Mark Billingham - The Burning Girl

Sema Zarif stepped from behind the counter and walked past them. She glanced at Thorne as she moved towards the stairs, and for the first time Thorne caught the trace of a smile. As if he were no longer someone to be worried about.

"You must have thought I was such a fucking idiot," Thorne said.

"Sitting at your table, eating with you."

"Not at all. If you want to feel better, you must know that you are a man far from the one I took you to be."

The white parts of Zarif's thick moustache were stained red with wine. Thorne stared at it, thinking that it looked like Zarif had been feasting on something raw; wishing that he'd said yes to a drink; wanting to know what the hell Zarif was talking about.

"A man who would torture to get what he wants," Zarif said. "The performance with the hot iron was. remarkable." Thorne felt something clench beneath his breastbone. "When did you speak to Wayne Brookhouse?" he asked.

Zarif raised his glass to his mouth, answered quietly across the top of it. "It was several days ago, I think." When Brookhouse had left Thorne's flat, in the early hours of the previous Friday morning, the goodbyes had been less than fulsome. Chamberlain had said nothing as Thorne had untied him. The two of them had stood and watched without a word as he'd rushed, swearing and stumbling, towards the door. Only at the last moment had Thorne taken Brookhouse to one side, held him against the back of the door and tried to press some good advice upon him.

"Don't go back," he'd said. It had been hard to make himself understood, to be sure his words were being heard and taken seriously, but Thorne knew that he had to make the effort. "Are you listening, Wayne? Go home, pack a bag and make yourself very fucking scarce."

Thorne watched as Zarif took another sip of wine. Wayne Brookhouse had not been nearly as clever as he'd thought he was. He'd made the decision to go back to Zarif and tell him what had happened, and Thorne knew that he almost certainly hadn't received the sympathy or the respect he thought he deserved. Thorne could imagine Brookhouse showing Zarif the burn on his chest, cursing those responsible and assuring his boss that he'd done what was expected, that he'd said nothing.

Thorne could imagine the artfully faked concern on the Baba's face, the stone-cold resolve as he'd made the only decision possible.

"Where is he now?" Thorne asked.

"I haven't seen Wayne for a day or two. He's gone away, maybe."

"If a body turns up, you know I'll be back."

"It won't turn up." Zarif made no effort to hide the smile or to disguise the double-meaning. He knew that he was safe, and seeing that knowledge smeared across his fat face was like a blade sliding back and forth across Thorne's chest. He said nothing and tried again to convince himself that he'd done the right thing. If not the right thing, then the only thing he could have done.

He felt sure that even if he'd done the sensible thing a week earlier if he'd asked Wayne Brookhouse to drive his taxi to the nearest police station it would have made no difference. Brookhouse would have said nothing. Zarif's lawyers would have had him back picking up customers within a few hours. The police would have been left with nothing but a few awkward questions to throw at Gordon Rooker, and even less to link the Zarif family to anything worth talking about. Even if Thorne were to come clean now if he were to go to Brigstocke or Tughan or Jesmond and tell him what he knew and how he knew it there would be little to gain. He could admit to torturing a witness and with his next breath explain that the witness had now disappeared; that the witness was, in all likelihood, dead and buried. The only person on the end of any awkward questions after that would be Thorne himself.

And he'd been asking himself plenty of those already.

"Mr. Rooker was released yesterday, so I understand."

"You know he was."

"This was a surprise." Zarif raised his thick grey eyebrows. "Knowing that he told you a number of lies, you still chose to let him out of prison."

Thorne tried hard to draw some spit up into his dry mouth. "I chose not to take the steps that might keep him there." I chose not to reveal what I'd discovered. I chose not to tell anyone that I'd kidnapped a suspect, that I'd held him against his will and done nothing as this information was forced from him with extreme violence. I chose not to reveal the extent of Gordon Rooker's brutality, or of my own.

I chose to keep the truth quiet and to protect myself.

"I wonder what Rooker is doing?" Zarif asked.

"If he's got any sense, he'll be watching his back. You're not fond of leaving loose ends lying around, are you?"

Zarif looked genuinely hurt. "You've got it wrong. Rooker has nothing to fear from me. We had an agreement, we had shared interests."

"Right. He helps you deal with Billy Ryan and in return you look after him once he's out. What are we talking? Money, I presume. Protection?

Something above and beyond what we can provide."

"An agreement, which I fully intend to honour." Thorne ran his hand along the surface of the table, scraped salt into the palm of his hand. "Honour, right. That's important, isn't it? I remember you touching glasses with me and drinking to it. How much honour was there for Marcus Moloney? Sliced up and shot in the head in his car." He dropped the salt on to the floor. "Was that an honourable way to die, do you think?"

"Did he behave honourably?" Zarif asked. "Doing what he was doing?" He flicked a fingernail against his glass. "Have you?" Another question Thorne had asked himself, and answered, a thousand times in the previous few days. "When I came down to your level, no."

Zarif looked up at the sound of his daughter calling to him from the top of the stairs. He answered her, watched her go, then turned back to Thorne. He emptied the last few drops of wine into his glass. "Time for you to leave."

Thorne reached across the table, grabbed the wineglass and pushed it hard into the old man's face. He felt the glass break and ground it through the soft hair of Zarif's moustache, blood springing bright to the surface and running down as Thorne twisted and pressed.

"We need to lock up."

Thorne blinked away the fantasy and stood up. He walked to the counter, leaned back against it. "You got the message I gave to Memet about retaliation for the shooting?" He pressed on before Zarif could answer. "Of course you did. Hence the message of your own on my front door."

Zarif spread his arms wide. Sweat stains darkened the white nylon of his shirt. "I'm sorry for that, really. That was Hassan's doing." This was a genuine surprise. "Hassan?"

"He is normally the most cautious of my sons, but you upset him."

"Well now he's upset me."

"I will be sure to tell him."

"Do that."

Zarif grunted, began to slide his bulk along the seat. "Have you replaced your door?"

Thorne shook his head.

"Please' – Zarif gestured casually towards the counter 'take some money from the till."

He got to his feet and fixed Thorne with the same expression of vague amusement that had recently been on his daughter's face. "Go ahead, help yourself."

Thorne wondered if perhaps there was more on offer than just a few tenners to cover the cost of a new door. Zarif had already admitted that Thorne was not the man he'd thought he was. Was he pushing a little, perhaps, trying to find out just what sort of a man Thorne really was?

Zarif's smile was returned with bells on. "I think I'll let you owe me," Thorne said.

Zarif shrugged and stepped towards the door. He held out a hand in front of him, beckoning Thorne to leave. Thorne pushed away from the counter and walked slowly back the way he'd come in. He felt the faintest flutterings of pride, but at the same time knew that he was kidding himself. He guessed that the feeling would probably not last as far as the pavement.