Helen started to talk to Akhtar, but Thorne cut her off.
‘But I will find out what happened,’ he said. ‘Tell him that. No, promise him that.’
Helen passed on what Thorne had said.
‘And this is the most important thing, Helen. Are you listening?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Tell him I believe him, OK?’
TWENTY-ONE
‘Jesus, that’s terrible. Sorry if I was a bit … ’
‘It’s fine.’
‘So, what can I do to help?’
The man who had spent six months putting together an appeal that would never be heard had not sounded best pleased to be receiving a phone call from a police officer at eight-thirty in the evening. But as soon as Thorne had told Carl Oldman who he was and explained the circumstances, the solicitor was only too keen to answer his questions.
‘I saw Amin a week or so before he died,’ Oldman said. ‘The day before he was attacked. Actually, I think I might well have been the last person to visit him.’
‘And how was he?’
‘He was in pretty good spirits as I remember. I ran through our appeal with him and he had every reason to be happy about it. I think we had a hell of a good chance of getting his sentence reduced.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘On the grounds that the bloody judge went way over the top, pure and simple. Based on the circumstances and all the pre-sentencing reports, Amin should have got three years tops, and then the judge starts banging on about this ridiculous “dangerousness” business. There’s no basis for that in any of the reports he was given, not a whisper. It was quite clearly a self-defence incident, Amin’s character was nigh-on spotless and any fool could see that he wasn’t a danger to anyone.’ Oldman sighed heavily. ‘Some of these idiots see a knife involved and start reaching for an imaginary black cap, you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, I’ve come across a few of those,’ Thorne said.
‘Right. Well, I was definitely up for going after this one, I tell you that.’
The solicitor was clearly angry, though whether it was aimed at the judge in question, or the fact that Oldman would never now have the chance to challenge the sentence he had handed down, was hard to tell.
‘So you wouldn’t say he was depressed when you saw him?’
‘Not even close.’
‘Or showing any signs that he was feeling suicidal?’
‘Look, I’m not a psychiatrist,’ Oldman said. ‘And I can’t possibly know what that attack did to him, but he seemed fine to me. He was excited about the appeal and he was pleased that he had this move coming up. I think there were some friends he was going to miss and he was a bit upset about that, but he was keen to get this qualification, so … ’
‘So were you surprised at what happened?’
There was a pause, and Thorne heard Oldman take a drink of something. He suddenly imagined the solicitor on a designer sofa with a glass of wine, while an angry wife or girlfriend pointed towards a plate of dinner that was getting cold. Mind you, he also knew plenty of briefs who lived alone in grubby flats and survived on Stella and pot noodles.
‘I was gutted,’ Oldman said. ‘And pissed off. I spend half my bloody life looking after scumbags, but Amin was a good lad.’
When Thorne had thanked Oldman and hung up, he walked across to the stereo and slid a Willie Nelson disc into the CD player. Then he sat down on the floor and leaned back against the sofa, looking up at Phil Hendricks who was sitting there studying the PM report. He held up the phone that he was still carrying. Said, ‘No way did that kid top himself.’
Hendricks held up the report. ‘It certainly looks like he did.’
‘Looks like it,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s the point.’
Hendricks cast his eyes back down to the report and flicked through the pages. ‘This bloke seems to have done a reasonable job as far as I can see. I mean obviously his prose style isn’t as good as mine.’
‘Come on, Phil.’
Hendricks had picked up a takeaway from the Bengal Lancer on his way over. He leaned down now to scoop up what was left of a cold onion bhaji from the plate on the floor and took a bite. ‘There’s a shed-load of Tramadol in the boy’s blood. The remains of a few tablets in his stomach. All the evidence of an overdose and nothing that suggests it wasn’t suicide.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘So why do you think it wasn’t?’
‘The timings don’t work for a start,’ Thorne said.
‘Go on.’
‘People don’t kill themselves first thing in the morning. They do it in the early hours, in the middle of the night.’
