“First night,” Thorne said.
“Fuck.” The boy pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. He repeated himself, drawing out the word, respectfully.
“So, what? You’re the welcoming committee, are you?”
“Nearest thing to it, yeah, if you like.”
Thorne watched the boy rummage beneath the blanket and emerge with another cigarette. He could see that the boy was actually much taller than he’d first appeared. He’d walked with hunched shoulders, eyes down, as though he could tell exactly which way he was going by looking at the cracks in the slabs, by studying the pattern of discarded chewing gum on the pavement.
“You look like the Man with No Name,” Thorne said.
The boy finished lighting up, blew out a thin stream of smoke. “You what?”
Thorne pointed toward the blanket around the boy’s shoulders. “With that. Like Clint Eastwood in the movie, you know? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
The boy shrugged and thought for a minute. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, rocking from side to side. “He the one did those films with the monkey?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Thorne shoved his feet down inside the sleeping bag. “Good time for your mate Terry to go visiting.”
“Why’s that, then?”
“One less for this nutter to go after. This loony that’s killing rough sleepers.”
The boy’s cheeks sank into shadow again as he took a deep drag. He held in the smoke until he needed to take a breath. “I suppose. He’s still got plenty to choose from.” His mood had changed suddenly: fear, suspicion, or perhaps a bit of both. It was hard for Thorne to work out which.
“Did you know any of them?” Thorne asked the question casually, through a yawn. “Any of the blokes who were…?”
“I knew Paddy a bit, yeah. Mad as a snake, like, but totally harmless. Paddy was happy with God and a bottle.”
“So you don’t reckon he could have fallen out with somebody? Nobody had a reason to give him a kicking?”
The boy looked straight at Thorne, but it was as though he’d heard a totally different question. He nodded once, twice, quickly. Repeated what he’d just said: “God and a bottle…”
“Right.”
“What’s your name?” Another, equally sudden change of mood and tone.
“Tom.”
“I’ll see you around, Tom…”
“What about you? You might look like the Man With No Name, but you must have one.”
“Spike. Because of the hair, you know? Like the vampire in Buffy .”
Now it was Thorne’s turn to be the one on whom a reference was lost. “Okay, but what’s your real name?”
The boy cocked his head, looked at Thorne as though he, too, were a harmless old nutcase. “Just Spike.”
Then he turned, hoiked up his blanket, and began walking north toward Soho.
SEVEN
The mobile phone Thorne had been issued with was permanently set to vibrate, and had been shoved deep inside the pocket of his overcoat. It had been agreed that Thorne and Holland would talk twice every day, morning and evening. Contact either way could, of course, be made at other times if necessary, and a face-to-face meeting, with either Holland or Brigstocke, would take place, all being well, once a week.
Thorne had already spoken to Holland by the time he walked into the London Lift day center, just after the place opened at nine o’clock. He found himself in a small holding area between the front entrance and a larger glass door. The young Asian man on duty at the reception desk eyed him through the glass for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, before pressing the button that allowed him through the second set of doors.
“All right?” Thorne stepped up and leaned against the counter.
“I’m good, mate. You?”
Thorne shrugged and scribbled his name in the register that had been passed across to him. The receptionist, who wore an ID badge that said raj, tapped a couple of keys on his computer and Thorne was buzzed through the steel door into the cafe area.
A fair number of the gray or orange plastic chairs-scattered around tables or lined against the walls-were already taken. Most people sat alone, nursing hot drinks and rolls, and though a few had gathered in groups, the sound of a knife scraping across a plate rose easily above the muted level of conversation. Considering how busy it was, the place was oddly still and quiet. Thorne knew that half as many people would be making twice as much noise in the Starbucks across the road.
He moved to the end of a short queue, studied the price list on the blackboard behind the counter. He saw a familiar figure rise from a table across the room and nod. Spike walked across, moving a little slower than he had done the night before.
“Found this place quick enough, then?”
“I saw an outreach worker,” Thorne said. “Came along last night after you left, told me if I got down here first thing, I could get a decent breakfast.” The second lie of the day came easily. He’d told the first on the phone half an hour earlier, when Dave Holland had asked him how his night had been.
Thorne looked around. It was a big room, and bright. One wall was dominated by a vast, glossy mural; notice boards ran the length of another.
“You signing on?” Spike asked.
Thorne nodded. He wouldn’t be going to the dole office, but he’d taken the decision early to live on the equivalent of state benefit. He would exist on the princely sum of forty-six pounds a week, and if he wanted any more he was going to have to find his own way to come up with it, same as anybody else sleeping on the street.
He took a step closer to the counter, remembering what Brendan had said about “De Niro shite.”
“The rolls aren’t bad,” Spike said. “Bacon could be crispier.”
“I just want tea.”
Thorne’s instinct at that moment was to put his hand a little deeper into his pocket and offer to buy tea for Spike, too, but he stamped on the natural impulse to be generous. The idea was to fit in, and he knew damn well that, where he was, nobody would make that kind of gesture.
They reached the front of the queue and Spike stepped in front of him. “I’ll get the teas in.”
Thorne watched Spike hand over forty pence for two cups of tea and realized that there was precious little he could take for granted.
They walked over to a table, Thorne a step or two behind Spike, thinking, He must want something. Then, Fuck, I’m doing it again.
“You get much sleep?” Thorne asked.
Spike grinned. “Haven’t been to bed yet, like. Busy night. I’ll crash for a couple of hours later on.”
“Where d’you bed down?”
Spike seemed distracted, nodding to himself. Thorne repeated the question.
“The subway under Marble Arch. I only come into the West End during the day, like, to make some money.” The grin again, spreading slowly. “I commute.”
Thorne laughed, slurped at his tea.
“It’s not bad, this place,” Spike said. He leaned down low across the table and dropped his voice. Thorne could just make out the last gasp of an accent. Somewhere in the southwest he reckoned. “There’s not many centers around like this, where under-twenty-fives and over-twenty-fives can hang around together. Most of ’em
