Good as Dead

TWENTY

Thorne knew he would hit the rush hour coming off the M40, but he would use the blue light to get through it. With luck he would be back in Tulse Hill within forty minutes or so, though if there had been any major developments he felt sure Donnelly would have let him know.

Now he needed to let Javed Akhtar know that he was doing as he had been asked.

He reached for his phone and dialled. One day he would get around to putting a hands-free kit in the car, but right now getting stopped for driving while using a mobile was the least of his worries.

Helen’s phone rang out and after half a minute went to voicemail. He listened to the message, hung up and tried again. This time she answered almost immediately.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He was in the next room, so I couldn’t pick up.’

Thorne thought about the confident voice he had heard on Helen’s answerphone and compared it to the one he was hearing now. They might have been two different people.

‘Is he there now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I speak to him?’

He waited while Helen asked the question.

‘He wants you to talk to me,’ she said.

‘OK… tell him I’ve spent the day at Barndale, that I’ve been talking to people about what happened to Amin. The governor, the doctor that treated Amin. Amin’s friends. Tell him that.’

He waited again, easing the BMW into the outside lane and pushing it up to ninety, while he listened to Helen Weeks relaying the information to Akhtar.

‘OK, he’s got that.’

‘But you also need to keep telling him that this is going to take time. I’m going flat out here, but it’s not like anybody’s confessing to anything. He needs to understand that.’

Helen started to talk to Akhtar, but Thorne cut her off.

‘But I will find out what happened,’ he said. ‘Tell him that. No, promise him that.’

Helen passed on what Thorne had said.

‘And this is the most important thing, Helen. Are you listening?’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Tell him I believe him, OK?’