Good as Dead

DAY TWO
LIES HAVE DONE THESE THINGS
TWENTY-FIVE

Thorne left the house just before seven-thirty, still eating toast as he turned the BMW on to Kentish Town Road and headed north. He wanted to avoid the worst of the morning rush hour on his way to Potters Bar, but also thought it might be a good idea to call on Susan Hughes nice and early. There was every possibility, he thought, that some helpful officer from Barndale had thought fit to let her know Thorne had been asking questions.

She might well be expecting his visit.

He was over the M25 before eight, and ten minutes later he was pulling up opposite a small, neat-looking house in a modern terrace just behind the High Street. The curtains were still drawn, upstairs and down. There was a Honda Civic parked on the road outside with a Nurse On Call sticker in the window. Thorne wondered if Susan Hughes had found herself another job yet, or just left the sticker there to avoid parking tickets. He had done the same thing himself often enough.

If she had been expecting him, the woman had not gone to a great deal of effort in tarting herself up for the occasion. The white towelling dressing gown was not wholly surprising at this time in the morning, but the tracksuit bottoms and grey T-shirt beneath suggested that she was not thinking about changing any time soon. Thorne could smell the fags as soon as the door was opened and, once he had told her who he was and why he needed to speak to her, it looked very much as though Susan Hughes needed another one.

Thorne accepted the monosyllabic offer of tea and followed her inside.

The house was divided somewhat clumsily into two flats and Hughes lived on the ground floor. Once through her own front door, she led Thorne through her living room and into a small kitchen. There was a laminated wooden floor, plain white cupboards and a grey, granite countertop. It was as spotless and uncluttered as everywhere else.

Susan Hughes was the untidiest thing in the place.

She was short and full-figured, somewhere in her mid-thirties, with a dark-rooted blonde bob that had seen better days. ‘You been to Barndale, have you?’ She flicked the kettle on and tightened the belt on her dressing gown. ‘Spoken to McCarthy, I suppose.’

The distaste had been clear enough in her voice. ‘Not a fan, then?’

She shrugged. ‘Would you be? If you were the one that been made into a scapegoat?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Don’t you think he should have taken some responsibility?’

‘He wasn’t there when it happened.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head, her mind made up. ‘As chief medical officer, the buck stops with him.’

Though it was clearly in Hughes’ own interest to think as she did, Thorne had some sympathy. He had seen plenty of hard-working friends and colleagues sacrificed by senior officers who had refused to take ultimate responsibility. He had been hung out to dry enough times himself. ‘Actually, he was defending you,’ Thorne said. ‘He told me you couldn’t really be blamed for what happened.’

‘Did he?’ she scoffed. ‘Shame he didn’t say that when I was being suspended.’

The kettle was starting to grumble loudly and save for the necessary questions and answers about how Thorne wanted his tea, they said no more until it had boiled. When the tea was ready, she walked back into the living room. She sat down on the edge of the sofa and lit a cigarette. Thorne took his tea across to the window and peered out through a gap in the curtains. A woman was walking a small dog on the pavement opposite. She stopped to say something to a man who looked as though he was leaving for work. A smart suit and a pinched expression.

‘Open them if you want,’ Hughes said.

Thorne turned away from the window. ‘It’s fine,’ he said.

She sat back and drew her legs up beneath her. A decent enough attempt to appear relaxed. ‘So what else did he say then? McCarthy.’

‘He told me that you checked Amin,’ Thorne said. ‘Twice. That you looked into the room and you thought he was OK.’

She pulled on her cigarette. Leaned forward to knock away a worm of ash.

‘I take it you should have gone into the room. You should have done a bit more than glance through the window, right?’

‘I’d already been working for twelve hours straight.’ She looked away, took another drag and let the smoke out on a muttered curse. ‘I know that’s not an excuse.’

‘It sounds like one.’

‘It’s all I’ve got,’ she said. She ran clawed fingers through her hair. ‘There’s going to be some pointless disciplinary hearing in a few weeks and believe me, I really wish I had something better. Because there isn’t a cat’s chance in hell they’re going to reinstate me and that’s fifteen years of nursing up the swanee.’ She carried on as she stubbed out the half a cigarette that was left. ‘People talk to one another in this job, you know? Word gets round, so it’s not like anyone’s going to be banging on my door offering me anything else.’

Thorne drank his tea. He sat there, finding it hard to care a great deal, and waited for her to say something else. Then, when she spoke again, he could see that the bitterness in her voice up to that point had been nothing but bravado.

He watched her blink slowly and saw the mask slip.

‘I thought he was sleeping,’ she said. ‘He’d been doing so well, you know? He would probably have been out of there in a day or two, so when I looked… I thought everything was fine. It had been fine, just before, so I assumed… ’

‘He’d bitten through his tongue,’ Thorne said.

‘I know-’

‘There was blood all over his face.’

‘His head was turned the other way, so I couldn’t see it. I didn’t

… see it, all right? I just saw a boy, asleep in bed.’ She leaned forward and fumbled for another cigarette from the pack on the table. ‘Do you really think I haven’t thought about what I should have done? That I’ve thought about anything else?’ She grabbed at the material of her dressing gown then raised her arms, the unlit cigarette held between her fingers. ‘You reckon I’ve had a good night’s sleep, do you? That I’ve had one since? Look at me, for God’s sake.’

Thorne did as he was asked, but only for a second or two, a little uncomfortable with the fact that Susan Hughes was looking right back at him. He might have been dressed rather more formally than she was, but he guessed that his own face was every bit as drawn, as grey as hers.

‘Listen, Susan… I didn’t come here because you were negligent.’

‘So why did you come?’

‘I presume you knew about the thefts from the dispensary.’

She nodded, lighting her cigarette. ‘You think those might have been my fault as well?’

‘Did you know that sixty tablets of Tramadol were taken the day after Amin came in?’

‘You think he stole them?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘What, so someone took them for him?’

‘I’m not convinced he even swallowed those tablets,’ Thorne said. ‘I think someone murdered him.’

The nurse stared at him and released smoke from the side of her mouth. ‘Why would anyone…?’

‘That’s my problem,’ Thorne said.

‘He was a decent enough kid,’ she said. ‘I mean I hadn’t come across him before he was admitted to the wing, but that’s what I’d heard. Good-looking lad too. At least he was until some little twat took a knife to him.’ She thought for a few seconds then leaned forward, shaking her head in realisation. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I was prime suspect, was I?’

Thorne drained the last of his tea. ‘I can’t think of too many other people who could have done it,’ he said.

‘Jesus.’

Thorne did not rely on instincts, not any more. They had got him into trouble too often. Cost as many lives as they had saved. He had been played by killers – male and female – too many times to place trust solely in the gut feeling or that insistent voice in his head. Both were every bit as capricious as they were convincing.

And yet, was his belief that Amin Akhtar had been murdered based on anything more than a nagging doubt?

Wary as he was of these things, he looked at this woman in a dressing gown, saw her glaring at him through a plume of cigarette smoke and knew that she had not murdered anyone. She had not done her job as well as she might, and she was clearly living with that, but she was not directly responsible for Amin Akhtar’s death.

He was sure of it, and he told her so.

‘I know I’m not,’ she said, the anger returning to her voice. ‘But that’s not going to get me my job back, is it?’