Good as Dead

SIXTY

McCarthy told Thorne that there were perhaps a dozen different venues where the parties had been held, in the few years he had been in regular attendance. Locations and guest lists were confirmed last minute, he said. Despite having been to this particular place before, he had no idea who owned it, only that it would be an individual whose discretion could be relied upon absolutely. Someone who, because of their shared tastes and enthusiasms, was happy to entertain a few dozen high-flying professionals once every couple of months. Who would not mind too much if red wine, or anything else for that matter, got spilled on the soft furnishings.

Thorne craned his neck to look up. Thought, someone who’s worth a good few million.

The venue for the evening’s get-together could not have been any closer to the water. Housed within a sleek glass-and-silver crescent on the south side of the river between Battersea and Albert Bridges. Eleven storeys arcing back from the water’s edge, with a horseshoe of duplex penthouses, light spilling from their tinted windows across a wraparound balcony.

‘Nice place for it,’ Thorne said.

‘You’re just trying to make it sound dirty,’ McCarthy said. ‘I’m not ashamed.’

‘ What? ’

‘Not of… the sex.’

Thorne turned in his seat, stared right at him. ‘Listen, I don’t care who you fuck, or how,’ he said. ‘Long as it’s legal and you’re not using anyone. Fact is though, Ian, I think it’s all gone a bit beyond that, don’t you?’

McCarthy said nothing, leaned his head against the window.

‘I’m more concerned about you killing young boys than sleeping with them.’

Thorne had parked up on a narrow access road to the west side of the development. It was probably not a location mentioned on the estate agent’s lavish description of the property. From the car, he could see no more than a dark sliver of Thames, and nothing at all of Chelsea Embankment twinkling on the other side of it, but he had a nice, unimpeded view of the entrance to the twenty-four-hour underground car park.

Since arriving fifteen minutes before, they had watched half a dozen cars turn in and drift slowly down the ramp. As many black cabs dropped passengers off at the main entrance. Now, another car approached. McCarthy checked, shook his head.

Thorne already knew what vehicle he was looking out for. ‘He’d better be coming.’

‘Why don’t you just arrest him when he arrives?’ McCarthy asked. ‘Why do you need to go up there?’

‘Because I want to walk in there and catch him sweating,’ Thorne said. ‘With his hands all over some fourteen-year-old. I want to see his face when he knows I’ve got him, same as I wanted to see yours. Then he’s going to tell me the whole story. He’s going to tell me everything, so I can tell Amin Akhtar’s father.’

Through the rain on the windscreen, Thorne saw another pair of headlights emerge from the blackness. He watched as a dark-coloured Jaguar XJ slowed, and turned into the car park.

McCarthy nodded. ‘That’s him.’

Thorne could smell the fear coming off the man in the passenger seat, or perhaps it was something coming off himself. He could certainly taste the adrenalin in his mouth, the metallic tang in what little spit he was able to suck up. Tinfoil against his teeth.

He told McCarthy to stay where he was, and got out of the car. ‘We’ll give it a few minutes,’ he said, before closing the car door. ‘Let things get going a bit. No point being unfashionably early.’

Thorne jogged the twenty or so feet to the car that had driven in and parked opposite his own a few minutes after arriving. He climbed into the back of the unmarked Volkswagen Passat, then leaned forward between the front seats to talk to the two occupants.

‘We’re in business then,’ Holland said. He too had recognised the number plate on the Jag, having pulled up all the necessary information from the Police National Computer several hours earlier, after Thorne had called him en route to Barndale. He had texted Thorne the details. The registration numbers for the Jaguar and the Audi Q7. The addresses of the flat in Marylebone and the weekend house in Sussex.

Yvonne Kitson turned from the passenger seat. ‘So what’s the plan?’

‘I don’t have one,’ Thorne said.

‘Making it up as you go along again?’ Holland asked.

‘Best way, I reckon.’ Thorne told them that he would send McCarthy back out once he was safely inside. ‘You hang on to him for me, and I’ll call to let you know what’s happening up there. If I need you for anything else. In the meantime, watch the exits and if anyone comes out of there before I’m finished, nick them.’

‘Nick them for…?’

‘Anything you fancy.’

‘What if we don’t hear from you?’ Kitson asked. ‘How long do you want us to give it?’

‘This won’t take long,’ Thorne said. ‘I think the party’s going to be winding down fairly soon after I get in there.’

As Thorne walked quickly back through the drizzle towards the BMW, the message alert sounded on his mobile. He saw that he had been sent a text from Helen Weeks’ phone. When he opened it, there was only an MMS attachment.

Unknown JPEG.

Thorne clicked to open the picture. Stopped and stared. He swallowed, wiping a finger across the small screen, and for a few seconds he could not be sure if it was rainwater he could feel creeping, slow and icy, down the back of his neck.

The gun went off for some reason, but nobody’s hurt.

The image was slightly blurred, but Thorne could make out the waxy, bloated features well enough. The lips, pinched and so much paler than the rest of the face. The spatters of what looked like dried blood around the chin and neck, a few brown flecks near the hairline. It took him a few moments before he recognised the tattered scraps of shiny black that seemed to flutter around the head like bats’ wings, but it made sense to him, once he had.

He was looking at a man he could only presume was Stephen Mitchell.

A dead face.

His body, wrapped in bin-bags.

Thorne took half a dozen steps towards the car, then turned and walked back again, his mind racing. Had Pascoe and Donnelly been sent the same image? If they had, then surely they would be calling to tell him. Thorne looked at the phone, waited half a minute… more, for it to ring.

He punched in the number for the RVP.

‘Where are you?’ Donnelly asked.

‘I’m about to meet the man who organised the murder of Akhtar’s son,’ Thorne said. ‘Actually, we’ve met before.’

‘Well, quicker the better.’

‘Something going on?’

‘Akhtar’s kicking off a bit,’ Donnelly said. ‘Waving the gun about, shouting about running out of patience.’

‘What’s Pascoe saying?’

‘She’s worried.’

‘Tell her, when she speaks to him, to say that I’m getting exactly what he wanted. All the answers.’ Thorne glanced up towards the shining half-moon of penthouses high above him, narrowed his eyes against the rain. ‘Tell him this’ll be finished tonight.’

‘I hope so,’ Donnelly said. ‘And I really hope he listens. Chivers is getting decidedly jumpy, and I can’t say I blame him.’

Thrusting the phone back into his pocket, Thorne walked back towards the car, asking himself why on earth Helen Weeks had not told those on the outside about the death of Stephen Mitchell. Was she simply being coerced into silence by the gun at her head? Or had she deliberately chosen to keep it quiet? As a police officer, she would have understood only too well how quickly a situation could escalate once there were fatalities. As a mother, she had more than just her own life to worry about. He remembered what Donnelly had just said about Chivers, and thought he could understand why Detective Sergeant Helen Weeks might have decided to say nothing.

Whatever the reason, now Thorne had done the same thing and kept the fact of a hostage’s death from those running the operation. One more black mark against him, but it could not make things any blacker.

What else could he do?

Akhtar’s kicking off a bit…

Now, Thorne understood all too clearly that Javed Akhtar was not running out of patience. It had already been exhausted. The picture of Stephen Mitchell’s body had been a simple enough message and one meant only for him.

Get a move on.

He reached the car and yanked open the passenger door. ‘Let’s go.’

McCarthy looked up at him. His face was pale and clammy under the sickly interior light. ‘You said it was too early before. You said-’

‘That was before,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’ve never been particularly fashionable.’