Death Message

He tried to move but couldn’t; knew that he didn’t have time.

The car’s engine screamed only a little louder than he did, for those few seconds before he was hit. The bumper squealed against the bodywork as it took his legs; spun him up and over the bo

Then, final moments in the air; fierce and crowded.

The dull crack of the screen shattering, and his own bones. The car speeding away.

His ex-wife and the two children he never saw.

His dog…

‘It’s me. Just calling to see how things were going really. Ring me when you get in, and we can see which one of us has had a shittier day.’

‘Hello, love, hope you’re well. Just wondered if you were any the wiser about Christmas…’

‘If you want to call me later on, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter if it’s late, OK?’

Messages on Thorne’s machine when he got home: Louise; Auntie Eileen; Yvo

Thorne hadn’t responded to any of them. He didn’t want to have any of those conversations; knew he wouldn’t be capable. There was only one person he was eager to speak to.

He could barely remember leaving work, the journey home, or walking through the front door and scattering food into a bowl for the cat. He drifted from room to room like someone waking up. He turned the TV on and turned it off again. He stood and stared at bits of the flat as if he’d never seen them before. The way the ceiling met the wall in one corner. The angle of a door striking him as odd and unfamiliar.

He walked around the flat and thought about Arkan Zarif.

Two and a half years before, Thorne had been working on a series of gangland killings; an inquiry which had then widened to include a search for the man who had set fire to a young girl in a playground in 1984.

It had been a case that had cost many more lives by the time it was over, and although a degree of justice had been meted out, the man responsible for most of those deaths had escaped it.

Had perhaps meted out a little of his own.

The Zarif family owned restaurants and minicab companies, but their main income came from elsewhere: extortion; human trafficking; the importation and distribution of heroin. The business was fronted by Memet, Tan and Hassan Zarif, but the decisions were all taken by their father: ‘Baba’ Arkan Zarif.

Zarif had seen many of those nearest to him die or go to prison, had seen his business suffer through the actions of Thorne and others. But he had taken care to protect himself and had continued to run his unassuming family restaurant: choosing the meat, carefully preparing the diced lamb and the delicately spiced milk puddings. He had remained untouchable.

And life, business, had carried on as normal…

Thorne had gone to see him just once, when the inquiry had all but run its course. He had tried to make it clear that he was not a man who liked leaving loose ends around. He had fronted the old man out, made empty threats and talked about honour.

Later, he had taken steps that led to a man Zarif had agreed to protect being murdered. Then, a month after that, Thorne’s father had died in a fire at his home.

Thorne had gone through that conversation with Arkan Zarif many times since. Recalled every smile, every shift of those powerful shoulders.

‘I take my business very seriously,’ Zarif had said.

Thorne had failed to protect his father, even though he’d known the old man could not look after himself properly. So he had lived with the terrible knowledge that his father’s death had been his fault, whether the fire had been accidental or not.

Just the mention of Zarif’s name in the interview room had been enough. His mouth had gone dry in a second, and he could taste the sick rising up into his throat. Not knowing what had happened to his father had been bad enough, but whenever Thorne had fantasised about discovering the truth, he had never been able to decide what it was he hoped to find.

Now, he walked around his furniture and waited for whatever was coming. If Kemal was right, Arkan Zarif had destroyed another family; had indirectly wreaked the havoc of grief among many more people. Thorne felt he might finally have been gifted a chance to tie up at least one loose end.

But it was closer to dread than excitement.

Brooks called just before ten o’clock.

‘It’s finished,’ he said.

Thorne knew at once what Brooks meant. The officer he had spoken to earlier that day had made the wrong decision. Or at least had not made the right one quickly enough. Thorne felt no more than if he’d just been told it was going to rain the next day. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It isn’t finished.’

‘I’m tired. I don’t care.’

‘You need to listen,’ Thorne said. ‘You still believe me when I tell you that nobody is listening to these calls, don’t you? That there’s no trace.’

Brooks finally sighed, as though it hurt to push out the breath. ‘I believe you.’

‘Good.’ Thorne sat down. ‘Because this might take a while…’

THIRTY-FIVE

Thorne could have made the journey to Green Lanes in his sleep. He’d sat in his car and watched Zarif’s restaurant enough times to be familiar with the routine; to know what times people tended to come and go. He knew where to park so that his car would not be seen, and how to get round to the alleyway that ran along the back of all the businesses in the small parade of shops near Manor House Tube station.

It was just after eleven o’clock.

The service entrance to Zarif’s restaurant was no more than a small yard off the dimly lit alleyway. Thorne knew which one it was. He could see the grey plastic wheelie-bins from the end of the alley. He had stood in the same spot several times and watched the old man, or occasionally his wife or daughter, bringing out the leftovers at the end of the night, dumping bottles in the recycling buckets, as the ovens cooled down inside, and the last customers were ushered out of the front door.

Thorne knew that this usually happened before eleven-thirty, or a little later on a Saturday. Within the next half-hour, most of the clearing up would have been done. Zarif’s wife and daughter would be on their way back to the grand and gated family home in Woodford, leaving the boss to sit quietly alone, as he did every night, with a glass of wine or a strong Turkish coffee.

Contented and complacent. Thinking about the day’s takings from the restaurant. From his other, more profitable businesses.

From the end of the alleyway, Thorne watched a ski

A minute or so later, Thorne saw another figure emerge from a pool of shadow, a few feet from where the cat had been. He knew that the man could see him; that the street-lamp behind cast enough light to make his small wave visible.

The man raised a hand in return, then disappeared as quickly as the cat had done. Thorne stood for another minute, then walked back round to his car to wait.

Forty-five minutes later, he was listening to drops of water falling on to the roof of the BMW from the trees above as he continued to stare across the road.

Watching as customers left, then the single waitress. Figures still moving around inside.

The restaurant was set back on a wide pavement, between an estate agent’s and the minicab office. This was another of the family’s firms, run by Arkan’s eldest son, but Thorne knew all three sons’ habits as well as he did their father’s. If Memet or his two younger brothers were in there, Thorne knew that they would be ensconced in the back room by now, deep into a high-stakes card game with associates.