Good as Dead

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Right does not come into it. I know that this is not right, but in the end I did not have a choice.’

  ‘Course you did.’

  Akhtar stood up and took down a carton of cigarettes from one of the shelves. He brandished it, angrily. ‘You know, I could be doing what everybody else does and driving across to France or Belgium and bringing thousands of these things over in the back of a van. I would save myself a fortune, but I always refused to do it because I never believed that sort of thing was right. You break a small law and soon the bigger ones become easier to ignore. So I always did things the correct way, I always obeyed every rule because the most important thing was that I could sleep at night. That mattered to me, Miss Weeks, however silly it might sound now. I never had to worry that someone would come knocking at my door in the middle of the night, you understand?’ He tossed the carton on to the floor. ‘I was stupid,’ he said. ‘I believed that the law would look after my son, that he would be treated fairly.’ He took a deep breath and wiped the sleeve of his shirt across his face. ‘And when he died, I believed, stupidly, that the person who was responsible would be found and would be punished.’

  They both turned at the sound of a raised voice somewhere outside the front of the shop. They waited. Helen guessed it was just some copper shouting at a subordinate and shook her head to let Akhtar know there was nothing to get excited about.

  He nodded and sat down.

  ‘Sometimes people get it wrong,’ she said.

  ‘I was the one who got it wrong,’ Akhtar said. ‘Because I trusted in people who I thought were far cleverer than me. Who were supposed to be good at their jobs.’ He picked up the gun then laid it down again. ‘Now look where we are … ’

  Helen groaned as she shifted her position to relieve the ache in her buttocks. In an effort to ease the cramp in her calves she reached forward with her free hand and pulled back on her toes.

  ‘Shall I try and find another cushion?’ Akhtar asked.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Helen said. She leaned back. ‘You never answered my question.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘What if all Thorne’s efforts aren’t good enough?’ Helen stared at him, her face neutral, no more than curious. Thinking: what if you’re just a misguided old man with a screw loose? And even if you’re not, will it bring your son back? Will it bring Stephen Mitchell back? ‘What if you don’t get the answers you’re waiting for?’

  ‘Very simple. I keep waiting. I have plenty of time.’

  ‘We can’t sit in here for ever, Javed.’ She nodded towards the shop. ‘They won’t let that happen.’

  Akhtar shook his head and slapped his palm against the desktop. ‘No, no, I am the one in charge here.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Helen said.

  ‘Good, because everyone needs to understand that. You and the people outside.’

  ‘They understand, believe me.’

  ‘And you’re doing well, yes?’ He pointed at her. ‘I’m looking after you OK?’

  ‘Very well,’ Helen said. ‘Thank you.’

  Akhtar seemed pleased and began searching eagerly through the pile of magazines on the desk. He asked Helen if she would like something to read, told her he always kept an excellent selection. He offered her Hello!, Bella and Brides Monthly. Helen said thank you and told him that she would look at them later.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Helen nodded towards her phone. It was sitting on the desk, plugged into the charger that Helen always kept in her handbag. ‘Do you think I could make a quick call?’ she asked.

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘My sister,’ Helen said. ‘I just want to see how my son’s doing, you know?’

  Akhtar looked suspicious, but his expression was almost melodramatic, as though he believed it was how he ought to look. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s not what’s supposed to happen.’

  ‘Please, Javed. Only for a minute.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper, but she kept it even at least. ‘I want to check he’s all right.’

  ‘No.’ Akhtar stood up. ‘I’m running this bloody show and I decide what happens.’ He picked up the gun to emphasise his authority, but did not point it at her. He walked towards the shop then stopped in the doorway, calmer suddenly. ‘Anyway, we need to keep the phone free in case Thorne calls.’

  ‘I just wanted him to hear my voice,’ Helen said. ‘That’s all.’

  Akhtar looked at his feet for a while, then disappeared into the shop.

  Helen closed her eyes and lay down.

