Buried Read online

  ‘Can’t say I disagree.’

  ‘But I’ll get Holland or someone to track down the other two who were on that panel. Might as well keep it tidy.’

  ‘I had you down as a messy fucker.’

  ‘Only when I can’t find anybody else to clean things up.’

  ‘So which of our white-hot leads do you fancy having a crack at next?’ Porter asked. ‘There are so many, I just can’t make my mind up.’

  ‘Why don’t we have a look at the sister?’

  Porter stopped, began rummaging around in her bag. ‘But you just said—’

  ‘Freestone’s not a kidnapper, but something won’t let me leave it alone.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘The fact that Tony Mullen never mentioned him.’

  She produced a half-eaten tube of mints and dug one out. ‘It couldn’t hurt to go back via Arkley,’ she said.

  They stepped out into a square that was thicker with people, as the rush hour started to take hold; and darker, as the day began to dim, running out of breath while those hurrying through the streets at the arse-end of their nine, ten or more hours got a second wind.

  Walking past the huge statue of Abraham Lincoln, Porter pointed back to the windows on the third floor of the Guildhall. ‘His office was fucking horrible,’ she said. ‘Did you see the damp? And the mousetrap by the filing cabinet? I’d go mental working somewhere like that all day.’

  Thorne said nothing, thinking she did work somewhere like that. All of them did, spending endless hours in other people’s houses and shitty little offices. TV shows were fond of showing coppers, and those they needed to speak to, strolling slowly through the crowd at noisy dog tracks, arguing in meat markets, or blowing cigarette smoke at each other across empty warehouses in the early hours.

  It was all about atmosphere, apparently . . .

  But the truth was over-lit and dirty-white. It sounded like the hum of distant traffic and felt sticky against the soles of your shoes. It smelled of old blood or fresh bullshit, and no amount of gasometer-filled skylines was going to make it gritty. The atmosphere – in sweltering front rooms and shitty little offices – could make your guts jump for sure, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention, but truthfully, it was rarely one of menace. Or of danger.

  Watching people sob, and rant, and lie. Watching them tremble and gulp down grief.

  It was more like embarrassment.

  When he stepped off the bus, he looked pretty thrilled with himself; as though his journey home had been a riot of well-told jokes and stirring tales of sporting success. Yvonne Kitson was pleased to see that one look at who was waiting to meet him seemed to change the young man’s mood in an instant. Pissing on Adrian Farrell’s chips made her a very happy woman.

  ‘Good day at school, Adrian?’

  Farrell looked straight through her. He ignored the shouts and the waves of friends banging on the windows of the bus as it moved off and passed him.

  ‘Did you have history today? I remember you said that was your favourite.’ Kitson was talking on the move now, walking quickly to catch up as Farrell marched through spiky blots of shadow, cast by the trees planted every twenty feet or so along the broad pavement. ‘Got anything planned for the weekend? After you’ve got your homework out of the way, obviously . . .’

  Farrell slowed a little, but he kept on walking, hitched his grey regulation rucksack a little higher on his shoulder.

  ‘What sort of thing do you and your mates get up to on a Saturday night? My kids are still a bit younger than you, so I’ve really got no idea what goes on, except that I’ve got it all to look forward to. The taxi-service stuff, I mean.’ She was ten, twelve feet behind him. ‘Pub? Clubbing? What?’

  Despite their pace, they were moving relatively slowly past a row of detached houses, many of them set back a long way from the road and some with gated drives. Kitson had to quicken her step to get the other side of a Jeep that reversed across the pavement without a great deal of attention.

  ‘That student who was kicked to death. Remember, I told you about him?’ Kitson said. ‘He was killed on a Saturday night. Saturday, October the seventeenth last year. I’m sure you can’t remember exactly what you were doing that night, but I bet you were enjoying yourself, whatever you were up to . . .’

  Farrell didn’t stop dead, but he slowed to a standstill within a pace or two. He mumbled something as he turned, raised his arms and let them slap back down against his legs. It was a remarkably childish gesture of frustration and annoyance.

