Now the soldiers themselves were being hunted down and killed. It was hard to feel too sorry for them, though, kicked to death or not. They weren’t shitting themselves, were they? Sitting there, watching it happen, and waiting their turn.
He lay down flat and turned his head. The stone felt wonderfully cool against his face.
It had to be the man who’d shot the video, didn’t it? Surely. That’s what he felt in his guts, swilling around with the beer and the tea and the sandwiches. They’d know soon enough; they’d know what was happening when they found the other two soldiers. If they were alive, they could identify whoever had been pointing that camera.
Somebody shot soldiers shooting.
Fucking tongue twister…
Thorne smelled something familiar and opened his eyes.
He had no idea how many hours it had been since Spike and Caroline had dropped him at his doorway and left. He was equally clueless as to how long Spike had been back, sitting there on the steps with a skinny joint in his hand. Without a watch, Thorne relied on his mobile phone to tell him the time. Even if he could have dug it out now in front of Spike, he wouldn’t have bothered…
“When d’you come back?”
“Just.” Without turning, he offered Thorne the joint. “Want some?”
Thorne groaned a negative. “Where’s Caroline?”
From the back, Thorne could see the shrug, and shake of the head, but not Spike’s expression. “Busy…”
Thorne’s eyes had closed for what seemed like no more than a second when he heard something smack against the wall above him and felt something hit his face.
“Fuck’s that?”
He sat up, wiping his mouth, and saw the messy remains of a burger scattered on the floor and across his sleeping bag. He saw Spike standing and moving toward two men in the middle of the street.
“What d’you think you’re fucking doing?” Spike asked.
The man who answered was wearing a green parka and a blank expression. He slurred, mock apologetic. “Sorry, mate, I thought this was a rubbish tip…”
The second man was bald and thin-faced. He laughed and casually lobbed something else, whistling as if he’d launched a grenade. Spike stepped aside and watched the cup explode, sending ice cubes and whatever drink was inside spilling across the pavement.
“You arsehole.” Spike came forward, and the first man-taller and heavier than he was-moved to meet him.
Thorne was on his feet now, sobering up very quickly and struggling to free his feet from the sleeping bag. He watched as the man in the parka spread his legs and lowered his face into Spike’s.
“You fancy it, you junkie cunt?”
Then things got very out of hand very quickly…
As the pushes are exchanged, and quickly become blows, Thorne begins moving down the steps. At the same time, the bald man charges toward him. Still tangled in his sleeping bag, Thorne all but falls into him, raising his forearms to meet the man’s face as they collide.
As they struggle Thorne is aware of Spike and the other man going at it a few feet away. He hears leather soles scraping against the road to gain purchase, then bodies hitting it as they both go down. Spike’s attacker is taunting him as they struggle: calling Spike filthy; a disease; a dirty, AIDS-ridden fucker. Between these words he grunts with the effort of every punch.
Thorne knows that he’s being hit and kicked, but he hears rather than feels the impact. The man is lashing out wildly, screaming at Thorne that he’s dead as he swings fists and feet. Thorne grabs an arm, fastens one of his own around the man’s neck, and moves his hands quickly. He can feel the stubble on the man’s head as he takes a firm grip on it and brings a knee up hard into his face.
The man slumps…
His hands claw at Thorne’s coat, pulling off a button as he goes to his knees.
Thorne spins away and in a couple of staggered steps he is on top of the man with the parka. Spike is flat on his back beneath them, his hands raised to protect his head.
Thorne tries to grab hold of the arms that are pummeling Spike, to pin them back, but it’s hard to get a grip on the shiny material.
A voice shouts something close to him and Thorne feels a hand taking hold of his shoulder. He wheels round fast, pulling back a fist.
“I said that’s enough…”
Thorne paused for half a second, panting and scarlet-faced, the fist still poised to accelerate forward. He was pissed, very pissed no question, but still he recognized Sergeant Dan Britton. The officer was wearing the same hooded top and combats he’d been wearing in the tube station. Thorne, fizzing with adrenaline and strong lager, was nevertheless 100 percent certain that the man who’d taken hold of him was a copper.
He took a breath…
Then punched him anyway.
EIGHTEEN
“I was pissed,” Thorne said. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You broke my sergeant’s nose is what you did…”
The man opposite Thorne wore a blue suit over a white shirt and a tie with golf balls on it. He’d walked into the interview room, told Thorne in very blunt language that he was an idiot, and put two coffees down on the table. He’d identified himself as Inspector John McCabe and then sat back, waiting for Thorne to explain himself.
“How’s he doing?” Thorne asked.
“Britton? His face is about the same as yours.” McCabe slid the coffee across the table. “You look like shit warmed up.”
Thorne felt much worse.
He was starting to realize exactly what had happened. The lack of formality, McCabe’s attitude, the mugs of coffee. It was becoming obvious what he’d done; and even as McCabe spelled it out, moments from the night before zipped through Thorne’s semifunctioning consciousness like a dream sequence in an arty movie. Being pinned against the wall while others scattered; shouting the odds in the van; bleeding onto the smooth counter in the custody suite; making it clear that he could find his own way to the cells, thank you very fucking much. Telling anyone who’d listen that they had to ring this phone number…
Christ, he really hadn’t known what he was doing.
“This is the stuff of legend,” McCabe said. He was somewhere in his late forties, but there was very little gray in the helmet of straight black hair. He was clean-shaven and ruddy, with a smile-much in evidence as he spoke-that was slightly lopsided. “In years to come, the boys at SO10 might well be using this on courses.”
“All right…”
“It’s the perfect example of how not to do things…”
Thorne picked up his coffee and leaned back in his chair. It was probably best to let McCabe get on with it.
“What you do is, you get yourself arrested for something. Something nice and trivial, you know, like assaulting a police officer . Then, when things get a bit tasty, because you’re a total fuckup or maybe because you’re a bit frightened of spending a night in the cells all on your own, you start announcing that you’re actually working undercover and giving out the number of your squad to all and bloody sundry.” A slurp of coffee and the lopsided smile. “Done much undercover work, have you?”
“Are you finished?”
“Only you don’t really seem to have grasped the basic concept.”
