Good as Dead

TEN

It was as ridiculous to generalise about a group of people as diverse as prison officers as it was about anybody else – pointless and ultimately reductive – but it saved time, so Thorne did it anyway.

They were, so Thorne imagined, either no-nonsense, by-the-book types or those slightly more sensitive sorts who could easily have become teachers if they didn’t like the uniforms quite so much. ‘Old school’ or ‘reconstructed’ might have been more accurate labels, but Thorne found it easier to think of them as ‘Mackays’ or ‘Barracloughs’; the archetypes named in honour of the two very different types of screw on the sitcom Porridge that he had adored as a kid.

Which he still thought about sometimes, in the middle of a particularly tedious trial.

Norman Stanley Fletcher…

The PO that escorted him from Bracewell’s office to the hospital wing was a thickset and balding fifty-something named Dobson. Like all the officers, he was wearing dark trousers and a black polo shirt with his name stitched into it, but it was not until Thorne commented on what the boys were wearing that Dobson revealed his true colours. At other YOIs Thorne had visited, the boys had worn tracksuit bottoms, and he was surprised that those he had seen that morning were wearing cargo pants beneath their dark blue sweatshirts or T-shirts.

‘That was the governor’s idea,’ Dobson said, nodding towards one of the boys. ‘Bloody good one, as well. They used to strut about with their hands shoved down the front of their tracksuit bottoms, grabbing their bollocks like wannabe gangsters. These days, we have to shake hands with the little bastards a hundred times a day.’ He pulled a face. ‘So… ’

To the likes of Dobson, the boys they banged up every night were no more than adult prisoners waiting to happen, whether they had started shaving or not and whatever he and his colleagues were required to wear as part of a more casual and caring regime. Thorne knew that there were those within the Prison Service who requested the posting to a YOI. Officers who enjoyed working with young offenders, because they felt there was a chance to make a real difference. There were others, however – a small minority, thankfully – who were unhappy to find themselves assigned to kids and saw no reason to treat the prisoners in their charge any differently to those who might previously have been subject to their less than tender mercies in Long Lartin or the Scrubs.

It was not hard to work out which category Dobson belonged to.

Ian McCarthy was waiting for them outside the doors when they arrived at the hospital wing. Dobson said, ‘Here you go,’ then turned and walked away.

‘He’s a charmer,’ Thorne said.

McCarthy opened the door for Thorne and ushered him through. ‘Bark’s worse than his bite,’ he said. ‘Like a lot of them.’

Thorne had naively imagined that Barndale’s chief medical officer would be older. That he might possibly be wearing a white coat. As it turned out, the man who showed him into his large, bright office and dropped into a chair behind a cluttered desk was, like the governor, a few years younger than Thorne himself and considerably better dressed. He was stocky with thick, dark hair and a well-trimmed goatee. There was a trace of a northern accent.

‘Roger said you’re looking into Amin Akhtar’s suicide.’

Thorne nodded and held up the stack of files he’d brought with him from Bracewell’s office. ‘Got to work my way through this lot as soon as I can, but I wanted to have a quick look around in here first.’

‘That’s fine-’

‘Just get my bearings, you know?’

‘Not a problem.’

‘You found Amin, right?’

McCarthy stood up, removed his jacket and hung it across the back of his chair before sitting down again. A heavy sigh made it clear that he was going to find talking about Amin Akhtar’s death hard work.

‘I’ve not been here that long,’ he said. ‘Only a year or so, and this is like the worst nightmare. There was a kid who cut his wrists in his cell a few months before I got the job, and I know this kind of stuff goes on in prisons, but Amin was here.’ He held out his arms. ‘On my watch, so… ’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I got here about seven-thirty,’ McCarthy said. ‘A bit earlier than usual because the governor had called a senior management meeting for eight o’clock and I needed to get a few things dictated in the office. I decided to do a quick round before the meeting and Amin’s was the first room I checked.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I always check the private rooms first,’ McCarthy said. ‘And his was the only one that was occupied.’ He looked down and straightened some papers on his desk. ‘Well, you know what I found.’

