granddad. Fucking cardigans and pajamas that somebody died in.”
“Nothing wrong with a decent cardy,” Thorne said.
Caroline took hold of his arm. “Yeah, but you are an old granddad, aren’t you?”
They drifted across the pavement toward a gift shop and stationer’s, whose window was already well stocked with tinsel and tat. They stared for a few seconds.
“Too bloody soon,” Thorne said. There was a Dixon’s next door and he turned his attention to the television screens, still flickering in the window. A soap opera, The Bill, Sky News. He watched a journalist talking to camera and tried, without the benefit of sound, to work out what he might be talking about. He remembered Alan Ward, the reporter he’d met outside Colindale Station when he’d run into Steve Norman. Thorne decided that if Spurs were at home over the Christmas period-if he were at home-he’d take the man up on his offer of football tickets. He thought about the pies and the hot dogs and the scalding tea at halftime; more attractive, at that moment, than the prospect of watching the game itself…
Spike leaned his face against the glass, steaming it up as he spoke. “I think I might go to my sister’s this year. She’s got a fantastic flat in Docklands…”
Thorne nodded. Spike was constantly telling him things that he’d told him once or twice already.
“I don’t care, as long as I’m indoors,” Caroline said. “This year more than any.”
Thorne knew that she was talking about the murders. For the families, wherever they were, and for those still sleeping on the same streets as their dead friends, this would be that first, difficult Christmas.
“Killing people, or scaring them into leaving,” Caroline said. “One way and another, he’s clearing a lot of us off the street.”
Spike leaned back, drew a face on the window with his finger. “Maybe he’s working for the council…”
As with those places that dispensed more substantial meals, there were soup runs happening across the West End at different times during the evening. There was one at ten o’clock, just around the corner on the Strand, where, with irony far thicker than the soup itself, the homeless were fed within spitting distance-within sniffing distance-of the Savoy. Again, it was all about knowing when and where. There were some, with appetites all but destroyed by drugs, who would go all day without eating and get by on two or three bowls of soup; trudging between the various locations with the weary resignation of those for whom eating has long ceased being a pleasure.
There were a dozen or more people already waiting by the time they got arrived, including a good few that Thorne had come across before. He recognized faces he’d seen at the Lift, from the streets around the theater where he bedded down for the night. He met-but only briefly-the disturbing gaze of the man who’d come close to attacking him and Spike a couple of days earlier.
Thorne, Spike, and Caroline joined those who were milling around outside a building that was-according to a discreet but highly polished nameplate- the headquarters of British and American Tobacco. Some lurked as close as possible to where they were expecting the van to stop, while others hung back, preferring to wait across the road. They gathered in small groups, talking or staring into space: the pale-faced kids in dirty anoraks, and the entrenched, long-haired and bearded, in dark clothes that seemed smeared across their bulky frames in grease. One group looked like backpackers who’d run out of money. Thorne caught a word or two in an Australian accent and decided that’s exactly what they were.
Standing alone on the other side of the road near the tube station was one of the few black men Thorne had seen in his time on the streets. Maxwell had told him early on that there were so few black and Asian rough sleepers because those communities were closer-knit; that they believed in the extended family. Basically, he’d said, it came down to how much people gave a shit. It made sense to Thorne, who knew that were he even able to find any of his cousins- first, second, or whatever-none of them would be inclined to take him in if he found himself in real trouble. He also knew, of course, that he’d be equally reluctant were he the one being asked to help. He’d seen enough blood to know that it was certainly thicker than water. But he’d also seen enough of it spilled within families to know that the phrase meant less than bugger-all.
Spike saw Thorne looking around. “Told you. There’s all sorts.. .”
“Must be great soup,” Thorne said.
It arrived, and it wasn’t. Ladled into Styrofoam bowls from a huge metal saucepan in the back of a Volvo estate. But it was hot, dished out with a smile, and, crucially, with no questions asked. This was another reason why the soup run remained popular, and why teenage backpackers could stand in line with those who’d been sleeping rough for decades.
Caroline crossed the road to a bench and lit up as a very tall man, six feet five or more and cradling his bowl of soup, sauntered up to where Spike and Thorne were finishing theirs. Thorne put his empty bowl on to the windowsill behind him, watched as Spike tossed his into the gutter. Thorne had to fight the urge to march over and pick it up.
The tall man and Spike greeted each other warmly and Spike made the introductions: “This is Holy Joe.”
The man looked down at Thorne and gave a small nod. He was wearing a Queen’s Park Rangers bobble hat and trainers, and what looked like a long brown robe beneath a tightly buttoned donkey jacket.
“Who was it this time?” Spike asked.
“Nuns,” the man said. “They’re the fucking worst.”
Spike explained that Joe spent most of his time falling upon the tender mercies of a variety of different church organizations: the Jesus Army; the Salvation Army; the Quakers; the Young Jewish Volunteer Corps; the Sisters and Brothers of Just About Anybody. A few weeks at a time of free food and accommodations for the price of a daily Bible class or prayer meeting.
“I’ve got a hundred and seven crosses in a plastic bag,” Joe said. He took a slurp of soup. “Wooden ones, plastic ones. There’s dozens of Bibles…”
“I bet you knew Paddy Hayes,” Thorne said. “Spike’s mate. The one who was killed. He was a God-botherer, wasn’t he?”
Joe took a step back into the road, scraped the sole of his training shoe against the curb as though he were trying to remove dogshit. “Yeah, but Paddy was a bit of a lightweight.”
Thorne was still convinced that Jago and the first victim would provide the answer as to why these murders had happened. Why they were still happening. But how the killer selected the subsequent victims, if it was anything other than random, might give the police their best chance of catching him quickly. The idea that he was choosing victims from among distinct groups was definitely a strong possibility, but Thorne suddenly wondered if there might be a church connection.
“You can ask this man anything,” Spike said. “He could do religion and all that shit on Mastermind. Your specialist subject, innit, Joe?”
Hadn’t Robert Asker thought that he could talk to God on his radio? Maybe he’d been to a meeting or two. Thorne made a mental note to ask Caroline when he got the chance.
Spike was getting excited, shifting from foot to foot. “Go on, ask him something. He knows the Bible fucking backward.”
Joe nodded solemnly. “And the Talmud. And the Koran. I’m not fussy.”
“I can’t think of anything,” Thorne said.
“Ask him all the books in the Bible. Ask him to do them in order. ..”
“Too easy,” Joe said.
Thorne thought about his father, who would have loved a game like this. The old man wouldn’t have slept until he’d found out the right answer and written it down somewhere. In his last few years he’d taken to ringing Thorne up in the early hours of the morning, demanding lists of answers to all manner of bizarre trivia questions.
“Ask him,” Spike said.
Give me a dozen big cats… The three fastest ball games in the world… All the kings and queens of England. Go on, I’ll give you the first couple to start…
“Go on, anything you like.”
“Okay,” Thorne said. He pointed to the bowl in Joe’s hands. “Could Jesus have turned that into soup?”
There was the swish of a revolving door behind them and a man walked quickly from the B amp;A Tobacco building and hurried across the road. He wore a tailored overcoat and carried a metal briefcase, and his free hand
