Good as Dead tt-10

by Mark Billingham

  She opened her mouth to say his name again, then the explosion forced her back hard against the radiator and down on to her side.

  She kept her eyes closed while the gunshot’s report sang in her ears.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Every officer in the hall was silent, frozen at their station. Donnelly was on his feet. ‘Was that what I think it was?’

  He and Pascoe stared at the monitors. They watched as firearms officers who had been leaning casually against their vehicles scrambled to take up combat stances and trained their weapons on the shop. They turned to see Chivers pick up his helmet and his Heckler and Koch carbine and rush from the hall to join his team, then turned back to the monitors to see him appear on screen twenty seconds later and take up a position himself.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Pascoe said.

  Donnelly studied the monitor for half a minute. There was no further movement. He pointed to the phone in Pascoe’s hand.

  Said, ‘Call.’

  The number had been programmed into speed dial. Pascoe hit the button and waited. The click of connection popped from the speakers and, a few seconds later, the ringing of Helen Weeks’ phone began to echo, tinny and grating, around the hall.

  The call went to voicemail.

  Hi, this is Helen. Up to my eyes in something or other, so please-

  ‘Again,’ Donnelly said.

  Pascoe ended the call and hit redial. The phone rang three times, then was answered.

  ‘Helen?’

  There was a long pause before Helen Weeks said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s Sue Pascoe.’ Pascoe waited. ‘Helen?’

  ‘Yes… I’m here.’

  ‘Is everything OK in there? We heard what sounded like a gunshot.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Was it a gunshot, Helen?’

  ‘It was a stupid accident-’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Pascoe asked. ‘Is Mr Mitchell all right?’

  ‘We’re both fine. It was just… an accident, that’s all, so no need to panic.’

  Pascoe felt the tension in her shoulders, in the room, lift a little. She watched Donnelly let out a breath as he leaned against the table. The next question was obvious enough. There was still the possibility that the hostage taker had turned the gun on himself.

  ‘Mr Akhtar?’

  ‘He’s fine too,’ Helen said.

  There were more than a few in the hall who struggled to hide their disappointment.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The gun went off, that’s all. No harm done and nobody hurt. Well, except for the bloody ringing in my ears.’

  ‘As long as everything’s OK.’

  ‘Yes… look, I’m sorry if you were worried. I’m sure everyone started getting a bit jumpy out there.’

  Pascoe put a laugh into her voice. ‘Yeah, just a bit.’

  There was a longer pause before Helen said, ‘This is going to sound a bit pathetic, but I really need the loo, so… ’

  ‘OK,’ Pascoe said. ‘We’ll talk again soon.’

  The line went dead.

  Pascoe looked at Donnelly, but he was already on the radio, reporting the conversation to Chivers. A minute later, the CO19 man came marching back into the hall. He dropped his helmet on the table next to the monitor and grabbed a bottle of water. He looked rather less relieved than everyone else in the room. ‘Up to me, we’d be going in,’ he said.

  Donnelly nodded, picked at one of the buttons on his jacket.

  ‘ What? ’ Pascoe said.

  ‘How do we know it was just an accident?’

  ‘I spoke to Sergeant Weeks.’

  ‘I’m well aware of what she said, but how the hell can we be sure she wasn’t made to say it? How can we trust anything she tells us?’

  ‘There was nothing to indicate any form of coercion,’ Pascoe said.

  Chivers shook his head, then took out his Glock and held it against his temple. ‘It was just a silly accident, nothing to worry about.’ He widened his eyes, spoke in a robotic monotone. ‘We’re all fine, honestly, having a lovely time-’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Donnelly said.

  ‘Her speech patterns were normal,’ Pascoe said. ‘The rhythms, the way she was breathing. I know about all that stuff.’

  Chivers holstered his weapon, but the look he gave Pascoe made it clear he was unimpressed. As though she had just admitted to studying crop circles or reading tea leaves.

  Donnelly sat down. ‘So, in your professional opinion…?’

  ‘It’s fine, sir,’ Pascoe said. ‘No harm done.’

