"Even if he had, he might still have got away," Thorne said. "People would have been far more concerned with helping the girl. You know as well as I do that by and large people are afraid to do anything. They don't want to be the have-a-go hero who gets shot, or gets a knife stuck in him."
Chamberlain stared into her glass. "Why a bus stop, though? Why the different MO?"
"There's a lot more security around schools now," Hendricks said.
"He'd've been lucky to find a school like Jessica Clarke's, where he could just march up to the playground."
She shook her head. "The middle of Swiss Cottage at four o'clock in the afternoon? It's stupid. The place was heaving." Hendricks leaned his head back into the kitchen to check on something for a second. "He obviously wanted to make a splash."
"Do you think it's the same bloke?" Thorne stared hard at Chamberlain.
"Yes, I'm fairly certain. It looked like the same anorak." Thorne shook his head. "No, I don't mean that. Do you think it's the same man who set fire to Jessica Clarke twenty years ago?" There was no quick answer. "He didn't look old," she said. "I know you couldn't see his face. It was more the way he held himself, I suppose."
"You're thinking about Rooker, about somebody like he is," Thorne said.
"I know."
"Suppose this man was in his early twenties back then. He'd only be in his early forties now."
"It was seeing him run away. It seemed wrong, somehow, for the man I was imagining."
"He jogged away," Thorne said. "Even if he was in his fifties, or sixties even, that's not out of the question, is it?" Hendricks carried his glass across the room and topped it up. "Just jogging away, casually, like he did, makes a lot of sense. It's the right thing to do if you don't want to draw attention to yourself, if you don't want to look like you're legging it away from something." From the kitchen, the timer on Thorne's cooker suddenly buzzed. Hendricks put down his wineglass and went to do whatever was necessary.
"If it is him," Chamberlain said, 'is Billy Ryan behind what he's doing now?"
"God knows, but, if he is, I haven't got the first idea why." Hendricks swore loudly. Either dinner was ruined or he'd burned himself.
"You all right in there, Delia?" Thorne shouted. There was another bout of slightly more subdued swearing. Chamberlain laughed. "It smells good, whatever it is." She drained her glass, glancing at her watch in the process.
"Listen, why don't you stay the night?" Thorne asked. "We can sort out a bed."
"No, I'm going to get the last train. If you can give me a taxi number."
"It's no trouble, really. I'm sure Jack can make his own breakfast." She shook her head and took a step towards the kitchen. Thorne put a hand on her shoulder. "When we get Ryan, he's going to tell us who took his money twenty years ago and burned Jessica. He's going to give me a name." He pointed towards the VCR. "If it was this bloke, I'll get him. If it wasn't this bloke, and whoever it was is still alive, I'll get him. Then, I'll get this bloke as well. That's a promise,
Carol."
When Chamberlain looked at him, her expression a mixture of gratitude and amusement, Thorne realised that his hand had moved from her shoulder. In his effort to reassure her, he'd been gently rubbing her back in small circles. She raised her eyebrows comically. "So, this offer to stay the night," she said. "What exactly did you have in mind?"
Ian Clarke sat on the sofa, his arm around his wife. He stared across the room in the direction of the television.
He cried once a year on his first daughter's birthday. The day that was also the anniversary of her death. For the rest of the time, everything was kept inside, squashed and pressed inside, his ribs, like the bars of a cage, holding in the thoughts and feelings and dark desires.
He sat still, going over the details of Thorne's visit, the things that were said, feeling as if his ribs might crack and splinter at any moment.
His wife laughed softly at something on the television and nestled her head into his chest. His hand moved automatically to her hair. He stared at a small square of white wall a foot or so above the screen. From time to time, he could hear a gentle thud on the ceiling as his second daughter moved around upstairs.
Thorne lay awake in bed, wondering if it was simply indigestion he was suffering from, or something a little harder to get rid of. Enjoyable as the evening had been, he'd been happy to see Carol call for a cab. And he'd been relieved when, later, Hendricks had decided to leave the clearing up until the morning and get an early night. The uncertainty that surrounded every aspect of the Billy Ryan/ Jessica Clarke case had squatted next to him all evening, like an unwanted dinner guest. Now he felt it pressing him down into the mattress as he stared up at the Ikea light fitting he hated so much. Not knowing was the worst thing of all.
In the course of some of the cases he'd investigated over the years, Thorne had learned things, seen things, understood things that, given the choice, he'd have preferred to avoid. Still, in spite of all the horrible truths he'd been forced to confront, he preferred knowledge to ignorance, though the dreadful weight of each was very different. Beneath the duvet, his hand drifted down to his groin. He fiddled around half-heartedly for a few minutes, then gave up, unable to concentrate.
He began to think about the photos of Jessica Clarke, out in the hallway inside his leather jacket. He pictured the image of her blasted and puckered face pressing against the silk lining of the pocket. He thought about the diary in his bag, waiting for him. It was reading he'd postpone until another night.
Reaching across for his Walkman, he pulled on the headphones and pressed play: The Mountain, Steve Earle's 1999 collaboration with the Del McCoury Band. He rubbed at the tightness in his chest, deciding that it almost certainly was indigestion.
It was impossible to stay down for too long, listening to bluegrass.
THIRTEEN
"You're looking a bit better, Gordon," Holland said. Rooker grunted. "It's all relative, isn't it?"
"OK then," Stone said. "You look better than a bag of shit, but not quite as good as Tom Cruise. How's that?"
The prison officer who had been standing behind them took a step forward, leaned down. "Can we hurry this up?" They were gathered around a table in the small office-cum-cubicle in a corner of the visits area. A TV and VCR had been set up. Holland was stabbing at a button, trying to cue up the tape. Without looking at him, Stone waved a piece of paper towards the prison officer. "Don't worry, it's not a long list." The paper was waved in Rooker's direction. "He isn't exactly your most popular guest, is he?"
This was part of the checking-up that Thorne had spoken about to Tughan when the doubts about Rooker were first raised. While Stone and Holland had headed into HMP Park Royal, others on the team were looking at those who had recently moved in the opposite direction; those who might have associated closely enough with Gordon Rooker to do him a favour on the outside.
The list Stone was brandishing contained the names of all those who had been to the prison to see Rooker in the last six months. If the man who had made the calls to Carol Chamberlain, and perhaps been responsible for the attack in Swiss Cottage, had cooked up something with Rooker, chances were the plans would have been hatched in the visiting area. Something could have been organised via the telephone, but it was highly unlikely. As a Category B prisoner, any calls made by Gordon Rooker would, at the very least, be randomly monitored. If Rooker had an accomplice, Thorne felt sure that his name would be on the visitors list.
"It's easy to check names and addresses," Thorne had told Holland, 'but I want you to go through them with Rooker in person, get any extra information you can from him. See how he reacts when you show him the pictures. Let's make absolutely sure we're not being pissed about."