Mark Billingham - Good as Dead

‘Actually, Graham, we’re both gagging for a drink,’ Thorne said.

Graham rolled his eyes and stood aside. ‘Enjoy… ’

They laid their jackets down on a cowhide-covered chaise longue just inside the door. McCarthy took a glass of wine and Thorne helped himself to water from the tray proffered by a teenage boy with spiky black hair and pupils like piss-holes in the snow. Then they took three steps down into a large, open-plan living area.

Thorne smelled marijuana, amyl nitrate and aftershave.

Money…

The decor and furnishings reminded Thorne of Rahim Jaffer’s flat and he wondered if it was all those evenings the young man had spent in places such as this that had given him a taste for the ultra-modern and expensive. Ironic, as they had certainly helped pay for it. Looking around – as though he were doing no more than admiring the art on the walls or the stylish light fittings – Thorne counted fourteen men in the room. Forty-ish and upwards and all dressed as though they had just come from one office or another, and while most had a drink in their hands, some had not yet been there long enough to loosen their ties.

There were at least the same number of boys.

While their prospective clients were just starting to relax and remained content to talk among themselves for a while, most of those who had been invited to provide a paid service did the same thing. They were gathered in twos and threes at the edges of the room. Whispering and giggling, moving in time to the low-level soft rock, or hovering near the long glass table where a cold buffet had been laid out.

Two distinct groups, for the time being.

There was plenty of eye contact though. Sizing-up being done on both sides. Sly looks and not so shy smiles.

The boys were white, black, Asian. A selection made deliberately, Thorne guessed, so as to appeal to all tastes. He wondered if the same consideration had gone into picking out the invitees according to their age. Thorne guessed that the majority were fifteen and up, but several were younger – or were at least trying to look younger – while two boys who stood close together near the food could not have been more than twelve.

Someone had probably agreed to pay a little more for them.

With McCarthy staying close to him as per instructions, Thorne wandered across the bleached-wood floor to stand near the vast windows that ran around half the room. A man with swept-back silver hair tapped a finger against the rain-streaked glass and nodded out.

‘Shame about the bloody weather,’ he said. ‘Out on that balcony you get the most astonishing view.’

Thorne turned and leaned back against the glass, scanning the room.

The man nodded towards a skinny boy in a tight black vest who looked to Thorne as though he was not that long out of Spiderman pyjamas. ‘Mind you, the view’s pretty spectacular in here… ’

At that moment, Thorne got his first look at the man he was there for. He walked into the room from one of the two softly lit corridors running off on either side. Coming from the toilet, Thorne guessed, or perhaps a bedroom, though it did seem a little early for that. Thorne watched the man help himself to a drink from another of the boys with the trays, then lean across, smiling at whatever the boy had said, to take something from the buffet. He popped the food into his mouth as he turned, and saw McCarthy.

He raised his glass and started walking towards them.

It took a few steps before the man got his first good look at Thorne, before the easy stride faltered, just a little. Thorne was impressed that he had been recognised so quickly. It had been eight months after all, and even then they had only been face to face for half an hour or so.

As long as it had taken for Thorne to give his evidence.

‘Smashing party, your honour,’ Thorne said.

The man stood close and stared hard at McCarthy, but McCarthy refused to meet the look, staring down instead into his wine glass. The man shifted his attention. Said, ‘Thorne.’

Thorne was even more impressed that his name had been remembered. Then he realised that McCarthy would have been in regular contact with his colleague from the moment Thorne had turned up at Barndale two days earlier and begun asking questions. That the man in front of him was simply putting two and two together.

The quicker he made four, Thorne decided, the better.

‘Your friend Dr McCarthy here has been great company,’ Thorne said. ‘And a fascinating storyteller.’ He looked at McCarthy. ‘You can toddle off now, Ian. My sergeant’s waiting for you downstairs.’

McCarthy hesitated, but only for a second, and neither Thorne nor the other man bothered to watch him leave.

‘So, who’s waiting for me?’ the man asked. ‘Not a lowly sergeant, surely.’

The music got louder suddenly, and someone let out a whoop of excitement from the other side of the room.

Thorne did not blink.

‘You’re all mine,’ he said.

Helen Weeks’ phone rang out. Ten seconds, fifteen. Twenty…

‘They’re not going to answer,’ Chivers said.

‘ They? ’ Pascoe stared at him. ‘What exactly do you think is going on in there?’ Chivers started to answer, but Pascoe talked over him. ‘Because two and something days is a bit quick for Stockholm Syndrome to have kicked in, you know what I mean?’

Twenty-five seconds.

‘Neither the hostage nor the hostage taker is answering the phone,’ Chivers said. ‘I was stating a fact, that’s all. There was no-’

The call was answered and, almost simultaneously, all five people inside the truck held their breath. Pressed hands to headsets. There were a few, crackly seconds of near-silence, then Helen Weeks said, ‘Hello.’

‘Helen, it’s Sue Pascoe. I need to speak to Mr Mitchell.’ Calm, but authoritative. The tone she reserved for particular types of crisis intervention.

‘He’s asleep.’

‘I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to wake him up.’

‘Is there some sort of problem?’

‘I need to speak to him now, Helen. I need to know that he’s all right.’

There was a pause.

Chivers looked at Donnelly, turned his palms up.

‘Helen?’

‘Hang up now.’ Akhtar’s voice. Calm, but authoritative.

‘It was an accident.’

‘ Hang up! ’

The line went dead.

Pascoe removed her headset and dabbed fingers against the film of sweat on her ear. Donnelly and Chivers were already moving together towards the back doors, and their body language – their shoulders together, their heads low and close – made the manner of the conversation they were gearing up to have abundantly clear. Made it equally obvious that any further contribution from Pascoe would be entirely superfluous.

‘Going in through the front isn’t an option,’ Chivers said.

‘Right.’ Donnelly began nodding.

‘The shutters wouldn’t be a problem, but we’d be too far away. He’d have too much time to react. The back door’s the obvious entry point.’

‘How long?’

‘Best part of an hour to get set up. Forty minutes at a push.’

‘So let’s push it.’

Chivers jumped down from the back of the truck and immediately began shouting. Donnelly started talking to Pascoe. Something about how vital her role was going to be in this last hour or so, something about redeeming herself, but it took her a few seconds to focus. She was remembering something she had said to Tom Thorne.

The hostage is mine to lose.

And the nothing she’d had to say to Stephen Mitchell’s wife.

Looking at him, Thorne suddenly had a very clear image of His Honour Judge Jeffrey Prosser QC dressing before a trial. Transforming himself, enjoying the ritual. He pictured the man standing in front of a large mirror in his chambers, the smile widening and the blood rushing to his cock as he slipped on his purple robe and red sash. As he became empowered. The wig would be last of all, best of all. Stern and imposing suddenly, that blissful scratch of horsehair against the tender pink skin.