Good as Dead

by Mark Billingham

  To start again …

  He turned towards Finchley and almost immediately hit a tailback. No more than five miles now, but still half an hour or so away from Hendon, and Becke House. The headquarters of the Area West Murder Squad.

  ‘Why the hell do you need to change your job?’

  He had been out drinking with Phil Hendricks a few weeks before, and, as always, the Mancunian had not fought shy of giving his opinion. Thorne shook his head, but had listened anyway. Hendricks’ opinion was the one he most valued professionally and the same thing usually applied when it came to his private life, because the pathologist was the nearest thing he had to a best friend.

  ‘Only friend,’ Hendricks never tired of saying.

  ‘Why not?’ Thorne had asked.

  ‘Because it’s not … relevant. It’s not necessary. It would be like me doing a post-mortem on some poor bugger who’d been shot twelve times in the head, then saying the fact he had hardened arteries and a slight heart condition might have had something to do with his death.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ Thorne had said.

  ‘It’s too much, that’s all. Just because you’ve split up with someone doesn’t mean you have to change everything. I mean, car … yes! The bloody thing was a death-trap and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with moving to a new flat either. We’ll find you somewhere much nicer than that dump you’re in now and I’ll take you shopping for some decent furniture, but do you really need to be looking for a new job as well?’

  ‘It’s all part of it.’

  ‘Part of what?’

  ‘New start,’ Thorne said. ‘New broom … leaf, whatever.’

  ‘You’re drunker than I am … ’

  They had moved on to football then and Thorne’s desolate sex life, but Thorne could see that Hendricks had a point, and he had thought about little else since. Even though he still believed he was doing the right thing in looking for a new challenge, the thought of leaving Area West Homicide made him feel slightly sick. The nature of the job and the politics of arse-covering meant that it was often hard to build up real trust between members of a team. Thorne had come to value the relationships he had with a number of those he worked with every day. Men and women he liked and respected. Plenty of idiots as well of course, but even so.

  Better the devil you know, all that.

  On the radio, Chris Evans was making him almost as angry as Expresso Man, so Thorne turned it off. He switched to CD and scanned through the ten discs he had mounted in the changer. He turned up the volume at the familiar guitar lick and that first lovely rumble of the man’s voice.

  Johnny Cash: ‘Ain’t No Grave’.

  ‘While you’re busy changing things,’ Hendricks had said, ‘you could always do something about that stupid cowboy music.’

  Thorne grinned, remembering the pained look on his friend’s face, and pushed on through the traffic towards the office.

  It was not as if he was going to take the first thing that came along. Chances were nothing suitable would present itself for a good while anyway, and by the time it did he might feel differently.

  For now he would just do his job, wait and see what turned up.

  THREE

  As Helen backed away from the gun, she could see a face at the window over Akhtar’s shoulder. One of the boys he had chased from the shop, open-mouthed at seeing what was happening inside. He shouted something to one of his friends before tearing away, down towards the station. If Akhtar heard it, he did not seem unduly concerned. He just kept walking towards Helen and the man standing next to her.

  Good, Helen thought, that’s good. At least now someone on the outside will know what the situation is and will alert the police. This was provided they believed it, of course. She could barely believe what was happening herself.

  Mr Akhtar.

  She could not say honestly that she knew the man, not really, but she had been coming into his shop for over a year. They’d spoken every day, no more than pleasantries, but still …

  What the hell was he up to?

  Pointing with the gun, Akhtar ushered Helen and the other customer around the counter and through a low archway into a cluttered storeroom behind the shop. Sitting on a battered wooden desk was a television showing Daybreak with the sound turned down. There was a single chair, a filing cabinet and a small fridge in the corner with a kettle, some mugs and a jar of coffee on top. Aside from a small sink, almost every inch of space on three of the walls was taken up with cardboard boxes and stacked plastic pallets containing replacement stock.

  Tinned goods, crisps, kitchen towel, cigarettes.

  There were two doors. The one with bolts top and bottom and a heavy padlock was clearly an exterior door which Helen presumed opened out on to the alleyway that ran along the back of the shops. She guessed that the unpainted plywood door led to a toilet.

  Akhtar said he was sorry that things were a little cramped and told them to stand against the one bare wall. He asked Helen if she had a mobile phone. She told him it was in her handbag. He told her to slide the bag across the floor towards him and told the man to slowly do the same with his mobile phone. Then, once he had taken a seat at the desk, he ordered them both to sink down on to their backsides. Without taking his eyes from them, he rooted around in one of the desk drawers before tossing two pairs of metal handcuffs across to Helen.

  ‘Off the internet,’ he said. ‘Top of the range. Same as the ones you use, I think.’

  Helen reached across and picked the cuffs up from the floor. ‘It’s not too late to stop this,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is you’re doing, things are not too serious yet, OK? I mean I can’t say for sure you’ll stay out of prison, because of the gun, but if you let us go now I’ll do everything I can to make sure that it’s not too bad. Are you listening, Mr Akhtar?’

  He smiled at Helen, a little oddly. Said, ‘I would like you to handcuff one another to the radiator pipes. There is one at either end, see?’

