Good as Dead tt-10

by Mark Billingham

  Today, it was just going to be about who finished first.

  In their headphones, from the speakers, the sounds of some drama or other. One of those set in a hospital. Bar a short exchange about tea – asked for by the hostage and curtly refused by the hostage taker – it had been nothing but television for the last hour or so.

  Behind him, on the other side of the van, Yates was aware that the hostage negotiator had her nose buried in one of those magazines. Hello! or some rubbish. He knew what Annette would think about that.

  He wondered if he should let her finish the sudoku first. Beating him would put her in a good mood and she might be more inclined to say yes if he finally plucked up the courage to ask her out for a meal. He would need to think carefully though. Taking the standings between them into account, the fact that he had now won six in a row, she was far too smart not to at least suspect that he had let her win, and her reaction to that could only really go one of two ways. Would she think he was being gallant, or patronising? Would she be angry with him? Or would she pretend to be offended, but only because she was secretly pleased?

  Hell’s bells, this was why he found women such a nightmare, he could never second-guess them.

  He went back to the puzzle, filled in another couple of numbers.

  Who was he trying to kid anyway? Like he was ever going to ask Annette out for a meal. Perhaps he should ask another woman what she thought. Yes, that was a sensible idea, he decided. Get a second opinion before deciding what to do next.

  He would ask his mother when he got home.

  Yates, Williams and Pascoe all looked up at the same time when the sound stopped suddenly. Magazines and puzzle books were pushed quickly aside.

  ‘TV’s off,’ Pascoe said.

  The two technicians made a few minor adjustments to the levels. All three listened. Pascoe looked back to where Donnelly was talking to Chivers in the playground, just beyond the back doors of the truck.

  She shouted, ‘Sir… ’

  Akhtar: I think I have been very patient up to now, but I am running out of it. No more patience.

  More adjustments, to cope with the sudden increase in volume level from the hostage taker.

  Weeks: Please put the gun down, Javed-

  Akhtar: I think I am being laughed at.

  Weeks: That’s really not true.

  Akhtar: Inspector Thorne thinks I am a fool, that he can tell me this and that and string me along while I sit in here like an idiot making bloody tea! Well, that’s enough.

  There was a pause. Half a minute. Donnelly and Chivers stepped up into the van.

  Akhtar: Does this have a camera on it?

  Donnelly looked at Pascoe as he grabbed a pair of headphones. She shook her head, no wiser than he was. They all listened, but for the next few minutes until Akhtar spoke again the only sounds were generated by Helen Weeks. A grunt as she shifted position, the rattle of metal handcuffs against the radiator pipe.

  Akhtar: There. Now we’ll see. Then, Sorry about the smell.

  Weeks began to cough.

  Akhtar: I brought this. Should help a bit.

  There was a long hiss, then another. Donnelly looked at Pascoe.

  ‘Aerosol,’ she said.

  Akhtar: That’s better.

  A few seconds later the television was switched on again. The channels were changed in rapid succession; music, football, canned laughter, before Akhtar – presuming it was Akhtar – finally settled on the same drama they had been watching a few minutes earlier. There were a few more coughs from Helen Weeks, then the sound of something – a remote control or possibly the gun – being dropped on to a table.

  Then nothing.

  ‘Hell was all that about?’ Donnelly asked.

  SIXTY

  McCarthy told Thorne that there were perhaps a dozen different venues where the parties had been held, in the few years he had been in regular attendance. Locations and guest lists were confirmed last minute, he said. Despite having been to this particular place before, he had no idea who owned it, only that it would be an individual whose discretion could be relied upon absolutely. Someone who, because of their shared tastes and enthusiasms, was happy to entertain a few dozen high-flying professionals once every couple of months. Who would not mind too much if red wine, or anything else for that matter, got spilled on the soft furnishings.

  Thorne craned his neck to look up. Thought, someone who’s worth a good few million.

