The PHO reappeared at the window, watching for a few seconds before gesturing at McCarthy that she needed to speak to him. He held up one finger to let her know that he would only be a minute, then turned back to Thorne.
‘So … those options. Well, just the two really. You can waste a little more time asking me some more questions I’m not going to dignify with an answer. Or you can get the hell off my wing.’
There was strictly no food or drink allowed inside the Technical Support Unit vehicle, so with a few minutes left until they were due to put the next call in, Pascoe finished her coffee walking around the playground. There was rain in the air, and it had turned a little colder, so anyone who did not need to be out here was back inside the school, but it was still busy enough. Kidnap, traffic, CO19. Uniform and CID. A situation like this was one of the few that brought a large number of different Met Police units together on the same operation. ‘Suits’ and ‘lids’ in something almost approaching harmony. They just needed Vice, Anti-Terror and the Royalty Protection branch, maybe a copper or two on horseback, and they would have pretty much the whole set.
Pascoe lit a cigarette, then walked across to a chalked-out hopscotch court and stepped slowly from square to square, careful to avoid the lines.
Not forgetting the one poor bugger from the Murder Squad, of course. Who, if he succeeded, would almost certainly receive no credit for his part in a successful outcome, and who she felt sure would blame himself if things did not turn out well. She thought about Tom Thorne; grim-faced, a blue-arsed fly, desperately searching for answers with no guarantee there were any there to find.
His hand wrapped tightly around the shitty end of the stick.
She bent to pick up a smooth, flat stone and weighed it in her palm. She walked back to the first square of the court and told herself that if she could toss the pebble cleanly into the semicircle at the end, she would be drinking tea with Helen Weeks before the day was out. She crouched and prepared to throw the stone, wondered how many people as control-freakish as she was were also superstitious.
‘DS Pascoe … ’
She turned to see Donnelly beckoning her from the back doors of the TSU truck. She threw her cigarette away and slipped the stone into her jacket pocket as she crossed the playground to join him.
As she climbed up a small set of metal stairs into the truck, Donnelly asked her if she had thought about what to say, how to get the necessary message across. She told him how she was planning to handle things and he said that it sounded ideal. Clear enough, but still subtle.
‘She’s clever,’ Pascoe said.
‘So is he,’ Donnelly said.
Pascoe took her place on a low stool on the left-hand side of the truck and picked up a headset. Donnelly settled in next to her and did likewise. A large pair of speakers were mounted above a line of TV monitors on the rear wall, while on the right-hand side a pair of civilian technicians – a twenty-something woman and a forty-something man – sat in front of a console that made the cockpit controls of a 747 look primitive.
‘Can you get Radio 1 on there?’ Pascoe asked.
The woman looked over her shoulder. ‘Sorry?’
‘Scott Mills is on in a bit.’
Donnelly managed a grunt of amusement, but the woman just shrugged as though Pascoe had been speaking a foreign language and slowly turned back to her bank of knobs and faders.
‘We set?’ Donnelly asked.
The man turned, said, ‘Absolutely.’ What was left of his hair was fine and sandy-coloured and his paunch was exaggerated by the tight black polo shirt he wore over neatly ironed jeans. His name was embroidered in red just above his left man-boob:
TSU: Kim Yates.
Donnelly looked at his watch. ‘About a minute.’
Pascoe nodded. She knew that the slightest break in routine could wreck many days of delicate negotiation and be enough to push a hostage taker over the edge. A change of voice at the end of the phone, or a call coming at one minute past the allotted hour.
‘Off you go, Sue.’
Yates saw Pascoe take out her mobile and waved a hand. ‘You won’t be needing that again,’ he said. ‘It’s programmed into our system as a speed-dial. More or less instantaneous, and obviously we’ve made sure that yours will still appear as the incoming number on Sergeant Weeks’ handset.’ He half turned back then stopped. ‘If you’ve got any questions, feel free to fire away.’
‘I think I’ve got it.’
Yates spun back round to his console and he and his colleague put on their own headsets. He stabbed at a button. ‘Here we go.’
The ringing of Helen Weeks’ phone immediately filled the van.
It was answered after three rings and Helen said, ‘Hold on.’ A few seconds later and the quality of the silence changed, as she switched the call on to speaker. ‘Now Javed can hear,’ she said.