  Helen exchanged a look with the man slumped next to her, and nodded. She reached across and cuffed his right hand to the small pipe that ran down into the floor. When she had finished, though it had now become somewhat awkward and took rather longer, he did the same to her left hand.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the newsagent said. ‘The radiator is not on, so you will not get too hot.’ He looked at Helen. ‘Nice weather, like you said.’

  Helen could see that he was trying to make a joke, but she could also see the tension in his face and hear the tremor in his voice. She could see how frightened he was.

  This was not necessarily a good thing.

  Satisfied that his prisoners were secure, Akhtar stood up and walked back out into the shop. The man handcuffed next to Helen stared at the archway for a few seconds, then, apparently satisfied that the newsagent was not coming straight back, he turned to her.

  ‘You’re a copper, then?’ Perhaps it was because he was trying to talk quietly, but his voice was soft and high. He was well spoken with just a trace of a London accent.

  Helen looked at him and nodded.

  He had short hair and was wearing a blue suit and patterned tie. He reached up with his free hand and yanked the tie loose, tore at the top button of his shirt. He was sweating.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What are you going to do about this?’

  Helen looked at him. ‘Well, there’s not really a lot I can do. Not right this minute.’

  The man’s head dropped. ‘Shit.’

  ‘The first thing is that we need to stay calm, OK?’

  ‘You don’t understand, I’ve got a meeting this morning,’ he said. ‘A really important meeting.’

  Helen almost laughed, but the impulse vanished when she saw the desperation on the man’s face. She knew that such a reaction was not uncommon. She had heard about some of the victims of the 7 July bombings, stumbling up on to the street covered in blood, keen to tell police and p
aramedics that they would skip the visit to the hospital, thank you very much, that they needed to get to this or that appointment. This ‘inverted’ panic was a natural instinct in some; a refusal to accept that a situation could really be as serious as it was.

  It’s only a little bit of blood. It’s just a gun …

  ‘I think your meeting’s going to have to wait,’ Helen said.

  They stared at one another for a few seconds, until she saw the wash of acceptance slide across his face. He nodded slowly and sat back against the radiator. Said, ‘I’m Stephen, by the way.’

  ‘Helen,’ she said.

  They both turned at the sudden noise from the front of the shop. A loud grind and clatter. Stephen looked at Helen and she raised her voice over the drone. ‘He’s closing the shutters on the shop.’ They listened in silence until the squeals and clanking had finished, which told them that the solid metal shutters were now down, completely covering the shopfront.

  ‘We’re locked in,’ Stephen said.

  Helen was watching the doorway. ‘I think it’s more a question of locking everyone else out.’

  They had been locked in anyway, of course, but something in the lowering of the shop’s shutters, a change in the light perhaps, provoked an increased panic in the man. He began yanking at the cuffs which rattled and scraped against the radiator pipe, grunting with the effort that Helen knew was pointless.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  Stephen just yanked even harder. He moved on to his knees and began swearing and shouting as he used his free hand to try and pull the radiator away from the wall.

  ‘Please don’t—’

  When Akhtar walked back into the room, he could see that Stephen had changed his position but he did not seem concerned. He clearly had faith in the quality of the handcuffs and the strength of his radiator pipes. He spent a few minutes wrestling the heavy metal filing cabinet from against a wall and inching it, corner by corner, across the room until it was pushed up against the back door.

  He was sweating profusely by the time he had finished. He sat down at the desk and wiped his face with a handkerchief, then fished the gun from his pocket and laid it down on the desktop.

  He turned to look at Helen. ‘You have been in my shop hundreds of times,’ he said, ‘but I still don’t know your name.’

  Despite the situation and the fact that her mind was racing as she struggled to make sense of it, Helen felt a peculiar pang of guilt. She told herself she was being ridiculous. Life in a city like London was full of relationships such as theirs. A few words exchanged every day and a necessary distance maintained. Did this man want more than that? Did he feel … slighted? Rejected even? Was he interested in her romantically?

  ‘Helen,’ she said. ‘Detective Sergeant Helen Weeks.’

  He nodded. ‘My name is Javed.’ He looked over at the man sitting at the other end of the radiator. ‘I’m very sorry that you have been caught up in all this, Mr …?’

  Stephen was still breathing heavily. He did not look up. ‘Stephen Mitchell.’

  ‘I can only apologise, Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘Listen, Javed—’

  Akhtar cut Helen off. ‘What kind of police officer are you, Miss Weeks?’

  Helen was thrown by the question. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘In which area do you work? Do you investigate robberies, fraud? Murder?’

  ‘I work on a Child Protection Unit,’ Helen said.

  ‘So not murder?’

  ‘Sometimes … ’

  ‘I need to speak to a police officer urgently.’

  ‘So speak to me.’ She was careful to keep her tone even and reasonable. ‘Tell me what it is you want and we can sort all this out. Whatever your problem is, the sooner you let us go, the easier things will be.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I need to speak to a particular police officer, so I need you to help me.’

