Mark Billingham: Good as Dead

Trying to decide whether or not to make a move.

Same as she was.

‘You lot are pussies without a bomb in your backpack.’ The white boy took another step towards the counter. He was grinning and opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped when he saw Mr Akhtar reach quickly below the counter and come up with a baseball bat.

One of the boys at the fridge whistled, mock-impressed, and said, ‘Oh, look out.’

The newsagent moved surprisingly quickly.

Helen took a step towards the end of the counter, but felt herself held back by the man next to her and could only watch as Mr Akhtar came charging from behind it, yelling and swinging the bat wildly.

‘Get the hell out. Get out.’

The white boy backed quickly away, his hand still in his pocket, while the other two turned on their heels and ran for the door, their arms reaching out to send tins and packets of cereal scattering as they went. They screamed threats and promised that they would be back and one of them shouted something about the place stinking of curry anyway.

When the last one was out on the pavement – still swearing threats and making obscene gestures – Mr Akhtar slammed the door. He fumbled in his pocket for keys and locked it, then stood with his head against the glass, breathing heavily.

Helen took a step towards him, asked if he was all right.

Outside, one of the boys kicked at the window, then hawked up a gobbet of thick spittle on to the glass. It had just begun to dribble down past the ads for gardeners, guitar teachers and massage, when he was pulled away by his friends.

‘I’m going to make a call,’ Helen said. ‘We’ve got it all on camera, so there’s nothing to worry about.’ She glanced up at the small camera above the till and realized it was almost certainly a dummy. ‘I can give good descriptions of all three of them, OK? You know I’m a police officer, so… ’

Still with his back to the shop, Mr Akhtar nodded and began fumbling in his pocket a second time.

‘Mr Akhtar?’

When he turned round, the newsagent was pointing a gun.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ the man next to Helen said.

Helen swallowed hard, tried to control the shaking in her leg and in her voice when she spoke. ‘What are you doing-?’

Mr Akhtar shouted then and swore as he told Helen and her fellow customer exactly what would happen if they did not do what he said. The curse sounded awkward in his mouth though, like something spoken by an actor who has over-rehearsed.

Like a white lie.

‘Shut up,’ he screamed. ‘Shut up or I will fucking kill you.’

‘It’s espresso, for crying out loud,’ Tom Thorne shouted. ‘Espresso… ’

The man – who of course could not hear him – was talking enthusiastically about how he could not even think about starting his day without that all-important hit of caffeine. He said the offending word again and Thorne slapped his hand against the steering wheel.

‘Not ex presso, you pillock. There’s no bloody X in it… ’

Sitting in a long line of rush-hour traffic, crawling north towards lights on Haverstock Hill, Thorne glanced right and saw a woman staring across at him from behind the wheel of a sporty-looking Mercedes. He smiled and raised his eyebrows. Muttered, ‘Sod you, then,’ when she turned away. He had hoped that, having seen him talking to himself, she might presume that he was making a hands-free call, but she clearly had him marked down as a ranting nutter.

‘I suppose that a nice strong ex presso gives you an ex pecially good start to the day, does it?’

Looking for something else, anything else to listen to, he stabbed at the pre-set buttons; settled eventually for something sweet and folksy, a soft, pure voice and a song he half recognised.

Shouting at the radio was probably just another sign of growing older, Thorne thought. One of the many. Up there on the list with losing a little hearing in his right ear and thinking that there was nothing worth watching on television any more. Wondering why teenagers thought it was cool to wear their trousers around their knees.

The song finished and the DJ cheerfully informed him which station he was tuned into.

Up there with listening to Radio 2!

Changes of opinion or temperament were inevitable of course, Thorne knew that, and on some days he might even admit that they were not necessarily a bad thing. When change happened gradually, its slow accretion of shifts and triggers could go almost unnoticed, but Thorne was rarely comfortable with anything that was more sudden. However necessary it might be. Too many things in his life had changed recently, or were in the process of changing, and he was still finding it hard to cope with any of them.

To adjust.

He pulled somewhat less than smoothly away from the lights, cursing as his foot slipped off the still unfamiliar accelerator pedal.

The bloody car, for a start.

He had finally traded in his beloved 1975 BMW CSi for a two-year-old 5 Series that was rather more reliable and for which he could at least obtain replacement parts when he needed them. The car had been the first and as yet only thing to go, but more major changes were imminent. His flat in Kentish Town had been on the market for a month, though he still had some repairs to do and buyers seemed thin on the ground. And, despite several weeks of quiet words and clandestine sniffing around, a suitable transfer to another squad had yet to become available.

Then there had been Louise…

All these less than comfortable shifts in Thorne’s life, important as they might seem, were secondary to that. The car, the flat, the job. The flurry of changes had come about, had been decided upon, as a direct result of what had happened with Louise.

He and Louise Porter had finally parted company a couple of months before, after a relationship that had lasted just over two years. For half that time it had been better than either of them had expected; way better than most relationships between police officers, certainly. But as a team they had not been strong enough to cope with the loss of a baby. Neither had been able to give the other the particular form of comfort they needed and, while the relationship had limped on for a while, they had suffered separately and paid heavily for it. Louise had been understandably resentful that Thorne seemed more easily able to deal with the grief of strangers, while Thorne himself had struggled with guilt at not having been quite as devastated by the miscarriage as he thought he should have been. By the time that guilt had burned itself out and Thorne was able to admit just how much he had wanted to be a father, it was too late for both of them.

They had become lovers by numbers, and in the end it had simply fizzled away. It was Louise who finally plucked up the courage to say what needed saying, but Thorne had known for a while that the break had to come, before such feelings as were left between them darkened and became destructive.

They had both kept their own flats, which made the practicalities straightforward enough. Louise had taken away a bin-liner stuffed with clothes and cosmetics from Thorne’s place in Kentish Town, while Thorne had left Louise’s flat for the last time with a carrier bag, a few tins of beer and a box of CDs. It had ended with a hug, but it might just as well have been a handshake. Loading his boxes and bags into the back of his car, Thorne had decided that it might be a good idea to change a whole lot of other things.

To start again…

He turned towards Finchley and almost immediately hit a tailback. No more than five miles now, but still half an hour or so away from Hendon, and Becke House. The headquarters of the Area West Murder Squad.

‘Why the hell do you need to change your job?’