The Burning Girl-4 (34 page)

Then there was last year: the Foley case .. .

The murderers you got on with .. .

"I don't real y know where to start," Thorne said. "Dennis Nielsen was al right if you got to know him, and Fred West was quite a good laugh, til he topped himself. Talking of which, I remember one night, I was playing darts with Harold Shipman. Harry, I used to cal him ..."

Hol and let out a loud, long-suffering sigh. "If you're going to try to be funny, can you turn up the music again?"

They drove on, the car barely getting into top gear for more than a few minutes at a time. The monotony yielded only briefly to drama when Thorne spent too long watching a kestrel hovering above the hard shoulder, and came within inches of rear-ending an Audi.

"How's Sophie and the baby?" he asked.

"They're good."

"What is she now?"

"Nearly seven months. It feels like we're getting our lives back a bit, you know?"

Thorne shook his head. He had no idea at al .

"There's not so much panic," Hol and explained. "I mean, it's stil bloody scary, and we're knackered al the time, but we know more or less what we're doing." He paused, glanced across at Thorne. "Wel , Sophie always did, but now I know, more or less what I'm doing. You should come round and see her .. ."

"So, you're fine with it al , then? The dad bit. I know you had some worries." Thorne remembered a conversation they'd had the previous summer. Bizarrely, it had been on the very day he'd bought the BMW. Hol and had been drunk, had confessed to feeling terrified. He'd told Thorne he was worried that he might resent the baby when it came, that Sophie might make him choose between the baby and the job.

"I was being stupid," Hol and said. He turned to Thorne, grinning. "Chloe's bril iant. She's into everything, but she's fucking bril iant.. ."

"I'm glad it's working out," Thorne said.

"Tel you the truth, the last couple of weeks have been great. A chance to recharge the batteries, you know? The only problem is that Sophie's starting to get used to having me around again .. ."

The officers on the investigation had al been spending more time with loved ones in the fortnight or so since the Ryan murder. The job had recently involved a lot of paperwork, much of it from other cases, and a good deal of time sitting on arses waiting for somebody -Stephen Ryan in particular to get off theirs. To make a move. The investigation had wound itself down, or spiral ed into chaos, depending on your point of view.

"D'you reckon Stephen Ryan is going to do anything?" Hol and asked.

Thorne grunted, but only with pleasure as the Transit van final y indicated and moved inside. Thorne swerved back into the fast lane and powered past it, gaining a pointless thirty feet but enjoying it nonetheless.

He had no idea that, twenty miles ahead of him, uniformed officers were taping off the area around a minicab office on Green Lanes. Others were gathering witnesses and starting to take statements. Phil Hendricks was already on his way to the crime scene, while an ambulance was moving in the opposite direction, its services clearly not required.

Stephen Ryan had made a move.

TWENTY-FIVE

Wednesday morning in the Major Incident Room. Two days after the fatal shooting at the Zarifs' minicab office. A team back on its feet, but yet to get the feeling back in its arse .. .

"We've had word from Immigration," Brigstocke said. "They think a few more from the lorry might have turned up. I say "think" because the individuals concerned aren't tel ing anybody very much."

"Where?" Thorne asked.

Brigstocke glanced at the sheet of paper he was holding. "A car wash in Hackney. One of those places where there's half a dozen of them on your car at once, you know? With sponges and chamois leathers, inside with vacuums .. ."

Stone nodded. "There's one near me. Inside and out for a tenner. Plus a tip .. ."

"The owner's being questioned," Brigstocke said. "So far, surprise, surprise, he's pleading ignorance. There'l be a connection to the Ryans somewhere down the line, but I don't think it'l be much different from the others .. ."

A man and a woman, suspected of being from the hijacked lorry,

had been detained the previous week in Tottenham, having been discovered working in a restaurant kitchen. Two men had been seized a few days before that from a shop fitting wholesalers in Manor House. In both cases an astonishing bout of amnesia seemed to have struck al concerned. Arrests had been made, but none would lead to anything other than deportation orders for the il egals and fines for their employers. There would be enough red tape to stretch back to where the people in the lorry had originated and nothing to incriminate those who mattered in the Ryan or the Zarif organisations.

