smell. Chrome and tinted glass or flaking orange plasterboard. Freezing or overheated. Intimate or anything
