The Burning Girl

TWENTY-ONE

3 November 1986

If another person leers at me and winks or says something moronic like 'you'll soon be legal', I might have to do something drastic. It's like they're really saying 'as soon as you're sixteen, you can have sex, you know, which is absolutely normal'. I feel like grabbing them by the wrists and saying, "Thanks a million, I hadn't realised that. All I need now is to find someone who's desperate enough and a big fucking bag to go over my head!

Why do people presume I'm interested?

Why do people always presume?

I've been frantic for days, wondering how to tell M amp; D that I'd rather die than go to this party they've been so busy planning for tomorrow. First birthday since the recovery, since the final op. It's like it's such a big deal and I know they just want me to have a good time and do normal things and I can't make them understand.

I don't want a party. I don't want the attention. The falseness of all that.

When I get angry they just fucking smile at me. They indulge me all the time and it makes me want to scream and smash something. While AH and the others would be getting grounded or whatever, I get treated with kid gloves.

Like all of me's scarred. Like none of me can be touched. I want to be shouted at and punished. I want to tell them to stick their party up their arses just to see them lose their tempers for once and tell me that the whole thing's off. Whenever I do start being a bitch, they just stare at each other and they have this look that kills me, as if they're thinking that this behaviour's acceptable and should be forgiven. You know, black clothes and black moods, like it's all perfectly normal for your average, horribly disfigured teenage girl. When I try to tell them how I feel about this birthday, I know they think it's just some trauma I'm having, some understandable reaction after everything I've been through, and that I don't really mean it. I do really mean it.

This party, just the thought of it, makes me sweat and makes me ache. Nobody has a clue. Even AH doesn't seem to get what I'm talking about. She keeps telling me that it'll be a laugh, that I'm just being a stroppy cow, and asking me if there's going to be any tasty men there.

I know M amp; D have probably spent a fortune on hiring the hall and the disco and everything, and I love them to death for doing it. If I thought for a second that I could get through it, I wouldn't be making a fuss. Watching my mates dance and drink and get off with people sounds great, but I know bloody well what would happen. I know that, eventually, someone would want to say something. I've imagined it for weeks now, ever since they told me. Ever since they announced that they wanted to throw a party and looked a bit upset when I told them to throw it as far away from me as possible. Sometimes I imagine it's Dad and other times it's one of my friends, usually AH. The music stops and there's this howl from the speakers as they grab the DJ's microphone. They start to make this speech. They say something about bravery and make some crap jokes and people pretend to find them funny. Then there's that awkward few seconds of silence that you get after a speech. Then they all start to clap and everyone stares.

Everyone. Stares.

And the pale half of my face, the smooth half, reddens until the blush becomes the colour of the scar. Both halves matching as I burn all over again.

Singing 'Happy Birthday', and Mum and Dad are hugging each other and a few of my mates are crying, and they're all watching me standing in a circle of light in the centre of the room, with looks on their faces like I'm six years old.

Like I'm special.

Thorne closed the diary, lay back and pressed it to his chest. He opened it again, took out the photograph he'd been using as a bookmark. Pictured her slipping away into the darkness on a bleak November night.

The music, a Wham track, fading behind her as she walks away from the hall, from the party, moving towards the lights of the town centre. Unmissed still. Her friends dancing, shouting to one another above the music while she climbs.

The smell of exhaust fumes and the sound of her shoes echoing off the grey concrete stairwells.

A voice of concern, the first few worried looks from her friends as, half a mile from them, she steps out into the cold. Into fresh air. The desperate rush of the black towards her. The night kissing both sides of her face as she tumbles through it…

Thorne jumped slightly when the phone rang, the sudden movement sending Elvis careering from the end of the bed. Thorne looked at the clock: 4.35. Brigstocke wasted no time on pleasantries. "We're getting reports of an incident at an address in Finchley." Thorne was already out of bed. "Ryan's place?" he said.

"Right. Uniform are on the scene, but there's some confusion. At least one person injured, by all accounts, but beyond that we don't know much."

"Zarif sent the X-Man after Ryan, you think?"

"You know as much as I do, mate."

Thorne was moving quickly around the bedroom, snatching up socks and underpants, grabbing at a shirt. "Are you on your way up there?"

"Tughan's got it," Brigstocke said, "but you live a lot nearer than he does, so I reckon you'll probably beat him to it."

"Cheers, Russell. I'll call you when I get there." Thorne moved into the living room to find that Hendricks was already sitting up in bed. Thorne told him what was happening.

