Good as Dead (37 page)

Ahead of Thorne, the silver Astra was indicating, pulling across to the inside lane.

‘So how the hell do I prove any of this, Phil?’

‘
Almost
undetectable,’ Hendricks said. ‘And only when you’re not specifically looking for it. Amin wasn’t cremated, was he?’

‘Buried.’

‘No problem then. If we can exhume Amin’s body, I’ll find it.’

Thorne watched as the Astra began to indicate again, just shy of the first motorway junction. He followed the car as it came off at the exit then turned right at the roundabout following the sign for Maple Cross. Holland had already texted through McCarthy’s address and Thorne recognised the name.

It looked as though the doctor was heading home.

Thorne pulled out to overtake a lorry and ratcheted up his wipers to handle the spray. He put his foot down. Now, he was happy enough to follow McCarthy all the way to his front door and he no longer cared whether he was seen or not.

FIFTY-SEVEN

The sound had gone back up on the television now, and as Helen watched, she imagined Pascoe and the others outside, huddled in their van, their eyes narrowed in concentration, with their headphones pressed to their ears, enjoying
Emmerdale
.

We’re listening.

If anything, she was surprised that it had taken them this long. Perhaps it had been her presence inside that had delayed the decision to bring in technical support until now. The notion that, as one of the hostages was a police officer, they had ‘ears’ on the inside anyway.

We’re listening.

The implication was obvious enough.

We’re listening … if there’s anything you want to tell us. Anything you think might help. Something to give us the advantage out here, put us ahead of the game.

She leaned back against the radiator, took her eyes from the screen and looked across at Akhtar. He had no interest in the television. He was sitting with his back to the wall opposite her, his head lowered, staring down at the gun. He had been doing this a lot more since the previous evening. Picking the gun up, carrying it around for a while, putting a hand on it. He was not pointing it, or even waving it around, and it seemed to Helen that it was simply a question of reminding himself that he had it, and why he had it.

That
he
was the one ahead of the game.

Helen felt something tighten in her chest each time he reached for it.

However much she thought she understood Javed Akhtar, she could no longer be sure what he was or was not capable of, and she did not need to be reminded what a loaded gun could do. She hoped to God that she was imagining it, but several times in the last few hours she had thought she could catch her first whiff of the body in the next room. A sharp stab of something sweet. Only for a moment, but enough to make her stomach turn over and her eyes begin to water.

We’re listening.

She felt as though she should say something to Akhtar, to warn him before he said the wrong thing, but she had no idea how. She could write something down perhaps –
DON’T MENTION MITCHELL
– but even asking for a pen and paper would probably sound suspicious to anyone listening in.

Inevitable in the end, she knew that. Same as the smell.

Now it was only a matter of time until they were found out. Until she was found out. A matter of time before the people on the outside stopped listening and took a rather more proactive approach.

Because of something they
hadn’t
heard.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Thorne slowed and watched the silver Astra fifty yards ahead of him turn into the driveway of a modern, semi-detached house. He watched Ian McCarthy get out of the car and drag his briefcase from the back seat. He watched him walk quickly through the rain along a path paved in red brick, past nicely trimmed shrubs and well-tended flower beds, and step through his front door without looking back.

He gave him five minutes. Just enough time for someone to get their feet under the table, put the kettle on or open a bottle of something. Start getting comfortable.

When McCarthy opened the door he was still wearing his coat.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No.’

‘There’s a third option,’ Thorne said. ‘You stop pretending you’re big and brave and tell me everything you know.’

McCarthy moved quickly to close the door, but found Thorne’s foot in the way, then his shoulder. A dog began to bark somewhere behind him and a few seconds later a Golden Retriever that looked anything but fierce forced its head through the gap. McCarthy tried to pull the dog back while keeping his weight against the door.

‘It’s finished,’ Thorne said. His face was only a few inches from McCarthy’s. ‘We’re going to get Bridges eventually and he’ll give you all up in a second as soon as he starts to need a fix badly enough. Let’s not forget we’re talking about two murders here, counting Peter Allen, oh … and when we re-examine Amin Akhtar’s body we’ll find the Suxamethonium.’