‘Of course,’ Pascoe said.
Straight away, Yates and his colleague began making minor adjustments to their settings. The voices of Helen Weeks and Javed Akhtar would be relayed inside the vehicle via the microphones that had been carefully sunk into two of the storeroom walls. It was crucial, however, that this sound did not feed back to Helen’s phone. That she and – more importantly – Akhtar were not able to hear their voices broadcast back at them through the TSU speakers.
Yates gave Donnelly and Pascoe the thumbs-up.
‘It all looks very busy out there,’ Akhtar said. ‘Like Piccadilly Circus or something.’
‘What do you mean?’ Pascoe asked.
‘We have got the television on with the sound turned down,’ Akhtar said. ‘We can see it all on the six o’clock news. All the reporters, the flashing lights and what have you. A lot of police officers.’
‘This is a major operation, Javed.’
‘There is a picture of me in the corner of the screen.’ There was a grunt of shock or disapproval. ‘Where did they get that? Did
Nadira
give them that?’
‘Probably the passport service,’ Helen said. ‘DVLA maybe.’
‘You’re making the news, Javed,’ Pascoe said. ‘What you’re doing.’
‘I don’t care about that.’
‘Of course you don’t, I know that, Javed. I know that this isn’t about making headlines.’
‘Not until my son’s murderer is caught and sent to prison. Then I want to see big bloody headlines, believe me.’
‘Of course.’
‘Biggest ones they have.’
‘Biggest ones they have, absolutely,’ Pascoe said. ‘But until then you can at least see how seriously we’re taking everything.’
‘Everybody looks very serious, that’s for sure,’ Akhtar said. ‘Everybody seems very busy, but still there is nothing really happening. I have heard nothing more from Inspector Thorne.’
‘He wanted me to tell you that he’s still chasing that lead, Javed.’ Pascoe glanced at Donnelly. ‘A very strong lead.’
‘The dead boy, yes I know.’
‘He has more information now—’
‘I’m getting
impatient
.’
Pascoe looked at Donnelly again. They did not need top-quality speakers and high-definition stereo to hear the anger in Akhtar’s voice.
‘That’s understandable, Javed.’
‘I will not be strung along, do you understand?’
Donnelly waved to get Pascoe’s attention, pointed at his headset and nodded.
‘That’s not what’s happening, Javed,’ Pascoe said. ‘You need to believe that. You need to know that there’s support for you out here. A lot of support, for all of you. Can you hear me, Helen?’
‘Yes,’ Helen said.
‘Whatever happens, you need to know that we’re out here, that there’s support here and that we’re listening. OK?’
‘OK,’ Helen said.
‘I do not want to be …
fobbed off
,’ Akhtar said. ‘I do not want to be messed around.’ The anger was blossoming now, his voice ranting and ragged. ‘There has been far too much of that.’
‘I will not mess you around,’ Pascoe said.
‘You give me your word?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Good. OK. That’s it.’
There was a second or two of silence before the line went dead.
‘Nice,’ Donnelly said. He took off his headset. ‘You think she got the message?’
‘Like I said, she’s clever.’ As Yates and his fellow technician began to confer about DBs and balanced output, Pascoe excused herself and stepped down from the truck into the playground.
I’m getting impatient …
She thought about the textbook response to anger on the part of a hostage taker. The strategies she had been taught to deal with the increased threat of volatility. She considered the options as she walked back towards the hopscotch court and felt for the pebble in her pocket.
It was just beginning to get dark as McCarthy’s silver Astra drove out of the Barndale car park and its headlights came on as the barrier was raised at the security checkpoint. The car turned on to the quiet country road towards the M25 and Thorne waited for another vehicle to pass before he pulled out of the unmarked track opposite, flicked on his own lights and began to follow. It would be easier to stay out of sight once they reached the motorway and until then it would just be a matter of staying far enough back. Thorne did not think there would be a problem. He guessed that Ian McCarthy would have more important things to worry about than whether or not he was being followed.
He hoped so at any rate.
