blades where his arms had been driven up hard behind his back. “There were quite a few of them in the end…”
“What d’you expect? You smack a copper in the face and a lot of his mates want to give you something to remember them by. Sounds like they did you a right favor, though…”
Thorne looked at the cut along Spike’s cheekbone and the side of his lip that had split and swelled. “I thought you’d be a damn sight worse,” he said. Spike shook his head, looking smug. “I kept my head covered most of the time, like. Bastard ribs are black and blue, mind you. Just sorry I never got a chance to stick the fucker.”
“You carry a knife?”
With half his lip as swollen as it was, the smile was as lopsided as McCabe’s had been. “I’ve always got a weapon,” Spike said.
They were heading north through Soho. The overcast streets were busy with lunchtime shoppers and workers hurrying to grab a bite to eat, or a quick drink to take the edge off the rest of the day. Thorne and Spike walked slowly along in the center of the pavement. The state of their faces allowed them to cut a swathe through pedestrians a little thicker than might normally have been the case.
“You’re lucky they didn’t pick you up with it,”
Thorne said. He was thinking that, despite what he’d said to McCabe, things could have been a lot worse.
If he’d been party to an assault with a deadly weapon, there’d have been bugger-all Russell Brigstocke could have done about it…
“Sorry I scarpered, by the way,” Spike said. “I had stuff on me. You know how it is, right?”
Thorne knew how it was.
“Otherwise… you know?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Spike sniffed and spat. He shoved his hands into the pockets of a scarred vinyl bomber jacket. “I wanted to say thanks for wading in, you know? For trying to pull the tosser off me. Not that I was in any trouble…”
Thorne nodded solemnly, sharing the joke. “ ’Course not.”
“So”-Spike grinned as a young couple swerved into the street to avoid him, “as a small token of my appreciation, I’ve got us both a job…”
Half an hour later and Thorne was hard at work. The sign he was holding had a bright yellow arrow drawn on it and bore the legend mr. jerk. chicken ‘n’ ribs. The restaurant was situated halfway along Argyll Street, and Thorne and Spike, with their gaudy advertising boards, constituted a cheap and cheerful pincer movement. Spike was at the Oxford Circus end of the street, his sign pointing hungry people one way, with Thorne doing his bit to encourage them in the other direction from a pitch down near Liberty’s. Every half an hour or so the two of them would swap positions; pausing for five minutes’ chat outside the Palladium.
At a couple of quid an hour, Mr. Jerk was happy, and by the end of the day they would have made enough for Thorne to get a decent dinner and for Spike to get himself fixed up.
Thorne stood, propping up his sign; letting it prop him up. The features of those who moved past him were anonymous, in sharp contrast to his own, which had been punched into distinction…
What he’d told Spike had been at least partly true. Brigstocke had done his bit to placate McCabe and the officer whose face Thorne had rearranged, but nothing had really been decided. There might well be charges to answer, either sooner as a rough sleeper or later, when the operation was all over, as one officer assaulting another. Unlikely as it was that he’d be allowed to walk away from the incident, Thorne was far more concerned with how his stupidity might have compromised the job he was trying to do. McCabe had given assurances that, as far as Thorne’s undercover status was concerned, confidentiality would be maintained. But they were worthless: he could not possibly vouch for the discretion of every one of his own officers, never mind those hundreds of others-the beat officers, the Drugs Squad, the Pickpocket Teams, the Clubs and Vice boys-who moved through Charing Cross Station every day. The Met was no different from any other large organization. There was talk and rumor. There were drunken exchanges and gossipy e-mails. Thorne thought about the man they were trying to catch; the man who might be a police officer. If word did get out, would the killer himself be able to hear those jungle drums?
Thorne remembered something Brigstocke had said. The mouse doesn’t know there’s cheese on the trap, but we still call it bait…
When he’d stormed into the interview room at Charing Cross a few hours earlier, Russell Brigstocke was one police officer who certainly had looked like he wanted to kill him. The language of each I told you so had been predictably industrial, and he hadn’t spared himself. He’d also aimed a good deal of invective at his own stupidity for trusting Thorne in the first place…
“I must have been fucking mental,” he’d said. “Maybe it was that diet you were on…” That hadn’t helped, and it wasn’t until Brigstocke was about to leave that he’d seemed to soften even a little. He’d turned at the doorway, exactly as McCabe had done, and let out a long breath before he spoke. “At least you look the part now
…”
Walking up now toward Oxford Street, Thorne could see Spike on his way toward him, spinning the sign in his hand as he bounced along. He looked twitchy, like his blood was jumping. He’d need paying pretty soon.
Thorne remembered the look on Brigstocke’s face when he’d spoken; it was somewhere between pity and relief. He’d always been confident that he could look the part. He just hadn’t banked on feeling it.
The soldier standing at the side of Major Poulter’s desk wore regulation combats over a green T-shirt, and Holland could not help but be struck by how good the uniform looked on her. As part of the Royal Armoured Corps, the 12th King’s Hussars was an all-male regiment. Neither Holland nor Kitson had expected to see any women.. .
“This is Lieutenant Sarah Cheshire, our assistant adjutant,” Poulter said. “She’s the administrative wizard round here, maintains all the databases and so on. If you’d like to tell her exactly what it is you’re looking for, I’m sure she’ll do her best to sort you out.”
Kitson explained that they needed a list of all those soldiers currently serving in the regiment who’d also fought in the first Gulf War.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Cheshire said.
Holland’s charm was not quite as boyish as it had once been, but he turned it on nevertheless. “That’d be great, thanks…”
Cheshire nodded and turned to Poulter. “I’ll get on it then, sir.” She was no more than twenty-two or
– three, with ash-blond hair clipped back above a slender neck, and a Home Counties accent that Holland found a damn sight sexier than the major’s.
“That’s good of you, Sarah, many thanks. I can’t see it taking you too long, to be honest.”
“Sir?”
Poulter looked across his desk at Kitson and Holland. “Aside from myself, I don’t think we’re talking about more than, say, half a dozen men left in the regiment.” He smiled at Cheshire; drew deeply on his cigarette as he watched her leave the room.
“Why so few?” Kitson asked.
Holland shook his head. “I thought there’d be a lot more than half a dozen.”
“Soldiers leave,” Poulter said. “For many reasons. We lose a lot of men after a major conflict, a lot of them. It’s all about pressure, at the end of the day. Pressure from others and pressure inside your own head. If you’re lucky enough to have a family, then nine times out of ten they’ll want you out. You’ve been and done your bit, you’ve been out there and risked your neck, so why the hell go back and do it again? If you were lucky enough to make it back in one piece, the attitude of your nearest and dearest is ‘Why push your luck? Get out while the going’s good.’ ”
“Understandable,” Kitson said.
“Of course it is, but that’s the easy pressure. And having that kind of support system makes it easy to readjust afterward. For those without that system, and even for many who do have loving families, it’s not quite so cut-and-dried. You come back, your head’s still buzzing, you’re in constant turmoil, and I’m not necessarily talking about men who’ve fought hand to hand or anything like that. Any length of time spent in a combat situation, or
