Thorne - Lifeless Part 37

THIRTY-SIX.

He heard the man coming long before he saw him. The footsteps sounded hesitant; he could recog nize the tread of someone unfamiliar within the network of tunnels from a mile away. He'd heard such echoes many times before: the click-clack of heels slowing, then speeding up again as confidence comes and goes; the sc.r.a.pe of a leather sole against the concrete as the wearer turns to get their bearings, or decides in which direction to proceed. Or whether to proceed at all . . .

When he finally saw the man rounding the corner, Spike stood. He leaned back against the wall and waited; tried to look unconcerned as the distance between the two of them shortened, as the man moved toward him through puddles of water and deeper pools of shadow.

"Am I in the right place?" the man said. Still twenty feet or more away.

The fear would have killed any strength in his voice anyway, but with the sound moving effortlessly, as it did through the air underground, Spike had no need to speak much above a whisper. "Depends," he said, "on if you've got s.h.i.+tloads of cash in one of those pockets . . ."

When the man stopped, it was three or four arms'

lengths away from Spike. He looked around quickly. Took in his immediate surroundings. "This is nice,"

he said.

Spike said nothing.

The man nodded toward the large cardboard box behind, and to Spike's right, against the wall. "That where you sleep?"

"It's a lot better than some places," Spike said. The corners of the man's mouth turned up, but it could hardly have been called a smile. "Tell me how you got the tape." It seemed that the small talk was at an end.

"I told you when I called . . ."

"You told me f.u.c.k-all," the man said. "You talked a lot of c.r.a.p and I've had a few days to think about it since then."

"What's the matter? Don't you want it? That's fine with me, like. Only you seemed keen enough on the phone . . ."

"Tell me."

It was never really silent down in the subways.

There was always the m.u.f.fled roar of the traffic overhead, the buzz of the strip lights, the eerie beat of dripping water. These were the only sounds for several seconds.

Spike rubbed his hands across his face. Through his hair. "What d'you want me to say?" His voice was hoa.r.s.e; cracked with nerves and desire. "You want me to tell you I'm a f.u.c.ked-up junkie? Do anything to score? Desperate enough for money to s.h.i.+t on a mate?"

"Now you're starting to persuade me," the man said.

"Thorne told me he was a copper, like. That he'd been working undercover because of these murders.

He told me about the case, about why everyone had been killed."

The man didn't blink.

"He talked about everything," Spike said. "What happened all them years ago in the f.u.c.king desert.

He told me who you were and he told me about the tape."

"Why?"

Spike shrugged. "f.u.c.k knows. Because it was his last night, I suppose, and the stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d thought it didn't matter. He said that the bloke who did the actual killing had legged it and there wasn't anything else anyone could do . . ."

The man thrust his hands into the pocket of a long leather coat and pressed his arms close to his body. It was getting very cold in the early hours. "So, you just sat there, took all that in, and saw an easy way to make a few quid?"

"More than a few, mate . . ."

"Don't try to be clever." It was a simple directive.

Spoken quietly, with the cold confidence that comes from being used to having such instructions followed.

"Look . . . I was f.u.c.ked off with him," Spike said.

"For bulls.h.i.+tting me all that time. For making me and my girlfriend and all the rest of us look like idiots. It was a good way to get my own back." The man looked unconvinced. "It was a good way to make some money."

"Yeah, all right. 'Course it was. Obviously, after what he told me, I knew that the tape was valuable.

That you'd probably pay a fair bit to get it back.

When he said he had the tape on him, I started to think about it, you know? I was thinking about a shedload of smack and that. And a flat for me and my girlfriend." Spike grinned, bounced a fist against his leg, as he thought about those things again. "She wants us to get a place together, you know?" "You just took it?"

"When he was asleep, I grabbed his stuff and f.u.c.ked off. I know he's looking for me, but I'm pretty good at keeping out of people's way, you know?" "He said this was the only copy?"

Spike widened his eyes. "Thorne's f.u.c.king mental.

I told you. I reckon being on the street has made him go funny, made him see things a bit twisted, like. He more or less nicked it, from what he was saying. Got some other copper he knew to hand it over to him on the quiet."

"Why would he do that?"

"Don't ask me. He was ranting about showing it to somebody. About using it for something." The man seemed to think about this.

