not just those poor, useless buggers with nowhere else to go. All of them: the people working in shops and behind fast-food counters and the ones in cars and those walking fast along the pavement, tutting and growling, looking like they were ready to kill someone if their progress was halted for even one second. They all wanted something-your money, or your time, or your fucking attention-and if you wanted to make absolutely sure they got nothing, that no part of you was touched, it was crucial to stay on top of your game.
He wandered through the streets around Soho and Covent Garden, moving quickly between those places he needed to visit. There was a list of them in his pocket, and he’d worked through most of it already. He turned from Dean Street on to Old Compton Street, heading toward Piccadilly. Past the cruisers and the coked-up media wankers. Past a wild-haired wino, breathing heavily and scowling at the world from the doorway of a fetish-wear boutique.
As he walked he realized where that dull ache came from. It was the effort of staying self-contained that drained you; of keeping yourself impervious to the offers and the pleas; to the promises of pleasure of one sort or another. It was as though he’d been forced to spend the day permanently clenched, and he knew that when he got home he’d need to spend long hours flicking through the channels or working at the controls of the PlayStation. Sleep wouldn’t come until the knots had fallen out.
He wasn’t complaining. You went where the job demanded, but still, he was pleased that he’d been able to define what it was that was niggling him. He’d write it down somewhere when he got back. All that stuff about greed…
At least it was an appropriate place to be, he thought. Considering why he was there in the first place. After all, if one idiot hadn’t got greedy, none of it would ever have been necessary. They would all still be alive. The driver and the gunner and…
He waited until the man who was walking straight toward him had stepped aside before pulling the list from his pocket and checking the next address.
By the time it was dark he’d be well away, and he’d made an early start so as to be sure of it. He’d been around the West End late on a Saturday night before and it wasn’t something he was desperate to repeat unless he had to. That was when the fights broke out and the gutter seemed as good a place to lie down as any; when all the alleyways ran with piss and every hidey-hole contained some moron throwing up or sleeping off the excesses.
On Saturday night you couldn’t tell who was homeless and who wasn’t.
The young blond-haired woman was still unhappy with the background. She waved her hand, urging her subject to move just a little farther to the right…
There was no shortage of photo opportunities in London. The gasometers of King’s Cross were perfect for the seriously arty, as were the estates of Tower Hamlets and Tottenham for a certain sort of documentary maker. Snap-happy tourists, of course, were spoiled for choice. The Americans and the Japanese on their European tours, the Geordies and the Jocks down for the weekend; they could all point their cameras just about anywhere, and few landmarks were more popular than Eros. Visitors to Piccadilly Circus clicked away oblivious, thinking that the figure atop the memorial fountain was the God of Love, and equally misguided about many of those who gathered around the steps of the monument. The statue was actually meant to be the Angel of Christian Charity, and a number of those within range of his bow were among the city’s lost: runaways, junkies, and rent boys for whom a little Christian charity was long overdue.
“No… further… keep moving…”
The blonde spoke with a thick Scandinavian accent and kept waving from behind the camera, eager to keep the trio of scarred and scruffy-looking wasters out of her shot. Her boyfriend was growing increasingly impatient, unaware of the three figures on the steps directly behind him.
Spike and Caroline were tucking hungrily into greasy pizza slices while Thorne sat engrossed in what was happening on the far side of the circus. He watched as a big man in an unfamiliar blue uniform leaned down to talk to a beggar outside Burger King. There was some head shaking before the man on the ground snatched up his blanket and stalked away.
“Who’s that?” Thorne nodded toward the man in the uniform.
Spike stood up and peered across the traffic. “PCP,” he said.
“Piccadilly Circus Partnership.” Caroline shoved the last bit of pizza into her mouth and wiped her fingers on the back of her jeans. “A bunch of local businesses pay for a few little fucking Hitlers to keep the streets clean. Someone told me they’re in radio contact with the police and there’s a huge control room full of CCTV screens in the Trocadero.” She pointed toward the huge entertainment complex on Coventry Street. “They’re supposed to be on the lookout for all sorts of stuff. Cracked paving stones, blocked drains, or whatever…”
“Yeah, right.” Spike was lighting a roll-up. “These fuckers think some things smell a damn sight worse than that, like.”
Thorne watched the man in the blue uniform walking slowly across the zebra crossing toward Tower Records. There were plenty of these cut-price coppers to be seen around the West End, differentiated-to any but the trained eye-only by the colored fluorescent strips across their uniforms and peaked caps. Aside from the PCP goons, there were council-appointed city wardens patrolling the streets in pairs. Then there were the Met’s own community support officers. The CSOs had the power to detain rather than arrest, and despite the publicity that had surrounded their introduction a few years previously, they were seen-not least by real police officers-as something of a joke.
“Look at that cocky sod,” Caroline said. “I bet he goes home and gets his wife to piss on him…”
In general terms at least, Thorne shared Caroline’s suspicions. He thought that those who wanted to be full-time police officers were dodgy enough. Anyone who couldn’t manage that, but still had some overwhelming desire to pull on a uniform and strut around trying to keep the streets clean, almost certainly needed watching.
Spike tried to blow smoke rings, but the breeze pulled them apart. “Or he makes her dress up as a beggar and handcuffs her to the bed.”
Caroline laughed. “With a sign saying ‘Homeless and Horny’…”
“Dirty bastard…”
Thorne thought about the “policeman” that Mannion and others had mentioned. The one who was supposed to have been seen asking questions prior to the first killing. Was it possible that this man had been one of these ancillary officers? With a few drinks inside you, wouldn’t one uniform look much the same as another on a dark night? He thought it was unlikely. They didn’t know for sure that the officer described had even been uniformed, but if he had, Thorne guessed that most of those sleeping rough around the West End, many of them living on the fringes of one law or another, would know a genuine copper when they saw one.
He turned, and watched a real enough police officer marshaling the queue that was moving slowly into a matinee at the Criterion. He decided that thinking out loud could do no harm.
“Do you reckon this killer might be a copper?”
Spike sat down again. The smoke from his cigarette moved quickly across Thorne’s face. “Fuck knows. It’s what a lot of people think.” He turned to Caroline. “Caz thinks he’s a copper, don’t you?”
“Got every chance,” she said. “That’s why they’ve sent this undercover copper in to catch him. It’s like in films, when they talk to convicted killers to find out what the one they’re after is thinking. It-takesone-to-know-one kind of thing…”
Thorne nodded, thinking that he didn’t understand what went on in his own head, let alone anybody else’s.
“I wouldn’t fancy doing it,” Spike said. “Sleeping on the street if you didn’t have to, with a killer knocking around.”
Caroline leaned across and touched Thorne’s face. The graze on his forehead had scabbed over and the bruises were yellowing nicely, their edges indistinct. “This undercover bloke’ll be all right,” she said. “If he’s as handy with his fists as the coppers that did this, I don’t think he’s got much to worry about.”
TWENTY-TWO
