end, eyes tight shut in cutaway, looked suitably grateful?
Hassan Zarif was sitting, side on to the door, in a velour armchair. A red to welling robe gaped open across his chest and he was using his one good arm to flick through the pages of a Daily Mirror. He let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a moan when he looked up and saw that he had company.
'That's a shame.' Thorne said, nodding towards the sling. 'You could have a wank and read the paper if you hadn't gone and got yourself shot.'
Hassan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, caught between a desire to stand and the need to hide his erection.
'Don't get up,' Thorne said.
It didn't take too long for Hassan to recover his composure. He crossed his legs, pulled the robe across his chest. 'If you've come here for a freebie, I'll see what I can do,' he said. 'I'm pretty sure a number of police officers get V.I. P treatment in here.' Thorne walked slowly across the room. He picked up a remote from a glass-topped table, flicked off the TV. 'Sorry, but the slurping makes it really hard to concentrate.'
'I presume you do want something.'
'This one of yours, is it?'
'I'm sorry?'
Thorne held out his arms. 'This place part of the Zarif Brothers empire?'
Hassan smiled. 'No. This business is owned by an acquaintance, but we may, in fact, be looking to invest in similar premises.'
'Right. So this is.. what? Research?'
'This is exactly what it looks like. I'm not certain you can arrest me for it, but go ahead and try if you like. I'm happy to let you make a fool of yourself.'
Thorne nodded. 'How happy would you be if I stepped over there and snapped your other arm? How happy would you be with somebody else wiping your arse for a while.?'
Hassan stuck out his prominent chin and pointed towards the ceiling. Thorne looked up at the tiny camera mounted high above a flap of peeling Anaglypta.
'You'd be amazed at how easily a videotape can go missing in an evidence room,' Thorne said. He moved towards the archway on the far side of the room, leaned against a plastic pillar and stuck his head through. To his left, a number of rooms 'suites', as they were advertised on a poster in reception ran off a carpeted corridor. Thorne turned back into the lounge, looked across at Hassan. He thought he'd got the three brothers fairly well worked out: Tan, the youngest, was the hard man the one with a short fuse; Hassan was the one that made business plans and worked out where to hide the money. Neither was the one Thorne needed to speak to.
He gestured back towards the archway. 'Big brother through there, is he?'
'I presume you followed us here, so you know he is.'
'You're sitting here waiting for sloppy seconds, that about right?' Hassan said nothing, but his jawbone moved beneath the skin where the teeth were clenching.
'You presume?' Thorne said. 'So you didn't see me? That's good news. It's been a while since I've tailed someone and I thought I might have lost the knack.'
Before he stepped through the archway, Thorne picked up the remote and turned the movie back on. The blonde woman resumed her performance.
'This one's a classic,' Thorne said. 'Don't worry, I won't tell you what happens at the end, in case you haven't seen it.' Rooker turned the phone card over and over in his hand as he waited for his turn to make a call. He had a fair amount of credit left that he'd never get the chance to use up now. Phone cards were always in demand in prison, were as good as hard currency to those with people to talk to. He'd swap this one for a few fags before he left. He'd made more calls than usual in the last couple of months, but before that there hadn't really been many people he'd wanted to speak to. Fewer still who had wanted to speak to him. The man in front of him swore and slammed down the phone. Rooker avoided making eye contact as he stepped forward to take his turn. He slotted in the card and dialed the number.
When the call was eventually answered, the response was curt, businesslike.
'It's me,' Rooker said.
'I'm busy. Be quick.'
'You know I'm coming out in a couple of days?'
The man on the other end of the line said nothing, waited for Rooker to elaborate.
'I'm just checking, you know, confirming that we still have an agreement.'
There was a grunt of laughter. 'Things have changed a little.'
'Right, and whose doing well out of that? You're quads in now, right?'
'Let's hope so.'
'Course you are. Competition's out of the way, aren't they?' Rooker cleared his throat, did his best to sound casual, matey. 'Listen, I'll be relocated. I don't know where yet, but I'll let you know as soon as I do.'
There was a long pause. Rooker could hear voices in the background. The man he was talking to spoke to somebody else, then came back to the phone. 'That's fine. I hope it all works out, all right?'
'Hang on, I want to know that you're guaranteeing me protection.'
'From who?'
'From whoever.' Rooker was trying to control his temper. This was the same conversation he'd had with Thorne, for Christ's sake. Unbelievable.
'Don't worry. We had an agreement, as you say.'
'Good. Great.' Rooker saw his own grin; a lopsided reflection in the battered metal plate above the phone. 'So you were joking just now, right?'
'Just joking.'
'I mean, anything could happen, couldn't it? The deal was that you'd look after me. That you'd take steps.'
'You have that guarantee.'
Steel crept into Rooker's voice. 'If anything happens to me.' It was there too in the voice of the man on the other end of the line. In the words he repeated before ending the call: 'You have that guarantee.'
What had been described in reception as the 'V.I. P Suite' was little more than a large bathroom with a sofa in one corner. The walls were paneled in glossy, orange pine that ran with moisture. Red bathrobes hung on hooks, and a pink, plastic Jacuzzi took up most of the available space. The wall-mounted TV, probably set up to show the same film that was playing in the lounge, was switched off. Memet Zarif had no need of such visual stimulation. The real thing was being eagerly supplied by the woman sharing his bathwater, though, in the absence of an aqualung, she was providing manual rather than oral relief. The woman, whose enhanced breasts bobbed in the water like buoys, stopped what she was doing the second she saw Thorne.
Memet reached for her wrist, dragged her arm back beneath the water. He spoke to her, but his eyes never strayed from Thorne's. 'Carry on.' For a few tepid seconds nobody did much, then, finally, with a splash, the woman yanked her hand away and climbed out. Dripping, she walked behind Memet and pulled on a bathrobe, her lack of shyness as obvious as the scars and stretch-marks. She slipped her feet into sandals and turned back to Zarif. 'Do I need to fetch someone?' Memet shook his head, unconcerned.
The woman sized Thorne up like she was working out how big a stick she'd need to scrape him off the bottom of her sandal.
'Am I a copper or a hired thug?' Thorne asked. 'Or both? I know you're finding it hard to decide.' He nodded towards Memet. 'Your friend in there's helping me with my inquiries, so why don't you go somewhere and wash your hands.'
The woman slipped the scrunches from her hair, shaking it loose as she crossed the room. She stopped for just a second to hiss at Thorne, before stepping out into the corridor.
'Tosser.'
'You're a fine one to talk,' he said.
When Thorne turned back to Memet, he had disappeared under the water. Thorne waited, watched as he lifted up his balding head and shook the water from it like a dog.
'Sorry to interrupt.'
'She was right,' Memet said. 'You are a tosser.' The accent made the word sound a good deal more serious
