The Burning Girl

TWELVE

Thorne pulled up outside the house and sat for five minutes. It felt like the longest pause for breath he'd taken in a while. The time had passed in a flurry of activity, mindless and otherwise: seven days between the attempt to kill one young girl, and this, a visit to the father of another who had died almost twenty years earlier. Seven days during which the powers-that-be had quickly changed their minds about Gordon Rooker's offer.

Thorne waited until the engine had ticked down to silence and it had begun to get cold in the car before he got out and walked towards the house. It was in the centre of a simple Victorian terrace on the south side of Wandsworth Common, not far from the prison. Thorne rang the bell and took a couple of steps back down the path. There were lights on in most of the houses: people settling down to eat, or getting ready for a Friday night out. The place would probably fetch around half a million. It was certainly worth much more now than it had been fifteen years ago, when the Clarkes had moved back here from Amersham. Back from where Jessica had gone to school.

The man who answered the door nodded knowingly while Thorne was still reaching into a pocket for his warrant card. "Don't bother," he said, stepping away from the door. His voice was thin, and a little nasal.

"What else would you be?"

Ian Clarke had been on the phone within an hour of that first news report. He'd sounded angry and confused. He'd insisted on being told the details, had demanded to know exactly what was being done. Thorne sensed that he'd calmed down a little during the week that had followed.

"Thanks for coming. There might be some tea on the way, with a bit of luck."

"That'd be great."

"We've got some Earl Grey, I think."

"Monkey tea's fine."

The tea delivered, Mrs. Clarke announced that she had work to do. She smiled nervously as she stepped out of the room. She was wearing what, to Thorne, seemed like the look people gave to seriously ill patients before closing doors behind them in hospitals.

"Emma runs her own catering business," Clarke said. He pointed towards the ceiling. "She's got a small office at the top of the house."

"Right. What about your daughter?"

There was the shortest of awkward pauses before Clarke responded.

"Isobel?"

Thorne nodded. The second daughter.

"Oh, she's around somewhere."

Clarke had split from his first wife in 1989, three years after Jessica's death and almost immediately after they'd moved back to London from Buckinghamshire.

Thorne had seen it plenty of times with bereaved parents. It was often impossible to deal with the guilt and the anger and the blame. Impossible to look into the eyes of a husband or wife and not see the face of a lost child.

"No more news, then?" Clarke asked. He ran a hand across his skull. He'd lost a fair amount of hair and cut the remaining grey brutally short. It emphasised the chiseled features and lively, blue eyes that belied his age. Thorne knew that he had to be in his early fifties at least, but he looked maybe ten years younger.

Thorne shook his head. "Only the same stuff rehashed to sell a few more papers. None of it's coming from us, I'm afraid."

"Witnesses? Descriptions? It was a busy street, for God's sake."

"Nothing's changed since I last spoke to you on the phone. I'm sorry."

"I know I don't really have a right to be told anything at all. I'm grateful."

Thorne waved away the thanks and the implicit apology. For a few seconds they drank their tea and stared into the flame-effect gas fire. On the mantelpiece, Thorne could see postcards, cigarettes, a party invitation in a child's handwriting. The large wooden mirror above reflected a water colour on the wall behind him. Clarke caught Thorne studying it. "That was Jessica's mother's," he said. "One of the few things I got to keep." Clarke was sitting on a lived-in leather armchair. Thorne was adjacent, on the matching sofa. They were both leaning forwards, mugs of tea on their knees.

"It's like the old joke, then?" Clarke said, suddenly changing tack.

"About the police having their toilets stolen." Thorne smiled. "Right."

Though Thorne obviously understood, Clarke trotted out the tawdry punch line anyway: "You've got nothing to go on."

"We need a bit of luck," Thorne said. "We always need a bit of luck."

Clarke put down his mug and stood up. "And if he tries to do it to another girl, would that count as a bit of luck?" He smiled and walked past Thorne to draw the curtains.

Thorne was struck again by how good Clarke looked for his age, though the fleecy blue tracksuit top may have been helping to create the illusion. He was grateful for finding something with which to break the slightly awkward silence. "You look pretty fit," he said. He patted his belly. "I could do with shifting this." Clarke walked round the sofa, dropped back into his armchair. "I manage a leisure centre," he explained.

Thorne nodded, thinking that actually, it explained nothing. Most hairdressers had terrible hair, and he'd known plenty of dishonest coppers. "Listen, we're making an assumption," he said. "We're assuming that this recent incident is connected, in some way, to the attack on your daughter."

Clarke pulled at his lip with a finger and thumb. "Obviously. It's the same kind of attack. Whoever this lunatic is, he must be aware of what happened to Jess. He must have read about it… yes?"

"Yes. Or there could be other connections."

"Could there?"

"I said we're making an assumption."

