Good as Dead tt-10

by Mark Billingham

  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 d
own, 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 reckon? 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.

  Certainly not to the likes of Chivers anyway. Not the sort of tosser who thought women did not really belong in high-pressure situations. Who would talk at you instead of to you, then still try it on after work given half a chance. Who still called female officers ‘plonks’ when they weren’t listening.

  Nine out of ten hostage situations were resolved through negotiation, she told herself for the umpteenth time.

  By people like her.

  Why on earth was she worrying about how well qualified she or anybody else was? She knew her superiors thought well of her and that her record was as good as anyone’s. Other negotiators were busy being assigned to talk nutters down off car-park roofs and only the best in the field got called in when weapons were involved.

  ‘About ten minutes, Sue?’

  Donnelly was pulling out the chair next to her. She looked up at him and nodded. For a second she considered asking him who would be taking her place overnight, but thought better of it. Then, when she was sure he wasn’t looking, she lowered the phone and wiped it and her palm against her trouser leg.

  As she and Donnelly began a pre-call briefing, Pascoe chided herself again for those fleeting moments of insecurity. She had done a good job, she told herself, had acted and re acted as per all her training. Most importantly of all, the hostages remained safe.

  Donnelly talked and she nodded.

  As long as they were still safe by the time she walked out of that school hall at the end of her shift, she could sleep well.

  Helen had used the toilet twice since Mitchell had been that first time and the routine was now well established. When the newsagent gave the nod, Mitchell picked up the small key which Akhtar had tossed to
the floor in front of him then leaned across Helen’s lap and attempted to unfasten her cuff.

  Akhtar stood safely out of reach, the gun trained on the pair of them.

  It was not easy, as Mitchell was right-handed and was forced to try and unlock the cuffs with his left. He had managed it after a minute or two the first couple of times, but on this occasion he seemed to be struggling.

  ‘Just go easy,’ Helen said.

  His hand was shaking and he cursed under his breath.

  ‘You really don’t want me to piss myself.’

  Mitchell took a deep breath and made another attempt, the key grasped between his thumb and forefinger as he stretched awkwardly to manoeuvre it into the tiny lock. Just as it looked as though he had succeeded, the key slipped from his grasp and dropped to the floor.

  ‘Can I not just do it myself?’ Helen asked. ‘Please.’

  Akhtar shook his head. Said, ‘The same way as before.’

  Groaning with the effort, Mitchell strained to pick up the key. He pushed clumsily at the lock and missed. He tried again, then sat back up and threw the key down hard.

  ‘I can’t do this.’

  The key settled on the scarred and dirty lino a few feet in front of him.

  ‘Just relax, Stephen,’ Helen said. ‘Give it another go.’

  ‘No… ’

  Helen watched Akhtar take two steps forward, the gun held out in front of him, and something cold fluttered in her chest. From the corner of her eye she caught the look on Mitchell’s face, but even as she saw what was coming, it was too late to do anything about it.

  Akhtar let his eyes drop to where the key had fallen, just for a moment, but long enough for Mitchell to launch himself forward, stretch out his arm and get a hand on the gun.

  Helen screamed Mitchell’s name.

  Mitchell pulled hard at the gun, dragging Akhtar towards him and on to his knees. The newsagent gasped in panic. He shook his head. Then they were both shouting, ‘No, please,’ and ‘Give it to me,’ and the metal handcuff clattered against the radiator pipe as Mitchell fought to wrench the gun from Akhtar’s hand.

  Helen leaned across and clawed at Mitchell’s arm.