Good as Dead

THIRTY-FIVE

Just a few seconds after Akhtar came back into the storeroom, a phone began to ring. They both looked at Helen’s handset still sitting on the desk, then quickly realised that the noise was coming from the shop.

Mitchell’s mobile, ringing in his pocket.

They sat and listened to it ring, then when it had stopped, Akhtar said, ‘I meant to tell you this before, but I wrapped Mr Mitchell’s body up as best I could. There were some black bags, so… ’

‘That’s OK,’ Helen said. ‘I don’t see what else you could have done.’ She was already wondering when the body would start to smell. It would not be long, not in this heat.

Akhtar sat down. ‘I am so ashamed that he is lying out there… like that, so very ashamed, but I promise you this, Miss Weeks. When all this is over, I will do everything necessary to make sure that he has a proper burial. It does not matter what it costs. I swear to do that.’

Helen just looked at him. The nodding, the earnestness. Did he really think that when it was over he would just walk out of here and go back to his old life? Home to his wife and dinner on the table and up again at half past four the next morning to open the shop? Did he really think there were any other options besides death and prison?

And what were her options?

She thought again about the price she was likely to pay for keeping Stephen Mitchell’s death a secret, the career she had worked so hard for and had now jeopardised, and she felt a hot rush of anger for the man lying dead in the next room. Why had he not listened, why had he been so stupid? He was the one who had put her in this position.

Had made her lie and squirm and snivel…

When the anger had finally subsided, she felt every bit as ashamed as Akhtar did. The truth was that she would sacrifice anything, her stupid career included; that she would crawl out of this shop bleeding and limbless if it meant the chance to see her son again. And she knew that if she did, when she did, Stephen Mitchell would be carried out in a body-bag, stinking, in a shroud of bin-liners.

‘Are you all right, Miss Weeks?’

Helen looked at him and tried to smile. ‘Don’t you think “Miss Weeks” is a bit formal? I mean, considering where we are and everything.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Akhtar said. ‘Stupid.’

‘It’s Helen.’

He nodded and moved his chair a little closer to her. ‘I think this might be over soon, Helen.’

‘That’s good,’ Helen said. A genuine smile broke, unbidden, across her face and for the first time in many hours she forgot the numbness in her backside and the pain where the cuff had bitten into her wrist. ‘That’s really good, Javed.’ She did not want to push it, to ask him what he and Thorne had been talking about at the shutters. She had heard Akhtar’s voice but could not quite make out what Thorne had been saying. She was happy enough to wait until Akhtar told her.

Instead, he asked, ‘How do you know Mr Thorne?’

‘It’s a long story,’ she said.

Akhtar shrugged. ‘I don’t think either of us is going anywhere for a little while, at least.’

‘My partner died, just over a year ago. Just before Alfie was born.’

‘Ah,’ Akhtar said, nodding. ‘I had wondered why I never saw the baby’s father. I would never have asked, of course.’

Helen swallowed, took a few seconds. ‘Paul was… killed, and it was Thorne’s job to find out what happened.’

‘Like this, then?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘So, did he?’

‘Well, actually I found out the truth myself.’ Helen shook her head, still not quite able to believe, a year on from it, that she had done the things she had. Taken such stupid risks. Putting herself close to gangs and killers like a kid poking at a wasps’ nest and tearing around like a lunatic while eight months pregnant with Alfie.

She had felt proud of herself though, in the end, and vindicated because she knew how proud Paul would have been. It had helped her cope with the grief, and the guilt.

‘Well, perhaps I should be asking you to find out what happened to Amin,’ Akhtar said, grinning. ‘And Thorne should be sitting where you are.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Helen said.

Akhtar stood up and flicked the kettle on. There was a lightness to his movements suddenly, as he reached for mugs and spoons. A squareness in his shoulders. ‘Yesterday, when he suggested swapping places with you? That told me something very important about the kind of man he is. Told me he was the right man… ’

Helen suddenly remembered talking to Thorne a year before, at Paul’s funeral. He had looked uncomfortable in a stiff collar and tie and had told her he was going to be a father. ‘One on the way,’ he had said. ‘Not as far gone as yours but… on the way.’ So just a couple of months, but that meant Thorne would have a baby of his own now.

Yet still he had offered to take her place.

When it came, Helen drank her tea and ate the biscuits that were given with it, feeling anything but proud. Because she knew that she would not have done the same.