Good as Dead

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne accepted the monosyllabic offer of tea and followed her inside.

  The house was divided somewhat clumsily into two flats and Hughes lived on the ground floor. Once through her own front door, she led Thorne through her living room and into a small kitchen. There was a laminated wooden floor, plain white cupboards and a grey, granite countertop. It was as spotless and uncluttered as everywhere else.

  Susan Hughes was the untidiest thing in the place.

  She was short and full-figured, somewhere in her mid-thirties, with a dark-rooted blonde bob that had seen better days. ‘You been to Barndale, have you?’ She flicked the kettle on and tightened the belt on her dressing gown. ‘Spoken to McCarthy, I suppose.’

  The distaste had been clear enough in her voice. ‘Not a fan, then?’

  She shrugged. ‘Would you be? If you were the one that been made into a scapegoat?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Don’t you think he should have taken some responsibility?’

  ‘He wasn’t there when it happened.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head, her mind made up. ‘As chief medical officer, the buck stops with him.’

  Though it was clearly in Hughes’ own interest to think as she did, Thorne had some sympathy. He had seen plenty of hard-working friends and colleagues sacrificed by senior officers who had refused to take ultimate responsibility. He had been hung out to dry enough times himself. ‘Actually, he was defending you,’ Thorne said. ‘He told me you couldn’t really be blamed for what happened.’

  ‘Did he?’ she scoffed. ‘Shame he didn’t say that when I was being suspended.’

  The kettle was starting to grumble loudly and save for the necessary questions and answers about how Thorne wanted his tea, they said no more until it had boiled. When the tea was ready, she walked back into the living room. She sat down on the edge of the sofa and lit a cigarette. Thorne took his tea across to the window and peered out through a gap in the curtains. A woman was walking a small dog on the pavement opposite. She stopped to say something to a man who looked as though he was leaving for work. A smart suit and a pinched expression.

  ‘Open them if you want,’ Hughes said.

  Thorne turned away from the window. ‘It’s fine,’ he said.

  She sat back and drew her legs up beneath her. A decent enough attempt to appear relaxed. ‘So what else did he say then? McCarthy.’

  ‘He told me that you checked Amin,’ Thorne said. ‘Twice. That you looked into the room and you thought he was OK.’

  She pulled on her cigarette. Leaned forward to knock away a worm of ash.

  ‘I take it you should have gone into the room. You should have done a bit more than glance through the window, right?’

  ‘I’d already been working for twelve hours straight.’ She looked away, took another drag and let the smoke out on a muttered curse. ‘I know that’s not an excuse.’

  ‘It sounds like one.’

  ‘It’s all I’ve got,’ she said. She ran clawed fingers through her hair. ‘There’s going to be some pointless disciplinary hearing in a few weeks and believe me, I really wish I had something better. Because there isn’t a cat’s chance in hell they’re going to reinstate me and that’s fifteen years of nursing up the swanee.’ She carried on as she stubbed out the half a cigarette that was left. ‘People talk to one another in this job, you know? Word gets round, so it’s not like anyone’s going to be banging on my door offering me anything else.’

  Thorne drank his tea. He sat there, finding it hard to care a great deal, and waited for her to say something else. Then, when she spoke again, he could see that the bitterness in her voice up to that point had been nothing but bravado.

  He watched her blink slowly and saw the mask slip.

  ‘I thought he was sleeping,’ she said. ‘He’d been doing so well, you know? He would probably have been out of there in a day or two, so when I looked … I thought everything was fine. It had been fine, just before, so I assumed … ’

  ‘He’d bitten through his tongue,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I know—’

  ‘There was blood all over his face.’

  ‘His head was turned the other way, so I couldn’t see it. I didn’t … see it, all right? I just saw a boy, asleep in bed.’ She leaned forward and fumbled for another cigarette from the pack on the table. ‘Do you really think I haven’t thought about what I should have done? That I’ve thought about anything else?’ She grabbed at the material of her dressing gown then raised her arms, the unlit cigarette held between her fingers. ‘You reckon I’ve had a good night’s sleep, do you? That I’ve had one since? Look at me, for God’s sake.’

  Thorne did as he was asked, but only for a second or two, a little uncomfortable with the fact that Susan Hughes was looking right back at him. He might have been dressed rather more formally than she was, but he guessed that his own face was every bit as drawn, as grey as hers.

  ‘Listen, Susan … I didn’t come here because you were negligent.’

  ‘So why did you come?’

  ‘I presume you knew about the thefts from the dispensary.’

  She nodded, lighting her cigarette. ‘You think those might have been my fault as well?’

  ‘Did you know that sixty tablets of Tramadol were taken the day after Amin came in?’

  ‘You think he stole them?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘What, so someone took them for him?’

  ‘I’m not convinced he even swallowed those tablets,’ Thorne said. ‘I think someone murdered him.’

  The nurse stared at him and released smoke from the side of her mouth. ‘Why would anyone …?’

  ‘That’s my problem,’ Thorne said.

  ‘He was a decent enough kid,’ she said. ‘I mean I hadn’t come across him before he was admitted to the wing, but that’s what I’d heard. Good-looking lad too. At least he was until some little twat took a knife to him.’ She thought for a few seconds then leaned forward, shaking her head in realisation. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I was prime suspect, was I?’

