Good as Dead tt-10

by Mark Billingham

  Now, he stopped and stood a few feet in front of her, holding the gun.

  Waiting.

  ‘I can’t say for certain that Paul was Alfie’s father,’ Helen said. ‘That’s it, basically.’ She looked up at him. ‘That’s the truth of it. I know I’ve been talking as though he is, and that’s the way I always talk, even to myself, but the fact is I can’t be certain. Paul wasn’t certain either, which was why things were so difficult between us when he was killed. He died not knowing one way or another.’

  Akhtar backed slowly away until he reached the desk and lowered himself on to the chair. ‘Why are you telling me these things?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said.

  Why was she telling a man who had threatened to kill her, knowing full well that at the same time she was announcing it to whoever was listening in on the outside? Why did she feel the need suddenly to get this stuff off her chest? Did she really think she would absolve herself?

  Because she knew that Akhtar was right and it was only a question of how and not when they would be coming in. Because although the men with the guns would do everything they could to avoid discharging their weapons and to keep her safe, things did not always go according to plan. Because people got over-excited and accidents happened.

  Because she did not want to die without saying it.

  ‘Because I need to tell someone,’ she said.

  Akhtar looked at her, cocked his head slightly. He rested the gun on his knee, the barrel pointing towards her. ‘I am a newsagent,’ he said. ‘Not a priest.’

  Helen’s impulse was to smile back, but her mouth could do no more than say the words. Her tongue felt thick and heavy and her heart was thundering against her chest.

  ‘I met a man on a course,’ she said. ‘A firearms officer, of all things. Right now, I’d be seriously thinking that he might be one of the ones out there with a gun in his hand, except that he moved away, after what happened to Paul…

  ‘It was a fling, that’s all. Stupid. Just half a dozen times in some hotel or other and I’m not saying that as any kind of excuse. I still did what I did, and at the time I wanted to do it. He was everything Paul wasn’t, in all sorts of ways. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed being wanted that much. I’m just saying that I never actually thought about leaving Paul, that’s all. He was the one who talked about leaving, when he found out. It was awful for a while and things never got back to how they’d been before, but we decided we were going to carry on.

  ‘For the baby’s sake.

  ‘Things were said when it all came out. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Horrible things, but I knew he was only saying them because he’d been hurt and because he wanted to hurt me back. I was happy to take whatever he was dishing out, because I knew I deserved it, and I thought everything would be all right because of the baby. I just kept telling myself that it would all be OK once the baby came along.

  ‘After Paul was killed, guilt was one of the things that made me so desperate to find out what had happened. The main thing, if I’m honest. Just like I’d been kidding myself about the baby solving all our problems, I told myself that if I found out what had happened to Paul, if I found out the truth, I might feel a bit less guilty about what I’d done to him.

  ‘Like I say, kidding myself.’

  Helen was leaning back with her head against the radiator, her eyes fixed on a space a few feet above Akhtar’s head, and she did not see him grimace and look away.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  However unafraid Prosser might have appeared at the party, it was clear from his face, from the occasional whimper that escaped his lips, that he was a little less bullish when it came to being driven at seventy miles an hour through the dark of busy urban streets, with rain lashing against the windscreen, a siren wailing and a blue light flashing on the roof.

  ‘You’re a bit pale,’ Thorne said. ‘A bit quiet.’

  Prosser turned to him. His left hand was braced against the dashboard and his right held tight to the seatbelt across his chest. ‘I’m just trying to decide which lawyer I’m going to get to tear you a nice new arsehole.’ He did his best to smile. ‘Professionally speaking, of course.’

  Thorne drove away from the river, pushing the Passat south on Battersea Bridge Road. In regular traffic, on a good day, they were no more than twenty-five minutes from Tulse Hill. The traffic was bad thanks to the rain, but with the blue light and the siren clearing the way Thorne was hopeful that they would make it in fifteen minutes or less.

