Good as Dead (44 page)
On spotting Thorne, the imam and his followers changed course, veering towards him like an articulated lorry switching lanes.
Shakir told Thorne how pleased he was to see him. He talked about Amin in reverential tones and made the same sorts of noises the governor had made. Thorne waited politely for the priest to finish, then stared over his head and spoke directly to Aziz.
The boy would not look at him.
‘Given up on the science then?’ Thorne said.
Eyes screwed tightly shut, he screamed up into her face, bouncing on the mattress in time to his keening and pulling hard at the edge of the cot. He leaned his head against the bars then rubbed his gums against the padded vinyl. He fell suddenly silent for a few seconds, as though he had forgotten what it was he was so upset about, then stared up at her, his lip quivering, and raised his arms.
‘Come on then, chicken,’ Helen said. She heaved her son up and placed his hot, sweaty head against her chest.
His cry was still the only thing that could rouse her – waking her almost instantly, completely – and three weeks on from it, she remained amazed that she was sleeping so well. Sleeping at all. Even that first night, she’d been spark out in the back of the panda car before it had arrived at her sister’s place. Stretched out on the sofa an hour later, with Jenny still waiting not very patiently for juicy details and Alfie wriggling on her chest.
Sleep of the just, her dad would have called it.
She turned the dial on the musical mobile that was clipped to the edge of the cot. She murmured and shushed and padded around the small bedroom on her bare feet. She rubbed and patted and Alfie’s nappy was heavy against her hand.
‘Right, chicken.’ She carried him across and laid him down on the single bed. Leaned across for the changing bag. ‘Let’s sort you out.’
She smiled, remembering.
I slept like a baby last night.
The pair of them in the pub with a few mates. Paul, a pint or two in, and on a roll.
Woke up every hour and shat myself!
Releasing the poppers on the baby grow, she decided she was definitely going to call her DCI first thing. She was ready to go back to work, had been within a day or two if she were being honest. She felt fine and there was nothing she needed to ‘come to terms’ with. She did not need any more ‘time and space to recover’ and she was not up for introspection.
Not any more.
Imagining herself walking back into her office, the faces of her colleagues, she thought again about the things she had told Javed Akhtar. Those first few minutes after she was taken out of there, she had studied the face of every officer she’d come into contact with and wondered which of them had been listening in to her confession. How long it would take before the gossip spread as far as her own unit. By the time she was washing the blood off her hands, she had decided that she didn’t really give a toss, that she had more important things to worry about.
She lifted Alfie’s legs up. She pulled the dirty nappy away and dropped it into a nappy sack. She wiped him down, struggling to keep him still, then began to slather on the cream.
Within a day or two of her release, it had become obvious that nobody had told Donnelly or anyone else exactly what had gone on in that storeroom at the end. Nobody had talked about the gun being held at Prosser’s head. She racked her brain, trying to recall if Thorne or Prosser had said anything while it was happening that would have given the game away to those listening in, and began to realise that she had got away with it.
Same as she had with Mitchell.
They talked about her bravery from day one, her
resilience
. Holed up in there with a gun to her head, knowing that she too could be killed if she let on that her fellow hostage had already been murdered. They talked about the strength of her character.
Mentioned a medal, for God’s sake.
Tom Thorne had known that keeping Mitchell’s death secret had been her decision. When they found their first moment alone together, he told her that he’d suspected it almost as soon as he’d been sent that picture of Stephen Mitchell’s body. He hadn’t said anything. He disposed of his mobile phone as soon as he had the chance. He had enough secrets of his own, he told her, so keeping another one was hardly going to get him into any more trouble.
Thorne did not seem overly burdened by guilt at the way things had panned out, which was fine, because neither was she.
Been there, done that, bought the hair T-shirt.
The way she heard it, Nadira Akhtar was not exactly overcome with remorse either and Helen had no real problem with that. She would never forget the look on Javed Akhtar’s face though, when he had finally revealed just why his guilt was so poisonous and so all-consuming; why the ravenous cancer of it would never stop sucking at him. He had smiled at her and looked as good as dead.