  ‘Good,’ Kitson said, as she drew close to him. ‘Not that I couldn’t have kept up with you all day long. Chasing after three kids keeps you pretty bloody fit.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Farrell said. ‘I talk to someone about this boy in the year below me who’s gone missing. I answer a couple of questions. Next thing I know I’m getting hassled for no good reason.’

  ‘Nobody’s hassling you.’

  ‘Right. So nobody’s following me into the precinct in the lunch-hour? You’re not turning up outside my house after school, telling me about your kids?’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about my kids.’

  ‘Really?’

  A jogger came past, his face twisted into a grimace, as though the song on the iPod he had strapped to his arm was particularly tuneless.

  ‘I just wondered if you’d remembered anything else about Amin Latif,’ Kitson said. ‘Perhaps something came back to you.’

  Farrell’s expression was one Kitson knew well. He looked irritated, inconvenienced perhaps, as though he were being kept from some important TV show he really needed to watch. ‘In terms of what, exactly? Have I remembered which hymn we sang in assembly?’

  ‘Anything at all. Me talking to you about it might have helped you recall something that had slipped your mind.’

  ‘It might have been “To be a Pilgrim”.’

  ‘How long have you known Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson?’ The two boys Farrell had been with in the shopping precinct the day before.

  ‘Are we changing the subject?’

  ‘I didn’t think we were getting very far with the other one.’

  ‘A few months, I suppose.’

  ‘Six months?’

  ‘Did I know them on October 17th last year, you mean?’

  ‘That’s as good a date as any.’

  Farrell nodded, understanding, and raised his eyes as though racking his brains. After a few seconds he snapped his fingers, grinned and pointed at Kitson. ‘I think it was “Immortal Invisible, God Only Wise”,’ he said. ‘I knew it would come to me.’

  The urge to lay hands on him was getting harder and harder to ignore. Kitson pointed to the school crest, embroidered on the pocket of Farrell’s blazer. ‘What’s it say on the badge, Adrian? What’s the motto?’

  ‘I’m really shit at Latin,’ he said. ‘Sorry . . .’

  She reached slowly into her bag, took out a piece of paper. ‘So, without wishing to labour the point, we’ve established that the name Amin Latif doesn’t really mean very much to you. Yes?’

  ‘Not a great deal, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘What about Nabeel Khan?’

  A shrug. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s funny.’ Kitson unfolded the piece of paper, turned it the right way up. ‘Because he seems to know you. See?’

  Farrell looked at the picture and the impatience suddenly gave way to panic, then genuine anger. He pulled the heavy bag from his shoulder, let it drop, and swung it back and forth in front of him. ‘I’m not sure what you think that proves.’

  ‘I’m not sure it proves anything,’ Kitson said. ‘I just thought your parents might like to put one in a frame. Pop it on the piano.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing more without a solicitor present.’

  ‘Fine. Come to the station with me and we can organise one.’

  ‘We already have one.’

  For a second or two, Kit
son wasn’t certain who ‘we’ were. She wondered if Farrell meant himself and his friends. Then she realised he was talking about his family. ‘Whatever you like,’ she said.

  ‘Are you arresting me?’

  ‘Do I need to?’

  ‘Definitely.’ A twitch at the edge of the mouth; an aborted smile. ‘If you want to talk to me again, I mean. I think that you aren’t arresting me because, whatever you’ve convinced yourself I’ve done – and you’ve given me some fairly major clues – you don’t have any evidence whatsoever to back your ideas up. None at all. I think you’re worried, with fairly good reason, that if you did arrest me, you’d only end up giving yourself unnecessary paperwork. That all you’d have caused by the end of it was huge inconvenience to other people, and a lot of professional embarrassment personally. Is that about right?’

  Kitson said nothing.

  ‘This is lame.’ He jabbed a finger at the E-fit. ‘It’s borderline mental, if you want to know what I really think.’ If Farrell had lost his composure, it had been for only a few seconds; it never seemed to be any longer than that. ‘Come to mention it, have you ever shown me any identification? How do I know you’re who you say you are? You might be some kind of nutter.’

