‘Well you’re wrong,’ Hendricks said. ‘The most common time is around four o’clock in the afternoon. If you’re interested, March, April and May are the favourite months for suicides and the most popular method worldwide is hanging, except in America obviously where they tend to prefer guns. It’s also cobblers that suicide is more common among young people than old people and that more people kill themselves at Christmas. It’s actually below average.’ He popped what was left of the bhaji into his mouth. ‘I went to a seminar.’
‘Course you did,’ Thorne said. ‘So I suppose there’s no point me mentioning the absence of a suicide note is there?’
‘Less than twenty per cent leave a note,’ Hendricks said. ‘I’m not really helping, am I?’
Thorne let out a noisy breath. ‘He had no motive, Phil. Nothing at all. His appeal was going well and every person who saw him said he was full of the joys of spring.’
‘People who are depressed can be pretty good at putting up a front. I’ve seen you do it.’
Thorne shook his head. ‘These were people who knew him, OK? His father, his lawyer, his friend. And what reason did he have to be depressed in the first place?’ He pointed down at the report on Hendricks’ lap. ‘Forget about the pills for a minute, OK? As far as I can make out, this whole “suicidal state of mind” thing seems to stand or fall on the knife attack and the idea that he was raped, so I need you to tell me if what it says in there is conclusive.’
Hendricks sighed theatrically and turned to the appropriate page in the report. He read, while Thorne waited and Willie Nelson sang in a cracked, world-weary voice about a preacher crying like a baby.
‘OK, so the word “rape” isn’t actually used,’ Hendricks said. ‘But we just record what we find when we examine the body, so that doesn’t mean a great deal. It’s not a pathologist’s job to draw conclusions from this stuff… Come on, you know all this.’
‘Yeah, I know. Now shut up and draw a conclusion for me, would you?’
Hendricks read on. ‘There’s clear evidence that the boy had been sodomised,’ he said.
‘No semen though, right?’
‘Rapists do know about DNA. A lot of them wear condoms.’
‘In prison?’
‘There are some signs of internal tearing and some damage to the soft tissues… ’
‘Does that rule out the possibility that it was consensual though?’
‘Consensual or not, it was certainly… aggressive.’
‘Is it possible that this was not rape?’
Hendricks thought about it. ‘Well, if you’re suggesting this was the result of sex with a regular partner, then I suppose it’s feasible his boyfriend was hung like a donkey. Or maybe he just liked it rough.’ He smiled. ‘Some of us do, you know?’
‘Too much information, Phil.’
‘Yeah, OK… it’s possible. But-’
‘Right,’ Thorne said. ‘Well, there’s your motive for suicide shot to shit.’
Hendricks glanced down to see if there were any more leftovers he liked the look of, then swung his legs up on to the sofa and lay back. ‘So where’s your motive for murder, smartarse?’
Thorne reached across and tore off a piece of nan bread. ‘I don’t have all the answers.’
‘Don’t have any of them as far as I can see.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s where I stupidly thought you might be able to help.’
‘It’s a radical idea, I know,’ Hendricks said, ‘but evidence might be a good place to start. You’ve got bugger all on the CCTV.’
‘Because whoever did this knew how to stay clear of the cameras. It’s not difficult to do. I checked.’
‘OK, what about the lack of prints on that cup the pills were supposed to have been in?’
‘Easy enough to get plastic gloves in a hospital wing, I would have thought.’
‘You should do this for a living,’ Hendricks said.
‘Those pills were given to him.’ Thorne tossed the bread back on to the plate. ‘No question.’
‘And you don’t think that might be down to this Antoine kid?’
‘Antoine loved him.’
‘Enough to help him kill himself, maybe?’
Thorne shook his head. ‘It’s got to be someone who was in the hospital wing. Someone with access to that DDA cabinet.’
‘One of the other patients?’
‘No chance.’ Thorne had not bothered talking to any of those boys who had been patients on the night Amin was killed. He knew that some would have been released by now anyway and that he would get no more out of those who were still serving sentences than Dawes had done.
That he would only have been wasting time he did not have.
‘Think about why Amin was in hospital in the first place,’ Thorne said. ‘If these kids want to hurt someone, they do it with fists or homemade knives. The lid off a tin of peaches. They don’t bother getting elaborate. Anyway, this had to be someone with keys.’
‘What about that PHO? I mean she conveniently saw nothing when she checked his room.’
‘She’s first on the list.’
‘Still can’t see a motive though.’
They said nothing for a few minutes. The album finished, but Thorne did not bother getting up to change it. He had stayed off the beer in case he needed to get somewhere in a hurry, but Hendricks climbed off the sofa and went into the kitchen to fetch himself another can.
‘Actually, I reckon the pills are your biggest problem,’ he said, coming back.
‘Why?’
‘You ever tried giving people tablets against their will? Ever tried giving a cat a fucking tablet?’
‘Amin was half asleep,’ Thorne said. ‘Already drugged up.’
‘Even harder to do it. Look, even if we accept the possibility that someone gave him that overdose, I honestly don’t see how they could have done it. They’d have needed thirty, forty of those tablets at least, and there’s no way they could have got them down Amin’s throat without causing one hell of a bloody racket. Whoever did it would have needed to get in and out fast, right?’
‘Yeah, before the patients were checked again.’
Hendricks shook his head. ‘No way it could have been done that quickly. Sorry, Tom.’
Thorne said, ‘Shit,’ closed his eyes and let his head fall back.
‘Look-’
‘There’s got to be a way,’ Thorne said. ‘The man who’s holding Helen Weeks is not going to want to listen to anything else. I can’t go back there with nothing. I can’t just say, “I think you’re right, will that do you? Yeah, your son probably was murdered, but God knows why or by who and there’s no way I can prove it anyway, so why don’t you stop pissing about and put the gun away?” I can’t… do that, all right, Phil?’
The look on Hendricks’ face made it clear he could see there was no point arguing. Not when Thorne was in this mood. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a think about it.’
‘Well, think fast.’
‘Calm down, mate, I’ve got the message.’ Hendricks opened his beer. ‘You concentrate on who and why, all right?’ He took a swig. ‘I’ll try and figure out how.’
When Hendricks had gone, Thorne sat down at his laptop and saw that an email had arrived from Ian McCarthy. The doctor apologised for not getting the information Thorne had asked for to him sooner. Said that he had been swamped all afternoon. He gave him the name of the prison hospital officer who had been suspended, an address in Potters Bar. He told him that, having checked in the DDA book, he could confirm that sixty Tramadol tablets had been stolen from the dispensary the day after Amin Akhtar had been admitted.
Thorne closed the laptop and heard himself say, ‘That’s very bloody convenient.’
He called the RVP.
Donnelly told him everything there was quiet. That the overnight team would be coming on at 11.30 and that Pascoe had scheduled another call to the newsagent’s in an hour, just before the handover.
The overnight team…
A fresh set of officers was vital of course, Thorne understood that. A new SIO, a wide-awake hostage negotiator and, crucially, a unit of firearms officers with eight hours’ rest behind them. He hoped that the man or woman leading them was a little less excitable than Chivers.