  A few minutes later, she could hear him crying again next door.

  Sue Pascoe emerged from the toilet cubicle and crossed to the row of small sinks to wash her hands and splash some water on her face. She smiled at seeing that someone had written ‘Wesley is a big knob’ in black felt-tip on the mirror. Wondered if Wesley, who could be no more than eleven, would have the wherewithal to change ‘is’ to ‘has’.

  It was the first time all day that she had found a few minutes to herself or thought about anything other than the job in hand.

  The first time she had smiled.

  She looked at her watch. It was now thirty hours since Javed Akhtar had taken two people hostage at gunpoint. Donnelly seemed happy enough with the way things were progressing, though in a situation such as this one, that only meant that nothing bad was happening. Chivers was still making noises about the need for advanced technical support and Pascoe knew there would soon be pressure from elsewhere to relax the cordon so as to ease traffic congestion in the area, or at least make an effort to get the station at Tulse Hill reopened.

  God forbid the commuters should suffer.

  As things stood, none of this was her concern, but it soon would be if the whispers about resolving the hostage situation as quickly as possible grew any louder. If Donnelly started to listen. Then it would become Helen Weeks’ concern too.

  She dried her face and brushed her hair. She groaned at the amount of grey coming through and determined to get back to the hairdresser’s as soon as she got the chance. She reapplied her lipstick, then stepped out into the school corridor feeling better. Passing one of the classrooms, she glanced in through the small window and saw a black woman talking animatedly to a WPC. The woman saw her and immediately stood up and walked towards the door.

  Pascoe swore quietly and braced herself. She knew Denise Mitchell had clocked her, that there was now no possibility of walking quickly away.

  The woman was pretty, with flawless skin and hair in cornrows, and she had begun talking before she had opened the door. ‘Look, nobody will tell me what the hell’s going on. I’m going mental stuck in here.’

  ‘Everybody’s doing everything they can,’ Pascoe said.

  ‘It doesn’t feel like it,’ Denise said. ‘It feels like everyone’s rushing around with serious faces, but nothing’s actually happening.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Pascoe said. ‘Obviously if there was anything to tell you, I would.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Even if it was something I really didn’t want to hear?’ The woman’s eyes were suddenly wet. ‘Is that your job or do they give that one to somebody else?’

  ‘Look, I think perhaps you’d be a lot more comfortable staying elsewhere. Has anybody talked to you about a hotel?’

  A nod.

  ‘Don’t you think that would be a good idea?’

  ‘I don’t want to go on my own.’

  ‘What about family?’ Pascoe asked. ‘There must be somebody … ’

  ‘There’s just Steve.’ Denise reached into the sleeve of her sweater and drew out a used tissue. She lifted it towards her face then stopped and crushed it in her fist.

  ‘Everybody’s doing everything they can,’ Pascoe said.

  ‘Yeah, you keep saying that.’

  ‘Because it’s the truth.’

  ‘Really?’ The woman narrowed her eyes and stared at the Met Police badge on the lanyard
around Pascoe’s neck. The WPC had appeared behind her in the doorway. ‘What are you doing?’

  Pascoe wondered if there was anything she could say that would make this woman feel better. I’m the one being paid to negotiate with the man who has your husband. I’m the one whose job it is to keep him alive.

  Denise Mitchell did not bother waiting for an answer. ‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘Steve hasn’t done anything.’ Her voice cracked as she raised it. ‘You should stop talking about it and get him out of there, because he hasn’t done anything.’

  Now, Pascoe really had nothing to say.

  She watched as the WPC guided the woman back into the room, then turned and walked back towards the hall.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘You don’t appear to be with us today, Mr Jaffer … ’

  Rahim looked up and stared at his tutor. She waited, as though expecting an explanation for his lack of attention or perhaps a précis of the topic she and the other students had been discussing for the previous few minutes. All Rahim could do was mumble an apology, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks while some of the others around the table laughed and shook their heads. The woman began talking again and Rahim did his best to listen. He scribbled a few notes on a page that was already covered with meaningless doodles, but within a minute or two the pen grew heavy in his hand and the tutor’s words had become no more than background burble and hiss.

