Doing a good job without charging silly money. It was simple really. He thought that he could build a decent reputation for himself by doing the same thing. He knew there were others, a few foreigners especially, who asked for more, but he believed that pitching yourself somewhere in the middle was the best policy long term. He flicked on his indicator, edged the bike's front wheel towards the road.
Not the cheapest, but one of the best: that was what he wanted people to think. All anyone really wanted was to believe they were getting value for money, wasn't it? Everyone loved a bargain. A lorry's horn blared as it rumbled by him. He pulled out into the stream of traffic, accelerated, and overtook it within seconds. Rooker was standing. Maybe he thought it gave him some authority. "We had an agreement," he said.
Thorne leaned back in his chair. He knew exactly how much authority he had. "I'm a police officer, and, unless I'm much mistaken, you're a convicted felon. This is a prison, not a gentleman's club, and the only part of you I'd ever consider shaking is your neck. Are we clear?"
Rooker ground his teeth.
"Any agreement you might have thought you had is worth precisely less than fuck all," Holland said.
Thorne shrugged. "Sorry."
Rooker sloped across the room, dragged back his chair and sank on to it. He pushed a palm back and forth across white stubble, the loose skin beneath his chin shaking gently. "There's stuff I know," he said.
"Stuff about plenty of people. I told some of it to DCI Tughan's boys, but there's other bits and pieces. There's a few things I kept back."
"Why was that, then?" Thorne asked.
"Because I wasn't sure you lot were being completely straight with me."
Holland laughed. "Straight with you?'
"I was right as well, wasn't I?" Rooker smiled thinly. His tongue flicked the spit away from his gold tooth.
Thorne could well believe that Rooker hadn't told them everything. He could equally well believe that Tughan had kept a few pieces of information back from the team himself. Thorne didn't really give a toss on either score.
"Whatever you may, or may not, have told SO7, the deal was based on you helping to put Billy Ryan away."
Holland took over. "Now that he's been put away for good, you're not a great deal of use."
"I want to talk to Tughan."
"You can talk to whoever you like," Thorne said. "I'm sick of listening to you." He reached behind for the leather jacket that was draped across the back of the chair.
Rooker slid a hand forward, slapped a palm down on the scarred metal tabletop. It was a gesture of frustration as much as anger. "I need to get out. I was supposed to get out."
"You'll be out soon enough," Holland said. Rooker spoke as if his mouth were filled with something sour, with something burned. "No. Not soon enough."
"Unfortunate turn of phrase, Holland." Thorne pulled on his jacket.
"Without your say-so I'll never get through the DLP next week. Those evil bastards'll make sure I die inside."
"You'll get out eventually," Holland said. "Think how much more enjoyable it'll be. Things are always better when you've looked forward to them for a while."
Thorne tried to catch Rooker's eye. The irises, green against off-white, darted around like cornered rats. "Especially now you don't have to worry about Billy Ryan paying someone to put a bullet in your spine."
"Well you certainly won't be worrying about it," Rooker said. Holland stood, tucked in his chair. "I reckon you've probably still got time to do something useful," he said. "Why not squeeze in a quick degree? Come out with a few letters after your name.?" Rooker muttered curses.
Thorne watched as he snatched the lid from his tobacco tin, dug into it. "Why are you so very keen to get out, Rooker? Got a little something stashed away?"
Rooker spat back the answer without so much as raising his head. "I told you before."
"Right. Some desperately moving crap about fresh air and wanting to watch your grandson play football."
"Fuck you, Thorne."
"You never know, Gordon. If the pair of you avoid injury, you might be out in time to watch him score the winning goal in the FA Cup Final. Although, with him playing for West Ham." The motorcyclist idled the bike, steady against the kerb, waiting out the final minute.
Trying to focus. Deciding to go half a minute early, to take into account the probable wait for a gap in the late afternoon traffic. Trying to clear his head. Trivial thoughts intruding, sullying the pure white horizon of his mind in the final few moments. They'd need to set aside enough for school uniforms. They weren't cheap when you needed to buy four or five of everything. Did the all-inclusive package in the Maldives include booze? He'd need to check. That could make a big difference.
He let one car pass, two cars, a push bike before accelerating away hard from the kerb and swinging the machine across both lanes in a wide U-turn. He pulled up outside a dry cleaner's, two doors along from the address he would be visiting. Then, within fifteen seconds, the moves he'd gone over in his mind a hundred times or more in the last few hours.
He flicked the bike on to its stand, left the engine running. He walked quickly to the box on the back. It had been left unlocked. He reached inside, withdrew his hand as soon as it had closed around the rubberised grip of the gun, and turned away from the street. The arm swung loose at his side as he walked, quickly but not too quickly from kerb to shop front Without breaking stride, he turned right into the open doorway of the minicab office. He was two large paces towards the counter before the man behind it looked up and by then the gun was being leveled at him. A man in an armchair in the corner lowered his newspaper and executed a near-perfect double-take before crying out. Hassan Zarif cried out too as a bullet passed through him. The spray of blood that fell across the calendar behind him was somewhat over dramatic in comparison with the gentle hiss from the weapon that had caused it. The motorcyclist fired again and Zarif fell back, dropping behind the wooden counter. The gun bucked in his hand, but only slightly. No more than it might recoil had it brushed the surface of something hot to test the temperature.
As he strode forward, his target having disappeared from sight, the door to the right of the counter burst open, and the motorcyclist turned just as the gun in Tan Zarif s hand began to do its work. The bullet smashed through the plastic of the darkened visor. By the time the first passer-by had spilled his shopping, and others who knew very well that a car was not backfiring close by were starting to run, the man in the leathers had dropped, with very little noise, on to the grubby linoleum.
For a few seconds inside the tiny office, there was only the ringing report of the unsilenced gunshot. The high-pitched hum of it rose above the deep rumble of a bus, passing by outside on its way towards Turnpike Lane.
Tan Zarif shouted to the man in the armchair, who jumped up and ran past him through the doorway that led to the rear of the office. Zarif stepped smartly across to the body. And it was a body, that much was obvious: the ragged hole in the visor and the blood that poured along the cushioned neck of the helmet and down, made it clear that the man on the floor would not be getting up again.
It didn't seem to matter.
The man who had been sitting in the armchair, the man who was now behind the counter bending over the bloodied figure of Hassan Zarif, clapped his hairy hands across his ears as Hassan's younger brother emptied his gun into a dead man's chest.
The first part of the drive back had been pleasant enough. They'd moved through the Wiltshire and Hampshire countryside quickly, but with enough time to enjoy the scenery, to laugh at the signs to Barton Stacey and Nether Wallop. Once they'd joined the M3, however, things had quickly become frustrating. It was one of those journeys where drivers had decided to sit there, beetling along at seventy or below in all three lanes. As usual, Thorne sat in the outside lane, grumbling a good deal and damning those ahead of him for the selfish morons they were. He never for a moment entertained the possibility that he might be one of them.