‘Well, someone screwed up rather badly by the sound of it.’
‘I gave him several doses of the tablets myself,’ McCarthy said, ‘and I certainly didn’t screw up.’
‘I wasn’t trying to say you had, but can you think of any other explanation?’ Thorne walked slowly back across the room, turned and leaned against the door.
‘Perhaps someone brought them in for him,’ McCarthy suggested.
‘From the outside?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that would mean Amin had suicidal feelings even before he got attacked.’ Thorne shook his head. ‘It would have to have been after he was admitted to the hospital wing. Was he allowed visits from other boys while he was in here?’
‘Yes, at least one lad came in, I think. I can get you the name.’
‘That would be helpful,’ Thorne said. ‘But we’ve still got the same question to answer. Where did whoever gave Amin enough tablets to kill himself get them from?’ Thorne had already figured out the most likely answer, but waited for McCarthy to catch him up. It only took a few seconds.
‘What about the thefts from the dispensary?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Thorne said.
The doctor nodded, looking highly delighted with himself and his powers of deduction. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem to find out if and when any Tramadol tablets were taken. Everything is noted down in the DDA book, so—’ He stopped at the noise from Thorne’s pocket. ‘Is that yours?’
Thorne was unsurprised at McCarthy’s shocked expression when his mobile rang. They were strictly forbidden inside the prison and that applied to members of staff every bit as much as to prisoners themselves. It was another protocol Thorne had been obliged to ignore, and dispensation had been granted after a senior officer at the Yard had spoken to the governor by phone and made it clear that they were dealing with a serious live-time incident.
Thorne took the phone from his jacket and saw who was calling. ‘I need to take this,’ he said.
McCarthy stayed where he was, then seeing that Thorne was not about to answer while anyone was around to listen, indicated that he would wait outside and stepped into the hall.
Thorne pushed the door shut after him and answered the phone.
‘Helen?’
‘He wants to know what’s happening.’
Thorne pressed the handset to his chest and swore quietly. He could still hear the radio that was playing on the ward across the corridor. ‘Tell him I’m doing what he asked me to do,’ he said. ‘I’m working as quickly as I can, all right?’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘That this might take some time.’
There was a pause. ‘I’ll tell him … ’
‘I’m talking to all the people I need to talk to.’ He looked down at the bed in which Amin Akhtar had died. He reached out and touched the metal bedstead. ‘I’m in the right place. Tell him we’re taking everything he said very seriously, OK?’
‘The truth, that’s what he wants.’
‘I know … I know it is, and I’m going to find out what happened, one way or the other.’ He sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You make sure he knows that.’
‘I will.’
‘Helen …?’
‘That’s good.’
She was breathless and he could hear the tightness in her voice, the effort to sound upbeat. He guessed that Akhtar was listening. ‘How are you and Mitchell doing, Helen? How’s Akhtar doing?’
There was another pause, longer this time. Thorne could hear Helen Weeks breathing, imagined he could also hear the breathing of the man who was probably pointing a gun at her.
‘None of us are doing very well,’ she said.
TWELVE
Once he had finished in the hospital wing, Thorne decided that he should spend half an hour going through Amin Akhtar’s paperwork. In his experience, the library was rarely the busiest part of any prison, so it seemed as good a place as any to get some peace and quiet.
He called Donnelly on his way there to see what was happening in Tulse Hill. He told him about the meetings with Bracewell and McCarthy and then about the call he had received from Helen Weeks.
‘Thank God for that,’ Donnelly said. ‘Pascoe’s been desperate to get a line of communication open.’ He asked Thorne how Helen Weeks had sounded on the phone.
‘She’s holding up, but she doesn’t sound great.’
‘I think Akhtar had a bit of a wobble,’ Donnelly said. ‘He seems to have calmed down now.’
‘What do you mean, a wobble?’
‘Smashing the shop up, shouting and screaming. We’ve got no idea what set him off, so everyone’s still a bit jumpy.’