"Listen," Spike said. "I don't really want to know about any of it, all right? Like you said, I'm just doing this for the money."

"Now, that I do understand," the man said. "It's what started all this in the first place."

Spike lifted a sleeve and rubbed the sweat away.

"Starts everything, mate. Only some of us need it a bit more than others . . ."

The man peered at Spike with curiosity and disgust, as though the wreckage of an accident had been taken away and he was staring at a bloodstain on the road. "My good fortune in this case," he said.

Spike reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a plastic carrier bag, and wrapped it around whatever was inside. "Tape's in here," he said.

The man made no move to take it. "You know that if you're f.u.c.king me about, I'll find you," he said. "However good you think you are at keeping out of people's way. I'll pay someone to find you." "Thorne told me what's on here." Spike shook the package. The tape rattled inside. "I haven't watched it, but I know what you did. I know what happened back then, and what happened later on with cars and tablets and with army boots, so I know what you're capable of." He looked across at the man and held his stare. "I'm a junkie, and a liar, and a f.u.c.k ing thief. But I'm not stupid . . ."

The man seemed impressed by this. When his hand came out of his pocket it was holding a bulging, brown A3 envelope.

"How do we do this, then?" Spike held out the plastic bag at arm's length. It shook in his hand. He dropped the arm and took a breath; tried to sound casual. "You want me to chuck it over or what?" The man stepped forward suddenly, and kept coming as Spike moved backward away from him. When Spike was against the wall, the man gently lifted the package from his hand. Six inches taller than Spike, he looked down and pressed the envelope against the boy's chest. "Quite a bit in here," he said. "Quite a lot of s.h.i.+t to put in your arm . . ."

The man's eyes swiveled in an instant to the cardboard box and at the same moment he took a step back. At the sudden noise; at the movement . . . A week before, back at the Lift, when they'd been playing pool and talking about how it might work, this had been the moment that had caused Spike to laugh out loud. Back before Thorne had gone to Brigstocke or Brigstocke to Jesmond. Before Jesmond had gone higher to wherever the buck stopped. This had been what they'd called the "rat"

moment.

"He'll probably think it's a rat," Spike had said.

"A f.u.c.king big one, like. He'll probably s.h.i.+t himself . . ."

The man's reaction when Thorne appeared from inside the box-sitting and then standing up in one smooth movement-was less dramatic than Spike had predicted, but Thorne could certainly see that he'd sprung a powerful surprise. "I'm guessing those football tickets are out of the question now," he said.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Alan Ward nudged his gla.s.ses, then reached to grab a handful of hair at the back of his head, as if that might be the only way to stop himself shaking it. He'd carried on moving backward as the sides and lid of the box had burst outward and upward, and now he stared at Thorne and Spike across the eight or so feet that separated one wall of the tunnel from the other.

Thorne glanced to his left. "All right?"

Spike nodded, without taking his eyes off Ward. "This is . . . interesting," Ward said, finally. He looked both ways along the length of the tunnel. "No point in going anywhere," Thorne said. "Because . . . ?"

"Because there are police officers at every exit. Why did you think it was so quiet down here tonight?" "Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Spike said.

The slow shake of Ward's head became a nod of acceptance, and as Thorne watched, an excitement of sorts came into the journalist's eyes. Though he was clearly anxious-the muscles in his face and neck singing with it-there was also a calmness in his voice and in his manner, as though he were somehow relaxed by the tension.

He glared at Spike. "That little f.u.c.ker wired up, is he?"

Spike just smiled.

"Or have you got something set up in the box?" Thorne nodded up at the roof of the tunnel, toward one of the small, metal PA speakers that was now more or less directly above Ward's head. "The mike's in there," he said. "And the camera. Seemed appropriate to get it all on film as well."

"You haven't got anything."

"You know we've got plenty . . ."

Ward c.o.c.ked his head as if he were weighing it up.

Then he casually dropped the package he was carrying to the ground and began to stamp on it. The noise, as the tape's plastic housing first cracked and then shattered, echoed back along the tunnel from left and right.

Thorne waited for a couple of seconds. "Well done," he said. "You've just stomped the s.h.i.+t out of a Jim Carrey movie."

"I don't believe you . . ."

"Not that we couldn't have tied you to these latest killings without the tape anyway, but did you really think we'd only have one copy?"

