Good as Dead tt-10

by Mark Billingham

  Good as Dead

  ( Tom Thorne - 10 )

  Mark Billingham

  Good as Dead

  Mark Billingham

  DAY ONE

  WILD IN HIS SORROW

  ONE

  Chewing gum and chocolate, maybe a bottle of water on those hen’s teeth days when the sun was shining. A paper for the journey into work and half a minute of meaningless chat while she was waiting for her change.

  Nothing there worth dying for.

  Helen Weeks would tell herself much the same thing many times before it was over. In the hours spent staring at the small black hole from which death could emerge in less time than it took for her heart to beat. Or stop beating. In those slow-motion moments of terror that measured out each day and in the sleepless nights that followed. While the man who might kill her at any moment was shouting at himself just a few feet away, or crying in the next room.

  It is not my time to die.

  Or my baby’s time to lose his mother…

  The chewing gum was a habitual thing, something to do and to help her stay off the cigarettes she’d given up two years before when she’d become pregnant. A newspaper ensured she would not have to look at the people sitting opposite her on the train, presuming she was lucky enough to get a seat and did not find herself pressed up against some lard-arse in a cheap suit who bought his aftershave from Poundstretcher. The chocolate was an addiction, pure and simple. One that had made the struggle to lose weight since her son was born no more than partially successful. She would try and eke it out; a chunk or two around eleven with a coffee, another after lunch and the rest as a treat at the end of the day. That was always the plan, but it was usually gone before she’d so much as logged on at her desk or, if the case she was working on was particularly unpleasant, by the time her train had finished its four-minute journey to Streatham station.

  There were a lot of unpleasant cases.

  She collected her paper from the rack near the door of the newsagent’s, and by the time she reached the counter Mr Akhtar had already picked out her usual chewing gum and chocolate bar of choice. He smiled and brandished them as she approached.

  Same as always. Their private joke.

  ‘How is the little one?’ he asked.

  Mr Akhtar was a short, prematurely balding man who almost always had a smile on his face. He rarely wore anything other than dark trousers, a white shirt and a cardigan, though that might be blue or brown. Helen thought he was probably younger than he looked, but put him somewhere in his mid-fifties.

  ‘He’s good,’ Helen said. She was aware of the customer she had seen browsing through the magazines on her way in, moving up to stand behind her. The man – tall, black, thirties – had been looking up at some of the covers in the top shelf’s ‘gentleman’s interest’ section and had quickly dropped his eyes down to the lifestyle and motoring mags when he’d seen Helen come in. ‘Yeah, he’s good.’

  Mr Akhtar smiled and nodded and handed over the chewing gum and chocolate. ‘Hard work though, yes?’

  Helen rolled her eyes and said, ‘Sometimes.’

  Actually, Alfie was way better than good. He was indescribably brilliant. She grinned, thinking about her one-year-old son babbling happily as she had walked him to the childminder half an hour before. He was happy almost all of the time, as far as she could tell, but he certainly let her know when he wasn’t. He had Paul’s temper, Helen had decided, as well as his eyes.

  Or was she kidding herself?

  ‘Worth it though, yes?’

  ‘Definitely,’ she said.

  ‘Trust me, it gets harder.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tell me that.’ Laughing, Helen handed over two pound coins and waited for the forty-three pence she was given back every morning. As Mr Akhtar was digging her change from the till, she heard the bell on the door. She saw him glance up and heard the voices, braying and fearless, as a group of lads came into the shop.

  She looked round. Three of them: one black, two white. All full of themselves.

  ‘Here you are,’ Mr Akhtar said. He held out Helen’s change, but his eyes were on the three boys, and his voice was a little smaller than it had been a few seconds earlier. Before Helen turned back to him, she watched the boys amble across to the tall fridge and open the door, laughing and cursing.

  Enjoying the attention of an audience, Helen thought.

  ‘Looks like it might be nice today.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Mr Akhtar said. Still quiet, looking towards the fridge.

  ‘Won’t last.’ Helen put the coins into her purse and folded the newspaper into her bag. She heard the man behind her exhale loudly, clearly impatient to be served. She had just opened her mouth to say ‘see you tomorrow’ when Mr Akhtar leaned towards her and whispered, nodding towards the three boys.

  ‘I hate those bastards,’ he hissed.

  Helen looked round again. They were rooting around inside the fridge, pulling out cans, then putting them back again. Laughing and pushing each other. One, who must have grabbed a paper on the way in, was leaning against a display of greeting cards, rifling through the pages.

  The man standing behind Helen muttered, ‘Christ’s sake.’ She could not be sure if it was frustration at being made to wait or irritation at the behaviour of the boys at the fridge.

  ‘Hey,’ Mr Akhtar said.

  Helen turned back to the till, then heard the hiss of a can being opened and saw Mr Akhtar’s expression darken suddenly.

  ‘ Hey! ’

  Another hiss, and now two boys were swigging from cans of Coke, while the third tossed the remains of his newspaper away and reached into the fridge for one of his own.

  ‘You pay for those,’ Mr Akhtar shouted.

