Good as Dead

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Javed doesn’t think that Amin killed himself,’ Thorne said. ‘He wants me to prove it. To find out what happened.’

  Nadira laughed derisively. ‘I want to win the lottery, so what?’

  ‘You’re not holding people at gunpoint until you do though.’

  She turned to him. She was ashen. She said, ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘You can start by telling me you think he’s wrong. About what happened at Barndale.’

  ‘My son took his own life,’ she said. She might have been telling Thorne her son’s name or how old he was. A simple statement of fact. ‘He could not cope with what had happened to him. What was happening to him every day. He was not … a hard boy.’

  ‘So why does your husband believe that he was killed?’

  She thought about it for half a minute. ‘It’s easier for him to believe that, perhaps. He likes to think that everyone is lying to him.’ She stretched her legs out, but they still did not reach the end of the footwell. ‘He doesn’t really sleep any more, so there is a lot of time for brooding on things and for foolish ideas to take hold.’

  ‘What about you?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Me, what?’

  ‘How are you sleeping?’

  She gave a small shrug, and smoothed out the material of her sari against her legs. ‘I have some pills. It’s fine.’ She glanced at Thorne. ‘You have to move on.’

  Nadira Akhtar sounded fine. She spoke as if she had come to terms with what had happened to her son in a way that her husband had not, but Thorne could sense the anguish beneath the matter-of-fact exterior. He knew this was how couples coped sometimes. How they handled disaster. There was little point in both partners going to pieces and, if one did, the other had to at least maintain the pretence of getting on with things. Hadn’t he and Louise done much the same thing after the miscarriage?

  All a front, of course, but one that had served its purpose for a time.

  Nadira had other children, a life to live, a business to keep afloat. It was understandable that she should at least seem to have adjusted to the death of her youngest child so much better than Javed.

  ‘You’ll need to help him,’ Thorne said.

  Before Nadira could answer, her mobile rang. She fished it from her bag, then spoke in Hindi for a few minutes. She sounded agitated, but had calmed down by the time she ended the call.

  ‘My eldest son,’ she explained. ‘He is waiting for me back there, with the police. He is very upset.’

  ‘I’ll get you back as soon as I can.’ Thorne checked in his rear-view and raised a hand to the driver of the squad car that had followed him from south London. The squad car flashed its lights in acknowledgement. ‘There’s an officer on the scene who specialises in these situations,’ he said. ‘She thinks you might be able to help. That it might be good if you talked to Javed.’

  ‘We would only argue,’ Nadira said. ‘He won’t listen to me.’

  ‘Will you try?’

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  ‘There’s a woman in there with your husband who has a young child. She’s very scared.’

  ‘He won’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘Are you certain about that?’

  She reached into her bag and produced a wad of tissues. She clutched it in her fist. ‘Before Amin died, I would have laughed out loud if you had told me what Javed was doing. Like it was some practical joke off a TV show or something. He would never hurt anyone, you know? If there were boys in the shop stealing things or messing around, he would talk to them. He would ask them very quietly why they were wasting their time taking chocolate bars or what have you, until they felt guilty and most of the time they would not do it again. He taught them respect. He was always calm and he would never raise his hand.’ She pressed the tissues to the corner of each eye. ‘Now though, I cannot be so sure … ’

  They were approaching the turnoff and Thorne told her that he would pull over as soon as they had left the motorway. That the car behind would take her back to her eldest son.

  She shook her head. ‘I want to go with you. I want to see the place.’

  Thorne looked at her.

  ‘I never visited him,’ she said, quietly. ‘I could not do it. I made food for him and sent it along with Javed, but I did not want to see him in there.’

  ‘I understand,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Do you?’

  Thorne’s mother came suddenly into his mind. It was, as always, a pleasant surprise, for even though she was always lurking somewhere, it was Jim and not Maureen whose ghost usually shouted the loudest, who demanded the lion’s share of headspace. That made sense of course. After all, had it not been for Thorne, his father would not be a ghost at all.

  He remembered them coming home from some party or other. The key in the door as they and another couple arrived back, shushing and giggling, the goodbyes as the babysitter left and then the music starting. She crept into his room, and he recalled the wine on her breath as she bent to kiss him, the guitars and the voices from downstairs.

  ‘It’s nice here,’ Nadira said.

  They were driving through countryside within a few minutes of leaving the motorway. They passed Chorleywood Common, then turned north across the canal into an area with dense woodland on both sides and carpets of bluebells along the edge of the narrow road.

  ‘I never thought it would be.’

  Unable to sleep, he had crept down in his pyjamas, no more than nine or ten, and she had come out to use the toilet and found him sitting on the stairs. She had brought him into the living room and he had sat between her and his father on the sofa for half an hour while they and their friends talked and drank some more. She had sung along with Patsy Cline and George Jones, singing the words to him, and he had seen his father rolling his eyes, the same way Holland and Kitson did now, and he had never told them that he had got it from her.

  Football from the old man and the music from her. Gilzean, Perryman and Jennings from Jim. Hank, Merle and Johnny from Maureen. The beat and the fiddles and the hairs on his neck standing up beneath his pyjama top at the cry of what he would later learn was called the pedal steel.