"Other connections, right." Quickly: "Such as?" Clarke had been correct when he'd said that he had no right to be told anything, but Thorne knew bloody well that there was no other reason for him to be sitting in the man's living room. He'd come to tell him.

"It's possible that the man found guilty of attempting to murder your daughter in 1984 was not in fact the man responsible." Clarke gave a short bark of a laugh." What? Because some psycho's gone out and bought himself a can of lighter fluid?"

"No."

"That's bloody ridiculous."

"Hang on, Mr. Clarke."

"So, if a prostitute gets cut up in Leeds tomorrow night that means Peter Sutcliffe's innocent, does it?"

"We had good reason to believe that Gordon Rooker was innocent before the attack last week."

The skin tightened across Clarke's jaw at the mention of Rooker's name.

"I presume that "good reason" is some bloody police euphemism, yes?

Like when doctors say "as well as can be expected" when somebody's on their deathbed. Yes? Am I right? Because, don't forget, we're talking about the man who confessed to setting my daughter on fire."

"Yes, I know."

"The man who confessed."

"He's withdrawn that confession."

"Well, he's a bit fucking late." Clarke slapped both palms hard against his legs, and grinned as if he'd been half joking, but there'd been no mistaking the venom in his voice. He reached behind the armchair. "Hang on," he said. He found a switch, and flicked on an up lighter "Best to lift the gloom a bit." Thorne looked up at the soft circle of light on the ceiling. "You're right. Of course you are. It's very fucking late."

"So, you think the man who attacked the girl last week is the man who really attacked Jess?"

"We've got to consider the possibility."

"Where's he been for the last twenty years, then?" It was, of course, the obvious question and Thorne had only obvious answers. "Living abroad, maybe. In prison for something else."

"And he's doing this now, because?"

"Because he's worried that Rooker's about to come out. He's trying to make us look stupid, tell us we got it wrong. Or he's trying to claim credit that should rightfully be his. I don't honestly know, Mr. Clarke."

"The toilet joke again."

"Pretty much, yeah."

For want of anything else to do, Thorne brought the mug to his lips and tipped it back, though he knew full well that the tea was finished.

"Listen, we don't know who this man is, or if he is the man who attempted to murder your daughter, and neither, so he says, does Gordon Rooker."

"So, you don't believe everything he says?"

"What he does say is that he knows who is responsible for what happened to Jessica. He knows who paid the money, and he's going to tell us."

"It was some gangster." Clarke said it as if it were in inverted commas. "I was told, unofficially, that no one could be one hundred per cent sure which one, but that he was probably killed shortly after what he did to Jess. Right?"

Thorne saw Clarke's expression start to darken when he didn't answer him instantly. He knew that the water was suddenly getting deep and that he shouldn't wade in any further. "I'm sorry, but I can't really go into."

Clarke held up his hands. He understood.

"I just wanted you to be clear about something," Thorne continued. "If Rooker comes out of prison, it's only so that the man who was behind what happened to your daughter can go in!

Clarke pondered this for a minute. He turned his chair towards the fire, held his hands towards it. Thorne thought that it had suddenly become a lot colder. He also thought: How can he stand to look into a fire? What does he see when he stares into the flames?

"You should have a picture of Jess," Clarke said, suddenly. The smallest of shivers crept across the nape of Thorne's neck. He felt as if the man opposite him had somehow known what he was thinking. He watched as Clarke got up and walked across to a pine chest in the corner of the room. Photos in assorted metal frames were scattered across the top.

"Right."

"A reminder."

Clarke picked up a small frame, began removing the clips that held the picture in place. "This is a good one." He removed the glass and took out the photograph. He waved it at him.

Thorne stood and moved across the room to take the picture from Clarke's outstretched hand. Clarke handed it over and stepped towards the door. "That's the "before". You need the "after" as well. I don't keep any out down here because they upset Isobel. That's the only reason."

He left the room. Thorne heard him running up the stairs, heard a door open and close.

You should have a picture of Jess.

Thorne thought about how Clarke had said it. As though it were a simple piece of good advice that would aid his well-being. You should check your cholesterol. You should keep up your pension payments. You should have a photo of my dead daughter.

Thorne knew that Clarke was well aware that this visit was not procedural. This was not part of any inquiry, and nor was the offer of the photograph. This was something Ian Clarke wanted Thorne to have. Thought he should have.

When he heard a door close upstairs, Thorne stepped out into the hallway and waited near the front door. Now seemed as good a time as any to be making a move.

Clarke jogged quickly down the stairs and pressed a small black book into Thorne's hands. "I thought you might want to look at her diary. It doesn't matter if you don't. Let me have it back either way when you've finished with it."

"Right, of course."

Clarke handed over the photo with a small nod. Thorne took it with barely a glance, afraid of staring. Of being seen to stare. When he looked back at Clarke, it was clear from the man's expression that this was a reaction he'd seen a hundred times before.