  ‘I forgot my wallet,’ one of the boys said. The other two laughed, touched their fists together.

  The white boy who had been reading the newspaper drained his can and crushed it. ‘What are you going to do if we don’t?’ He held his arms out wide in challenge. ‘Blow yourself up or something?’

  ‘You need to pay.’

  Helen looked at Mr Akhtar. She could see the muscles working in his jaw, his arms stiff at his sides, his fists clenched. She took a small step to her right, moved into his eyeline, and shook her head.

  Leave it.

  ‘Get out of my shop,’ Mr Akhtar shouted.

  The white boy’s eyes looked small and dead as he dropped his empty can and walked slowly towards the till. One hand slid fast into the pocket of his hooded top. ‘Make us,’ he said. Behind him, his friends dropped their own cans, sending Coke fizzing across the floor of the shop.

  ‘Sorry,’ one of them said.

  Suddenly, Helen had no spit in her mouth. She eased her hand into her bag and closed her fingers around the wallet that held both her Oyster and warrant cards. It was bravado, no more than that, she was almost certain. One flash of her ID and a few strong words and the gobby little sods would be out of there in a shot.

  ‘I think Osama’s shit himself.’

  But an instant after Helen’s professional instinct kicked in, another took hold that was far stronger. It could so easily be a knife in the kid’s pocket, after all. She knew that she could take nothing for granted and was aware of what could happen to have-a-go heroes. She knew one community police support officer in Forest Hill who had reprimanded a fourteen-year-old for dropping litter a few months before. He was still on a ventilator.

  She had had more than her fair share of this a year or so before.

  Now, she had a child…

  ‘Your shop, but it ain’t your country.’

  The man who had been waiting to be served moved closer to her. Was he trying to protect her, or protect himself? Either way, he was breathing h
eavily and when she turned she could see that he was eyeing up the door, wondering if he should make a dash for it.

  Trying to decide whether or not to make a move.

  Same as she was.

  ‘You lot are pussies without a bomb in your backpack.’ The white boy took another step towards the counter. He was grinning and opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped when he saw Mr Akhtar reach quickly below the counter and come up with a baseball bat.

  One of the boys at the fridge whistled, mock-impressed, and said, ‘Oh, look out.’

  The newsagent moved surprisingly quickly.

  Helen took a step towards the end of the counter, but felt herself held back by the man next to her and could only watch as Mr Akhtar came charging from behind it, yelling and swinging the bat wildly.

  ‘Get the hell out. Get out.’

  The white boy backed quickly away, his hand still in his pocket, while the other two turned on their heels and ran for the door, their arms reaching out to send tins and packets of cereal scattering as they went. They screamed threats and promised that they would be back and one of them shouted something about the place stinking of curry anyway.

  When the last one was out on the pavement – still swearing threats and making obscene gestures – Mr Akhtar slammed the door. He fumbled in his pocket for keys and locked it, then stood with his head against the glass, breathing heavily.

  Helen took a step towards him, asked if he was all right.

  Outside, one of the boys kicked at the window, then hawked up a gobbet of thick spittle on to the glass. It had just begun to dribble down past the ads for gardeners, guitar teachers and massage, when he was pulled away by his friends.

  ‘I’m going to make a call,’ Helen said. ‘We’ve got it all on camera, so there’s nothing to worry about.’ She glanced up at the small camera above the till and realized it was almost certainly a dummy. ‘I can give good descriptions of all three of them, OK? You know I’m a police officer, so… ’

  Still with his back to the shop, Mr Akhtar nodded and began fumbling in his pocket a second time.

  ‘Mr Akhtar?’

  When he turned round, the newsagent was pointing a gun.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ the man next to Helen said.

  Helen swallowed hard, tried to control the shaking in her leg and in her voice when she spoke. ‘What are you doing-?’

  Mr Akhtar shouted then and swore as he told Helen and her fellow customer exactly what would happen if they did not do what he said. The curse sounded awkward in his mouth though, like something spoken by an actor who has over-rehearsed.

  Like a white lie.

  ‘Shut up,’ he screamed. ‘Shut up or I will fucking kill you.’

  TWO

  ‘It’s espresso, for crying out loud,’ Tom Thorne shouted. ‘Espresso… ’

  The man – who of course could not hear him – was talking enthusiastically about how he could not even think about starting his day without that all-important hit of caffeine. He said the offending word again and Thorne slapped his hand against the steering wheel.

  ‘Not ex presso, you pillock. There’s no bloody X in it… ’

  Sitting in a long line of rush-hour traffic, crawling north towards lights on Haverstock Hill, Thorne glanced right and saw a woman staring across at him from behind the wheel of a sporty-looking Mercedes. He smiled and raised his eyebrows. Muttered, ‘Sod you, then,’ when she turned away. He had hoped that, having seen him talking to himself, she might presume that he was making a hands-free call, but she clearly had him marked down as a ranting nutter.

  ‘I suppose that a nice strong ex presso gives you an ex pecially good start to the day, does it?’

  Looking for something else, anything else to listen to, he stabbed at the pre-set buttons; settled eventually for something sweet and folksy, a soft, pure voice and a song he half recognised.

