Good as Dead

THIRTY-NINE

Thorne had barely eaten a thing all day, so had made himself three pieces of cheese on toast as soon as he’d got home. Now, after finishing his conversation with Helen Weeks, he went back into the kitchen to make himself another couple.

He hoped it was a myth, the business about cheese and bad dreams.

It had been uncomfortable, lying to Helen on the phone, but it was not as if Thorne had been given a great deal of choice. Her sister’s landline had been engaged every time he’d called and she had not been answering her mobile. Having sat and eaten in front of the ten o’clock news, Thorne had a fair idea of why that might be. However much those running the operation in Tulse Hill tried to keep a lid on it, the press was persistent and had deep pockets. Leaks were all but inevitable. During the latest report ‘live from the siege’, Helen had finally been mentioned by name, and Thorne guessed that her sister was now leaving her phone off the hook in an effort to avoid the media.

He bent to check what was happening under the grill.

There would almost certainly be a fair-sized scrum of hacks and snappers on the poor woman’s doorstep by now.

So, in the end, he had said the things he felt sure he would have been saying if he had spoken to Helen’s sister. The things Helen was clearly desperate to hear. It had not been easy listening to the emotion in her voice and he had fought to keep it from his own; letting her know simply that all those she loved and who loved her would be waiting on the other side of those shutters.

Waiting, with those who loved Stephen Mitchell, and Javed Akhtar.

When it was ready, Thorne carried his supper back into the living room. He opened a can of supermarket lager and ate while flicking through the channels on the TV.

Supersize v Superskinny, Rude Tube, golf…

I’m sure you’ve got better things to do…

He called Louise.

He was thirty seconds into leaving a rambling message on her answering machine when she picked up.

‘Tom?’

‘Sorry, I was just… I thought you’d probably gone to bed.’ He waited for her to say something. ‘Are you OK?’

‘It’s late.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I’m on stupid hours at the moment.’ He told her about the situation in Tulse Hill. She had been following developments on the news, but was still surprised to hear that he was involved. Thankfully, as of yet, Thorne’s name had not been mentioned.

‘I would have thought this one was right up your street,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Someone to catch and someone to save.’

‘Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.’

‘Chuck in a dead kid,’ she said, ‘I reckon this just about ticks all your boxes. Probably not quite enough bodies yet, but plenty of strangers to care about.’

‘Come on, Lou.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s not get into that.’

There was a long pause, then Louise apologised. She told Thorne that she was still thinking about getting out of the Job and away from London. Then, as if by way of explanation, she talked a little about the case she was working on. The kidnapping of a fourteen-year-old Romanian girl that had widened to become a major investigation into sex trafficking.

‘It’s hard to think of anything but the faces of those girls,’ she said. ‘The marks where they stubbed fags out on them.’

Thorne waited a few seconds. ‘That’s what used to piss me off,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘All that stuff about me caring, when it was always perfectly bloody obvious that you care every bit as much as I do.’

‘Yes, but I care a bit more about myself.’

‘Listen, the reason I was calling,’ he said. ‘We’ve got this hostage negotiator in Tulse Hill… ’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Her. Sue Pascoe?’

Louise hadn’t heard of her and asked if she was any good.

‘She’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘But you’d be better. Maybe if I talked to the superintendent… ’

‘What, you think we can just arrange a job swap or something?’

‘It might be worth thinking about.’

‘Right, presuming he’d be happy for you to bring your ex-girlfriend in and the woman who’s there already would be happy to step aside, and presuming I hadn’t got anything better to do.’ It was mock-outrage, nothing more, and there was lightness in her voice. ‘Have you actually thought about this?’

‘Well… ’

‘It wasn’t the reason you called at all, was it?’

‘I suppose not,’ Thorne said.

‘Anyway, I’m pretty much burned out when it comes to all that stuff.’ Louise laughed. ‘After two years trying to negotiate with you

… ’

Rahim fetched a knife from the expensive set in the kitchen, chopped out two fat lines of cocaine with it, then sat and stared at them. He raised the knife and licked the few grains from the blade. Let the metal rest against his tongue.

He had always known Amin was brave of course, he’d seen that for himself, but when he heard what Amin had done to himself at Barndale, that had been his first thought.

Then: I could never be brave enough to do that.

Even if what Thorne had told him was to be believed, it didn’t matter that Amin hadn’t actually killed himself. It still applied. His best friend had been so much braver than he was.

Amin had taken far more risks than Rahim had ever done. It had not mattered what he might have seen in the eyes of some of the men at those parties, what some of them had asked him to do. Some part of him had enjoyed the danger. He had taken all the chances and laughed when Rahim had talked about playing it safe.

‘That’s what nice Indian boys like us are meant to do,’ he had said.

Yeah, well, Rahim thought, the anger rising up in him suddenly. Which of us is still here? Which of us has all this? He looked around at his expensive furniture, listened to the jazz whispering from his expensive speakers. The things that caution had bought him.

The drugs. The knife in his hand.

Amin had been the one that night, after it had all happened, who had come up with the story about the party. Rahim had been hysterical, had wanted to tell the police everything, but Amin had told him that they would be all right, that they just needed to stick to their story.

To stick together.

Rahim had never visited him in Barndale, never written him a letter. At the funeral, he had sat in the corner with some of the other boys they had met at the ‘parties’ and laughed at half-remembered stories. He had eaten samosas and drunk Kingfisher like a big man and had not been able to look Nadira or Javed Akhtar in the eye.

One of these men might have killed Amin.

The music finished and, in the few seconds of silence before the next track, Thorne’s words came back to him.

Rahim turned the knife over in his hand, the wooden handle slick against his palm. He placed the edge of the blade against his wrist and began to press.

He cried out and jerked the knife away the instant it broke the skin. He pushed his wrist against his mouth and sucked. Why had he thought, for even one second, that he would have the courage? He stared down at his wrist and watched the scarlet line rise up again through the skin and begin to run.

He reached across the table for a banknote and rolled it, then when he lowered his head towards the first line of cocaine, he watched a drop of blood splash down into the white powder. He angled his wrist so that more would follow.

Rahim remembered his friend slipping as he bent to pick up the knife that Lee Slater had dropped, and screaming as he lunged. He remembered sitting on the ground and watching it all happen, his own arse wet and cold, and safe.

He stared down at the table, remembered blood on the snow.