"There were gangsters at her funeral," he said. "Murderers and drug barons and men who get paid to hurt people. They came to show their respects after she'd killed herself." He spoke calmly, though the anger was clear enough, like something moving behind a muslin curtain.

"It was a gorgeous day when we buried her, a really stunning day. We all said how that was Jess's doing, because she loved the good weather so much, and then that lot turned up in dark suits and sunglasses like something out of Reservoir Dogs and ruined everything. Kevin Kelly and his tarty wife, and that other one who'd taken over. Ryan. A bunch of them. All standing there, sweating, with huge wreaths. One of them spelled out her name, for pity's sake. Hovering with tasteless fucking wreaths for my little girl, who'd died because her friend happened to be a gangster's daughter."

Thorne was finding it hard to look at him. Rubbing his thumbs across the shiny surface of the photo in his hands. Nodding when it felt as though he should.

"We worked our arses off to send Jess to that school, to raise the money for the fees. What did Kelly have to do? How many people did he have to kill or rob to send that little… to send his little girl to that school?"

Thorne saw a figure appear on the landing at the top of the stairs: a teenage girl with long, ash-blond hair.

Clarke turned when he saw Thorne raise his eyes. "Isobel." Thorne was unsure whether Clarke was talking to the girl or introducing her. He couldn't help but wonder how much she looked like her half-sister. He wanted to look at the photo to check, but the picture on top was of Jessica after her attack, and Thorne felt unable to move it, to slide the photo of her unscarred to the front…

"Hello," he said.

The girl tugged at a corner of her sweater, muttered a sullen greeting in return. Clarke gave Thorne a weary, parental shrug. "She's thirteen," he said by way of explanation. Then his face changed.

"She'll be fourteen in a couple of weeks." He reached past Thorne to open the front door.

Thorne toyed with some cod response about kids growing up too fast, but before he had a chance to make it, Clarke stepped in close and lowered his voice. "This man, whoever he is, attempted to murder Jess. You said that. You said it a couple of times, actually."

"Sorry, I don't."

"He didn't attempt to murder her, Mr. Thorne. He murdered her." Clarke looked Thorne in the eyes as he spoke.

Thorne instinctively looked away, but then, ashamed, forced himself to meet Clarke's eyes again.

"It took a couple of years for her to die, but he murdered her." There was little to say except 'goodbye', so they both said it, and let the front door close between them.

Thorne glanced back. Through the frosted squares of red, blue and green glass in the front door, he could make out the shape of Ian Clarke climbing slowly up the stairs towards his daughter. The crowd at the bus stop is just that at first: a crowd; massed, indistinguishable, and not just because of the quality of the film. A tight knot of people bunched on the pavement, bundled up against the cold weather or, in the case of the girls, huddled into a gang, a million things to talk about while they wait for the bus. There is no sound, but it isn't hard to imagine the screams, the shouts of anger and incomprehension.

The knot unravels in a moment, people wheeling or jumping away, revealing the man for the first time. An old woman points at him, pulls at the sleeve of the woman with the push chair standing next to her. Girls cling to one another, to blazers and bags, as the man, his face hidden inside the hood of a dark anorak, turns and jogs casually away up the street…

Hendricks appeared from the kitchen. "The food'll be ready in a couple of minutes," he said.

Thorne got off the sofa and ejected the tape from the VCR. While he was up, he grabbed the bottle of wine from the mantelpiece and refilled Carol Chamberlain's glass.

"Nothing from any other angles?" she said. Thorne shook his head as he swallowed from his own glass. "These are the best pictures we could get." CCTV footage seemed to play an increasingly large part in most investigations these days. Often, the cameras were no more than a deterrent, and a pretty unsuccessful one at that. The crack dealers on Coldharbour Lane and the heroin mules around Manor House knew exactly where they were and treated them with the same disdain they might accord a traffic warden. Most of the time, they would happily go about their business in full view of the camera, knowing just when to turn a head or angle a shoulder to avoid the incriminating shot, then wink at the lens when the deal was done. Once in a while, though, Thorne would find himself staring at more significant footage: grainy, black-and-white pictures of armed robbers, of killers, or, more disturbingly, of those about to become their victims.

In this case, a potential victim who got lucky.

"It doesn't make sense," Chamberlain said. "How did he ever think he'd get away with it? If, God forbid, he hadn't been rumbled. If that girl hadn't seen what he was doing with the lighter fluid and he'd managed to set her alight."

"Even if he had, he might still have got away," Thorne said. "People would have been far more concerned with helping the girl. You know as well as I do that by and large people are afraid to do anything. They don't want to be the have-a-go hero who gets shot, or gets a knife stuck in him."

Chamberlain stared into her glass. "Why a bus stop, though? Why the different MO?"

"There's a lot more security around schools now," Hendricks said.