  Shouting at the radio was probably just another sign of growing older, Thorne thought. One of the many. Up there on the list with losing a little hearing in his right ear and thinking that there was nothing worth watching on television any more. Wondering why teenagers thought it was cool to wear their trousers around their knees.

  The song finished and the DJ cheerfully informed him which station he was tuned into.

  Up there with listening to Radio 2!

  Changes of opinion or temperament were inevitable of course, Thorne knew that, and on some days he might even admit that they were not necessarily a bad thing. When change happened gradually, its slow accretion of shifts and triggers could go almost unnoticed, but Thorne was rarely comfortable with anything that was more sudden. However necessary it might be. Too many things in his life had changed recently, or were in the process of changing, and he was still finding it hard to cope with any of them.

  To adjust.

  He pulled somewhat less than smoothly away from the lights, cursing as his foot slipped off the still unfamiliar accelerator pedal.

  The bloody car, for a start.

  He had finally traded in his beloved 1975 BMW CSi for a two-year-old 5 Series that was rather more reliable and for which he could at least obtain replacement parts when he needed them. The car had been the first and as yet only thing to go, but more major changes were imminent. His flat in Kentish Town had been on the market for a month, though he still had some repairs to do and buyers seemed thin on the ground. And, despite several weeks of quiet words and clandestine sniffing around, a suitable transfer to another squad had yet to become available.

  Then there had been Louise…

  All these less than comfortable shifts in Thorne’s life, important as they might seem, were secondary to that. The car, the flat, the job. The flurry of changes had come about, had been decided upon, as a direct result of what had happened with Louise.

  He and Louise Porter had finally parted company a couple of months before, after a relationship that had lasted just over two years. For half that time it had been better than either of them had expected; way better than most relationships between police officers, certainly. But as a team they had not been strong enough to cope with the loss of a baby. Neither had been able to give the other the particular form of comfort they needed and, while the relationship had limped on for a while, they had suffered separately and paid heavily for it. Louise had been understandably resentful that Thorne seemed more easily able to deal with the grief of strangers, while Thorne himself had struggled with guilt at not having been quite as devastated by the miscarriage as he thought he should have been. By the time that guilt had burned itself out and Thorne was able to admit just how much he had wanted to be a father, it was too late for both of them.

  They had become lovers by numbers, and in the end it had simply fizzled away. It was Louise who finally plucked up the courage to say what needed saying, but Thorne had known for a while that the break had to come, before such feelings as were left between them darkened and became destructive.

  They had both kept their own flats, which made the practicalities straightforward enough. Louise had taken away a bin-liner stuffed with clothes and cosmetics from Thorne’s place in Kentish Town, while Thorne had left Louise’s flat for the last time with a carrier bag, a few tins of beer and a box of CDs. It had ended with a hug, but it might just as well have been a handshake. Loading his boxes and bags into the back of his car, Thorne had decided that it might be a good idea to change a whole lot of other things.

  To start again…

  He turned towards Finchley and almost immediately hit a tailback. No more than five miles now, but still half an hour or so away from Hendon, and Becke House. The headquarters of the Area West Murder Squad.

  ‘Why the hell do you need to change your job?’

  He had been out drinking with Phil Hendricks a few weeks before, and, as always, the Mancunian had not fought shy of giving his opinion. Thorne shook his head, but had listened anyway. Hendricks’ opinion was the one he most valued professionally and the same thing usually applied
when it came to his private life, because the pathologist was the nearest thing he had to a best friend.

  ‘Only friend,’ Hendricks never tired of saying.

  ‘Why not?’ Thorne had asked.

  ‘Because it’s not… relevant. It’s not necessary. It would be like me doing a post-mortem on some poor bugger who’d been shot twelve times in the head, then saying the fact he had hardened arteries and a slight heart condition might have had something to do with his death.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ Thorne had said.

  ‘It’s too much, that’s all. Just because you’ve split up with someone doesn’t mean you have to change everything. I mean, car… yes! The bloody thing was a death-trap and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with moving to a new flat either. We’ll find you somewhere much nicer than that dump you’re in now and I’ll take you shopping for some decent furniture, but do you really need to be looking for a new job as well?’

  ‘It’s all part of it.’

  ‘Part of what?’

  ‘New start,’ Thorne said. ‘New broom… leaf, whatever.’

  ‘You’re drunker than I am… ’

  They had moved on to football then and Thorne’s desolate sex life, but Thorne could see that Hendricks had a point, and he had thought about little else since. Even though he still believed he was doing the right thing in looking for a new challenge, the thought of leaving Area West Homicide made him feel slightly sick. The nature of the job and the politics of arse-covering meant that it was often hard to build up real trust between members of a team. Thorne had come to value the relationships he had with a number of those he worked with every day. Men and women he liked and respected. Plenty of idiots as well of course, but even so.

  Better the devil you know, all that.

  On the radio, Chris Evans was making him almost as angry as Expresso Man, so Thorne turned it off. He switched to CD and scanned through the ten discs he had mounted in the changer. He turned up the volume at the familiar guitar lick and that first lovely rumble of the man’s voice.