‘My sweet, sweet boy,’ Akhtar had said.
Helen sat there on the edge of the bed as the music wound slowly down. She had a clean nappy in her hand, but she was happy enough just to sit and watch her son kick his fat little legs for a while.
There was light – grey and watery – creeping in through the gap where the curtains would not close properly. There were birds too – a couple of tone-deaf blackbirds with smoker’s cough – and Thorne guessed it was somewhere around four, but his watch was on the dressing table and he could not be arsed to slide across to the other side of the bed and check the clock to be sure.
Whatever time it was, awake was awake and Thorne didn’t fancy himself to get to sleep again any time soon. He hadn’t been sleeping particularly well since the siege had ended. Some nights he would wake every couple of hours, his skin slick and his brain feeling as though it were about to overheat, his internal clock shot to pieces. Not that missing out on a few hours’ sleep during the night mattered a great deal at the moment.
Not when he could catch up during the day.
‘You should take the chance to get away,’ Hendricks had said. ‘Think of it like a holiday and do something you’ve always fancied.’
‘I quite fancy doing sod all, which is handy at the moment.’
‘Seriously. You could go to Nashville … ’
‘It’s suspension without pay,’ Thorne reminded him. ‘I could barely afford half a day at Southend.’
‘So, read a few books, go to a gallery or something.’
Thorne had watched a lot of daytime television.
Even before Javed Akhtar’s wife had got busy with the storeroom scissors, Thorne had known he was likely to end up facing disciplinary action of some kind. Once Prosser had bled like a stuck pig all over last week’s
Daily Express
and
TV Quick
there had been no question about it, but Thorne would almost certainly have been in big trouble anyway, just for taking him in there.
‘There was always going to be some wrist-slapping,’ Brigstocke had told him. ‘Just for the way you did it. I know it’s stupid and you didn’t have a lot of choice, and I know that his being a judge should have bugger all to do with anything, but there you go. You might still have got away with it, but chuck in this business with the warrant and you’re properly stuffed.’ Brigstocke had at least looked genuinely upset,
was
genuinely upset, but it had not made it any easier to hear. ‘I’ve gone out on a limb for you before, Tom, you know I have, but not this time. Nothing I can do to help you, mate.’
In the end, the illegal search of Jonathan Bridges’ flat had put the tin lid on it and by the time the dust had settled, at least three different DPS teams had worked themselves into something of a frenzy. Whatever else happened, Thorne was determined to find out which job-pissed arse-licker had grassed him up about the warrant. To make his displeasure plain and painful. He knew, were this to happen before the brass had decided his fate, that it would not be doing his cause a great deal of good, but such things could not be helped.
Might as well be hung for a sheep as a judge.
Thorne lay listening to the birds getting louder and remembering the look Antoine Daniels had given him earlier that day, hinting at a revenge of his own.
Then I’d
definitely
lose my nice fancy room.
Plenty of people had lost a great deal more than that.
Stephen Mitchell, Denise Mitchell, Peter Allen.
Javed Akhtar …
Akhtar had lost his son, his wife, everything he had ever worked for. Once the body had been removed and the forensic evidence gathered, a FOR SALE sign had gone up outside his shop and those dirty metal shutters had come down for the final time.
The word
MURDERER
now legible underneath
PAKI
.
One thing Thorne
had
decided to do with the free time so generously granted him by the Directorate of Professional Standards was try and get the flat in Kentish Town shifted. The estate agent was talking about dropping the price a little further, but Thorne wanted to try tarting the place up a bit first. A lick of paint, the smell of fresh coffee, all that. Though the change of direction job-wise would now need to be put on hold for the immediate future, or more likely would be decided for him, he could at least make an effort as far as domestic circumstances were concerned.
Not that there hadn’t already been major changes in that area.
‘Sorry, did he wake you?’
Thorne looked up to see Helen in the doorway, carrying the baby. ‘I was awake already.’