‘What, you got that off an episode of Morse, did you?’
‘I read it somewhere.’
‘Well you’re wrong,’ Hendricks said. ‘The most common time is around four o’clock in the afternoon. If you’re interested, March, April and May are the favourite months for suicides and the most popular method worldwide is hanging, except in America obviously where they tend to prefer guns. It’s also cobblers that suicide is more common among young people than old people and that more people kill themselves at Christmas. It’s actually below average.’ He popped what was left of the bhaji into his mouth. ‘I went to a seminar.’
‘Course you did,’ Thorne said. ‘So I suppose there’s no point me mentioning the absence of a suicide note is there?’
‘Less than twenty per cent leave a note,’ Hendricks said. ‘I’m not really helping, am I?’
Thorne let out a noisy breath. ‘He had no motive, Phil. Nothing at all. His appeal was going well and every person who saw him said he was full of the joys of spring.’
‘People who are depressed can be pretty good at putting up a front. I’ve seen you do it.’
Thorne shook his head. ‘These were people who knew him, OK? His father, his lawyer, his friend. And what reason did he have to be depressed in the first place?’ He pointed down at the report on Hendricks’ lap. ‘Forget about the pills for a minute, OK? As far as I can make out, this whole “suicidal state of mind” thing seems to stand or fall on the knife attack and the idea that he was raped, so I need you to tell me if what it says in there is conclusive.’
Hendricks sighed theatrically and turned to the appropriate page in the report. He read, while Thorne waited and Willie Nelson sang in a cracked, world-weary voice about a preacher crying like a baby.
‘OK, so the word “rape” isn’t actually used,’ Hendricks said. ‘But we just record what we find when we examine the body, so that doesn’t mean a great deal. It’s not a pathologist’s job to draw conclusions from this stuff … Come on, you know all this.’
‘Yeah, I know. Now shut up and draw a conclusion for me, would you?’
Hendricks read on. ‘There’s clear evidence that the boy had been sodomised,’ he said.
‘No semen though, right?’
‘Rapists do know about DNA. A lot of them wear condoms.’
‘In prison?’
‘There are some signs of internal tearing and some damage to the soft tissues … ’
‘Does that rule out the possibility that it was consensual though?’
‘Consensual or not, it was certainly … aggressive.’
‘Is it possible that this was not rape?’
Hendricks thought about it. ‘Well, if you’re suggesting this was the result of sex with a regular partner, then I suppose it’s feasible his boyfriend was hung like a donkey. Or maybe he just liked it rough.’ He smiled. ‘Some of us do, you know?’
‘Too much information, Phil.’
‘Yeah, OK … it’s possible. But—’
‘Right,’ Thorne said. ‘Well, there’s your motive for suicide shot to shit.’
Hendricks glanced down to see if there were any more leftovers he liked the look of, then swung his legs up on to the sofa and lay back. ‘So where’s your motive for murder, smartarse?’
Thorne reached across and tore off a piece of nan bread. ‘I don’t
have all the answers.’
‘Don’t have any of them as far as I can see.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s where I stupidly thought you might be able to help.’
‘It’s a radical idea, I know,’ Hendricks said, ‘but evidence might be a good place to start. You’ve got bugger all on the CCTV.’
‘Because whoever did this knew how to stay clear of the cameras. It’s not difficult to do. I checked.’
‘OK, what about the lack of prints on that cup the pills were supposed to have been in?’
‘Easy enough to get plastic gloves in a hospital wing, I would have thought.’
‘You should do this for a living,’ Hendricks said.
‘Those pills were given to him.’ Thorne tossed the bread back on to the plate. ‘No question.’
‘And you don’t think that might be down to this Antoine kid?’
‘Antoine loved him.’
‘Enough to help him kill himself, maybe?’
Thorne shook his head. ‘It’s got to be someone who was in the hospital wing. Someone with access to that DDA cabinet.’
‘One of the other patients?’
