‘There,’ he said, making final adjustments. ‘That’s much better. Not perfect, but at least you might be able to get an hour or two’s sleep. Before, it was impossible, I know.’
‘Thanks,’ Helen said.
Akhtar went back to his camp bed and lay down. Helen still thought that the chances of sleep were slim, but the light was better, she had to admit that, softer. Diffused as it was through dirty cotton and dried blood.
Thorne had barely eaten a thing all day, so had made himself three pieces of cheese on toast as soon as he’d got home. Now, after finishing his conversation with Helen Weeks, he went back into the kitchen to make himself another couple.
He hoped it was a myth, the business about cheese and bad dreams.
It had been uncomfortable, lying to Helen on the phone, but it was not as if Thorne had been given a great deal of choice. Her sister’s landline had been engaged every time he’d called and she had not been answering her mobile. Having sat and eaten in front of the ten o’clock news, Thorne had a fair idea of why that might be. However much those running the operation in Tulse Hill tried to keep a lid on it, the press was persistent and had deep pockets. Leaks were all but inevitable. During the latest report ‘live from the siege’, Helen had finally been mentioned by name, and Thorne guessed that her sister was now leaving her phone off the hook in an effort to avoid the media.
He bent to check what was happening under the grill.
There would almost certainly be a fair-sized scrum of hacks and snappers on the poor woman’s doorstep by now.
So, in the end, he had said the things he felt sure he would have been saying if he had spoken to Helen’s sister. The things Helen was clearly desperate to hear. It had not been easy listening to the emotion in her voice and he had fought to keep it from his own; letting her know simply that all those she loved and who loved her would be waiting on the other side of those shutters.
Waiting, with those who loved Stephen Mitchell, and Javed Akhtar.
When it was ready, Thorne carried his supper back into the living room. He opened a can of supermarket lager and ate while flicking through the channels on the TV.
Supersize v Superskinny, Rude Tube
, golf …
I’m sure you’ve got better things to do …
He called Louise.
He was thirty seconds into leaving a rambling message on her answering machine when she picked up.
‘Tom?’
‘Sorry, I was just … I thought you’d probably gone to bed.’ He waited for her to say something. ‘Are you OK?’
‘It’s late.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I’m on stupid hours at the moment.’ He told her about the situation in Tulse Hill. She had been following developments on the news, but was still surprised to hear that he was involved. Thankfully, as of yet, Thorne’s name had not been mentioned.
‘I would have thought this one was right up your street,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Someone to catch
and
someone to save.’
‘Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.’
‘Chuck in a dead kid,’ she said, ‘I reckon this just about ticks all your boxes. Probably not quite enough bodies yet, but plenty of strangers to care about.’
‘Come on, Lou.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s not get into that.’
There was a long pause, then Louise apologised. She told Thorne that she was still thinking about getting out of the Job and away from London. Then, as if by way of explanation, she talked a little about the case she was working on. The kidnapping of a fourteen-year-old Romanian girl that had widened to become a major investigation into sex trafficking.
‘It’s hard to think of anything but the faces of those girls,’ she said. ‘The marks where they stubbed fags out on them.’
Thorne waited a few seconds. ‘That’s what used to piss me off,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘All that stuff about me caring, when it was always perfectly bloody obvious that you care every bit as much as I do.’
‘Yes, but I care a bit more about myself.’
‘Listen, the reason I was calling,’ he said. ‘We’ve got this hostage negotiator in Tulse Hill … ’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Her. Sue Pascoe?’
Louise hadn’t heard of her and asked if she was any good.
‘She’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘But you’d be better. Maybe if I talked to the superintendent … ’
‘What, you think we can just arrange a job swap or something?’
‘It might be worth thinking about.’
‘Right, presuming he’d be happy for you to bring your ex-girlfriend in and the woman who’s there already would be happy to step aside, and presuming I hadn’t got anything better to do.’ It was mock-outrage, nothing more, and there was lightness in her voice. ‘Have you actually thought about this?’
‘Well … ’
‘It wasn’t the reason you called at all, was it?’
‘I suppose not,’ Thorne said.
