‘I suppose so, yeah.’
They walked towards the large playground decorated with brightly painted murals. There was a climbing area with high wooden walk-ways, rope bridges, a paddling pool. ‘I think Amin’s parents were pretty hard on him,’ Holland said. ‘So you can hardly blame him for telling porkies when he wanted to sneak off to a party. Probably some dope around or whatever.’
‘I certainly didn’t do any of that,’ Kitson said.
‘Different for boys, maybe.’
‘It was strictly underage sex and heroin for me.’
The drizzle had got no worse, so for a few minutes they watched a couple of kids clambering over an enormous wooden dragon, while the children’s mothers sat smoking on a bench nearby. Holland was impressed with the place and said he might try and come back with Chloe some time. He said that the play facilities near his place at Elephant and Castle left a lot to be desired, unless you enjoyed games of dodge-the-wino or thought playing with used syringes was educational.
‘North–south divide for you,’ Kitson said.
They walked out on to Copenhagen Street and, crossing the road to head back towards the car, they passed a large pub on the corner opposite the entrance to the park. Loud music spilled out on to the street, where a group of lads sat drinking at a table outside, seemingly oblivious to the drizzle.
A large sign in the window advertised various themed evenings.
Thursday: Wild West Night (with rodeo bull!)
Friday: Eighties Night!
Saturday: Gay Night.
Kitson pointed to the sign. ‘Maybe you should bring Chloe down to the playground on a Saturday. You can always pop in here for a quick one while she’s playing. Maybe get a drink as well.’
‘You’re hilarious,’ Holland said.
‘Denial’s a terrible thing, Dave.’
They walked back to Upper Street, then cut behind the green on to Essex Road. They had almost reached the car and were still trying to decide where to go next when Holland’s mobile rang.
‘I’ve just come out of Barndale,’ Thorne said.
‘And?’
‘And I’m starting to see why Javed Akhtar thought the police got it wrong. Why they all got it wrong.’
‘You’re joking.’ Holland looked at Kitson who raised her eyebrows. He mouthed, ‘Tell you in a minute.’
‘Look, there’s still people I’ve got to talk to,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m not saying I’ve got anything solid to tell him about yet, and it might be that stuff comes out of this he doesn’t want to hear anyway.’
‘Like what?’ Holland stopped at the kerb, waiting for a gap in the traffic.
‘It’s probably got sod all to do with anything,’ Thorne said, ‘but I think Amin might have been gay.’
Holland looked at Kitson again. He remembered something Danny Armstrong had said when they had told him Amin had been raped. A snide remark about how much he would have enjoyed it. He thought about that pub opposite the entrance to Barnard Park.
‘You still there, Dave?’
‘What night of the week was it, when Lee Slater got stabbed?’
‘Saturday. Why?’
‘I think I might know what Amin and his mate were doing in Islington,’ Holland said. ‘And why they were attacked.’
Thorne knew he would hit the rush hour coming off the M40, but he would use the blue light to get through it. With luck he would be back in Tulse Hill within forty minutes or so, though if there had been any major developments he felt sure Donnelly would have let him know.
Now he needed to let Javed Akhtar know that he was doing as he had been asked.
He reached for his phone and dialled. One day he would get around to putting a hands-free kit in the car, but right now getting stopped for driving while using a mobile was the least of his worries.
Helen’s phone rang out and after half a minute went to voicemail. He listened to the message, hung up and tried again. This time she answered almost immediately.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He was in the next room, so I couldn’t pick up.’
Thorne thought about the confident voice he had heard on Helen’s answerphone and compared it to the one he was hearing now. They might have been two different people.
‘Is he there now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I speak to him?’
He waited while Helen asked the question.
‘He wants you to talk to me,’ she said.
‘OK … tell him I’ve spent the day at Barndale, that I’ve been talking to people about what happened to Amin. The governor, the doctor that treated Amin. Amin’s friends. Tell him that.’
He waited again, easing the BMW into the outside lane and pushing it up to ninety, while he listened to Helen Weeks relaying the information to Akhtar.
‘OK, he’s got that.’