‘Chivers?’
‘Inspector Chivers is responding … appropriately.’
‘You need to keep on top of him.’
‘I don’t need anyone to tell me how to run this operation, thank you very much.’
Thorne took a few seconds. Donnelly was a detective superintendent, but he was not Thorne’s detective superintendent. That said, it would not be doing anyone any favours, least of all Helen Weeks, to alienate the man running the operation. He would need to observe at least a few of the niceties.
‘That’s what I’m trying to say, sir.’ Thorne dug deep to find a reasonable tone of voice. ‘You know what some of these ex-army types are like. Once there’s any kind of weapon involved, they tend to think they’re calling the shots. Sir.’
That seemed to do the trick.
‘I’ll consult with whomever I need to,’ Donnelly said, ‘but I’m calling the shots. Not that it’s a particularly suitable phrase, considering the circumstances.’
‘Probably not,’ Thorne said. He thought, considering the circumstances, that nobody should give a tuppenny toss about whether a phrase was suitable or not, but he bit his tongue. He just hoped he had made his point about Chivers. He’d come across that sort enough times to worry that the man leading the Tactical Firearms Unit could prove every bit as dangerous to Helen Weeks’ safety as a newsagent with a gun.
‘I need to go and get this call set up,’ Donnelly said.
‘You’re sure he’s calmed down?’
‘That’s why Pascoe’s keen to do it now. We need to talk to him, or if not then at least talk to him through DS Weeks. We want to let him know that we’re doing everything we can to get this resolved, but above all we need to make sure he’s stable.’
‘Up to you, obviously, but isn’t Helen under enough pressure as it is?’
‘Like it or not she’s our go-between, so we don’t have a lot of choice.’
‘I suppose not.’ Thorne could hear voices in the background. Sue Pascoe’s and Nadira Akhtar’s.
‘If it all goes well,’ Donnelly said, ‘we’re going to see if he’ll talk to his wife.’
Thorne remembered Nadira Akhtar’s face when he’d talked to her in the car a couple of hours before, when she’d considered the possibility of her husband ever hurting anyone. Thinking about it, the wad of damp tissue squeezed in her fist.
Now I cannot be so sure …
‘Are you saying you’re worried about her?’
‘His wife?’
‘DS Weeks.’
‘No more so than I would be about any other officer,’ Thorne said.
A clatter echoed down the corridor from somewhere deep on the wing, followed swiftly by jeering and catcalls. There were whistles and a few seconds of clapping until it was silenced by the voice of a prison officer.
‘I spoke to a couple of her colleagues,’ Donnelly said, ‘and as far as they’re aware, she’s never been in a seriously threatening situation before. They weren’t altogether sure how she’d handle it.’
‘She’s not going to do anything stupid.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘She’s got a child.’
‘Yes, I know, but that means she could well react … emotionally, which might not be the best thing for anyone.’
‘S
he’ll be fine.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Donnelly said. ‘I know you’ve had some dealings with her in the past.’
Thorne doubted that anyone Helen Weeks worked with would know too much about what she had been through a year before. Her partner’s murder and the risks she had run to find out who had been responsible. He did not know all the facts himself, but he knew what an ordeal it had been.
He knew that she had come through it.
‘I think we need to trust her,’ Thorne said.
As much as she’ll be trusting us.
Trusting me.
Thorne glanced up as a small group of boys ambled past, escorted by a prison officer. Teeth were sucked and curses muttered. Thorne met the eyes of the angriest-looking and held them. ‘I honestly don’t think we could ask for anyone better in there,’ he said.
Akhtar had not said much when he had reappeared in the storeroom after his bout of destruction in the shop. He had been sweating and had taken off his cardigan to mop his face and neck. Though most of the hair on top of his head had gone, there were silver-streaked tufts above his ears that were sticking up and he smoothed them down with small, delicate hands. When he had finally sat down, Helen could see that the redness in his face was as much the result of embarrassment as exertion.
