TWENTY-THREE
'I think you're an idiot, Tom.'
'Cheers. Thanks for that.'
'I think you're a fucking idiot.'
'Jesus, Carol.'
The shock of hearing Chamberlain swear not an everyday occurrence somehow softened the blow of the comment itself. Chamberlain's pithy character assassination simultaneously managed to kill the conversation stone dead; to thicken the space between them. After half a minute spent tearing up beer mats and avoiding eye contact, Thorne held up his empty glass. Without fully shifting her gaze from the back of a stranger's head, Chamberlain nodded. She slid her empty wineglass across the table.
Thorne walked across to the bar, ordered a pint of Guinness and a glass of red.
They were in the Angel on St. Giles High Street. The pub, pleasantly tatty and old fashioned, stood on or around the site of a tavern which, several hundred years before, had been on the route from Newgate Prison to the gallows at Tyburn. The condemned man's final journey, which took him along what was now Oxford Street, involved stopping at the tavern for a last drink. The drink was given free, the joke being that the customer would pay for it 'on his way back'. Thorne handed over his ten-pound note, knowing that he wouldn't receive a great deal of change. The concept of free drinks certainly belonged in a bygone age, like smallpox or press-gangs. These days, you could crawl into a pub on your hands and knees with two minutes to live and you'd be lucky to find so much as a complimentary bowl of peanuts on the bar.
Those who knew the history of the pub also knew that the custom for which it had once been famous had spawned the phrase so beloved of publicans and piss heads alike. Thorne walked back to the table, put down the drinks. 'One for the road,' he said. Chamberlain understood the reference. Her smile managed indulgence and disapproval at the same time. 'Right, and we all know who's likely to be the one swinging, don't we?'
Thorne's face, save for the moustache of froth, was a picture of innocence. 'Do we? I can't see why.' He could see perfectly well why, but felt like arguing about it. He was less certain about why he'd told Carol Chamberlain what he'd said to Alison Kelly in the first place. He'd actually decided to tell Chamberlain, to confide in her, well before this evening. Well before Alison had killed Billy Ryan even. So he could hardly blame the beer.. 'The sex part I understand,' she said.
'Oh, good.'
'After all, you are a bloke.'
'Right. I'm a mindless brute in helpless thrall to my knob.' Chamberlain reddened slightly. 'You said it.' The blush made Thorne smile. 'I didn't tell her because I slept with her,' he said.
'So why, then?' She answered the question herself. 'Because you're an idiot.'
'Let's not start that again.'
She shook her head, exasperated, and took a slug of red wine. Thorne wondered if the things she'd seen, that she surely must have heard, had made Chamberlain blush back when she was on the force. Perhaps it was simply a reaction that suppressed itself in certain situations, like a bookmaker's pity or a whore's gag reflex. She was certainly a damn sight less worldly than she often pretended.
'You're pissed off because it wasn't you,' Thorne said. 'Because you had nothing to do with it.'
'I'm pissed off because of a lot of things.' It didn't sound like an invitation to pry, or a willingness to share. Thorne held his tongue and waited to see where she wanted to go.
'You're right, though,' she said. 'I knew I could never play a part in bringing Ryan down. However much you indulged me.'
'Carol, I never.'
She silenced the protestation with the smallest movement of her hand.
'Still, knowing I wasn't going to be involved didn't stop me imagining certain. scenarios.'
'Ryan dead, you mean?'
'Not just dead. I thought about killing him myself. I thought about it a lot.'
Thorne raised an eyebrow. 'How was it?'
'It was great.'
'The way you killed him or the way it made you feel?'
'Both.'
'And the reality isn't quite as good as you'd imagined it..' She pulled a tissue from her sleeve, dabbed at a ring of wine left on the table. 'It's not the right result, Ryan being dead.' Thorne had turned the same thing over and over in his head, looked at it from every angle, examined it in every conceivable light. 'Do you not think he's paid for what he did?'
Page 165 billingham, mark – the burning girl
Chamberlain said nothing.
'Look, the law could have taken its course, and Tughan, or somebody like him, might have got lucky and maybe, five years from now, Billy Ryan would have been cock of the walk in Belmarsh or Parkhurst. I'm not necessarily saying that what happened was right or that he got what was coming to him. How the hell could I, knowing. what I had to do with it? I just can't find it in myself to feel the slightest bit gutted that he's dead.'
The flash that had been in Chamberlain's eyes when she'd talked about killing Billy Ryan had gone. It had been replaced by something warmer, more muted. 'I'm not exactly heartbroken myself,' she said. Thorne lifted his glass. 'Let's not overlook the substantial saving of taxpayers' money. Of our money. Or the fact that overpaid solicitors might have to wait that bit longer for flash cars and luxury holidays ..'
Chamberlain did not come close to returning his smile. 'It's not the right result, because with Ryan dead we'll never get him, will we? How will we ever know who Ryan gave that money to? How will we ever know who burned Jessica?'
The beer was suddenly vile in Thorne's mouth. He swallowed it quickly, tasting it thick and brackish as it moved down his throat. He felt it settle in his stomach, black and heavy, like doubt. Like guilt.
'Why did you tell her, Tom?' Chamberlain asked. 'If it wasn't just a post-coital thing?'
Thorne shook his head. 'I honestly have no idea.' And he honestly didn't. 'Not beyond a simple, strong feeling that she needed to know.'
''She needed to know', or you needed to tell her? They might have seemed like the same thing at the time.'
'It felt good to tell her. I won't pretend it didn't.'
'What about now?'
Now felt like a world away from then, though it was less than three weeks since he and Alison Kelly had slept together. Ten days since she'd stuck a blade into Billy Ryan. Now seemed infinitely confused and uncertain. Then, it had all seemed straightforward. Then, there had only been light and shadow, and a simple choice between a hot, hard knowing and an ignorance that looked and sounded anything but blissful.
Thorne blinked before answering Chamberlain's question, remembered the inscription on a headstone he'd walked past at Billy Ryan's funeral a few hours before.
In life, in death, in dark, in light. We are all in God's care. It was supposed to be simple. Life was light and death was darkness. But for some souls, the situation was always going to be more complex. There could be little doubt that Ryan's had been a life lived in darkness. Through it and for it. Right now, Thorne was not so certain where he stood.
'Now? I wish to God I'd kept my mouth shut,' he said. 'Not for Ryan's sake.'
'For hers.'
'She'll spend a long time in prison.'
'There's a lot for the court to take into account..' Thorne shook his head. 'A long time. And she's not hard, you know?
She must think she is. She made a decision to do what she did. She chose prison.'
'Same as our friend Gordon Rooker,' Chamberlain said. 'Maybe we're not making these places scary enough.'
'Right.' It was an automatic response, meaning nothing. Alison Kelly would find it tough enough.