‘No chance.’ Thorne had not bothered talking to any of those boys who had been patients on the night Amin was killed. He knew that some would have been released by now anyway and that he would get no more out of those who were still serving sentences than Dawes had done.
That he would only have been wasting time he did not have.
‘Think about why Amin was in hospital in the first place,’ Thorne said. ‘If these kids want to hurt someone, they do it with fists or homemade knives. The lid off a tin of peaches. They don’t bother getting elaborate. Anyway, this had to be someone with keys.’
‘What about that PHO? I mean she conveniently saw nothing when she checked his room.’
‘She’s first on the list.’
‘Still can’t see a motive though.’
They said nothing for a few minutes. The album finished, but Thorne did not bother getting up to change it. He had stayed off the beer in case he needed to get somewhere in a hurry, but Hendricks climbed off the sofa and went into the kitchen to fetch himself another can.
‘Actually, I reckon the pills are your biggest problem,’ he said, coming back.
‘Why?’
‘You ever tried giving people tablets against their will? Ever tried giving a cat a fucking tablet?’
‘Amin was half asleep,’ Thorne said. ‘Already drugged up.’
‘Even harder to do it. Look, even if we accept the possibility that someone gave him that overdose, I honestly don’t see how they could have done it. They’d have needed thirty, forty of those tablets at least, and there’s no way they could have got them down Amin’s throat without causing one hell of a bloody racket. Whoever did it would have needed to get in and out fast, right?’
‘Yeah, before the patients were checked again.’
Hendricks shook his head. ‘No way it could have been done that quickly. Sorry, Tom.’
Thorne said, ‘Shit,’ closed his eyes and let his head fall back.
‘Look—’
‘There’s got to be a way,’ Thorne said. ‘The man who’s holding Helen Weeks is not going to want to listen to anything else. I can’t go back there with nothing. I can’t just say, “I think you’re right, will that do you? Yeah, your son probably was murdered, but God knows why or by who and there’s no way I can prove it anyway, so why don’t you stop pissing about and put the gun away?” I can’t … do that, all right, Phil?’
The look on Hendricks’ face made it clear he could see there was no point arguing. Not when Thorne was in this mood. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a think about it.’
‘Well, think fast.’
‘Calm down, mate, I’ve got the message.’ Hendricks opened his beer. ‘You concentrate on who and why, all right?’ He took a swig. ‘I’ll try and figure out how.’
When Hendricks had gone, Thorne sat down at his laptop and saw that an email had arrived from Ian McCarthy. The doctor apologised for not getting the information Thorne had asked for to him sooner. Said that he had been swamped all afternoon. He gave him the name of the prison hospital officer who had been suspended, an address in Potters Bar. He told him that, having checked in the DDA book, he could confirm that sixty Tramadol tablets had been stolen from the dispensary the day after Amin Akhtar had been admitted.
Thorne closed the laptop and heard himself say, ‘That’s very bloody convenient.’
He called the RVP.
Donnelly told him everything there was quiet. That the overnight team would be coming on at 11.30 and that Pascoe had scheduled another call to the newsagent’s in an hour, just before the handover.
The overnight team …
A fresh set of officers was vital of course, Thorne understood that. A new SIO, a wide-awake hostage negotiator and, crucially, a unit of firearms officers with eight hours’ rest behind them. He hoped that the man or woman leading them was a little less excitable than Chivers.
‘We’ll let you know how it goes,’ Donnelly said. ‘Now get some sleep. I’m certainly going to.’
Thorne put Red Headed Stranger on again, turned out the lights and took his friend’s place on the sofa. He held his phone to his chest and closed his eyes. The music – sparse and simple – curled around fragments of the day’s conversations; the pictures that bloomed and swam as he tried and failed to take Donnelly’s advice.
The catch in Helen Weeks’ voice.
The tears on Antoine Daniels’ face.