‘Anyway, I’m pretty much burned out when it comes to all that stuff.’ Louise laughed. ‘After two years trying to negotiate with you … ’
Rahim fetched a knife from the expensive set in the kitchen, chopped out two fat lines of cocaine with it, then sat and stared at them. He raised the knife and licked the few grains from the blade. Let the metal rest against his tongue.
He had always known Amin was brave of course, he’d seen that for himself, but when he heard what Amin had done to himself at Barndale, that had been his first thought.
Then: I could never be brave enough to do that.
Even if what Thorne had told him was to be believed, it didn’t matter that Amin hadn’t actually killed himself. It still applied. His best friend had been so much braver than he was.
Amin had taken far more risks than Rahim had ever done. It had not mattered what he might have seen in the eyes of some of the men at those parties, what some of them had asked him to do. Some part of him had enjoyed the danger. He had taken all the chances and laughed when Rahim had talked about playing it safe.
‘That’s what nice Indian boys like us are
meant
to do,’ he had said.
Yeah, well, Rahim thought, the anger rising up in him suddenly. Which of us is still here? Which of us has all this? He looked around at his expensive furniture, listened to the jazz whispering from his expensive speakers. The things that caution had bought him.
The drugs. The knife in his hand.
Amin had been the one that night, after it had all happened, who had come up with the story about the party. Rahim had been hysterical, had wanted to tell the police everything, but Amin had told him that they would be all right, that they just needed to stick to their story.
To stick together.
Rahim had never visited him in Barndale, never written him a letter. At the funeral, he had sat in the corner with some of the other boys they had met at the ‘parties’ and laughed at half-remembered stories. He had eaten samosas and drunk Kingfisher like a big man and had not been able to look Nadira or Javed Akhtar in the eye.
One of these men might have killed Amin.
The music finished and, in the few seconds of silence before the next track, Thorne’s words came back to him.
Rahim turned the knife over in his hand, the wooden handle slick against his palm. He placed the edge of the blade against his wrist and began to press.
He cried out and jerked the knife away the instant it broke the skin. He pushed his wrist against his mouth and sucked. Why had he thought, for even one second, that he would have the courage? He stared down at his wrist and watched the scarlet line rise up again through the skin and begin to run.
He reached across the table for a banknote and rolled it, then when he lowered his head towards the first line of cocaine, he watched a drop of blood splash down into the white powder. He angled his wrist so that more would follow.
Rahim remembered his friend slipping as he bent to pick up the knife that Lee Slater had dropped, and screaming as he lunged. He remembered sitting on the ground and watching it all happen, his own arse wet and cold, and safe.
He stared down at the table, remembered blood on the snow.
No ‘birds’ whatsoever had proved to be even remotely ‘up for it’ by the time Allen and Bridges left their fourth pub of the evening. They had tried their luck gamely in each place and Bridges called the latest woman to reject their advances a ‘fat lesbian’ before the pair of them stumbled out on to the Lower Clapton Road. Allen said, ‘She wasn’t fat,’ which reduced Bridges to fits of hysterics and they were both still laughing fifteen minutes later when they arrived at Allen’s front door.
‘Nice place, pal,’ Bridges said, when they got inside. He walked across to the stereo and whistled. ‘Where did you get all this gear, then? It’s like one of them shops on Tottenham Court Road or something.’
‘Came into some money, didn’t I.’
‘Where from?’
Pissed as he was, and tempted to show off, Allen knew better than to say any more. He shrugged.
Bridges did not seem bothered. ‘We could have had a major party in here if your ugly mug hadn’t put all the slags off.’
‘I think that was you, mate.’
‘Bollocks!’
They both started laughing again. Allen’s dog came running in from another room and they both made a fuss of it for a while.
‘Beers?’
‘In the fridge.’
‘Go on then,’ Bridges said.
Allen collected four cans from the kitchen, and by the time he came back in, Bridges had selected a CD and turned the volume up good and loud. They opened cans and stood grinning at one another, heads nodding in time to the music and fingers moving against the tins as though they were the necks of Fender Strats.
‘Slayer,’ Bridges shouted above the squeal of a guitar. ‘Fucking excellent.’
