the people on the outside stopped listening and took a rather more proactive approach.
Because of something they hadn’t heard.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Thorne slowed and watched the silver Astra fifty yards ahead of him turn into the driveway of a modern, semi-detached house. He watched Ian McCarthy get out of the car and drag his briefcase from the back seat. He watched him walk quickly through the rain along a path paved in red brick, past nicely trimmed shrubs and well- tended flower beds, and step through his front door without looking back.
He gave him five minutes. Just enough time for someone to get their feet under the table, put the kettle on or open a bottle of something. Start getting comfortable.
When McCarthy opened the door he was still wearing his coat.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No.’
‘There’s a third option,’ Thorne said. ‘You stop pretending you’re big and brave and tell me everything you know.’
McCarthy moved quickly to close the door, but found Thorne’s foot in the way, then his shoulder. A dog began to bark somewhere behind him and a few seconds later a Golden Retriever that looked anything but fierce forced its head through the gap. McCarthy tried to pull the dog back while keeping his weight against the door.
‘It’s finished,’ Thorne said. His face was only a few inches from McCarthy’s. ‘We’re going to get Bridges eventually and he’ll give you all up in a second as soon as he starts to need a fix badly enough. Let’s not forget we’re talking about two murders here, counting Peter Allen, oh… and when we re-examine Amin Akhtar’s body we’ll find the Suxamethonium.’
McCarthy blinked.
‘So, can I come in?’
The dog had retreated back into the hall, barking with less enthusiasm now, and as McCarthy opened the door Thorne saw a woman come through a doorway behind him, grab the dog by the collar and tell it to be quiet. She looked up at McCarthy as Thorne stepped past him.
‘Everything all right?’
McCarthy closed the front door. ‘Fine, love. There’s a problem back at the prison, that’s all.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing very serious,’ Thorne said. ‘I shouldn’t keep him too long.’
McCarthy moved to a closed door and nudged it open. ‘Let’s go in here.’
‘Wherever.’
‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ the woman asked.
‘I’ll have coffee,’ Thorne said, smiling. ‘Only if you’re making some.’
McCarthy switched on a light and disappeared through the door. Thorne watched the woman and the dog head off towards the kitchen, then followed him.
The room was pristine – the cushions on sofa and armchairs perfectly plumped and the Hoover marks still visible on the carpet – and Thorne guessed it was the living room the McCarthys kept for best. The one they might take coffee through to after a dinner party and where they played Trivial Pursuit or Risk once in a blue moon. There were framed degree certificates arranged on the wall and dried flowers in the fireplace, and the highly polished sideboard in one corner was topped with an array of family photographs.
Husband, wife, daughter, dog.
Perfect.
Thorne dropped into an armchair. Said, ‘Very nice.’
McCarthy was already sitting on the sofa. ‘What is?’
‘All of this,’ Thorne said. ‘Your wife.’
‘Don’t,’ McCarthy said.
Thorne sat forward. ‘Here’s the thing. I was thinking “conspiracy to murder”, but the law’s become very… fluid these days, as far as all that goes. I mean, let’s say you’re part of a gang that attacks and kills someone. Even if you do nothing but egg somebody else on, even if you don’t lay a finger on the victim, you can still go down for murder.’ He let that hang for a few seconds. ‘That’s what the law says now. “Joint enterprise”, it’s called. Probably got a few up in Barndale been done because of that. You give someone a murder weapon… the fact that you’re miles away when that murder’s committed is neither here nor there. You’re as guilty of murder as they are in the eyes of the law.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone.’
‘Knife, gun, syringe… doesn’t matter.’
‘No-’
‘You gave Bridges that syringe, and you showed him exactly what to do with it. Eager to learn, I should imagine. A decent wedge to spend when he got out, and the fact that it’s an Asian kid he’s doing is probably a bonus for a racist headcase like Johnno Bridges, right? You gave him the keys to get out of the ward and into Amin’s room. You showed him where the cameras were.’
‘Please-’
‘And let’s not forget who staged those thefts from the dispensary to make it look like those were the drugs that Amin Akhtar had taken. So, even though you were tucked up here in bed while he was being shot full of poison, you’re the one who was ultimately responsible. You’re the one who’s looking at a very long time in prison, and it’ll be somewhere a damn sight rougher than Barndale, I can guarantee that-’
‘It wasn’t my idea,’ McCarthy said. ‘None of it was my idea.’
Thorne sat back. It was like he had thought. The weakest link in the chain.
McCarthy’s face was tight and bloodless, and he squeezed one hand with the other, methodically crushing the knuckles as though trying to distract himself with pain. The first pangs of remorse, or anguish at being caught, it did not much matter.
Thorne looked at him and felt nothing.
‘The shit in that syringe,’ Thorne said. ‘The paralytic. They stopped using that in executions because of what it did. Because it was too cruel. Did you know that?’
McCarthy started to talk, quickly and quietly. ‘The other men I was with at that party, the men in the picture. One you know, obviously, and the other one’s called Simon Powell.’
The name meant nothing. ‘What does he do?’
‘He works for the Youth Justice Board. He’s on the allocations team.’
Thorne thought about it and it made perfect sense. The second in the chain of three, the second in the process. It also explained something the governor of Barndale had told him two days earlier.
Sometimes these pen-pushers who allocate placements just like to try and make things awkward.
What else had Bracewell said?
I’m sure you’ve met the type.
The type. Thorne looked across at McCarthy.
‘I didn’t sleep with Amin that night,’ McCarthy said. ‘I swear. Not ever in fact. Powell might have done, or… ’
He stopped speaking as the door opened and his wife came in with two mugs of coffee. She handed Thorne his, then gave the other one to McCarthy. ‘You didn’t say, but I guessed you’d want one.’ She stopped at the door. ‘What time did you say you were going out?’
McCarthy looked at her. Opened his mouth and closed it.
‘I need to know what time to get dinner ready, that’s all.’
‘Don’t worry,’ McCarthy said. ‘I’ll get myself something later on.’
‘It’s no bother.’
‘I’m fine, love, really… ’
Thorne watched McCarthy’s wife leave, wondering if she was simply playing the good wife for the sake of the visitor, and how things were between the happy couple when there was nobody else around. If she had the
