keeping out of people’s way, you know?” “He said this was the only copy?”
Spike widened his eyes. “Thorne’s fucking mental.
I told you. I reckon being on the street has made him go funny, made him see things a bit twisted, like. He more or less nicked it, from what he was saying. Got some other copper he knew to hand it over to him on the quiet.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Don’t ask me. He was ranting about showing it to somebody. About using it for something.” The man seemed to think about this.
“Listen,” Spike said. “I don’t really want to know about any of it, all right? Like you said, I’m just doing this for the money.”
“Now, that I do understand,” the man said. “It’s what started all this in the first place.”
Spike lifted a sleeve and rubbed the sweat away.
“Starts everything, mate. Only some of us need it a bit more than others…”
The man peered at Spike with curiosity and disgust, as though the wreckage of an accident had been taken away and he was staring at a bloodstain on the road. “My good fortune in this case,” he said.
Spike reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a plastic carrier bag, and wrapped it around whatever was inside. “Tape’s in here,” he said.
The man made no move to take it. “You know that if you’re fucking me about, I’ll find you,” he said. “However good you think you are at keeping out of people’s way. I’ll pay someone to find you.” “Thorne told me what’s on here.” Spike shook the package. The tape rattled inside. “I haven’t watched it, but I know what you did. I know what happened back then, and what happened later on with cars and tablets and with army boots, so I know what you’re capable of.” He looked across at the man and held his stare. “I’m a junkie, and a liar, and a fuck ing thief. But I’m not stupid…”
The man seemed impressed by this. When his hand came out of his pocket it was holding a bulging, brown A3 envelope.
“How do we do this, then?” Spike held out the plastic bag at arm’s length. It shook in his hand. He dropped the arm and took a breath; tried to sound casual. “You want me to chuck it over or what?” The man stepped forward suddenly, and kept coming as Spike moved backward away from him. When
Spike was against the wall, the man gently lifted the package from his hand. Six inches taller than Spike, he looked down and pressed the envelope against the boy’s chest. “Quite a bit in here,” he said. “Quite a lot of shit to put in your arm…”
The man’s eyes swiveled in an instant to the cardboard box and at the same moment he took a step back. At the sudden noise; at the movement… A week before, back at the Lift, when they’d been playing pool and talking about how it might work, this had been the moment that had caused Spike to laugh out loud. Back before Thorne had gone to
Brigstocke or Brigstocke to Jesmond. Before Jesmond had gone higher to wherever the buck stopped. This had been what they’d called the “rat” moment.
“He’ll probably think it’s a rat,” Spike had said.
“A fucking big one, like. He’ll probably shit himself…”
The man’s reaction when Thorne appeared from inside the box-sitting and then standing up in one smooth movement-was less dramatic than Spike had predicted, but Thorne could certainly see that he’d sprung a powerful surprise. “I’m guessing those football tickets are out of the question now,” he said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Alan Ward nudged his glasses, then reached to grab a handful of hair at the back of his head, as if that might be the only way to stop himself shaking it. He’d carried on moving backward as the sides and lid of the box had burst outward and upward, and now he stared at Thorne and Spike across the eight or so feet that separated one wall of the tunnel from the other.
Thorne glanced to his left. “All right?”
Spike nodded, without taking his eyes off Ward. “This is… interesting,” Ward said, finally. He looked both ways along the length of the tunnel. “No point in going anywhere,” Thorne said. “Because…?”
“Because there are police officers at every exit. Why did you think it was so quiet down here tonight?” “Stupid bastard,” Spike said.
The slow shake of Ward’s head became a nod of acceptance, and as Thorne watched, an excitement of sorts came into the journalist’s eyes. Though he was clearly anxious-the muscles in his face and neck singing with it-there was also a calmness in his voice and in his manner, as though he were somehow relaxed by the tension.
He glared at Spike. “That little fucker wired up, is he?”
Spike just smiled.
“Or have you got something set up in the box?” Thorne nodded up at the roof of the tunnel, toward one of the small, metal PA speakers that was now more or less directly above Ward’s head. “The mike’s in there,” he said. “And the camera. Seemed appropriate to get it all on film as well.”
“You haven’t got anything.”
“You know we’ve got plenty…”
Ward cocked his head as if he were weighing it up.
Then he casually dropped the package he was carrying to the ground and began to stamp on it. The noise, as the tape’s plastic housing first cracked and then shattered, echoed back along the tunnel from left and right.
Thorne waited for a couple of seconds. “Well done,” he said. “You’ve just stomped the shit out of a Jim Carrey movie.”
“I don’t believe you…”
“Not that we couldn’t have tied you to these latest killings without the tape anyway, but did you really think we’d only have one copy?”
Ward turned angrily to Spike.
“Since when do junkies tell the truth?” Spike asked.
Ward’s unsettling calmness had all but vanished now. Thorne was aware only of the adrenaline, of a readiness, in the man opposite him. And something else at the furthest edge of the rush: Ward’s barely concealed fury at the hopelessness of his situation.
There was nothing practical to be gained by it, but still there were many reasons why Thorne felt the need to push and to bait. To glory, and to let Ward see him glory at his impotence.
“So, lucky or unlucky, then?” Thorne said. “The day you came across that tank crew. What d’you reckon, Alan?”
Ward seemed to find the question funny. Asked one in return: “For me or those Iraqis?”
Thorne answered with a look.
“Lucky for me, definitely,” Ward said. “Very lucky. And you can make your own luck up to a point, but it’s what you do with it that makes the difference.”
“What were you doing there?” Thorne asked.
“I was driving around, monitoring radio transmissions, and I heard Callsign 40 radio through that they’d thrown a track.” Ward leaned back against the wall and looked hard at Thorne. This wasn’t reminiscence. It was education. “I heard REME telling them that the engineers couldn’t get out there for a couple of hours, and I was nearby, so I thought I’d head across and see what was happening. By the time I’d got there, the men in the Iraqi tank had just driven up and surrendered. Popped their lids waving fucking white flags…”
“Very stupid of them.”
“See, I had my nice bit of luck right there, and ordinarily that’s all it would have been. If all I’d wanted was to point my little camera and watch a few of our boys capturing a few of theirs, that would have been handy. But it was much more than that. Because I wanted much more than some boring bit of footage that might or might not
