Mark Billingham - The Burning Girl

Another drag. "I want this parole. I really need it to go my way this time."

"And?" Thorne stared blankly across the table at Rooker. "Not a lot we can do about that'

"Bollocks. It's down to the Home Office. You can get it done if you want to."

"Why would we want to?"

"I need a guarantee that I'm getting out…"

"Don't want much, do you?"

"It'll be worth it."

"Unless you're telling us who Jack the Ripper was and where Lord Lucan and Shergar are holed up, I doubt we'd be interested." Rooker didn't seem to find that funny.

"What about these letters?" asked Chamberlain. "The phone calls. That's what we're here to talk about."

Rooker stared down at the ashtray.

"Whoever's doing this has been to my house."

"I want protection." Rooker looked up at Thorne. "After I'm out."

"Protection from who?" Chamberlain said.

"New identity, national insurance number, the lot."

"Billy Ryan," Thorne said.

"Maybe."

"Is Billy Ryan going to come after you?"

"Not for the reason you think."

"So why should we give a toss?"

"I can give him to you."

Thorne blinked. This was interesting. This was far from tenuous. He avoided eye contact with Chamberlain, refused to show Rooker anything, kept his voice casual. "You're going to grass up Billy Ryan?" Rooker nodded.

"Grass up the Ryans," Chamberlain said, 'and you really will be a target."

"That's why I want protection."

It was a straightforward piece of gangland logic, and Thorne could see the sense of it. "Get Ryan before he gets you. That it?"

"Don't make out like you wouldn't like to put him away. He's a piece of shit and you know it."

"And you're a fucking saint, are you, Gordon?"

"It's him or me, isn't it? What would you do?"

"After what you did at that school, what you did to that girl. I'm inclined to let Billy Ryan have you."

Rooker's head dropped and stayed down as he stubbed out what was left of his cigarette. He ground the butt into the ashtray until there appeared to be nothing left of it at all. For a moment, Thorne wondered if he'd palmed it, like a magician. When Rooker finally looked up, the cockiness had gone. The lines in his face had deepened. He seemed suddenly tense. He looked like a frightened old man.

"I didn't burn the girl," he said. "It wasn't me." Thorne saw Chamberlain's hands clench into fists on the table, white across her knuckles as she spoke. "Don't piss me about. Don't you bloody dare piss me about."

Rooker licked his lips and repeated himself.

And Thorne believed him. It really was that simple. All that struck him as odd was that Rooker seemed so reluctant, so hesitant about his denial. Surely things were arse about face. Thorne remembered how, a week before, the man sitting opposite him had admitted to setting a fourteen-year-old girl on fire as easily as he might own up to nicking lead off a roof. Now, he was taking it back, denying he'd had anything to do with it, and it was as if it were the hardest thing in the world.

It was like he was confessing his innocence.

Dave Holland and Andy Stone got along, but no more than that. A year or so ago, when they'd first begun working together, Holland had resented Stone's easy charm, and bridled at his place as the young pretender to what he was never sure feeling threatened. They'd kicked along well enough since then, though there were still times when the ease with which his fellow DC told a joke or wore a suit made him want to spit.

"I feel like shit warmed up," Stone said. Holland looked up from the computer screen and smiled. "Caning it again last night, were you?"

"Still sweating Carlsberg and Sea Breezes." Holland raised an eyebrow. "Cocktails?"

"I was with a very classy lady, mate." Holland was at least self-aware enough to admit that now, with a baby to think about, his resentment had distilled into plain, old-fashioned jealousy.

"I bet I still had more sleep than you, though," Stone said.

"Right…"

Holland had more or less grown used to the physical fatigue. He could happily nod off at pretty much any time, and was not beyond catnapping in the Gents' after a really bad night. It was mentally that he was still finding things tough. There was a fuzziness about his thinking these days, a reluctance to go in any direction other than the path of least resistance. There was a time, back before the baby and the rough patch they went through even before that, when Sophie would badger him about being the kind of straightforward, head-down, career copper that his old man had been. She didn't have to bother these days, and she knew it. Holland didn't have the mental energy to do a great deal else.

And there was the way the baby made him feel: the sheer, fucking size of the love and the terror. Looking down at her sometimes, he could feel his heart swell and his sphincter tighten at the same time. Holland closed his eyes for a few seconds. He could remember so vividly the first time he'd walked into a CID suite. He could recall virtually every moment of that first case he'd worked on with Tom Thorne. He saw in perfect detail the clothes he'd been wearing on a particular occasion in Thorne's car, or in the office when they got a break in the case. It was only the excitement of it, which he knew had been intense, that seemed suddenly distant and hard to imagine.

"Where's that plum from SO7, anyway?" asked Stone. "He's never here when he's needed, is he?"

They were going through the paperwork and computer data relating to what had quickly emerged as the less than legitimate business activities of Muslum Izzigil's video shop. When one or two members of Brigstocke's team had expressed surprise that video piracy was still big business, they had been subjected to Tughan at his most patronising: "Five thousand copies from one stolen master tape, knocked out at a couple of quid a pop. You might be looking at half a million per year per film. It's not quite up there with heroin, but there's a damn sight less risk and you don't tend to get put away for so long." Some, notably Thorne, had remained sceptical. Then again, Thorne was sceptical about everything that came out of Tughan's mouth, and there was certainly evidence that pointed towards a sophisticated smuggling operation. There was no such evidence leading them to whoever was running it; whoever Muslum Izzigil among many others in all likelihood had been fronting for; whoever had reacted so aggressively when Billy Ryan had tried to muscle in on their territory.

Whoever was paying the X-Man.

There was a DC from SO7 who, theoretically at least, was supposed to be working with Holland and Stone, but whenever there were paper-trails to slog through, urgent meetings would materialise back at Barkingside, or mysterious sources would suddenly need chasing up on the other side of London.

"They're taking the piss, aren't they?" Holland found it hard to disagree with Stone's assessment. He was about to chip in with a comment of his own when something on the screen caught his eye. He stared at it for a few seconds, scrolled back to check something else, then held up a hand, beckoning Stone from the other side of the room. "Come and look at this, Andy."

"What?"

"A name." He highlighted two words on the screen for Stone to look at, moved to a different page and highlighted the same words again. Stone stared down at the screen from behind his shoulder. "Just a name," Holland said. "Nothing to tie it to anything dodgy, as yet."

"There wouldn't be. These fuckers are too clever for that."

"Maybe."

"Definitely. We won't catch 'em with Windows 2000, I can tell you that."

Holland grunted. "Well, whoever they are, their name just keeps cropping up."

"I was a dead man," Rooker said.

Chamberlain leaned back in her chair, waiting. Thorne moved in the opposite direction. "Don't get existential on us, Gordon. Keep it simple and keep it honest. All right?"