  ‘I spoke to Amin Akhtar’s lawyer,’ Thorne said, raising his voice to be heard above the siren.

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘He reckoned they had a good shot at winning the appeal. Getting the ridiculous sentence you handed out reduced. That can’t have been good news.’

  ‘Neither good nor bad,’ Prosser said. ‘It would have been the decision of another judge. I remain happy with the sentence I gave.’

  ‘I bet you do.’

  ‘A sentence that the law fully entitled me to pass. You should remember that.’

  ‘Akhtar’s lawyer told me he had grounds to pursue you for professional misconduct.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘For ignoring all the statements made about Amin’s good character, the circumstances of his offence. For all that rubbish about “dangerousness” you peddled to the jury.’

  ‘He stabbed a boy to death.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Thorne said. ‘The only person Amin was dangerous to was you.’ He tore past a van that had been slow to pull over, swung the wheel to the left and accelerated into the bus lane. ‘God, I’d love to be back in that courtroom. See your face when you got your first look at that boy in the dock. I’m betting you went as white as your fucking wig.’

  Prosser sighed. ‘I did not recognise the boy, because I had never seen him before. You see how that works?’

  ‘Despite having been at a party with him. At least one party.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Or perhaps it was just that you didn’t recognise him from the front.’ Thorne was thrilled to see a flash of anger from Prosser, a glimpse of small white teeth biting down on his fat lower lip. ‘Then again, it might have been the name that you recognised. I hadn’t really thought about it until now, and I don’t know if rent boys are in the habit of using their real names, but I suppose Amin might have done. I mean do you use your real name?’ He looked at Prosser, shook his head. ‘No, I doubt it very much. Do you have a special name you like to use when you’re letting your hair down? A secret identity? Or do you just like the boys to call you “your honour” while you’re fucking them?’

  Thorne slowed to fifty around the one-way system at the southern corner of Battersea Park, then let the needle climb as he followed the Latchmere Road towards Clapham. The rain had worsened. Through the beating wipers, the brake lights and indicators of the vehicles in front were no more than smears of orange and red.

  ‘You were probably putting it together before the trial had even finished,’ Thorne said. ‘The perfect three-part solution to your awkward little problem and the three perfect people to carry out the plan. Yes? Had it all worked out by the end of the first day, I reckon.’ Another quick glance across at his passenger got no response. He shrugged. Thorne had never done a high-speed driving course and he told Prosser as much, then winced as he put his foot down and took the car across a busy junction on red.

  ‘Jesus,’ Prosser whispered.

  ‘Once you’ve put Amin away for as long as you can get away with, it’s just a question of making sure he gets sent to the right place. So that’s where our friend Mr Powell at the Youth Justice Board comes in. He’s the only one of the three musketeers I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet, but it won’t be long because he’ll have been picked up by now. Probably sitting in an interview room next door to Dr McCarthy, while my sergeant takes bets on which one of them is going to start blubbering and shooting off his mouth first…

&nb
sp; ‘Who would your money be on?’

  Prosser’s eyes were closed, the skin tight around his mouth.

  ‘So… your friend Powell allocates Amin to Barndale, which conveniently happens to be the Young Offenders Institution where your mutual friend Dr McCarthy is the chief medical officer. Which means you can watch him. Because that’s really what it’s all about. Keeping an eye on the boy, making sure he says nothing, does nothing. Making sure there’s one of you on the spot if he so much as hints at the fact that he sussed you out in that courtroom and knows exactly what the three of you get up to in your spare time.

  ‘And it works. It all works very nicely until the boy decides he wants to do some course which isn’t available at Barndale, which means he needs to be transferred. Which means you won’t be able to watch him any more. Powell tries to block it, but the governor insists because he’s trying to do the best thing for Amin… and now you’re in trouble. So, you decide to do what you would probably have done later on anyway when it was time for Amin to move into an adult prison. That’s when you give McCarthy his orders and he puts a nice little plan of his own together with a couple of boys who are happy to earn some money before they get out. That’s when he gives Jonathan Bridges a syringe.

