Mark Billingham - Good as Dead

‘No, not just about all this. I’m scared about what I’m going to say to my son when he’s old enough to want to know who his father was. I’m scared to find out the truth.’

Akhtar looked at her. ‘There is some way to find out?’

‘Paul was a copper, same as me. So his DNA’s on record. I could get a test done, but I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t the right result.’

‘Would it really be so bad?’

‘I know there are worse things.’ She looked at him. ‘I know there are, but second to anything happening to Alfie, this would be my worst thing.’

‘Thorne told me yesterday that I should prepare myself for the truth,’ Akhtar said. ‘He told me that it might not be particularly pleasant. Well, I can only say to you what I said to him. You have suffered, same as I have, and you must surely realise that the truth, however unpleasant, cannot compare to that sort of pain. That it can only make things more bearable in the long run.’ He stood up slowly. ‘Ignorance is not bliss, Helen. Trust me on that. Ignorance is torment.’ He took a few steps towards the shop, then stopped and cocked his head towards the sound of a siren that was quickly growing louder.

Less than ten feet from where Javed Akhtar was standing – outside, on the rutted, overgrown path that snaked from a crumbling block of garages to the rear of the premises – Chivers was watching as his method-of-entry specialist knelt in the mud and carefully laid the last of the explosive charges at the base of the back door.

Five minutes from a ‘go’.

Once the charges were in position, Chivers would brief each member of his team once more on the action plan. Each would have a specific function to carry out. One that would hopefully last no more than a few seconds, but which would prove crucial as part of a six-man operation and upon which their own lives as well as the lives of those in the building would depend.

The ballistic shield officer.

The baton officer.

The ‘cover’ officer.

The prison reception officer, responsible for handling the hostage taker until such time as he could be taken into custody.

The dog handler.

Following that final briefing, there would be a last-minute equipment check. Helmets, goggles, earplugs and body armour. All rifles, handguns and Tasers. The CS canisters and the 8-Bang stun grenades designed to create as much noise and chaos as possible, to distract and disorient the hostage taker in those first few seconds after breaching had been effected. A faulty bit of kit would always be a firearms officer’s worst nightmare and with good reason. Chivers firmly believed that his men had been well trained and that equipment failure was far more likely than any human error.

Sadly, the same could not be said for others on the operation. There would certainly be an inquiry into why it had taken a trained hostage negotiator the best part of two days to notice that one of her hostages was dead.

Chivers doubted he’d be seeing DS Susan Pascoe again.

He had not even been aware of the siren until it became clear that it was somewhere very close. He immediately moved back towards the garages, well away from the earshot of anyone behind the door and called Donnelly on the radio.

‘What’s happening, Mike?’

‘I don’t believe this.’

The rain was noisy against his helmet, his body armour. ‘Say again.’

‘He’s come right through the fucking cordon, almost took out a couple of the uniforms.’

‘Who?’

‘Thorne. Listen, Bob, you’d better hold off for the time being and get yourself and your lads back round to the front… ’

As Thorne got out of the car and jogged around to the passenger side, he was forced to shield his eyes against the glare from a cluster of powerful arc lights that had been arranged on the pavement opposite the shop. In front of them was a line of emergency vehicles – ARVs, ambulances, rapid response cars – behind which the CO19 officers had taken up their firing positions earlier on.

Thorne’s phone began to ring, but he knew very well who was calling.

He opened the door and dragged Prosser out. The light, bouncing back from the metal shutters of Akhtar’s shop, washed across the judge’s face, worsened its already sickly pallor. Thorne pushed him back against the side of the car. He pressed the flat of one hand hard into Prosser’s chest, then answered his phone with the other.

‘Mike.’

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’ve got what Akhtar wanted, so you can stand the CO19 boys down.’

‘Who’s that with you?’

Thorne guessed that Donnelly and the rest of the team were gathered in the TSU vehicle, watching him on the monitors that carried the CCTV feed. He squinted up through the rain and stared straight at the camera mounted high on a lamppost on the opposite side of the road. ‘This is the man who killed Akhtar’s son,’ he said. ‘Who arranged for him to be killed.’ He turned back to Prosser and looked him in the eye. ‘He’s the reason we’re all here.’

‘You need to move away from the shop, Tom.’

‘I’m taking him inside,’ Thorne said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘It makes about as much sense as sending Chivers and his mates in.’

‘We’ll talk to Akhtar,’ Donnelly said. ‘You tell him you’ve done what he asked. You tell him you’ve got the individual responsible for his son’s death in custody and he walks out of there.’

‘Never going to happen,’ Thorne said. ‘He doesn’t trust us enough. He doesn’t trust me enough.’ He heaved Prosser away from the car and marched him towards the newsagent’s. Just before he dropped the phone into his pocket, he heard Donnelly shout, ‘Stay where you bloody well are.’

Thorne pushed Prosser back against the shutters, then began hammering at them, his fist smashing against the dirty metal, no more than a few inches from Prosser’s face. He shouted, ‘Javed, it’s Tom Thorne. I’m out here with the man you asked me to find.’ He banged again, Prosser flinching at every blow. ‘Javed… ’

He waited for a few seconds. He pressed his ear to the metal.

Looking up at the sound of footsteps to his left, he saw Chivers and five CO19 officers emerge at speed from the entrance to a small alleyway three shops down. They slowed when they caught sight of him and, after grabbing a ballistic shield from one of them, Chivers waved his team back behind the line of vehicles where they stood, looking somewhat bemused, waiting for orders. None the wiser himself, Chivers stayed where he was, in the middle of the road, thirty feet or so away from Thorne and Prosser.

Behind the shutters, Javed Akhtar said, ‘I’m here.’

Chivers and Thorne both turned at the sound of more footsteps and watched as Donnelly, Pascoe and half a dozen others came running from the direction of the school towards the main road. All except Donnelly stopped at the line of arc lamps. He carried on that little bit further forward into the road, before stopping just a few feet away from Chivers.

A few feet behind him.

‘Mr Thorne?’

‘I’ve got him with me right now, Javed.’ Thorne leaned close to the shutters. ‘If I bring him in there, you have to promise me that once you have heard exactly what happened to Amin, you will give yourself up. No questions asked, OK?’

‘I can’t allow you to take a civilian in there, Thorne.’ Donnelly was still struggling to get his breath back as he shouted. ‘Not while Akhtar still has a loaded weapon. What are you thinking?’

‘Not up for discussion,’ Chivers said. ‘Simple as that.’

The civilian in question, who up until now had remained relatively passive, suddenly became animated and began shouting. ‘My name is Jeffrey Prosser, QC, and if you’re the officer in charge you need to put a stop to this now.’ Thorne pushed him back against the shutters and told him to shut up. Prosser struggled and shouted his name out again.