Good as Dead

NINE

Helen listened, waiting and hoping for some reaction.

Akhtar had been in his shop for ten minutes or more, while for most of that time, from the front of the building, a woman’s voice had echoed – crackling and tinny – through a loudhailer.

‘We just want to talk, Mr Akhtar. We need to know that everyone’s all right in there. If we could start some kind of dialogue on the phone, we could begin talking about how we’re going to resolve this. How we can get you what you want without anybody getting hurt.’

When he finally came back into the storeroom, Akhtar was carrying an armful of chocolate bars and bags of crisps. He stood a few steps away from where Helen and Mitchell were chained to the radiator and stared down at them.

‘So, what do you think?’ Helen asked.

‘What do I think about what?’

‘Should we maybe just switch my phone on at least?’

Akhtar blinked, licked his lips.

‘If you don’t communicate with them-’

‘I already said,’ he shouted. ‘When I’m ready.’ He stamped his foot like a petulant schoolboy and shook his head as if clearing it or trying to refocus. Then he smiled suddenly at Helen and Mitchell, calmly opened his arms and dropped the crisps and chocolate at their feet. ‘It’s lunchtime,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid this is the best I can do.’

Helen watched him walk back to the desk and pick up the gun. As far as her stomach was concerned, she did not know where fear ended and hunger began.

‘It’s time to eat,’ he said.

She slowly pulled a chocolate bar towards her with her free hand and tore at the wrapper with her teeth. She bit into it, then nodded towards a packet of crisps. ‘I don’t think I can open that with one hand,’ she said.

Akhtar said, ‘Sorry.’ With the gun still pointed at them, he bent down slowly, opened the two bags of crisps that were closest to him then nudged them across the dirty linoleum floor with his foot.

Mitchell did not seem interested in the food. He never took his eyes off the gun.

‘Can we have something to drink?’ Helen asked.

Akhtar apologised again, the anger having seemingly given way to embarrassment and concern, and hurried back into the shop.

‘You should eat something,’ Helen said to Mitchell.

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘Just a bar of chocolate.’

‘I’d probably be sick anyway,’ he said. He blew out his cheeks and rubbed at his stomach. ‘Butterflies, you know?’

‘Yeah, I know.’ She reached across and laid a hand on his arm.

Akhtar came back in with three cans: Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite. He held them up so that Helen and Mitchell could take their pick.

‘I’ll have the Diet Coke,’ Helen said, ‘if that’s all right. Probably wasting my time worrying about calories while I’m stuffing my face with chocolate, mind you.’ She tried to smile. ‘Might as well make the effort though.’

Akhtar nodded and laughed. He opened the can and laid it down within Helen’s reach, then he raised up the other two, one in each hand. ‘Mr Mitchell?’

Mitchell said he was happy with either.

‘You can have the Coke,’ Akhtar said. He opened the drink and placed it on the floor, then sat back down at the desk. He laid the gun on the desktop and popped the ring-pull on his own can. He looked across at Helen and patted his paunch. ‘I gave up worrying about weight a long time ago,’ he said. ‘All that ghee in everything my wife cooks.’

‘I can’t afford to give up,’ Helen said. She looked at him and swallowed hard. ‘Been struggling with it ever since Alfie was born. Can’t seem to get rid of those few extra pounds, even though I spend half my life running round after the little bugger like a lunatic. Well, you’ve seen how much energy he’s got.’

Akhtar looked away and took a long swig from his can.

Helen was happy to see that Akhtar was feeling uncomfortable. Had she managed to provoke a pang of guilt, or remorse? Perhaps she had simply succeeded in reminding him of his own son. She decided that this could not be helped, that whatever she said, the man would not need to be reminded of the child he had lost.

It was the reason they were there, after all.

She finished the chocolate and started on the crisps. ‘Where did you get the gun, Javed?’

‘What?’

She asked again, kept it nice and casual, as though she were enquiring where he had bought his shoes.

Akhtar reached for the gun and picked it up, felt the weight of it as if holding it for the first time. It looked old. A revolver. ‘A man who came into the shop,’ he said.

Helen waited.

‘I knew he was involved in certain sorts of business, you know? The way he looked and some of the things he said. Same way I got to know the business you were in.’ He slowly turned the gun over in his hand, as though curious himself as to how it had got there. ‘I told this man some made-up stories, told him I was having real trouble with kids in the shop, all that kind of nonsense. He said there were things I could do to protect myself, that it would be easy to get what I needed if I was happy to pay for it. He said there was a pub I could go to, people I could ask. So, for several nights, when I had told my wife I was at the cash-and-carry, I sat in this pub that stank of God-knows-what, trying to look as though I had a good reason to be there, and I asked questions. Eventually I found a man who was keen to take my money and give me what I wanted.’

‘You must have been frightened,’ Helen said.