‘But you also need to keep telling him that this is going to take time. I’m going flat out here, but it’s not like anybody’s confessing to anything. He needs to understand that.’
Helen started to talk to Akhtar, but Thorne cut her off.
‘But I will find out what happened,’ he said. ‘Tell him that. No,
promise
him that.’
Helen passed on what Thorne had said.
‘And this is the most important thing, Helen. Are you listening?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Tell him I believe him, OK?’
‘Jesus, that’s terrible. Sorry if I was a bit … ’
‘It’s fine.’
‘So, what can I do to help?’
The man who had spent six months putting together an appeal that would never be heard had not sounded best pleased to be receiving a phone call from a police officer at eight-thirty in the evening. But as soon as Thorne had told Carl Oldman who he was and explained the circumstances, the solicitor was only too keen to answer his questions.
‘I saw Amin a week or so before he died,’ Oldman said. ‘The day before he was attacked. Actually, I think I might well have been the last person to visit him.’
‘And how was he?’
‘He was in pretty good spirits as I remember. I ran through our appeal with him and he had every reason to be happy about it. I think we had a hell of a good chance of getting his sentence reduced.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘On the grounds that the bloody judge went way over the top, pure and simple. Based on the circumstances and all the pre-sentencing reports, Amin should have got three years tops, and then the judge starts banging on about this ridiculous “dangerousness” business. There’s no basis for that in any of the reports he was given, not a whisper. It was quite clearly a self-defence incident, Amin’s character was nigh-on spotless and any fool could see that he wasn’t a danger to anyone.’ Oldman sighed heavily. ‘Some of these idiots see a knife involved and start reaching for an imaginary black cap, you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, I’ve come across a few of those,’ Thorne said.
‘Right. Well, I was definitely up for going after this one, I tell you that.’
The solicitor was clearly angry, though whether it was aimed at the judge in question, or the fact that Oldman would never now have the chance to challenge the sentence he had handed down, was hard to tell.
‘So you wouldn’t say he was depressed when you saw him?’
‘Not even close.’
‘Or showing any signs that he was feeling suicidal?’
‘Look, I’m not a psychiatrist,’ Oldman said. ‘And I can’t possibly know what that attack did to him, but he seemed fine to me. He was excited about the appeal and he was pleased that he had this move coming up. I think there were some friends he was going to miss and he was a bit upset about that, but he was keen to get this qualification, so … ’
‘So were you surprised at what happened?’
There was a pause, and Thorne heard Oldman take a drink of something. He suddenly imagined the solicitor on a designer sofa with a glass of wine, while an angry wife or girlfriend pointed towards a plate of dinner that was getting cold. Mind you, he also knew plenty of briefs who lived alone in grubby flats and survived on Stella and pot noodles.
‘I was gutted,’ Oldman said. ‘And pissed off. I spend half my bloody life looking after scumbags, but Amin was a good lad.’
When Thorne had thanked Oldman and hung up, he walked across to the stereo and slid a Willie Nelson disc into the CD player. Then he sat down on the floor and leaned back against the sofa, looking up at Phil Hendricks who was sitting there studying the PM report. He held up the phone that he was still carrying. Said, ‘No way did that kid top himself.’
Hendricks held up the report. ‘It certainly looks like he did.’
‘
Looks
like it,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s the point.’
Hendricks cast his eyes back down to the report and flicked through the pages. ‘This bloke seems to have done a reasonable job as far as I can see. I mean obviously his prose style isn’t as good as mine.’
‘Come on, Phil.’
Hendricks had picked up a takeaway from the Bengal Lancer on his way over. He leaned down now to scoop up what was left of a cold onion bhaji from the plate on the floor and took a bite. ‘There’s a shed-load of Tramadol in the boy’s blood. The remains of a few tablets in his stomach. All the evidence of an overdose and nothing that suggests it wasn’t suicide.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘So why do you think it wasn’t?’
‘The timings don’t work for a start,’ Thorne said.
‘Go on.’
‘People don’t kill themselves first thing in the morning. They do it in the early hours, in the middle of the night.’
‘What, you got that off an episode of
Morse
, did you?’
