Good as Dead

SEVENTY

It was the smell that hit everybody first.

Thorne moved across to Nadira who was leaning against the wall, moaning gently, a hand clamped tight across her mouth. He rubbed her back, shushed her like a baby. Then he walked across to Prosser. The judge had dropped to his knees the second he was clear of the shutters and stayed that way. He coughed and retched, his arms braced against the shop window and a string of drool running from his chin to his chest.

Thorne leaned back against the door.

‘You’ll never forget that smell,’ he said. ‘Never. And other people will smell it on you, long after you’ve left this shop, long after you think you’ve washed it off even. Because you’ll actually absorb it… particularly through your hair and fingernails apparently. Believe me, for the next few days, you’ll belch it and fart it and breathe it.’ He leaned down. ‘And I think that’s only right and proper, considering. Don’t you?’

He lifted Prosser to his feet, spun him around and pushed him towards the rear of the shop. Ahead, Thorne could see the figure of Javed Akhtar, waiting, in semi-silhouette behind the counter. Nadira was a few steps behind as they walked towards her husband.

The shop had been torn apart.

They moved cautiously, negotiating a mess of scattered magazines, sweets and crisps, the debris of tinned food and broken bottles. They stepped over the fridge which was lying on its side and were careful to avoid slipping on the small puddles of melted ice cream and sodden newspapers underfoot. The body of Stephen Mitchell lay close to the counter. The tattered black bin-bags in which it had been wrapped were submerged in shadow and only the face was clearly visible where the thin plastic had been torn open to reveal it.

‘In here,’ Akhtar said.

He nodded towards the room behind him. He held out an arm as if welcoming them to a drinks party or inviting a select group of friends into a well-appointed sitting room.

Thorne shoved Prosser through the doorway and followed. It took him no more than a few seconds to take in the tiny room. To his left, a desk and chair, assorted boxes, a sink and a small fridge, a kettle, a television. Ahead, the back door with a filing cabinet pushed against it, a small toilet.

He looked to his right, and nodded down to Helen Weeks.

A stupid thought: her hair’s different.

He saw the blood on the floor and guessed that this was where Stephen Mitchell had died, the brown streak on the linoleum where the body had been hauled from the room.

‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ Helen said.

‘This’ll only take a minute,’ Thorne said.

Helen was holding the gun in her right hand. She lifted her left and rattled the cuff against the radiator pipe. ‘The key’s on the desk,’ she said.

Thorne half turned to look for it, but his attention was seized by a loud crack from the doorway just behind him. He wheeled round to see Nadira Akhtar slap her husband again, the noise even louder this time, crying out with the effort of it. There was a fine spray of spittle as Akhtar’s head snapped to the side. He righted it slowly and closed his eyes, then began to mutter something soft in Hindi as his wife stepped weeping into his outstretched arms and he eased her into the room with him.

The storeroom was crowded suddenly and though close proximity to the others in the room was unavoidable, people quickly did whatever they could to find themselves another few inches of space. Helen pulled her knees up to her chest, while Akhtar pushed the camp bed to one side so that he and his wife could stand against the rack of metal shelves at the far end of the room. Prosser had pressed himself against the back door, but Thorne dragged him away and stood him in the middle of the room, facing the Akhtars.

‘Centre stage,’ he said.

‘This is stupid,’ Prosser said. There was a laugh in his voice, but it was nervous, and he had not once looked at Javed or Nadira Akhtar.

‘Wait,’ Thorne said.

He took the key from the desk, knelt to unlock the handcuffs, then slowly helped Helen to her feet. She rubbed at her wrist, nodded that she was all right and leaned back against the wall above the radiator.

Thorne stepped up close to Jeffrey Prosser.

‘Why is he here?’ Nadira asked. The tears seemed to have stopped, but every third or fourth breath was catching. ‘What’s he got to do with what happened to Amin?’

Thorne dug an elbow into Prosser’s ribs. Said, ‘I’ll kick things off, shall I, your honour? And you can chip in whenever you feel like it.’ He looked at Akhtar. ‘You need to know that your son was gay, Javed.’

‘No.’ Akhtar was shaking his head before Thorne had finished speaking, as though he had guessed at least something of what was coming. He wagged a finger. ‘That is not true.’

‘Yes, Javee, it is,’ Nadira said. She took hold of her husband’s hand and began to rub the back of it. ‘Amin was how he was and it was fine. So you have to be quiet now, my love, OK? You have to shut up and listen to the rest of it.’

Akhtar blinked quickly and picked at a button on his shirt. He looked a lot thinner than the man Thorne had last seen on the steps of the Old Bailey eight months before. He was red-eyed and unshaven, his face almost grey.