  The venue for the evening’s get-together could not have been any closer to the water. Housed within a sleek glass-and-silver crescent on the south side of the river between Battersea and Albert Bridges. Eleven storeys arcing back from the water’s edge, with a horseshoe of duplex penthouses, light spilling from their tinted windows across a wraparound balcony.

  ‘Nice place for it,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You’re just trying to make it sound dirty,’ McCarthy said. ‘I’m not ashamed.’

  ‘ What? ’

  ‘Not of… the sex.’

  Thorne turned in his seat, stared right at him. ‘Listen, I don’t care who you fuck, or how,’ he said. ‘Long as it’s legal and you’re not using anyone. Fact is though, Ian, I think it’s all gone a bit beyond that, don’t you?’

  McCarthy said nothing, leaned his head against the window.

  ‘I’m more concerned about you killing young boys than sleeping with them.’

  Thorne had parked up on a narrow access road to the west side of the development. It was probably not a location mentioned on the estate agent’s lavish description of the property. From the car, he could see no more than a dark sliver of Thames, and nothing at all of Chelsea Embankment twinkling on the other side of it, but he had a nice, unimpeded view of the entrance to the twenty-four-hour underground car park.

  Since arriving fifteen minutes before, they had watched half a dozen cars turn in and drift slowly down the ramp. As many black cabs dropped passengers off at the main entrance. Now, another car approached. McCarthy checked, shook his head.

  Thorne already knew what vehicle he was looking out for. ‘He’d better be coming.’

  ‘Why don’t you just arrest him when he arrives?’ McCarthy asked. ‘Why do you need to go up there?’

  ‘Because I want to walk in there and catch him sweating,’ Thorne said. ‘With his hands all over some fourteen-year-old. I want to see his face when he knows I’ve got him, same as I wanted to see yours. Then he’s going to tell me the whole story. He’s going to tell me everything, so I can tell Amin Akhtar’s father.’

  Through the rain on the windscreen, Thorne saw another pair of headlights emerge from the blackness. He watched as a dark-coloured Jaguar XJ slowed, and turned into the car park.

  McCarthy nodded. ‘That’s him.’

  Thorne could smell the fear coming off the man in the passenger seat, or perhaps it was something coming off himself. He could certainly taste the adrenalin in his mouth, the metallic tang in what little spit he was able to suck up. Tinfoil against his teeth.

  He told McCarthy to stay where he was, and got out of the car. ‘We’ll give it a few minutes,’ he said, before closing the car door. ‘Let things get going a bit. No point being unfashionably early.’

  Thorne jogged the twenty or so feet to the car that had driven in and parked opposite his own a few minutes after arriving. He climbed into the back of the unmarked Volkswagen Passat, then leaned forward between the front seats to talk to the two occupants.

  ‘We’re in business then,’ Holland said. He too had recognised the number plate on the Jag, having pulled up all the necessary information from the Police National Computer several hours earlier, after Thorne had called him en route to Barndale. He had texted Thorne the details. The registration numbers for the Jaguar and the Audi Q7. The addresses of the flat in Marylebone and the weekend house in Sussex.

  Yvonne Kitson turned from the passenger seat. ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘I don’t have one,’ Thorne said.

 
‘Making it up as you go along again?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Best way, I reckon.’ Thorne told them that he would send McCarthy back out once he was safely inside. ‘You hang on to him for me, and I’ll call to let you know what’s happening up there. If I need you for anything else. In the meantime, watch the exits and if anyone comes out of there before I’m finished, nick them.’

  ‘Nick them for…?’

  ‘Anything you fancy.’

  ‘What if we don’t hear from you?’ Kitson asked. ‘How long do you want us to give it?’

  ‘This won’t take long,’ Thorne said. ‘I think the party’s going to be winding down fairly soon after I get in there.’

  As Thorne walked quickly back through the drizzle towards the BMW, the message alert sounded on his mobile. He saw that he had been sent a text from Helen Weeks’ phone. When he opened it, there was only an MMS attachment.

  Unknown JPEG.