McCarthy blinked.

‘So, can I come in?’

The dog had retreated back into the hall, barking with less enthusiasm now, and as McCarthy opened the door Thorne saw a woman come through a doorway behind him, grab the dog by the collar and tell it to be quiet. She looked up at McCarthy as Thorne stepped past him.

‘Everything all right?’

McCarthy closed the front door. ‘Fine, love. There’s a problem back at the prison, that’s all.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing very serious,’ Thorne said. ‘I shouldn’t keep him too long.’

McCarthy moved to a closed door and nudged it open. ‘Let’s go in here.’

‘Wherever.’

‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ the woman asked.

‘I’ll have coffee,’ Thorne said, smiling. ‘Only if you’re making some.’

McCarthy switched on a light and disappeared through the door. Thorne watched the woman and the dog head off towards the kitchen, then followed him.

The room was pristine – the cushions on sofa and armchairs perfectly plumped and the Hoover marks still visible on the carpet – and Thorne guessed it was the living room the McCarthys kept for best. The one they might take coffee through to after a dinner party and where they played Trivial Pursuit or Risk once in a blue moon. There were framed degree certificates arranged on the wall and dried flowers in the fireplace, and the highly polished sideboard in one corner was topped with an array of family photographs.

Husband, wife, daughter, dog.

Perfect.

Thorne dropped into an armchair. Said, ‘Very nice.’

McCarthy was already sitting on the sofa. ‘What is?’

‘All of this,’ Thorne said. ‘Your wife.’

‘Don’t,’ McCarthy said.

Thorne sat forward. ‘Here’s the thing. I
was
thinking “conspiracy to murder”, but the law’s become very … fluid these days, as far as all that goes. I mean, let’s say you’re part of a gang that attacks and kills someone. Even if you do nothing but egg somebody else on, even if you don’t lay a finger on the victim, you can still go down for murder.’ He let that hang for a few seconds. ‘That’s what the law says now. “Joint enterprise”, it’s called. Probably got a few up in Barndale been done because of that. You give someone a murder weapon … the fact that you’re miles away when that murder’s committed is neither here nor there. You’re as guilty of murder as they are in the eyes of the law.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘Knife, gun, syringe … doesn’t matter.’

‘No—’

‘You gave Bridges that syringe, and you showed him exactly what to do with it. Eager to learn, I should imagine. A decent wedge to spend when he got out, and the fact that it’s an Asian kid he’s doing is probably a bonus for a racist headcase like Johnno Bridges, right? You gave him the keys to get out of the ward and into Amin’s room. You showed him where the cameras were.’

‘Please—’

‘And let’s not forget who staged those thefts from the dispensary to make it look like those were the drugs that Amin Akhtar had taken. So, even though you were tucked up here in bed while he was being shot full of poison, you’re the one who was ultimately responsible. You’re the one who’s looking at a very long time in prison, and it’ll be somewhere a damn sight rougher than Barndale, I can guarantee that—’

‘It wasn’t my idea,’ McCarthy said. ‘None of it was my idea.’

Thorne sat back. It was like he had thought. The weakest link in the chain.

McCarthy’s face was tight and bloodless, and he squeezed one hand with the other, methodically crushing the knuckles as though trying to distract himself with pain. The first pangs of remorse, or anguish at being caught, it did not much matter.

Thorne looked at him and felt nothing.

‘The shit in that syringe,’ Thorne said. ‘The paralytic. They stopped using that in executions because of what it did. Because it was too cruel. Did you know that?’

McCarthy started to talk, quickly and quietly. ‘The other men I was with at that party, the men in the picture. One you know, obviously, and the other one’s called Simon Powell.’

The name meant nothing. ‘What does he do?’

‘He works for the Youth Justice Board. He’s on the allocations team.’

Thorne thought about it and it made perfect sense. The second in the chain of three, the second in the process. It also explained something the governor of Barndale had told him two days earlier.

Sometimes these pen-pushers who allocate placements just like to try and make things awkward.

What else had Bracewell said?

