Eyes screwed tightly shut, he screamed up into her face, bouncing on the mattress in time to his keening and pulling hard at the edge of the cot. He leaned his head against the bars then rubbed his gums against the padded vinyl. He fell suddenly silent for a few seconds, as though he had forgotten what it was he was so upset about, then stared up at her, his lip quivering, and raised his arms.
‘Come on then, chicken,’ Helen said. She heaved her son up and placed his hot, sweaty head against her chest.
His cry was still the only thing that could rouse her – waking her almost instantly, completely – and three weeks on from it, she remained amazed that she was sleeping so well. Sleeping at all. Even that first night, she’d been spark out in the back of the panda car before it had arrived at her sister’s place. Stretched out on the sofa an hour later, with Jenny still waiting not very patiently for juicy details and Alfie wriggling on her chest.
Sleep of the just, her dad would have called it.
She turned the dial on the musical mobile that was clipped to the edge of the cot. She murmured and shushed and padded around the small bedroom on her bare feet. She rubbed and patted and Alfie’s nappy was heavy against her hand.
‘Right, chicken.’ She carried him across and laid him down on the single bed. Leaned across for the changing bag. ‘Let’s sort you out.’
She smiled, remembering.
I slept like a baby last night. The pair of them in the pub with a few mates. Paul, a pint or two in, and on a roll. Woke up every hour and shat myself!
Releasing the poppers on the baby grow, she decided she was definitely going to call her DCI first thing. She was ready to go back to work, had been within a day or two if she were being honest. She felt fine and there was nothing she needed to ‘come to terms’ with. She did not need any more ‘time and space to recover’ and she was not up for introspection.
Not any more.
Imagining herself walking back into her office, the faces of her colleagues, she thought again about the things she had told Javed Akhtar. Those first few minutes after she was taken out of there, she had studied the face of every officer she’d come into contact with and wondered which of them had been listening in to her confession. How long it would take before the gossip spread as far as her own unit. By the time she was washing the blood off her hands, she had decided that she didn’t really give a toss, that she had more important things to worry about.
She lifted Alfie’s legs up. She pulled the dirty nappy away and dropped it into a nappy sack. She wiped him down, struggling to keep him still, then began to slather on the cream.
Within a day or two of her release, it had become obvious that nobody had told Donnelly or anyone else exactly what had gone on in that storeroom at the end. Nobody had talked about the gun being held at Prosser’s head. She racked her brain, trying to recall if Thorne or Prosser had said anything while it was happening that would have given the game away to those listening in, and began to realise that she had got away with it.
Same as she had with Mitchell.
They talked about her bravery from day one, her resilience. Holed up in there with a gun to her head, knowing that she too could be killed if she let on that her fellow hostage had already been murdered. They talked about the strength of her character.
Mentioned a medal, for God’s sake.
Tom Thorne had known that keeping Mitchell’s death secret had been her decision. When they found their first moment alone together, he told her that he’d suspected it almost as soon as he’d been sent that picture of Stephen Mitchell’s body. He hadn’t said anything. He disposed of his mobile phone as soon as he had the chance. He had enough secrets of his own, he told her, so keeping another one was hardly going to get him into any more trouble.
Thorne did not seem overly burdened by guilt at the way things had panned out, which was fine, because neither was she.
Been there, done that, bought the hair T-shirt.
The way she heard it, Nadira Akhtar was not exactly overcome with remorse either and Helen had no real problem with that. She would never forget the look on Javed Akhtar’s face though, when he had finally revealed just why his guilt was so poisonous and so all-consuming; why the ravenous cancer of it would never stop sucking at him. He had smiled at her and looked as good as dead.
‘My sweet, sweet boy,’ Akhtar had said.
Helen sat there on the edge of the bed as the music wound slowly down. She had a clean nappy in her hand, but she was happy enough just to sit and watch her son kick his fat little legs for a while.
SEVENTY-FOUR
There was light – grey and watery – creeping in through the gap where the curtains would not close properly. There were birds too – a couple of tone-deaf blackbirds with smoker’s cough – and Thorne guessed it was somewhere around four, but his watch was on the dressing table and he could not be arsed to slide across to the other side of the bed and check the clock to be sure.
Whatever time it was, awake was awake and Thorne didn’t fancy himself to get to sleep again any time soon. He hadn’t been sleeping particularly well since the siege had ended. Some nights he would wake every couple of hours, his skin slick and his brain feeling as though it were about to overheat, his internal clock shot to pieces. Not that missing out on a few hours’ sleep during the night mattered a great deal at the moment.
Not when he could catch up during the day.
‘You should take the chance to get away,’ Hendricks had said. ‘Think of it like a holiday and do something you’ve always fancied.’
‘I quite fancy doing sod all, which is handy at the moment.’
‘Seriously. You could go to Nashville… ’
‘It’s suspension without pay,’ Thorne reminded him. ‘I could barely afford half a day at Southend.’
‘So, read a few books, go to a gallery or something.’
Thorne had watched a lot of daytime television.
Even before Javed Akhtar’s wife had got busy with the storeroom scissors, Thorne had known he was likely to end up facing disciplinary action of some kind. Once Prosser had bled like a stuck pig all over last week’s Daily Express and TV Quick there had been no question about it, but Thorne would almost certainly have been in big trouble anyway, just for taking him in there.
‘There was always going to be some wrist-slapping,’ Brigstocke had told him. ‘Just for the way you did it. I know it’s stupid and you didn’t have a lot of choice, and I know that his being a judge should have bugger all to do with anything, but there you go. You might still have got away with it, but chuck in this business with the warrant and you’re properly stuffed.’ Brigstocke had at least looked genuinely upset, was genuinely upset, but it had not made it any easier to hear. ‘I’ve gone out on a limb for you before, Tom, you know I have, but not this time. Nothing I can do to help you, mate.’
In the end, the illegal search of Jonathan Bridges’ flat had put the tin lid on it and by the time the dust had settled, at least three different DPS teams had worked themselves into something of a frenzy. Whatever else happened, Thorne was determined to find out which job-pissed arse-licker had grassed him up about the warrant. To make his displeasure plain and painful. He knew, were this to happen before the brass had decided his fate, that it would not be doing his cause a great deal of good, but such things could not be helped.
Might as well be hung for a sheep as a judge.
Thorne lay listening to the birds getting louder and remembering the look Antoine Daniels had given him earlier that day, hinting at a revenge of his own.
Then I’d definitely lose my nice fancy room.
Plenty of people had lost a great deal more than that.
Stephen Mitchell, Denise Mitchell, Peter Allen.
Javed Akhtar…