  Thorne clicked to open the picture. Stopped and stared. He swallowed, wiping a finger across the small screen, and for a few seconds he could not be sure if it was rainwater he could feel creeping, slow and icy, down the back of his neck.

  The gun went off for some reason, but nobody’s hurt.

  The image was slightly blurred, but Thorne could make out the waxy, bloated features well enough. The lips, pinched and so much paler than the rest of the face. The spatters of what looked like dried blood around the chin and neck, a few brown flecks near the hairline. It took him a few moments before he recognised the tattered scraps of shiny black that seemed to flutter around the head like bats’ wings, but it made sense to him, once he had.

  He was looking at a man he could only presume was Stephen Mitchell.

  A dead face.

  His body, wrapped in bin-bags.

  Thorne took half a dozen steps towards the car, then turned and walked back again, his mind racing. Had Pascoe and Donnelly been sent the same image? If they had, then surely they would be calling to tell him. Thorne looked at the phone, waited half a minute… more, for it to ring.

  He punched in the number for the RVP.

  ‘Where are you?’ Donnelly asked.

  ‘I’m about to meet the man who organised the murder of Akhtar’s son,’ Thorne said. ‘Actually, we’ve met before.’

  ‘Well, quicker the better.’

  ‘Something going on?’

  ‘Akhtar’s kicking off a bit,’ Donnelly said. ‘Waving the gun about, shouting about running out of patience.’

  ‘What’s Pascoe saying?’

  ‘She’s worried.’

  ‘Tell her, when she speaks to him, to say that I’m getting exactly what he wanted. All the answers.’ Thorne glanced up towards the shining half-moon of penthouses high above him, narrowed his eyes against the rain. ‘Tell him this’ll be finished tonight.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Donnelly said. ‘And I really hope he listens. Chivers is getting decidedly jumpy, and I can’t say I blame him.’

  Thrusting the phone back into his pocket, Thorne walked back towards the car, asking himself why on earth Helen Weeks had not told those on the outside about the death of Stephen Mitchell. Was she simply being coerced into silence by the gun at her head? Or had she deliberately chosen to keep it quiet? As a police officer, she would have understood only too well how quickly a situation could escalate once there were fatalities. As a mother, she had more than just her own life to worry about. He remembered what Donnelly had just said about Chivers, and thought he could understand why Detective Sergeant Helen Weeks might have decided to say nothing.

  Whatever the reason, now Thorne had done the same thing and kept the fact of a hostage’s death from those running the operation. One more black mark against him, but it could not make things any blacker.

  What else could he do?

  Akhtar’s kicking off a bit…

  Now, Thorne understood all too clearly that Javed Akhtar was not running out of patience. It had already been exhausted. The picture of Stephen Mitchell’s body had been a simple enough message and one meant only for him.

  Get a move on.

  He reached the car and yanked open the passenger door. ‘Let’s go.’

  McCarthy looked up at him. His face was pale and clammy under the sickly interior light. ‘You said it was too early before. You said-’

  ‘That was before,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’ve never been particularly fashionable.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  Donnelly had taken Thorne’s call in the playground, shivering beneath a Met Police umbrella and helping himself to some slightly stale fruit cake from Teapot One as they had talked. Now, he walked quickly back to the TSU truck to relay Thorne’s news. If they could contain the situation, keep the lid on things inside the newsagent’s for just another couple of hours, then they might well see the result they all wanted before knocking-off time.

  As soon as he climbed up into the truck, he could see that he had missed something.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  Pascoe was pale, slumped in a chair. The two TSU technicians were looking at the floor. Chivers shook his head and said, ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I didn’t think about it,’ Pascoe said. ‘It never even occurred to me.’

  ‘ What? ’ Donnelly asked again.

  ‘She kept saying everything was fine.’ Pascoe looked from Donnelly to Chivers. ‘Every time I asked, she told me they were all doing fine. You heard.’

  The sounds of the television in Akhtar’s storeroom were still coming through the speakers. Donnelly asked the technicians to lower the volume a little, then stepped across to Sue Pascoe. ‘Exactly what didn’t you think about, Sue? What never occurred to you?’