Thorne was thinking: clean slate. ‘I haven’t had an opportunity to see the police report yet,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Or the post-mortem. So I’d be grateful if you could tell me.’

McCarthy cleared his throat. ‘Amin had taken an overdose of Tramadol, which is the same drug he was being treated with. It’s related to morphine… ’

Thorne nodded.

‘He’d been checked twice on the rounds between six-thirty and seven a.m. and although the hospital officer on duty was rightly suspended, I don’t think we can really blame her for not noticing that anything was wrong. I mean, I can’t honestly say I’d have done anything different. He was just lying there in bed, so anyone looking in through the window for a few seconds could easily have thought he was asleep and that everything was OK.’ He held up his hands. ‘She didn’t notice the plastic cup and the few spilled tablets lying on the floor by his bed. Simple as that.’ He shook his head, looked to see if Thorne needed any more detail.

Thorne waited.

‘There was some blood where he’d bitten through his tongue and he’d… soiled himself, though obviously that couldn’t be seen from outside the room.’ He looked at Thorne again. ‘Yes, we might have been able to save him if the officer on duty had been a little more observant, but as it was, Amin was dead by the time I went into his room. He was still… warm, but I checked and there was clearly no hope of resuscitation. So-’

‘Still warm? So what time did he take the overdose?’

‘Well, I haven’t seen the PM report either, but I spoke to the Home Office pathologist when he arrived and he put the time of death at somewhere between six and seven a.m. The hour after he was given that last dose of medication.’ McCarthy smiled sadly. ‘Right about the time I was rolling out of bed at home and coming downstairs to put the kettle on.’ He swallowed. ‘Looking forward to the day.’

‘That was your first mistake,’ Thorne said.

‘Sorry?’

‘I stopped looking forward to work years ago.’ He leaned forward, mock-conspiratorial. ‘You should always assume that things are going to be really bad. That way, even if it’s just an averagely shitty day, you feel like you’ve had a result.’

McCarthy’s gaze drifted towards the large window that looked out on to the corridor. He smiled weakly, but looked as confused as he did upset. ‘I said all this a fortnight ago at the inquest,’ he said. ‘Told them what had happened.’

Thorne shrugged. ‘Another set of papers I haven’t seen.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘A… situation has developed very suddenly, which means that we’re looking at Amin’s death again.’ Thorne let that hang for a second or two. ‘That I am. Starting pretty much from scratch, I’m afraid.’

McCarthy sat back, thinking, then raised his arms. ‘Right, well I’m still none the wiser, but if there’s anything I can do… ’

Thorne stood up. ‘A guided tour would be very helpful,’ he said.

McCarthy said that would not be a problem, so Thorne walked out on to the ward, waiting by the door for a few moments while the doctor grabbed his jacket.

Waiting, and thinking that for once he knew what might be causing that tickle in the soft hairs at the back of his neck; that something McCarthy had told him would need looking at more closely.

‘All set?’ McCarthy said, closing the door to his office behind him.

‘Absolutely.’

Thinking that six o’clock in the morning was a very strange time to kill yourself.

Gavin Slater did not seem inclined to let Holland and Kitson into his house. He had glowered at their warrant cards and drawn the front door a little closer towards him. From inside came the sounds of a television at high volume and somewhere upstairs a woman was shouting, raising her voice above the barking of a dog.

Holland and Kitson were not overly keen on going inside themselves.

‘You may or may not know that Amin Akhtar died two months ago,’ Holland said.

Slater blinked, then smiled. ‘I didn’t, but thanks. Not too often you lot knock on my door with good news.’

‘We just need to ask you a few questions.’

Slater laughed. ‘Right, like where I was when it happened? Was I breaking into whatever prison the little shitbag ended up in, something like that?’

‘Something like that,’ Kitson said.

‘So what happened?’ Slater sniffed. ‘Somebody take a knife to him or what?’