‘That was why he and Rahim were attacked,’ Thorne said. ‘They were coming from a gay bar. And sometimes they would go to parties, where older men would pay them. Pay to be with them.’

Akhtar moaned, low in his throat. Nadira gripped her husband’s hand a little tighter.

‘I’m sorry, but I said this would be difficult,’ Thorne said. ‘I warned you.’

‘It’s fine,’ Akhtar said. He nodded, drew back his shoulders. ‘Go on.’

Thorne nodded towards Prosser. ‘Men like him.’

‘He knew Amin?’

‘Yes, he knew him.’

Akhtar looked at Prosser. ‘You knew my son? Before? ’

Prosser said nothing.

‘He recognised him at the trial,’ Thorne said. ‘And he thought, wrongly as it turned out, that Amin had recognised him too. So, he conspired with the man responsible for deciding where Amin would serve his sentence, and the doctor at Barndale, and when he discovered that Amin was going to leave, he decided it would be safer to have him killed. They came up with a plan to make it look as though your son had killed himself.’

Akhtar’s mouth opened slowly and hung there, as though the muscle that controlled it was no longer working.

‘So,’ Thorne said.

Nadira sighed and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘This… man.’ Akhtar took half a step towards Prosser, and Thorne could clearly see the pulse ticking at his neck. He could see the tremor that had taken hold suddenly in the man’s hands and legs, as though a switch had been thrown and a current had begun to pass through him. ‘This man who I put my faith in. This man who was the law .’ He moved closer still to the judge and yanked his hand free from his wife’s. ‘My son was murdered in prison, because this man had been to a party… given him money.’

‘The other two men are already in custody,’ Thorne said. ‘And all three of them will go to prison for a long time.’ He could see that Akhtar was not really listening, that his eyes had not moved from Prosser’s face. ‘Javed… ’

‘Amin died because this man had… ’ Akhtar squeezed his eyes shut and the trembling in his hands increased and his face contorted as though something vile had risen up into his mouth.

‘We need to go now,’ Thorne said. ‘You’ve got what you asked for.’

‘I want to hear him say it.’

‘Please, Javee,’ Nadira said.

‘I want him to tell me.’

Thorne put a hand on Prosser’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘Tell him.’

Prosser looked at the floor.

‘Tell him what you did.’

Prosser shook his head.

Thorne was aware of Helen suddenly pushing herself away from the wall behind him. He was about to speak again when he heard the dull smack of the gun barrel being pushed into the back of Prosser’s skull.

‘ Tell him,’ Helen said.

The judge tensed and swallowed and began to gabble. His eyes were fixed on the floor. ‘I had sex with your son, I was at a party and I paid him for sex and when I saw him in my courtroom I panicked and for God’s sake you know the rest. Please, what else can I say…?’

There was no need to say anything else. Thorne’s failure to observe the correct legal procedure might well have done some damage to the case against Jeffrey Prosser, but there was no arguing with a confession, every word of which had just been monitored and recorded.

Helen Weeks left the gun where it was.

Prosser looked as though he were about to burst into tears, but when the sob exploded, it was from Javed Akhtar’s throat and not his. Akhtar stepped then staggered backwards and only the steadying hand of his wife prevented him from crashing into the rack of metal shelves behind him.

‘My sweet, sweet boy,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Stop it, Javed,’ Helen said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Akhtar smiled at her, and looking at him it seemed to Thorne that the inside of his mouth was black, that he looked old and ill suddenly under the striplights. ‘You see I was not strictly honest with you either, Helen. Not that I’ve been lying exactly, but… ’

‘You did what you thought was right,’ Nadira said.

‘I was the reason he was in that courtroom in the first place, do you understand?’ He was swaying slightly and his eyes were wide and wet, staring at Helen Weeks. ‘I was the one that turned him in. I gave my own son up to the police, because I trusted in the law to do the right thing.’ His words were coming in short bursts now, thrown up on noisy breaths. ‘I told him that everything was going to be fine. I told him not to worry. He came home covered in blood, you see? It’s all right, he told me. It’s not mine, it’s not mine.’ He turned to his wife. ‘You remember he said that?’

She nodded, clinging to him.

‘Not my son’s blood,’ Akhtar said. ‘Not his blood. Now, I am the one covered in my son’s blood. Drowning in it.’ He began to sink slowly towards the floor and his wife took his weight, and kissed his head and shoulders as she eased him gently down on to the canvas bed.

Thorne turned and took the gun from Helen Weeks.

He put a hand on Prosser’s back, eased him towards the doorway.

He knew there was no need to shout.

‘We’re coming out,’ he said.