Allen nodded. ‘Top band.’ He moved to nudge the volume down. Said, ‘Neighbours can get a bit arsey.’
‘Leave it.’ Bridges sat on the floor and leaned back against the sofa. The dog jumped up and lay down behind him. ‘Fuck ’em.’
Allen turned the volume down just a little, then joined Bridges on the floor and they sat and smoked and drank a couple each. They talked about their time at Barndale and other places. The screws they had hated, the scraps and the war stories.
‘Like a holiday camp,’ Bridges said. ‘Barndale. Compared to some, you know?’
‘No holiday camp
I’m
ever going to visit,’ Allen said.
‘They all get easier after a while.’
‘Not going back, mate.’
‘Right.’
‘Straight up,’ Allen said. ‘Got a bit of dosh now, going to get things sorted out.’ He picked up the empty cans and carried them towards the kitchen.
‘Don’t be such an old woman,’ Bridges said.
Allen turned in the doorway, the empties clutched to his chest. ‘Spent too much time in a pigsty,’ he said. ‘My place stays nice and tidy from now on.’ He walked into the kitchen, dumped the cans into the bin and pressed his forehead to the cool glass in the back door. He stared at the outline of the plastic chairs on the dark patio outside and hoped that Bridges was not planning on staying too much longer. Allen was one more beer from slaughtered now and struggling to think straight. He just wanted to crash out, to curl up with his dog and get some sleep.
When he came back into the living room, Bridges was taking his works out of a battered metal tobacco tin. A syringe and a needle, a crooked and blackened tablespoon, a wrap of paper.
‘Get us some water, would you, pal?’
Allen turned and walked back towards the kitchen.
‘Got any lemon juice?’
‘Who d’you think I am, Jamie fucking Oliver?’
‘Vinegar?’
‘Yeah, somewhere.’
‘That’ll do.’
He came back with a glass of water and a Sarsons bottle, sat and watched Bridges tip the drug carefully out into the spoon and drizzle a few drops of vinegar on it. Bridges filled the syringe with water, added it to the spoon, then heated the mixture over a lighter. He broke off the filter from a cigarette, dropped it into the bubbling brown mess and drew the liquid up through it into the syringe. Then he fixed the needle, the movements small and sure. He told Allen to take off his belt and once Allen had handed it over, he tied it around his arm, tapped up a vein and injected himself. His head nodded a few times and when he finally looked up and across at Allen, he looked as though he’d just come in his pants.
‘Beautiful,’ he said.
‘How you getting home?’ Allen asked.
Bridges held up the syringe, shook what liquid was still left inside. ‘Come on, we’ll do half each,’ he said. ‘Seeing as I’m feeling generous.’
‘I’m fine, mate,’ Allen said. ‘You do the lot.’
‘You scared?’ Bridges showed as many ratty-looking teeth as he had left. ‘You never shot up before?’
‘Course I have. Just too pissed to enjoy it, that’s all.’
‘Come on,’ Bridges said. ‘That big “fuck you” to Barndale, eh? Like a celebration kind of thing. We’re going to get out of it, let’s get
out
of it!’ He took the belt from around his forearm, leaned across and began tying it around Allen’s. ‘Half each, yeah?’
Allen stared at the syringe. Looked like a lot more than half left in there, but what the hell. He had always wanted to, had come close a few times, and he certainly wasn’t going to chicken out in front of a prick like Bridges.
He nodded.
‘Take you to the moon, pal,’ Bridges whispered. ‘Won’t even be able to
remember
Barndale … ’
Allen sucked in a fast breath as the needle went in and watched as Bridges drew back the plunger. The skinny scarlet thread that twisted and bloomed in the barrel.
‘Sweet, isn’t it?’ Bridges looked at him and smiled. ‘That’s how you know you’ve hit a vein, not just going to skin-pop, which hurts like fuck and doesn’t give you the same hit.’
‘Like a lava lamp,’ Allen said.
‘In she goes … ’
Allen instantly felt like someone had driven a bus across his chest. He struggled to breathe and wanted desperately to be sick, but before he had the chance to do either he heard a loud bang. He was still wondering what the hell it was as the blackness fell across him.