Thorne could think of better places to be on a sunny morning. He hated hospitals for all the obvious reasons, as well as for a few others unique to the job he did to some of the cases he'd worked. He shuffled his chair a little closer to the bed. Holland was sitting next to him. On the other side of the bed, a prison officer relaxed in a tatty brown armchair.
"You're a lucky bastard, Gordon," Thorne said. Rooker had been attacked two days earlier, an hour or so after Thorne and Chamberlain had confronted Ryan in the street, and four hours before Marcus Moloney had been murdered. Thorne had presumed it had been the confrontation with Ryan which had prompted him to do something about Rooker, but now he realised that it could not have been organised in the time. It had to have been Thorne's earlier meeting with Ryan in his office, when he'd first mentioned Rooker's name, that had sparked things off.
He'd certainly touched a raw nerve.
Thorne tried to picture Ryan as he'd stood in the street outside his arcade, the wind whipping across his face. Ryan had stood there and smiled when Thorne had offered the greeting from Rooker, safe in the knowledge that a special greeting of his own had already been arranged. Rooker in the evening; Moloney later that night. Two problems solved within hours of each other.
What was it Rooker had said? Billy Ryan's cold. Rooker tried to lift himself up the bed a little. He grimaced in pain.
"Define lucky," he said.
The improvised shiv actually a sharpened paintbrush which Alun Fisher had stuck into his belly during an art class had somehow missed every vital organ in Rooker's body. He'd lost a lot of blood, but the surgery had been about patching him up rather than saving his life. Rooker settled back. "Lucky that I'm alive, but it's hardly fortunate that certain parties have got wind of things, is it?" Thorne decided that it wouldn't do Rooker any good to know who was responsible for mentioning his name to Billy Ryan.
"Told you I'd be marked, though, didn't I?" Rooker said. "Now I've got even more reason to make sure the fucker gets put away." Rooker's hair was lank and his skin was the colour of a week-old bruise. The gold tooth still glinted in his mouth, but half of the top set was missing, the bridge sitting in a glass on the bedside cabinet. A drip ran into his left arm and an oxymeter peg was attached to the index finger. His right wrist was connected, rather less delicately, to a prison officer, one of two on a rotating bed watch. The officer, skull and chin neatly shaved, sat with his head in a paperback. Rooker raised the handcuffs, lifting his and the officer's arm.
"Fucking ridiculous, isn't it?" The prison officer didn't even look up. "Like I'm going to do a runner. Like somebody's going to spring me. Like who?"
Holland smiled. "Got no friends, Gordon?"
"See any flowers?"
"Friends, acquaintances, we'll have to check all of that," Thorne said. "One or two people are still bothered by this bloke turning up out of the blue and claiming responsibility for what happened to Jessica Clarke."
"Check what you like," Rooker said. "I can't help you. I tell you what, though: if it is the bloke who did it, who really did it, we both know who can give you his name."
The small room was strangely half lit. The curtains had been drawn against the dazzling sunshine, filtering it through thin, brown and orange nylon. A dirty amber light moved across the pale walls, softening the metallic gleam of the dressing-trolley and the drip-stand.
"Tell me about Alun Fisher," Thorne said. With what few teeth were left in his upper jaw, Rooker bit down hard on his bottom lip. "He's nothing. A fucking little tosspot." Thorne heard the prison officer chuckle quietly and glanced across. It wasn't clear whether it was Rooker or his book that he was finding so funny.
"A little tosspot with a smack habit." Thorne could see where it was going. "And a drug debt, right?"
"A fucking big one. Three guesses who he owes the money to."
"So Fisher just walks up to you in the middle of a class?" Holland said. "Stabs you, just like that, while you're doing your Rolf Harris bit?"
"I thought you could see it coming," Thorne said. "That's what you told me last time. If someone was going to have a pop at you, you'd know about it."
