Good as Dead Page 6

  Decided, on reflection, that perhaps there was a miniature portrait of the Queen tucked away in one of the drawers.

  In the school’s assembly hall, the temporary Incident Room was up and running. A communications team had set up fax and phone lines and had tapped into a local CCTV feed. Monitors showed live, black and white images of the shopfront from two different angles, while a hastily erected camera in the alleyway behind the property broadcast a picture of the shop’s back door. There was no sound and precious little movement. Occasionally an emergency vehicle moved through shot, or a stray dog that nobody had yet been able to catch. A member of the CO19 team wandered between the two Armed Response Vehicles which were still parked on the street across from the newsagent’s.

  Still waiting for instructions.

  There were more than two dozen officers working inside the school. Most sat at computers, feeding back any information they could find about the layout of the shop and the man who owned it to the team from Specialist Crime. A few more had come down from Helen Weeks’ unit in Streatham, volunteering to help, but now found themselves with little to do.

  Donnelly was at the monitors with Sue Pascoe when Chivers walked across to join them.

  They studied the pictures for a while.

  ‘Phones?’ Chivers said.

  Pascoe shook her head. ‘He’s making us wait.’

  They had quickly established that there was a landline in the shop, but just as quickly discovered that Akhtar had taken the phone off the hook. Calls being made every fifteen minutes to the mobiles registered to both Helen Weeks and Stephen Mitchell were going straight to voicemail.

  ‘In for the long haul, I reckon,’ Donnelly said.

  Chivers shrugged. ‘Up to you.’

  ‘Up to Mr Akhtar, I would have thought.’

  ‘Only if we let him have control of the situation.’

  Donnelly stared at the screen. ‘I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘Look at those shutters.’ Chivers pointed at the monitor. ‘They’ve already been twisted up at the bottom, see? That’s just kids or what have you. Wouldn’t take us long to get through those.’

  ‘Long enough for him to do something.’

  ‘We need to get this sorted quickly,’ Chivers said.

  ‘What we need,’ Pascoe said, ‘is to open a channel of communication with our hostage taker.’

  ‘At least let us get Tech Support in here.’ Chivers was looking at Donnelly. ‘Get some microphones up on the roof, take a listen to what’s going on in there.’

  ‘Too risky,’ Pascoe said. ‘If he thinks there’s anything like that going on, he might do something stupid.’

  ‘We don’t even know the gun is loaded.’ Chivers stabbed at the monitor again. ‘He’s a newsagent, for Christ’s sake.’

  Donnelly looked at Pascoe. She shook her head.

  ‘We do something without really thinking it through,’ she said, ‘and he’ll be the one making the news.’

  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, a
ll 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 dangerousness”. 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.

  TEN

  It was as ridiculous to generalise about a group of people as diverse as prison officers as it was about anybody else – pointless and ultimately reductive – but it saved time, so Thorne did it anyway.

  They were, so Thorne imagined, either no-nonsense, by-the-book types or those slightly more sensitive sorts who could easily have become teachers if they didn’t like the uniforms quite so much. ‘Old school’ or ‘reconstructed’ might have been more accurate labels, but Thorne found it easier to think of them as ‘Mackays’ or ‘Barracloughs’; the archetypes named in honour of the two very different types of screw on the sitcom Porridge that he had adored as a kid.

  Which he still thought about sometimes, in the middle of a particularly tedious trial.

  Norman Stanley Fletcher …

  The PO that escorted him from Bracewell’s office to the hospital wing was a thickset and balding fifty-something named Dobson. Like all the officers, he was wearing dark trousers and a black polo shirt with his name stitched into it, but it was not until Thorne commented on what the boys were wearing that Dobson revealed his true colours. At other YOIs Thorne had visited, the boys had worn tracksuit bottoms, and he was surprised that those he had seen that morning were wearing cargo pants beneath their dark blue sweatshirts or T-shirts.

  ‘That was the governor’s idea,’ Dobson said, nodding towards one of the boys. ‘Bloody good one, as well. They used to strut about with their hands shoved down the front of their tracksuit bottoms, grabbing their bollocks like wannabe gangsters. These days, we have to shake hands with the
little bastards a hundred times a day.’ He pulled a face. ‘So … ’

  To the likes of Dobson, the boys they banged up every night were no more than adult prisoners waiting to happen, whether they had started shaving or not and whatever he and his colleagues were required to wear as part of a more casual and caring regime. Thorne knew that there were those within the Prison Service who requested the posting to a YOI. Officers who enjoyed working with young offenders, because they felt there was a chance to make a real difference. There were others, however – a small minority, thankfully – who were unhappy to find themselves assigned to kids and saw no reason to treat the prisoners in their charge any differently to those who might previously have been subject to their less than tender mercies in Long Lartin or the Scrubs.

  It was not hard to work out which category Dobson belonged to.

  Ian McCarthy was waiting for them outside the doors when they arrived at the hospital wing. Dobson said, ‘Here you go,’ then turned and walked away.

  ‘He’s a charmer,’ Thorne said.

  McCarthy opened the door for Thorne and ushered him through. ‘Bark’s worse than his bite,’ he said. ‘Like a lot of them.’

  Thorne had naively imagined that Barndale’s chief medical officer would be older. That he might possibly be wearing a white coat. As it turned out, the man who showed him into his large, bright office and dropped into a chair behind a cluttered desk was, like the governor, a few years younger than Thorne himself and considerably better dressed. He was stocky with thick, dark hair and a well-trimmed goatee. There was a trace of a northern accent.

  ‘Roger said you’re looking into Amin Akhtar’s suicide.’

  Thorne nodded and held up the stack of files he’d brought with him from Bracewell’s office. ‘Got to work my way through this lot as soon as I can, but I wanted to have a quick look around in here first.’

  ‘That’s fine—’

  ‘Just get my bearings, you know?’

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘You found Amin, right?’

  McCarthy stood up, removed his jacket and hung it across the back of his chair before sitting down again. A heavy sigh made it clear that he was going to find talking about Amin Akhtar’s death hard work.