  All those voices and the wine on her breath.

  ‘You know, as green as this,’ Nadira said. ‘I wasn’t expecting so many trees.’

  She did not speak again until they drew within sight of Barndale, but when they did, her expression was enough to tell Thorne that she did not think the view was particularly nice any more.

  As the BMW slowed for the security gate, she asked Thorne to pull over and she climbed out as soon as the car had stopped.

  The prison had been established on Ministry of Defence land on the site of an old RAF base. The original building had been added to many times over the years, each new block seemingly greyer and more depressing than the last, as though the budgets had not run to anything as flash and fancy as imagination. Acres of brick and metal loomed beyond the barrier, and coils of razor wire ran along the top of the green fence that stretched away in each direction from the main entrance.

  Nadira stared, unblinking, through the wire. The wind had picked up and was coming hard and noisy across the fields of stubbled corn on either side. When she spoke, Thorne had to lean in close to hear what she was saying.

  ‘I can’t blame him … ’

  She said something else, but Thorne lost it on the wind and it was clear enough that it was meant for no one but herself.

  After another minute or so, she turned to Thorne and nodded. She had seen all she needed to see. She turned to walk back towards the waiting squad car, then, after a few steps, she stopped just for a moment and said, ‘I will try and think about what to say to Javed.’

  Thorne watched the car turn round and head back towards the motorway, then got back into the BMW and drove up to the checkpoint. He was quickly waved through and directed towards the visitors’ car park, but parked in one of the staff places instead, because it was slightly closer and beca
use he felt like it.

  Then he walked towards the building where Amin Akhtar had died.

  EIGHT

  Roger Bracewell, the governor, was younger than Thorne had been expecting, floppy-haired and well spoken. Hugh Grant with trendy spectacles. He pushed a collection of files across the desk, bound with a thick elastic band and labelled.

  A name, date of birth, prisoner number.

  ‘This is everything on Amin Akhtar,’ he said. ‘Admission papers, progress reports, course assessments and so on.’ He sat back from his desk. ‘I was asked to get everything together in a hurry, so … ’ He waited, as if expecting thanks or explanation, but none was forthcoming. ‘Nobody’s seen fit to let me know the reason for all the rush, but ours is not to question why, I suppose.’

  Thorne lifted the files from the desk and dropped them on the floor by the side of his chair. ‘We’re investigating Amin Akhtar’s death,’ he said. ‘Re-investigating.’ He saw no reason to explain anything to Bracewell. He did not want anyone he would be talking to at Barndale knowing what his agenda might be, besides which they would all know soon enough, when they switched on a television or opened the evening paper.

  ‘Right,’ Bracewell said.

  The governor’s office lay at the far end of a warren of interconnected offices in the prison’s administration block. With modern furniture and venetian blinds at the windows, it was rather less imposing than some Thorne had visited. There were no antique clocks or dusty paintings of hunting scenes on the wall. There was no portrait of the Queen.

  ‘Horrible business,’ Bracewell said. He reached for the mug of coffee that had been brought in soon after Thorne had arrived. ‘Sure I can’t offer you some biscuits or something?’

  Thorne said that he was fine. Took a sip of his own coffee.

  ‘Worst thing that can happen, obviously.’ Bracewell tapped at the edge of the wooden desk. ‘Thankfully we’ve got a pretty good record as far as suicides go, but it’s always a possibility. They’ll always find some way of doing it if they’re determined enough.’

  ‘Tell me about Amin,’ Thorne said.

  Bracewell leaned back again, cradling his mug. ‘Kept himself to himself,’ he said. ‘Studied hard, did as he was asked. Stayed away from trouble.’ He pointed down to the files on the floor. ‘It’s all in there.’

  ‘I’ll go through them later on.’

  ‘We run a mentoring scheme here, something I introduced a year or so ago. We team up the more trusted of the older boys with some of the younger ones who look like they might be having a problem adjusting. A buddy system, if you want to call it that. Amin was certainly one of those I would have asked to do some mentoring for me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Not much point as he was moving on.’

  ‘Over there?’ Thorne nodded towards the window, the building a hundred yards away on the other side of a large, well-maintained courtyard. Barndale was a split-site prison, with three separate estates whose inmates were divided by age. The Juvenile site, where Amin Akhtar had been held, housed boys between fifteen and eighteen. The population was fed from a Secure Training Unit holding younger boys and itself fed directly on to the Young Offenders Institution for those aged eighteen to twenty-one. The three sites had different governors and management teams, but while each prison was autonomous, key members of staff moved between them on a regular basis and they shared sports facilities, a reception area and a hospital wing.

  ‘No,’ Bracewell said. ‘He was being transferred.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He wanted to do an A-level course in Pure Maths, whatever that is, and unfortunately we don’t do an awful lot beyond woodwork here. He’d applied to do the course at a YOI in the East Midlands. Long Minster?’

  Thorne shook his head. He didn’t know it. ‘Anyway, I was happy to approve the application despite some stupidly strong opposition from the Youth Justice Board, and he was scheduled to be transferred … some time this month, I think.’

