The flash that had been in Chamberlain's eyes when she'd talked about killing Billy Ryan had gone. It had been replaced by something warmer, more muted. "I'm not exactly heartbroken myself," she said. Thorne lifted his glass. "Let's not overlook the substantial saving of taxpayers' money. Of our money. Or the fact that overpaid solicitors might have to wait that bit longer for flash cars and luxury holidays .."
Chamberlain did not come close to returning his smile. "It's not the right result, because with Ryan dead we'll never get him, will we? How will we ever know who Ryan gave that money to? How will we ever know who burned Jessica?"
The beer was suddenly vile in Thorne's mouth. He swallowed it quickly, tasting it thick and brackish as it moved down his throat. He felt it settle in his stomach, black and heavy, like doubt. Like guilt.
"Why did you tell her, Tom?" Chamberlain asked. "If it wasn't just a post-coital thing?"
Thorne shook his head. "I honestly have no idea." And he honestly didn't. "Not beyond a simple, strong feeling that she needed to know."
'"She needed to know", or you needed to tell her? They might have seemed like the same thing at the time."
"It felt good to tell her. I won't pretend it didn't."
"What about now?"
Now felt like a world away from then, though it was less than three weeks since he and Alison Kelly had slept together. Ten days since she'd stuck a blade into Billy Ryan. Now seemed infinitely confused and uncertain. Then, it had all seemed straightforward. Then, there had only been light and shadow, and a simple choice between a hot, hard knowing and an ignorance that looked and sounded anything but blissful.
Thorne blinked before answering Chamberlain's question, remembered the inscription on a headstone he'd walked past at Billy Ryan's funeral a few hours before.
In life, in death, in dark, in light. We are all in God's care. It was supposed to be simple. Life was light and death was darkness. But for some souls, the situation was always going to be more complex. There could be little doubt that Ryan's had been a life lived in darkness. Through it and for it. Right now, Thorne was not so certain where he stood.
"Now? I wish to God I'd kept my mouth shut," he said. "Not for Ryan's sake."
"For hers."
"She'll spend a long time in prison."
"There's a lot for the court to take into account.." Thorne shook his head. "A long time. And she's not hard, you know?
She must think she is. She made a decision to do what she did. She chose prison."
"Same as our friend Gordon Rooker," Chamberlain said. "Maybe we're not making these places scary enough."
"Right." It was an automatic response, meaning nothing. Alison Kelly would find it tough enough.
Chamberlain put down her glass, leaned forward. '"She chose prison." You said it yourself. You didn't put the weapon in her hand, Tom."
"In a way, I did." He took a sip of Guinness. It wasn't really tasting any better. "Didn't somebody say that knowledge is a dangerous thing?" Feeling his brain start to fuzz up just a little. Breathing a bit more heavily.
Thinking: knowledge is a knife.
"Probably," Chamberlain said. "Some smart-arse." The dour look on her face, the way her soft Yorkshire accent suited the word so perfectly, made Thorne laugh. A hole was punched through the murk that had been settling about their heads and sucking away the joy that was normally there between them.
"How's your cold case going, anyway? The case of the punctured publican."
"It wasn't a publican, it was in a pub car park and "cold" doesn't come close. There's icicles hanging off the bloody thing. Mind you, I've not exactly been giving it my undivided attention."
"Maybe now you'll be able to focus a bit more."
"Maybe."
Thorne touched his glass to her hand. "Billy Ryan. Jessica Clarke. You need to let it go now."
Slowly, her eyes widened. '"Let it go". Right. And the names Bishop, Palmer and Foley mean nothing to you."
Thorne's hand moved to his scrubby beard and his thoughts to the cases Chamberlain was talking about. Cases that had left their mark on him. Carved deep, but never less than fresh, never less than tender. How had one fifteen-year-old put it? "Like a mask you could never take off."
"I think', he said after a few moments, 'that I preferred it when you were insulting me."
Tottenham Court Road tube station was pretty handy for both of them. Thorne would take the Northern Line up to Kentish Town. Chamberlain could change at Oxford Circus, just two stops away from Victoria Station and the last train back to Worthing.
They walked past the church of St. Giles in the Field. It had been founded at the start of the twelfth century as a leper hospital, and its parish records contained the names of Milton, Marvell and Garrick. The burial grounds that lay behind the spiked metal fence contained many of those who'd met their end at Tyburn tree and whose final taste of alcohol had cost considerably less than Thorne and Chamberlain had just spent.
They crossed the road at Denmark Street and turned towards the Charing Cross Road. To the north of them, the skyline was dominated by Centre Point. The office block once thought smart, and even stranger, tall had stood totally empty for some time after it was first erected, and a charity for the homeless, as an ironic gesture, had taken its name. The building rose above an area that a hundred and fifty years before had been the city's most notorious and overcrowded slum. The Rookery had been a maze of filthy alleyways, rat-runs and courts where the poor had lived in squalor, and where crime had been as endemic as the disease. A sprawling network of so-called 'thieves kitchens' and 'flash houses' had made it a virtual no-go area for the police officers of the time.
Thorne outlined the history of the place as they walked. It had flourished, if that was an appropriate word, for over a century, before being demolished to make way for what was now New Oxford Street some time in the mid-nineteenth century. Thorne couldn't remember the exact date.
"You and I seem to talk about history a lot," Chamberlain said. Thorne laughed. "Some of it not quite so dim and distant."
"Why do you think that is?"
Thorne considered the question for a moment. "Maybe because we think we can learn from it."
"Can we?"
"We can. I'm not sure we have. I'm not convinced anything's changed very much."
Chamberlain said something, but her words were lost beneath the wail of a siren as a police van rushed past them towards Leicester Square. Thorne shook his head. Chamberlain waited for the noise to die down before she repeated herself. "Perhaps that's reassuring." Gazing through the windows of Internet cafes and computer stores, Thorne couldn't help but picture the gutters running with sewage, families packed into cellars. Men and women driven to prostitution and theft to maintain a standard of living that could only be described as inhuman.
"Have you read Oliver Twist?" Thorne asked. It was the iniquity of life in the Rookery, and places like it, that Dickens had described, perhaps a touch romantically, in his creation of Bill Sikes, Fagin and his gang of under-age rogues.
Chamberlain shook her head. "I've only seen the musical. Shameful, isn't it?"
Thorne had taken a few steps before he decided to make his confession.
"I was in a production of Oliver! at school. I was the Artful Dodger."
Chamberlain took his arm. "Now that I would have paid good money to see."
"You'd have felt very ripped off.." Thorne had actually enjoyed himself. He'd done his turn, shown off and clowned around, blissfully unaware that the real people on which the characters were based did somewhat worse than pick a pocket or two.
"Can you remember any of the songs?" Chamberlain asked. She began to hum "Consider Yourself", but Thorne didn't join in.