They were the leavings; the ones who had failed at everything and would ultimately fuck up at the most basic task of staying alive. Failure was their strong suit, and, at the end of the day, helping one more of them do what they were obviously good at wasn’t going to cost him a great deal of sleep.
How could you take someone’s life when they didn’t really have one in the first place?
Moony was two bottles dead to the world, but he still woke up the second the boot was placed across his neck.
“Jesus!”
The sole was wiped slowly across a cheek, then lifted. “I thought it was your mate Paddy who was the religious one.”
As Moony turned to look up, Thorne bent and grabbed hold of the conveniently wide lapels. He dragged him fast across the narrow street, leaving sheets of cardboard and blankets trailing in his wake, Moony yelped like a throttled dog.
“Hey!” A figure took two tentative steps toward them from the end of the street.
“Fuck off,” Thorne said, and the figure did as he’d been told.
Thorne slammed Moony into a wall plastered with posters for boy bands and nightclubs, pushed him hard onto his arse, and squatted down close to him.
“Oh my Christ,” Moony said, breathless.
“There you go again,” Thorne said. “Strange how people turn to Him when they think their number’s up.” He pressed a palm against Moony’s heart. “That’s going ten to the dozen, that is.”
“What do you”-three gulps of air-“fucking expect?”
“You thought I was the man who killed Ray, didn’t you? The man who kicked Paddy’s brains into the middle of next week.” Thorne took a handful of the loose flesh around Moony’s chest and dug in his fingers. “You thought you were about to get some dosh pinned onto you, right?”
Moony squealed and grabbed at Thorne’s fist, but Thorne calmly raised his other hand and slapped him twice, a little harder than he might have slapped someone who was unconscious. Moony’s hands flew to his face and he stopped struggling.
“Only it’s the money that’s bothering me,” Thorne said. “Well, not the money itself so much as the fact that you knew about it. Do you see what I’m saying?”
Moony shook his head.
“There’s been nothing on the news about any money being pinned to the victims’ chests. Nothing in the papers either, as far as I can remember.”
“I don’t understand…”
“My guess is it’s one of those things they’re keeping back, you know? They do that sometimes, the police. They keep certain facts out of the press so they can weed out the cranks and the copycats.”
“I must have read about it somewhere.”
“No. You didn’t. Not unless it was written on the side of a beer can. There are only two reasons why you’d know about money being pinned to the chests of the victims, and as I don’t think you’re the murderer… You’re not, are you?”
Moony was starting to snivel.
“I thought not. Which means that you must be the kind of snot-gobbling tosspot that steals money from the body of a dying man.”
“No…”
Thorne grabbed an ear and twisted. “Tell me.”
“I thought Paddy was just pissed, that’s all.” Moony spluttered out his confession between sniffs and yelps. “I didn’t know he was hurt.”
“You lying little turd. There was blood everywhere.” Thorne knew that now he was revealing a knowledge of the facts few would be privy to, but he also knew that Moony was too far gone, and too terrified, to take it in or realize its significance.
“I didn’t know he was that bad…”
“You didn’t care how bad he was. You just wanted the money.”
“I needed it…”
“Did you take anything else?”
Moony tried to turn away, but Thorne yanked on his ear again, turned his face back around. “There was a watch.”
Long since sold, Thorne knew, and the money-a fraction of whatever the watch might have been worth- spent on cider or sweet sherry.
“Taking the money and the watch is bad enough,” Thorne said. “The fact that you robbed a man who was supposed to be your friend, whose life was bleeding away into the gutter, makes me sick, but it doesn’t surprise me. What I really can’t understand is why you didn’t call the police. Why you didn’t tell anybody…”
“I told you, I didn’t think he was-”
Thorne could feel the cartilage buckle beneath his fingers as he closed his fist hard around Moony’s ear. “If you tell me that again, I’ll rip this off.”
Moony gurgled his understanding.
“See, I’m guessing that if you’d called an ambulance, if they could have got to Paddy a little earlier than they did, he might not be hooked up to a machine right now. I’m not a doctor or anything, but there’s got to be a chance.”
“No…”
“No, you’re probably right. Chances are he was already brain-dead by the time you started going through his pockets. But you couldn’t possibly have known that, could you? You just thought he was… what, exactly? Moderately badly injured? Serious but hopefully not critical? So you took what you wanted and left him there to die, because, basically, at the end of the day, you didn’t give a fuck. Simple as that…”
The recognizable rumble of a diesel engine grew louder as a black cab drove slowly past the end of the street and stopped. Thorne heard a door slam, the exchange of voices, before the cab moved off again.
“Leave me alone,” Moony said.
“I will, but what if I was to hurt you first?”
“Please…”
“What if I was to injure you in some way? I don’t know what exactly, something serious but hopefully not critical.” Thorne watched Moony’s eyelids flutter and close. He caught the sudden, sharp smell of urine that drifted up from his crotch. “If I was to do that and then leave you alone, do you think anyone would help you? What d’you reckon?” Thorne leaned in close to Moony’s face. “Would anyone give a fuck?”
Because the average rough sleeper wasn’t usually to be seen blathering into a state-of-the-art mobile phone, Thorne had been finding discreet locations from which to check in with Holland. Tonight, he couldn’t be bothered, and besides, the phone was small enough to fit easily into his palm. So, sitting in his theater doorway with it pressed close to his ear, he figured he looked no stranger than Radio Bob, muttering happily into an invisible handset…
“So Hayes was definitely a victim of the same killer,” Holland said. “If he had the money on him.”
Thorne swallowed a mouthful of lager. “Looks that way,” he said.
“More than ‘looks,’ I would have thought.”
“Whatever…”
“We’ve got two murders- three, if you count Paddy Hayes, and I think we can.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“You’ve still got a problem with the whole serialkiller angle, though?”
“Look, Raymond Mannion was terrified. I’ve got a witness.”
“Of course he was scared-”
“Not in the general way you mean, because there was a killer around. He was scared of someone. I think he was killed because of what he knew or what he’d seen.”
“It’s a leap.”
“Which means that the killing of the first victim takes on a greater significance. Don’t you think?”
“Maybe…”