  Kitson stared at him: the wide eyes, the bag still swinging, like he couldn’t decide what socks to wear. ‘I think you should go home now,’ she said. ‘You should fuck off indoors to Mummy and Daddy, and have your tea.’

  The shock at Kitson’s language might have been genuine, might have been another mask. Having lost her own composure, she was suddenly finding him hard to read. Either way, Farrell didn’t need a second invitation to turn on his heel.

  He walked for fifty or so yards, then moved to the edge of the pavement and waited to cross. He looked left, then right and held it, making sure that Kitson was still looking at him. Thinking about it later, Kitson imagined that she saw that nice, polite smile again, just for a moment, before he hawked a ball of phlegm on to the pavement and jogged across the road.

  As Kitson reached the spot where Farrell had crossed, a woman standing behind a large wooden gate caught her eye. She wore a green velour tracksuit and full make-up, and stooped to empty bottles from a plastic bag into the recycling bin at the end of her drive. The woman nodded towards where Adrian Farrell had disappeared round the corner. ‘Dirty little sod,’ she said. ‘I would have been belted by a copper for that in my day. Not that you can find one of those buggers when you need one now . . .’

  Kitson didn’t answer. Just continued to stare down at the spit. Shiny, grey-green against the concrete.

  The security light above the garage came on, and Maggie Mullen answered the front door as though she had been waiting on the other side of it. Her eyes moved quickly from Thorne to Porter. Seeing little need for concern, or relief, she waved them inside, through a curtain of cigarette smoke, then stared into the darkness that squatted beyond the bleed of yellow light, as if she were waiting for stragglers.

  On their way along the hall, Thorne and Porter exchanged a word with Kenny Parsons, who emerged from the kitchen clutching a tabloid and a ballpoint pen. Their visit was unexpected and he searched their faces for news much as Maggie Mullen had done; and much as her husband did when they walked into the living room.

  Mullen tossed a paperback on to the chair behind him. ‘Do you want coffee or something?’

  Thorne shook his head. Porter said no, that it was fine.

  ‘Been a long day.’

  Thorne wasn’t sure if Mullen was referring to the day that had crawled past for himself and his family or to the one that the officers on the case had endured. Either way, there was little reason to argue.

  Mullen sat down on the arm of the sofa. His wife came back into the room, walked past him to an armchair, grabbing cigarettes and ashtray from the mantelpiece as she went. ‘I hope you’re finishing better than you started,’ Mullen said. ‘That certain people have taken their heads from out their arses.’

  ‘Sir?’ Porter lowered her bag to the floor.

  ‘I’m presuming the idea that my son’s murdered anybody has been kicked into fucking touch where it belongs. Yes?’

  Now it was clear to Thorne that Mullen knew exactly how long a day it had been for everybody. He was plugged into the investigation just as much as the officers working it. Thorne wondered how many times a day he spoke to Jesmond, or called one of his other old mates, to get the inside track.

  ‘There was evidence which had to be looked at seriously,’ Porter said.

  ‘Prints on a knife?’

  Thorne decided that people were probably calling Mullen. He was being updated as comprehensively as if he were the SIO.

  ‘That’s enough to make you seriously believe that my son has gone from kidnap victim to some kind of killer on the run, is it? If that’s what you’re telling me, I’m seriously starting to doubt that the right people are on this.’

  There was something like a sigh, something like a sob, from the armchair. Mrs Mullen was staring at the Chinese rug, as if she were mesmerised by the dragons and the bridges. Her hands were clasped in front of her and cigarette smoke rose straight up into her face.

  ‘It’s not what we think,’ Thorne said. He spoke towards Mrs Mullen, the ‘we’ used as though he were talking about everyone on the case; though, in truth, he could vouch only for those in the room at that moment.