  She looked at him.

  The male technician – Yates – cleared his throat. ‘Well, it was Annette who pointed it out.’ He gestured towards the female technician sitting next to him; whip-thin with spiky black hair coloured red at the tips. He tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It was her idea, really.’

  His colleague nodded and spoke quietly. ‘I was just saying that we’ve been monitoring the conversations in there for about four hours now, and yes I know that the television’s been on for a lot of the time and that nobody’s said a great deal. It’s just that in all that time we haven’t heard anything from the second hostage. From Mr Mitchell.’

  ‘Not a peep,’ Yates said.

  Donnelly stared at the speakers for a few seconds, as though willing Stephen Mitchell’s voice to suddenly burst from them. ‘Oh, Christ.’ He turned and looked at Chivers.

  ‘DS Weeks assured us that everything in there was fine.’ Pascoe sounded as though she was talking to herself. ‘Repeatedly.’

  ‘You told us it was fine,’ Donnelly said.

  ‘Because I believed that it was.’

  ‘All that guff about her voice being normal and no signs of coercion. “There isn’t a problem,” you said. That was your professional opinion, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘That’s the way I remember it, too,’ Chivers said.

  Pascoe looked as though the breath had been punched from her. ‘This wasn’t just me,’ she stammered. ‘Nobody else seemed too concerned about Mitchell.’ She stood up, fumbling to straighten her jacket. ‘It was not just me… ’

  Donnelly reached for a headset and threw it at Pascoe.

  ‘Call her.’

  SIXTY-TWO

  Helen had been unable to say anything, to do anything but watch, when Akhtar had walked calmly away into the shop with her phone.

  Does this have a camera on it?

  She had fought to control her breathing as she thought about what he might be taking a picture of, struggled that little bit harder as she considered what he might be thinking of doing with such a photo. After a minute or so, she had finally managed to catch her breath and hold it. She had almost convinced herself she was being ridiculous, when the smell hit her and she knew that she had been right to worry.

  He had torn open the bags.

  Something li
ke this had been coming for the last few hours, the signs had been clear enough. Or might have been, if she had been able to think clearly and focus for five minutes, if she had not been in such a state herself.

  She suddenly remembered something Paul used to say. An expression he’d picked up somewhere.

  Up and down like a whore’s drawers.

  He’d said it a lot – always in that comedy ‘cockney wanker’ voice he was so fond of – those first few months she’d been carrying Alfie. When the hormone fairy arrived and the mood swings really kicked in.

  She felt tears building and held her breath again, refused to let them rise.

  She needed to concentrate…

  It had been coming. Akhtar’s hand on the gun, cradling it, the talk about being ‘fobbed off’. Being ‘ignored’. She had asked him for tea and he had snapped at her; her well-being or comfort no longer of any concern, no longer something worth worrying about. Not by him, at any rate.

  And now he had done something stupid. Worse than stupid.

  When he had finally come back in, apologising for the stink and squirting that air-freshener around, there had been this look on his face. Like he’d accomplished something. Triumphant, almost.

  ‘There,’ he had said. ‘ There ’, like ‘that’ll show them’ or ‘now we’ll see who gets fobbed off’ and more than anything Helen had wanted to strike out hard and smash and claw at his face. To tear the smirk off and demand to know what the fuck he thought he was doing.

  At that moment, she knew that she could hurt him.

  She looked across at him. Sitting in his chair, his hand was on the revolver in his lap still, but his eyes were fixed happily on the television screen, as though he had done no more than simply cause a little mischief. Put the cat among the pigeons.

  Helen knew that if Akhtar had sent a picture of Stephen Mitchell to anyone on the outside, there might not even be time to finish the programme he was watching.

  She inhaled through her nose, so she would not have to taste it. The smell was still fierce, the cheap air-freshener no more than a top note, almost as sickening as the stench it was failing to mask. She breathed it in, because she had to.