Buried Read online

  Pupils had been spoken to in school. They were told that Luke Mullen was still missing and that there would be police officers waiting to talk to them if they felt they had anything useful to report. The headmaster had been at pains to remind them that neglecting to do so would be as good as falsehood, and every bit as dishonourable. They were urged to pass on any information they had, however trivial it might seem, about the Friday afternoon when Luke had been driven away.

  The Essex boy and his partner paired off, taking up a position at the other end of the quad, but neither they nor Holland and Parsons were exactly swamped by the rush of eager young informants.

  Those few pupils Holland and Parsons did speak to all told just about the same story. It became clear that over the previous few days the school jungle drums had been working overtime and that it would not be easy to sort out the fact from the hearsay.

  One boy assured Holland that Luke Mullen had run off with a sexy older woman. Several sixth-form girls swore blind that they’d seen Luke and the mystery woman kissing two or three days earlier. One of Luke’s classmates said that he thought Luke had a secret girlfriend; that he’d been dropping hints about going away somewhere with her. Spain, maybe, or France.

  Nothing they were told took them any closer to identifying the car. It was still probably a Passat, and more likely dark blue than black, but the partial number plate had now become all but useless, with another dozen different letters and numbers passed on by those who swore they’d seen it drive away with Luke Mullen inside.

  The descriptions they were given of the woman were much the same as they already had, though, again, such statements became less credible once it became clear that those giving them had been talking to each other. She was in her late twenties. She was dirty blonde. She was very skinny. ‘Tasty, though,’ one of Luke’s classmates had said. ‘Luke reckoned she was fit. Mind you, he hadn’t got much to compare her to, had he?’

  The emphasis in this, as in all similar dealings with the public, was on the search for a missing teenager. It was certainly not talked of as an abduction; and, in line with standard practice, the word ‘kidnap’ was never used by officers outside of Central 3000 or the Mullen house.

  A school, however, was as perfect a breeding ground for conjecture as it was for stomach bugs or cold sores.

  ‘This woman’s the one who kidnapped Mullen, yes?’ The boy was fifteen, a year below Luke, but his manner was that of a pupil three or four years older.

  ‘I can’t go into too many details, I’m afraid,’ Holland said. The boy had neatly parted hair and was carrying a small briefcase. Holland guessed that he was probably not a big star on the rugby field.

  ‘I understand.’

  Holland saw straight away that it was best to speak to the boy as if he were genuinely as mature as he appeared. ‘But she’s certainly someone we’re interested in tracing.’

  ‘How much of a description do you have?’ the boy asked.

  Holland exchanged a look with Kenny Parsons, then gave the boy the basic facts. ‘Obviously, if there’s anything more you can add . . .’

  ‘I’m doing S-level art,’ the boy said. ‘I’m one of the best in the year.’

  Holland stared at him.

  ‘I got a pretty good look at the woman with Luke. I could probably draw her, if you’d like.’

  ‘We’ll get that arranged as soon as we can,’ Holland said.

  Parsons made a note of the boy’s name and address. They asked him a few more questions: ascertained exactly where he’d been standing the previous Friday afternoon; how far away he’d been; if there was anyone with him at the time.

  ‘People have been saying that she was Luke’s girlfriend or something,’ the boy said out of the blue, ‘but I can’t say I’m convinced.’

  ‘Why not?’ Holland found it hard to believe that the boy could be an expert on such matters; that he was much beyond a crush on the dinner ladies.

  ‘Body language.’ He said it as though it were obvious, and as if he were becoming slightly bored with the conversation. Yet there was an authority and a confidence about him, which, to Holland at least, made what he said oddly credible.

  ‘What about Luke? What did he seem like?’

  ‘Happy enough, I suppose. They walked straight past me at one point and he was talking to her.’

  ‘Did you—?’

  ‘I didn’t catch any of what was said I’m afraid, but he seemed . . . content.’

  ‘It didn’t look like he was going anywhere under duress, then? He didn’t seem frightened or apprehensive?’

  ‘No, but she did.’ The boy swung his briefcase distractedly. Stared past Holland and Parsons towards the school gates, as if he were looking for a friend. ‘She looked scared to death.’

  Thorne had certainly made good use of his Travelcard.

  He’d been across to Barking to talk to a DI on the Intel Unit based there, then spent an hour and a half travelling up to Finchley to interview a DCI on the Flying Squad. Both men had told him what a great bloke Tony Mullen was, what a loss it had been when he’d retired so early, how terrible it was that his family had been targeted. One of them said he’d started a collection at the station, but then stopped and given the money back when he’d realised he didn’t know what it was for.