‘Stupid,’ he’d said.
Then he had passed Helen her mobile phone and told her to call Tom Thorne …
He sat thinking for a few minutes after the call was finished, then stood up and fetched a broom that was leaning against a stack of shelves. He put the gun down on the desk, then, careful not to get too close, he swept the empty crisp packets, cans and chocolate wrappers towards him. He stuffed them into a plastic bag and carried it across to a black rubbish bin in the corner.
He sat down again and picked up the gun.
‘Seems a bit daft to go on a cleaning spree,’ Helen said. ‘Considering the mess you must have made out there.’
The redness returned to Akhtar’s face. ‘I know, but that foolishness is no reason you should have to sit in here with rubbish stinking everywhere.’
Helen was still wearing her jacket. Her underarms were clammy and her blouse was pasted to her back. ‘I think that might be me,’ she said. She held up her free arm. ‘Can I …?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Akhtar said. ‘Slowly, please.’
Helen moved her shoulder until she had enough room to pull the arm that was free up through the sleeve of her jacket. Then she shuffled it behind her back and shook it down until finally the jacket was gathered around the hand that was cuffed to the radiator pipe. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Shame you were right about the weather.’
Akhtar asked Mitchell if he would like to do the same.
‘I’m OK,’ Mitchell said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry you can’t be more comfortable,’ Akhtar said. ‘But we are stuck with things as they are, so … ’
‘We don’t have to be stuck with anything,’ Helen said. ‘You heard what Thorne said.’
‘I heard what you said.’
‘He’s doing everything he can to find out what happened to Amin. He’s talking to people.’
Akhtar smiled. ‘People lie to policemen as often as they lie to anyone else. More, I think. People lie all the time.’
‘How about if I promise not to lie to you, Javed?’ Helen looked at him. ‘How about that?’
The newsagent shrugged. ‘You will say whatever you think I want to hear, because I am pointing a gun at you.’
‘I won’t lie, OK? I need you to trust me.’
Akhtar turned away, apparently uninterested, but Helen could see that he was considering what she had said.
When he looked back, he nodded down at Mitchell. ‘Is he all right?’
Other than refusing the chance to remove his jacket, Mitchell had not spoken in almost half an hour. He was staring at the floor between his knees. He was shaking.
‘He’s frightened,’ Helen said. ‘That’s all.’
‘Are you?’
‘I’m frightened for my son.’
Akhtar nodded and turned away again. He folded his arms. Helen could see that he was doing his best to appear hard-bitten and unconcerned, but he was not even close to carrying it off.
‘You get used to it,’ he said.
There were plenty more hard looks and insults as Thorne walked through the wing towards the library. It was not a novelty and he heard nothing he had not heard many times before, though he was a little surprised to find that it was the youngest boys who were the worst. One particular double-act who could not have been older than fourteen got extremely worked up; telling Thorne exactly what they thought of him, what they would happily do to his wife and mother, before being gently admonished by a prison officer who was clearly more of a Barraclough than a Mackay.
All par for the course.
Approaching the library, Thorne saw two more likely lads hanging around outside the doors and prepared himself for another bout of industrial-strength badinage. He was pleasantly surprised to see them hurrying away as he got closer. Then, hearing footsteps behind him, he turned, and saw that he was not the one they were keen to avoid.
There were a dozen or so boys, sixteen and upwards, in step and walking close together. They were black, white, Asian. They all wore regulation blue T-shirts and cargos, but each also wore a simple grey skullcap. As they drew closer, Thorne saw that there was a middle-aged Asian man in the middle of the group, wearing a plain white robe and embroidered velvet kufi. The boys flanking him moved aside when the group was within a few feet of Thorne, allowing the man to move ahead.
He placed one hand over his heart and extended the other one towards Thorne. ‘I am Imam Mir Hamid Shakir,’ he said. ‘I am the visiting imam here at Barndale.’
