‘What sort of stuff?’
He shrugged. ‘CDs, computer games, watches.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Maybe.’ Automatic caution.
I stared at Luke. ‘Listen, Luke…’
‘OK,’ he said. I didn’t need to finish my little speech about complete honesty. Luke recognised his mistake.
‘Yeah, he could get most things – dope, E, whizz.’
‘For you?’
‘Sometimes, for parties, not on a regular basis. Well, only dope as a regular thing.’
‘Did you all smoke dope?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And the rest? Whizz, E?’
‘Yeah, the weekend or parties like I said. Everyone does it, it’s not a problem.’
I nodded. ‘OK, so Joey D was there. Who else?’
‘Zeb, Ahktar’s cousin, and Emma.’
‘He’s at school with you?’
He smiled briefly. ‘No, he’s older, he works for his brother Janghir. They all call him Jay. Clothing business. They’ve a place up Cheetham Hill.’
‘And when you got inside, what did you do?’
He thought about it. ‘We went to the big room downstairs. We had a drink. We had a dance. It was livening up. Zeb had brought Ahktar this jacket he’d been after for ages. Canadian import, can’t get them here. Really nice jacket, silk and microfibre, black and yellow. Weighs nothing, really warm. They use them up in the Arctic. Anyway Zeb has one and Ahktar had paid him cash upfront back in the summer. It was getting hot but Ahktar, he won’t take this jacket off.’ He smiled. ‘Everyone-took a tab. Everyone was dancing.’
‘Who did you get it from?’
‘Joey. He’d gone off to sort it soon as we got in there.’
‘Go on.’
‘That’s it. There was lots of stuff going round – pills, some heavy dope. Everyone was trying it all.’
‘Including you?’
He nodded. ‘I can’t remember anything else, not till…after. Someone said they were going to turn the sprinklers on at midnight, cool everyone down for New Year but I think that was just a rumour.’
‘Do you remember leaving the club?’
‘No.’
‘Do you remember anything outside the club?’
‘I’ve tried, there’s nothing.’
‘Do you remember going to the police station?’
He studied his hands. ‘No. The next thing I knew I was waking up, I was cold, I was shaking. There was blood all over my T-shirt and my hands. I thought I’d had a nosebleed.’ He looked at me. ‘It wasn’t my blood, it was Ahktar’s. They asked me all these questions then. I couldn’t tell them anything. They just kept on about Ahktar, what had we argued about? I couldn’t remember anything. In the end, I lost it. I shouted at him: “I can’t fucking remember! Why don’t you ask Ahktar?” One of them stared at me, hard. “We can’t,” he said, “he’s dead.”
I spent another half-hour talking to Luke, going over details, checking names and addresses. I asked him about motives, too – who might have wanted to kill his friend? He hadn’t a clue. Ahktar was bright, popular but not cocky. He used drugs for fun like they all did, but he wasn’t involved in anything criminal. He was an ordinary eighteen-year-old studying for A levels, playing in a band. Just like Luke who was now accused of murder.
Before I left I took him back to the night at the club and asked him to think again of anything he could remember- familiar faces, funny moments, anything. He began to shake his head then hesitated.
‘Emma, Zeb’s girlfriend, she left early. They’d fallen out, I think.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘No, Zeb is a bit of a…’ I watched Luke struggle to find a word but there was only one would do.
‘Wanker?’ I supplied.
He blushed slightly. ‘Yeah, he goes to the casino, spends a fortune, then he’s borrowing. He’d borrow off Emma and she’d get really pissed off. She’s a nursery nurse, he makes more in a week than she earns in a month. Anyway, she went. And then I saw Zeb, looks like he’s giving Joey D a hard time.’
‘Borrowing money?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t hear, you couldn’t hear a thing unless someone yelled in your ear. But Zeb had Joey D by the collar and then Joey goes upstairs.’
‘At the time what did you think?’
‘Nothing. Well, Joey can be a pain and I thought Zeb was fed up because Emma had gone and maybe he was taking it out on Joey D. He never knows when to keep a low profile.’
‘Could it have been about drugs? You said Joey had supplied the stuff that night.’