  They had looked at Mullen’s already truncated list. Neither had made much comment, but each had told a war story or two, remembering the part they’d played alongside Tony Mullen in catching and putting away the individuals named. Thorne had listened, laughed in all the right places, and encouraged each officer in turn to consider any other of Mullen’s past cases that they felt might have a bearing on what was happening. To give him the name of any person they felt should be checked out, if only to be eliminated from any enquiry. Between them, another two names had been suggested; four altogether now on the list Thorne carried with him on the short journey to Colindale. To the meeting he had scheduled at the Peel Centre.

  In the Major Incident Room on the third floor of Becke House, Thorne spent fifteen minutes catching up with a few of those he would normally have been working with: he shared a quick cup of coffee with Yvonne Kitson, who seemed a little preoccupied; he traded jokes with Samir Karim and Andy Stone, who assured him that no one had even noticed he was gone; and he stuck his head round Russell Brigstocke’s door in the vain hope of some moral support.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond made it clear from the second Thorne stepped across his threshold that they were not going to be talking for long.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long, Sir.’

  ‘Good. I’m up to my bloody eyeballs.’

  Thorne brought Jesmond up to speed on the Luke Mullen case as briskly as he could. He explained that they had to seriously consider revenge as the motive for kidnapping Tony Mullen’s son; that they were looking at anyone who might be holding a grudge. As Jesmond knew Mullen better than anyone, Thorne said, and had worked closely with him over a number of years, nobody was better placed, or better qualified, to cast an expert eye across a list of the candidates. He laid it on good and thick, and though Thorne could see that Jesmond knew he was being flattered, it seemed to work.

  ‘Naturally I’m keen to do anything I can to help,’ Jesmond said.

  Thorne reached into his pocket for the list. ‘Of course . . .’

  ‘Tony and Maggie are going through hell.’

  ‘A couple more names have been added since we spoke on the phone . . .’

  Jesmond stood and walked past Thorne to the door. He lifted an overcoat from a metal hat-stand. ‘We’ll continue this outside. Then I can be doing other things at the same time.’

  ‘It’s still not a long list—’

  ‘What is it women like to say? That we blokes can’t multi-task?’

  Thorne said nothing, alarmed to see Jesmond’s thin lips sliding back across his teeth in something approaching a smile.

  One of the ‘other things’ turned out to involve trudging acros
s to the centre’s driving school, where, for no obviously good reason, they stood and watched those on the advanced driving course take cars around the track or turn inwards to career across a skid-pan.

  Jesmond waved to one of the instructors, then shouted above the roar of an engine: ‘Do you like motor sport, Thorne?’

  Thorne pretended he hadn’t heard, and asked Jesmond to repeat the question while he thought about whether to lie. He watched an Audi squealing between a series of bollards. ‘Only the crashes,’ he said.

  And that was the end of that.

  The driving school was directly opposite the athletics arena. When not captivated by the sight of cars swerving or being driven at high speed, Thorne could glance across and watch a gaggle of recruits jogging slowly around the asphalt perimeter. Each wore a pristine blue tracksuit, but several looked anything but athletic. Most looked as though they’d have preferred a nice riot, or maybe an armed siege.

  ‘Tony Mullen had a decent strike rate,’ Jesmond said. ‘As good as anyone I can think of, as it happens. But you know as well as I do that most of the lowlife we put away treat being caught as part of the job. They don’t take it personally. If they were going to try and get their own back on every copper who’d ever nicked them, they’d be far too fucking busy to reoffend.’

  Thorne knew it was true, by and large, but he also knew better than most that there were some to whom the rules did not, could not, apply. When it came to the ones that killed, there were some for whom the offence was far from occupational; whose reactions when they were caught – when they were no longer able to act on their compulsions – were anything but predictable.

  It was clear when Jesmond spoke again that, as usual, the expression on Thorne’s face had made it obvious what he was thinking.

  ‘Of course, there are always going to be headcases,’ Jesmond said, ‘and I know you’ve had your fair share of those over the last few years. But they can usually be discounted, because the majority of them end up in places they’re never coming out of again.’

  The majority of them.

  A few names and faces flashed through Thorne’s mind: Nicklin, Foley, Zarif . . .

  ‘Thorne?’

