Dead Wrong (5 page)

Just getting near the place made me want to abscond. The idea of being locked up terrified me, not only because of the loss of liberty but because of the enforced separation from Maddie. She’d be taken into care, devastated. I’d lose her.

I shook away the frightening fantasies. I was checked through an electronic door, a bit like the ones at airports. The visitors’ lounge was awash with children and thick with smoke. There was a drinks machine in the corner. I was shown to a table and waited for them to take me through to see Luke Wallace.

Ten minutes later, suffering seriously from the effects of passive smoking, I was collected by a guard. He carefully unlocked the door through from the lounge and locked it behind us before using his keys on the next one. We walked down a narrow windowless corridor and then passed through another secured lobby leading into a longer corridor with a row of enclosed booths along one wall. I was shown to one of the cubicles. It had a small table and two chairs placed opposite each other. One wall was clear from waist height so we could be observed by the guards.

‘I’ll bring him through now, miss.’ The guard went, leaving the door shut but not locked.

A sign in large black capitals instructed all visitors not to pass any materials to prisoners, and warned that all materials including gifts e.g. cigarettes and food must be checked through the main office.

Although the place was only a few years old it already bore the marks of interminable time. The floor and walls and even the furniture were pocked with cigarette burns. The place stank of stale nicotine. There were names and dates scratched on the paintwork, and the see-through partition was a mass of scratches. I shifted in my seat trying to get comfortable, tried to edge my chair forward. I couldn’t. It was bolted to the floor.

Luke Wallace had the same stocky frame as his father though he was much slimmer, and the same round face. His thick hair was cut with a wedge in the back and fell to his eyes at the front in a heavy fringe.

He sat down and folded his hands on the table in front of him.

‘Just give us a nod when you’re finished,’ the guard said. He left the room, locking it behind him.

I introduced myself and explained what his father wanted me to do. As I spoke he kept looking away, studying his hands or staring over at the notice on the wall then casting sideways glances at me.

At first I mistook it for teenage disaffection, a show of boredom or restlessness then, as he glanced my way once more, I saw that he was scared witless. He couldn’t meet my eyes because he’d become cowed, disturbed by the nightmare he was living. He’d lost all confidence; he no longer knew who he could trust. In an effort to reassure him I repeated that his father had employed me.

‘Luke, I want you to tell me about Ahktar – anything, everything.’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘No, not about New Year’s Eve, before that. You were friends,’ I prompted.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you go to the same primary school?’

‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘secondary. We were in the same class, did the same subjects. We both stayed on…’ He broke off. The world of A levels and the sixth-form common room a million miles away.

‘Your dad said you were good friends.’

He nodded, chewed a corner of his lip, sat very still. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said quietly, and his nose grew red and his eyes shone. He swallowed, struggled hard for composure.

‘But you don’t remember,’ I said gently.

He took a breath. ‘I never…he was my best…’ His efforts failed and tears streamed down his cheeks. He put his hands up to cover his face. I glanced over at the window. Would they yank him away for so emotional a display? I reached across and put my hand on Luke’s shoulder. He cried almost silently, his head bobbing in his hands.

Indignation flared in me. This boy, barely a man, hadn’t been tried yet, might well be innocent – but he was in here alone and terrified almost senseless. I shouldn’t think he’d have had any access to counselling, or seen anyone to help him deal with the trauma he’d been through. If he fell apart they’d put him in the hospital, but until then…

After what seemed like ages he straightened up. I withdrew my hand; my arm had gone dead and I rubbed at it to stop the pins and needles while he wiped his face with the palms and backs of his hands. I passed him some tissues.
Do not pass any materials to the prisoner.
He blew his nose noisily.

The crying had calmed him. His eyes no longer swept here and there. He gazed steadily into the distance. ‘They wouldn’t let me go to the funeral. I should have been there.’ He looked directly at me, ‘I still can’t believe he’s dead. I dream about him and then I wake up and…’ He sighed. ‘When we were in Year Seven, that’s when my mum died, Ahktar, he was great. He didn’t mind if I got moody or anything, he just stuck with me. There was no one else. My dad was in a right state. Ahktar was…he didn’t talk about it or anything,’ he leant forward, trying to make me understand, ‘he just kept coming round. He wasn’t embarrassed, everybody…that’s the main thing, they’re embarrassed, they make you feel awkward.’ He paused. ‘We’ve still got his guitar in the cellar.’

