Buried Read online

  ‘The average sixteen-year-old doesn’t get kidnapped,’ Holland said.

  ‘It’s all a touch too neat and tidy.’ Parsons made a face, as if the very notion were somehow distasteful. ‘And I wouldn’t put a lot of money on finding any wank-mags under the bed.’ He stopped as he saw Holland’s expression change, and turned to see the girl standing in the doorway. ‘Juliet . . .’

  Holland had no way of knowing how long Juliet Mullen had been standing outside the door, how much of their conversation she’d overheard. He couldn’t tell if her manner and the tone of her voice were because she was angry with them or upset about what had happened to her brother, or simply down to the fact that she was an average fourteen-year-old.

  The girl half turned to go, then nodded towards the tray and spoke casually, as if she were insulting them in code: ‘I’ll have tea. Milk and two.’

  ‘What time does your post come?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What time in the morning? Mine’s all over the bloody place. It’s any time before lunchtime, really, and stuff gets lost right, left and centre.’

  If Tony Mullen knew where Thorne was going, he showed no sign of it. ‘Between eight and nine, usually. I don’t see—’

  ‘Your wife said that she stopped you from phoning the police straight away.’

  ‘She didn’t stop me . . .’

  ‘That she didn’t think there was anything to worry about.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have called immediately anyway. There was no reason to.’

  Thorne strolled around the sofa, walked to the opposite side of the fireplace to where Maggie Mullen was crushing her cigarette butt into an ashtray. ‘Sorry, I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but your wife certainly implied that you were worried; or at least concerned. That’s why I was asking about what time your post arrived.’ Thorne caught Porter’s eye; saw that she understood. ‘I think you were expecting a ransom demand. I think you presumed that someone had snatched Luke and that you’d hear from them yesterday morning. I think you were probably waiting to find out exactly what they wanted and that you were planning to handle it yourself. When you didn’t get anything in the post, that’s when you really started to worry, when you started to wonder what might have happened. That’s when you called us.’

  Maggie Mullen walked across the room and sat down on the arm of her husband’s chair. Her hand moved very briefly to his, then back into her lap. ‘Tony tends to look on the blacker side of things a lot of the time.’

  ‘The Job does that to most of us,’ Porter said.

  ‘Look, it’s understandable.’ Thorne was still trying to connect with Tony Mullen. ‘I’m sure I would have thought the same thing.’

  ‘I knew he’d been kidnapped before I went to bed on Friday night,’ Mullen said. He looked up at Thorne, something like relief on his face. ‘I was brushing my teeth and Maggie was sorting the dog out downstairs, and I knew someone had taken him. Was holding him. Luke wasn’t the type to just go off, certainly not without letting us know where he was.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s understandable. In light of your career, you’ve got every reason to believe there might be people who would want to hurt you. Or hurt those close to you.’

  Mullen said something, but Thorne couldn’t make it out.

  He couldn’t hear much for a second or two.

  He was straining to make out the voice of his father above the roar and hot spit of long-dead flames . . .

  ‘We’ll need a list,’ he said, finally. ‘Anyone who might bear a grudge. Anyone who issued threats.’

  Mullen nodded. ‘I’ve been trying to work on one over the weekend.’ His tone and the look he gave his wife were guilty, confessional, as though the fact that he’d been thinking about such things at all meant he’d been assuming the worst. ‘But I don’t think it’ll be much help. Either my memory’s going or I didn’t make as many enemies as I thought.’

  ‘Well, that makes our job easier,’ Porter said.

  ‘Right. Good.’ Thorne was trying to sound equally positive, but he must have looked every bit as dubious as he felt.

  Mullen’s expression hardened. ‘Would you remember every one?’

  Thorne tried to stay composed and encouraging, tried to put the edge in Mullen’s voice down to stress, to blame the aggression on guilt and panic. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘How many people have you seriously pissed off, Detective Inspector Thorne? You needn’t include the ones you were supposed to be working with.’

