"I can tell you who paid for it. I can tell you whose idea it was to kill a kid."
"We knew that. We knew it was one of the other firms who."
"You knew fuck all."
Next to him, Chamberlain sat stock still, but Thorne could feel the tension radiating off her. He asked the question slowly: "So, who was it then?"
This was Rooker's big moment. "It was Billy Ryan. That's why I can give him to you. Billy Ryan put the contract out on Kevin Kelly's little girl-'
A pause, but nothing too dramatic before Thorne asked the obvious question: "Why?"
"It wasn't complicated. He was ambitious. He wanted to take on the smaller firms, but Kelly wouldn't have it. He thought things were fine as they were. Billy reckoned Kevin was losing his edge."
"So he tried to take over?"
"Billy wanted what Kevin had. More than Kevin had. He'd tried to get him out of the way earlier but fucked it up." Thorne remembered Chamberlain's gangland history lesson: the failed attempt on Kevin Kelly's life a few months before the incident at the school. "Were you anything to do with that, Gordon?"
"I'm not getting into anything else. Point is, the Kelly family thought I was."
"So, Billy targets his boss's daughter, but whoever he's paying tries to kill the wrong girl."
"Yeah, that got fucked up as well, but it still worked. Kevin Kelly goes mental, wipes out anybody who's so much as looked at him funny, then hands the whole fucking business over to Billy Ryan and walks away. It couldn't have gone better."
Thorne saw Rooker flinch slightly when Chamberlain spoke. "I'm not sure Jessica Clarke or her family would have seen things in quite the same way."
"How come you know any of this?" Thorne asked.
"Because Billy Ryan asked me to do it, didn't he? I was the perfect person to ask. I'd done a bit of freelance stuff for one or two people, a few frighteners and what have you."
"You're telling us that Ryan offered you money to kill Kevin Kelly's daughter."
"A lot of money."
"And you turned the job down."
"Fuck, yes. I don't hurt kids."
Chamberlain groaned. "Jesus, this stuff makes me sick. It always comes down to this "noble gangster" bollocks. "We only hurt our own", and "it was only business", and "anybody who touches kids should be strung up". He'll be telling us how much he loves his mum in a minute."
Rooker laughed, winked at her.
The room wasn't warm, and up to this point Thorne had kept his leather jacket on. Now he stood and dropped it across the back of his chair. Chamberlain stayed where she was. Thorne guessed that her smart, grey business suit was new. He thought she might have had her hair done as well, cut a little shorter and highlighted, but he'd said nothing.
"I hope this isn't an obvious question," Thorne said. "But why did you confess?"
"Billy Ryan made sure that every face in London thought I'd done it. I was well stitched up. That lighter they found by the fence was left there deliberately." He looked at Chamberlain. "You saw what Kevin Kelly did to the people he guessed were responsible. Imagine what he'd have done to me. I had Kelly after me for what he thought I'd tried to do to his Alison, and Billy after my blood because I was the only person who knew who'd really set it all up." He turned back to Thorne. I was a marked man."
"So, prison was a preferable option, was it?" Rooker took the lid off his tobacco tin. He put the cigarette together without looking down, and spoke as if he were trying to explain the mysteries of calculus. "I thought about running, pissing off to Spain or further, but the idea of spending years looking over my shoulder, shitting myself every time the doorbell went…" Chamberlain shook her head. She glanced at Thorne and then looked back to Rooker. "I'm not buying this. You'd be just as much of a marked man in prison."
Rooker put down his half-finished roll-up. "Do you think I didn't know that?" He reached down and gathered up the bottom of the bib and the sweatshirt underneath, then hoisted them up above sagging, hairy nipples to reveal a jagged scar running across his ribs. "See? I was a marked man from the moment I walked into Gartree, and Belmarsh, and this place."
"So why not just take your chances outside?"
"It's on my terms in here. I'm not scared of it." He pulled down the sweatshirt, smoothed the bib across his belly. "On the outside it could be anyone who's on a big pay-day to take you out. It's the bloke who wants to know the time. The bloke taking a piss next to you, asking you for a light, whatever. In here, I know who it's going to be. I can see it coming and I can protect myself. I've had a couple of scrapes, but I'm still breathing. That's how I know I did the right thing."
Thorne watched Rooker's yellow tongue snake out and moisten the edge of the Rizla. He rolled the cigarette, slid it between his lips and lit up. "You did the right thing by Billy Ryan as well. You never grassed him up."
"I wasn't a complete fucking idiot."
Chamberlain drummed her fingers on the table. "That "honour among thieves" shite again."
"So why now?" Thorne asked.
"Listen, it was you who came to see me, remember. Started me thinking about this. Started people round here whispering."
' Why now, Rooker?
Rooker removed the cigarette from his mouth, held it between a nicotine-stained finger and thumb. "I've had enough. I'm breathing, but the air tastes of stale sweat and other men's shit. I'm arguing with rapists and perverts about whose turn it is to change channel or play fucking pool next. I've got a grandson who's signing forms with West Ham in a few weeks. I'd like to see him play." He blinked slowly, took a drag, flicked away the ash. "It's time." Chamberlain stood up and moved towards the door. "That's all very moving, and I'm sure it's just the kind of stuff the parole board loves to hear."
Rooker stretched. "Not so far, it isn't. That's why I need a bit of help."
"I still don't see why you confessed to the attempted murder of Jessica Clarke. You could have got yourself safely banged up by putting yourself in the frame for any number of things. That security manager you tied to a chair and set light to, for instance. Why claim that you tried to kill a fourteen-year-old girl?"
Thorne had the answer. "Because you're less of a marked man on a VP wing. Right, Gordon? You're harder to get at." Rooker stared, and smoked.
There was a knock, and the prison officer put his head round the door, offered tea. Thorne accepted gracefully and Chamberlain declined. The officer bristled a little at Rooker's request for a cup but disappeared quietly enough at the nod from Thorne.
"So, who was it?" Chamberlain said.
Thorne knew that she was thinking about the letters, about the calls, about the man she'd thought was smiling up at her from her front garden.
"If it wasn't you who took Billy Ryan's money, you must have some idea who did."
Rooker shook his head. "Look, I haven't got a clue who this nutter is who's been pestering you."
"Who burned Jessica Clarke?" Chamberlain asked.
"I haven't got the faintest, and that's the truth. I don't know anyone who would have done it. Who could have. Over the years, I've started to wonder if maybe it was Billy himself…" They sat in the car for a minute, saying nothing. When Thorne leaned forward to turn the key, Chamberlain suddenly spoke.
"What did you make of all that?"
Thorne glanced at her, exhaled loudly. "Where do you want to start?"
"How about with Rooker getting himself put away for something he didn't do?"
"I've heard similar stories once or twice," Thorne said. "I suppose if you've got a head case like Billy Ryan on your back."
"Twenty years, though?"
"Yeah, well, he didn't bank on that, did he?" Chamberlain turned her head, stared out across the car park.
"You not convinced?" Thorne asked.
She spoke quietly, without looking at him. "I haven't got the foggiest bloody idea. I'm not far away from a free bus pass, and, to be honest, I'm no better at working out what goes on in the heads of people like Gordon Rooker than I was when I first pulled on a uniform." Thorne started the car. As he pulled out of the car park his mind drifted back to how their interview with Rooker had ended. Thorne had almost gasped when he'd suddenly remembered something else from Chamberlain's history lesson. "Hang on, didn't Ryan marry Alison Kelly a few years after all this happened?" Chamberlain had nodded. "He tries to kill her, pays someone to set fire to her, maybe even does it himself. and then marches her down the aisle as soon as she's old enough?"