Good as Dead

by Mark Billingham

  ‘It’s a fair point, Pete,’ Kitson said. ‘There isn’t a scrap of evidence and the fact is that even if you told us right here and now that it was you, we’re far too busy to do a great deal about it. I mean the kid’s dead now, right, and it wasn’t like you had anything to do with that.’ She waited, studied his face. ‘But let’s just say hypothetically that it was you who attacked him—’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  Kitson held her hand up. ‘For the sake of argument, all right? If it was you, then why might you have done it? Like you say, you barely knew the kid, right? It wasn’t like it was revenge for some fight you’d had with him or he’d said something to piss you off in the canteen, was it? Not a kid like him. I mean … fair play to you, you did a very nice job, you got away with it somehow. You managed to stash the knife somewhere, got yourself cleaned up, but it was still a hell of a risk.’ She turned to Holland. ‘Don’t you reckon?’

  Holland nodded. ‘You’d have to be an idiot.’

  ‘What were you, just a few days from being released? Something like that would have put plenty more time on your sentence, so there’s no way you’d have done it without a seriously good reason, is there? Without something decent in it for you, I mean. You’re not Brain of Britain, but you’re not an idiot, are you, Pete?’

  Allen struggled for something to say. Settled for: ‘This is bollocks.’

  ‘Maybe you did it because someone asked you to.’

  ‘What?’ Allen shook his head and tried to laugh, but it was tight, strangled.

  ‘Where did the money come from for all this?’ Holland asked. The dog was whimpering outside the kitchen, scratching at the back door. ‘And don’t tell us it was the three-thirty at Kempton Park, because we’re certainly not idiots.’

  Allen sniffed and looked as though he was considering spitting on the floor, until he remembered he was in his own living room. He pushed himself away from the wall and said, ‘I’ve got to feed my dog.’

  Holland and Kitson watched as Allen sauntered into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. They heard him open the back door, then listened to the skitter of the puppy’s claws on the tiles and Allen fussing over it, his voice deliberately raised so that they could hear just how unconcerned he was.

  ‘If you tell us who put you up to it, we can guarantee you won’t be prosecuted for the attack,’ Kitson shouted.

  Holland looked at her. They had been authorised to give no such guarantee. Kitson shrugged.

  There was no response from the kitchen.

  After half a minute they stood up to leave, but as Kitson moved back towards the porch, Holland walked across and leaned in close to the kitchen door. ‘Good luck.’

  There was a pause before Allen answered. ‘What?’

  ‘I was talking to the dog,’ Holland said.

  THIRTY

  Good people who snapped, they were always tricky to deal with. It was what they did that counted of course, the havoc no different to that wrought by multiple killers with no discernible conscience, the grief of those left behind no less crippling. But still …

  Hard to treat them the same way.

  As Thorne drove north, he thought about a Russian he had read about in a magazine, a man who had tracked down the Swiss air traffic controller whose negligence had cost the lives of his wife and children in a plane crash. The Russian had gone to the man’s door holding a photograph of his dead family and when the air traffic controller had knocked the picture from his hands, the man had lost his reason, burst into the house and stabbed the owner to death.

  ‘It was as if he had taken them from me all over again,’ the Russian had said, and years later, when he was finally released from prison, there had been a parade held in his honour.

  Good people who snapped.

  He remembered a teacher – the ‘best in the school’, according to parents and other members of staff – who had put a fifteen-year-old boy into a coma with a cricket stump after being baited once too often. Thorne had watched the man break down in the interview room, weeping like a child for two lives wiped out in a few seconds of madness. ‘The red mist,’ the teacher had said to him. ‘One of my kids put that in an English essay once and I crossed it out and put “cliché”, but that’s exactly what it’s like. I was watching this arm clutching that stump and then I realised it was mine, but I just couldn’t stop swinging it. It was like there was blood in my eyes.’

