The Burning Girl

FOUR

The uniformed constable who'd been first on the scene was sitting at a small table in a back room, next to a teenage boy whom Thorne guessed was Muslum Izzigil's son. Thorne stared across at them from the doorway. He couldn't decide which of the two looked the younger, or the most upset.

Holland stood at Thorne's shoulder. "The boy ran out into the street when he found them. Constable Terry was having breakfast in the cafe opposite. He heard the boy screaming."

Thorne nodded and closed the door quietly. He turned and moved back into the shop, where screens had been hastily erected around the bodies. The scene of crime team moved with a practised efficiency, but it seemed to Thorne that the usual banter, the dark humour, the craze -was a little muted. Thorne had hunted serial killers; he had known the atmosphere at crime scenes to be charged with respect, even fear, at the presentation, the offering up, of the latest victim. This was not what they were looking at now. This was almost certainly a contract killing. Still, there was an odd feeling in the room. Perhaps it was the fact that there were two bodies. That they had been husband and wife.

"Where was the boy when it happened?"

"Upstairs," Holland said. "Getting ready for school. He didn't hear anything."

Thorne nodded. The killer had used a silencer. "This one's a little less showy than the X-Man," he said.

Muslum Izzigil was sitting against the wall between a display of children's videos and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Lara Croft. His head was cocked to one side, his eyes half-open and popping. A thin line of blood ran from the back of his head, along freshly shaved jowls, soaking pink into the collar of a white nylon shirt. The body of his wife lay, face downwards, across his legs. There was very little blood, and only the small, blackened hole behind her ear told the story of what had happened. Or at least, some of it… Which one had he killed first? Did he make the husband watch while his wife was executed? Did the wife die only because she had tried to save her husband?

Thorne looked up from the bodies. He noticed the small camera in the corner of the shop. "Too much to hope for, I suppose?"

"Far too much," Holland said. "The recorder's not exactly hard to find. It's over there underneath the counter. The shooter took the tape with him."

"One to show the grandchildren."

Holland knelt and pointed with a biro to the back of the dead woman's neck. "Twenty-two, d'you reckon?"

Thorne could see where the blood was gathering then. It encircled her neck like a delicate necklace, but it was pooling, sticky between her chin and the industrial grey carpet. "Looks like it," he said. He was already moving across the shop towards the back room. Towards what was going to be a difficult conversation.

Constable Terry got to his feet when Thorne came through the door. Thorne waved him back on to his chair. "What's the boy's name?" The boy answered the question himself: "Yusuf Izzigil."

Thorne put him at about seventeen. Probably taking A levels. He'd gelled his short, black hair into spikes and was making a decent enough job of growing a moustache. The hysteria which Holland had mentioned, which had first alerted the police, had given way to a stillness. He was quiet now, and seemingly composed, but the tears were still coming just as quickly, each one pushed firmly away with the heel of a hand the instant it brimmed and began. to fall.

He started to speak again, without being asked. "I was getting ready upstairs. My father always came down just after eight o'clock, to deal with the tapes that had been returned in the overnight box. My mother came down to help him get things set up once she'd put the breakfast things away." He spoke well, and slowly, with no trace of an accent. Thorne realised suddenly that the maroon sweater and grey trousers were a uniform, and guessed that the boy went to a private school.

"So you heard nothing?" Thorne asked. "No raised voices?" The boy shook his head. "I heard the bell go on the door when someone opened it, but that isn't unusual."

"It was a bit early, though, wasn't it?"

"We often have customers who come in on their way to work, to pick up a film that's been returned the night before."

"Anything else?"

"I was in the bathroom after that. There was water running. If not, I might have heard something." His hand went to his face, pressed and wiped. "They had silencers on their guns, didn't they?" It was an odd thing to say. Thorne wondered if perhaps the boy knew more than he was telling, but decided it was probably down to seeing far too many of the shitty British gangster movies his father kept on the shelves.

"What makes you think there was more than one of them, Yusuf?"

"A week ago two boys came in. About the same age as me, my father said. They tried to scare him."

"What did they do?"