  Thorne thought then that perhaps Jesmond had been a little more candid in his description of him after all. Or perhaps Tony Mullen was just a good judge of character. He said nothing; just considered what Mullen had told him about putting a list together. Thorne himself would have much less trouble, and doubted that he was unique. When it came to those who might have posed a serious threat to him, or to anyone he cared about, Thorne had no problem recalling every last one of them.

  Holland and Parsons appeared in the doorway at the same moment that the phone rang. Everyone, Thorne included, jumped slightly, and Maggie Mullen was first to her feet.

  ‘It’s important to try and stay calm . . .’

  ‘Love . . .’

  If she heard what either Porter or her husband said, Maggie Mullen chose to ignore it. Her eyes were fixed only on the phone as she crossed to where it sat on a low table near the window.

  A trace/intercept had, of course, been set up on the Mullens’ home number as soon as the Kidnap Unit had been scrambled, with all incoming calls monitored by Technical Support back at the Yard. If, as was most likely, the all-important call were to come from an unregistered mobile, the Telephone Unit would immediately begin working on cell-site location, moving from place to place where required in a vehicle equipped with the necessary, state-of-the-art gadgetry.

  When she reached the phone, Mrs Mullen held out a hand; she turned and looked first at her husband, then across at Porter and Thorne.

  Porter nodded.

  Mrs Mullen took a deep breath and picked up the phone. She spoke the number quickly, waited, then shook her head. Her eyes closed and she turned away, muttering into the mouthpiece, fingers dragging through her long brown hair for the few seconds before she hung up.

  ‘Mags?’

  She walked slowly towards her husband’s chair, her voice splintering as she spoke, and Thorne could see relief and disappointment, inseparable, fighting it out in the fall of her face, and of her shoulders. He saw how well-matched, how brutal, the two feelings could be.

  ‘Hannah. One of Juliet’s friends.’

  ‘It’s OK, love.’ Mullen was on his feet, moving to meet her.

  ‘Obviously we told everyone we could not to call,’ she said. ‘We wanted to make sure the line stayed clear, you know, in case Luke got in touch. In case anyone who had him tried to contact us. We tried to think of everyone, but there are a few people we must have forgotten . . .’

  Then Mullen’s arms were around her and pulling her close. Her own hung at her sides, as though she suddenly lacked the strength to lift them. Her head bowed as she sobbed hard into his neck.

  Thorne beckoned Holland and Parsons into the room with the coffee tray, then glanced at Porter, who raised her eyes from the floor to meet his. He was heartened to see that she found watching the embrace just as difficult as he did.

  AMANDA

  Everything changed the first time Conrad put a gun to her head in that petrol station in Tooting.

  The set-up had certainly looked real, and she’d made a convincing enough hostage, so he hadn’t needed to go such a long way over the top: to pull her hair quite so much, to press the barrel of the toy gun so hard into the side of her head. Later that night, after they’d counted the money and got completely wrecked, she’d read him the Riot Act. Yes, obviously they had to be convincing, but they weren’t fucking method actors! He hadn’t known exactly what she meant, of course, so she’d explained it to him in simpler terms unt
il he did. He was terribly sorry and upset, and only too happy to listen when she told him how they could do things better the next time.

  That was when she’d fully understood that she was the one in charge.

  All she’d wanted in the beginning was someone to get heavy with a dealer she owed money to. Conrad had managed that easily enough, then they’d just carried on seeing each other. It helped that he was OK looking, that he knew his way around and that he seemed to like looking after her. He’d racked his brains for ways to come up with cash, to pay for what she needed. She was touched and relieved, happy to have found the first man who would really take care of her since her father. The fake robbery idea had been Conrad’s, as it happened, but everything since had come from her.

  To get your own way, of course, it helped if you knew what the other person was thinking. If you could predict which way they were liable to jump. Conrad had never been particularly good at pretending he was feeling one thing when what was really in his heart and head was written all over his face. She liked that about him. She’d always been wary of men who were better liars than she was.