  Thorne made a note of it. ‘He was doing well here,’ Bracewell said.

  ‘And I can’t say that for too many of the boys. He spent almost all his time on our Gold wing, with better rooms and extra privileges and so on, and presuming things had carried on the same way he would probably have been looking at an open prison well before his sentence was up.’ Bracewell smiled and shook his head. ‘Tragically, all speculation now of course.’

  ‘It’s very helpful.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Building up a picture of him, you know?’

  The governor nodded and looked at Thorne. ‘Well, I’d certainly have been sorry to see him go.’

  ‘But you still approved his move?’

  ‘Because it was the best thing for him, and it was what he wanted.’

  ‘So why was the Youth Justice Board opposed to it?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it would have been a little further from his family than he was here, but sometimes these pen-pushers who allocate placements just like to try and make things awkward, if you ask me. I’m sure you’ve met the type.’

  Thorne said that he’d met plenty. That it sounded like a detective chief superintendent of his acquaintance. He glanced at the white-board behind Bracewell’s desk. Various headings had been scribbled: Re-offending Rates; Justification for Remand; Age/Offence/Ethnicity. At the bottom of the board, somewhat incongruously, it said, Buy milk, eggs, smoothies.

  ‘How did he end up in the hospital wing?’ Thorne asked.

  Bracewell shrugged. ‘Looked at someone for a few seconds too long. Or someone didn’t like the fact that he was awarded certain privileges for good behaviour. Sometimes these kids don’t need any reason at all.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone walked into his cell and slashed his face. In and out, no sign of a weapon.’

  ‘You had a damn good look though.’

  ‘We followed all the normal search procedures.’

  Thorne nodded. The sharpness of the governor’s response had probably been justified. Thorne knew how hard it was to find any weapon, when a boy determined enough could fashion one from almost anything that came to hand.

  ‘Amin was taken to the local A&E to get stitched up, then brought back here the same evening. It’s all in the police report.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it yet,’ Thorne said. He had already decided that the constraints placed upon him by time might be no bad thing in terms of his investigation. Not having had a chance to look at the notes, he would be unprejudiced by the findings of the original inquiry and would have no choice but to investigate Amin Akhtar’s death as if it had just happened. If he came to the same conclusions as Martin Dawes then so be it, but this way he might just be giving himself the best chance of getting at the truth and that was what Javed Akhtar wanted. ‘Best to start with a clean slate anyway, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Compare what I find out today with what my predecessor found out eight weeks ago.’

  Bracewell smiled, knowing. ‘See if anyone changes their story.’

  Thorne smiled back. ‘That’s always a possibility.’ He kept his eyes on the governor as he drank the last of his coffee. ‘Any idea who was responsible for the attack on Amin?’

  ‘A couple of my officers reckon they’ve got a very good idea,’ Bracewell said. ‘But proving it is something else entirely. The boy concerned denied it of course. Amin refused to tell us who it was and it’s very hard to find witnesses in a place like this. I’m sure you know what it’s like.’

  ‘I’ll need to speak to him,’ Thorne said. ‘Proof or no proof.’

  ‘Unfortunately, he was released a couple of months ago. Just a few days after the attack on Amin, in fact. Annoying, but without evidence there was nothing we could do to prevent it.’

  ‘I’ll need a name, then. The address on his release papers.’

  Bracewell said that shouldn’t be a problem, but with sufficient hesitation for Thorne to point out that, as far as this inquiry was concerned, the no
rmal procedures did not, could not apply. There was simply no time for niceties, or ethics. Bracewell said he understood, and though Thorne could see that he did not, that the man was still desperate to know the reason for what was happening, he could also see that the situation was making him uneasy.

  ‘I need to speak to whoever found the body as well.’

  ‘That was Ian McCarthy,’ Bracewell said. ‘Dr McCarthy. I think he should be in by now, so I can get one of my officers to take you down there. If that’s OK?’

  Thorne thanked him for his help and Bracewell phoned out to make the arrangements. Almost as soon as he had hung up, the phone rang and Bracewell took the call. He said, ‘For Pete’s sake,’ and ‘Right,’ and when the call was finished, he sat back shaking his head as though the weight of the world had just settled on his smartly suited shoulders. ‘One of the boys has smashed his cell up. Seventeen-year-old Polish lad, doesn’t speak a word of bloody English.’

  ‘Can’t be easy.’

  ‘It isn’t. My officers are doing their best, but they’ve got their work cut out as it is.’

  ‘I meant for the boy.’

  Thorne remembered the colourful sign he had seen at the entrance to the prison. A single word written in dozens of languages. It was a nice idea, but a shame that the effort at translation had not gone a little further. The inmates probably thought it was a sick joke anyway, considering where they were and what that one word was.

  Welcome.

  ‘Well no,’ Bracewell stammered. ‘Of course not … I mean, obviously. It’s a very tricky situation for everyone.’

  When the prison officer arrived, Thorne stood to gather up the files and Bracewell moved quickly from behind his desk to assure him that he would remain available if there was anything else he could help with. With his hand pressed firmly between the governor’s two, Thorne said that he would bear the offer in mind.

  Then he turned and followed his escort out of the office.