  Thorne drained the last of his tea. ‘I can’t think of too many other people who could have done it,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus.’

  Thorne did not rely on instincts, not any more. They had got him into trouble too often. Cost as many lives as they had saved. He had been played by killers – male and female – too many times to place trust solely in the gut feeling or that insistent voice in his head. Both were every bit as capricious as they were convincing.

  And yet, was his belief that Amin Akhtar had been murdered based on anything more than a nagging doubt?

  Wary as he was of these things, he looked at this woman in a dressing gown, saw her glaring at him through a plume of cigarette smoke and knew that she had not murdered anyone. She had not done her job as well as she might, and she was clearly living with that, but she was not directly responsible for Amin Akhtar’s death.

  He was sure of it, and he told her so.

  ‘I know I’m not,’ she said, the anger returning to her voice. ‘But that’s not going to get me my job back, is it?’

  TWENTY-SIX

  When Helen woke suddenly, it seemed as though one corner of the room was alive with light. She blinked and saw that Akhtar was watching television in the dark, his shoulders slumped and his hands clasped together in his lap. The colours danced across his face. The flickering reds and blues gave expression to his face where there was none and showed up the wetness around his eyes.

  They flicked to hers, and he seemed shocked that Helen was awake.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Helen said nothing. Thinking: sorry for waking me up? For the dried blood on my neck?

  For this? For all of … this?

  She closed her eyes again, and though she could not be sure how long she had slept or what had been a dream and what had not, the next thing she was fully aware of was the shape of him standing over h
er with a mug of hot tea and a packet of biscuits. A polite cough and him saying, ‘Some breakfast.’

  He stepped away, left the tea and biscuits on the floor within reach of her, and sat down.

  The gun was on the table.

  ‘I meant to say thank you,’ he said. ‘For what you said on the phone last night, I mean. For not telling them what had happened.’

  Helen reached for the tea. Her mouth tasted foul and she was glad of the scalding liquid to wash it away. She glanced down at the spatters of blood dried brown against the linoleum next to her, and the broad smear of it that led out into the shop. Akhtar had still been questioning himself the night before as he had unlocked the handcuffs and dragged Stephen Mitchell’s body out of the storeroom. He had stayed in the shop with it, while Helen sat shivering, with one arm hugging her legs to her chest, wishing that she had both hands free to block out the noise of him muttering in Hindi or shouting at himself. He was weeping, high-pitched like a woman, when sleep had finally overtaken her.

  ‘I am very grateful,’ he said now.

  Helen nodded, but the smile was much harder to plaster on and keep in place than before. An innocent man was lying dead among yesterday’s newspapers because Javed Akhtar believed the world was conspiring against him. Because he had gone out and bought a gun. Helen would still say and do whatever it took to stay safe, of course. She would do her best to sympathise and forge a bond with this man who held her prisoner, to convince him that she could help, that she was on his side. She would take his side if need be.

  But she would never forgive him for Stephen Mitchell.

  ‘Why did you lie to them?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t really think about it,’ Helen said.

  It was almost the truth. Instinct had certainly kicked in quickly, but she had known very well what might happen if the officers running the operation outside thought that a hostage had been killed or injured. She knew that there would suddenly be huge pressure to intervene, to use such force as was necessary to resolve the situation quickly, before the second hostage was also killed.

  Before they lost one of their own.

  She knew what could happen once that kind of intervention was authorised. Once the bullets started flying. She had done the only thing she could think of to prevent that happening, and though she had been well aware that the lie she was telling could end up costing her career, she had also known that it might just save her life.

  It is not my time to die.

  Or my baby’s time to lose his mother.

  ‘It was the sensible thing to do,’ she said.

  Akhtar drank his tea and began to talk about how, by this time on an ordinary day, he would normally have been up for four hours already. He told her that he would have driven to work, then delivered the papers and laid out any new stock that was needed before opening the shop. He talked quickly, trying a little too hard to keep things light, while Helen tucked into the biscuits. She realised suddenly that she was ravenous.

  Alfie would be up and about by now, she thought, full of beans and demanding to be fed. Would Jenny have been shopping? Would she have the things in that he liked best?

  ‘So, what do you think will be happening?’ Akhtar asked, suddenly.

  Helen looked up. She had not really been listening. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Out there.’

  He sounded genuinely anxious now, and looking at the tightness around his mouth Helen felt a peculiar rush of elation. Thinking that he damned well deserved to be. She was a trained police officer, for God’s sake, and there were dozens more outside his poxy shop who would happily tear his head off given half a chance …

  The feeling was short-lived. She needed him calm and reassured, and her bring-it-on confidence evaporated when she saw the speckles of blood on her tights and thought about Stephen Mitchell’s wife, waiting and hoping somewhere outside.

  Denise, who liked a glass of wine and didn’t mind telling people what she thought. Who wanted to wait just a little while longer before she and Stephen had their kids.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening out there,’ Helen said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be calling soon.’