Though not quite able to pull off ‘blasé’, the doctor had done his best to appear cocky, defiant even, and Thorne’s first thought when he had left the prison almost an hour before had been to race back into central London and confront the person he believed had given McCarthy the coaching. He had quickly decided that he would almost certainly have even less luck with him than with McCarthy. So, with no idea who the third man was, he could do little for the time being other than stay close to the doctor and see what happened.
See where the weakest link in the chain would lead him.
Or to whom.
Thorne was now convinced that Amin Akhtar had been the victim of a conspiracy. He also knew that he could base this on no more than a single picture on Rahim Jaffer’s phone, which actually proved nothing at all. The names and the reasons were what mattered now of course, were what would get Helen Weeks out of that newsagent’s, but if those responsible were to pay for what they had done, Thorne would need evidence that the conspiracy had been maintained. He had to prove that the men in that photograph were still in contact with one another.
It began to rain as they drove past Chorleywood Common. The road straightened over the next mile or so, becoming wider and better lit as it approached the M25 roundabout. Thorne was three cars behind the Astra, doing fifty-five in the inside lane, when his phone rang.
‘You sound weird.’
‘I’m in the car.’
‘Hands-free, I hope.’
‘What is it, Phil?’
‘I know how they did it,’ Hendricks said.
Thorne’s hands tightened on the wheel, just for a second, as he followed McCarthy’s car across the roundabout, up on to the slip road, then southbound on the M25.
‘We’d already established there was no way the killer could have got that many pills into Amin’s stomach,’ Hendricks said. ‘Right? Those few pills in his mouth, on the bedclothes, they were just for show. They were the suicide indicator.’
‘But there was enough Tramadol in his system to kill him?’
‘Plenty, so there’s only one other way it can have got there. It was liquid Tramadol and it was injected.’
‘But Bridges did this.’
‘It’s just an injection, Tom, it’s not rocket science. He takes the cap off the cannula on the back of Amin’s hand and in it goes. Anyone could have shown the kid how to do it.’
Thorne told Hendricks exactly who had shown him.
‘Right,’ Hendricks said. ‘So McCarthy gives Bridges a quick lesson on cannulas and needles, slips him the pills and the syringe—’
‘We’ve still got a problem with these pills though,’ Thorne said. ‘How did he get as many as he did into Amin’s mouth? How did he do it that fast? That quietly?’
‘Because it wasn’t just Tramadol in the syringe,’ Hendricks said. ‘This is what I’ve been trying to figure out. What the extra drug was.’
‘You’ve figured it out?’
‘Remember that Hamas agent? The one the Israelis killed in that hotel in Dubai a couple of years ago? This is the same drug they used on him. It stops the victim struggling, eliminates noise.’
‘Go on then.’
‘You might need to write this down.’
‘Tricky,’ Thorne said.
‘Suxamethonium chloride.’
‘I can’t even say it.’
‘You don’t need the chloride bit.’ Hendricks said it again, slowly. ‘It’s a neuromuscular blocker, OK? Basically a muscle relaxant, but incredibly powerful, incredibly quick. It’s used in anaesthesia and intensive care, to make intubation easier. They used to use it in the US to paralyse prisoners before they got the lethal injection.’
‘Jesus.’
‘They stopped because of the side-effects.’
‘I’m listening … ’
‘As soon as it’s administered, all the nerves start to fire and every muscle in the body begins to spasm like mad. The patient starts fitting basically, then a minute or so later he’s completely paralysed and pretty soon the drug makes it impossible to breathe. But he’s awake the whole time this is happening, so these days it’s never given to patients who are conscious, not unless there’s no other option. It’s too dangerous.’ There was a pause. ‘Too disturbing.’
‘Amin would have known what was happening to him?’
‘Sorry, Tom.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘It was the perfect drug,’ Hendricks said. ‘Sodding
perfect
. The fits were consistent with a Tramadol overdose … the tongue bitten off, all that. Then as soon as the paralysis kicked in, Bridges could put the pills into Amin’s mouth, set up the overdose scenario and the beauty part is he’s in and out of there in a couple of minutes. Job done.’
‘Why didn’t they find it at the PM?’ Thorne asked.
‘That’s why it’s so perfect. Unless you take a blood specimen within thirty minutes, the enzymes in the body start to break the drug down and eventually it becomes so degraded it’s almost undetectable.’