The smallest suggestion of punishment.
Bare-headed now and wearing a blue pinstripe, Prosser reminded Thorne of an old deputy headmaster he had not thought about in more than twenty years. A scrawny neck and sagging gut. Almost entirely bald, his face flushed with the effort those few stray tufts of grey were making in fighting their desperate rearguard action. Fierce, but ultimately ineffectual. The man Thorne remembered from school had made up for countless failings as a teacher with a manic adherence to a disciplinary regime that involved caning boys from eleven and upwards on a regular basis. Across the palm much of the time, but always the buttocks for the younger boys. Breathless by the end of it, and sweating.
Right, Thorne, now get out of my sight.
Thorne looked at Prosser. Perhaps the similarity was even closer than he had thought.
They had not moved from their positions near the window, except for Prosser stepping briefly across to a low glass table to set his tumbler down, after finishing his drink in two large gulps. Another half a dozen guests had arrived in the last few minutes and one or two of the boys had begun dancing together, showing themselves off to potential customers. The judge made no attempt whatsoever to disguise the fact that he was enjoying the show.
‘I’m still not a hundred per cent sure why you’ve blundered into a private party without an invitation,’ he said. ‘One photograph is hardly going to give any of our friends at the CPS a hard-on, is it?’
‘One photograph of you, Ian McCarthy and Simon Powell.’
‘Whom I am not for one second denying that I know.’
‘That’s a good start.’
‘I’ve dealt with Simon several times professionally and I met Ian socially a couple of years ago.’
‘Somewhere like this.’
‘I’m not disputing the fact that Ian, Simon and I were once at the same party.’ He smiled. ‘You have that photograph, so to do so would be ridiculous.’
‘The person who took that photograph is willing to testify that Amin Akhtar was also at that party.’
‘I go to a lot of parties,’ Prosser said. ‘I meet a lot of people.’
‘I have a witness who puts you and Amin Akhtar at the same party just a few months before he was convicted. That’s just a few months before you sentenced him to eight years in a Young Offenders Institution.’
‘It’s a small world.’
Thorne turned his head, nodded towards a man sharing a joint with a boy young enough to be his grandson. ‘I bet
this
is. Same faces showing up all the time, I’d imagine. Same arses … ’
‘For God’s sake—’
‘Amin Akhtar.’
‘It really means nothing.’
‘Means everything if you had sex with him.’
‘Now, I really don’t see how you’re going to prove
that.
’
A man in a cream shirt and brown velvet waistcoat approached and the smile indicated that he and Prosser clearly knew one another. He opened his mouth to speak, but Prosser shook his head, made it clear he was rather busy. The man raised his eyebrows and turned on his heel.
‘McCarthy’s not exactly playing hard to get any more,’ Thorne said. ‘He’s made it very clear that he’ll happily spill his guts in return for a nice bit of carpet in his cell, and there’s no reason to believe that Powell is going to be any less of a pushover.
‘Thing is though, I’d like to hear it from
you
. Because you’re the one it started with, that day eight months ago, when you looked up and saw Amin Akhtar in the dock in front of you. You’re the one who made everything happen, the one who put the fear of God into your friends and called in a few favours … so
you’re
the one who’s going to confess.’ He leaned in close to Prosser. ‘So that
I
can tell the father of the boy you had killed.’
‘You’re welcome to lie to him,’ Prosser said. ‘If you really think that will help.’
Thorne’s mobile rang in his pocket. He dug it out and saw who was calling. It must have been obvious from his expression that it was a call he needed to take.
Prosser took two steps away, then turned. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not making a run for it,’ he said. He picked up his empty glass from the table and waggled it at Thorne. ‘Just getting a top-up … ’
‘Just thought you ought to know,’ Pascoe said, ‘Donnelly’s authorised a dynamic entry.’
‘What’s happened?’
There was the smallest of pauses, an intake of breath. ‘We’ve got every reason to believe that Stephen Mitchell is dead.’
Every reason. So now Thorne knew for sure that they had not been sent the picture, that the RVP team had found out about the hostage’s death in some other way. All the same, he could hardly admit that he had known and said nothing. ‘That gunshot on the first night.’