  Chivers took a long swig from his water bottle. ‘Well, at least we know the gun’s loaded,’ he said.

  Thorne was torn from a dream, something vaguely sad and sexual which evaporated almost immediately with the clamour of the phone against his chest. He saw the time on the small, brightly lit screen and realised that he had been asleep for less than half an hour.

  ‘There was a gunshot inside the newsagent’s,’ Donnelly said.

  ‘ What? ’ Thorne sat up fast.

  ‘The gun went off for some reason, but nobody’s hurt. Sue Pascoe spoke to DS Weeks and assures us that everything’s fine.’

  A pungent scrap of the dream drifted across Thorne’s mind, just for a second or two. A woman he had briefly known called Anna Carpenter. Alive again, with skin that tasted of salt.

  ‘I’ll come down,’ Thorne said.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep anyway.’

  ‘Look, it’s up to you, but I think you’ll be more use to us if you try and get your head down. More use to her.’

  It made sense. Thorne knew he would struggle to get back to sleep, but could not pretend that he was not exhausted.

  ‘We’re handing over to the night shift,’ Donnelly said. ‘And I’ve briefed the SIO to call you if anything else happens, OK?’ He told Thorne he would see him first thing the following morning at the RVP, assured him they were leaving the safety of Helen Weeks in good hands.

  Thorne sat in the dark for a while afterwards, thinking about the handful of occasions in the last twenty years when he had thought he might be about to die. Those slow-motion, shit-yourself seconds. Each moment was pin-sharp and terrible, though oddly more comfortable lying curled in his memory than those mercifully fewer times when he had felt himself capable of killing.

  Thorne hoped that Helen was keeping such feelings at bay, though he knew they might well come along later on.

  He pushed the idea from his mind, tried to focus instead on what he might do to help her. He thought about what Hendricks had said and imagined himself trying to shovel pills into Amin Akhtar’s mouth. Forcing him to swallow, his hand over the boy’s nose as he retched and kicked and bit.

  He knew Hendricks was right. However perfect the timing of that theft from the dispensary was, it had to have been done another way.

  He got up and switched on the light, then gathered together the papers that were spread out across the small table. Was the answer somewhere in those reports? Or would he come face to face with the person responsible for Amin’s death tomorrow?

  If he had not done so already.

  He turned the television on and picked up the dirty plates that were still lying on the floor. He carried them out to the kitchen. He ran hot water across the dried food and left them in the sink. Then he opened the fridge.

  Presuming Hendricks had left any, Thorne decided there was no reason to deny himself that beer any longer.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Five minutes on from it, Helen could no longer be sure that the noise in her head was the result of the gunshot. That it was not simply a silent scream of alarm at what had happened: the head slamming back against the radiator, the light leaving the eyes, the body slumping slowly down across her own.

  And at what had happened afterwards.

  The things she had said on the phone…

  She had dragged herself, wailing, from beneath the dead weight of Step
hen Mitchell. She had pushed his body away in disgust – her hands slick with him – and flinched when his head had cracked against the floor. She had turned, as the cry died to a ragged groan that bubbled in her throat, and seen Akhtar shuffle backwards to press himself against the wall.

  She had listened to him murmur in a language she did not understand.

  She had wondered if he was praying.

  Then, when it had begun to ring, they had become still and stared at the phone. The handset juddering across the linoleum between Helen’s leg and Mitchell’s head. Its bright blue casing spattered with red.

  It was not until it had rung a second time that her brain was able to do what was needed. Then, it had calmly told her hand to move and pick it up. Told her mouth to say what it needed to…

  Now, she lifted the cushion from behind her by one sodden corner and tossed it towards the toilet door. She leaned back and tried to control her breathing. She could feel the sticky wetness on her blouse. The blood, livid against the ivory, pressing the material against her skin, and her chest rising upwards to push the skin against the wetness.

  ‘Can I please put my jacket back on?’

  Akhtar was examining his hand, the gun that lay in his open palm.

  ‘ Please. I don’t want to look at the blood.’