Tughan took over from Brigstocke. "Let's move on to the shooting in Green Lanes. What about the witnesses, Sam? Any luck?"

Karim shook his head. "Hard to believe, I know, but we stil can't find anybody who saw anything that contradicts Memet Zarif's story. We've even got a couple who conveniently noticed a man in a balaclava carrying a gun and running away after the gunshots had finished."

"Yeah, right," Thorne said.

Hol and let out a grunt of laughter. "That's one couple who won't go short at Christmas, then .. ."

According to Memet Zarif and the others in the minicab office at the time, the man in the leathers who had shot and wounded Hassan Zarif had himself been shot dead by a mysterious second gunman who'd fol owed him inside and fled once he'd kil ed him. The police knew it was cock and bul . They guessed that the 'second' gunman was Memet or Tan Zarif, but with no murder weapon or corroborating witness, there was little anyone could do to prove it.

"We are sure about one thing, though," Tughan said. There was a certain amount of laughter, which he acknowledged with uncharacteristic good humour. "I know, I've already alerted the media. We have a name for the victim: the dead one, that is. He was Donal Jackson, thirty-three. A known associate of Stephen Ryan."

This last fact came as no surprise to anyone.

"Is he the bloke who did the Izzigils, do we think?" Stone asked. "Same gun .. .?"

Tughan opened his mouth but Thorne was quicker. "No chance," he said. "It's the same type of gun, that's al . Whoever was hired to kil the Izzigils was good. Clinical, you know? This idiot got himself kil ed and didn't even manage to take anybody with him .. ." He trailed off, his mind focusing suddenly on the failed attempt to kil an innocent fourteen-year-old girl. Now, twenty years later, the son of the man behind that had fucked up a hit of his own.

"DI Thorne's probably right," Tughan said. "Word is that Jackson was pretty new to contract stuff. Picked up the job because he was Stephen Ryan's mate, because Ryan wanted to go a different way from his old man. Also, according to the people we've spoken to, Jackson was pretty cheap."

Stone snorted. "Pay peanuts, you get monkeys."

"You'd've thought shel ing out for a decent hit man was pretty basic," Kitson said.

Others picked up on her sarcasm, mumbled their agreement.

"Haven't these people heard of a false economy?"

"You just can't get the staff."

"He'l pay for it in the end," Thorne said. "What he did, what he failed to do, is going to cost him."

"Think it's al going to kick off?" Hol and asked.

"I think Ryan should have dug into his pocket and hired a trio of hitmen." Thorne was only half joking. "One for each brother. He should have done it properly and kil ed al three of them."

"This might be a good time to announce that in terms of the joint operation, we're going to be scaling things down a bit," Tughan said.

Thorne stared at him. Surely he was joking. "You what?"

"We've had results, some good ones, but the fact is that the Job can't see us getting too much more out of this. We're wrapping it up."

Thorne looked across at Brigstocke, eyes wide. The look he got back told him that there was nothing worth arguing about. This was for information, not discussion.

"Bil y Ryan, one of our main targets, is no longer a worry, even if, sadly, we can't claim credit for that. In point of fact, from now on, there's not going to be much in the way of results that we won't have to share with Immigration or the Customs and Excise mob. There are one or two loose ends that we've yet to tie up and there'l be a few more arrests, but the pro-active end of it just isn't justified in terms of resources .. ."

"How can we pul out of this now?" Thorne asked. "After what just happened?"

Tughan was already putting papers into a briefcase. "It was Stephen Ryan's last hurrah. He messed it up. It's a war he's going to lose, and then hopeful y things wil settle down again .. ."

"Hopeful y?"

"Things wil settle down again."

"Meanwhile, we just look the other way. We do some paperwork and nick a few nobodies and let them kil each other .. .?"

Tughan turned to Brigstocke. "I want to thank Russel and his team for their cooperation and for their hospitality. We've done some good things together. We've achieved a lot, real y, we have, and I think I'l be borne out on that in the weeks and months to come. Anyway, I'm sure you'l be looking forward to getting back to work on your own cases. To getting your offices back, at least."

There was a smattering of unenthusiastic laughter.