  Thorne could not foresee a parade when the teacher completed his sentence for attempted murder, but neither had there been any team celebration in the pub the day he was sent down. He guessed that it would be much the same when things had played themselves out in Tulse Hill, unless Javed Akhtar did something very stupid.

  Negotiating his way across the main roundabout at Elephant and Castle, Thorne knew that he was somewhere close to where Holland lived. One of the turnings off St George’s Road. He’d only been there a couple of times, on the last occasion just after Chloe was born, but Sophie had not been shy about making her feelings towards him obvious, and there had certainly not been an invitation to return.

  He wondered if it was something Holland and his girlfriend argued about.

  Or did Holland think he was a prick as well?

  Half a mile further on and he was in Southwark, looking for somewhere to park, when his phone rang. He pulled over.

  ‘How’s it going then?’

  DI Martin Dawes was trying to sound cheery and no more than curious, but Thorne knew better. ‘Checking up on me?’ he asked. ‘Worried that I might find something you didn’t?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘How do you think Amin got hold of those drugs?’ There was a pause, as though Dawes was trying to work out if it was a trick question or not, so Thorne ploughed on. ‘Were they brought in by someone else, d’you reckon? Or maybe he nicked them himself.’

  ‘Well, either’s possible.’

  ‘What about those thefts from the DDA cupboard, do you think they might be important?’

  ‘Listen, I took all that into account.’

  ‘Really? Including the fact that the Tramadol was stolen the day after he was admitted?’

  Another pause.

  ‘You never thought to check that, did you?’

  ‘Well, I did find out later on,’ Dawes said, flustered. ‘It was mentioned at the inquest, as a matter of fact, so it’s not like you’ve found Shergar or anything. Didn’t make any difference in the end, so to be honest, I don’t see quite what you’re getting so worked up about.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘If he took them it’s still suicide, isn’t it?’

  ‘If he took them.’

  Dawes clearly wasn’t listening. ‘It doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘Actually it does,’ Thorne said. ‘I was wrong yesterday when I said you were an idiot. You’re a fuckwit.’

  He parked behind the Local History Library on Borough Road and walked back across Keyworth Street, which neatly bisected the Southwark campus of South Bank University.

  Thorne had called the office before he’d left Tulse Hill and asked DS Samir Karim to do some checking for him. Karim had spoken to the university registrar and discovered that Rahim was in the first of a three-year Marketing and Accountancy course. A second call to his tutor had established the day’s lecture schedule.

  10.30-12.00: Quantitative Literacy.

  Thorne stopped to ask directions from a couple of girls who tried their best to help, despite having little English. He knew which building he was looking for, but it still took him another quarter of an hour to find it.

  He checked his watch. He still had fifteen minutes.

  It was striking, the way that Rahim Jaffer’s expression changed twice after he had spotted Thorne on the way out of the lecture theatre. He was talking to another student who was laughing at whatever was being said, when his eye was caught by the man in the leather jacket standing up from a chair in the corridor. The smile was instinctive, a natur
al enough reaction on seeing someone he recognised, but it lingered no more than a second or two, until Rahim remembered where he had met the man before.

  When he had last seen him.

  Thorne knew that none of this was necessarily significant, of course. As investigating officer in the manslaughter of Lee Slater, Thorne had been giving evidence for the prosecution, while Rahim had been a key witness in his friend’s defence. It was nine months ago, so understandable that Rahim had been unable to place Thorne for a few seconds. It was also very likely that the circumstances in which their paths had last crossed would be the reason that he did not seem overjoyed to see him again.

  ‘Remember me?’ Thorne asked. He could see that Rahim did, but it was always worth trying to elicit a lie immediately. It told you something straight away. Brigstocke called it ‘getting the lie of the land’.

  Rahim nodded and put out his hand.

  Thorne shook and said he needed a word. ‘It won’t take long and you’re not due at your Digital Marketing seminar until one o’clock, so there’s plenty of time.’

