He moved to the end of a short queue, studied the price list on the blackboard behind the counter. He saw a familiar figure rise from a table across the room and nod. Spike walked across, moving a little slower than he had done the night before.
“Found this place quick enough, then?”
“I saw an outreach worker,” Thorne said. “Came along last night after you left, told me if I got down here first thing, I could get a decent breakfast.” The second lie of the day came easily. He’d told the first on the phone half an hour earlier, when Dave Holland had asked him how his night had been.
Thorne looked around. It was a big room, and bright. One wall was dominated by a vast, glossy mural; notice boards ran the length of another.
“You signing on?” Spike asked.
Thorne nodded. He wouldn’t be going to the dole office, but he’d taken the decision early to live on the equivalent of state benefit. He would exist on the princely sum of forty-six pounds a week, and if he wanted any more he was going to have to find his own way to come up with it, same as anybody else sleeping on the street.
He took a step closer to the counter, remembering what Brendan had said about “De Niro shite.”
“The rolls aren’t bad,” Spike said. “Bacon could be crispier.”
“I just want tea.”
Thorne’s instinct at that moment was to put his hand a little deeper into his pocket and offer to buy tea for Spike, too, but he stamped on the natural impulse to be generous. The idea was to fit in, and he knew damn well that, where he was, nobody would make that kind of gesture.
They reached the front of the queue and Spike stepped in front of him. “I’ll get the teas in.”
Thorne watched Spike hand over forty pence for two cups of tea and realized that there was precious little he could take for granted.
They walked over to a table, Thorne a step or two behind Spike, thinking, He must want something. Then, Fuck, I’m doing it again.
“You get much sleep?” Thorne asked.
Spike grinned. “Haven’t been to bed yet, like. Busy night. I’ll crash for a couple of hours later on.”
“Where d’you bed down?”
Spike seemed distracted, nodding to himself. Thorne repeated the question.
“The subway under Marble Arch. I only come into the West End during the day, like, to make some money.” The grin again, spreading slowly. “I commute.”
Thorne laughed, slurped at his tea.
“It’s not bad, this place,” Spike said. He leaned down low across the table and dropped his voice. Thorne could just make out the last gasp of an accent. Somewhere in the southwest he reckoned. “There’s not many centers around like this, where under-twenty-fives and over-twenty-fives can hang around together. Most of ’em are one or the other. They prefer it if we don’t mix.”
Thorne shook his head. “Why?”
“Stands to reason, when you think about it. The older ones’ve picked up every bad habit going, haven’t they? You take somebody fresh on the streets. After a couple of weeks knocking about with someone who’s been around awhile, he’ll be a pisshead or he’ll be selling his arse or whatever.”
It made sense, Thorne thought, but only up to a point. “Yeah, but look at us two. I’ve got twentyodd years on you and you’re the one that’s been around.”
Spike laughed. Thorne listened to the breath rattling out of him and looked into the pinprick of light at the center of his shrunken pupils, and thought: You’re the one that’s picked up the bad habit.. .
Thorne had seen it the previous night: the glow from a streetlamp catching a sheen of sweat across Spike’s forehead, heightening the waxy pallor of his skin. This morning, it was obvious that he’d not long got his fix. Thorne knew that without it he’d have no chance of getting any sleep.
“Can you not get a hostel place?”
“Not really bothered at the moment. When I wake up covered in frost, like, I’ll be well up for it, no question, but I’m all right where I am just now. Been in plenty of hostels, but I’m not really cut out for ’em. I’m too… chaotic, and that’s a technical term. ‘Chaotic.’ I’m fine for a few days or a week, and then I fuck up, and end up back on the street, so…”
Spike’s speech had slowed dramatically, and his gaze had become fixed on a spot above Thorne and to the right of him. Slowly, he lowered his head and turned, and it was as though the eyes followed reluctantly, a second later. “I think… it’s bedtime,” he said.
Thorne shrugged. A junkie’s hours.
Spike slid his chair slowly away from the table, though he showed no sign of getting up from it. On the other side of the room voices were raised briefly, but by the time Thorne looked across, whatever had kicked off seemed to have died down again. “Maybe see you back here lunchtime.” “Maybe,” Thorne said.
“Had enough yet?” Brendan Maxwell asked.
Thorne ignored the sarcasm. “Tell me about Spike,” he said.
As soon as the breakfast rush had started to die down, Thorne had wandered out. Holland had told him earlier that Phil Hendricks would be coming in, and Thorne was keen to see him. He’d headed surreptitiously toward the offices. The admin area was on the far side of the top floor and Maxwell had given him the four-digit staff code to get through each of the doors. There were coded locks on every door in the place.
With the open-plan arrangement of offices offering little privacy, Thorne, Maxwell, and Hendricks had gathered in a small meeting room at the back of the building. If anyone wandered in, it would look like a caseworker/client conference of some sort, but Thorne wasn’t planning to hang around very long, anyway. It was just a quick catch-up.
Maxwell was perched on the edge of a table next to Hendricks. “He’s not quite twenty-five, so Spike’s not one of mine yet, but I couldn’t tell you anything even if he was.”
Hendricks looked sideways at his boyfriend. To Thorne, it seemed like a look that was asking Maxwell to lighten up a little. To bend the rules.
“Come on, Phil,” Maxwell said. “You know how it works.” He turned back to Thorne. “Look, I had a long chat with your boss about this. There are major confidentiality issues that have to be considered.”
“Fair enough,” Thorne said. Brigstocke had made the position very clear to him. Unless he had good reason to think it would directly aid the investigation, Thorne would be given no personal information about other rough sleepers.
“It’s just the way we do things. I’ve had Samaritans on the phone trying to trace someone on behalf of parents. People who just want to know if their kid’s alive or dead. The person they’re looking for might be downstairs drinking tea, but I can’t say anything. I can’t tell them because maybe they’re the reason why the kid’s on the street in the first place, you know?”
“Just talk to this kid if you’re interested,” Hendricks said.
Maxwell nodded his agreement, leaned gently against his partner. “Spike’s not shy, I can tell you that much. You’ll get his life story if he’s in the mood to tell you.”
For a few moments nobody said anything. Hendricks and Maxwell were usually a demonstrative couple physically, but Thorne sensed that, at that moment, Hendricks was a little uncomfortable with Maxwell’s arm resting on his shoulder.
There had been periods in the past when the relationship between the three of them had become somewhat complex. Thorne thought that Maxwell could, on occasion, be jealous of the platonic relationship he shared with Hendricks. At other times, after a beer or three, Thorne was not beyond wondering if it was he himself who was the jealous one. Right that minute, he was too tired to think much about anything at all. He took a moment. He knew that if he was going to last the course, this was a level of tiredness he was going to have to get used to pretty bloody quickly.