  So rack that fucking big brain of yours …

  Thorne’s words were still ringing loud and clear though, the expression on the policeman’s face vivid enough to tighten the cold and slippery knot in Rahim’s guts whenever he closed his eyes.

  I’m betting he had more than one secret.

  He was squeezing the pen so tightly that purplish half-moons of blood had formed beneath his fingernails. He cast his eyes in the direction of his tutor and told his head to nod, while he tried to regulate his breathing. To keep the anger in check. He was not a child any more, and he hated being made to feel like one. He resented feeling ashamed and fearful when he had left shame and fear behind him, locked away back in his parents’ house with the ugly carpets and the stink of patchouli.

  The other students laughed suddenly. One of his tutor’s bad jokes.

  He laughed along, while he sat there and told himself that none of this was his fault. Not what Amin’s stupid father was doing and not what had happened to Amin. He could never have foreseen that, or done anything to stop it, and nothing he could do or say now would change the fact that he was dead, would it?

  Dead was dead, even if there was no need to rack that big brain of his. Even though he knew exactly what Thorne was after. Dead was dead, whatever his parents and their priests might have taught him, and did it really make any difference to anyone except one policeman and a crazy old newsagent how it happened?

  Or why?

  He was your friend …

  Rahim looked up at the mention of his name. Saw the look of concern on his tutor’s face.

  ‘Perhaps you should go home,’ she said. ‘You really don’t look well.’

  He did not need a second invitation. He stood and gathered his books, said something about a virus and hurried from the room without bothering to close the door behind him.

  He was lucky that the toilet was only a few steps away.

  Ten seconds later his books and papers lay scattered on the floor of the cubicle, as he dropped to his knees, clutched at the edge of the bowl and threw up.

  Excited as he was by developments, Thorne had been at something of a loss as to where he should go after talking to Rahim Jaffer, so he decided to get some lunch. To share it with someone he could at least usefully discuss things with. It would not be the first time he had eaten in a mortuary, enveloped by the sounds and smells of the dead and those who worked on them. Thorne figured there were probably fewer germs around than in the average greasy spoon.

  Phil Hendricks shared the small office at Hornsey Mortuary with three other pathologists. In contrast to the state-of-the-art lab and post-mortem suite along the corridor, the room was tired and grimy. Hendricks’ desk was as cluttered as usual with olive-green arch files and folders, the only flashes of bright colour provided by the columns of curling pink Post-it notes around the computer screen and the obligatory ‘Arsenal: Legends of the Seventies’ calendar pinned to the wall above.

  This month: Liam Brady with his 1979 FA Cup Winner’s medal.

  ‘So the kid was gay,’ Hendricks said. ‘You’d more or less worked that out anyway and it’s still not much of a motive.’

  ‘No?’ Thorne held out the plastic bag containing the selection of sandwiches and snacks he’d picked up from Tesco on the way. Hendricks rummaged around, finally plumped for the ham and cheese and a bottle of apple juice. ‘That was the one I wanted,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks said, ‘Good,’ went back into the bag again and fished out a packet of crisps. ‘OK, so there’s always a few morons who enjoy taking their problems out on people with better fashion sense than them, but as a rule I don’t think gay-bashers tend to be quite so … imaginative.’

  ‘It’s definitely part of it though.’ Thorne took out his own sandwich, opened a bottle of water. ‘There’s sex involved somewhere.’

  ‘You’re obsessed, mate.’

  ‘Me?’

  Hendricks had taken off his scrubs and was wearing jeans and a tight-fitting white T-shirt. Thorne took a quick inventory of the tattoos on display. There were none he could not recall seeing before, and as his friend usually celebrated each sexual conquest with a trip to the tattoo parlour, this probably meant that he wasn’t getting much action. It was always possible that there was a new tattoo somewhere Thorne couldn’t see it of course, but he doubted it. That would mean that Hendricks was getting his end away and keeping it to himself.