  ‘I want to help you, but I can’t—’ The words caught in Helen’s throat when she saw Akhtar’s expression change and watched him scrabble for the gun. She could see that, for the moment at least, he was done with being apologetic or reasonable.

  ‘I need you to use your phone,’ he shouted. ‘I need you to call whoever you have to call to get this policeman here.’

  He was waving the gun at them as he ranted and Helen was aware that, next to her, Mitchell was flinching each time Akhtar used the weapon to emphasise his wishes.

  ‘You get him here now, OK?’ Akhtar threw Helen’s handbag back at her and she had to raise her free hand to stop it hitting her in the face. ‘Get him here and I will tell you what to say when he comes.’

  Outside a siren began to sound, and grew louder.

  For a few seconds, Akhtar and Mitchell were both staring intently at her. Helen could feel the rage and the fear radiating from both of them and from inside herself. The heater at her back was not turned on, but might just as well have been.

  ‘Who?’ she asked.

  Akhtar told her the name.

  ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘Not well, but … ’

  ‘Good,’ Akhtar said. ‘That might help both of us.’

  Helen’s hand was shaking as she reached into her handbag for her phone.

  FOUR

  Thorne had just picked up his own ‘hit of caffeine’ from the ancient and grubby machine in the Incident Room and was walking towards his office, when Detective Chief Inspector Russell Brigstocke stepped out into the corridor in front of him.

  ‘Don’t take your coat off,’ Brigstocke said.

  ‘Bloody hell, can I finish my coffee?’ Thorne saw the look on his senior officer’s face and stopped smiling. ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got a situation in south London.’

  ‘South?’ Thorne’s squad worked the north and west of the city and rarely, if ever, ventured south of the river. Even when he wasn’t working, Thorne tried to avoid crossing the water whenever possible.

  ‘A Child Protection Unit in Streatham got a call from one of their officers who claims she’s being held at gunpoint in a newsagent’s in Tulse Hill.’ Brigstocke glanced down at the scrap of paper in his hand. ‘Sergeant Helen Weeks.’

  ‘I know the name,’ Thorne said. He tried to remember.

  ‘The CPU found us on the intranet system and the call got put through to me. So—’

  ‘She was the woman whose boyfriend got run down at the bus stop. A year and a bit ago.’ Thorne tried to picture the woman who had sat in his office, to whom he had briefly spoken at her partner’s funeral. ‘He was Job too, remember?’

  ‘No, but it might be relevant.’ Brigstocke shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea at the moment. Point is—’

  ‘Hang on, what’s this got to do with us?’

  ‘Not us,’ Brigstocke said. ‘You.’

  Thorne waited, already feeling an unwelcome tingle at the nape of his neck and starting to wish that he’d rung in sick.

  ‘The newsagent has apparently asked for you.’ The DCI was still staring at the scrap of paper as though trying to gain some insight from what was clearly limited information. ‘Better make that “demanded”, seeing as he’s holding a gun on a police officer.’

  ‘Have we got a name?’

  ‘Akhtar.’

  It was another name Thorne recognized, as Brigstocke had known he would. A surname, at least.

  ‘That manslaughter case last year,’ Thorne said. ‘Right?’

  ‘He’s the kid’s father,’ Brigstocke said.

  Thorne tried to picture the man, but the face would not come. He remembered an uncontrolled anger though, when the sentence had been announced, a fury the man had taken out vociferously on Thorne and his fellow officers outside the court. Despite having a good deal of sympathy for him, Thorne had tried to calm the man down, pointing out that he should be taking up his dissatisfaction with the judge and not the police.

  Thorne remembered the tears when the man had finally walked away.

  ‘So is that what this is all about
?’

  Brigstocke’s shrug said: your guess is as good as mine.

  ‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Thorne said. ‘The trial was what, eight months ago? Nine?’

  ‘Look, you know as much as I do,’ Brigstocke said, brandishing the scrap of paper. ‘I’ll try and find out as much as I can while you’re on your way down there.’

  ‘Can I take Holland?’

  ‘Just go.’

  Thorne walked quickly back into the Incident Room, told Detective Sergeant Dave Holland to follow him and took the stairs two at a time down to the car park. He grabbed a magnetic blue light from the boot and tossed it to Holland before they climbed into Thorne’s car.

  Holland dropped the light at his feet and reached for the seatbelt. ‘Any chance you might tell me where we’re going?’

  Thorne had shared such information as he had by the time the car was pulling out of Becke House and turning towards the north circular.

  ‘Something different,’ Holland said.

  Thorne had to agree, but was not at all sure that ‘different’ was what he needed right now.

  With the traffic thickening as they hit Park Lane at the height of the rush hour, Thorne suddenly remembered that Helen Weeks had been pregnant the last time he’d seen her. About to pop, more or less.

  She would have a one-year-old by now.

  ‘Let’s get the blues on,’ he said.

  Holland reached down for the light, and plugged one end of its curly lead into the car’s cigarette lighter.

  Thorne could imagine Helen Weeks staring at a gun and thinking about her child. He put his foot down, and as Holland leaned out to attach the blue light to the BMW’s roof, Thorne accelerated south towards Victoria and Vauxhall Bridge beyond.