  Her daddy hadn’t been a good liar, either. Didn’t have it in him. Of course, he may have had some sordid secret life that he’d kept hidden from Amanda and her mother. He may have visited rent boys, or kept a string of mistresses – and, with the marriage he had, who could have blamed him? – but she preferred to imagine him as she remembered him: perfect, right until the day he left. As handsome as he’d been the moment before he went through the windscreen of his Mercedes.

  Conrad hadn’t gone for the kidnap idea straight away. He’d needed a little convincing. She’d told him that it would be easy money; that, more importantly, it would be far bigger money than they could get from any branch of Threshers or a BP station. She promised him that afterwards they could make a fresh start somewhere, that she could afford to get some proper help and maybe get herself cleaned up. That had sorted him out; those promises, and the ones she’d made in the dark with her skinny little body.

  And now there was the boy. Their overgrown baby hostage.

  He’d responded to promises, same as any other man: that he wouldn’t be hurt if he behaved himself; that he would be home soon; that everything was going to be all right.

  She looked across to where he lay sleeping, his head on the hands that she’d tied at the wrists with crêpe bandage. She wondered if she should give him another dose to keep him asleep, or let him wake up and see if he’d learned his lesson. The knife seemed to have calmed him down a bit, scared him into being a good lad. Like most blokes she’d ever known, if promises weren’t enough, threats would usually do the trick.

  He was a good-looking boy, she decided. His personality wasn’t easy to read, given the circumstances, but he seemed nice enough. She thought he would probably break a heart or two, if he ever got the chance.

  THREE

  ‘Shouldn’t we be doing this in summer?’ Hendricks suggested. ‘I’m freezing my cobs off.’

  ‘Put your coat on then.’

  Whatever the Job euphemistically chose to call a sudden and inexplicable leave of absence, such as that imposed upon him the previous year, this had been about as close to ‘gardening’ as Thorne had come. Or was ever likely to. Half an hour in B & Q one Saturday afternoon and a weekend of self-assembly hell had been all the time necessary to work a small miracle on the few square feet of cracked and manky paving slabs behind his kitchen.

  ‘I wanted a bit of sympathy, obviously,’ Hendricks said. ‘I mean, that’s why I came. And beer’s always a bonus. But I hadn’t banked on double pneumonia.’

  Thorne drank the last from a can of Sainsbury’s own-label Belgian lager and looked across what any self-respecting estate agent – if that were not a contradiction in terms – would now describe as ‘a small but well-appointed patio area’. A couple of plants in plastic pots, a wonky barbecue on wheels, a heater on a stand.

  And a weeping pathologist . . .

  In fact, Hendricks seemed to be past the worst of it, but his bloodshot eyes still looked as though they might brim and leak at any moment, and the tremble at the centre of his chin hadn’t quite disappeared. Thorne had seen his friend cry before, and, though it was always uncomfortable, he could never help but be struck by the painful incongruity of the spectacle. He knew better than anyone how strongly the Mancunian could take things to heart, yet Phil Hendricks remained – in appearance at least – an imposing, even aggressive, figure. He was a shaven-headed Goth, with dark clothes and tattoos; with rings, studs and spikes through assorted areas of flesh. Watching him in genuine distress was like seeing pensioners touch tongues, or a Hell’s Angel cradle a mewling newborn. It was disconcerting. It was like staring at an arty postcard.

  ‘So, have I been sympathetic enough?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Well, not straight away, no.’

  ‘That’s because I know what a bloody drama queen you are. You turn up on the doorstep wailing and it could mean anything. I don’t know whether someone’s died, or if you’ve just lost one of your George Michael CDs.’

  Thorne got the smile he was aiming for. Hendricks was certainly no drama queen, but when he’d arrived an hour before it had taken a while for Thorne to realise how serious it was. Hendricks had told him that he and his boyfriend Brendan had had a major argument, that this was definitely the end, but Thorne had known both of them long enough to take such pronouncements of doom with a fistful of salt.

