Good as Dead

SIXTY-FIVE

Looking at him, Thorne suddenly had a very clear image of His Honour Judge Jeffrey Prosser QC dressing before a trial. Transforming himself, enjoying the ritual. He pictured the man standing in front of a large mirror in his chambers, the smile widening and the blood rushing to his cock as he slipped on his purple robe and red sash. As he became empowered. The wig would be last of all, best of all. Stern and imposing suddenly, that blissful scratch of horsehair against the tender pink skin.

The smallest suggestion of punishment.

Bare-headed now and wearing a blue pinstripe, Prosser reminded Thorne of an old deputy headmaster he had not thought about in more than twenty years. A scrawny neck and sagging gut. Almost entirely bald, his face flushed with the effort those few stray tufts of grey were making in fighting their desperate rearguard action. Fierce, but ultimately ineffectual. The man Thorne remembered from school had made up for countless failings as a teacher with a manic adherence to a disciplinary regime that involved caning boys from eleven and upwards on a regular basis. Across the palm much of the time, but always the buttocks for the younger boys. Breathless by the end of it, and sweating.

Right, Thorne, now get out of my sight.

Thorne looked at Prosser. Perhaps the similarity was even closer than he had thought.

They had not moved from their positions near the window, except for Prosser stepping briefly across to a low glass table to set his tumbler down, after finishing his drink in two large gulps. Another half a dozen guests had arrived in the last few minutes and one or two of the boys had begun dancing together, showing themselves off to potential customers. The judge made no attempt whatsoever to disguise the fact that he was enjoying the show.

‘I’m still not a hundred per cent sure why you’ve blundered into a private party without an invitation,’ he said. ‘One photograph is hardly going to give any of our friends at the CPS a hard-on, is it?’

‘One photograph of you, Ian McCarthy and Simon Powell.’

‘Whom I am not for one second denying that I know.’

‘That’s a good start.’

‘I’ve dealt with Simon several times professionally and I met Ian socially a couple of years ago.’

‘Somewhere like this.’

‘I’m not disputing the fact that Ian, Simon and I were once at the same party.’ He smiled. ‘You have that photograph, so to do so would be ridiculous.’

‘The person who took that photograph is willing to testify that Amin Akhtar was also at that party.’

‘I go to a lot of parties,’ Prosser said. ‘I meet a lot of people.’

‘I have a witness who puts you and Amin Akhtar at the same party just a few months before he was convicted. That’s just a few months before you sentenced him to eight years in a Young Offenders Institution.’

‘It’s a small world.’

Thorne turned his head, nodded towards a man sharing a joint with a boy young enough to be his grandson. ‘I bet this is. Same faces showing up all the time, I’d imagine. Same arses… ’

‘For God’s sake-’

‘Amin Akhtar.’

‘It really means nothing.’

‘Means everything if you had sex with him.’

‘Now, I really don’t see how you’re going to prove that. ’

A man in a cream shirt and brown velvet waistcoat approached and the smile indicated that he and Prosser clearly knew one another. He opened his mouth to speak, but Prosser shook his head, made it clear he was rather busy. The man raised his eyebrows and turned on his heel.

‘McCarthy’s not exactly playing hard to get any more,’ Thorne said. ‘He’s made it very clear that he’ll happily spill his guts in return for a nice bit of carpet in his cell, and there’s no reason to believe that Powell is going to be any less of a pushover.

‘Thing is though, I’d like to hear it from you. Because you’re the one it started with, that day eight months ago, when you looked up and saw Amin Akhtar in the dock in front of you. You’re the one who made everything happen, the one who put the fear of God into your friends and called in a few favours… so you’re the one who’s going to confess.’ He leaned in close to Prosser. ‘So that I can tell the father of the boy you had killed.’

‘You’re welcome to lie to him,’ Prosser said. ‘If you really think that will help.’

Thorne’s mobile rang in his pocket. He dug it out and saw who was calling. It must have been obvious from his expression that it was a call he needed to take.

Prosser took two steps away, then turned. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not making a run for it,’ he said. He picked up his empty glass from the table and waggled it at Thorne. ‘Just getting a top-up… ’

‘Just thought you ought to know,’ Pascoe said, ‘Donnelly’s authorised a dynamic entry.’

‘What’s happened?’

There was the smallest of pauses, an intake of breath. ‘We’ve got every reason to believe that Stephen Mitchell is dead.’

Every reason. So now Thorne knew for sure that they had not been sent the picture, that the RVP team had found out about the hostage’s death in some other way. All the same, he could hardly admit that he had known and said nothing. ‘That gunshot on the first night.’

‘We don’t know what happened,’ Pascoe said. ‘We can only assume that Weeks had no choice but to pretend everything was normal. I should have sussed there was something wrong, but I didn’t.’

‘You blaming yourself for this?’

‘I fucked up.’

‘How long until they go in?’ Thorne asked.

‘Under an hour.’

Thorne watched Prosser filling his glass. Still smiling.

‘Where are you?’

Thorne told her, his eyes on Prosser as the judge walked back across the living room, moving calmly through a gaggle of partygoers. A nod and a wink to someone he recognised, something whispered, a hand laid on an arm. Watching, Thorne recalled how Ian McCarthy had reacted to those initial accusations. The doctor had tried to appear confident and fearless, but the anxiety had been all too obvious and Thorne had been able to smell the man’s weakness, sharp as disinfectant.

Prosser, though, seemed genuinely unafraid of anything.

‘Tom?’

‘I’m still here,’ Thorne said.

‘Well anyway, I just thought you should know. If there’s anything you might have that could persuade Akhtar to give up and walk out of there before Chivers and his mates go crashing in, you need to get back here with it on the hurry-up… ’

When Thorne had hung up, he walked across and took hold of Prosser by the arm.

Making it up as you go along again?

Prosser tried to pull away, but Thorne dug his fingers into the flab of the judge’s forearm.

Thinking about the promise he’d made to Javed Akhtar.

The assurances he’d given Helen Weeks.

He prised the heavy tumbler from Prosser’s hand, wondering – just for a second – how it would feel to smash it against the table and grind the jagged edge into the mottled flesh of the man’s neck. He set it down and guided Prosser none too gently towards the door.

‘Hell are we going?’ Prosser demanded, still trying to wrench his arm from Thorne’s grip.

Thorne dug his fingers in harder.

He called Holland as soon as they were in the lift and told him that they were going to be swapping vehicles. Unlike his own car, the Passat was fitted with Blues and Twos and Thorne guessed that the siren might save him a few precious minutes. He told Holland and Kitson to call up a van, to make it two. He told them to get straight up to the penthouse party and start nicking people for fun.

Then he turned to Prosser.

‘How do you feel about restorative justice?’