  Rahim blinked, taken aback. ‘Right … ’

  Again, it was a simple enough trick, but when you weren’t sure where a conversation with someone was going to lead, the back foot was usually the best place for them to start.

  Thorne led the way to a small seating area where he had spent most of the previous fifteen minutes drinking coffee and flicking through a student newspaper. A few metal tables and chairs, vending machines for snacks, hot and cold drinks. He sat Rahim down and asked him if he wanted anything. He bought him a bottle of still water, then took the chair opposite.

  He saw Rahim looking around and told him not to worry.

  He had been careful to select a table where they would not be overheard.

  ‘So come on then,’ Thorne said. ‘What the hell is “quantitative literacy” when it’s at home?’

  ‘It’s just about being comfortable with numbers really,’ Rahim said. ‘How we use them in our everyday lives. So … logic and reasoning, algebra, geometry, probability, statistics. It’s basically just a pretentious way of saying maths.’

  ‘Enjoy it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘Take away the algebra and geometry bits and it’s the same kind of stuff I use. Reasoning, probability, all that. Maybe I should start calling myself a quantitative detective.’ He stumbled over the words and smiled. ‘Well, I would if I could say it.’

  Rahim smiled too, but it was as short-lived as before. He fiddled with the cap from his water bottle.

  ‘What are you now, eighteen?’

  Rahim nodded.

  Thorne had recognised Rahim straight away, but the boy had certainly changed a good deal since he had last seen him. Perhaps it was just that jump from sixth-former to undergraduate. The neatly combed hair was now gelled up into a fin and the simple grey suit had been replaced with baggy jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt. A tattoo was just visible on his forearm and he wore a diamond stud in each ear.

  Before he had clapped eyes on Thorne, he had seemed comfortable and happy.

  ‘You know what this is about?’ Thorne asked. ‘Right?’

  ‘What’s going on with Amin’s dad, you mean? Yeah, I saw it on the news.’ Rahim sat back. ‘Is everybody OK?’

  ‘At the moment.’

  ‘So, what’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘You lied about where you were,’ Thorne said. ‘The night you and Amin got attacked.’ He waited, but Rahim said nothing. ‘I mean we knew you were lying back then, but we didn’t think it was very important. Now, it might be.’

  Rahim took a long swig of water.

  ‘I know you’re gay, Rahim.’ Thorne knew no such thing, but the look on the boy’s face told him he was right.

  ‘So?’

  ‘And so was Amin.’

  ‘Look … ’ Rahim put down the bottle. ‘We couldn’t say anything because our parents didn’t know. Mine still don’t know. They’re pretty strict … very strict, and there’s no way I can tell them that isn’t going to be a nightmare. It’s an Indian thing, OK? You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘I do understand,’ Thorne said. ‘And for what it’s worth I’ve got no intention of telling them.’ He studied the boy’s face, looking for a sign of reassurance or relief, but there was none. He was clearly worried about something else.

  ‘I still don’t see—’

  ‘Javed Akhtar doesn’t think Amin killed himself.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t—’

  ‘He believes that Amin was murdered.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And I think he’s right.’

  ‘Jesus …!’

  It could easily have been an exclamation of shock, but it had taken just a second too long and to Thorne it looked more like fear. ‘Here’s the thing, Rahim,’ he said, leaning across the table. ‘Right now, I don’t have a motive and if I’m going to catch the person responsible for this, I really need to find one. So … using “logic” and “reasoning” and a bit of bog-standard guesswork, there’s a fair chance that there are other things about Amin that I don’t know and maybe one of them got him killed.’ He let his words hang for a moment, waiting until the boy looked up and met his eyes. ‘Now, you’d know way more than me about the probability, but I’m betting that he had more than one secret, and I need you to tell me what they were.’

  Rahim leaned away and raised his hands. ‘There’s … nothing.’

  ‘You quite sure about that?’ Thorne’s tone was sharp suddenly. He had given up expecting anything on a plate, but was content to take out his frustration at the last day and a half on the young man sitting opposite.

