SEVENTY-THREE

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.