Mark Billingham - The Burning Girl

"Because you don't stop where other people do," he said. He looked at the floor as he spoke, sweat stinging his eyes. He stared at the strip of grubby mastic where the tiles met the base of the Jacuzzi. "Because you don't have a line."

There was a long moment of silence, of stillness, before Memet heaved himself on to the edge of the bath. Water gathered in thick droplets on his round shoulders. It ran through the dark hair clinging to the fat on his chest and belly.

"I will talk to those with some influence in the community."

"Don't start with that "pillar of the community" bollocks." Thorne wasn't murmuring now. "I heard enough of it at that hotel."

"My family has done all that was asked of us."

"Does Mrs. Zarif know about these lunchtime hand-jobs, by the way?"

"You're starting to sound very desperate."

"Whatever it takes."

Memet sat and dripped.

"Talk to me about what you do," Thorne said. "Here and now, come on. Tell me about the killing, and the buzz or whatever it is, that you get from controlling people's lives. It can't just be about the money." He paused as Memet climbed to his feet and stared at him, a defiance in his stance, some strange challenge in his nakedness.

"There's nobody worth hiding from in here, is there?" Thorne said. The water was cooling, but the room seemed to be growing hotter by the second. "It's just the two of us. I'm not writing anything down, my memory's not what it was and I haven't got a tape recorder in my pocket, so it stays in this room. Every bit as discreet as everything else that goes on in here. Talk to me about it honestly. Just once."

Slowly, Memet reached for the towel that was draped across the arm of the sofa and began to dry himself. "That day in my father's cafe," he said. "You told me to make a wish, remember?" Thorne remembered the lamps hanging from the ceiling, the cigarette smoke dancing around them like a genie. He recalled his parting shot as he'd walked out of the door. "So, did you make one?"

"I made one, but it didn't come true." Thorne beat Memet to the punch line. He smiled, but felt the sweat turn to ice at his neck as he spoke. "Because I'm still here."

"I knew I should have got a toy or something."

"Don't worry, I'm sure we can exchange them."

"You'll be lucky. I've chucked the bloody receipt away." They spoke quietly, conscious of the baby asleep in a Moses basket beneath the window.

"We can just hang on to them, you never know." Thorne had known as soon as he'd clapped eyes on Holland's baby that all the clothes he'd bought were far too small. Holland was holding up the tiny outfits, trying and failing to find something positive to say about them.

"What, are you going to have another baby?" Thorne asked.

"Well.." Holland laughed and sipped from a can of lager. Thorne, furious with himself, eventually did the same.

"Sophie's had to nip out and see a mate," Holland said. "She'll be sorry she missed you. Said to say "hello"." Thorne nodded, feeling himself redden slightly. He knew very well that Holland was lying, that his girlfriend would have done her level best to make herself scarce on learning that Thorne was coming round. For all he knew, she might have been hiding in the bedroom, waiting for him to leave.

They were sitting on the sofa in Holland's living room. The clutter made the first-floor flat seem even smaller than it was. Thorne looked around, thinking that if the rest of the place was as cramped, then Sophie wouldn't have had the room to hide.

Holland read his thoughts. "Sophie thinks we should find a bigger flat."

"What do you think?"

"She's right, we should. Whether we can afford to is a different matter."

"Rack up that overtime, mate."

"Well I was. God knows whether there'll be any on the cards now." Though Thorne had brought the beer, he didn't feel much like drinking. He leaned over, put his can down by the side of the sofa. "Don't worry about it, Dave. The SO7 thing might have gone, but there'll be some nutter out there somewhere putting a bit of work our way soon." Holland nodded. "Good. I hope he's a real psycho. We could do with three bedrooms."

The joke was funny only because of the dark truth that fuelled it. Thorne knew all too well that in a world of uncertainties, in a city of shocking contrasts and shifting ideas, some things were horribly reliable. House prices climbed or tumbled; Spurs had bad seasons or average ones; the mayor was a visionary or an idiot. And the murder rate went up and up and up.. "What d'you reckon about the operation just getting called off like that?" Holland asked. "I know you and the DCI weren't exactly best mates, but still." Thorne didn't fancy rehashing the conversation he'd had with Tughan the day before. Instead, he told Holland how he'd spent the morning.

"I reckon they'd booked the entire massage parlour for themselves."

"Like when they close Harrods so some film star can go shopping," Holland said. "Only with prostitutes." Thorne described the confrontations in the lounge and the V.I. P Suite, playing up the comedy in his exchanges with Hassan and Memet Zarif. He exaggerated the moments that had felt like small victories and glossed over those that were a little more ambiguous.

He left out the fear altogether.

"Will it do any good, d'you think?" Holland said.

"Probably not." Thorne looked across at the baby. He watched for a few seconds, counted the breaths as her tiny back rose and fell. "But we can't let these fuckers just. swan about, you know? Most of the time, they'll run rings round us, I know that, but every so often we've got to give them a decent tap on the ankles, just to let them know we're still there."

Thorne lifted his eyes to the window, saw that it was rapidly darkening outside. "I thought it would do me some good," he said.

The baby began to stir, crying softly and kicking her pudgy legs in slow motion. Holland moved quickly to her and squatted down next to the basket. Thorne watched as he pulled the dummy from his daughter's mouth, gently pushed it back in, and repeated the action until she was peaceful again.

"I'm impressed," Thorne said.

Holland returned to the sofa. He picked up his beer. "Can I ask you something?"

"As long as it doesn't involve nappies."

"There's a rumours going around."

Thorne hadn't bothered taking his jacket off. It was warm in the flat, but he'd been unsure how long he would be staying. Suddenly, it felt as stifling as it had been standing next to that Jacuzzi a few hours earlier.

"Right." Thorne said.

"Did you have a thing with Alison Kelly?" A variety of images, hastily constructed denials and straightforward lies flashed through Thorne's head in the few seconds before he spoke.

Where had the rumours come from? It didn't really matter. There was only a headache to be gained from worrying about it, or trying to work it out..

Thorne didn't want to deceive Dave Holland. He didn't want to look him in the face and make shit up. In the end, though, he chose to tell the truth because he couldn't be arsed to lie, as much as anything else. "I slept with her, yes."

Holland's expression rapidly changed from shock to amusement. Then it became something different, something ugly, and that was when Thorne decided to tell him everything else. He wouldn't stand for Holland sitting there looking impressed.

When Thorne had finished the story, when the words had moved from the simple repetition of things said over a pub table to those that best described Billy Ryan's body, bleeding on a kitchen floor, they sat and watched Chloe Holland sleep for a minute or two. Holland drained his can, then squeezed it very slowly out of shape.

"Are we just talking here? This is off duty, right?"

"If you mean "Can we forget about rank?" then yes."