‘Do you mind if he comes in with us?’
‘Course not,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s your bed. Are
you
all right with that though? I mean … ’
‘Fine with me.’ She folded back the duvet and laid Alfie down. ‘I mean we’ll have to see how jealous
he
gets.’ She grinned as she climbed in. ‘And believe it or not, he snores.’
‘I think I can live with that.’
‘Then again, so do you.’
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘
And
you talk in your sleep.’
‘What?’
‘Should have heard yourself the other night. “Phil, Phil … ”’
‘You’re hilarious,’ Thorne said. Thinking about it, he probably had talked a good deal about Phil Hendricks since he and Helen had begun spending time together, that friendship one of the few things in his life he could still count on. Actually, they had talked about all sorts of things this last couple of weeks, the job not included. Laughed a lot too, which never hurt. ‘I don’t though, do I?’
‘Well it’s only been four nights.’ Helen turned on to her side and looked at him. ‘Didn’t Louise ever say anything?’
Thorne shook his head.
Four nights. Many bottles of wine …
The baby had begun to grizzle a little and Helen drew him close. Thorne moved gradually across to close the gap and found himself enjoying the feel of the small warm body against his own. The hand that flopped on to his arm or the swaddled foot that dug into his ribs. ‘He’s got a decent kick on him,’ Thorne said. ‘We could do with him at Spurs.’ He turned on to his side and looked at Helen. ‘Did Paul support a team?’
Helen’s turn to shake her head.
They lay in silence for a while, but Alfie refused to settle and began to cry again. Helen said that three in a bed was a stupid idea. That she was happy to take the baby back to the spare room, so that Thorne could try and get to sleep.
‘Stay here,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s not like I’ve got anything to get up for, is it?’
‘What do you think they’ll do?’ Helen asked.
Thorne knew that the DPS had plenty of options. ‘Depends how public they want to be about it,’ he said. ‘I could always save them the trouble and knock it on the head.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘It’s good to think about doing something else every now and again,’ he said. ‘Don’t you reckon? Something nice and simple and boring.’
‘I suppose.’
‘Apparently, there’s a newsagent’s for sale just up the road.’
Helen began to giggle, and when she lifted her leg across his, Thorne reached over the baby to stroke her neck. ‘Let me take him next door,’ she said. ‘I can get him off in ten minutes and come back.’
Thorne nodded, grinning. ‘Then you can get
me
off,’ he said.
That was when Alfie chose to start kicking him again.
I am enormously grateful to the many people without whom this book would be as good as dead …
First and foremost, I am thankful to Dilip Gaglani for his kindness, his patience and a memory almost as astonishing as the life it recalled in such amazing detail.
Simply put, there would be no book without him.
As far as the book’s other major location is concerned, I could not have created a YOI as dysfunctional as Barndale without seeing how one should be run properly. I owe a huge debt to Emily Thomas (governor), Sara Pennington (deputy governor), the fabulous Stieve Butler and all the staff at HMP Cookham Wood, whose attitude towards the boys in their care is truly inspirational. Further thanks are due to Debbie Kirby of HMP Press Office for arranging my trips inside and to my good friend Martyn Waites for guidance and great stories.
A born storyteller with an enviable amount of material, Ivor Ward was hugely generous with his time and advice, as were Caroline Haughey and Carl Newman, whose legal expertise was invaluable. Thanks to Michael Jecks, who has forgotten more about guns than most people will ever know, to Tony Fuller who saved my bacon innumerable times and to Premiership forensic experts Professor Dave Barclay and Dr James Grieve. They all answered more stupid questions than anyone would consider reasonable.
Ten years ago, the incomparable Dr Phil Cowburn provided the spark that brought the first Thorne novel,
Sleepyhead
, to life. This time round, his champagne moment was every bit as important.
I owe you, Phil …
As always, the book would be the poorer were it not for the eagle eye of Wendy Lee, the enthusiasm and expertise of David Shelley and the team at Little, Brown and the immaculate furnishings of Sarah Lutyens.
