"This is the first time he's done it in a car, remember. He had less room to manoeuvre than he did with the others." Hendricks nodded. It all made perfectly good sense.
"You'd say it was the same killer, though," Thorne said. "The X-Man."
It was a few seconds before Hendricks gave a nod that said "probably'. Enough time for Thorne to find himself wondering if they hadn't got things arse about face. They were assuming that the Zarifs had targeted the Ryans again and killed Marcus Moloney, unaware that he was a police officer. But there was an equally plausible possibility.
"What if the killer knew exactly what Moloney was?"
"Sir?" It was Holland, back from the Gents'. The more Thorne articulated it, the more convinced he became. He thought back to the previous night, in the street outside the games arcade: Moloney on the phone, not to Billy Ryan's driver, as Thorne had thought, but to Nick Tughan. Making the last call he was ever going to make. Unaware that his cover had been blown
"I think they found out he was a copper," Thorne said. "With what was going on, with what had happened to the others, they had a perfect way to get rid of him, didn't they? I think Billy Ryan killed Moloney." Thorne reached for his mobile to make the call to Tughan. Before he could start dialing, it began to ring.
It was Russell Brigstocke.
"Tom? We've just had a call from the Central Middlesex Hospital." Thorne didn't quite take it all in. He just heard the key word and immediately thought: Dad.
"Up by Park Royal."
The initial relief quickly gave way to mild panic. "What's happened?" Thorne guessed what the answer would be before Brigstocke gave it.
"Somebody tried to kill Gordon Rooker."
ELEVEN
Thorne could think of better places to be on a sunny morning. He hated hospitals for all the obvious reasons, as well as for a few others unique to the job he did to some of the cases he'd worked. He shuffled his chair a little closer to the bed. Holland was sitting next to him. On the other side of the bed, a prison officer relaxed in a tatty brown armchair.
"You're a lucky bastard, Gordon," Thorne said. Rooker had been attacked two days earlier, an hour or so after Thorne and Chamberlain had confronted Ryan in the street, and four hours before Marcus Moloney had been murdered. Thorne had presumed it had been the confrontation with Ryan which had prompted him to do something about Rooker, but now he realised that it could not have been organised in the time. It had to have been Thorne's earlier meeting with Ryan in his office, when he'd first mentioned Rooker's name, that had sparked things off.
He'd certainly touched a raw nerve.
Thorne tried to picture Ryan as he'd stood in the street outside his arcade, the wind whipping across his face. Ryan had stood there and smiled when Thorne had offered the greeting from Rooker, safe in the knowledge that a special greeting of his own had already been arranged. Rooker in the evening; Moloney later that night. Two problems solved within hours of each other.
What was it Rooker had said? Billy Ryan's cold. Rooker tried to lift himself up the bed a little. He grimaced in pain.
"Define lucky," he said.
The improvised shiv actually a sharpened paintbrush which Alun Fisher had stuck into his belly during an art class had somehow missed every vital organ in Rooker's body. He'd lost a lot of blood, but the surgery had been about patching him up rather than saving his life. Rooker settled back. "Lucky that I'm alive, but it's hardly fortunate that certain parties have got wind of things, is it?" Thorne decided that it wouldn't do Rooker any good to know who was responsible for mentioning his name to Billy Ryan.
"Told you I'd be marked, though, didn't I?" Rooker said. "Now I've got even more reason to make sure the fucker gets put away." Rooker's hair was lank and his skin was the colour of a week-old bruise. The gold tooth still glinted in his mouth, but half of the top set was missing, the bridge sitting in a glass on the bedside cabinet. A drip ran into his left arm and an oxymeter peg was attached to the index finger. His right wrist was connected, rather less delicately, to a prison officer, one of two on a rotating bed watch. The officer, skull and chin neatly shaved, sat with his head in a paperback. Rooker raised the handcuffs, lifting his and the officer's arm.
"Fucking ridiculous, isn't it?" The prison officer didn't even look up. "Like I'm going to do a runner. Like somebody's going to spring me. Like who?"
Holland smiled. "Got no friends, Gordon?"
"See any flowers?"
"Friends, acquaintances, we'll have to check all of that," Thorne said. "One or two people are still bothered by this bloke turning up out of the blue and claiming responsibility for what happened to Jessica Clarke."
"Check what you like," Rooker said. "I can't help you. I tell you what, though: if it is the bloke who did it, who really did it, we both know who can give you his name."
The small room was strangely half lit. The curtains had been drawn against the dazzling sunshine, filtering it through thin, brown and orange nylon. A dirty amber light moved across the pale walls, softening the metallic gleam of the dressing-trolley and the drip-stand.
"Tell me about Alun Fisher," Thorne said. With what few teeth were left in his upper jaw, Rooker bit down hard on his bottom lip. "He's nothing. A fucking little tosspot." Thorne heard the prison officer chuckle quietly and glanced across. It wasn't clear whether it was Rooker or his book that he was finding so funny.
"A little tosspot with a smack habit." Thorne could see where it was going. "And a drug debt, right?"
"A fucking big one. Three guesses who he owes the money to."
"So Fisher just walks up to you in the middle of a class?" Holland said. "Stabs you, just like that, while you're doing your Rolf Harris bit?"
"I thought you could see it coming," Thorne said. "That's what you told me last time. If someone was going to have a pop at you, you'd know about it."
Rooker sniffed, cast his eyes to the right. "Well, somebody looked the other fucking way, didn't they? Took their eye off the ball. These teachers in the Education Department don't get paid much, do they? Or maybe a screw fancied a new car, a holiday for the wife and kids."
If the prison officer was upset, he wasn't showing it. Park Royal was already carrying out an inquiry into exactly what had gone wrong, while Alun Fisher sat in a segregation cell waiting to see what they were going to do with him. Having fucked up and left Gordon Rooker breathing, he was probably more worried about what Billy Ryan was going to do. He might suddenly find that his debt had increased in all sorts of ways.
"So are you going to press charges?" Holland asked.
"Not much point, is there? They'll move Fisher to another prison. Might as well try to get through the rest of the time without any hassle."
"Up to you," Thorne said.
Rooker moved his hand and began scratching the top of his leg. The prison officer raised his head, waited a few seconds, then yanked the hand back down to the mattress.
"What you were saying about checking my friends," Rooker said. "How long is all this going to take? The sooner they get everything sorted out, you know, and arranged, the quicker we can start talking. Right?
This has been going on too long already." Thorne knew what Rooker meant, realised that he was reluctant to talk specifically about protection, and evidence, and Ryan, with the prison officer in the room.
"It won't be a quick decision," Thorne said. "They've only been considering the position seriously for the last couple of days." Rooker shook his head. "Right. That's typical. Maybe, if they'd considered it a bit earlier, I might not have had a fucking paintbrush jammed in my guts."
Thorne knew that was probably his fault. He looked at the indignant expression plastered across Rooker's yellowish chops. He could remember feeling guiltier. From the corner of his eye, he saw the prison officer look up when Holland's mobile rang. The DC checked the caller ID, stood up and took the phone out of earshot to answer it.