sold fruit and vegetables. and wool. Another boldly announced itself as 'currency exchange and delicatessen'. Thorne could never quite picture anyone asking for 'fifty quid's worth of escudos and a slice of carrot cake' and was sure the place was a front for some dodgy scheme or other. He remembered a small shop near the Nag's Head which had seemed to sell nothing much of anything during its odd opening hours. The owners, a couple of cheery Irish guys, appeared uninterested in any conventional definition of 'stock', and no one was hugely surprised when the place closed down the day after the IRA cease fire It was easy for Thorne to imagine places and people as other than they seemed. It was in his nature and borne of experience. It was also, for better or worse, his job.
In the chemist's, Thorne finally realised that, though disposable nappies would be useful, they were really no kind of a present. He looked at his watch: the shops would be shutting soon. After a few words with the woman behind the counter, who he was seriously starting to fancy, Thorne stepped out on to the street.
He stood for a minute, and then another, letting people move past him as the day began to wind down. It wasn't that he had any grand moral notions about serving these people. He didn't imagine for one second that he, or the thousands like him, could really protect them. But he had to side with those of them who drew a line. He knew from bitter experience that some of them might one day be his to hunt down. Some would think nothing of hurting a child. Some would wound, rape or kill to get whatever it was they needed. That was a fact, plain and terrible.
Most, though, would know where to stop. They would draw a line at round about the same place he did. Most would stop at cheating the tax man or driving home after a few drinks too many. Most would go no further than a raised voice or a bit of push and shove to blow away the cobwebs. Most had a threshold of acceptable behaviour, of pain and fury, of disgust at cruelty that was close to his own. These were the people Thorne would stand with.
The lives of these people, to a greater or lesser extent were being affected every minute of every day by the Ryans and the Zarifs of the world. By those who crossed the line for profit. Some would never even know it, handing over a cab fare or the money for a burger without any idea whose pockets they were lining. Whose execution they might unwittingly be funding. Some would be hurt, directly or through a loved one, their existence bumped out of alignment in the time it took to lose a child to drugs. Twisted by those few moments spent signing the credit agreement. Smashed out of existence in the second it took to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They worked in banks and offices and on buses. They had children, and got cancer, and believed in God or television. They were wonderful, and shit, and they did not deserve to have their lives sullied while Thorne and others like him were being told to step away. Thorne thought about the woman he fancied in the chemist's and the bloke who lived in the flat upstairs, and the man passing him at that very second yanking a dog behind himself. He remembered the Jesus woman and the reluctant security guard who'd thrown her out of the supermarket.
I suppose there are worse crimes.
The lives of these people were being marked in too many places by dirty fingers.. He turned as the chemist stepped out of his shop and pressed a button. They both watched as a reinforced metal grille rolled noisily down over the door and window. Thorne looked at his watch again and remembered that the Woolworth's across the road sold a few kids' clothes. He couldn't remember whether it closed at five-thirty or six.
TWENTY-SIX
Chamberlain stood in the doorway watching Jack at the cooker. She loved her husband for his attention to detail and routine. He wore the same blue-striped apron whether he was making a casserole or knocking up cheese on toast. His movements were precise, the wooden spoon scraping out a rhythm against the bottom of the pan. He caught her looking at him and smiled. 'About twenty minutes. All right, love?'
She nodded and walked slowly back into the living room. The paper on the walls came from English Heritage a reproduction of a Georgian design they'd had to save up to afford. The carpet was deep and spotless, the colour of red wine. She let herself drop back on to the perfectly plumped cushions and tried to remember that this was the sort of room she'd always dreamed of; the sort of room she'd imagined when she'd been sitting in dirty, smoke- filled boxes trying to drag the truth out of murderers.
She stared at the water colour above the fireplace, the over-elaborate frame suitably distressed. She'd pictured it or something very like it years before, while she'd stared at the photos of a victim; of the body parts from a variety of angles.
She pulled her stockinet feet under her and told herself that these walls she'd once coveted so much weren't closing in quite as quickly as they had been.
What had Thorne said?
'Billy Ryan. Jessica Clarke. You've got to let it go?'
She was trying, but her hands were sticky.
As it went, she knew that Ryan would quickly become little more than the name on a headstone.
She could keep on trying, but Jessica would always be with her. And the man who'd stood looking up at her bedroom window the flames dancing across the darkness of his face would become, if he were not actually the man who had burned Jessica, a man who they were never going to catch. In her mind, he was already the one who had touched the flame to a blue cotton skirt, all those years before. In the absence of cold, hard fact, imagination expanded to fill the spaces. It created truths all of its own.
Jack called through from the kitchen, 'Shall we open a bottle of wine, love?'
Fuck it, Chamberlain thought.
'Sod it,' she said. 'Let's go mad.' Thorne stared at the screen, his eyes itchy after an hour spent trawling the Net for useless rubbish. He wrote down the name of an actor he'd never heard of and reached for his coffee. His father had called while Thorne was still in Woolworth's, struggling to make a decision.
'I'm in trouble,' Jim Thorne had said.
'What?'
Thorne must have sounded worried. The impatience on the face of the girl behind the till had been replaced, for a few seconds, by curiosity.
'Some items for lists I'm putting together, maybe for a.. thing. Bollocks. Thing people read, get in fucking libraries. A book. Other stuff, trivia questions driving me mental.'
'Dad, can I talk to you about this in a few?'
'I was awake until three this morning trying to get some of these names. I've got a pen by the bed, you know, to jot things down. You saw it when you were here. Remember?'
Thorne had noticed that the girl on the till was staring at her watch. It was already five minutes after closing time and there were no other customers in the shop. He was still holding two different outfits in his arms, unable to decide between them.
He had smiled at the girl. 'Sorry.'
'Do you remember seeing the pen or not?' His father had started to shout.
The girl had nodded curtly towards the baby clothes Thorne was carrying. Her eyes had flicked across to an angry-looking individual standing by the doors, waiting to lock up.
'I'd better take both of them,' Thorne had said. He'd handed over the clothes, returned to his father. 'Yes, I remember the pen. It's a nice one.'
His father had spat down the phone. 'Last night the bloody thing was useless. Needs a.. new pen. Needs a new bit putting in. Fuck, you know, the thin bit with fresh ink you put in.. when the fucker runs out..'
'Refill.'
'I need to go to a stationer's. There's a Ryman in the town.' The girl had held out a hand. Thorne had put a twenty-pound note into it. 'I'll call you when I get home, Dad, all right? I can go online later and get all the answers.'
'Where are you now?'
'Woolworth's.'
'Like the killer.' his father had said.
'What?'
'It was the Woolworth's Killer who did Sutcliffe in Broadmoor. Remember? He'd killed the manager of a Woolworth's somewhere, which is how he got the name, and then, when him and the Ripper were inside together,
