Thorne nodded.
‘He’d been checked twice on the rounds between six-thirty and seven a.m. and although the hospital officer on duty was rightly suspended, I don’t think we can really blame her for not noticing that anything was wrong. I mean, I can’t honestly say I’d have done anything different. He was just lying there in bed, so anyone looking in through the window for a few seconds could easily have thought he was asleep and that everything was OK.’ He held up his hands. ‘She didn’t notice the plastic cup and the few spilled tablets lying on the floor by his bed. Simple as that.’ He shook his head, looked to see if Thorne needed any more detail.
Thorne waited.
‘There was some blood where he’d bitten through his tongue and he’d… soiled himself, though obviously that couldn’t be seen from outside the room.’ He looked at Thorne again. ‘Yes, we might have been able to save him if the officer on duty had been a little more observant, but as it was, Amin was dead by the time I went into his room. He was still… warm, but I checked and there was clearly no hope of resuscitation. So-’
‘Still warm? So what time did he take the overdose?’
‘Well, I haven’t seen the PM report either, but I spoke to the Home Office pathologist when he arrived and he put the time of death at somewhere between six and seven a.m. The hour after he was given that last dose of medication.’ McCarthy smiled sadly. ‘Right about the time I was rolling out of bed at home and coming downstairs to put the kettle on.’ He swallowed. ‘Looking forward to the day.’
‘That was your first mistake,’ Thorne said.
‘Sorry?’
‘I stopped looking forward to work years ago.’ He leaned forward, mock-conspiratorial. ‘You should always assume that things are going to be really bad. That way, even if it’s just an averagely shitty day, you feel like you’ve had a result.’
McCarthy’s gaze drifted towards the large window that looked out on to the corridor. He smiled weakly, but looked as confused as he did upset. ‘I said all this a fortnight ago at the inquest,’ he said. ‘Told them what had happened.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘Another set of papers I haven’t seen.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘A… situation has developed very suddenly, which means that we’re looking at Amin’s death again.’ Thorne let that hang for a second or two. ‘That I am. Starting pretty much from scratch, I’m afraid.’
McCarthy sat back, thinking, then raised his arms. ‘Right, well I’m still none the wiser, but if there’s anything I can do… ’
Thorne stood up. ‘A guided tour would be very helpful,’ he said.
McCarthy said that would not be a problem, so Thorne walked out on to the ward, waiting by the door for a few moments while the doctor grabbed his jacket.
Waiting, and thinking that for once he knew what might be causing that tickle in the soft hairs at the back of his neck; that something McCarthy had told him would need looking at more closely.
‘All set?’ McCarthy said, closing the door to his office behind him.
‘Absolutely.’
Thinking that six o’clock in the morning was a very strange time to kill yourself.
Gavin Slater did not seem inclined to let Holland and Kitson into his house. He had glowered at their warrant cards and drawn the front door a little closer towards him. From inside came the sounds of a television at high volume and somewhere upstairs a woman was shouting, raising her voice above the barking of a dog.
Holland and Kitson were not overly keen on going inside themselves.
‘You may or may not know that Amin Akhtar died two months ago,’ Holland said.
Slater blinked, then smiled. ‘I didn’t, but thanks. Not too often you lot knock on my door with good news.’
‘We just need to ask you a few questions.’
Slater laughed. ‘Right, like where I was when it happened? Was I breaking into whatever prison the little shitbag ended up in, something like that?’
‘Something like that,’ Kitson said.
‘So what happened?’ Slater sniffed. ‘Somebody take a knife to him or what?’
‘We’re not at liberty to reveal the circumstances-’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ Slater began to pick away at a patch of paint that was peeling from his front door. ‘Just let me know when you’ve got a name, so I can send him a box of chocolates or something.’
‘Maybe you can help us with that,’ Holland said.
Slater laughed again. Inside, the woman was screaming at the dog to shut up.
Kitson brushed away a sliver of white paint that had blown on to her jacket. ‘So you’re not exactly heartbroken that Amin is dead then?’
Slater turned and studied her for a few moments. ‘The Met really is taking on the brightest and the best, isn’t it?’ He looked away and up towards the main road where heavy traffic was pouring east towards the Angel and west towards King’s Cross. A few streets from where, just over a year before, his eldest son had been fatally stabbed with his own knife by Amin Akhtar.
‘You still in touch with either of the boys who were involved in the incident with Lee?’ Kitson asked.
‘The “incident”?’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Not seen them since Lee’s funeral.’
‘You sure about that?’
‘They helped to carry his coffin, them and a few of Lee’s other mates.’ Slater narrowed his eyes at Kitson. ‘You might have known that, if any of your lot had actually bothered to come. Don’t you normally do that, show up to pay your respects when a victim of violent crime is buried? Or does it depend on what colour they are?’
‘It depends on how you define “victim”,’ Kitson said.
Slater breathed in deep, then smacked his palms together hard to get rid of the dried paint. ‘Well, thanks again for dropping by to cheer me up. If I think of anything that might help, I’ll be sure and keep it to myself.’ He turned away and walked back inside. Said, ‘Now piss off,’ before slamming the door shut.
Holland and Kitson walked back towards their car.
‘He was lying,’ Kitson said. ‘About not seeing those other two.’
‘Doesn’t mean anything.’ Holland said. ‘Careful,’ and stepped around a smear of dog shit. ‘It’s the default position with rubbish like him, lying to coppers.’
Kitson reached into her bag for the keys. Pressed the remote to unlock the car.
‘I still don’t know what he wants us to do,’ Holland said. ‘What he thinks we can do.’ He saw the questioning look from Kitson. ‘Thorne.’ They climbed into the car and Kitson started the engine. ‘I mean, we’ve got no good reason to think anyone killed Amin.’
They sat there for a few moments. They could still hear Slater’s dog barking from the other end of the street. Holland could see that Kitson clearly found something funny.
‘What?’
‘You,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t seem like five minutes since you were all fresh-faced and floppy-haired and thought the sun shone out of Tom Thorne’s arse. You’d have jumped off a cliff if he’d told you to.’
Holland said, ‘Yeah, well,’ and ran a hand through blond hair that was somewhat shorter these days. Nobody’s fresh-faced anything.
‘Then you found out he was fallible,’ Kitson said. ‘Like everyone else.’
Holland looked at her, thinking that he was not the only one who had changed. That she had… softened, while, for whatever reason, he had moved the other way. Thinking: yes, if fallible means being everyone’s sure thing for youngest female commander in the Met, until you sleep with a senior officer and screw up your marriage and have to start all over again. ‘Like everyone else,’ he said.
Kitson angled the rear-view mirror down to check her reflection. She pursed her lips and opened her eyes wide. ‘We have addresses for the other two?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, for all the good it’s going to do us.’
‘You got anything else on?’
‘I’m just saying… ’
