“Give me a minute or two,” Moony said, sitting. The voice was high and light; effete, even. “Just one minute, and I’ll tell you what you do. I’ll tell you what you did, I should really say. In your previous life. I’m never wrong, never. I’ve got a knack for it…”
Thorne spooned stew into his mouth, grunted a marginal interest.
Spike hauled Caroline to her feet and moved toward the counter. “I’m going to get some tea.” He screwed up his face, put on a posh voice, and brayed, “Perhaps a crumpet, if they have such a thing.”
Moony watched them go, expressionless, stroking the neck of his bottle.
Thorne wondered if Moony was a surname or a nickname, but knew better than to ask. If the latter, then its origin was not obvious. Haggard and pockmarked, he certainly didn’t have a moonface. Maybe he was partial to showing people his arse when he’d had a few too many. If so, a sighting might well be in the cards, judging by the state of him. By the stink of him.
“You knew this poor bastard that was half kicked to death, then?” Thorne spoke without looking up from his dish. “Haynes, was it?”
“Hayes, right. Paddy Hayes. I knew Paddy well enough, certainly. On a life-support machine, according to the television, but we all know that means ‘vegetable,’ don’t we?”
“Right.” Thorne had spoken to Holland about Paddy Hayes first thing that morning. There was no change. None was expected.
“Not that he can think anything now, of course, but if he could, I wonder if he’d still think that everything happened for a reason. I wonder if he’d still be on good terms with Him upstairs. I wonder if he’d be all forgiving.” He scoffed, pointed a finger heavenward. “Mysterious ways, my arse.”
Thorne folded a slice of tacky white bread in half and began to mop up the last of his stew.
“I knew the second victim, too, you know.”
Raymond Mannion. Found fourteen days after the first victim. Killed three streets away. Thorne looked up, but just for a second, doing his best not to appear overly interested.
“Ray and I talked a great deal,” Moony said. “A great deal.”
Thorne pushed a dollop of soggy bread into his mouth and wondered who it was that Moony reminded him of. He realized that it was Steve Norman, the press officer. Moony had that same self-importance that Norman had been full of when he’d introduced Thorne to his friend from Sky. He was enjoying himself.
“What did you talk about?” Thorne asked.
“When you’ve got as much time to talk as we had, you tend to cover the entire spectrum. He was drugfucked, so there were occasions when he couldn’t string a sentence together, but we discussed most things at one time or another.”
“Did you talk to him on the night he was killed?”
“ Hours before he was killed, mate. Just hours before.”
“Christ.”
Moony lowered his voice. “Which is how I know he was scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Like I said, he was a junkie, so I thought it was just that at first, you know? Then I could see that something had really put the wind up him. Or some one had…”
There was certainly an element of grandstanding to the way Moony was telling it, but Thorne thought he could smell truth as well as bullshit.
“He’d said something before about someone asking him questions. It was just after that first bloke was killed he told me this, the one they can’t identify.”
“Did you know him?”
Moony shook his head.
“So who was asking your friend these questions, then?”
A flash of gold in his mouth, and a snigger that carried the smell of booze right across the table. “Well, this is the thing, isn’t it? Ray reckoned it was a copper, reckoned that he was looking for the bloke that turned up stiff a couple of days later.”
Thorne let a look that said, I’m impressed, pass slowly across his face, while his mind raced. Mannion was a druggie. What he told Moony, if he told him anything at all, could easily have been down to a dose of everyday delusional paranoia. But what if this wasn’t a story cooked up in a dirty spoon? Was it at least possible that Raymond Mannion was terrified because he knew something, because he’d seen something? Did he think that someone he’d spoken to had kicked one rough sleeper to death and might fancy coming back for him?
“So this is what he tells me,” Moony said. “And every time I run into him after that, he looks like he can’t decide whether to leg it or shit himself and, lo and behold, suddenly it’s Ray who’s the one with his brains kicked all over the shop and a twenty-quid note pinned to his fucking chest.” He leaned back, pleased with himself. “You’ve got to admit it’s bloody strange.”
Thorne grunted. He did think it was strange, but he was already thinking about something else, something Moony had just said. There was only one thing it could possibly mean…
He became aware of Moony talking again and looked up. “What?”
“She’s pretty fit,” Moony said. He nodded across to where Spike and his girlfriend were talking to one of the care workers. The three of them were laughing, drinking tea. “ Her. One-Day Caroline.”
Thorne’s mind was still in several places at once, but one part of it was curious enough. “Why d’you call her that?”
Moony looked pleased with himself again, like this was something else he was going to relish passing on. “Because she’s always bleating on about how she’s going to get herself clean ‘ one day.’ Then, when she tries to give up, one day is usually as long as she lasts…”
Thorne looked over, watched Caroline absently trailing her fingers down Spike’s arm as she listened to the care worker, nodding intently.
He pushed his chair away from the table. “So, come on, then,” he said. “You’ve had more than a couple of minutes. What did I do before this?”
Moony looked suddenly serious, as if he were getting in touch with something significant, something profound, deep down in his pickled innards. “It’s business, definitely business,” he said. “Some sort of financial thing. Accountancy or stocks and shares. I reckon you were loaded and then you lost the fucking lot. I’m right, aren’t I? I’m never fucking wrong.”
“Bang on, mate.” Thorne raised his hands. “You are absolutely bang on. That’s seriously spooky.” He stood and walked away, leaving Moony nodding slowly, gently patting the bottle in his pocket as though it were his pet. Or his muse.
Out near the reception desk, Thorne all but bumped straight into the man who’d walked in when he’d been talking to Maxwell and Hendricks that morning. Maxwell’s new boss…
“Oh, hi, I’m Lawrence Healey.”
The tone was not one Thorne had been on the receiving end of for a few days. It was brisk but friendly; respectful, even. Healey proffered a hand and Thorne shook it, wondering for just a second or two if the man knew he was really a police officer.
“Brendan tells me you’re new.”
“New-ish,” Thorne said.
“Well, I know how you feel. I’m a new boy myself.
If there’s anything you need, anything you want to talk about, you mustn’t be shy about it. Yes? You know where we are…”
Thorne said that he did, and that he certainly wouldn’t be.
As he moved toward the exit he could still make out the hiss and blather of Radio Bob’s broadcasts, coming from the cafe, on the other side of the door behind him.
“Are you receiving me? Are you receiving me…?”
EIGHT
London stank of desperation.
This time of night, of course, it smelled of all sorts of things: fags and fast food; piss and petrol. Still, in spite of all the money that was clearly being spent- the wealth on display in the rows of Mercs, Jags, and Beamers, and in the ranks of overpriced restaurants-you could catch the whiff of desperation almost everywhere. Pungent and unmistakable. Classless and clinging, and far stronger than anything being rubbed onto wrists, or rolled across armpits, or sprayed over shoppers by those grotesquely made-up hags in Harrods and Selfridges.