Ward turned angrily to Spike.

"Since when do junkies tell the truth?" Spike asked.

Ward's unsettling calmness had all but vanished now. Thorne was aware only of the adrenaline, of a readiness, in the man opposite him. And something else at the furthest edge of the rush: Ward's barely concealed fury at the hopelessness of his situation.

There was nothing practical to be gained by it, but still there were many reasons why Thorne felt the need to push and to bait. To glory, and to let Ward see him glory at his impotence.

"So, lucky or unlucky, then?" Thorne said. "The day you came across that tank crew. What d'you reckon, Alan?"

Ward seemed to find the question funny. Asked one in return: "For me or those Iraqis?"

Thorne answered with a look.

"Lucky for me, definitely," Ward said. "Very lucky. And you can make your own luck up to a point, but it's what you do with it that makes the difference."

"What were you doing there?" Thorne asked.

"I was driving around, monitoring radio transmissions, and I heard Callsign 40 radio through that they'd thrown a track." Ward leaned back against the wall and looked hard at Thorne. This wasn't reminiscence. It was education. "I heard REME telling them that the engineers couldn't get out there for a couple of hours, and I was nearby, so I thought I'd head across and see what was happening. By the time I'd got there, the men in the Iraqi tank had just driven up and surrendered. Popped their lids waving f.u.c.king white flags . . ."

"Very stupid of them."

"See, I had my nice bit of luck right there, and ordinarily that's all it would have been. If all I'd wanted was to point my little camera and watch a few of our boys capturing a few of theirs, that would have been handy. But it was much more than that. Because I wanted much more than some boring bit of footage that might or might not have given me a bit of clout next time I was negotiating a pay rise."

"So you . . . encouraged them."

Ward was still, and focused, his eyes unblinking in the artificial light. When he spoke, it was clear to Thorne that what he said was deeply felt. The frigidity and scorn for life that Thorne knew to be at the core of this man were belied by the twisted pa.s.sion of the words.

"Have you ever thought you were about to die?" Ward asked. "Or even that you were about to be the one to take a life? Have you ever really experienced that sort of excitement?"

Thorne had little intention of answering, and Ward had even less of giving him the opportunity.

"I suppose, because of what you do, that you've felt it more keenly than most, and let me say straightaway that I admire what you do. Really. Perhaps you have been in the sort of situation I describe, but can you even begin to imagine feeling those things for days, for weeks, on end? Constantly. Can you imagine it becoming something that you live with?" He flicked his eyes to Spike, spat the words out at him. "That . . . heightened feeling in the body becomes something that's more powerful than any drug. And when you come down from it, you fall a very long way and you fall very hard."

"What the f.u.c.k do you know about it?" Spike said.

Ward just smiled and turned his attention back to Thorne. "Those boys were trained for it . . . And they were boys, emotionally at any rate. They were taught to expect it, whipped up into a state every day until eventually, not seeing combat became far worse than seeing it. They needed the high, can you understand that? They were sent over there to do a job and then some of them didn't get a chance to do it. There were lads out there turning on each other. Shooting f.u.c.king camels. Anything to get close to that buzz."

"You wanted it, too, though, didn't you?"

Ward's eyes widened. "I was . . . frustrated, yes," he said. "And me and that situation were just f.u.c.king perfect for each other. They thought it was about to happen, Hadingham and Eales and the others. They'd been told that the enemy was close, that there was every chance of engaging at any f.u.c.king moment. Then the machine lets them down and they can do nothing but watch their mates disappear into the distance. Feel that buzz disappear with them."

"What did you do?"

"I hardly had to do anything," Ward said. "I was the catalyst, if you like; that's all. They just needed someone to give them a nudge in the right direction, to tell them that what they were thinking about doing, what they wanted to do, was absolutely understandable. That it was all right." His voice had become quieter, more intense, and when he paused there was a rattle in his breath. He nodded toward the plastic bag at Thorne's feet, to the remains of the video inside. "I don't know what you think you've seen on the tape, but I promise you that even the ones that weren't so keen to begin with, the ones that needed a bit of persuading, they got the biggest thrill of their lives that day. Ryan Eales, for one, spent the rest of his life trying to recapture it."

"By killing for you?"

"For me, among others. He was a professional."

"Usually . . ."