‘We’re not at liberty to reveal the circumstances-’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ Slater began to pick away at a patch of paint that was peeling from his front door. ‘Just let me know when you’ve got a name, so I can send him a box of chocolates or something.’

‘Maybe you can help us with that,’ Holland said.

Slater laughed again. Inside, the woman was screaming at the dog to shut up.

Kitson brushed away a sliver of white paint that had blown on to her jacket. ‘So you’re not exactly heartbroken that Amin is dead then?’

Slater turned and studied her for a few moments. ‘The Met really is taking on the brightest and the best, isn’t it?’ He looked away and up towards the main road where heavy traffic was pouring east towards the Angel and west towards King’s Cross. A few streets from where, just over a year before, his eldest son had been fatally stabbed with his own knife by Amin Akhtar.

‘You still in touch with either of the boys who were involved in the incident with Lee?’ Kitson asked.

‘The “incident”?’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Not seen them since Lee’s funeral.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘They helped to carry his coffin, them and a few of Lee’s other mates.’ Slater narrowed his eyes at Kitson. ‘You might have known that, if any of your lot had actually bothered to come. Don’t you normally do that, show up to pay your respects when a victim of violent crime is buried? Or does it depend on what colour they are?’

‘It depends on how you define “victim”,’ Kitson said.

Slater breathed in deep, then smacked his palms together hard to get rid of the dried paint. ‘Well, thanks again for dropping by to cheer me up. If I think of anything that might help, I’ll be sure and keep it to myself.’ He turned away and walked back inside. Said, ‘Now piss off,’ before slamming the door shut.

Holland and Kitson walked back towards their car.

‘He was lying,’ Kitson said. ‘About not seeing those other two.’

‘Doesn’t mean anything.’ Holland said. ‘Careful,’ and stepped around a smear of dog shit. ‘It’s the default position with rubbish like him, lying to coppers.’

Kitson reached into her bag for the keys. Pressed the remote to unlock the car.

‘I still don’t know what he wants us to do,’ Holland said. ‘What he thinks we can do.’ He saw the questioning look from Kitson. ‘Thorne.’ They climbed into the car and Kitson started the engine. ‘I mean, we’ve got no good reason to think anyone killed Amin.’

They sat there for a few moments. They could still hear Slater’s dog barking from the other end of the street. Holland could see that Kitson clearly found something funny.

‘What?’

‘You,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t seem like five minutes since you were all fresh-faced and floppy-haired and thought the sun shone out of Tom Thorne’s arse. You’d have jumped off a cliff if he’d told you to.’

Holland said, ‘Yeah, well,’ and ran a hand through blond hair that was somewhat shorter these days. Nobody’s fresh-faced anything.

‘Then you found out he was fallible,’ Kitson said. ‘Like everyone else.’

Holland looked at her, thinking that he was not the only one who had changed. That she had… softened, while, for whatever reason, he had moved the other way. Thinking: yes, if fallible means being everyone’s sure thing for youngest female commander in the Met, until you sleep with a senior officer and screw up your marriage and have to start all over again. ‘Like everyone else,’ he said.

Kitson angled the rear-view mirror down to check her reflection. She pursed her lips and opened her eyes wide. ‘We have addresses for the other two?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, for all the good it’s going to do us.’

‘You got anything else on?’

‘I’m just saying… ’

Kitson readjusted the mirror then looked back towards Gavin Slater’s house. ‘His youngest’s inside, isn’t he?’

Holland nodded. Following in the criminal footsteps of both his father and elder brother, Wayne Slater was serving four months in a YOI near Manchester for breaking and entering.

‘So there might be something useful there, right? Someone in that YOI knows someone in Barndale, you know how it works.’ Kitson moved out into the traffic and turned towards the main road. ‘It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, is it?’

Holland shrugged, said, ‘I suppose not.’

Thinking that the only thing they could usefully do would be to turn the car round, pick up that piece of dog shit he had almost stepped in and pop it through Gavin Slater’s letterbox.