  Still, Akhtar did not raise his head. Just shook it, as though pushing it through water or treacle-thick air. ‘What have I done?’ he said, the whisper gaining in strength with each repetition. ‘What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?’

  Helen could just make out her own voice, cracked and nervous, below the high-pitched whine in her head.

  Asking the same question.

  The party is shaping up nicely, and he bloody well needs it after a long day dealing with idiots. There are plenty of good bodies on display and the drugs are top quality as always. The first joint – in his hand before he had removed his jacket – has helped him relax a little, taken the edge off, and he will move on to some of the harder stuff later on, once things really start to get serious.

  When the lights are dimmed and the bedroom doors begin to close.

  He has already met one or two he might go back to see later and made more than casual eye contact with someone he hopes is as keen as he is to take things further. Just a look, but that is usually more than enough early on, and he had needed to step out into the hallway afterwards, slip a hand into his underpants and make the necessary adjustments.

  The feel of things down there had got him even more excited of course. The smoothness of it, and the weight in his hand. He had spent a few minutes in the bathroom after that.

  He is pouring Glenlivet into a glass when his phone rings. He sees the caller ID and hesitates for just a second as he reaches for the water jug. He lets the phone ring. Then, once he has taken a sip and helped himself to a nibble or two, he carries his drink out on to the balcony and calls back.

  It is a warm night, if a little breezy, and there are three or four boys out there laughing and smoking. They smile, but he ignores them and walks to the furthest corner; stares out across the rooftops towards the winking light on top of Canary Wharf.

  ‘It’s me.’

  There is a noisy breath at the other end of the phone. ‘Listen… you should know that some questions are being asked about one of our old friends.’

  He takes a gulp of whisky. ‘You might need to be a little more specific than that.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘Are we talking about an old friend we haven’t seen for a while?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake. Yes.’

  ‘I thought that had all been dealt with.’

  ‘When was the last time you watched the news?’

  The conversation continues for another few minutes. All perfectly casual, at least from his end, and as far as those boys eavesdropping from the other side of the balcony are concerned.

  A little business, no more than that.

  When he goes back inside, he tops up his drink and sits down across from a group he recognises from one of the parties the month before. He has encountered one of them professionally once or twice, but here that counts for nothing. Nods are exchanged, that is all.

  He holds the whisky in his mouth, then swallows, closing his eyes and letting the warmth spread through his chest. He needs to think, for a few minutes at least, about what he has just been told. It is problematic, certainly, but it is manageable, and he will not let it spoil his enjoyment.

  Stop him satisfying himself.

  He will have a couple more and a snort or two of something to liven him up. Get the juices flowing. Then he will get good and sweaty giving some lucky so-and-so the seeing-to of their lives.

  DAY TWO

  LIES HAVE DONE THESE THINGS

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Thorne left the house just before seven-thirty, still eating toast as he turned the BMW on to Kentish Town Road and headed north. He wanted to avoid the worst of the morning rush hour on his way to Potters Bar, but also thought it might be a good idea to call on Susan Hughes nice and early. There was every possibility, he thought, that some helpful officer from Barndale had thought fit to let her know Thorne had been asking questions.

  She might well be expecting his visit.

  He was over the M25 before eight, and ten minutes later he was pulling up opposite a small, neat-looking house in a modern terrace just behind the High Street. The curtains were still drawn, upstairs and down. There was a Honda Civic parked on the road outside with a Nurse On Call sticker in the window. Thorne wondered if Susan Hughes had found herself another job yet, or just left the sticker there to avoid parking tickets. He had done the same thing himself often enough.

  If she had been expecting him, the woman had not gone to a great deal of effort in tarting herself up for the occasion. The white towelling dressing gown was not wholly surprising at this time in the morning, but the tracksuit bottoms and grey T-shirt beneath suggested that she was not thinking about changing any time soon. Thorne could smell the fags as soon as the door was opened and, once he had told her who he was and why he needed to speak to her, it looked very much as though Susan Hughes needed another one.

  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… ’