he stabbed the evil fucker in the eye. With a pen, funnily enough. A fucking pen!'
'Dad.'
'We got your bike from Woolworth's in 1973. Can't remember who did the Christmas advert that year. Always big stars doing the Woolies Christmas ads, you know TV stars, comedians, what have you. Always the same slogan. 'That's the wonder of Woolworth's!' Fucking annoying tune went with it, an' all. I'll bet Peter bastard Sutcliffe wasn't singing that when the pen was going in and out of his eye.' Then his father had started to sing. ''That's the wonder of Woolworth's.'
The girl behind the counter had all but thrown Thorne's change at him. The security guard by the door had held the door wide and glared.
''.. that's the wonder of good old Woolies.' Thorne had just listened.
He'd bought the computer cheaply the year before, stuck it on a table underneath the window in the living room. One of the old-model iMacs, it was 'snow' white when he'd bought it, but was now distinctly grubby. Thorne listened to the low hum from the monitor and thought about the inside of his father's head.
Did the words get lost somewhere between the brain and the mouth? If they made it out of the brain, did they just take a wrong turn? If his father could hear the word he wanted inside his head, if he could see it perfectly well, then the frustration must have been unbearable. He imagined his father as a tiny, impotent figure, raging inside his own skull. He imagined him standing next to a pair of enormous speakers that blared out the word he was unable to speak. Dwarfed by its illuminated letters, fifty feet high.
Swearing and shouting and a certain amount of public embarrassment under the circumstances, they were the very least you could expect. Jesus, Thorne was amazed his father hadn't smashed his own brains out against a wall. Bent down to finger the grey goo as it leaked from his head, and tried to pick those elusive words out of the soup. A new page was downloading. Thorne waited for a list to appear on the screen, then scribbled down the names of the ten tallest buildings in the world. He'd call his father in the morning, give him all the useless information he'd asked for.
'The Job can't see us getting too much more out of this.' Thorne leaned back in his chair, cradled his coffee cup and thought about the team celebrating that night in the Oak. Tughan would have made a speech, rather more fulsome than the one he'd given in the office. They'd have drunk toasts to their results. Arms thrown around shoulders as they lifted glasses of lager and malt whisky, and drunk to lies. To what they'd been told to settle for.
He pictured other glasses being raised elsewhere, by those who really had something to celebrate. Those who would be extremely happy if they knew and there was every reason to think that they would know that for the time being the police were off their backs.
Thorne had only a mug of lukewarm coffee, but he raised it anyway. To some of the police.
He reached forward to turn the computer off but then paused. He typed 'immortal skin' into the search engine and waited. Eventually, a site appeared that gave all the details Ian Clarke had told him about. The page was dense with information, closely typed, difficult to read. Thorne's eyes closed and he dreamed for a few minutes, no more than that, of holes in flesh that healed. Of scars fading like the words written in sand, and of lines etched into skin that vanished; the X replaced by smooth, fresh flesh that smelled of babies. When he jolted awake, the screen had frozen. He swore at the computer for a few seconds, then pulled out the plug.
And went to bed.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The car containing Memet and Hassan Zarif pulled away from the traffic lights at Stoke Newington station and accelerated across the Stamford Hill Road.
Sitting three cars behind them, Thorne was still unsure where the brothers were heading. They were driving in the general direction of the restaurant and minicab office, but it wasn't the route Thorne would have chosen. They were a little too far south.
Thorne made it through the lights with a few seconds to spare. He turned up the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and sat back. Wherever the Zarifs were going, he was along for the ride. He'd tried the minicab office first, but none of the brothers had been around. The same surly individual he'd encountered on his first visit there had shaken his head and invited Thorne to search the premises. The man had shrugged and drawn phlegm into his mouth when Thorne had turned to walk back out of the door.
Outside, Thorne had stood for a moment, considering where to go next. A smart black Omega had pulled up and one of Zarif's drivers had asked if he needed a lift. Thorne had shaken his head without giving the driver a second glance. His decision made, he'd marched towards his car. Looking through the windows of the restaurant as he'd passed, Thorne had seen Arkan Zarif and his wife moving about in the half light, setting up the tables for lunch.
The cars crossed the Seven Sisters Road at the bottom end of Finsbury Park, heading north again.
Memet Zarif's BMW was somewhat newer than Thorne's, and now, sitting no more than fifty feet behind it, he wondered if its occupants were aware that they were being followed. His car was fairly distinctive both in shape and colour and if they knew where he lived, the chances were they also knew what he drove.
Thorne decided that it didn't really make a fat lot of difference. They'd be stopping somewhere eventually and he only needed a quick word.
After leaving the minicab office, he'd driven a mile or two east, to Memet Zarif's home address. It was an ordinary-looking, semidetached house in Clapton, with a view across the River Lea to the Waltham stow Marshes beyond. There were plenty of pr icier places around, but Thorne guessed that, somewhere, Zarif had other property they were as yet unaware of.
Thorne had spent forty minutes loitering with a newspaper, then watched as the front door eventually opened, and Hassan Zarif had emerged. His arm was in a sling, the only visible sign of the bullet that had shattered his collarbone. As Hassan had waited on the drive near the car, his elder brother had appeared, a wife and child next to him on the doorstep. Memet had kissed his family goodbye, and Thorne had walked back towards the side- street where he'd parked up. When the dark blue BMW had moved past him a few minutes later, Thorne had eased his car slowly out and fallen into the stream of vehicles behind it.
They moved through heavy traffic into Stroud Green and then dropped down towards the somewhat better- preserved environment of Crouch End. This was an area popular with creative types who were not quite in the Highgate and Hampstead league. Despite the lack of a tube station, property prices had gone through the roof in recent years, and the place was crammed with trendy restaurants and bars. The majority of its better-than- averagely heeled shoppers tended to ignore the handful of less salubrious establishments: the adult magazine shop; the working men's cafe; the massage parlour.
The main road divided either side of the clock tower, and Thorne watched as Zarif took the right-hand fork, then pulled sharply across and parked on a double-yellow line. Thorne cruised past as the brothers stepped out of the car, and swung into a side-street as they crossed the pavement towards a door.
The sign in the window flashed red after dark. At half-past eleven in the morning, the letters spelled out 'sauna' in grime. The girl on reception probably looked a little better herself once the daylight had disappeared; a little less pasty and pissed off. The smile she'd slapped on when Thorne came through the door became a scowl as soon as he produced his warrant card.
'Oh, for fuck's sake,' she said.
'Nothing like that going on here, is there?' Thorne walked towards the door in the far corner, tipping his head from one side to the other.
'Neck's a little bit painful,' he said. 'Got anybody through here who can do something about stiffness.?'
'Sorry if I don't piss myself.'
Thorne reached for the handle. The girl was either too lazy, or too scared or too engrossed in her magazine to try and stop him. The room on the other side of the door was clearly designed to be a lounge, but it had not been expensively decorated. Thorne guessed that this wouldn't bother most customers, as the eye would quickly be drawn from the multicoloured carpet to whatever hardcore activities were taking place on the big-screen TV. Right now, a blonde in pop-socks was engaged in an enthusiastic bout of fellatio. The premed stallion on the receiving
