Lifeless

TWENTY

Over the years, Thorne had felt more than his fair share of rage and regret, of lust and loathing, but he’d never been overburdened with guilt. He guessed it was because he spent his working life trying to catch those who should have been eaten up with enough of it for everyone. Many who had done the very worst things felt nothing, of course, but most people, even those without a shred of religious conviction, at least accepted that they should. For Thorne, it used to be that clear-cut.

It wasn’t that he never felt guilt at all; it was just that it was usually of the vaguely delicious variety that followed over indulgence of one sort or another. Its more corrosive strain was one that never burned within him for very long. It could be neutralized by making the call he’d forgotten to make; by stepping forward; by having that awkward conversation he’d been putting off. The pain was short-lived and easily dealt with.

These days, though, Thorne could feel little else… He’d spent most of the afternoon mooching around the Strand; begging for a couple of hours, chatting to a pair of old boys who drank near the Adelphi, and hanging around at a lunchtime soup run. Now, as the day turned from gray to charcoal, he moved quietly among the few tourists still left in the courtyard at Somerset House. This eighteenth-century riverside palace had, at one time or another, been home to the Inland Revenue, the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army. Now it was just another of the city’s attractions: a place for visitors to take snapshots of history, or for families to gather in winter, when the water fountains were replaced with a skating rink. Thorne remembered that they’d filmed an ice-skating sequence here for that stupid film with Hugh Grant as the prime minister. Yeah, right. Another one of those picturepostcard movies where London looked dreamy in beat-bobby blue and Routemaster red. Where the snow never turned to slush, and the ethnic communi ties were mysteriously absent. Where, if there was no one sleeping rough, it wasn’t because they’d been swept off the streets or were being kicked to death.

When Holland had rung the night before, Thorne had put on a good enough display of frustration and annoyance: at the way things had gone down in Somerset; at the polite inquiries about how they’d panned out for him at Charing Cross nick. In reality, he’d been feeling guilty as hell. He was screwing things up, and not just for himself.

He’d heard it in Holland’s concern every bit as much as it had been there, loud and clear, in Brigstocke’s curses. In that final comment from the doorway of the interview room when he’d talked about Thorne looking the part.

Thorne accepted that he wasn’t always completely honest with himself. But why had he ever thought that his going undercover would be a good idea? Had he only convinced himself as a reaction to those who made it clear what a terrible idea they thought it was?

Maybe everything that had happened in the last year-what he’d done and what had been done to him in return-had skewed his judgment permanently, made it no more reliable than if he were the one now suffering from dementia…

When he was eleven or twelve, his father had taken him skating a couple of times. Thorne had hated it. The Silver Blades at Finsbury Park was nobody’s idea of a romantic location, with the frequent stabbings as much a feature of the place as the ice itself. Thorne remembered struggling around the outside of the rink, cultivating blisters, and getting knocked on his arse by older boys with earrings and feather cuts. He remembered getting to his knees, pulling in his hands quickly as the blades flashed by, then looking across to see his dad rushing onto the rink. He’d been embarrassed because his father had broken the rules by coming onto the ice in his shoes. He remembered the look on his father’s face, the blush that had spread across his own, as Jim Thorne had skidded toward the boy who’d knocked him down and shoulder-charged him into the barrier. He remembered his dad pulling him off his knees, and brushing away the slivers of ice. Taking him over to hand in his skates. Across to where they could buy hot dogs and limeade…

Thorne knew very well that guilt caused such memories to bubble up and burst, the air inside permanently fouled. Guilt poisoned a well that it should have been sweet to drink from.

“I’m fine honestly, Victor. I really didn’t ring to talk about him.”

“ ’Course you didn’t…”

It took Thorne a few seconds to work out that the vibration in his pocket was his phone ringing. He moved to a corner and stole a glance at the handset; saw that the missed call was from Phil Hendricks. More concern from a friend, and more false assurances. Another small measure of poison.

Thorne needed to find somewhere secluded from where he could return the call. He walked back out onto the Strand and turned east toward Fleet Street. The City would be emptying rapidly now, as the rush hour took its grip on the streets. A hundred yards along, he stopped at a stall selling the late edition of the Standard. Stunned, he read what was on the hoarding, then stepped closer to look down at a front page.

