Mark Billingham - The Burning Girl

"Blood and money," Thorne said.

"What?"

"You told me that you came to this country for bread and work. Blood and money. I think that's closer to the mark." Zarif stepped around Thorne and opened the door. The breeze began to stir the lanterns above their heads. Diamonds and stars of colour danced gently around the walls. "That first time, when we talked about names, about what they meant, we talked about yours also," Zarif said.

"Thorne. Small and spiky, and difficult to get rid of." Thorne remembered. "It depends on how seriously you take that kind of thing."

"I take my business very seriously."

"Good, because I'd rather not see your face again, unless it's in a courtroom. I don't want to come back here, however good the food is."

Zarif nodded. "We understand each other."

"Fuck me, no," Thorne said. He caught Arkan Zarif's eye, and held it.

"Never."

Thorne turned towards the street, opening his mouth to suck down the fresh air. A few seconds later, he heard the door close behind him with a gentle click.

He'd been right about the pride not lasting very long. It was a warm night, but Thorne was shivering as he walked back towards his car. He imagined it… he felt it, as a frenzy of metal wire, tangled and tightly wound somewhere deep inside him. Each time he'd managed to work a piece of it loose, he would pull at it in desperation, succeeding only in winding the coils even tighter, making the snarl that much harder to unravel.

Thorne had put some music on, then turned the volume down. He'd opened a bottle of wine and left it untouched. Nothing made it easier. Nothing helped him make sense of the mess, or understand his own part in creating it. There'd been so many bodies and so much grief, and so little to show for it.

He asked himself what else he could have expected. Hadn't he always known that the likes of Baba Arkan Zarif were fireproof? They had complex mechanisms in place that protected them, soldiers who would sacrifice themselves and any number of men and women on the right side of the law who would keep them untarnished. Still, the knowledge that nobody was answerable, that no one would pay for a fraction of the carnage, was horribly corrosive.

A few of Ryan's people were dead and a couple of Zarif's. Business had been hit on both sides. Life moved easily on, but not for Yusuf Izzigil, who'd lost both parents. Nor for the family of Francis Cullen, nor for Marcus Moloney's widow, whose name Thorne had never even bothered to learn.

And there were the other deaths, those for which, for good or evil, Thorne himself would always be responsible.

Billy Ryan and Wayne Brookhouse.

Thorne felt the knots inside tighten a little further. He thought about where lines were drawn. He wondered whether his had just moved further away, or if he'd long since overstepped it and was moving on. Moving to a much darker place where people couldn't quite make out his face and the lines had disappeared.

He looked at the telephone.

He closed his eyes and saw the face of Gordon Rooker. It was starting to regain its colour, the smugness reddening in the fresh air. Thorne saw the gold tooth catch the light as Rooker bought fruit from a market stall. As he sat with other men around a pub table. As he smiled at something he was reading in a magazine.

And there was always the burning girl.

Her arms windmiling as she tumbled through blackness towards the street.

Her face in the photograph her father had given him; the features ravaged, the smooth skin overwritten by rough, discoloured ridges. Her voice in the diary. Funny and furious. Deserving to be listened to.

He got up from the sofa and walked across to the table near the front door.

He dialed a Wandsworth number and exchanged a few cursory pleasantries with the man on the other end. He made arrangements to return a diary and some photographs. Then, he told him to get a pen. Gave him an address.

Thorne turned the music up then, and poured himself a drink. He sat back down on the sofa, pulled his feet up and considered the weight of his soul. He wondered if it might be possible to exercise it, to beef up the soul, to strengthen it by working out spiritually. If so, then bad deeds would surely cost you weight. Those who were truly wicked would wind up with souls that weighed next to nothing. He reached for the wine bottle.

Wondering, in light of the phone call he'd just made, if his soul had gained a little weight. Or lost it.

MAY

IGNORANCE

It was the day before the Cup Final a little over a month since the man who used to be known as Gordon Rooker had been found murdered by an intruder in his own home when Thorne received the call. Three weeks into May and it was gently drizzling. Everything else was equally as predictable.

While the Zarif and Ryan investigations had become little more than a couple of dozen boxes stacked on metal shelves at the General Registry, other cases had arrived to fill the void. Other victims that cried out for attention, that demanded action. There was never a shortage of rage, or lust, or greed. Or of bodies, when the chemistry that was there to control such things turned everyday feelings into something murderous.

Disfigured them.

Tom Thorne had read the Murder Investigation Manual in an hour and forgotten the whole thing almost as quickly. He knew he was adept at forgetting what didn't really matter; what there simply wasn't room for. Every day there were a thousand new pieces of information that needed good, clean space that needed the chance, however slim, to move together, around and within one another, to spark and create the idea or the ghost of an idea that might just help to catch a killer. But many other things were far from forgotten. They just got shifted around, crammed into smaller spaces in Thorne's head and in his heart. And in that other place that there wasn't really a name for, where the coils just got wound that little bit tighter. On the couple of occasions he'd seen Carol Chamberlain, or spoken to her, they'd talked happily enough about their respective cases: his ongoing and hers long unsolved. Only their immediate past was jointly understood to be off limits.

Individually, and alone, it was far harder to escape. Alison Kelly had phoned one afternoon and they'd talked for a few minutes. Thorne had asked her how she was. The talk had been so small, so pathetically prosaic, that he'd almost asked her where she was. As the time passed, he thought of her face and body less than he thought of the knife in her hand, but each time she came into his mind he thought of the inscription carved into the foundation stone of Holloway Prison, where she waited for the trial that was only a matter of weeks away:

"May God make this place a terror to evil-doers." Thorne knew there was no God-given reason for Alison Kelly to be terrified.

Going home time. Sheltering beneath a concrete overhang in the car park of Becke House, Thorne breathed in the smoke from Holland's cigarette and watched the rain make a mess of the car he'd cleaned only that morning.

"Why don't you come round tomorrow?" Thorne asked. "Watch the game with me and Phil."

Despite Thorne's best efforts, Holland's enthusiasm for football was still no more than lukewarm. "I can't get excited about it," he said.

"Excited? It's the Cup Final." Thorne was conjuring a tirade of sarcastic abuse when his phone rang.

Something in Eileen's voice froze the smirk on Thorne's face. Chased the blood from it.

"Tom?"

"What's happened?"

Thorne started walking towards his car, his pace quickening with every second of silence that passed before Eileen spoke again.

"There was a fire."

"Jesus, again?" Thorne used a shoulder to press the phone to his ear, dug frantically in his pockets for the car keys. "Is he all right?" From behind him, Thorne could hear Holland shouting something. Thorne raised a hand without turning. "Eileen? Is he all right?"