‘Little shitehawk like Bridges,’ Kitson said. ‘He comes into a decent amount of money, he’s got to start spending it somewhere. Right?’
Thorne thanked them for their help. He told them to get back to the office and start chasing, but it was hard to summon much enthusiasm. He knew very well that nothing they had suggested would give him what he needed quickly enough, and as he followed Holland and Kitson out of the flat, Thorne could feel the excitement that had seized him only an hour before leaking from his body with every step.
The rush dissipating.
His mobile sang in his pocket and he answered it as he reached the pavement.
‘I can’t quite see what was so bloody important,’ Hendricks said. ‘Peter Allen was a textbook diamorphine overdose, end of story. Someone who’d never used, that amount of heroin could have killed him twice over. He was probably dead a minute or so after he was shot up.’
‘So definitely not self-inflicted, then?’
‘No chance, mate. No signs of previous intravenous drug use, plus the needle went into his right arm and he was almost certainly right-handed, so unless he was some kind of circus freak-’
‘How can you tell that?’ Thorne asked.
‘The hair.’
‘Come again?’
‘Ninety-five per cent of right-handers have hair that grows clockwise from the crown. Another riveting seminar, that was.’
Thorne watched as Holland and Kitson walked towards the squad car at the end of the street. They were deep in conversation and he could guess what it was about. Who it was about.
‘Doesn’t mean it wasn’t an accident though,’ Hendricks said. ‘Somebody does it for the first time, they often get someone else to do it for them. If his mate was already out of it, he could easily have got the dosage wrong.’
Thorne knew this was true, but explained that a mate who had accidentally given Allen an overdose was unlikely to have wiped everything down afterwards.
‘So none of this is news then, right? You knew it was murder before they took the body away.’
‘I needed it confirmed officially, so I could go after the man responsible.’
Hendricks laughed. ‘You’re so full of it.’
‘Yeah, well, time’s not exactly on my side on this one.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘I think this is the kid that gave Amin the overdose.’
There was a pause. ‘I said that, didn’t I? I said it was one of the other prisoners.’
‘He was just a willing pair of hands,’ Thorne said. ‘Someone set it all up, showed him what to do.’
‘I take it you’ve not caught him yet then?’
‘He’s done a runner,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re staying on it, but I’m not holding my breath, so now I really need to know how Amin was given that overdose. No pressure or anything.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I still need to check a couple of things-’
‘I’m getting desperate here, Phil.’ Thorne watched as a panda car turned fast into the street, swerved past the squad car just as Holland and Kitson were about to reach it. He saw them turn to watch as the panda came to a halt a few feet shy of where he was standing. An Asian WPC got out and began walking towards him.
He told Hendricks that he would call him later and hung up.
‘I’m looking for DI Thorne?’
‘Me,’ Thorne said.
The WPC nodded back towards the panda car. ‘Someone who wants to talk to you,’ she said. ‘He rang 999, and when he gave them your name they patched it through to a temporary incident room in Tulse Hill. You know, this siege?’
Thorne nodded.
‘It’s taken us a while to track you down.’
Thorne walked up to the car and peered in through the back window. He opened the door, felt the excitement flood back into him as Rahim Jaffer climbed nervously out.
FORTY-NINE
Sue Pascoe was feeling less in control of the situation with every hour that passed. Mid-afternoon on the third day, she would normally have had some sense of how events were likely to pan out. At the very least she would have felt a little more… connected, as though her own role in proceedings was part of an agreed and well-orchestrated strategy.
Normally…
Who was she kidding?
She sat in the small room behind the stage with coffee and sandwiches and reminded herself that she could slide back in behind a nice tidy desk any time she wanted ‘normal’. That it was its unpredictability that had attracted her to hostage negotiation in the first place. The training was vital, of course it was, but once you got out of the classroom, when it came down to the business end of things with guns pointed at heads, the job was all about reacting. Circumstances changed whenever moods did, so it was important to be flexible and to think on your feet.
That’s what kept people alive and got her own heart beating that little bit faster.
She looked across at Chivers on the other side of the table. He crammed half a sandwich into his mouth then washed it down noisily with a slurp of black coffee. He reached for another one and took a bite without looking at it. The process seemed to be about nothing but taking on fuel.
Keeping his strength up. Staying ready for it.
‘Obviously we’re all hoping it doesn’t come to that,’ Chivers kept saying. ‘If and when’ and ‘worst case scenario’, but Pascoe was becoming increasingly convinced that the CO19 man would go home disappointed if he did not get a chance to draw his weapon.
One of his weapons.
Still chewing, Chivers glanced up and nodded. Pascoe quickly looked down at her coffee, watched the creamy globs of powdered milk floating on the surface.
She thought about Tom Thorne.
Usually, the lack of operational predictability stemmed from whatever was happening on the inside. The delicate relationship between hostage and hostage taker, a flash of temper, a sudden tumble into depression. A host of dreadful possibilities and acceptable outcomes. This time though, what was happening on the outside felt every bit as uncertain, as impossible to second-guess, as what was going on behind those scarred metal shutters. There was simply no way to exercise any degree of control or to impose order, when so much seemed to depend on a single copper charging around like a nutcase and hoping to get lucky.
It was rapidly becoming clear that however things turned out, it would have as much to do with Tom Thorne as it did with Javed Akhtar.
Either capable of ending it.
Each with as great a potential for chaos as the other.
‘Nice job,’ Chivers said, suddenly.
Pascoe looked up. Chivers was wiping his mouth with a paper serviette. ‘Sorry?’
‘Just wanted to say. Nice job you’re doing with Akhtar. And with Weeks.’
Pascoe nodded. Bloody hell, was this another one who thought she needed bolstering up somehow? Did he actually think she might like him a bit more if he chucked a pointless compliment or two her way? Or was he trying it on, same as Donnelly had done? Even as she contemplated this last horrific possibility, she knew she was being ridiculous, that Chivers was probably the sort who lived alone and would go home to a cold shower having happily rubbed himself against pictures of some really shiny guns in Massive Weapons monthly. She watched him toss the crumpled serviette back on to the table and hesitated. Saying nothing might come across as unnecessarily antagonistic and ‘Thanks’ would sound a little too grateful.
She said, ‘Cheers,’ and turned as Donnelly came into the room.
‘So, where are we?’ Chivers asked.
‘Getting there,’ Donnelly said.
The Silver Commander had spent the last half-hour in the back of the mobile TSU suite parked up next to Teapot One, being briefed by officers and civilian technicians on their progress thus far. He now explained how an initial survey had made it clear the hostages were being held at the rear of the newsagent’s, in a small room used primarily for storage. Access had been gained to the premises next door – a dry cleaner’s with largely the same layout – from where they were now proposing to establish audio monitoring of the storeroom via the adjoining wall.