"Pathetic stuff, threats. Dog mess in a video case. Throwing a litter bin through the window." He pointed towards the shop front where a thick black curtain now ran across the plate-glass window and front door, rigged up to hide the activity within from the eyes of passers-by. "There was a letter first. My father ignored it."

"Did he keep the letter?"

"My mother will have filed it somewhere. She never throws anything away."

The boy realised what he'd said, and blinked slowly. The hand that went to his face stayed there a little longer this time. Thorne remembered the sign he'd seen stuck to the front of the till: You are being recorded. "Did your father get it on tape? The incident with the two boys?"

"I should think so. He recorded everything, but it won't be there any more."

Thorne asked the question with a look.

"Because he used the same few tapes over and over again," Yusuf said.

"Changed them half a dozen times every day, and recorded over them. He was always trying to save money, but this business with the videotapes was really stupid, considering that we sold the bloody things. Always trying to save money."

The boy's head dropped. The tears that came were left to run their course, the hands that had been wiping them away now clutching the countertop.

"You're not a child, Yusuf," Thorne said. "You're far too clever to buy any of my bullshit, so I won't give you any, all right?" He glanced back towards the screens, towards what lay behind them. "This is not about an argument, or an affair, or an unpaid bill. I'm not going to tell you that I can catch whoever did this, because I don't know if I can. I do know I'm going to have a bloody good try, though."

Thorne waited, but the boy did not look up. He gave a small nod to Terry, who stood and put an arm on Yusuf's shoulder. The constable said something, a few murmured words of comfort, as Thorne closed the door behind him.

He arrived back in the shop in time to see the black curtain swept aside and DCI Nick Tughan stepping through it like a bad actor.

"Right. What have we got?" Tughan was a stick-thin Irishman with less than generous lips. His short, sandy hair was always clean, and the collars crisp beneath a variety of expensive suits. "Who's filling me in.?"

Thorne smiled and shrugged: Me, given half a chance, you tosser. He was happy to see Holland walking across to do the honours, clearly not relishing the task, but knowing that he'd earn himself a drink later. A pint sounded like a good idea, even at eleven o'clock in the morning. Including the Izzigils, there were a dozen people inside the small shop, which, combined with the heat coming off the SOC lights, had turned the place into a sauna very quickly. Keen to get some air, Thorne stepped towards the front door, just as another person pushed through the curtain. This one was dressed from head to foot in black himself.

"What happened to you last night?" Hendricks asked. Thorne sighed. He'd completely forgotten to call and tell Hendricks he'd be stopping over at his old man's. "I'll tell you later."

"Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, fine. just my dad."

"Is he OK?"

"He's a pain in the arse."

"I stayed up. You should have called."

"Oh, that's sweet." It was Tughan's voice. The DCI was standing over the bodies of Muslum and Hanya Izzigil, a mock-sweet smile on his face.

"No, really, it's very touching that he's worried about you." Thorne was still spitting blood ten minutes later when Holland joined him on the pavement outside the shop.

"If ever there was an incentive to solve a case."

"Right," Thorne said. "Get shot of the slippery bugger."

"Mind you, he had a point. It was touching." Thorne turned, ready to let off some steam, but the broad grin on Holland's face softened the scowl on his own. He let out a long, slow breath and leaned back against the shop window. "You look rough, Dave."

Thorne had seen DC Dave Holland do a lot of growing up in recent years, no more so than since his daughter had been born. The floppy blond hair had been cut shorter recently, which put a couple of years on him, and the lines around his eyes had added a few more. Thorne knew that very few coppers stayed fresh-faced for long. Those that did were lucky or lazy, and Holland was neither of those things. He'd saved Thorne's life the year before, and the circumstances the dark, depraved intimacies which the pair of them had witnessed and experienced had rarely been talked about since the resulting court case.

"I'm utterly knackered," Holland said. Thorne looked at the gingerish stubble dotted across the pale and slightly sunken cheeks. Maybe the change in him was due to responsibility as much as experience. A few years ago, and particularly during his girlfriend's pregnancy, Holland hadn't shown a great deal of either.

"Is it the baby?"

"Actually, it's Sophie," Holland said. "It's probably hormones or something, but she's at me three or four times a night demanding sex."

