Mark Billingham: Good as Dead

It’s only a little bit of blood. It’s just a gun…

‘I think your meeting’s going to have to wait,’ Helen said.

They stared at one another for a few seconds, until she saw the wash of acceptance slide across his face. He nodded slowly and sat back against the radiator. Said, ‘I’m Stephen, by the way.’

‘Helen,’ she said.

They both turned at the sudden noise from the front of the shop. A loud grind and clatter. Stephen looked at Helen and she raised her voice over the drone. ‘He’s closing the shutters on the shop.’ They listened in silence until the squeals and clanking had finished, which told them that the solid metal shutters were now down, completely covering the shopfront.

‘We’re locked in,’ Stephen said.

Helen was watching the doorway. ‘I think it’s more a question of locking everyone else out.’

They had been locked in anyway, of course, but something in the lowering of the shop’s shutters, a change in the light perhaps, provoked an increased panic in the man. He began yanking at the cuffs which rattled and scraped against the radiator pipe, grunting with the effort that Helen knew was pointless.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

Stephen just yanked even harder. He moved on to his knees and began swearing and shouting as he used his free hand to try and pull the radiator away from the wall.

‘Please don’t-’

When Akhtar walked back into the room, he could see that Stephen had changed his position but he did not seem concerned. He clearly had faith in the quality of the handcuffs and the strength of his radiator pipes. He spent a few minutes wrestling the heavy metal filing cabinet from against a wall and inching it, corner by corner, across the room until it was pushed up against the back door.

He was sweating profusely by the time he had finished. He sat down at the desk and wiped his face with a handkerchief, then fished the gun from his pocket and laid it down on the desktop.

He turned to look at Helen. ‘You have been in my shop hundreds of times,’ he said, ‘but I still don’t know your name.’

Despite the situation and the fact that her mind was racing as she struggled to make sense of it, Helen felt a peculiar pang of guilt. She told herself she was being ridiculous. Life in a city like London was full of relationships such as theirs. A few words exchanged every day and a necessary distance maintained. Did this man want more than that? Did he feel… slighted? Rejected even? Was he interested in her romantically?

‘Helen,’ she said. ‘Detective Sergeant Helen Weeks.’

He nodded. ‘My name is Javed.’ He looked over at the man sitting at the other end of the radiator. ‘I’m very sorry that you have been caught up in all this, Mr…?’

Stephen was still breathing heavily. He did not look up. ‘Stephen Mitchell.’

‘I can only apologise, Mr Mitchell.’

‘Listen, Javed-’

Akhtar cut Helen off. ‘What kind of police officer are you, Miss Weeks?’

Helen was thrown by the question. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘In which area do you work? Do you investigate robberies, fraud? Murder?’

‘I work on a Child Protection Unit,’ Helen said.

‘So not murder?’

‘Sometimes… ’

‘I need to speak to a police officer urgently.’

‘So speak to me.’ She was careful to keep her tone even and reasonable. ‘Tell me what it is you want and we can sort all this out. Whatever your problem is, the sooner you let us go, the easier things will be.’

‘You don’t understand. I need to speak to a particular police officer, so I need you to help me.’

‘I want to help you, but I can’t-’ The words caught in Helen’s throat when she saw Akhtar’s expression change and watched him scrabble for the gun. She could see that, for the moment at least, he was done with being apologetic or reasonable.

‘I need you to use your phone,’ he shouted. ‘I need you to call whoever you have to call to get this policeman here.’

He was waving the gun at them as he ranted and Helen was aware that, next to her, Mitchell was flinching each time Akhtar used the weapon to emphasise his wishes.

‘You get him here now, OK?’ Akhtar threw Helen’s handbag back at her and she had to raise her free hand to stop it hitting her in the face. ‘Get him here and I will tell you what to say when he comes.’

Outside a siren began to sound, and grew louder.

For a few seconds, Akhtar and Mitchell were both staring intently at her. Helen could feel the rage and the fear radiating from both of them and from inside herself. The heater at her back was not turned on, but might just as well have been.

‘Who?’ she asked.

Akhtar told her the name.

‘I know him,’ she said. ‘Not well, but… ’

‘Good,’ Akhtar said. ‘That might help both of us.’

Helen’s hand was shaking as she reached into her handbag for her phone.

Thorne had just picked up his own ‘hit of caffeine’ from the ancient and grubby machine in the Incident Room and was walking towards his office, when Detective Chief Inspector Russell Brigstocke stepped out into the corridor in front of him.

‘Don’t take your coat off,’ Brigstocke said.

‘Bloody hell, can I finish my coffee?’ Thorne saw the look on his senior officer’s face and stopped smiling. ‘What?’

‘We’ve got a situation in south London.’

‘South?’ Thorne’s squad worked the north and west of the city and rarely, if ever, ventured south of the river. Even when he wasn’t working, Thorne tried to avoid crossing the water whenever possible.

‘A Child Protection Unit in Streatham got a call from one of their officers who claims she’s being held at gunpoint in a newsagent’s in Tulse Hill.’ Brigstocke glanced down at the scrap of paper in his hand. ‘Sergeant Helen Weeks.’

‘I know the name,’ Thorne said. He tried to remember.

‘The CPU found us on the intranet system and the call got put through to me. So-’

‘She was the woman whose boyfriend got run down at the bus stop. A year and a bit ago.’ Thorne tried to picture the woman who had sat in his office, to whom he had briefly spoken at her partner’s funeral. ‘He was Job too, remember?’

‘No, but it might be relevant.’ Brigstocke shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea at the moment. Point is-’

‘Hang on, what’s this got to do with us?’

‘Not us,’ Brigstocke said. ‘ You.’

Thorne waited, already feeling an unwelcome tingle at the nape of his neck and starting to wish that he’d rung in sick.

‘The newsagent has apparently asked for you.’ The DCI was still staring at the scrap of paper as though trying to gain some insight from what was clearly limited information. ‘Better make that “demanded”, seeing as he’s holding a gun on a police officer.’

‘Have we got a name?’

‘Akhtar.’

It was another name Thorne recognized, as Brigstocke had known he would. A surname, at least.

‘That manslaughter case last year,’ Thorne said. ‘Right?’

‘He’s the kid’s father,’ Brigstocke said.

Thorne tried to picture the man, but the face would not come. He remembered an uncontrolled anger though, when the sentence had been announced, a fury the man had taken out vociferously on Thorne and his fellow officers outside the court. Despite having a good deal of sympathy for him, Thorne had tried to calm the man down, pointing out that he should be taking up his dissatisfaction with the judge and not the police.

Thorne remembered the tears when the man had finally walked away.

‘So is that what this is all about?’

Brigstocke’s shrug said: your guess is as good as mine.

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Thorne said. ‘The trial was what, eight months ago? Nine?’