I don't know if they've really done anything vet. There's another bloke who she says she's got a big crush on as well. AH has a crush on somebody different every week. This one's much older than she is, which is why she's so keen, if you ask me. Also, he used to work with her dad, which means that he's probably got a nickname like Ron "The Butcher or something. AH always used to joke about trying it on with one of those blokes, one of her dad's friends. You know, flirting with them and saying, "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? Oh, it's a gun." There's another song on the album called "I Know It's Over'. I was listening to it on my headphones and there's a bit where Morrissey is singing about feeling soil falling over his head. Like that's how it feels when this relationship he's been in has finished, when he's been dumped or whatever. I was trying to imagine it. Like I'd been with someone and he'd finished with me. I was lying there with it on loud and my eyes closed, putting myself in that position. For a while, it made me feel deep and romantic, like some poet or something.
Then, suddenly, I started feeling angry and stupid and I couldn't stand to listen to it again. I always skip that track now. The words and the melody were making me cry, making me want to cry, but the feelings weren't real. The emotion behind it was fake. I'd thought that pity from other people was painful enough, but when I start pitying myself, that's just about as bad as it gets.
I'm not likely to have a fucking relationship, that's the simple truth, and if by some miracle I did, you wouldn't need to be Mastermind to figure out why it might not work. Unless I got it together with some other Melt-Job, of course. You know, our eyes meet across a crowded plastic surgeon's waiting room.
No chance of that. Just because Hook like I do, doesn't mean I have to fancy other people who look the same, does it?
Being dumped wouldn't make me sad. It would make me want to kill whoever I'd been having the relationship with for being such a wanker. Such a cowardly shithead.
I don't want to have a relationship anyway.
Reading all that back, it sounds so pathetic. Like I'm some brat and I'm pretending that I want to be on my own because I'm really feeling so sorry for myself. I can't help how it sounds. I know what I think.
Shit Moment of the Day.
Decided not to bother with this any more because it's stupid. Magic Moment of the Day
Ditto.
TWENTY
"Tell me again about the meeting with Ryan. Tell me what he said that night in Epping Forest."
Rooker was wreathed in cigarette smoke. His sigh blew a tunnel of boredom through the fug. "Is there nothing else you could be doing?" he asked. "It's not as though I'm suddenly going to remember something I haven't already told you, is it?"
Thorne stared at the tapes in the twin-cassette deck. Watched the red spools spinning. "I don't know."
"Not after twenty years. Do you not think I've had enough time to remember?"
"Or enough time to forget."
"Oh for fuck's sake."
It had been nearly a month now since the attack on the girl in Swiss Cottage. Nearly a month since the Powers That Be had agreed to take Gordon Rooker up on his offer to give evidence against Billy Ryan. Tughan had told Thorne the day before the day of the round-table session in Maidenhead that, all being well, Ryan was likely to be charged within a week or so.
The case was being carefully built on a number of fronts; many of the people connected with Rooker and Ryan back in 1984 had been sought out and questioned. Some were still in the game. Some had long since sloped off to the suburbs. Others had gone even further, to countries with better weather and more attractive tax systems. A few had talked, but not enough for Tughan and his team to feel confident. Omerta, the Mafia called it: the code of silence. The foreign language and associations made it sound honourable, dignified even, but there was no honour or dignity in the lives of these people, hiding out in villas, mock-Spanish and otherwise, shitting themselves. Thorne would have liked to spend some time with a few of these old fuckers, these fossilised hardmen in Braintree and Benidorm. He wanted to slap their stupid, per ma-tanned faces and press a picture of Jessica Clarke up close.
"Like I told you before," Rooker said, "I got the call from Harry Little and drove up to meet Ryan in Epping Forest. A track near Loughton."
One way and another, Rooker's testimony was going to be key, and, as with all evidence from convicted criminals, it would not be hard to discredit. If it was given any credit in the first place. Whatever happened, they had to be sure it was nailed down tight.
"You got into his car." Thorne said.
"I got into his car."
"What kind of car was it?"
Rooker looked up, stared at Thorne like he was mad. "How the fuck should I know? It was dark. It was twenty years ago." Thorne sat back, like he'd proved a point. "Details are important, Gordon. Ryan's defence team are going to slaughter you if you give them a chance. If you can't remember the car, maybe you can't really remember exactly what Ryan said. Maybe you were confused. Maybe you thought he was asking you to do something when he wasn't. You with me?"
"It might have been a Merc. One of those old ones with the big radiators."
"Do you understand what I'm saying? This is why we have to do this." Rooker nodded, reluctantly. "I wasn't confused," he said. The door opened and Thorne muttered his thanks as a guard stepped in with drinks. Tea for him. A can of cheap cola for Rooker. The guard closed the door behind him. The drinks were taken.
"This is warm," Rooker said.
"When you got into his car, did Ryan come straight out and say what he wanted or did you talk about other stuff first?"
"He wasn't really the type to chat about the weather, you know? We might have talked about this and that for a couple of minutes, I suppose. People we both knew."
"Harry Little?"
"Yeah, Harry. Other faces, what have you. I don't remember him beating around the bush for very long, though."
"So, he asked if you'd be willing to kill Kevin Kelly's daughter, Alison?"
Rooker puffed out his cheeks, prepared to trot out the answers one more time. Thorne asked the question again.
"Yes."
"In exchange for money that he would give you."
"Yes."
"How much? How much was he proposing to pay you to kill Alison Kelly?"
Rooker looked up quickly, stared at Thorne. A charge ran between them, flashed across the metal tabletop. Thorne realised, shocked, that this had not come up before.
Rooker seemed equally taken aback. "I think it was about twelve grand."
"You think about?"
"It was twelve grand. Twelve thousand pounds." He said something else, something about what that sort of money might be worth now. Thorne had stopped listening. Now he knew what Alison Kelly's life had been worth. He was wondering whether he would have told her -the exact amount had he known it on the night he'd started whispering truths to her in the dark. Thinking that he probably shouldn't have said anything at all. "Did Ryan say why he wanted you to do this?"
"He was trying to get at Kevin Kelly, wasn't he?" Rooker said. "He wanted him to take on the other firms. He wanted to take over."
"I know all that. I'm not talking about that. Did he say why he was trying to do it by killing a child? You said yourself that it was extreme. That it was out of the ordinary."
"Right. Which is why I walked away. But, beyond what I've already told you, I don't know anything else. Same with all the jobs I did back then. Why was never my business."
Thorne took a slurp of tea. He opened his mouth to ask something else, but Rooker cut him off.
"How many more times do we have to do this?"
"This is probably the last time," Thorne said. "The last time we need to go over it, at any rate. I'm not saying there won't be further interviews with other officers."