"What?"

"Of course it's the baby! Have you had a sense-of-humour bypass?"

"I didn't get a lot of sleep myself. I was staying at my dad's place."

"Sorry, I forgot. How's he doing?"

"I reckon he'll be the death of me before he manages to kill himself."

On the other side of the road, a small crowd had gathered to stare at the comings and goings at Izzigil's video shop. The cafe from which Constable Terry had run to see what all the screaming was about had now become a convenient vantage-point. The owner was cheerfully scurrying around, serving coffee and pastries to those who wanted to sit outside and gawp.

Holland took out a packet of ten Silk Cut. He scrounged a light from a woman walking past with a push chair.

"How long's that been going on?" Thorne asked, nodding towards the cigarette. He hadn't smoked in a long time, but would still happily have killed for one.

"Since the baby, I suppose. It was fags or heroin."

"Well, you're in the right place for that." North of Finsbury Park, Green Lanes straightened into a strut of what had become known as the Harringay Ladder. Looking at the bustle around its shops and businesses at that moment, it was easy to see the area for what it was: one of the busiest and certainly one of the most racially diverse areas of the city. Of course, that did not explain the presence of armed police on its streets. A fierce gun-battle in those same streets six months earlier had left three men dead, and shown the other side of the area only too clearly. Harringay was home to a number of gangs operating within the Turkish community. According to figures from the National Criminal Intelligence Service, they were in control of over three-quarters of the seventy tonnes of heroin that passed through London every year. They protected their investments fiercely.

"Does Tughan think it's about smack?"

Holland wasn't listening. "Sorry.?" Thorne pointed back to the shop. "The Izzigils. Does our gangland expert in there think this is a turf war?"

"Actually, he thinks it's the Ryans."

"Eh?"

"He seems to think that this is a message from Billy Ryan to who-ever's been knocking his boys off. A "declaration", he reckons."

"That's a bit of a leap, isn't it?" Thorne said. "What's he base that on?"

"No idea. He seems pretty convinced, though." Thorne closed his eyes as smoke from Holland's cigarette drifted across his face. "It makes sense on one level, I suppose."

"What?"

"The Ryans were always going to work out who was after them long before we did."

Thorne watched as two officers carrying body-bags moved towards the front door. Hendricks had obviously finished his preliminary examination. Thorne moved to follow the officers back inside, murmuring to Holland as he passed: "Listen, the fact that Hendricks is staying at my place. Are people making cracks about it?" Holland was enjoying a long drag. He laughed so much that he began to choke.

Thorne had spent the last three years based at the Peel Centre in Hendon, and his familiarity with it, with Becke House in particular, had bred a good deal of contempt. The building a dun-coloured, three-storey blot on an already drab landscape had once housed dormitories for recruits. The beds had given way to open-plan incident rooms and suites of poky offices, but there were still plenty of fresh faces to be spotted around the place, with the Metropolitan Police cadets now housed in another building within the same compound. It always struck Thorne as strange that the Serious Crime Group should be based where it was, hand in glove with a cadet-training centre. He remembered arriving back late one afternoon, a year or so earlier, and bumping into a uniformed cadet as he turned from locking his car. He'd spent the previous few hours trying to explain to an old woman why her son-in-law had taken an axe to her daughter and grandchildren. The look on Thorne's face that day had stopped the cadet dead in his tracks, hacking off his cheery greeting mid-sentence and sending the blood rushing from his smooth cheeks.

The meeting was taking place in the office that Russell Brigstocke was reluctantly sharing with Nick Tughan. The SO7 Projects Team was based in a collection of Portakabins at Barkingside, where Tughan and his team still spent a fair amount of time, but since the joint operation had begun, there'd been something of a shake-up on the third floor of Becke House. Holland and DC Andrew Stone now shared their office part time with two DCs from Serious and Organised Crime, leaving the third office to Thorne and DI Yvonne Kitson. The latter spent most of her time in the Incident Room, collating information alongside office manager DS Samir Karim and their opposite numbers from SO7. So, more often than not, Thorne had his office, such as it was, to himself.

"Right," said Tughan. "Game on. I think we've got ourselves a war."