Rooker sniffed, cast his eyes to the right. "Well, somebody looked the other fucking way, didn't they? Took their eye off the ball. These teachers in the Education Department don't get paid much, do they? Or maybe a screw fancied a new car, a holiday for the wife and kids."
If the prison officer was upset, he wasn't showing it. Park Royal was already carrying out an inquiry into exactly what had gone wrong, while Alun Fisher sat in a segregation cell waiting to see what they were going to do with him. Having fucked up and left Gordon Rooker breathing, he was probably more worried about what Billy Ryan was going to do. He might suddenly find that his debt had increased in all sorts of ways.
"So are you going to press charges?" Holland asked.
"Not much point, is there? They'll move Fisher to another prison. Might as well try to get through the rest of the time without any hassle."
"Up to you," Thorne said.
Rooker moved his hand and began scratching the top of his leg. The prison officer raised his head, waited a few seconds, then yanked the hand back down to the mattress.
"What you were saying about checking my friends," Rooker said. "How long is all this going to take? The sooner they get everything sorted out, you know, and arranged, the quicker we can start talking. Right?
This has been going on too long already." Thorne knew what Rooker meant, realised that he was reluctant to talk specifically about protection, and evidence, and Ryan, with the prison officer in the room.
"It won't be a quick decision," Thorne said. "They've only been considering the position seriously for the last couple of days." Rooker shook his head. "Right. That's typical. Maybe, if they'd considered it a bit earlier, I might not have had a fucking paintbrush jammed in my guts."
Thorne knew that was probably his fault. He looked at the indignant expression plastered across Rooker's yellowish chops. He could remember feeling guiltier. From the corner of his eye, he saw the prison officer look up when Holland's mobile rang. The DC checked the caller ID, stood up and took the phone out of earshot to answer it.
"You're supposed to turn those off in here," Rooker said. "They can interfere with medical equipment, you know. Fuck up the machines ."
The prison officer spoke for the first time: "Shame you're not wired up to a couple then. Might have done us all a favour." Thorne couldn't help smiling. "How long's he going to be here for?"
"We'll get him shifted back to the health care wing tomorrow, with a bit of luck," the officer said. "It's a level-three unit. They've got all the facilities, all the medication for any infection or what have you."
Rooker looked less than delighted, but it made sense. The prison would want him back as soon as possible. The officers would be wanted back where they could be of more use, and the hospital would be glad to get shot of any patient who needed guards.
Thorne heard the single, short tone as Holland ended the call and turned to ask him. "What?"
"That was DCI Tughan. He wants me to give you a message. You're not going to like it."
"Fuck."
Thorne could guess what the message would be. They must have turned down Rooker's offer. There hadn't been enough time for it to get up as high as it needed to go. It must have been blocked at a lower level. It would be interesting to find out exactly where. Thorne stood and pulled on his jacket. "It's not looking too promising, Gordon."
He saw the prison officer smirk, and return to his book. Thorne managed to make it through to the end of the day without having it out with Nick Tughan. He lost himself in a pile of unread memos, Police Federation junk mail and case updates from investigations he'd been working on before this one.
He then spent an evening in front of the TV without calling Tughan at home.
By lunchtime on Friday, just when he thought he'd given up on the idea, he found himself cornering Tughan in the Incident Room, spoiling for a fight. Sam Karim, who had been talking to Tughan when Thorne had marched over, made himself scarce pretty bloody quickly. Tughan leaned across a desk, flicking through the Murder Investigation Manual that seemed to have become his Bible.
"Answer in there, is it?" Thorne asked. Tughan glanced up. "What do you want, Tom?" Thorne wasn't 100 per cent sure. "Why didn't they go for it?"
"All the obvious reasons."
"Such as?"
"Oh, come on. Russell and I raised a number of concerns when you first brought it to our attention. When you eventually brought it to our attention."
It was clear to Thorne that Tughan was as riled up as ever. "This was a genuine chance to get Ryan for something and make it stick."
