Thorne led Rahim away towards the main road and around the corner to a Turkish cafe he had driven past an hour or so before on his way to Bridges’ flat. The boy said nothing as they walked and Thorne was happy enough to let him. Happy enough to wait just a little longer. Thinking was what had finally driven Rahim Jaffer to pick up the phone and a few more minutes of it could not hurt.
Could only wind things up that little bit tighter.
Nothing spoken then and both kept their eyes on the pavement a few feet ahead, but all the way there Thorne was aware of Rahim breathing heavily next to him. A faint wheeze when he inhaled. As though he had just been running and urgently needed to suck in some strength.
The place was busy, noisy with chat and clatter from the kitchen, and Thorne ushered Rahim to a small table in the corner. A waiter followed them over. Rahim said that he was not hungry, but Thorne ordered for them both anyway; tuna mayonaise sandwiches and two cans of Coke. He looked across at Rahim who nodded, mumbled, ‘Thanks.’
‘You’ve got to eat,’ Thorne said. ‘ I’m bloody starving. Missed breakfast and that feels like almost a day ago.’
Rahim studied the tabletop.
Between them in the middle of the table, a wooden rack held the laminated menu. Thorne pushed it to one side, then slid the ketchup bottle and the salt and pepper out of the way. His view was clearer, but with a baseball cap pulled down low over the boy’s brow Thorne still had difficulty making any sort of eye contact. ‘Up and out to a murder scene at half past stupid, I was.’ He grimaced. ‘Not that a body first thing does a great deal for your appetite, mind you.’
‘Don’t,’ Rahim said, quietly. He raised his head.
‘What?’
‘Bang on about it. I got your message.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘I’m very glad you are.’
‘So… you know. You don’t need to…’
Thorne sat back and folded his arms as the drinks were laid down. The waiter popped the ring pulls then turned to an adjacent table. Thorne watched Rahim reach for a can.
‘What did you do?’
‘Sorry?’
‘ That.’
Thorne pointed and Rahim quickly drew the can closer, obscuring Thorne’s view of the sticking plaster across his wrist. He took a sip and shrugged, lowered his head again. ‘Accident,’ he said.
Thorne snatched a serviette from the dispenser and dabbed at the few drops Rahim had spilled. Looking around, he understood that the cafe was so busy because of the range of food it served. To one side of them, a large man squeezed into a shiny suit was making short work of a full English breakfast, while at another table a pair of young girls who might have been students picked at chicken salads. There was a Daily Specials board Thorne had not noticed before. He quite liked the sound of the Mediterranean omelette with feta and peppers, or the shepherd’s pie with spiced lamb, but despite what he had told Rahim he was not feeling particularly hungry.
It had felt better to do this somewhere informal, that was all. To try and take the pressure off a little. Better than talking on the street or in the back of a panda car.
‘Why did you call 999?’ Thorne asked.
‘I needed to get hold of you.’
‘I gave you my mobile number.’
‘I threw it away.’
‘So, why now?’
‘Because I was scared, just like you said.’ Rahim looked up and stabbed a finger at Thorne. ‘And don’t say sorry again, because you know very well that’s what you wanted.’
‘It was the only way to get you to do the right thing,’ Thorne said.
‘You didn’t think I would otherwise?’
‘Well, you hadn’t so far.’ Thorne lowered his voice and leaned in. ‘Come on, Rahim. You must have thought there was something dodgy about Amin’s death. Even when you thought it was suicide, right?’
Thorne watched the judder and lurch of the boy’s skinny chest, the rapid rise and fall visible even beneath the padded jacket he was wearing, and he saw tears welling at the corners of his eyes. Neither of them looked up as their food was laid in front of them and neither seemed inclined to touch it once the waiter had walked away.
On the pavement outside, a woman bent to slap a young child’s legs.
A few tables away, the girls eating the salad were laughing.
Thorne said, ‘Whatever it is you’ve come here to tell me, you need to get on with it.’