Tughan's Irish accent could switch between syrupy and strident. Today, it went right through Thorne. He remembered the scrape of Gordon Rooker's chair across the floor of the visiting room at the Royal. Tughan leaned against the desk in a vain effort to make his superiority appear casual. He held up a piece of paper inside a transparent plastic jacket. "This was found among the dead man's paperwork. There are photocopies for each of you."

Brigstocke and Kitson already had their copies. Holland, Stone and Thorne moved forward and took theirs from the desk.

"This letter isn't dated," continued Tughan, 'but, according to the son, it was delivered by hand five or six weeks ago."

"Late Christmas present…" Stone said, looking for the laugh, a little too full of himself, as usual.

Tughan ignored him, pressed on. "It's nothing we haven't seen before. Subtler than some I've come across lots of stuff about the dangers facing new businesses. But basically it's a simple protection scheme. Only problem is they were moving in on someone who was already protected."

'"They"', Thorne said, 'being Billy Ryan."

"To the best of my knowledge, yes."

"The "best of your knowledge"?" Tughan smiled thinly and turned away from Thorne. "We're moving forward on the basis that this letter originated from the Ryan family, or from criminals closely associated with them." Thorne let it go, but it still bothered him. It wasn't like threatening letters were sent out on headed notepaper. How could Tughan be so sure that this one came from the Ryan family?

Thorne caught Brigstocke's eye, but the DCI did not allow him to hold it for very long. Brigstocke's attitude to the entire SO7 operation basically involved keeping his head down until they disappeared. Thorne had a lot of time for the man he was hard and principled, caught far too often between those above and below him but he still had an irritating predilection for hedging his bets. At the same time, of course, Thorne was well aware that his own refusal to do the same thing had often landed him in plenty of trouble.

Yvonne Kitson was less afraid than some to speak her mind. "It doesn't make a lot of sense," she said. "They send a threatening letter. They send the bully boys round to chuck a bin through the window. Then they have the owners killed."

Holland looked up from the letter. "Right, that's quite an escalation, sir."

"It's not complicated," Tughan said. His smile took him way over the line that separated informative from patronising. "This was a straightforward campaign of intimidation. It might well have got nasty eventually, but it wouldn't have gone as far as killing. Then the Ryans discovered that the video shop was protected by the same people responsible for the murder of Mickey Clayton and the others. The same people that are paying the X-Man."

"A bit coincidental, isn't it?" Holland asked.

Tughan had been waiting for this. "I don't think so."

"It was the letter," Thorne said. "That's what started everything."

"It was probably the letter." Tughan couldn't keep the irritation off his face at having his thunder stolen. "It doesn't really matter now how it started."

Thorne took Tughan's expression as his cue to get stuck in. "Whoever was protecting Izzigil's business took major offence at the Ryans trying to move in."

"Major offence?" Holland said. "That's putting it bloody mildly. They've had four of Billy Ryan's top men killed." Brigstocke agreed: "Whatever happened to breaking somebody's legs?"

"It's about a lot more than territory now," Thorne said. "It probably always was. We're presuming they're Turks, right? Whoever's been hitting the Ryans."

"We can't presume anything," Tughan said. "The fact that the video business was Turkish needn't be significant."

"It needn't be, no. But I still think it is."

"We've heard nothing from the NCIS."

"They're not infallible. We're probably talking about somebody relatively new here. Maybe an offshoot of an existing gang."

"Granted, it's a Turkish area, but other groups might still try their luck."

"They'd be idiots if they did."

"The Ryans did."

"Right," Thorne said. "And look what they got for their trouble." Tughan seemed to decide suddenly that a physical barrier between himself and Thorne might be a good idea. He moved behind the desk and slid into the chair. He looked at his computer, affecting an air of thoughtfulness, but, to Thorne, it seemed more like regrouping.

"We're assuming that on one side we've got the Ryans, right?" Thorne continued quickly before Tughan had a chance to pull him up: "If we assume that on the other side we've got an as yet unknown Turkish operation, it all starts to add up. If you're a ne wish gang, looking to establish yourself, you don't go up against the big Turkish gangs that have already got the area sewn up. Not if you want to be around in six months' time. You so much as start sniffing around one of those big heroin operations and they'll wipe you out, right?" If anybody disagreed, they were keeping quiet about it.