I’m sure you’ve met the type.

The type. Thorne looked across at McCarthy.

‘I didn’t sleep with Amin that night,’ McCarthy said. ‘I swear. Not ever in fact. Powell might have done, or … ’

He stopped speaking as the door opened and his wife came in with two mugs of coffee. She handed Thorne his, then gave the other one to McCarthy. ‘You didn’t say, but I guessed you’d want one.’ She stopped at the door. ‘What time did you say you were going out?’

McCarthy looked at her. Opened his mouth and closed it.

‘I need to know what time to get dinner ready, that’s all.’

‘Don’t worry,’ McCarthy said. ‘I’ll get myself something later on.’

‘It’s no bother.’

‘I’m fine, love, really … ’

Thorne watched McCarthy’s wife leave, wondering if she was simply playing the good wife for the sake of the visitor, and how things were between the happy couple when there was nobody else around. If she had the remotest idea what her husband got up to in his spare time.

McCarthy waited for ten, fifteen seconds after the door had closed. ‘I thought the whole thing was stupid,’ he said. ‘Worse than stupid.’

‘By “the whole thing”, you mean killing Amin Akhtar.’

The doctor nodded, slowly. ‘It was all so … unnecessary.’

Just the man’s choice of word made Thorne want to kick his face off, but he bit back the impulse, let him continue.

‘Amin showed no sign whatsoever that he recognized me. Nothing, not a glimmer of it, in all those months. So why anyone else thought they might have been recognized, I don’t know.’

‘Anyone else meaning one man in particular.’

McCarthy nodded.

‘He didn’t want to take any chances,’ Thorne said.

‘I told the other two what I thought, that there was absolutely no need to take such a pointless risk, but my opinion clearly didn’t carry the same weight as … some other people’s.’

‘And Simon Powell was happy enough to go along with it.’

‘Not happy, exactly,’ McCarthy said. ‘Nobody was happy about it. But yes.’

Thorne thought about the man who, by the sound of it, had been orchestrating the trio’s activities, both before and after the killing of Amin Akhtar. Who had led a conspiracy to murder first one boy, then another whose help had been enlisted in the killing of the first. Who was clearly a great believer in covering his tracks. Once again, Thorne asked himself what the chances were of finding Jonathan Bridges alive.

Did this man simply believe that he had that much more to lose than his friends? Or was he just that much more inhuman?

‘When was the last time you talked to him?’ Thorne asked.

McCarthy hesitated. ‘Last night.’

‘And when were you planning to see him next?’ He saw the answer in McCarthy’s face. ‘Tonight? That’s what’s messing up wifey’s plans for dinner, is it?’

‘There’s a party.’

McCarthy had only whispered it, but Thorne heard it loud and clear. There it was, the piece of luck that he was long overdue. He could not keep the grin from his face. ‘Is Powell going as well?’

‘I don’t think so,’ McCarthy said. ‘Some of the parties, there’s a different crowd.’

‘Well don’t worry, I’ll make up the numbers.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll tag along as your “plus one”.’

McCarthy shook his head. ‘No.’

Thorne dropped the jovial tone. ‘Maybe we should just get your wife back in here, see what she thinks. Maybe she’d like to come along as well.’

McCarthy began to squeeze his hand again, muttered, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck … ’

‘I don’t know why you’re so scared,’ Thorne said. ‘Because as things stand right this minute,
I’m
the one you need to be afraid of. You clear about that, Ian?’

McCarthy looked up. The smallest nod.

‘Good. Glad we’ve got that sorted.’ Thorne sat back and spread his arms along the back of the sofa. ‘Like I said, been ages since I went to a decent party.’ He took a sip of coffee and grinned. ‘Might be quite an
adventure
.’

FIFTY-NINE

Kim Yates looked up from his ‘extra-fiendish’ sudoku and glanced across at the woman sitting a few feet away. She was concentrating on the same puzzle in her own puzzle book. He looked at his watch. He and Annette Williams had been working together as technicians for almost a year now, but it did not look as though either of them was likely to beat their personal best on this occasion.

Today, it was just going to be about who finished first.