‘We don’t know what happened,’ Pascoe said. ‘We can only assume that Weeks had no choice but to pretend everything was normal. I should have sussed there was something wrong, but I didn’t.’
‘You blaming
yourself
for this?’
‘I fucked up.’
‘How long until they go in?’ Thorne asked.
‘Under an hour.’
Thorne watched Prosser filling his glass. Still smiling.
‘Where are you?’
Thorne told her, his eyes on Prosser as the judge walked back across the living room, moving calmly through a gaggle of partygoers. A nod and a wink to someone he recognised, something whispered, a hand laid on an arm. Watching, Thorne recalled how Ian McCarthy had reacted to those initial accusations. The doctor had tried to appear confident and fearless, but the anxiety had been all too obvious and Thorne had been able to smell the man’s weakness, sharp as disinfectant.
Prosser, though, seemed genuinely unafraid of anything.
‘Tom?’
‘I’m still here,’ Thorne said.
‘Well anyway, I just thought you should know. If there’s anything you might have that could persuade Akhtar to give up and walk out of there before Chivers and his mates go crashing in, you need to get back here with it on the hurry-up … ’
When Thorne had hung up, he walked across and took hold of Prosser by the arm.
Making it up as you go along again?
Prosser tried to pull away, but Thorne dug his fingers into the flab of the judge’s forearm.
Thinking about the promise he’d made to Javed Akhtar.
The assurances he’d given Helen Weeks.
He prised the heavy tumbler from Prosser’s hand, wondering – just for a second – how it would feel to smash it against the table and grind the jagged edge into the mottled flesh of the man’s neck. He set it down and guided Prosser none too gently towards the door.
‘Hell are we going?’ Prosser demanded, still trying to wrench his arm from Thorne’s grip.
Thorne dug his fingers in harder.
He called Holland as soon as they were in the lift and told him that they were going to be swapping vehicles. Unlike his own car, the Passat was fitted with Blues and Twos and Thorne guessed that the siren might save him a few precious minutes. He told Holland and Kitson to call up a van, to make it two. He told them to get straight up to the penthouse party and start nicking people for fun.
Then he turned to Prosser.
‘How do you feel about restorative justice?’
‘I haven’t been telling you the truth,’ Helen said. ‘Not that I’ve been lying, exactly, just not telling the truth, and I want to be honest. Here … like this. I need to be honest.’
Since they had called and demanded to speak to Mitchell, Akhtar had been prowling back and forth like one of those creatures in a zoo that have gone slightly mad. From storeroom to shop and back again. As though it were only a question of which way they were going to come for him.
Now, he stopped and stood a few feet in front of her, holding the gun.
Waiting.
‘I can’t say for certain that Paul was Alfie’s father,’ Helen said. ‘That’s it, basically.’ She looked up at him. ‘That’s the truth of it. I know I’ve been talking as though he is, and that’s the way I always talk, even to myself, but the fact is I can’t be certain. Paul wasn’t certain either, which was why things were so difficult between us when he was killed. He died not knowing one way or another.’
Akhtar backed slowly away until he reached the desk and lowered himself on to the chair. ‘Why are you telling me these things?’
‘I don’t really know,’ she said.
Why was she telling a man who had threatened to kill her, knowing full well that at the same time she was announcing it to whoever was listening in on the outside? Why did she feel the need suddenly to get this stuff off her chest? Did she really think she would absolve herself?
Because she knew that Akhtar was right and it was only a question of how and not when they would be coming in. Because although the men with the guns would do everything they could to avoid discharging their weapons and to keep her safe, things did not always go according to plan. Because people got over-excited and accidents happened.
Because she did not want to die without saying it.
‘Because I need to tell someone,’ she said.
Akhtar looked at her, cocked his head slightly. He rested the gun on his knee, the barrel pointing towards her. ‘I am a newsagent,’ he said. ‘Not a priest.’
Helen’s impulse was to smile back, but her mouth could do no more than say the words. Her tongue felt thick and heavy and her heart was thundering against her chest.
