rate went up and up and up.. 'What d'you reckon about the operation just getting called off like that?' Holland asked. 'I know you and the DCI weren't exactly best mates, but still.' Thorne didn't fancy rehashing the conversation he'd had with Tughan the day before. Instead, he told Holland how he'd spent the morning.
'I reckon they'd booked the entire massage parlour for themselves.'
'Like when they close Harrods so some film star can go shopping,' Holland said. 'Only with prostitutes.' Thorne described the confrontations in the lounge and the V.I. P Suite, playing up the comedy in his exchanges with Hassan and Memet Zarif. He exaggerated the moments that had felt like small victories and glossed over those that were a little more ambiguous.
He left out the fear altogether.
'Will it do any good, d'you think?' Holland said.
'Probably not.' Thorne looked across at the baby. He watched for a few seconds, counted the breaths as her tiny back rose and fell. 'But we can't let these fuckers just. swan about, you know? Most of the time, they'll run rings round us, I know that, but every so often we've got to give them a decent tap on the ankles, just to let them know we're still there.'
Thorne lifted his eyes to the window, saw that it was rapidly darkening outside. 'I thought it would do me some good,' he said.
The baby began to stir, crying softly and kicking her pudgy legs in slow motion. Holland moved quickly to her and squatted down next to the basket. Thorne watched as he pulled the dummy from his daughter's mouth, gently pushed it back in, and repeated the action until she was peaceful again.
'I'm impressed,' Thorne said.
Holland returned to the sofa. He picked up his beer. 'Can I ask you something?'
'As long as it doesn't involve nappies.'
'There's a rumours going around.'
Thorne hadn't bothered taking his jacket off. It was warm in the flat, but he'd been unsure how long he would be staying. Suddenly, it felt as stifling as it had been standing next to that Jacuzzi a few hours earlier.
'Right.' Thorne said.
'Did you have a thing with Alison Kelly?' A variety of images, hastily constructed denials and straightforward lies flashed through Thorne's head in the few seconds before he spoke.
Where had the rumours come from? It didn't really matter. There was only a headache to be gained from worrying about it, or trying to work it out..
Thorne didn't want to deceive Dave Holland. He didn't want to look him in the face and make shit up. In the end, though, he chose to tell the truth because he couldn't be arsed to lie, as much as anything else. 'I slept with her, yes.'
Holland's expression rapidly changed from shock to amusement. Then it became something different, something ugly, and that was when Thorne decided to tell him everything else. He wouldn't stand for Holland sitting there looking impressed.
When Thorne had finished the story, when the words had moved from the simple repetition of things said over a pub table to those that best described Billy Ryan's body, bleeding on a kitchen floor, they sat and watched Chloe Holland sleep for a minute or two. Holland drained his can, then squeezed it very slowly out of shape.
'Are we just talking here? This is off duty, right?'
'If you mean 'Can we forget about rank?' then yes.'
'Right, that's what I mean.'
The sick feeling that came with thinking he shouldn't have said anything was, for Thorne, becoming horribly familiar. 'Don't forget that it's only temporary, though, or that I can get pissed off very quickly, all right?' He was smiling as he spoke, but hoped that the seriousness beneath was clear enough. He knew that Holland thought he was every bit as much of a fucking idiot as Carol Chamberlain had, but he didn't want to hear it again.
Holland weighed it up and did what Thorne had repeatedly failed to do. He kept his mouth shut.
Thorne spent most of the drive back from the Elephant and Castle thinking about Alison Kelly. Bizarrely, it had not occurred to him until now, but he began to worry about whether she would say anything to anyone. He began to ask himself what might happen if she did. If she were to mention to her solicitor the conversation with a certain detective inspector, they would certainly recommend that she go public with the information. After all, it could only strengthen a diminished-responsibility plea. Wasn't it reasonable to conclude that the balance of a person's mind might be disturbed after they'd just been told that their ex-husband had tried to have them burned to death when they were fourteen years old? That he'd been responsible for setting fire to her best friend? Wouldn't that make most people go ever so slightly round the twist?
Mutterings from the public gallery and nodding heads among the jury.
Why on earth should the accused have believed such an outlandish tale?
Well, Your Honour, she was told it by one of the police officers who was investigating her ex-husband. Told it, as a matter of fact, in that very police officer's bed.
Gasps all around the courtroom.
In reality, Thorne had no idea what would happen to him were the truth to get out. He certainly felt in his gut that there would be some form of action taken against him, that he should probably resign before that could happen. Another part of him was unsure exactly what rule he'd broken. Maybe there were guidelines in that manual he'd never bothered to read. He could hardly go to Russell Brigstocke and ask. The more he thought about it, the simpler it became. Would she tell anyone? Would Alison Kelly, either alone or on the advice of others, sacrifice him in return for a lower sentence, or even a nice cushy number in a hospital?
He thought, as he drove across Waterloo Bridge, that she might well. Going around Russell Square, he decided that she probably wouldn't. By the time Thorne pulled up outside his flat, the only thing he knew for certain was that he would not blame her if she did. All thoughts of Alison Kelly flew from his mind as he approached his front door, then stopped dead with his keys in his hand. He stared at the scarred paintwork and pictured the face of Memet Zarif, the water running slowly through the heavy, dark brows. He stared at the gashes in the woodwork, at the ridges and clinging splinters picked out by the glow from the nearby streetlamp. He felt again the chill at his neck, and knew that Memet had made a decision. When wishes were not enough, action needed to be taken.
Thorne stared at his front door; at the ragged 'X' carved deep into it.
TWENTY-NINE
Thorne was dragging the car around and flooring it back towards the main road within a minute, spitting his fury out loud at the windscreen as he drove. His heart was dancing like a maniac in his chest, his breathing as rapid as the baby's he'd been watching only an hour before.
It was important to try to stay calm, to get where he was going in one piece. He had to hold on to his anger, to save it up and channel it against Memet Zarif when he finally got hold of the fucker. He shouted in frustration and stamped on the brake, his cry drowning out the squeal as the wheels locked and the BMW stopped at the lights with a lurch. He watched his knuckles whiten around the wheel as he waited for red to turn to green.
Watching a taxi drive past. Feeling his chest straining against the seat-belt over and over. Listening to the leather move against the nylon, the spastic thumping of his heartbeat.. The realisation was sharp and sudden, like a slap, and Thorne felt the stinging certainty spread and settle across him. Slowly, he leaned forward and flicked on his hazard lights, oblivious to the cars snarling round him and through the traffic lights.
A taxi.. a minicab.
He recalled the face he'd barely registered that morning behind the wheel of a black Omega the driver outside Zarif's place on Green Lanes who'd asked if he needed a cab. He remembered where he'd seen that face before.
Thorne waited until the lights had changed again, turned the car around and cruised slowly back towards his flat.
Why was this man driving a cab for Memet Zarif? Would he still be working this late in the day? It was certainly worth a try. Thorne's mind was racing every bit as fast as it had been before, adrenalin fizzing through his system, but now a calmness was making its presence felt, too, flowing through him where it was needed. The
