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 remotest idea what her husband got up to in his spare time.
McCarthy waited for ten, fifteen seconds after the door had closed. ‘I thought the whole thing was stupid,’ he said. ‘Worse than stupid.’
‘By “the whole thing”, you mean killing Amin Akhtar.’
The doctor nodded, slowly. ‘It was all so… unnecessary.’
Just the man’s choice of word made Thorne want to kick his face off, but he bit back the impulse, let him continue.
‘Amin showed no sign whatsoever that he recognized me. Nothing, not a glimmer of it, in all those months. So why anyone else thought they might have been recognized, I don’t know.’
‘Anyone else meaning one man in particular.’
McCarthy nodded.
‘He didn’t want to take any chances,’ Thorne said.
‘I told the other two what I thought, that there was absolutely no need to take such a pointless risk, but my opinion clearly didn’t carry the same weight as… some other people’s.’
‘And Simon Powell was happy enough to go along with it.’
‘Not happy, exactly,’ McCarthy said. ‘Nobody was happy about it. But yes.’
Thorne thought about the man who, by the sound of it, had been orchestrating the trio’s activities, both before and after the killing of Amin Akhtar. Who had led a conspiracy to murder first one boy, then another whose help had been enlisted in the killing of the first. Who was clearly a great believer in covering his tracks. Once again, Thorne asked himself what the chances were of finding Jonathan Bridges alive.
Did this man simply believe that he had that much more to lose than his friends? Or was he just that much more inhuman?
‘When was the last time you talked to him?’ Thorne asked.
McCarthy hesitated. ‘Last night.’
‘And when were you planning to see him next?’ He saw the answer in McCarthy’s face. ‘Tonight? That’s what’s messing up wifey’s plans for dinner, is it?’
‘There’s a party.’
McCarthy had only whispered it, but Thorne heard it loud and clear. There it was, the piece of luck that he was long overdue. He could not keep the grin from his face. ‘Is Powell going as well?’
‘I don’t think so,’ McCarthy said. ‘Some of the parties, there’s a different crowd.’
‘Well don’t worry, I’ll make up the numbers.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll tag along as your “plus one”.’
McCarthy shook his head. ‘No.’
Thorne dropped the jovial tone. ‘Maybe we should just get your wife back in here, see what she thinks. Maybe she’d like to come along as well.’
McCarthy began to squeeze his hand again, muttered, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck… ’
‘I don’t know why you’re so scared,’ Thorne said. ‘Because as things stand right this minute, I’m the one you need to be afraid of. You clear about that, Ian?’
McCarthy looked up. The smallest nod.
‘Good. Glad we’ve got that sorted.’ Thorne sat back and spread his arms along the back of the sofa. ‘Like I said, been ages since I went to a decent party.’ He took a sip of coffee and grinned. ‘Might be quite an adventure.’
FIFTY-NINE
Kim Yates looked up from his ‘extra-fiendish’ sudoku and glanced across at the woman sitting a few feet away. She was concentrating on the same puzzle in her own puzzle book. He looked at his watch. He and Annette Williams had been working together as technicians for almost a year now, but it did not look as though either of them was likely to beat their personal best on this occasion.