“So, what’s happening?” he asked Hendricks. Having spoken to Holland, he was practically up to speed, but Hendricks’s take on things, as the civilian member of the team, was always worth getting. “Anything I should know?”
Hendricks looked thoughtful, then began listing the headlines. “Brigstocke’s talking to a profiler. They’re recanvassing the area where Paddy Hayes was attacked. Everyone’s waiting around for the next body to show up, to be honest. Oh, and Spurs lost three-one at Aston Villa last night.”
“Cheers…”
There was a knock and a man stepped smartly into the room. He was somewhere in his late forties with neatly combed brown hair and glasses. He wore jeans that were a fraction too tight and a blue blazer over a checked shirt.
The man took in the scene quickly, then addressed himself to Maxwell. “Sorry, Brendan. Can I have a word when you’ve got a minute?”
Maxwell pushed himself away from the table, but before he could say anything, the man was already on his way out.
“Bollocks,” Maxwell muttered.
Hendricks leaned toward Thorne, spoke in a theatrical whisper. “Brendan’s new boss.”
Maxwell looked none too pleased. “He’s not my boss. He’s just the arsehole who controls our budget.” He walked to the door, stopped, and turned back to Thorne. “I was wrong about it taking a couple of weeks, by the way. You look pretty rough already…”
Thorne watched him leave. There’d been a smile on Maxwell’s face, but it hadn’t taken all the edge off the comment.
“Don’t worry about it.” Hendricks rubbed his palm rapidly back and forth across his shaved head. “He’s just in a shitty mood because he isn’t getting on with…” He pointed at the door.
Thorne nodded. “The arsehole. He sounded pretty posh.”
“Horribly posh. There’s a big consortium running all the outreach stuff now, and they want people with more of a business background. Brendan and a few of the others can’t even fill in a claim form for their expenses, so this bloke’s been shaking things up. There’s a bit of tension.” Hendricks was clearly struck by something hugely funny. “It’s like Brendan’s you, and this new bloke’s Trevor Jesmond.”
Thorne scowled. “Then Brendan has my deepest sympathy.”
“Actually, this new bloke’s not quite as bad as Jesmond.”
“That would be going some…”
“Stupid bugger had some high-powered banking job before this. Jetting all round the world for multinationals, oil companies, whatever, and he chucks it all in. Takes a massive pay cut to come and work for the care services…”
“Bloody do-gooder.”
“Mind you, you could be a paperboy and you’d still be taking a pay cut…”
Thorne stretched, yawned noisily. “I’d better get back out there. I’m sure you must have things that need cutting up.”
“I’ll find something.”
“Brendan told me you think I’m mad,” Thorne said.
“Only moderately.”
“I didn’t see what else we could do. Still don’t.”
Hendricks opened the door. “I’m not worried about the investigation…”
They both turned at the sound of rain blowing against the window, exchanged the comically worldweary look of a practiced double act.
“Brendan really doesn’t approve of this,” Thorne said. The silence told him that this was something Hendricks didn’t need to be told; that this was an issue he and Brendan had probably argued about. “Listen, I know how seriously Brendan takes his job, and I know that all he cares about is getting his clients off the streets. So tell him this when you two kiss and make up later on…”
“Before or after?”
“I’m serious, Phil. Remind him why we’re doing this again, will you? Tell him that there’s someone else out there who wants to get rough sleepers off the street, and this fucker’s got his own way of doing it…”
By lunchtime, the London Lift’s cafe area was busy again. The tables had been pushed closer together and somewhere between thirty and forty people sat eating, or queuing for food at the counter.
Thorne carried a plate of stew across to a table and got stuck in.
Around him were a few faces he recognized. He exchanged nods with one or two people he’d run into during the course of the day so far: an old man he’d walked the length of the Strand with; a Glaswegian with a woolly Chelsea hat and no teeth; a scowling, stick-thin Welshman who’d become aggressive when he’d thought Thorne was stealing his begging pitch, and had then turned scarily affectionate once Thorne had explained that he was doing no such thing. On the opposite side of the room, Thorne saw Spike, sitting with his back to him with his arm around the shoulders of an equally skinny girl.
Again, it was quieter than it might have been. By far the loudest noise came from a big, white-haired man at the other end of the table from Thorne. The man beamed and frowned-pushing a spoon distractedly through his food-far more intent on the two-way conversation he was having with himself on an invisible radio. Every half a minute or so he would hiss, imitating the sound of static, before delivering his message. Then, a few seconds later, he would move his hand, switch the “radio” to the other ear, and give himself an answer.
“This is London calling the president,” he said.
Spike went to the counter to collect his pudding. On the way back to his table he saw Thorne and shouted a hello. Thorne briefly waved a spoon, then carried on eating. The stew was thick with pearl barley and the gravy was tasteless, but at?1.25 for two courses, he had little cause for complaint.
Once he’d finished eating, Spike walked over, hand in hand with the girl, to where Thorne was sitting.
“This is Caroline,” he said. “Caz.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Tom…”
The girl had red-rimmed eyes and hair like sticky strands of dark toffee. She wore a faded rugby shirt under a zip-up top and multicolored beads and thin leather bracelets around her wrists.
“Spike and me are engaged,” she said.
Spike and his girlfriend sat and talked to Thorne while he finished his lunch. They told him about the time when they were asleep and they’d been sprayed with graffiti, and how another time they’d been pissed on by a gang of teenage boys. About how Caroline had once been propositioned by a woman off the telly and told her to go and fuck herself. About the flat they were planning to move into together once they had a bit of luck.
“It’s well fucking overdue, you know?”
“I do know,” Thorne said.
Spike did most of the talking. Thorne figured that this was about as close to normal as the boy ever got: a few hours of balance, of numbness between being wasted and needy. It was a window of opportunity that Thorne knew would get smaller and smaller as time went on.
“Everyone deserves a bit of luck, don’t they?”
When Caroline did speak, it was in a low mumble. Her voice had the flat vowels and slightly nasal tone of the West Midlands, but Thorne could hear a stronger influence.
Smack had an accent of its own.
There was a sudden, loud hiss from the other end of the table. The big man was receiving another message. Thorne stared at his red face and fat, flapping hands.
“That’s Radio Bob,” Spike said. He leaned in and shouted. “Oi, Bob. Say hello, you cunt…”
A pair of small dark eyes blinked and swiveled and settled on Thorne. “Houston, we have a problem,” Radio Bob said.
Spike sniffed and pointed to a man sitting on an adjacent table. “And that’s Moony,” he said. “He knew Paddy as well.”
“Did he?”
Spike shouted, beckoned over a skinny character with a sparse, gingery beard. His straw-colored thatch hid the clumps of dandruff far better than the vast lapels of his dirty brown sports jacket.
“This is Tom,” Spike said.
Moony fiddled with the top of what looked like the plastic Coke bottle he had jammed into his pocket. Cooking sherry was Thorne’s best guess. It was certainly a long time since the bottle had seen anything as benign as Coca-Cola.