After no more than a few seconds, the man behind the stack of papers leaned across. “Buy one or piss off…”

Thorne just stared at the headline.

He woke up, cold and clammy, and certain that he’d been crying in his sleep.

The copy of the Standard that Thorne had shelled out for was flapping, two steps down from his doorway, the headline partially revealed as the page caught the wind: rough sleeper killings: met goes undercover.

A few steps farther down, Spike was sitting, much as he’d been two nights previously, just before the trouble had started. He looked high and happy, and he stared at Thorne for a full ten seconds before seeming to notice that he was awake. He pointed toward Thorne’s sleeping bag. “New…”

“Yeah. Not new new, but…”

“S’nice, like. Brown…”

By the time Thorne had got back to his pitch after being released from Charing Cross, his sleeping bag-which had been left in the street during the melee-was nowhere to be found. He’d picked up this newer secondhand one from the Salvation Army center on Oxford Street.

Spike stretched out an arm for the newspaper and dragged it toward him. Thorne watched, wondering what his response should be if Spike were to say anything about the headline. As it was, he turned straight to the back and began to flick very slowly through the sports pages.

“You follow a team?” Spike said eventually. “Spurs, because I’m stupid. What about you?” “Southampton. Not properly for a few years, like…”

“Is that where you’re from?”

Spike lowered the Standard, then folded it. “Not far away. Just some shitty little seaside town.” He ran his hand slowly back and forth along the crease he’d made in the paper. Stared at a spot approximate to where Thorne was sitting. “Couldn’t wait to get the hell out of it, tell you the truth. And they couldn’t wait to get rid of me…”

It sounded like Spike had got himself into trouble before he’d come to London. It was the same story to one degree or another in most provincial towns. Kids reached a certain age, ran out of things to do, and looked around for something to combat the boredom. It was usually drink, drugs, crime, or a combination of all three. Some got out and got lucky. Others were drawn to those places where their blighted lives might flourish among like-minded souls. Many were destined to fare no better in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh than they had at home, but they would not be short of company; equally doomed perhaps, but not quite as freakish.

“They let you out on police bail, right?” Spike asked.

“Right…”

“But what if you needed to be bailed out? If you needed someone to come and get you, to pay to get you out. Would you have anybody?”

Thorne said nothing. Thinking it would probably be Hendricks; Holland at a push. But beyond them…

“It’d be my sister, I think,” Spike said. “It’d have to be. She bailed me out a year or so back, when I got caught with my stuff as well as Caroline’s and this other bloke’s, and they done me for dealing. So my sister stumped up the bail and gave me some extra cash on top of that.” His head dropped, and when he raised it again a smile was smeared across his face. His eyeballs were starting to roll upward, creamy under the streetlight and cracked with red. “She wanted to set me up for a bit, you know? To tide me over. I told her I was going to try and get myself clean, but I went straight out and used the money she gave me to score. Surprise, surprise, right? I think deep down she knew I would, ’cause she knows well enough what I’m like. She knows me better than anyone.” He stared at Thorne for half a minute, blinking slowly. “She knows, right?”

Thorne nodded. From a club somewhere nearby came the deep thump of a bass line. It was not 2 a.m. yet.

“I’d really have to be in the shit before I’d ask her for help again. Really deep in it. D’you know what I mean? Because I know bloody well I’d only let her down, and life’s hard enough without feeling guilty all the time, right? It’s not like she can’t afford it, mind you. She’s done brilliantly. She’s got a really posh job, got herself a flash car and a swanky flat in Docklands and all that. It’s just like it’s become dead important for me not to ask my sister for anything. I’m fucked, right? I know I am. We’re all completely fucked. But whatever happens, I’m not going to disappoint her again…”

Spike unfolded the paper and turned it over. He stared down at the front page, mouthing the first few words of the headline. Thorne was looking down at him from six feet away, but even if he’d been eyeball to eyeball, there would have been no way to tell if Spike was really taking in what was in front of his face.

If he was, something in the story made him suddenly laugh out loud. He cackled and hissed, chortled to himself for the next minute or more.

Thorne could only wish he found it that funny.