"We'l have a pint or two later, of course, and say our goodbyes. Obviously, we won't be vanishing right away. Like I said, there are a few loose ends .. ." And he was moving away towards the door.

Brigstocke cleared his throat, walked a few paces after Tughan, then turned. He looked to Thorne, Kitson and the rest of his officers. "I'l be getting together with DS Karim later. Re-assigning the casework." His parting words were spoken like a third-rate manager trying to gee up a team who were six-nil down at half time. "There's stil plenty of disorganised criminals out there who need catching .. ."

For a few seconds after Brigstocke had left the room, nobody moved or spoke. One of those uneasy silences that fol ows a speech. Gradual y, the volume increased, though not much, and the bodies changed position, so that in a few subtle turns, half paces and casual shifts of the shoulder, the single team became two very separate ones. The officers from each unit began to huddle and look to their own, their conversations far from secret, but no longer to be shared.

The members of Team 3 at the Serious Crime Group (West) stayed silent a little longer than their SO7 counterparts. It was Yvonne Kitson who sought to break the silence and change the mood at the same time. "How's the philosophy going, Andy? Nietzsche is it this week, or Jean-Paul Sartre?"

Stone tried to look blank, but the blush betrayed him. "Eh?"

"It's al right, Andy," she said. "Al blokes have tricks. Al women too, come to that."

Stone shrugged, the smile spreading. "It works .. ."

"Obviously you have to use whatever you've got." Hol and lounged against a desk. "Only some of us prefer to rely on old-fashioned charm and good looks."

"Money goes down quite wel ," Karim said, grinning. "Failing that, begging usual y works for me."

"Begging's excel ent," Kitson said.

Hol and looked to Thorne. He was six feet or so distant from them, the incomprehension stil smeared across his face like a stain.

"What about you, sir?" Hol and asked. "Any tricks you want to share with the group?"

Stone was laughing at his joke before he even started speaking. "I'm sure Dr. Hendricks could get his hands on some Rohypnol if you're desperate .. ."

But Thorne was already moving towards the door.

"Can't you be predictable just once in your life," Tughan said. "I thought you'd be glad to see the back of me."

Tughan stood in the doorway to his office. Brigstocke was nowhere to be seen.

"Look, we can't stand each other," Thorne said. "Fair enough. Neither of us loses a great deal of sleep about that, I'm sure, and once or twice, yes, I've said things just to piss you off.

Right? But this' he gestured back towards the Incident Room, towards what Tughan had said in there 'is seriously stupid. I know you're not personal y responsible for the decision .. ."

"No, I'm not. But I stand by it."

'"Ours is not to reason why". That it?"

"Not if we want to get anywhere."

"Career-wise, you mean? Or are we back to results again?"

"Take your pick .. ."

Thorne leaned against the door jamb. He and Tughan stood on either side of the doorway, staring across the corridor at the wal opposite. At a pin board festooned with Police Federation newsletters and dog-eared photocopies of meaningless graphs. At an AIDS-awareness leaflet, a handwritten list of last season's fixtures for Metropolitan Police rugby teams, a torn-out headline from the Standard that said, "Capital gun crime out of control', at postcards advertising various items for sale: a Paul Smith suit; a scooter; a second-hand Play Station .. .

"It's the timing I don't understand," Thorne said. "Now, I mean, after .. ."

"I think this decision was made before the shooting in the minicab office."

"And that didn't cause anybody to rethink it?"

"Apparently not."

Richards, the concentric-circles man, came along the corridor with a file that was, by al accounts, terribly important. Tughan took it with barely a word. Thorne waited until the Welshman had gone.

"When we found that lorry driver dead and those two in the woods with bul ets in the backs of their heads, you were fired up. "This has got to stop," you said. You were angry about the Izzigils, about Marcus Moloney. You were up for it. There's no point pretending you weren't.. ."

Tughan said nothing, clutched the file he was holding that little bit tighter to his chest.

"How do these people decide what we're going to do?" Thorne asked. "Who we target and who we ignore? Which lucky punters have a chance when it comes to us catching the men responsible for kil ing their husband or their father, and which poor sods might just as wel ask a traffic warden to sort it out? How do these people formulate policy} Do they rol a fucking dice every morning? Pick a card .. .?"