The blood caked around a dead boy’s mouth …
And, as those images finally began to blur and blacken, and the tiredness gained sway, Willie Nelson whispered to him about a man who was ‘wild in his sorrow’ and Thorne remembered his promise to Amin Akhtar’s father.
TWENTY-TWO
Helen watched as Akhtar moved boxes and stacked them on top of pallets that were piled up against one another. Made some space. He opened a low cupboard and hauled out a green canvas camp bed which he unfolded and pushed against the wall, then went back and took out a couple of ratty-looking cushions. He smacked the dust from them and held them up for examination.
‘We should all try and get a little sleep,’ he said. He tossed the cushions on to the floor in front of Helen and Mitchell. ‘I’m sorry you can’t be more comfortable, but we will have to make do.’
Helen reached for the cushion and nodded towards the camp bed, six or seven feet away. ‘You’ve slept in here before then?’
‘Oh yes, many nights,’ Akhtar said. ‘The shop was broken into three times in one month. Three times!’ He pointed. ‘They smashed straight through that door, took all my stock, everything.’
‘You were insured though, right?’
He shook his head. ‘I lost thirty thousand pounds’ worth of cigarettes in one go and the insurance company refused to pay a penny, because they said I should have had a proper alarm.’ He sat down on the edge of the camp bed. ‘Bloody thieves. Insurance companies, banks, all of them.’
Helen turned to Mitchell. ‘Banks? What have you got to say to that, Stephen?’
Mitchell smiled weakly and said, ‘No comment.’ He was looking exhausted suddenly.
‘So I slept in here for weeks in case they came back.’ He patted the grubby canvas next to him. ‘It was perfectly comfortable, but then Nadira told me to come home and stop being silly.’
‘I didn’t know that was your wife’s name,’ Helen said.
He nodded. ‘Nadira, yes. It means “One who is rare and hard to find”. Like a diamond or something, you know?’ His hand bounced nervously against his knee. ‘It’s a good name for her … ’
Helen had spoken to Akhtar’s wife on many occasions when he was not in the shop. She had been shy and soft-spoken and had not smiled as much as her husband. ‘What will she be thinking about all this, Javed?’
Akhtar looked at her.
‘Will she be proud, do you rec
kon? Or ashamed?’
She waited, but Akhtar showed no desire to answer her question. She reached for the cushion and tucked it behind her head. It smelled of mould and mice. Seeing that Mitchell had not moved to retrieve his own cushion, she leaned forward to pick it up and held it towards him. After a few seconds he bowed his head and, without a word, she gently tucked the cushion behind it, holding it in position until he leaned back.
‘Here you go. That’s better … ’ There was no noise, just the smallest of shudders across Stephen Mitchell’s shoulders, but Helen could tell that he had begun to cry again.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly.’
They sat for a few minutes, still and silent, until Helen could no longer ignore the pressure in her bladder. She told Akhtar that she was sorry and nodded towards the toilet door.
Akhtar stood and picked up the gun from the desk. As he reached for the key to the handcuffs, he said, ‘My wife understands why this needs to be done, and she will not judge me. Nadira will not condemn me for this.’
Sue Pascoe sipped from a styrofoam cup of strong coffee. She would be heading home in half an hour or so, after putting in her final call of the shift to Helen Weeks, but wanted to make sure she was on her toes for the remaining time until she was relieved.
There was no movement on any of the monitors, but the phone remained hot in her hand.
She could not help wondering who would be replacing her overnight and if they would be better qualified for the job than she was. Someone who had been to Virginia, maybe. She had applied months before to attend the Advanced Hostage Negotiation course at the FBI Academy at Quantico.
She was still waiting to hear about a vacancy.
The buzz had kicked in from the moment she had received the call first thing and had not gone away. She relished the coppery kick of the adrenalin that coffee could not wash from her mouth; the rush that came from doing something she knew she was cut out for. Those moments when it was just her voice and the hostage taker’s. When the success of the operation was down to her and nobody else.
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