Mark Billingham - Good as Dead

‘Who would your money be on?’

Prosser’s eyes were closed, the skin tight around his mouth.

‘So… your friend Powell allocates Amin to Barndale, which conveniently happens to be the Young Offenders Institution where your mutual friend Dr McCarthy is the chief medical officer. Which means you can watch him. Because that’s really what it’s all about. Keeping an eye on the boy, making sure he says nothing, does nothing. Making sure there’s one of you on the spot if he so much as hints at the fact that he sussed you out in that courtroom and knows exactly what the three of you get up to in your spare time.

‘And it works. It all works very nicely until the boy decides he wants to do some course which isn’t available at Barndale, which means he needs to be transferred. Which means you won’t be able to watch him any more. Powell tries to block it, but the governor insists because he’s trying to do the best thing for Amin… and now you’re in trouble. So, you decide to do what you would probably have done later on anyway when it was time for Amin to move into an adult prison. That’s when you give McCarthy his orders and he puts a nice little plan of his own together with a couple of boys who are happy to earn some money before they get out. That’s when he gives Jonathan Bridges a syringe.

‘That’s when you actually had Amin Akhtar killed,’ Thorne said. ‘But he was as good as dead the moment he walked into your courtroom, wasn’t he?’

Prosser shifted in his seat and looked at Thorne. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘The name of that lawyer,’ Prosser said. ‘He’s expensive, but it’ll be worth it just to see you reduced to helping old ladies across the road.’

Thorne’s knuckles whitened on the wheel and he nudged the Passat up to eighty on the long, straight road that crossed Clapham Common. Fifty yards ahead, a pedestrian beneath an umbrella was hesitating at a zebra crossing and though the lights and the siren were still going, Thorne leaned on the horn for good measure.

‘Do you know what’s really ironic?’ Thorne asked. ‘I don’t think Amin would ever have said anything, because he didn’t know anything. The simple, stupid fact is he didn’t recognise you. You were just another punter he wanted to forget as quickly as possible. He never said a word to McCarthy, he never said a word to his long-term boyfriend at Barndale, he never said a word to anybody. He was just a seventeen-year-old boy keeping his head down and trying to do his time. He wasn’t even the one that took that bloody photograph! I don’t suppose we’ll ever know for sure if you and your friends knew that photo existed, but even if you did… even if it was one more reason why you thought you should get rid of Amin Akhtar, you got your Asian rent boys mixed up. Easily done, I appreciate that. You got the wrong Paki.’

‘Oh for pity’s sake-’

‘You didn’t need to kill him.’

Thorne blasted across the South Circular and pointed the car towards Brixton Hill. They were no more than a few minutes away.

‘Where are we going anyway?’ Prosser asked. ‘You know exactly where we’re going,’ Thorne said. ‘Thing is, I’ve never been a big believer in the whole restorative justice thing, but some people genuinely believe that when the perpetrator and the victim… or in this case the victim’s family… come face to face, it can be hugely beneficial for both parties. On top of which, statistics suggest that it lowers the chances that the perpetrator will reoffend. Not really an issue as far as you’re concerned, obviously.’

‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You should,’ Prosser said. ‘Because you don’t have a great deal left. Not at your current pay grade anyway.’

Thorne turned to look hard at the judge for a few seconds longer than was strictly safe, all things considered. Long enough to see the blood begin to drain from Prosser’s face. Then he turned his eyes back to the road. ‘Listen, we’ve already established that Powell and McCarthy aren’t very likely to tough it out and there’s certainly no reason why either of them would want to do you any favours. Your two co-defendants, and I’m calling them that because that’s what they’re going to be soon enough, will roll over as quickly as one of those party boys when a punter starts waving his wallet around. So, my advice would be that you seriously consider your position at this point. Because, other than every effort I can possibly make to ensure you don’t get within a hundred miles of a Vulnerable Prisoner unit, and that every hard case on your wing knows exactly who you are and which of their friends and relations, if any, you’ve put away… I really don’t see what else you’ve got to gain by being such a smartarse. Your honour.’

Prosser nodded, mock-impressed. ‘Excellent speech, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if you were to put that much effort in when you’re giving evidence, a few less scumbags would get off.’

‘One less will do for now,’ Thorne said.

‘They tried to give me an epidural when I was giving birth to Alfie, but they couldn’t get the needle in and in the end it was like I just screamed him out.’ Helen’s fists were clenched as she remembered, her jaw tight as she lived through the agony again, but something soft all the same around her eyes. ‘The pain felt pretty good in the end, can you understand that?’

Akhtar nodded.

‘It felt honest. Like it was the only honest thing I had felt in a long time. It felt earned.’ She took a breath and stretched out her fingers, used one to dam the tears just for a second.

‘And he was… perfect, you know? Whatever, whoever had made him, he was just this perfect little boy and it made everything else, all the horrible things and the hurtful things, seem unimportant. So I just got on with it. I found a new flat, and it was just the two of us twenty-four hours a day, and sometimes I’d look right into his eyes and I’d tell him he looked just like his dad. I’d be telling myself he was Paul’s, because I wanted it so much. Because he had to be. Because that would be the fairest thing. Telling myself or telling other people that he had Paul’s nose or his mannerisms or whatever else, and it was nothing but a lovely, stupid lie, because there’d be other times when I’d look at him and he looked nothing like Paul at all.

‘When he wasn’t so perfect.’

She reached across to rub at the wrist of her left hand, where the handcuff had taken away the skin. It had become a tic. ‘There’s other people that know. My sister and my dad. They know what happened and they know it was just before I got pregnant, and I know damn well they’ve wondered about who Alfie’s father was. But nobody says anything. They just carry on as if I’ve got a husband or a boyfriend who’s working in another country or something, or else my sister’s trying to get me fixed up with some sad case that nobody else wants.’ She shrugged, and for just a moment there was the hint of laughter, somewhere low in her throat. ‘Nobody ever… talks about Paul. Only very occasionally, when they forget themselves or one of my sister’s kids says something and even then it’s like he’s just some private joke. Like he’s somebody I’ve made up. That’s what makes everything so much worse… that hateful, pathetic fear of embarrassment, of saying something awkward, and I’m just as bad as they are, because I’m too embarrassed to tell them how shitty and awful it’s making me feel. To tell them that sometimes it seems as if Paul can’t possibly be Alfie’s dad, because he was never there at all.

‘I’m scared,’ she said, quietly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Akhtar said.