“I really think we can get something out of this,” Thorne said.
“Like I said, a day or two.”
“We can get it quickly as well. There’s no need for a long lead-up time, we just do it.” He stared at Jesmond, trying hard to look relaxed even as his stomach jumped and knotted. “Come on, you’ve seen some of these down-and-outs. Staggering around, ranting at the world with a can of cheap lager in their hand. You know me well enough. How hard can that possibly be?”
FIVE
The mood of the cafe owner had obviously not improved as he cleared away the plates. Holland had eaten toast before he’d left home, but had done his best with a bacon sandwich. Thorne had made short work of the fullest of full English breakfasts.
“The eggs were hard,” Thorne said.
“So? You ate them, didn’t you? If you don’t like the place, you can fuck off.”
“We’ll have two more mugs of tea.”
The owner trudged back behind his counter. The place was a lot busier now, and he had more to do, so it was difficult to tell whether he had any intention of ever bringing the tea as requested.
“Can you find something to arrest him for?” Thorne said. “Being fat and miserable in a built-up area, maybe?”
“I’m not sure who he hates more, coppers or tramps. We’re obviously not doing much for his ambience.”
Thorne stared hard across the room. “Fuck him. It’s hardly the Ritz, is it?”
“I picked up a couple of papers on my way here,” Holland said. He reached down for his bag, dug out a stack of newspapers, and dropped them on the table. “Our picture of Victim One’s on virtually every front page today.”
Thorne pulled a couple of the papers toward him. “TV?”
Holland nodded. “All the national TV news broadcasts as well. Both ends of London Tonight. It’s pretty comprehensive…”
Thorne stared down at the Mirror, at the Independent, into a pair of eyes that had been generated by a software program, but nonetheless had the power to find his own, and hold them. Victim One was long-haired and bearded. His flat, black-and-white features were fine, the line of jaw and cheekbones perhaps a little extreme to be lifelike. But the eyes, like the heavy bags beneath them, looked real enough. Dark, narrow, and demanding to be recognized. It was a face that said, Know me.
“What do you think?” Holland asked.
Thorne looked at the text that accompanied the pictures. The crucial facts rehashed: a brutal reminder of just how much was known about this man’s death when nothing at all was known about the life that had been stolen from him.
Then the reproduction of the tattoo. The vital collection of letters found on the victim’s shoulder. It had been hoped early on-as Brigstocke had told Thorne in the pub-that this might help identify the body, but that hope had proved as temporary as the tattoo itself was permanent.
AB- S.O.F.A.
The decision not to print a photograph of the tattoo had been taken on grounds of taste. A similar decision with regard to the victim’s face had not been necessary: they’d had no choice but to computer-generate, and not just because the face itself was unrecognizable. It was unrecognizable as a face: every
46 Mark Billingham feature had been all but kicked or stamped clean off the victim’s head. The unmarked face that was confronting thousands of people, that very minute over their cornflakes, had been fashioned by a microchip from little more than bone and bruise.
“It’s like King’s Cross,” Thorne said. “It’s what they did with the victim they couldn’t put a name to.”
The fire at King’s Cross underground station in November 1987 had killed thirty-one people, but only thirty bodies were ever claimed. One victim had remained anonymous-in spite of numerous appeals to those who might have known who he was. Thorne remembered that face, too: the sketch on the poster in a hundred tube stations; the clay reconstruction of the head that was lovingly fashioned and paraded in front of the television cameras. Ironically, the dead man, known for years only as Victim 115, had finally been identified just the year before, nearly twenty years after his death, and had turned out to have been a rough sleeper. Many commentators in the press claimed to have been unsurprised. It was obvious he was homeless, or else someone would surely have come forward much earlier, wouldn’t they? Thorne wasn’t so sure. He doubted that material belongings had a great deal to do with being missed. He thought it was perfectly possible to have a roof over your head, a decent car, and two nice holidays a year, yet still go unacknowledged and unclaimed if you had the misfortune to find yourself trapped on a burning escalator.
Thorne reckoned it was less to do with being unknown than with being un loved.
“I think we’re in with more of a chance, though,” Holland said, looking at the picture. “The quality of this is far higher. It’s got to ring a bell with somebody.”
“Let’s hope somebody loved him enough.”
Thorne handed the Independent back across the table and turned the Daily Mirror over to the sports page. He wondered how many footballers had been accused of rape since the last time he’d read a newspaper.
SIX
Thorne leaned in close and stared at himself in the small, square mirror. A week without razor, soap, or shampoo didn’t seem to have made a great deal of difference. Seven days during which he’d tried to start looking the part, while a pair of stroppy sorts from SO10-the unit that ran undercover operations- had done their best to put him through a refresher course.
It had all been fairly straightforward. As Thorne had been keen to stress to Brigstocke, the job would be purely about intelligence gathering. There would be no real need to fabricate a detailed backstory-to create what those who worked in this area called a “deep legend.” When necessary, tax details, Land Registry records, and electoral rolls would be doctored, but there would be no need for any such elaborate preparations in this case. Whatever the reason for their being there, those who ended up on the street tended to reinvent themselves anyway; to keep their pasts to themselves. They were starting again.
Thorne took one last look, slammed the locker door shut, and hoisted the rucksack onto his shoulder.
“Once you’ve been out there a couple of weeks you’ll see the difference. Black snot and a proper layer of London grime that won’t wash off easily…”
Thorne turned to look across at the man standing by the door. “Who am I fucking kidding, Bren?”
Brendan Maxwell was to be the only person connected with the homeless community who would know what Thorne was doing. What he really was. Maxwell worked as a senior outreach officer for London Lift, an organization providing counseling and practical help for the city’s homeless, in particular those more entrenched rough sleepers who were over twenty-five.
He was also Phil Hendricks’s boyfriend. Thorne had been privy to the ups and downs of their oftenstormy relationship for the last few years and had come to know the tall, skinny Irishman pretty well. Aside from Hendricks himself, and those few officers on the investigation who had been briefed, Maxwell would be-for however long the operation lasted-the only real connection Thorne had between his two lives.
“Don’t lose the key,” Maxwell said. “There aren’t any spares.”
Thorne put the key into the front pocket of his rucksack. The locker, where he would leave spare clothes, was one of fifty or so provided for the use of clients at the Lift’s mixed-age day center off St. Martin’s Lane. The organization’s offices were on the top floor, with the lockers in the basement, along with washing and laundry facilities. On the ground floor were the advice counter, a seating area, and a no-frills cafe serving hot drinks and heavily subsidized meals.
Maxwell walked over. He had short blond hair and wore a brown corduroy shirt tucked into jeans. He cast an amused eye over Thorne’s outfit, which he’d already referred to sarcastically as his “dosser costume.” The sweater and shoes had come from Oxfam and the black jeans were an old pair of Thorne’s own.