‘I met a man on a course,’ she said. ‘A firearms officer, of all things. Right now, I’d be seriously thinking that he might be one of the ones out there with a gun in his hand, except that he moved away, after what happened to Paul …
‘It was a fling, that’s all. Stupid. Just half a dozen times in some hotel or other and I’m not saying that as any kind of excuse. I still did what I did, and at the time I wanted to do it. He was everything Paul wasn’t, in all sorts of ways. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed being wanted that much. I’m just saying that I never actually thought about leaving Paul, that’s all. He was the one who talked about leaving, when he found out. It was awful for a while and things never got back to how they’d been before, but we decided we were going to carry on.
‘For the baby’s sake.
‘Things were said when it all came out. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. Horrible things, but I knew he was only saying them because he’d been hurt and because he wanted to hurt me back. I was happy to take whatever he was dishing out, because I knew I deserved it, and I thought everything would be all right because of the baby. I just kept telling myself that it would all be OK once the baby came along.
‘After Paul was killed, guilt was one of the things that made me so desperate to find out what had happened. The main thing, if I’m honest. Just like I’d been kidding myself about the baby solving all our problems, I told myself that if I found out what had happened to Paul, if I found out the truth, I might feel a bit less guilty about what I’d done to him.
‘Like I say, kidding myself.’
Helen was leaning back with her head against the radiator, her eyes fixed on a space a few feet above Akhtar’s head, and she did not see him grimace and look away.
However unafraid Prosser might have appeared at the party, it was clear from his face, from the occasional whimper that escaped his lips, that he was a little less bullish when it came to being driven at seventy miles an hour through the dark of busy urban streets, with rain lashing against the windscreen, a siren wailing and a blue light flashing on the roof.
‘You’re a bit pale,’ Thorne said. ‘A bit quiet.’
Prosser turned to him. His left hand was braced against the dashboard and his right held tight to the seatbelt across his chest. ‘I’m just trying to decide which lawyer I’m going to get to tear you a nice new arsehole.’ He did his best to smile. ‘Professionally speaking, of course.’
Thorne drove away from the river, pushing the Passat south on Battersea Bridge Road. In regular traffic, on a good day, they were no more than twenty-five minutes from Tulse Hill. The traffic was bad thanks to the rain, but with the blue light and the siren clearing the way Thorne was hopeful that they would make it in fifteen minutes or less.
‘I spoke to Amin Akhtar’s lawyer,’ Thorne said, raising his voice to be heard above the siren.
‘Congratulations.’
‘He reckoned they had a good shot at winning the appeal. Getting the ridiculous sentence you handed out reduced. That can’t have been good news.’
‘Neither good nor bad,’ Prosser said. ‘It would have been the decision of another judge. I remain happy with the sentence I gave.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘A sentence that the law fully entitled me to pass. You should remember that.’
‘Akhtar’s lawyer told me he had grounds to pursue you for professional misconduct.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘For ignoring all the statements made about Amin’s good character, the circumstances of his offence. For all that rubbish about “dangerousness” you peddled to the jury.’
‘He stabbed a boy to death.’
‘Bollocks,’ Thorne said. ‘The only person Amin was dangerous to was you.’ He tore past a van that had been slow to pull over, swung the wheel to the left and accelerated into the bus lane. ‘God, I’d love to be back in that courtroom. See your face when you got your first look at that boy in the dock. I’m betting you went as white as your fucking wig.’
Prosser sighed. ‘I did not recognise the boy, because I had never seen him before. You see how that works?’
‘Despite having been at a party with him. At least one party.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Or perhaps it was just that you didn’t recognise him from the front.’ Thorne was thrilled to see a flash of anger from Prosser, a glimpse of small white teeth biting down on his fat lower lip. ‘Then again, it might have been the name that you recognised. I hadn’t really thought about it until now, and I don’t know if rent boys are in the habit of using their real names, but I suppose Amin might have done. I mean do
you
use your real name?’ He looked at Prosser, shook his head. ‘No, I doubt it very much. Do you have a special name you like to use when you’re letting your hair down? A secret identity? Or do you just like the boys to call you “your honour” while you’re fucking them?’