"What makes more sense, if you're looking to make a splash, is to go up against somebody else completely. Somebody unconnected with local business or local territory. When that letter dropped on to the doormat in that video shop, somebody saw an opportunity to expand in a different direction altogether; to send out a message to the gangs around them without getting anybody's back up. This lot, whoever the hell they are, probably see the Ryans as a soft target."

Tughan had been typing something. He raised his eyes from his computer screen and smiled. "Somebody should tell Billy Ryan that." There wasn't a trace of a smile from Yvonne Kitson. "And the Izzigils."

"So who are they?" Stone asked. "If we want to stop a war, we'll need to know who's up against who."

Tughan stabbed at a key, leaned back in his chair. "I think DI Thorne might well be right when he suggests that we're dealing with a Turkish or possibly Kurdish group here. I'm liaising with the NCIS, specifically the Heroin Intelligence Unit." Thorne shook his head. "I told you, I can't see that this is about heroin. This is about not shitting on your own doorstep."

"Is that a technical term?" Brigstocke asked. "I must have missed that seminar."

Thorne smiled. "I've seen a couple of Guy Ritchie films." Tughan raised his voice a little, bridling slightly, as always, at any exchange that rose above the funereal. "I'm confident that we will establish the identity of this gang quickly. We will find something connecting them to the video rental business, or we might get a lead from Turkish community leaders in the area."

"Only the ones with a death wish," Brigstocke said.

"One way or another, things are much clearer now than they were." Tughan brandished the letter whose implied threats had probably been the catalyst for at least six deaths. "We've made a real breakthrough today."

Thorne's mood blackened in an instant. He remembered the film of tears across a pair of dark eyes, red around the rims. A real breakthrough.

He doubted that Yusuf Izzigil would see things in quite the same way. They drove back from the restaurant in virtual silence. As always, Jack stayed well within the speed limit as he steered the Volvo through streets that were still slick after an early evening downpour. The short journey was one that they tried to make at least once a month sometimes more if there was a birthday or anniversary to be celebrated. Jack always drove, always stuck to half a bitter while they waited for the table, and a glass of wine with the meal.

"Are you cross with me?" Carol said, eventually.

"Don't be silly. I was just worried."

"It's like I spoiled your evening."

"You couldn't help it. What happened, I mean. You didn't spoil my evening."

Carol turned away from him and stared out of the window. She could still taste the vomit at the back of her throat. Instinctively, she looked again to make sure there was none on her blouse.

"You must be coming down with something," Jack said. "I'll call the quack first thing."

Carol nodded without shifting her gaze from a scratch on the car window, from the darkness moving past it.

It had come over her from nowhere as she was digging into her spaghetti a heat that had prickled and spread quickly until she'd had to throw down her fork and rush to the toilet. She'd emerged ten minutes later, pale and with a weak smile that had fooled nobody: not the manager, who offered to call a doctor and assured her that the meal was on the house, and least of all her husband. Jack had shrugged at the waiters and smiled. He'd taken her arm: "Come on, love. You're white as a sheet. We'd best make a move."

Carol knew full well what the trouble was. This was the first physical symptom of a virus that had been lurking inside her, waiting for the chance to blossom since the day she'd handed over her warrant card. She'd tried to ignore it on other occasions, when an unfamiliar reaction to something had forced her to ask the question. Have I stopped being a copper inside?

She knew what the answer was. The cold-case stuff was Mickey Mouse; it was just playing at what she used to do for real. Now, she could feel doubt, worry, pain, anger. And fear. She felt them all in a way she never had for those thirty years she'd spent watching other people feel the same things. She felt like a civilian. And she hated it. She knew that this was all about Gordon Rooker. The reassurance that had come from Thorne's visit to the Royal had lasted no more than a couple of hours. God, it was all so bloody stupid. After all, the facts were pretty obvious: Rooker was locked up; Rooker was guilty; whoever had been phoning her and sending the letters was some nutcase who, by the look of it, had probably stopped now anyway. It hadn't been facts, though, that had made her throw up. She needed to deal with the feelings. She needed to deal with the panic. She needed to start behaving like a real copper again.