  Akhtar smiled and reached for the remote. ‘We can find out, maybe.’ He turned the sound up on the television, then stood to angle the set so that Helen could see the screen. ‘Good idea?’

  They watched for a few minutes until, on the half-hour, Breakfast Time handed over to BBC London for what the smarmy presenter called the ‘news where you are’. The local anchor looked serious as a stock shot of an armed police officer appeared behind her.

  ‘There are no new developments this morning in the armed siege at a newsagent’s in south London. Overnight, there had been unconfirmed reports of a gunshot from inside the premises, but police have so far refused to comment. They have assured reporters in the last few minutes that both hostages, including an unnamed police officer, are alive and well, and that everything possible is being done to resolve the situation quickly and peacefully.’

  Another picture. A different expression. An interview with a local gymnast.

  ‘So,’ Helen said.

  Akhtar grunted and went back to his tea, as though the story they had just heard about had nothing whatsoever to do with him. He nodded towards the television. ‘Shall I leave it on?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘We might as well.’

  It was almost surreal, Helen thought. As though he were trying to restore some level of normality to the situation. However incongruous that notion might be with one of them handcuffed to a radiator, one armed with a gun and another growing cold in the next room.

  ‘I can never usually watch at this time,’ he said. ‘The shop is always so busy, you know?’

  So Helen brushed the crumbs from her bloodied skirt and they sat, like any other two people enjoying their breakfast, and watched the rest of the morning’s news.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Thorne was back at the RVP by nine-thirty. In the playground, the small catering van known to all and sundry as ‘Teapot One’ was still serving hot bacon rolls and Thorne could not resist. He saw Sue Pascoe smoking at the side of the main school building and wandered over.

  ‘You’ll get a detention for that,’ he said.

  She took another drag, nodding towards what was left of the roll in Thorne’s hand. ‘And you’ll get hardened arteries.’ She touched a little finger to the side of her mouth. ‘You’ve got … ’

  Thorne wiped away the ketchup. ‘So what happened last night? This gunshot.’

  Pascoe shook her head. ‘The gun went off, that’s all she said. Maybe he dropped it or something.’

  ‘Or fired it to prove it was loaded?’

  ‘Helen said it was an accident and I’m convinced she was saying that of her own free will.’ She turned and crushed the cigarette butt against the wall behind her. ‘Whatever happened, it was enough to give Chivers a stiffy.’

  ‘I don’t think it takes much,’ Thorne said.

  The look on Pascoe’s face told him she was every bit as wary of the CO19 team leader as he was. Another one of many who thought that a significant number of firearms officers took themselves a little too seriously and were rather too enamoured of the alpha-male canteen culture. There had been a minor scandal the year before, when one of their number was accused of slipping song titles into the evidence he was giving at an inquest. This had generated plenty of comic mileage throughout the Met, but sadly, many of those tough-as-old-boots alpha males in CO19 had shown themselves unable to take a joke.

  ‘So, all quiet overnight then?’

  Pascoe explained that an agreement had been reached late the night before between the outgoing team and those replacing them to make no further calls to Helen Weeks until the morning. Nobody believed that anyone inside would be getting a lot of sleep, but it had been decided that it would be best for everyone concerned to let hostages, and hostage ta
ker get as much rest as possible. While the replacement negotiator and firearms officers had remained on high alert throughout the night, there had been no proactive moves made from an operational standpoint, and no calls had been received from inside the newsagent’s.

  ‘Always good to come through the first night,’ Pascoe said. ‘Thing is though, as time goes on and everyone inside there gets more and more exhausted, they also get less predictable. And that’s more ammunition for those that want to get this resolved sooner rather than later.’

  As if on cue, Chivers appeared. He gave Thorne a nod, then focused on Pascoe. ‘Donnelly’s looking for you,’ he said. ‘Time to put another call in.’

  Pascoe hurried back towards the entrance and Thorne and Chivers followed a few steps behind.

  ‘So how’s it going your end?’ Chivers asked. He lowered his voice as though he did not want Pascoe to overhear.

  Thorne looked at him. ‘Well, I’ve not made an arrest as yet, if that’s what you want to know.’

  ‘What I want to know is how likely it is that you can give the man in that shop what he’s asking for. How likely and how long.’

  ‘There’s no way I can answer that.’

  ‘Well, you might have to think of one.’

  Thorne kept smiling. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Listen, I need to think about what my options are,’ Chivers said. ‘Do you understand?’ He jabbed a finger in the direction of the newsagent’s. ‘When he runs out of patience.’

  ‘Oh, I understand,’ Thorne said. ‘Because I’m not an idiot, you know?’ He shouldered open the doors and turned towards the hall. ‘Sounds to me though like you’re the one that’s getting impatient.’ He took a few steps. ‘Maybe you should relax a little, mate. Take it easy, you know, instead of living on a prayer. One day at a time, sweet Jesus.’

  Chivers stared for a few seconds, until the penny dropped. ‘Song titles,’ he said. ‘Funny.’

  Donnelly was waiting at the monitors and as soon as he saw Thorne and Chivers approaching, he gave Pascoe the go-ahead to make the call. Pascoe nodded and made final adjustments to the headset she had connected via Bluetooth to her mobile.