Rahim nodded and blinked slowly. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out an iPhone. He began to scroll through the menu.
‘What?’ Thorne said.
Rahim shook his head and pressed a few more buttons on the screen, then, when he had found what he was looking for, he laid the phone down on the table and slid it across to Thorne.
Thorne picked it up and was immediately looking at a photograph.
Decent quality, colour.
Three men.
They were standing close together, glasses in fists and arms on shoulders. A party. In the background there were others with drinks and smiles and a couple of men appeared to be dancing. There was a table with food.
Thorne glanced up. Rahim was looking away and nervously picking at the ring-pull on his can. Thorne pressed his finger and thumb to the screen, then eased them gently apart to enlarge the image of the group at the centre of the picture.
Three men…
They were all dressed similarly in open-necked shirts, though the one on the left was perhaps a few years older than the other two. The one in the middle and the one on the right both appeared to be laughing at something the one on the left had said. Having seen him so recently, Thorne recognised the man on the right straight away.
He grunted, felt a rush of anger, the breath heavy when he released it.
For obvious reasons, it took him just a little longer to identify the man on the left.
‘Jesus Christ… ’
‘Yeah,’ Rahim said. ‘You see?’
Thorne stared at the picture and struggled to put the pieces into some sort of order. He asked himself questions and tried to answer them. He teased out the tangles, made reasonable assumptions.
There was a ‘why’ now, all sorts of ‘whys’. Two-thirds of a ‘who’.
‘Is this Amin’s phone?’
‘Mine.’
‘You took the picture?’
‘Yeah, but Amin was there, at the party. He… went with one of those men. Not sure which.’
Thorne looked again. ‘Did they know about the picture?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Rahim said.
‘Are you sure, because it could all be about this.’ Thorne turned the phone round, held it up to Rahim’s face. ‘If they thought it was Amin who had taken it.’
‘They didn’t.’
‘Did Amin know about it?’
Rahim shook his head.
‘He could have been trying to blackmail someone-’
‘No way. Look, they didn’t even know I was taking it. See?’
Rahim pointed at the picture, and looking again, it seemed obvious enough to Thorne that the three men were not aware they were being photographed. That their focus was elsewhere.
Thorne turned the picture back towards Rahim and tapped a finger against the head of the older man on the left. The man it had taken him that bit longer to identify. ‘Did Amin recognise him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rahim said. ‘I never got the chance to ask him.’
‘ You did though.’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t know who he was back then, at the party?’
‘You never knew names or what anyone did,’ Rahim said. ‘Nothing like that. They were just punters, you know? And we were just… whatever we were.’
‘Must have been quite a shock when you saw him again.’
Rahim nodded, swallowed. ‘I thought I was going to throw up, you know? I didn’t know what to do, I just wanted to say what I had to say and get the hell out of there. I tried to forget about the whole thing. Then, when I found out what had happened to Amin, I figured it must have been connected.’
‘Connected is right,’ Thorne said. He stared down at the three men, their easy smiles, the arms draped across shoulders. ‘It’s all connected.’ He pointed to the man laughing in the middle of the picture. ‘Any idea who this one is?’
Rahim said he hadn’t. He pointed to the man on the right, another man he had not seen since the picture was taken and started to ask Thorne the same question.
‘Oh don’t worry,’ Thorne said. ‘I know exactly who this gentleman is.’
‘So which one of them killed Amin?’ Rahim asked.
Passing the table and seeing their food untouched, the waiter stopped to ask if everything was all right. Thorne said they were just in a hurry. He slipped the phone into his pocket and took fifteen pounds from his wallet to cover the bill.
‘I’ll organise a car home,’ Thorne said. ‘Do you need somebody to stay with you?’
‘I’m fine,’ Rahim said.
Thorne pushed his chair away from the table, caught another glimpse of the plaster on the boy’s wrist. Said, ‘Let’s do it anyway. For me, all right?’