Mark Billingham - The Burning Girl

Thorne shrugged. "So what are you going to do, Wayne? You want to call the police?"

Brookhouse leaned forward, his forearms braced across his knees. "I might call a solicitor, yeah."

"The phone's by the front door."

The man on the sofa held Thorne's stare for a few seconds, then, slowly, the smile reappeared. "You can't do shit to me." He started to laugh softly in short, high-pitched bursts, and Thorne could see that the amusement was real. The little fucker really found the situation funny. He genuinely believed that they could not touch him, that he was protected.

"You're absolutely right, Wayne. This is private, which means that I won't lose my job if I come over there and kick your balls up into your throat."

Thorne's threat, or perhaps it was his expression as he made it, was enough to stop the laughter, but no more than that.

"Fine," Brookhouse said. "It's probably the only way this can end up, right?"

"That's up to you."

Brookhouse sat up straight. "It's OK with me if it means we can get this shit over with. I'll take a pasting if I have to, but I'll hurt you at the same time, man, I swear." Another nod towards Chamberlain.

"She going to have a crack as well, is she? "Cos I tell you, I've got no fucking problems with giving her a slap as well." The confidence vanished for a second as Chamberlain stood suddenly and stepped towards him, shouting: "No fucking problems with trying to set fire to a young girl at a bus stop, either, have you?"

"No idea what you're on about."

Thorne knew now that the attack in Swiss Cottage had been made to up the stakes, had been the only option left when it looked like Rooker's offer had been rejected. It had certainly done the trick, leaving the police no option but to agree to Rooker's deal.

"That was you, too, wasn't it, Wayne? At that bus stop?" Chamberlain stood, red-faced, above him. "That's attempted murder, and you're looking at the same sentence Rooker got." Brookhouse stared at her, calmly bringing up his hand to wipe her spittle from his cheek.

"Jack of all trades, aren't you?" Thorne said. "Are you the only one Memet's got who can do all these things? Or has the family blown all its money on hookers and expensive hitmen?" Brookhouse said nothing.

Thorne leaned forward. This was an important one. "Who put the cross on my door, Wayne?"

The answer came at the back end of a yawn. "Piss off." Thorne's fingers curled into fists at the exact moment that Chamberlain turned to him, suddenly composed again.

"Have you got any handcuffs knocking about?" she asked. Gordon Rooker was shopping.

He'd spent a lot of money already. He'd splashed out on smart new clothes and several pairs of fashionable shoes. He'd got drinks in for a bar-full of strangers who were now his closest friends. He'd bought the latest mobile phone, a nice radio and a massive flat-screen TV that he'd seen in a magazine and planned to put in the corner of his new living room. He didn't know where that living room was going to be yet, or how much money he'd have to buy all these things when he really got the chance, but he relished the planning. He savoured the dream of owning again, the joy of the notes passing through his hands. Lying on his bunk in the dark, he tried to imagine the future. This was something he'd done countless times before, of course, when there was even a sniff of hope that he might be let out, but this time it was different. He could taste, smell and touch the freedom that was no more than a few days away.

He ate an expensive meal three courses and a fancy bottle of wine in a restaurant that was almost certainly no longer in business. He left a large tip and walked out of there feeling like his shit would taste of sugar.

Money had been mentioned back when Ryan was still alive. It had been part of the deal then, even though they'd been a bit coy about exactly how much. He was likely to cop for a bit less now than he would have done originally, but they still had to give him something, surely. They couldn't just dump him in a strange town or city, point him towards the nearest dole office and tell him to get on with it, could they?

He'd tried getting some straight answers out of that bastard Thorne, but it had been like trying to piss up a rope. There was still so much that was unsettled, and it was disconcerting after twenty years of routine, but he could live with it. A release date, in black and white, was all the certainty he needed.

He bought books, dozens of them: spy thrillers and biographies. He'd learned to lose himself in them and looked forward to choosing his own.

He bought a season ticket at Upton Park. Wherever he ended up, he'd sneak back now and again to watch his grandson play. And he bought himself a woman. Inside, you developed strong wrists, but cash handed over to lie back and watch a tart doing the work could only be money well spent.

In his cell, Rooker drifted towards sleep thinking about big, soft beds, and about flesh beneath his fingers that was not his own.

Thorne hadn't known Wayne Brookhouse for long, of course, but this was definitely a look he'd not seen before. The eyes bulged. The face seemed stiff and yellow as old newspaper.

Thorne knew Chamberlain's features far better, but they were distorted by an expression that to him was equally as strange.

"This is 50… fucking out of order," Brookhouse said. He panted out the words, his head twisting from side to side, the bed shaking as he fought against his restraints.

One wrist was cuffed to the metal bedstead, the other lashed to it with a black tie which Thorne normally only dug out for funerals. Thorne was sitting across his prisoner's legs, holding tight to the rail at the foot of the bed to avoid being pitched off as Brookhouse struggled and bucked.

Chamberlain finished unbuttoning Brookhouse's shirt and reached towards the bedside table. The appliance she picked up was plugged into a red extension reel, which in turn ran to a socket in the corner of the room. She flicked the cable aside as she took a step towards the head of the bed. "It's funny," she said, 'because, normally, I bloody hate ironing."

Brookhouse spat out a string of curses. He was doing his very best to appear unafraid, to make the fear look like rage, and he wasn't making a bad job of it. Maybe it would have been harder to disguise if Thorne had been holding the iron. Perhaps, much as he was struggling, Brookhouse found the sight of a woman in her mid-fifties playing amateur-hour torturer faintly ridiculous.

To Thorne, the only ridiculous thing was that Brookhouse wasn't a damn sight more scared. Thorne could see something in Carol Chamberlain's eyes that he'd never seen before. Or maybe something that was usually there was missing.

"Tell us about the X-Man," Thorne said. Brookhouse screwed his eyes shut. "I can't." Chamberlain lowered her arm. The face of the iron was no more than six inches above Brookhouse's chest. "This is heavy," she said. Thorne stared at Chamberlain. They were bus king this. He couldn't tell whether she meant it, so Brookhouse certainly couldn't. "Come on, Wayne."

Brookhouse winced. It was obvious, though the iron was not touching him, that he was starting to feel its heat. "He's gone, he's gone." He began to shout, to gabble his words. "He got out of the country. All right?"

"Where?" Thorne asked.

"I don't fucking know, I swear. Serbia, maybe. I think he was a Serb."

"Give me a name."

"I don't know his name, I never met him." He tensed as the iron dropped another inch. "Look, I saw him in the cafe once, that's all. He was just sitting on his own in the corner, smiling. Dark hair, you know, same as they all fucking look. Smile like a film star, loads of fucking teeth, I remember that."

Thorne remembered the man in the car outside his flat. He remembered that smile. He wondered how close he'd come to feeling a blade against his back; the brightness of its edge, teasing before the blackness of the bullet.