  Thorne’s first tactic had worked a time or two before: beer and distraction. Once the initial crying jag had abated and Thorne had got Hendricks settled down in the living room with a drink, he tried talking to him about work. Hendricks was a civilian member of Russell Brigstocke’s Major Investigation Team at Homicide Command (West), and the pathologist Thorne had worked with most regularly in recent years. He had also become a close friend; probably the only person Thorne could think of who might donate a kidney should he ever need one. Certainly the only one who might actually have the odd one or two knocking around.

  Their cosy chats about death and dismemberment were often perversely enjoyable, but this was one work conversation that was never destined to go anywhere. Though the two shared plenty of ancient history, Thorne’s position on the sidelines in recent weeks meant that they hadn’t a single ongoing investigation in common. Besides, the only dead thing Hendricks had seemed keen to talk about was his own relationship. ‘It’s not like the times before,’ he’d said. ‘He really fucking means it this time.’

  Thorne had begun to see that the situation was more serious than he’d first thought; that this was more than just a spat. He’d done his best to calm down his friend. He’d phoned out for pizza and dragged a couple of kitchen chairs into the garden.

  ‘I can’t feel my feet,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Stop bloody moaning.’ It was chilly, no question, and Thorne had never got around to buying a gas bottle for the heater, but he was enjoying being outside. ‘I’m starting to see why Brendan’s done a bunk.’

  Hendricks didn’t appear to find that crack quite so funny. He lifted his feet up on to the seat of his chair, wrapped his hands around his ankles.

  ‘Maybe he just needs a bit of space to cool off,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I was the one doing most of the shouting.’ When Hendricks sighed the breath hung in front of his face. ‘He stayed pretty calm a lot of the time.’

  ‘Maybe a day or two apart isn’t such a bad idea, you know?’

  Hendricks looked like he thought it was just about the worst idea anyone had ever come up with. ‘He took a lot of his stuff. Said he’s coming back for the rest tomorrow.’

  In recent months, the couple had been living at Hendricks’ place in Islington, but Brendan had kept his own flat. ‘So he’s got somewhere to fuck off back to when we split up,’ Hendricks had joked once.

  Up to this point it had all been about the fact of the argument, the ferocity and finality of it. Hendricks remained adamant
that it had been terminal, yet did not seem particularly keen to talk about what had triggered the fight in the first place.

  Thorne asked the question, then immediately wished he hadn’t when he watched his friend turn his head away and lie to him.

  ‘I can’t even remember, to be honest, but I can tell you it was nothing important. It never really is, is it? You end up falling out over the stupidest things.’

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘I think it’s probably been brewing for a few weeks. We’re both stressed at work, you know?’

  Though Thorne guessed there was still something he wasn’t being told, he knew that Hendricks was probably right about the stress. He’d seen what the work could take out of Hendricks on any number of occasions, and knew that his partner’s job was far from being a walk in the park, either. Brendan Maxwell worked for the London Lift, an organisation that provided much-needed services for the city’s homeless. Thorne had got to know him well during his investigations into the rough-sleeper killings the year before.

  Thorne looked at his watch. ‘What time did we order that pizza?’

  ‘I’m not going to do much better, am I?’ Hendricks stood up and leaned back against the wall next to the kitchen door. ‘Better than Brendan, I mean.’

  ‘Come on, Phil . . .’

  ‘I’m not, though. There’s no point kidding myself. I’m just trying to be realistic, that’s all.’

  ‘I give it a fortnight,’ Thorne said. ‘A tenner says you’ve got a new piercing within two weeks. You up for it?’ This was one of their jokes: that Hendricks commemorated each new boyfriend with a piercing. A unique, if painful way of putting notches on his bedpost. It had been a running joke, until Brendan had come along.

  ‘It’s just the thought of being single again.’

  ‘You aren’t single yet.’

  ‘Back on the scene. How depressing is that?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen, I’m telling you.’

  ‘We were so grateful that we’d saved each other from that, you know? That we’d found each other. Fuck.’