‘I read it somewhere.’
‘Well you’re wrong,’ Hendricks said. ‘The most common time is around four o’clock in the afternoon. If you’re interested, March, April and May are the favourite months for suicides and the most popular method worldwide is hanging, except in America obviously where they tend to prefer guns. It’s also cobblers that suicide is more common among young people than old people and that more people kill themselves at Christmas. It’s actually below average.’ He popped what was left of the bhaji into his mouth. ‘I went to a seminar.’
‘Course you did,’ Thorne said. ‘So I suppose there’s no point me mentioning the absence of a suicide note is there?’
‘Less than twenty per cent leave a note,’ Hendricks said. ‘I’m not really helping, am I?’
Thorne let out a noisy breath. ‘He had no
motive
, Phil. Nothing at all. His appeal was going well and every person who saw him said he was full of the joys of spring.’
‘People who are depressed can be pretty good at putting up a front. I’ve seen you do it.’
Thorne shook his head. ‘These were people who knew him, OK? His father, his lawyer, his friend. And what reason did he have to be depressed in the first place?’ He pointed down at the report on Hendricks’ lap. ‘Forget about the pills for a minute, OK? As far as I can make out, this whole “suicidal state of mind” thing seems to stand or fall on the knife attack and the idea that he was raped, so I need you to tell me if what it says in there is conclusive.’
Hendricks sighed theatrically and turned to the appropriate page in the report. He read, while Thorne waited and Willie Nelson sang in a cracked, world-weary voice about a preacher crying like a baby.
‘OK, so the word “rape” isn’t actually used,’ Hendricks said. ‘But we just record what we find when we examine the body, so that doesn’t mean a great deal. It’s not a pathologist’s job to draw conclusions from this stuff … Come on, you know all this.’
‘Yeah, I know. Now shut up and draw a conclusion for me, would you?’
Hendricks read on. ‘There’s clear evidence that the boy had been sodomised,’ he said.
‘No semen though, right?’
‘Rapists do know about DNA. A lot of them wear condoms.’
‘In prison?’
‘There are some signs of internal tearing and some damage to the soft tissues … ’
‘Does that rule out the possibility that it was consensual though?’
‘Consensual or not, it was certainly … aggressive.’
‘Is it possible that this was not rape?’
Hendricks thought about it. ‘Well, if you’re suggesting this was the result of sex with a regular partner, then I
suppose
it’s feasible his boyfriend was hung like a donkey. Or maybe he just liked it rough.’ He smiled. ‘Some of us do, you know?’
‘Too much information, Phil.’
‘Yeah, OK … it’s possible. But—’
‘Right,’ Thorne said. ‘Well, there’s your motive for suicide shot to shit.’
Hendricks glanced down to see if there were any more leftovers he liked the look of, then swung his legs up on to the sofa and lay back. ‘So where’s your motive for murder, smartarse?’
Thorne reached across and tore off a piece of nan bread. ‘I don’t have all the answers.’
‘Don’t have any of them as far as I can see.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s where I stupidly thought you might be able to help.’
‘It’s a radical idea, I know,’ Hendricks said, ‘but evidence might be a good place to start. You’ve got bugger all on the CCTV.’
‘Because whoever did this knew how to stay clear of the cameras. It’s not difficult to do. I checked.’
‘OK, what about the lack of prints on that cup the pills were supposed to have been in?’
‘Easy enough to get plastic gloves in a hospital wing, I would have thought.’
‘You should do this for a living,’ Hendricks said.
‘Those pills were
given
to him.’ Thorne tossed the bread back on to the plate. ‘No question.’
‘And you don’t think that might be down to this Antoine kid?’
‘Antoine loved him.’
‘Enough to help him kill himself, maybe?’
Thorne shook his head. ‘It’s got to be someone who was in the hospital wing. Someone with access to that DDA cabinet.’
‘One of the other patients?’
‘No chance.’ Thorne had not bothered talking to any of those boys who had been patients on the night Amin was killed. He knew that some would have been released by now anyway and that he would get no more out of those who were still serving sentences than Dawes had done.