struggled to tuck in one end of a bright red scarf that had caught in the wind.
Holy Joe turned and shouted cheerily after him. “Oi, mate, got any ciggies for me?”
The man didn’t even bother to look up. “Piss off,” he said.
Back on the Strand, they walked east toward Fleet Street. They passed the “ghost” Aldwych underground station, half of its boarded-up entrance now home to a Photo-Me booth, and Thorne gave Spike and Caroline a potted history. He told them how the station, originally called Strand, had fallen into disuse a number of times in the century since it had been opened; how a man had been eaten on one of the escalators in An American Werewolf in London, and how, during the Second World War, it had been home to the British Museum’s collection of mummies.
As they crossed toward St. Clement Danes, serene on its traffic island, Thorne pointed toward the spikes and spires of the Royal Courts of Justice, brutal against the night sky beyond the church. As a civil court, it was not a place Thorne knew well, but he did know that the man who built its clock was strangled to death when his tie got caught in the mechanism.
“Bloody hell,” Spike said. “You know some seriously weird shit.”
Thorne thought about everything he’d learned, from Spike more than anyone, in the past few weeks. He thought about the things he’d been shown and the people he’d met. He thought about the knowledge that had been passed on to him.
“ I know some weird shit…?”
Around the back of the church, a number of those who had been at the soup run had gathered to stand around and drink. To kill time until the next one. Caroline and Spike drifted away to talk to a couple of junkies whose conversation, by the look of them, would not be sparkling.
“Got-a-beer?”
Thorne turned to see an older man with a shock of white hair and a nose like an overripe strawberry standing far too close to him.
“Got-a-beer, mate?”
The words weren’t slurred exactly, but ran easily into one as though they belonged together. It sounded both casual and aggressive, the last word fading into a breath like hot fat spitting. Thorne wasn’t sure if the man had simply not got him down as a fellow rough sleeper, or was just so far gone that he didn’t care whom he asked. Either way, the answer was going to be the same.
“Sorry.” Thorne patted the can in his pocket. “Just got the one and that’s mine.”
“You’re not drinking it.”
Thorne took the can of Special Brew from his pocket. He was going to fill it with weak stuff later, but what the hell. He yanked back the ring pull. “Yes, I am.”
As Thorne brought the can to his mouth, the man stepped even closer. “Give us a fucking swig then.”
The man was leaning into him from the side. Thorne could feel the material of the man’s filthy body warmer against his father’s coat.
“Just the one swig…”
“Fuck off,” Thorne said.
The man moved back sharply as though he’d been pushed. He squinted at Thorne for ten or fifteen seconds, his feet planted firmly enough, but the top half of his body swaying gently. Then he cocked his head. “You’re a copper,” he said.
Thorne grunted and laughed. Took a mouthful of beer. It tasted vile.
“You’re Old Bill. ’Course you are.” He was starting to raise his voice. “I know you are.”
“Listen, mate…”
“I know a piggy…”
Thorne thrust the can toward him. “Here, you can take it…”
“Oink! Oink!” He smacked a fat hand against the side of his leg over and over as he shouted: “You’re a copper, you’re a rozzer, you’re a rotten, filthy fucker…”
Thorne was on the verge of driving the base of the can against the old man’s head when Spike appeared next to him.
“All right?”
As Thorne turned his head the man reached out and grabbed the beer.
Spike took hold of his arm. “Give us that back, you twat…”
“Let him have it,” Thorne said.
When Spike let go, the man took a couple of steps back, pulling the can of beer close to his chest. “He’s a copper. I swear he’s a fucking copper.”
Spike spoke like he was humoring a mental patient. “ ’Course he is.” He cupped his hands around his mouth, shouted after the old man, although he was no more than a few feet away. “You don’t know how fucking wrong you are, pal.”
They watched as the man walked to the railings at the edge of the curb and started to drink.
Spike looked at Thorne. “You didn’t used to be a copper, did you?”
Thorne turned and walked away, heading around the narrow strip of pavement that circled the church.
The old man was clearly a head case, yet Thorne was still unnerved by the confrontation. Was there a chance he had been recognized? Could the old man have been someone Thorne had put away years before? It didn’t really matter; from what Spike had shouted, it was clear that he still believed Thorne had spent time in prison.
He thought back to the case he’d been working on just before his father had died. The case that might have been the reason his father had died. He thought about a line he’d drawn, and then stepped across as casually as if he were entering another room.
Ex – offender was exactly right.
He stopped at the front of the church, looked up at the blackened statue of Gladstone, at the defiant bronze figure of Bomber Harris.. .
Something began to suggest itself.
There were other statues around the front of the church. He didn’t need to know whom they honored. Even from behind, the bearing of these men told Thorne what they were. He turned and walked back toward the entrance of the church, remembering it even as he saw the three letters, spelled out horizontally on a pale blue cross, beneath the figure of a golden eagle. St. Clement Danes was the RAF church…
Something blurred started to come sharply into focus.
He thought about the museum he’d walked past earlier with Russell Brigstocke. He remembered something Spike had said when he was talking about the differing backgrounds of people who were sleeping rough:
It’s a right old mix, though. I fucking love it, like. You’ve got your immigrants, you’ve got…
And then Thorne knew exactly who might have their blood group as a tattoo.
It was funny, he thought, about old friends.
Sitting in the flat, he thought about the strange ways things could pan out if you came across them again. Funny how it happened as well. It might be that you just ran into someone from your past on a street somewhere, or on a train, or found yourself leaning against the same bar one night. It might be a phone call out of the blue.
Or it might all come about same as this had: it might all start with a letter…
It was weird, that was the other thing, how some that you’d never really been close to might turn out, a few years down the line, to be all right. To be the ones you got on okay with. While others-the blokes who you thought at the time would be your mates forever; who you said stupid, soppy shit to after a few beers; who you felt really connected to-ended up being the ones who caused all the fucking headaches later on. And, of course, sod’s law, you could never tell first time round which were which.
Time could heal some wounds, ’course it could, but others were always going to fester.
He reckoned that basically, there was always a good reason why people lost touch with one another. Sometimes it was an effort to keep a friendship going; when geography was against you or whatever. If the friendship was really worth it, though, you made the effort. Simple as that. If not, you let it go, and like as not the other person was thinking the same as you, and letting it go at exactly the same time.
If an effort was made later to get back in touch, there was a good chance that the party making the effort