‘I was terrified, Miss Weeks, I don’t mind telling you. More scared than I have ever been. But in the end it was so easy, that is the terrible thing. Those boys who were in my shop this morning? They can get guns any time they want.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Like that .’ He shook his head. ‘I thought it would be difficult and dangerous, but it was really no different to buying anything else. No different.’ He nodded down to the floor in front of Helen. ‘Like buying crisps or bloody Coca-Cola… ’

Helen knew that Javed Akhtar was right, of course. The war on knives was all but lost, and it was hard to imagine the attempt to tackle gun crime going any other way, when you could buy one in a pub car park as easily as a box or two of dodgy fags.

He might just as well have been at the cash-and-carry.

‘Why don’t you just get rid of the gun?’ Helen asked.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘ Please,’ Mitchell said. The single word was said quietly but was thick with desperation. ‘You don’t need it.’ He rattled the handcuffs against the radiator pipe. ‘We can’t go anywhere.’

‘You don’t have to do anything else,’ Helen said. ‘We can carry on just like this if you want. It’s only the gun that’s making things dangerous. For all of us.’ She nodded reassuringly. ‘You can see that, Javed, can’t you? Just put the gun away… ’

‘My son never carried a weapon in his life,’ Akhtar said, ‘and look what happened to him.’

‘I know, but isn’t one terrible incident enough? Just put-’

‘“Dangerous”.’ Akhtar spat the word out. ‘That’s what they said about Amin in court. That he demonstrated a “degree of dangerous ness ”. What kind of word is that? What does that even mean?’

It was a legal term that Helen was well familiar with. It had been applied to many offenders she had dealt with over her years in Child Protection. It was invoked as justification for harsher sentencing, and for increasing the period an individual had to spend on licence once that sentence had been completed.

‘So what do you think, Javed? About the gun.’

Akhtar stood up and looked at her as though he had no idea what she was talking about. ‘What kind of word is that, I ask you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Helen said. ‘But it’s just a word.’

Akhtar shook his head and shouted. ‘No, no, no! Not just anything!’ His face was flushed suddenly and he was waving the gun about.

Next to her, Helen felt Mitchell flinch and whimper.

‘What kind of bastard, stupid word?’ He looked from Helen to Mitchell for an answer and, when none came, he shook his head again and stormed quickly out into the shop.

A few seconds later, the noise started, things crashing and breaking.

Helen shuffled across and, once again, dropped a hand gently on to Mitchell’s shoulder. ‘It’s going to be OK, Stephen,’ she said.

He turned slowly towards her. His skin was clammy and his lips looked pale.

He said, ‘I can’t do this.’

A woman approached Donnelly as he was walking back into the hall from the boys’ toilets. She introduced herself as DC Gill Bellinger. Said, ‘I work with Helen.’

‘Right,’ Donnelly said. ‘Well, we’re doing everything we can, but right now it’s a sodding big plate of wait-and-see pudding, I’m afraid.’

‘I was wondering what you were doing about Helen’s little boy.’

Donnelly said, ‘Right,’ again and nodded, as though he had just been wondering exactly the same thing.

Bellinger nodded back, but she could see that this was the first time he had so much as thought about Alfie Weeks. ‘He goes to a local childminder,’ she said. ‘I just thought we should make some arrangement to have him picked up?’

‘Yes, of course. Is there any family?’

‘There’s a sister, Jenny. Lives in Maida Vale, I think. I’m not sure they’re particularly close, but… ’

‘OK, I’ll try and get that organized, thanks, Gill.’ Donnelly looked around. ‘I’m not sure-’

‘You want me to do it?’

‘That would be great,’ Donnelly said, taking a step away. ‘Might all work out very well, seeing as you’re a friend of Helen’s, I mean.’

He was already on his way back to the monitors as Gill Bellinger was telling him that she would let him know what she’d managed to organise. He raised a hand in acknowledgement and sat back down.

‘Takes me back,’ he said.

Sue Pascoe looked up at him. ‘What?’

‘Boys’ toilets.’ Donnelly smiled. ‘I remember, we used to go charging into the girls’ toilets every so often. A big gang of us, just running in there shouting and screaming, trying to see what it was like. What the hell you got up to in there.’ He looked at Pascoe. ‘Funny that the girls never seemed particularly interested in what our toilets were like.’

‘Yeah, funny that,’ Pascoe said.

‘Anything momentous happen while I was pointing Percy at the porcelain?’

Pascoe shook her head. ‘Well, he hasn’t given himself up or shot anyone, if that’s what you mean. But it might not be too far away.’ She nodded across to where Chivers was talking to somebody on the far side of the hall. ‘He was looking for you.’

‘What does he want?’

‘Says his boys can hear a load of crashing and banging coming from inside the shop,’ Pascoe said. ‘Bottles breaking and what have you, like he’s smashing the place up.’ She stared at the monitor, let out a slow breath. ‘Sounds like he might be losing it.’

‘So what do you think?’ Donnelly asked.

‘I think we really need to talk to him.’

Donnelly watched Chivers finish his conversation and start walking quickly towards him. It was hard to be sure, as the man’s expression never changed a great deal, but even from a distance the CO19 team leader appeared rather pleased with developments.