  ‘That’s when you actually had Amin Akhtar killed,’ Thorne said. ‘But he was as good as dead the moment he walked into your courtroom, wasn’t he?’

  Prosser shifted in his seat and looked at Thorne. ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘The name of that lawyer,’ Prosser said. ‘He’s expensive, but it’ll be worth it just to see you reduced to helping old ladies across the road.’

  Thorne’s knuckles whitened on the wheel and he nudged the Passat up to eighty on the long, straight road that crossed Clapham Common. Fifty yards ahead, a pedestrian beneath an umbrella was hesitating at a zebra crossing and though the lights and the siren were still going, Thorne leaned on the horn for good measure.

  ‘Do you know what’s really ironic?’ Thorne asked. ‘I don’t think Amin would ever have said anything, because he didn’t know anything. The simple, stupid fact is he didn’t recognise you. You were just another punter he wanted to forget as quickly as possible. He never said a word to McCarthy, he never said a word to his long-term boyfriend at Barndale, he never said a word to anybody. He was just a seventeen-year-old boy keeping his head down and trying to do his time. He wasn’t even the one that took that bloody photograph! I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure if you and your friends knew that photo existed, but even if you did… even if it was one more reason why you thought you should get rid of Amin Akhtar, you got your Asian rent boys mixed up. Easily done, I appreciate that. You got the wrong Paki.’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake-’

  ‘You didn’t need to kill him.’

  Thorne blasted across the South Circular and pointed the car towards Brixton Hill. They were no more than a few minutes away.

  ‘Where are we going anyway?’ Prosser asked. ‘You know exactly where we’re going,’ Thorne said. ‘Thing is, I’ve never been a big believer in the whole restorative justice thing, but some people genuinely believe that when the perpetrator and the victim… or in this case the victim’s family… come face to face, it can be hugely beneficial for both parties. On top of which, statistics suggest that it lowers the chances that the perpetrator will reoffend. Not really an issue as far as you’re concerned, obviously.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You should,’ Prosser said. ‘Because you don’t have a great deal left. Not at your current pay grade anyway.’

  Thorne turned to look hard at the judge for a few seconds longer than was strictly safe, all things considered. Long enough to see the blood begin to drain from Prosser’s face. Then he turned his eyes back to the road. ‘Listen, we’ve already established that Powell and McCarthy aren’t very likely to tough it out and there’s certainly no reason why either of them would want to do you any favours. Your two co-defendants, and I’m calling them that because that’s what they’re going to be soon enough, will roll over as quickly as one of those party boys when a punter starts waving his wallet around. So, my advice would be that you seriously consider your position at this point. Because, other than every effort I can possibly make to ensure you don’t get within a hundred miles of a Vulnerable Prisoner unit, and that every hard case on your wing knows exactly who you are and which of their friends and relations, if any, you’ve put away… I really don’t see what else you’ve got to gain by being such a smartarse. Your honour.’

  Prosser nodded, mock-impressed. ‘Excellent speech, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if you were to put that much effort in when you’re giving evidence, a few less scumbags would get off.’

  ‘One less will do for now,’ Thorne said.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  ‘They tried to give me an epidural when I was giving birth to Alfie, but they couldn’t get the needle in and in the end it was like I just screamed him out.’ Helen’s fists were clenched as she remembered, her jaw tight as she lived through the agony again, but something soft all the same around her eyes. ‘The pain felt pretty good in the end, can you understand that?’

  Akhtar nodded.

  ‘It felt honest. Like it was the only honest thing I had felt in a long time. It felt earned.’ She took a breath and stretched out her fingers, used one to dam the tears just for a second.