"He'd've been lucky to find a school like Jessica Clarke's, where he could just march up to the playground."

She shook her head. "The middle of Swiss Cottage at four o'clock in the afternoon? It's stupid. The place was heaving." Hendricks leaned his head back into the kitchen to check on something for a second. "He obviously wanted to make a splash."

"Do you think it's the same bloke?" Thorne stared hard at Chamberlain.

"Yes, I'm fairly certain. It looked like the same anorak." Thorne shook his head. "No, I don't mean that. Do you think it's the same man who set fire to Jessica Clarke twenty years ago?" There was no quick answer. "He didn't look old," she said. "I know you couldn't see his face. It was more the way he held himself, I suppose."

"You're thinking about Rooker, about somebody like he is," Thorne said.

"I know."

"Suppose this man was in his early twenties back then. He'd only be in his early forties now."

"It was seeing him run away. It seemed wrong, somehow, for the man I was imagining."

"He jogged away," Thorne said. "Even if he was in his fifties, or sixties even, that's not out of the question, is it?" Hendricks carried his glass across the room and topped it up. "Just jogging away, casually, like he did, makes a lot of sense. It's the right thing to do if you don't want to draw attention to yourself, if you don't want to look like you're legging it away from something." From the kitchen, the timer on Thorne's cooker suddenly buzzed. Hendricks put down his wineglass and went to do whatever was necessary.

"If it is him," Chamberlain said, 'is Billy Ryan behind what he's doing now?"

"God knows, but, if he is, I haven't got the first idea why." Hendricks swore loudly. Either dinner was ruined or he'd burned himself.

"You all right in there, Delia?" Thorne shouted. There was another bout of slightly more subdued swearing. Chamberlain laughed. "It smells good, whatever it is." She drained her glass, glancing at her watch in the process.

"Listen, why don't you stay the night?" Thorne asked. "We can sort out a bed."

"No, I'm going to get the last train. If you can give me a taxi number."

"It's no trouble, really. I'm sure Jack can make his own breakfast." She shook her head and took a step towards the kitchen. Thorne put a hand on her shoulder. "When we get Ryan, he's going to tell us who took his money twenty years ago and burned Jessica. He's going to give me a name." He pointed towards the VCR. "If it was this bloke, I'll get him. If it wasn't this bloke, and whoever it was is still alive, I'll get him. Then, I'll get this bloke as well. That's a promise,

Carol."

When Chamberlain looked at him, her expression a mixture of gratitude and amusement, Thorne realised that his hand had moved from her shoulder. In his effort to reassure her, he'd been gently rubbing her back in small circles. She raised her eyebrows comically. "So, this offer to stay the night," she said. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

Ian Clarke sat on the sofa, his arm around his wife. He stared across the room in the direction of the television.

He cried once a year on his first daughter's birthday. The day that was also the anniversary of her death. For the rest of the time, everything was kept inside, squashed and pressed inside, his ribs, like the bars of a cage, holding in the thoughts and feelings and dark desires.

He sat still, going over the details of Thorne's visit, the things that were said, feeling as if his ribs might crack and splinter at any moment.

His wife laughed softly at something on the television and nestled her head into his chest. His hand moved automatically to her hair. He stared at a small square of white wall a foot or so above the screen. From time to time, he could hear a gentle thud on the ceiling as his second daughter moved around upstairs.

Thorne lay awake in bed, wondering if it was simply indigestion he was suffering from, or something a little harder to get rid of. Enjoyable as the evening had been, he'd been happy to see Carol call for a cab. And he'd been relieved when, later, Hendricks had decided to leave the clearing up until the morning and get an early night. The uncertainty that surrounded every aspect of the Billy Ryan/ Jessica Clarke case had squatted next to him all evening, like an unwanted dinner guest. Now he felt it pressing him down into the mattress as he stared up at the Ikea light fitting he hated so much. Not knowing was the worst thing of all.

In the course of some of the cases he'd investigated over the years, Thorne had learned things, seen things, understood things that, given the choice, he'd have preferred to avoid. Still, in spite of all the horrible truths he'd been forced to confront, he preferred knowledge to ignorance, though the dreadful weight of each was very different. Beneath the duvet, his hand drifted down to his groin. He fiddled around half-heartedly for a few minutes, then gave up, unable to concentrate.

He began to think about the photos of Jessica Clarke, out in the hallway inside his leather jacket. He pictured the image of her blasted and puckered face pressing against the silk lining of the pocket. He thought about the diary in his bag, waiting for him. It was reading he'd postpone until another night.

Reaching across for his Walkman, he pulled on the headphones and pressed play: The Mountain, Steve Earle's 1999 collaboration with the Del McCoury Band. He rubbed at the tightness in his chest, deciding that it almost certainly was indigestion.

It was impossible to stay down for too long, listening to bluegrass.