Thorne shook the man’s hand, nodded over his shoulder. ‘Got your own bodyguards, I see.’
The boys standing behind Shakir gave no more of a reaction than the imam himself did.
‘I hear you are asking questions about Amin Akhtar.’
Thorne said that he was.
‘Then we need to talk.’
THIRTEEN
The address that Holland and Kitson had been given for Scott Clarkson – one of the other two boys alleged to have attacked Amin Akhtar on the night of Lee Slater’s death – turned out to be a fifthfloor flat in a block behind Highbury and Islington station. The lift was predictably out of action and, after the climb up five flights of stone stairs that apparently doubled as a communal toilet and rubbish dump, there was no reply when Holland and Kitson knocked.
‘We should get some cards printed up,’ Holland said. ‘“We called while you were out. To ask if you, or any other waste of DNA you know, had anything to do with a death that may or may not have been a suicide. Please contact us on the number below if you can help.” That kind of thing.’
‘Or we could just move on to the next one,’ Kitson said.
‘Can we grab some lunch first? I’m bloody starving.’
Kitson turned and began walking back towards the stairs. ‘We’ll get a sandwich or something on the way.’ She peered over the wall and was pleased to see the car was where she’d left it. That it still had the requisite number of wheels. ‘I don’t think taking the full hour would go down too well under the circumstances, do you?’
‘Probably not.’
Holland followed, stayed a few steps behind her as they trudged back down the stairs. ‘Where’s Armstrong live?’
‘Luckily we’ve got a work address for this one, so I suggest we try that first.’ Kitson dug into her bag for a piece of paper. ‘Might be hopelessly optimistic of course.’
‘Theme for the day,’ Holland said, quietly.
Kitson looked at her notes and smiled. ‘Well that’s a bit of luck. He works in a takeaway on Essex Road, so we can kill two birds with one stone and pick you up a burger or something at the same time.’
‘Not unless I want extra spit in it,’ Holland sai
d. ‘Or worse.’
‘Well if you’re going to get picky.’
Holland caught her up on the next flight. ‘Seriously though, Yvonne—’
‘I know, but let’s just get on with it, shall we?’ Kitson’s tone was suddenly a little less matey. A simple reminder that she was a rank above him. ‘Yes, we’ll almost certainly turn up jack shit, but it’s not like Thorne’s got a lot of choice, and it’s the least we can do for that poor cow with the gun at her head, don’t you reckon?’
Holland appeared to have got the message, said he supposed it was.
‘Besides, it’s nice to have a day away from the office,’ Kitson said. They emerged from the stairwell on to the scrubby patch of grass in front of the block. There were two newly painted benches, and an old bike leaning against a yellowing fridge-freezer. ‘Get out and about, see a few of the sights.’
They both turned at the noise of a car backfiring and saw two figures fifty yards away to their left, huddled in the shadows of a concrete overhang. They watched something change hands that almost certainly wasn’t a set of Pokémon cards, before one of the figures looked in their direction, suddenly aware that they were being observed. Each shoved their hands into their pockets, but neither showed any inclination to move away.
‘Such a shame we’re in a hurry,’ Kitson said, then turned and began walking quickly towards the car. ‘See, Dave?’ she said. ‘If we weren’t so up against it, and we actually gave a monkey’s, we might have had that nonsense to deal with. So, every cloud … ’
They both knew very well that, busy or not, the chances of them choosing to intervene in a petty drug deal were slim to non-existent. But Holland was happy to play along for the sake of the joke.
‘I didn’t see a thing,’ he said, a step or two behind.
Thorne followed Mir Hamid Shakir and his friends in a slow, ten-minute procession to the other end of the wing. At each set of heavy metal gates they waited patiently for a prison officer to let them through, until eventually, after descending to the ground floor, they turned into a narrow corridor and arrived at a plain wooden door.
A sign outside said Faith Suite.
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