‘You had a group? What instrument did you play?’

‘Drums, Ahktar on guitar and vocals, Simon on bass, Josh on keyboards. Ahktar made it though.’ He smiled at some memory; it made him look so young. ‘He had a brilliant voice and he wrote the songs as well. That night, New Year’s Eve, we were going to see this guy at the club. He had a recording studio, his brother was one of the DJs at the club. Ahktar had talked to the DJ and he said he’d introduce us.’

‘Did he?’

“Nah. It was crazy in there.’

‘So you do remember part of the evening?’

‘Yeah, we got the bus into town, we went straight there. Everyone knew it’d sell out. We were there by eight. We all got in.’

‘Who were you with?’

‘Simon, Josh and his girlfriend, Ahktar, Joey D, Zeb and Emma.’

I asked him about the people who hadn’t been mentioned before.

‘Joey D.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Joey D is sad. He’s at school with us. He has a hard time, his old man’s an alcoholic. Joey lives with his grandma. She’s loaded, rolling in it. Joey’s got more money than sense, so people use him. He gives them stuff, he thinks they’ll like him.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

He shrugged. ‘CDs, computer games, watches.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Maybe.’ Automatic caution.

I stared at Luke. ‘Listen, Luke…’

‘OK,’ he said. I didn’t need to finish my little speech about complete honesty. Luke recognised his mistake.

‘Yeah, he could get most things – dope, E, whizz.’

‘For you?’

‘Sometimes, for parties, not on a regular basis. Well, only dope as a regular thing.’

‘Did you all smoke dope?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And the rest? Whizz, E?’

‘Yeah, the weekend or parties like I said. Everyone does it, it’s not a problem.’

I nodded. ‘OK, so Joey D was there. Who else?’

‘Zeb, Ahktar’s cousin, and Emma.’

‘He’s at school with you?’

He smiled briefly. ‘No, he’s older, he works for his brother Janghir. They all call him Jay. Clothing business. They’ve a place up Cheetham Hill.’

‘And when you got inside, what did you do?’

He thought about it. ‘We went to the big room downstairs. We had a drink. We had a dance. It was livening up. Zeb had brought Ahktar this jacket he’d been after for ages. Canadian import, can’t get them here. Really nice jacket, silk and microfibre, black and yellow. Weighs nothing, really warm. They use them up in the Arctic. Anyway Zeb has one and Ahktar had paid him cash upfront back in the summer. It was getting hot but Ahktar, he won’t take this jacket off.’ He smiled. ‘Everyone-took a tab. Everyone was dancing.’

‘Who did you get it from?’

‘Joey. He’d gone off to sort it soon as we got in there.’

‘Go on.’

‘That’s it. There was lots of stuff going round – pills, some heavy dope. Everyone was trying it all.’

‘Including you?’

He nodded. ‘I can’t remember anything else, not till…after. Someone said they were going to turn the sprinklers on at midnight, cool everyone down for New Year but I think that was just a rumour.’

‘Do you remember leaving the club?’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember anything outside the club?’

‘I’ve tried, there’s nothing.’

‘Do you remember going to the police station?’

He studied his hands. ‘No. The next thing I knew I was waking up, I was cold, I was shaking. There was blood all over my T-shirt and my hands. I thought I’d had a nosebleed.’ He looked at me. ‘It wasn’t my blood, it was Ahktar’s. They asked me all these questions then. I couldn’t tell them anything. They just kept on about Ahktar, what had we argued about? I couldn’t remember anything. In the end, I lost it. I shouted at him: “I can’t fucking remember! Why don’t you ask Ahktar?” One of them stared at me, hard. “We can’t,” he said, “he’s dead.”

I spent another half-hour talking to Luke, going over details, checking names and addresses. I asked him about motives, too – who might have wanted to kill his friend? He hadn’t a clue. Ahktar was bright, popular but not cocky. He used drugs for fun like they all did, but he wasn’t involved in anything criminal. He was an ordinary eighteen-year-old studying for A levels, playing in a band. Just like Luke who was now accused of murder.

