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.
SIXTY-EIGHT
‘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.
‘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… ’
SIXTY-NINE
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
