The old man next to him tugged at his beard, nodding enthusiastically.
"There are some in my community who are afraid to speak up," Zarif said. He looked towards Jesmond. "We had thought that those in Mr. Ryan's. circle might be a little less fearful." Zarif was pressing all the right buttons. Ryan's anger was controlled but obvious.
For a long ten seconds no one spoke. Thorne listened to the sound of the cars on the nearby motorway, the rattle of a fan above one of the ceiling vents. The weather had taken a turn for the better in recent days and the room felt arid and airless.
"These killings, whoever and whatever the victims might have been, are simply unacceptable," Jesmond said eventually. "They hurt people across a wide range of communities. They hurt people and they hurt businesses."
Thorne wrote, thinking, They hurt your chances of promotion. Ryan smiled thinly. "Sometimes they're the same thing."
"I'm sorry?" Jesmond said.
"People and business." Ryan leaned forward, looked hard at Zarif across the table. "Sometimes, your business might actually be people. You know what I mean?"
Now it was Zarif's turn to exercise some control. He knew that Ryan was talking about the people smuggling, about the hijack. He turned to the old man next to him and muttered something in Turkish. When Zarif had finished, the Turkish-speaking officer translated for Jesmond. "There was some swearing," she began. Thorne looked at Zarif's face. He wasn't surprised.
"Mr. Zarif said that some people should think a little about what they were saying before they opened their mouths. opened their stupid mouths."
Thorne looked from Ryan to Zarif, in the vain hope that the two of them might clamber on to the table and get stuck into each other. Go on, he thought, Let's end it here and now.
Jesmond thanked the WPC. Thorne looked across and caught her eye. He'd forgotten her name. He knew that she was there to ensure that any incriminating statement could be noted, however inadmissible it would later prove to be. He knew there was fat chance of anything much that mattered being said by anybody. This was politics and pussyfooting. The whole seemingly pointless exercise was about what was not being said.
"We need to be united in our efforts," Jesmond said. He looked around the table until he was satisfied that tempers were being held in check.
"There seems little point in continuing', Brimson said, 'if my client has to sit here and be insulted."
Thorne glanced at her and Ryan. Their arms were touching, and he idly began to wonder if they might be sleeping together. He knew Brimson was only doing her job, but surely there had to be some other reason why the bile wasn't rising into her mouth. "Would Mr. Ryan prefer to sit here and be insulted?" he said.
Ryan didn't bother looking up. "Fuck you, Thorne." Thorne turned innocently to Jesmond. "Should I write that down?"
"I want to get two messages across to you this morning," Jesmond said.
"The first, and I want there to be no mistake about this, is that, as far as the murders I have already mentioned are concerned, we are in no way scaling down any of those investigations."
"No way," Thorne repeated.
Jesmond glanced at him, nodded. "Some of you will already know this, but DI Thorne is one of the officers actively involved in seeking those responsible."
Thorne was tempted to give a little wave.
"The second message is by way of a direct appeal." Jesmond removed his glasses, slid them into his top pocket. "We want this level of consultation to continue, for everyone's benefit. On behalf of the Commissioner, I'm appealing to you directly. We want you to use your influence. As businessmen. As important members of your communities. We want you to do whatever you can to prevent further loss of life." Thorne's pen moved across the paper. He was struggling to keep up with Jesmond's speech. He sat there, hot and headachey, fighting the urge to doodle.
Fifteen minutes later, the waitress knocked and entered. She asked if the biscuits needed replenishing, but the meeting was already starting to break up. Ryan and Zarif left a minute or two apart, each chatting animatedly with his adviser.
Jesmond gathered up his papers. "How would you say that went, Tom?" He didn't wait for the answer, perhaps guessing that it would be a long time coming. "I know. These kind of meetings are buggers to get right." He snapped his briefcase shut. "Let's just hope we get something out of it."
With the possible exception of writer's cramp, Thorne doubted it. Methodical in this, as she was in everything up one aisle then down another, missing none of them out Carol Chamberlain steered her way past a small logjam near the checkouts, and turned towards detergents, kitchen towels and toilet roll.
Jack appeared, grinning at the side of the trolley, and dropped large handfuls of shopping into it. "Do we need dog food?" he asked. Chamberlain nodded, then watched her husband head up the aisle and disappear round the corner. She moved on slowly, picking things off the shelves. Reach, drop, push. Methodical, but miles away.
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!
Thorne had made her a promise. He'd told her he was going to find the man who'd been responsible for what had happened twenty years before. He'd told her that he was going to put right her mistake. He'd told her what he thought she wanted to hear. That had been more than a fortnight ago, round at his flat, and she hadn't seen Thorne since. She hadn't spoken to him on the phone for almost as long. She knew he was busy, of course, knew that he had far better things to do than keep her up to date.
Reach, drop, push.
Her cold case from 1993, the murdered bookie, was going nowhere. There was nothing in it to get the blood fizzing in her veins. Nothing to distract her.
Naturally, it was how Jack preferred it. He relished the calm at the end of the day, the fact that she had nothing, of any shape or form, to bring home. He was happier now that she rarely needed to be away from home at all. She loved him fiercely, knew that he felt as he did only because he loved her just as much. She'd have been lost without him, helpless without the anchor of his concern. But, feeling as she felt now, as she'd felt since this had all begun, that anchor was starting to pull her down.
She wanted this to be over.
Reach, drop, push.
Tom Thorne was the man in whom she'd placed her hopes. She'd had no choice but to do so. Much as Chamberlain liked and respected him, she hated feeling beholden. Hated the fact that it was out of her hands. Hated it.
She wanted to load up her trolley, pile it high with heavy bottles and tins, and charge, shouting, down the aisle. She wanted to watch the families and the shelf-stackers scatter as she ran at them. She wanted to hear the rattle of the trolley and the squawking of two-way radios as she burst past the tills and flattened the guards, and rushed at the plate-glass windows.
Jack came hurrying towards her, clutching cans of dog food to his chest. As soon as they'd tumbled noisily into the trolley, she reached out and slid her arm around his. They moved together towards the next aisle.
23 August 1986
The new Smiths album is awesome. It's got "Bigmouth Strikes Again' on it and Dad still puts his head round the door if he hears it, and laughs when it gets to the "Joan of Arc'line. Ali's got a boyfriend! She met him at some club. I don't know when she went clubbing, or who she went with, but apparently this bloke just walked up to her and asked if she wanted a drink. I met him the other day and he seems nice enough, but when he said hello to me, like everything was normal, he kept looking at AH, so she could see how 'sensitive' he was being, like he was checking to see what she thought of him.