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’ Mullen walked across to Thorne, dropped a heavy hand on to his shoulder and let it rest. Both Thorne and Porter were given the benefit of a thin and not entirely convincing smile, before Mullen turned and went back to his perch on the arm of the sofa. It had been a strange moment: a gesture of solidarity perhaps, or gratitude, or something else entirely. All Thorne had understood was the booze he could smell on the man, and he began to hear the faintest trace of it, when Mullen spoke again.

  ‘We need to move forward,’ he said. ‘Work out who contracted Allen and his girlfriend to do this. Why Luke was taken. We’ve got bodies now, and you can always get something from bodies, right?’

  ‘We’ve been talking to people who knew Grant Freestone today,’ Thorne said.

  Mullen blinked.

  Thorne spotted the movement and turned to see Maggie Mullen’s arm move towards the ashtray; watched as an inch or more of ash dropped on to the rug. She didn’t bend to brush it up.

  ‘Well, some heads are obviously still up arses,’ Mullen said. He was smiling but angry. ‘A long way up.’

  ‘Why didn’t you give us Freestone’s name when we asked you for the “grudge” list?’ Porter said.

  ‘God knows. I probably should have done, thinking about it. But I was hardly thinking straight, was I?’

  ‘What kind of threats did he make against you?’ Thorne walked across the rug and sat on the sofa.

  ‘The usual. He was “going to get me”. I was “going to be sorry”. Stuff you’ve heard a dozen times. I was certainly no more worried about him than I was about the others on that list.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘What about them? Cotterill and Quinn? Have you eliminated them?’

  Thorne and Porter had not heard back from Holland and his partner, nor from Heeney and Stone. ‘Not as yet.’

  ‘There you are, then. So why are you wasting so much time and energy on a pointless prick like Freestone?’

  ‘Just trying to move forward,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Jesus . . .’

  Porter opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Do you think this man kidnapped Luke?’ The question came from Maggie Mullen.

  All heads turned towards her.

  ‘No, of course he doesn’t.’ Mullen stood and moved behind the sofa, looked hard at Thorne. ‘Not unless he’s one chromosome short of a special parking permit.’

  Porter cleared her throat, but again failed to follow it up with anything. Thorne could feel Mullen’s fingers digging into the back of the sofa behind him.

  Mrs Mullen leaned down to stub out her c
igarette, then looked up, smiling. ‘Let’s have some coffee,’ she said. ‘Who wants one?’

  ‘I already offered,’ Mullen snapped.

  ‘Well, what about a glass of wine, then? Have you finished that bottle you opened when we had dinner?’

  The colour was rising in Mullen’s face. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be so stupid. I put it back in the—’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ Her voice was jagged, but her expression, and the finger she pointed, were fixed and severe. ‘Like I’m a piece of shit.’

  A few moments later, when Maggie Mullen flipped open the top of the cigarette packet again, Thorne dragged his eyes away and tried to find Porter’s, but she was concentrating hard on those dragons and bridges.

  More like embarrassment . . .

  ELEVEN

  The privileged few taking advantage of the Friday night lock-in at the Royal Oak were much the same as any other gathering of social, semi-serious or hardcore drinkers, save for there being one or two more women, fewer black and Asian faces, and the fact that the vast majority were carrying warrant cards.The Oak was an unofficial social club for anyone working at Colindale Station, or up the road at the Peel Centre, and though not a particularly attractive or friendly boozer, it had the advantage of being close, which was deemed more important than smiles or quiz nights. It also happened to be among those pubs less likely than some to be raided for after-hours drinking.

  Thorne and Porter stared briefly into their own bit of space over pints of Guinness and lager-top. Letting the beer work at some of the rougher edges. Giving the tiredness elbow room.

  ‘You reckon Mullen drinks that much normally?’ Porter asked.

  Thorne shook his head and swallowed. ‘No idea. Same with her and the fags. Can’t blame either of them for needing a bit of help, though, considering.’

  By the time they had got back to Becke House from the Mullens’ place, written up the work, been taken through a debrief and discussed the following day, it was after midnight. It was shaping up into an eighteen- or nineteen-hour tour, door to door, and though most of the team would be on again before the sun was up, the majority had decided that unwinding over a beer or two was worth an hour’s sleep.