Before I left I took him back to the night at the club and asked him to think again of anything he could remember– familiar faces, funny moments, anything. He began to shake his head then hesitated.

‘Emma, Zeb’s girlfriend, she left early. They’d fallen out, I think.’

‘Was that unusual?’

‘No, Zeb is a bit of a…’ I watched Luke struggle to find a word but there was only one would do.

‘Wanker?’ I supplied.

He blushed slightly. ‘Yeah, he goes to the casino, spends a fortune, then he’s borrowing. He’d borrow off Emma and she’d get really pissed off. She’s a nursery nurse, he makes more in a week than she earns in a month. Anyway, she went. And then I saw Zeb, looks like he’s giving Joey D a hard time.’

‘Borrowing money?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t hear, you couldn’t hear a thing unless someone yelled in your ear. But Zeb had Joey D by the collar and then Joey goes upstairs.’

‘At the time what did you think?’

‘Nothing. Well, Joey can be a pain and I thought Zeb was fed up because Emma had gone and maybe he was taking it out on Joey D. He never knows when to keep a low profile.’

‘Could it have been about drugs? You said Joey had supplied the stuff that night.’

‘Dunno. Maybe. Zeb was well into toot – cocaine,’ he added for my benefit.

‘Did he get it from Joey?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t think so. Just something Ahktar said one time about how much he spent on it and how miserable he still was.’

‘But Joey could have got it for him?’

‘Oh, yeah. Joey’d do anything if he thought it got him in with you. He’s like a little kid really.’

I asked Luke what he’d been told of the sequence of events that night – or what had been implied by the police and the prosecution.

He blew a breath out, shifted in his seat. ‘They reckon I stabbed him. Outside the club, there’s a small alley behind the side entrance, there’s bins there. That’s where they found us. Together,’ he whispered. ‘It’s quiet round there. The taxis and that, the buses, town – it’s all in the other direction.’

‘Who found you?’

‘Dunno, someone rang an ambulance, don’t know who. It was too late for Ahktar.’

‘Were you awake?’

‘No, they couldn’t rouse me.’

‘And the witnesses they’ve got?’

He pressed his hands onto his knees and swayed in the chair ‘They saw me and Ahktar fighting, shouting, they say I had a knife. They say I stabbed him.’ He spaced out his words, trying to hold himself together. ‘I didn’t,’ he insisted, ‘I didn’t.’

But they identified him.

‘Did you have a knife?’

‘No,’ he was emphatic, ‘I’ve never carried a knife. They’re saying I borrowed it or took it, it’s like one Joey D had.’

‘Could Joey have hurt Ahktar?’

‘No, he’s all mouth. He’s no hard man. He’d run a mile.’

‘The knife was there?’

He rolled his eyes back and blinked hard. ‘It was still in him – there was just one wound. My fingerprints were on the knife.’

Even worse. But there was more than one way to get prints on a knife – trying to remove it, for example.

Before I left I asked Luke to keep thinking about that night and stressed that if he remembered any other details, to tell me about them. I had left my card with reception, it would be given to Luke at an appropriate time, presumably once they’d checked it hadn’t been soaked with hallucinogens.

I told him who I planned to talk to and made sure he had no objection to me asking my questions. I also asked him to consider hypnosis. His amnesia, probably due to the cocktail of drink and drugs he’d taken, was a terrible obstacle to his defence. And while information from somebody under hypnosis probably wouldn’t be admitted in court, it could still help me to find witnesses to the crime and might even give a lead as to who’d stabbed Ahktar.

I knew it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility for Luke to have done it, but then it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility for me to win the Lottery. Except I don’t buy tickets. I prefer to work with probabilities. And Luke probably didn’t kill Ahktar. Someone else probably did, and they were escaping detection. The police had enough evidence to believe that a reasonable jury would find Luke guilty. The thought made me uneasy. Much of their case rested on the witnesses they’d got. It was vital I found out what they’d seen and established whether they could have been mistaken or whether I was up to my neck in a lost cause.

I stood up and went to the partition, motioned to the guard who was standing along the corridor.

‘When you see his parents,’ Luke said, ‘will you tell them I’m sorry, tell them I didn’t do it? They think I did. They wouldn’t talk to my dad. Tell them.’

‘I will.’ If they’ll talk to me, I added to myself.