  And he never kept it to himself.

  ‘You thought about blackmail?’ Hendricks asked.

  ‘All the time,’ Thorne said. ‘Give me a thousand pounds or I’ll go on Facebook and tell all your friends you’re shit in bed.’

  Hendricks flashed a sarcastic grin, teeth full of ham and cheese.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve thought about it,’ Thorne said.

  ‘He sleeps with someone who’d rather it’s kept quiet, tries to squeeze them for money.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You might want to look at the Muslim angle again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They hate poofs even more than people who kill themselves.’ Hendricks took another bite of his sandwich. ‘“When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes.” Muhammad said that, apparently.’ He chewed for a few seconds. ‘I’m clearly not sleeping with the right men.’

  They said nothing for a minute or two. Sat and ate and listened to the noises of the mortuary. The distant clanging of freezer cabinets and the squeak of trolley wheels in the corridor outside.

  ‘This Rahim kid knows more than he’s telling me,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Sounds like you put the wind up him.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Thorne aimed his empty water bottle at the metal bin in the corner and missed. ‘I haven’t got time to do things any other way.’

  ‘How’s that copper in the newsagent’s doing?’

  ‘Pretty well, I think,’ Thorne said. ‘She’s tougher than they think she is.’ He gathered the plastic packaging and empty crisp packets and shoved them into the plastic bag. ‘It’s that poor sod who works in a bank I feel sorry for. God knows how he’s holding up.’

  Thorne walked over and dropped the plastic bag into the bin. When he turned round, Hendricks was looking at him.

  ‘You spoken to Louise lately?’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘You?’

  He was not surprised when Hendricks nodded. He and Louise had grown extremely close in the two years she and Thorne were together and theirs was a relationship of gossip, whispers and in-jokes that had often made Thorne stupidly jealous. Had made him feel excluded. There were times w
hen Thorne had resented his best friend coming between himself and Louise, and others, somewhat less comfortable to think about now, when he had felt as though Louise were the one doing the muscling in.

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s doing OK,’ Hendricks said. ‘I mean it’s not like you’re any great loss, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘You should call her.’

  ‘Yeah, well she did accidentally manage to hang on to several of my Emmylou Harris albums.’

  ‘Seriously,’ Hendricks said.

  Thorne nodded and lifted his leather jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Listen, about this drugs thing.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Hendricks said, mock-offended. ‘There was I thinking you’d just dropped in to have lunch.’

  ‘A working lunch,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I told you, I’d get on it.’

  ‘When, Phil?’

  ‘Look, I just need to find a few hours to get my nose into a couple of books,’ Hendricks said. He nodded towards the computer keyboard. ‘Spend some time on the internet.’

  ‘Soon as you can, eh?’

  Hendricks pointed to the door, the post-mortem suite beyond. ‘Sorry, mate, I’ve been a bit bloody busy. RTA on the Seven Sisters Road yesterday. Multiple fatalities.’

  ‘They’re not going anywhere,’ Thorne said.

  While Kitson brought him up to speed with the day’s developments, Russell Brigstocke – ever the keen amateur magician – sat with a deck of cards, practising fancy cuts and shuffles. He listened intently while Kitson talked him through the interview with Peter Allen, the movement of the cards between his fingers helping him to relax and calm down after the call he had received ten minutes earlier from Martin Dawes’ commanding officer.

  ‘I just thought we should “touch base” on this Amin Akhtar thing,’ the man had said. That one phrase alone had been enough to tell Brigstocke the kind of pompous tosser he was dealing with. ‘From the sound of it, your DI is doing his level best to discredit the original inquiry, which I think is a real shame. It’s not going to make him very popular and if he’s not careful it’s going to make my team look rather silly.’