  ‘I can’t think of anything, I swear.’

  ‘You might want to try a bit harder,’ Thorne said. He spat the words out, happy enough for them to be overheard by the group of students two tables away. ‘Because he was your friend, and he wouldn’t even have been in prison if he hadn’t been trying to stop some thug sticking a knife in you.’

  ‘I know that. Don’t you think I know that?’

  ‘Good, so rack that fucking big brain of yours and do it sharpish.’ He grabbed the half-empty water bottle and threw it hard into the plastic bin by the side of the vending machine. ‘You’ve seen what’s happening at his dad’s shop, so you know that we’re kind of against the clock on this one.’

  ‘Yeah, I know … ’

  Thorne gave him a card with his mobile number on. ‘Call me any time, OK? Now you give me yours.’

  Rahim gave Thorne the number, then reached down for his bag. He looked close to tears. He said, ‘I need to have lunch before my next class.’

  Thorne watched him walk away without a word.

  He felt a brief pang of sympathy for Rahim Jaffer, of regret at his outburst. The boy was guilty of nothing, he was almost certain of that. As he reached for his phone and dialled, he knew losing his temper had been justifiable – given the circumstances, given his desperation – but that he should be saving all his anger for those deserving of it.

  If he ever got the chance.

  ‘Dave?’ He could hear that Holland and Kitson were driving. ‘How did it go with Allen?’

  ‘I managed to stop myself punching him,’ Holland said.

  Thorne heard Kitson laughing. ‘You fancy him for the attack on Amin, then?’

  ‘Oh yeah, but there’s definitely something else going on.’

  ‘He was shitting himself,’ Kitson shouted.

  ‘When we talked about someone putting him up to it, he was as nervous as hell.’

  ‘Any bright ideas?’

  ‘Well, he’s rather more minted than your average ex-con, I know that much,’ Holland said. ‘He’s got seven or eight grand’s worth of hi-fi and TV in his front room.’

  Thorne told Holland that he might as well get himself and Kitson back to the office, then asked them to run a name through the Police National Computer as soon as they had a chance. ‘It’s Rahim Jaffer,’ Tho
rne said. ‘J-A-F-F-E-R.’

  When he stood up, he could see that the group of students were eyeing him suspiciously. Most stared quickly down at their Cokes and lattes when they saw him looking. He smiled as he walked past them on his way to the exit, toyed with announcing that he was a visiting Criminology professor, but decided against it.

  There’s definitely something else going on.

  It might well have been the two coffees he’d drunk waiting for Rahim, but was more likely the conversation he’d just had with Dave Holland and Yvonne Kitson. The implication, the possibilities.

  Either way, Thorne was fired up suddenly. Full of energy.

  All he needed now was something, or someone, to focus it on.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘What happens if Thorne doesn’t find what you want him to find?’ Helen asked. ‘What do you do then, Javed?’

  Akhtar was sitting at the desk. He had been to fetch an assortment of reading material from the shop, and had been staring at the same page of a motoring magazine for half an hour. He looked across at Helen. ‘Is he a good policeman?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘OK, then.’ Akhtar shrugged as if there was therefore nothing to worry about. ‘So we have to trust that he will do a good job. A better job than his colleagues made of things, at any rate.’ He went back to his magazine, turned the page.

  ‘Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good you are,’ Helen said. ‘How hard you work. You don’t always get the result you want.’ She waited, but he didn’t look up. ‘Do you know how many times I’ve had to watch while someone I know is guilty as sin gets away with it? Someone who’s hurt children and who will go on hurting them.’

  Akhtar closed his magazine. ‘And you wonder why I no longer have any faith in the law?’ He shook his head. ‘Justice is a bloody joke, you have just made that very clear yourself.’

  ‘Things don’t always work out the way they should, I’m not saying they do.’

  ‘I know that, believe me.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean … this is right. What you’re doing.’