  ‘And he was… perfect, you know? Whatever, whoever had made him, he was just this perfect little boy and it made everything else, all the horrible things and the hurtful things, seem unimportant. So I just got on with it. I found a new flat, and it was just the two of us twenty-four hours a day, and sometimes I’d look right into his eyes and I’d tell him he looked just like his dad. I’d be telling myself he was Paul’s, because I wanted it so much. Because he had to be. Because that would be the fairest thing. Telling myself or telling other people that he had Paul’s nose or his mannerisms or whatever else, and it was nothing but a lovely, stupid lie, because there’d be other times when I’d look at him and he looked nothing like Paul at all.

  ‘When he wasn’t so perfect.’

  She reached across to rub at the wrist of her left hand, where the handcuff had taken away the skin. It had become a tic. ‘There’s other people that know. My sister and my dad. They know what happened and they know it was just before I got pregnant, and I know damn well they’ve wondered about who Alfie’s father was. But nobody says anything. They just carry on as if I’ve got a husband or a boyfriend who’s working in another country or something, or else my sister’s trying to get me fixed up with some sad case that nobody else wants.’ She shrugged, and for just a moment there was the hint of laughter, somewhere low in her throat. ‘Nobody ever… talks about Paul. Only very occasionally, when they forget themselves or one of my sister’s kids says something and even then it’s like he’s just some private joke. Like he’s somebody I’ve made up. That’s what makes everything so much worse… that hateful, pathetic fear of embarrassment, of saying something awkward, and I’m just as bad as they are, because I’m too embarrassed to tell them how shitty and awful it’s making me feel. To tell them that sometimes it seems as if Paul can’t possibly be Alfie’s dad, because he was never there at all.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Akhtar said.

  ‘No, not just about all this. I’m scared about what I’m going to say to my son when he’s old enough to want to know who his father was. I’m scared to find out the truth.’

  Akhtar looked at her. ‘There is some way to find out?’

  ‘Paul was a copper, same as me. So his DNA’s on record. I could get a test done, but I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t the right result.’

  ‘Would it really be so bad?’

  ‘I know there are worse things.’ She looked at him. ‘I know there are, but second to anything happening to Alfie,
this would be my worst thing.’

  ‘Thorne told me yesterday that I should prepare myself for the truth,’ Akhtar said. ‘He told me that it might not be particularly pleasant. Well, I can only say to you what I said to him. You have suffered, same as I have, and you must surely realise that the truth, however unpleasant, cannot compare to that sort of pain. That it can only make things more bearable in the long run.’ He stood up slowly. ‘Ignorance is not bliss, Helen. Trust me on that. Ignorance is torment.’ He took a few steps towards the shop, then stopped and cocked his head towards the sound of a siren that was quickly growing louder.

  Less than ten feet from where Javed Akhtar was standing – outside, on the rutted, overgrown path that snaked from a crumbling block of garages to the rear of the premises – Chivers was watching as his method-of-entry specialist knelt in the mud and carefully laid the last of the explosive charges at the base of the back door.

  Five minutes from a ‘go’.

  Once the charges were in position, Chivers would brief each member of his team once more on the action plan. Each would have a specific function to carry out. One that would hopefully last no more than a few seconds, but which would prove crucial as part of a six-man operation and upon which their own lives as well as the lives of those in the building would depend.

  The ballistic shield officer.

  The baton officer.

  The ‘cover’ officer.

  The prison reception officer, responsible for handling the hostage taker until such time as he could be taken into custody.

  The dog handler.

  Following that final briefing, there would be a last-minute equipment check. Helmets, goggles, earplugs and body armour. All rifles, handguns and Tasers. The CS canisters and the 8-Bang stun grenades designed to create as much noise and chaos as possible, to distract and disorient the hostage taker in those first few seconds after breaching had been effected. A faulty bit of kit would always be a firearms officer’s worst nightmare and with good reason. Chivers firmly believed that his men had been well trained and that equipment failure was far more likely than any human error.