"Want me to come along?" Hendricks asked. Thorne had gone into the kitchen. He came out shaking his head, gulping down a glass of water.

"You sure? I can be dressed in one minute." Thorne picked up his jacket, felt in the pockets for his keys. "No point. We don't know exactly what's happened yet," he said. "But I wouldn't bother going back to sleep, if I was you." The streets were all but deserted as Thorne drove up towards the Archway roundabout and turned north. He knew he might be over the limit to drive, but he felt clear-headed and focused. He was seeing the tail-lights early, anticipating the few cars that were coming at him from side-streets. Thinking a long way ahead. He chose the route through Highgate, avoiding the road that ran parallel, that would have taken him under Suicide Bridge. The iron footbridge that had long since replaced John Nash's viaduct the original "Archway' was the preferred jumping-off point for many of the city's depressed. Thorne did his best to avoid it when he could, unable to drive beneath it without unconsciously bracing himself for the impact of a body on the roof of the car.

Tonight, he was in a hurry, but with the pages of a dog-eared diary still dancing in front of his eyes, he would have done almost anything to avoid the bridge.

His mobile rang again as the car flashed across a red light and on to the North Circular. Thorne checked the display, saw "Holland Mob' flashing.

"I know," he said. "I'm on my way to Ryan's place now." Holland laughed. "I'll see you there." If the Zarifs had hit Ryan, there was no way of knowing how things would pan out. Thorne guessed that Stephen would take up the reins, and he didn't seem the sort to forgive and forget. Then again, from what Thorne had seen, there might be nothing to Billy's son and heir except a temper. He might go to pieces, leaving Ryan Properties to implode and the Zarifs with new possibilities for expansion. The whole messy business might have started out as a reaction to Ryan's firm moving into their territory, but Thorne couldn't believe that Memet and his brothers would have gone to all the trouble they had without wanting something substantial out of it. Whichever way things went, there were likely to be big changes ahead. Messy changes. Thorne reached the Finchley conservation area within fifteen minutes. He swung the BMW hard around the green and recalled his encounter there with Billy Ryan a fortnight before. He didn't know what he was going to find when he reached Ryan's house, but something told him that somebody else was going to be walking the dog for a while. It was a three-storey detached house at one corner of the green. There were two squad cars parked outside, but no sign of an ambulance. Thorne showed his warrant card to the PC at the door and stepped inside. He was looking at the trail of blood that snaked along the hall carpet when a second uniformed officer appeared in front of him.

"I'm DI Thorne. Where's the ambulance?"

"It came and went away empty, sir. The victim was already dead when they arrived. Dead when they were called, if you ask me." Thorne wondered if Hendricks had got himself dressed yet. "Where?" The officer pointed to a doorway down the hall.

Thorne moved towards it, wishing he'd taken some gloves from his boot.

"Any ID?"

"Yes, sir. According to Mrs. Ryan, the dead man is her husband, William John Ryan."

Thorne stepped carefully around the bloodstains that grew bigger as he neared the doorway. The door was ajar. He nudged it all the way open with his shoe.

Ryan was on the kitchen floor, curled close into a corner, one hairy forearm streaked with red and propped up oddly against a cupboard. His white shirt was sopping dark patches soaking through the silk at the shoulder and beneath the arm. The good-sized gash in his neck still wept a little blood, the lines of grout running red between the terra cotta floor-tiles.

You didn't need a medical degree.

Thorne was aware that the uniform had joined him at the door. He glanced at him, then looked back to Billy Ryan. "So, what's the story?" he asked.

"The story's a bloody odd one. She just walked in and stuck a knife in him, by all accounts. Over and over again."

Thorne swung around, stunned. "His wife killed him?"

"No, sir. Not his wife." The uniform turned, nodded towards the doorway from which he'd first appeared. "The other woman." Thorne pushed past him, moved down the corridor without a word. He could feel the breath rushing from his lungs, could hear a noise that grew louder in his head, like wasps trapped beneath a cup. He knew what he was going to see.

The two officers sitting on the sofa stood up, their faces grim-set, when Thorne entered the living room. The woman, handcuffed to one of them at the wrist, had little choice but to rise with him. A WPC on the other side of her stared at Thorne, waiting, her hand clasped tight around Alison Kelly's elbow.

Thorne opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. There was nothing he could think of to say. Alison looked at him for a second or two. He was sure she gave him a small nod before she lowered her head.

APRIL

IMMORTAL SKIN