"It's definitely not the food," Jack said as he slowed to turn into their quiet crescent. "How many times have we eaten in that place over the years?"

Hendricks was already asleep by the time Thorne got in, just after eleven. As Thorne crept past the sofa-bed towards the kitchen, Elvis, his psychotic cat, jumped down from where she'd been curled up on Hendricks' feet and followed him. While he waited for the kettle to boil, Thorne poured some cat munchies into a grubby plastic bowl and told Elvis one or two things about his day. He'd rather have talked to his friend, who was a marginally better conversationalist, but the snoring from the next room made it clear just how well away Hendricks was. Thorne didn't want to wake him. He knew that Hendricks had probably had a fairly tough day himself.

Up to his elbows in the cadavers of Muslum and Hanya Izzigil. Drinking his tea at the kitchen table, Thorne thought about those who would spend the coming night sleepless. Those with money worries or difficulties at work, or relationship problems. It was odd what could keep some people awake, while a man who dealt in death usually one that had been anything but peaceful could sleep like a baby. He thought about Dave Holland, bleary-eyed at 4 a.m." who would tell him just how ludicrous that expression was.

Of course, he didn't know what went on in Phil Hendricks' dreams. Thorne hadn't slept brilliantly himself since the night he'd come so close to death the year before. There had been nightmares, of course, but now it was just as if his body had adapted and required less sleep. Most nights he'd get by on four or five hours and then collapse into something approaching a coma when he took a day off. Having removed his shoes, Thorne carried them, and what was left of his tea, towards the bedroom. On the way through the darkened living room he picked up his CD Walkman and a George Jones album. He held the bedroom door open for Elvis, and watched as she hopped back up on to Phil Hendricks' legs.

"Sod you, then," Thorne said.

He padded into his bedroom with his tea, his shoes and his music, and closed the door behind him.

It was a sudden change in the light, no more than that. Carol Chamberlain saw it reflected in the dressing-table mirror as she sat taking her make-up off. She'd washed most of it off earlier, rubbing cold water into her face in the toilets at the Italian restaurant. Trying to stop the dizziness and to bring back a little colour to her cheeks.

Jack was moving around downstairs. Locking up, pulling out plugs. Keeping them safe.

She sat in her night-dress and stared hard at herself. It was time to sort her hair out, and maybe shift a few pounds though, at fifty-six, that was a damn sight harder than it used to be. She could try to get back to how she was when they'd taken the job away from her: her fighting weight', Jack called it.

Leaning closer towards the mirror, cream smeared across her fingers, she saw the light change. A glow pink at first, then orange that crept through a gap in the curtains and lit up the room behind her. She opened her mouth to call out Jack's name, then closed it and pushed back her chair. As she walked towards the window, she saw the glow reaching up and illuminating the bare branches of the copper beech at the end of the drive. She knew more or less what she was going to see when she reached the far side of the room and looked out. She wondered if he'd be there. She hoped that he would be. He was already looking up when she pulled back the curtains, standing motionless next to the car, the can of lighter fluid white against his gloved hand. Waiting for her.

For a few long, still seconds they stared at each other. The flames were not spectacular, and the light danced only across the dark material of the man's anorak. The blaze never threatened to break up the shadow, blue-black beneath the hood that was pulled tight around his head.

The fire was already beginning to spread across the Volvo's bonnet. It drifted down around its edges, into its mouldings, where the lighter fluid had run and dripped. Still, the words, sprayed in fuel and spelled out now in flame, were clear enough.

I burned her.

Carol heard locks being thrown back downstairs, and saw the man's head turn suddenly towards the front door. He took a step away from the car, then looked up at Carol for another moment or two before he turned and ran. She had seen nothing, could see nothing of his face, but she knew very well that he had been smiling at her.

A few seconds later, Jack burst out of the front door in his vest. He ran, arms raised and mouth gaping, on to the front lawn. Carol half-saw him turn to look up, at the same moment she moved away from the window and back into the heart of the room.