cat’s eye in the darkness.
A soldier waving papers taken from the Iraqi prisoners. No sign of what was to come. “We are keeping these.” (LOUDER) “Do you understand?”
While decisions-including that which would determine his own future-were being made, Thorne wondered if the Met had taken one to hand the tape over to the army. He wondered, too, in spite of all the bickering between the Met and the RMP that would surely follow, if the army themselves would be very surprised. Had Eales and his fellow crewmen effectively covered their tracks in 1991?
“Where D’you Get It?”
“Say Again?”
(Louder) “Where D’you Get It?”
“This?” (Soldier Holds Up Bacon Strips) “I Brought It With Me.”
Or was that commendation in the war diary little more than an exercise in sweeping shit under the carpet?
“That Reminds Me, I Could Kill A Fry-up…”
“That Stuff Fucking Stinks, Ian…”
Thorne read the next line…
And stared, breathless, at the page. At five words, spoken out of vision. A phrase that told him everything.
He knew who the man behind the camera was.
Thorne shut his eyes and pressed himself back in the chair, thrown by the excitement and the terror of being suddenly and completely without doubt. It was a sensation he’d almost forgotten: the sickness and the surge of knowing.
Then, quick and painful as a low punch, Thorne knew something else: that the man who had paid Ryan Eales to commit murder would walk away from it as surely as Eales himself had so far managed to do. Certain as he was of the man’s identity, and of what he had done, Thorne knew that there was no way on God’s earth that he could prove it.
Five minutes, perhaps ten, passed as Thorne weighed it up.
He stared into the thought, into the white-hot heart of it, until at last he began to make a few decisions. Each would be dependent on the decisions of others, but as Thorne stood and gathered his things together he felt as energized as he had in a long while. He might yet fail to cross it, but now at least he had a bloody good idea where the finishing line was.
He came out of the office and descended quickly toward the lower-ground floor. If Spike was still there, the two of them could chat while they played pool. They would have plenty to talk about.
Thorne had decided that if he was going to get off the streets, he needed to come clean… in every possible sense. He was going to tell Spike everything.
THIRTY-SIX
He heard the man coming long before he saw him. The footsteps sounded hesitant; he could recog nize the tread of someone unfamiliar within the network of tunnels from a mile away. He’d heard such echoes many times before: the click – clack of heels slowing, then speeding up again as confidence comes and goes; the scrape of a leather sole against the concrete as the wearer turns to get their bearings, or decides in which direction to proceed. Or whether to proceed at all…
When he finally saw the man rounding the corner,
Spike stood. He leaned back against the wall and waited; tried to look unconcerned as the distance between the two of them shortened, as the man moved toward him through puddles of water and deeper pools of shadow.
“Am I in the right place?” the man said. Still twenty feet or more away.
The fear would have killed any strength in his voice anyway, but with the sound moving effortlessly, as it did through the air underground, Spike had no need to speak much above a whisper. “Depends,” he said, “on if you’ve got shitloads of cash in one of those pockets…”
When the man stopped, it was three or four arms’ lengths away from Spike. He looked around quickly. Took in his immediate surroundings. “This is nice,” he said.
Spike said nothing.
The man nodded toward the large cardboard box behind, and to Spike’s right, against the wall. “That where you sleep?”
“It’s a lot better than some places,” Spike said. The corners of the man’s mouth turned up, but it could hardly have been called a smile. “Tell me how you got the tape.” It seemed that the small talk was at an end.
“I told you when I called…”
“You told me fuck-all,” the man said. “You talked a lot of crap and I’ve had a few days to think about it since then.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you want it? That’s fine with me, like. Only you seemed keen enough on the phone…”
“Tell me.”
It was never really silent down in the subways.
There was always the muffled roar of the traffic overhead, the buzz of the strip lights, the eerie beat of dripping water. These were the only sounds for several seconds.
Spike rubbed his hands across his face. Through his hair. “What d’you want me to say?” His voice was hoarse; cracked with nerves and desire. “You want me to tell you I’m a fucked-up junkie? Do anything to score? Desperate enough for money to shit on a mate?”
“Now you’re starting to persuade me,” the man said.
“Thorne told me he was a copper, like. That he’d been working undercover because of these murders.
He told me about the case, about why everyone had been killed.”
The man didn’t blink.
“He talked about everything,” Spike said. “What happened all them years ago in the fucking desert.
He told me who you were and he told me about the tape.”
“Why?”
Spike shrugged. “Fuck knows. Because it was his last night, I suppose, and the stupid bastard thought it didn’t matter. He said that the bloke who did the actual killing had legged it and there wasn’t anything else anyone could do…”
The man thrust his hands into the pocket of a long leather coat and pressed his arms close to his body. It was getting very cold in the early hours. “So, you just sat there, took all that in, and saw an easy way to make a few quid?”
“More than a few, mate…”
“Don’t try to be clever.” It was a simple directive.
Spoken quietly, with the cold confidence that comes from being used to having such instructions followed.
“Look… I was fucked off with him,” Spike said.
“For bullshitting me all that time. For making me and my girlfriend and all the rest of us look like idiots. It was a good way to get my own back.” The man looked unconvinced. “It was a good way to make some money.”
“Yeah, all right. ’Course it was. Obviously, after what he told me, I knew that the tape was valuable.
That you’d probably pay a fair bit to get it back.
When he said he had the tape on him, I started to think about it, you know? I was thinking about a shedload of smack and that. And a flat for me and my girlfriend.” Spike grinned, bounced a fist against his leg, as he thought about those things again. “She wants us to get a place together, you know?” “You just took it?”
“When he was asleep, I grabbed his stuff and fucked off. I know he’s looking for me, but I’m pretty good at