"Right. On the word of a man who confessed to it twenty years ago, and who suddenly decides to change his story."
"Ryan is panicking. He's seriously fucking rattled. Why else would he try to get Gordon Rooker out of the way after all this time?" Tughan went back to the manual. He licked a finger and began to flick through the pages. He was trying to slow things down, to put a foot on the ball. "Securing the release of a potentially dangerous prisoner is not something to be undertaken if there is any room for doubt."
"He'd be released into our custody, for fuck's sake."
"The last thing we need is a compensation case for wrongful imprisonment."
"How could Rooker claim compensation for that? He confessed!
Tughan looked at him as if he were an idiot. "If a decent lawyer gets a sniff of what's going on, that confession might suddenly turn out to have been all but beaten out of him."
"These are just excuses."
Tughan turned over another page.
"You're just pissed off because I came up with a way to nail Billy Ryan."
"I think you should get back to work."
"Same thing with the idea that it was Ryan who killed Moloney. Is anybody actually pursuing that line of inquiry?" The colour began to rise above Tughan's button-down collar. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Ryan had the perfect cover. He knew exactly what the X-Man did to his other victims. His men found two of the bodies, for fuck's sake."
"I know all this."
"All he had to do was make sure that whoever killed Moloney used the same type of gun and carved the X. It was a piece of piss."
"We're looking into it."
Thorne snorted. "Right, but not too hard. Because it came from me." Tughan slammed the manual shut. It sounded as though he was trying hard to keep his voice down. "Me again. There's over fifty officers working on this case."
"Don't give me that fucking "team player" speech." Thorne leaned forward, gripped the edge of the desk. "It's all well and good as long as you're the captain of the team. That's the truth."
"I'm not going to stand here and listen to this." Tughan picked up the manual and waved it angrily at Thorne. "Who do you think you're talking to?"
Thorne stepped back from the desk, laughing in spite of his anger.
"What? Are you going to throw the book at me?" For a few seconds, Tughan glared. Then, he dropped his eyes, gave a smile some room on his face. He opened the manual again and leafed through it until he found the page he was looking for. "Maybe just a bit of it," he said. Tughan snatched up a pen, dragged it hard across the page, and tore it out. He hesitated for just a second before stepping forward and pressing it hard against Thorne's chest.
"Something to think about."
Thorne grabbed at the torn-out sheet while Tughan stamped out of the room. Tughan had underscored one section hard enough to go through the paper.".
"The modern-day approach to murder recognises the fact that there is no longer the place for the "lone entrepreneur" investigating officer." Hendricks was working late. For the second night in a row, Thorne sat alone in front of the TV, trying to regain some equilibrium. It rankled that Tughan was choosing to ignore perfectly sound ideas, but, more than anything, Thorne couldn't cope with the idea that Ryan was going to get away with it. Yes, Tughan might nail him one day for drugs of fences or fraud, or bloody tax evasion. Who knew, perhaps even the Zarifs would get him?
But he wouldn't have paid for Jessica Clarke. Thorne brooded for most of the evening, then shouted at a TV chef for a while until the sourness began to dissipate and he started to feel better. Fuck it, February was almost over and spring was around the corner. He was thinking about maybe picking up his dad, driving down to Eileen's place in Brighton for the weekend, when the phone rang.
"Are you watching ITV?" Chamberlain asked.
"I was going to call you. The Rooker thing's a non-starter."
"Put it on," she demanded.
Thorne reached for the remote, changed the channel and turned up the volume.
A female reporter was talking straight to camera. Thorne watched, not clear what he was supposed to be seeing, until the camera cut away from the reporter and the story was told in a series of related shots. An empty playground. A group of schoolgirls gathered at a bus stop. A can of lighter fluid.
Thorne felt his guts jump.
"He tried to do it again," Carol Chamberlain said. "He tried to burn another girl."
MARCH
THE WEIGHT OF THE SOUL