'I should let you get back to… Sorry, I still don't know her name.'
Like so many other things…
'Louise,' Thorne said.
Walking back, they talked easily, taking their time as the streets narrowed and grew quieter. They argued about football when it emerged that Anna was a closet Match of the Day viewer. Like far too many Londoners, she was a Manchester United supporter, but Thorne tried not to take it too hard.
'Could be worse,' he told her. 'Could have been Chelsea.'
Their pace slowed even further when they reached Louise's road, walking back towards the flat at a fraction of the speed they had left it.
'Sorry for being such a nightmare,' she said.
'I'll get over it,' Thorne said.
Halfway along the street, a pizza-delivery scooter beetled past, its engine whining like a swarm of angry wasps.
'Bloody hairdryer on wheels.' Thorne spoke without thinking. It was something his father used to say.
Anna laughed. 'Pizza sounds good, though. My stomach thinks my throat's been cut.'
The rain was coming down far heavier now, and they were no more than half a minute from Louise's flat. Thorne thought about asking her inside and cooking her something. 'Do you want me to call you a cab?' he asked.
'It's fine. I can jump on the tube.'
Thorne watched the scooter reach the end of the road, turn around and start moving back the way it had come. He reached out instinctively towards Anna. 'You sure?' He kept one eye on the scooter. He had presumed that the driver could not find the right address, but there was no attempt to look for house numbers.
'Honestly, it's not a problem.'
Thorne felt a tingle build and spread at the nape of his neck. 'Let's get inside.'
The scooter slowed, wobbling a little as it edged towards the pavement; as Thorne moved his hand to the small of Anna's back and pushed.
' What? ' she said.
The man on the scooter, his face obscured by a blacked-out visor, was now steering with one hand, and without needing to see what was in the hand that was hidden by the fuel tank, Thorne urged Anna forward. ' Move! '
The rider raised the gun and Anna shouted, took hold of Thorne's arm and told him to watch out. Thorne half shoved, half dragged her the last few feet until they were level with the low railings that ran along the front of the building, Louise's door was still ten feet below them as the first shot was fired.
Just a pop, no louder than the scooter backfiring.
Anna said, 'Christ,' then spoke Thorne's name as the scooter accelerated, a few more seconds of wasp- whine, until it was all but level with them. There was no time to move those last few feet to where the steps wound down from the pavement and, in the end, Thorne could do nothing but push himself against her; pressing her back against the railings, feeling the tremble take hold in his arms and legs, and the rain running down his neck.
He heard his own name screamed again as he turned to see the gun come up a second time.
PART THREE
TWENTY-EIGHT
A few minutes before beginning its descent into Malaga, the plane hit a patch of clear-air turbulence and dropped suddenly. Thorne sat back hard and opened his eyes, aware from the look on the face of the woman next to him that his gasp had been audible. He felt embarrassed, knowing – because he'd read it somewhere – that such fraction-of-a-second drops were actually of no more than a few feet and were insignificant in the scheme of things.
He mouthed a 'sorry' and smiled at the woman. She nodded and went back to her magazine.
Thorne closed his eyes again and waited for it to get a little less bumpy. Although he knew well enough that the sick feeling, the wet and peppery knot in his stomach, had nothing to do with turbulence. He had not been asleep, but the images and snatches of remembered conversation might easily have been fragments of a nightmare.
Eight weeks since the shooting.
Before the man on the scooter could fire again, Thorne and Anna had gone crashing together over the metal railings and down hard on to the steps. He felt a searing pain in his shoulder, guessing as he struggled to move that his collarbone had gone and dimly aware of the engine noise, the high-pitched drone as the scooter accelerated away. Aware of Anna moaning beside him, the cold, wet step against his face, Louise opening the door and screaming when she saw the blood.
Eight weeks…
Two since the funeral.
Thorne had felt stared at; observed, at the very least. Inside the church, in the grounds outside, and most of all afterwards, at the Carpenters' house in Wimbledon. It was probably all in his head and certainly nobody had said anything. None of those with every right to do a damn sight more than stare at the copper who had spent two weeks with his arm in a sling while the girl beaming out at them from the order of service had bled to death in the back of an ambulance.
I don't back away from a row. Always been my problem.
One person who did stare was Frank Anderson, recognising Thorne as the man who had stood in his office with a cock-and-bull story about a skirt-chasing girlfriend. But even Anderson resisted the temptation to say anything, while Thorne, in turn, fought the urge to say a few of the things he had been bottling up. All the same, he imagined it, standing in the church and staring at the dandruff speckling Frank Anderson's collar. He imagined taking a handful of the man's hair, ramming his face down into the pew and demanding an explanation for the way he had treated Anna. For the things he had made her do.
Do you know how much she hated it, you spineless little twat? How it made her feel? Have you got the slightest idea?
Instead, Thorne stood and sang 'How Great Thou Art' and listened to a moving eulogy from an elder sister he had known nothing about. He spoke to her afterwards at the house, learned she was a successful lawyer. Thorne asked himself if, in taking the job she had hated at the bank, Anna had been trying to compete with her, or be different from her, every bit as much as she had been trying to please her mother. He silently rebuked himself. What right did he have to pass any sort of judgement, to jump to any conclusions about what had been going on in Anna's head?
Walking slowly out of the church, he had seen Donna up ahead of him. Outside, while people talked quietly and lit cigarettes, the two of them exchanged nods, but she seemed in a hurry to get away and Thorne was grateful to avoid the conversation. The clumsy dance around guilt and blame.
At the Carpenters' house, he downed a glass of beer and helped himself to another. After all, he was not there in any official capacity, so he could put away a drink or two. Surely he had every reason to put away more than a few and make an arse of himself.
It was a bright day, and out in the garden Thorne spoke to Anna's friends, Rob and Angie. They were sitting on a low wall, balancing plates of cold ham and salad on their laps.
'She mentioned both of you,' Thorne said. 'Said what a good laugh you always had.'
Rob nodded and pushed his coleslaw around.