  Thorne nodded, not quite sure what he was being asked. To his right, a mud-spattered meat wagon moved slowly through the car wash. Three more brooded in line behind it.

  ‘Let’s have a look at this list, then,’ Jesmond said.

  Thorne passed the slip of paper across, waited.

  ‘I wouldn’t even think about Billy Campbell.’ Jesmond jabbed at the paper. ‘He was just a gobshite. Told just about every copper, judge and prison officer he ever ran across that he’d come after them. Liked to shout his mouth off, that’s all, same as a lot of them.’

  Campbell’s was one of the two names added that morning. Thorne hadn’t had a chance to run it through the system. ‘What about the others?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve never heard of Wayne Anthony Barber.’

  The other new name. ‘Went down on two counts of rape in 1994. Liked to threaten his victims with a screwdriver. Went for Mullen in the interview room, by all accounts.’

  Jesmond shrugged and pointed to the two names at the top of the list. ‘These the ones Tony Mullen gave you?’

  Thorne grunted a yes.

  ‘Fair enough, I suppose. Cotterill and Quinn are both nasty pieces of work.’ He stretched out an arm, waved the paper for Thorne to take. ‘This case doesn’t fit either of them, though.’

  ‘Harry Cotterill took a building-society teller hostage in 1989 . . .’

  ‘It’s not the same thing. These two aren’t kidnappers.’

  ‘They’ll know people, though.’

  ‘I can’t see it.’

  ‘They’re both around, at any rate,’ Thorne took the paper, folded it and put it back in his pocket. ‘Worth having a look at, surely?’

  ‘You asked me what I thought,’ Jesmond said. ‘It’s an SO7 job, so it’s Barry Hignett’s call anyway.’

  Thorne took a breath of diesel and burning rubber. Used it to say thank you, though it was very much for nothing.

  Later, when Holland had seen him as one of a very different group, it became clear to him that the boy stood out, that he was the one you focused on, whomever he was with. There was a physicality that drew the eye; a look-at me-if-you-want-to swagger. A confidence. A lot of them had that, of course; it went with the uniform, and the accent, and the knowledge that, barring disaster, they were going to do fairly well for themselves. This boy was different, though; he looked like he knew it and he couldn’t care less.

  Holland and Parsons had been talking to a group of girls. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, confident in a different way still from their male counterparts. They answered questions succinctly and then posed a few of their own. They flirted and laughed. Holland had laughed right back, well aware that some of the girls were highly attractive and that they knew it. He watched them walking away, then turned to see Parsons staring at him, mock-stern, an eyebrow raised.

  ‘Easy, tiger . . .’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody silly!’ As Holland snapped, he remembered Thorne saying exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way, when certain veiled suggestions had been made about DI Louise Porter. Then he turned back towards the door to the school and saw the boy.

  He was with three others; not the tallest, nor the one at the front as they came out into the quad, but he was still the focal point. He made some comment and the others laughed, and Holland could see straight away that he was the leader. The one around whom the other boys moved.

  As the group approached, Holland watched the boy make subtle alterations to his appearance: the daily change from classroom to street. The tie was loosened and lowered, fingers pushed the blond hair into spikes, and when the hand had finished working at the side of the head a gold cross was dangling from the boy’s left ear.

  Holland stared at the earring. There was something familiar about it; something important.

  Parsons held out a hand, beckoned the group towards them. ‘We’re talking to anyone who might have seen what happened to Luke Mullen last Friday afternoon.’

  There was a good deal of shrugging and shuffling of feet. More than one pair of eyes settled on the boy with the earring.

  ‘Presumably that’s when you’d have been coming out of school,’ Parsons said. ‘Perhaps one of you saw Luke Mullen getting into a car.’

  There was a pause before answers began to tumble out, clumsily, one on top of the other.

  ‘Loads of kids are getting into cars . . .’

  ‘I was playing rugby last Friday . . .’

  ‘There was a meeting for next year’s skiing trip . . .’

  ‘I don’t think we can help you.’

  Answering last, the boy with the earring spoke with that odd, almost mid-Atlantic accent that Holland had heard in many of the pupils already: an upward intonation at the end of every sentence, as if everything were a nice, easy question being asked of someone who really ought to know the answer. The boy spoke for the other three, and Holland could see that they were happy to let him do so. He was the one each of them was keen to hang around with and to emulate; the friend they wanted. Holland remembered the boy with the briefcase, the young artist they’d spoken to earlier. This boy was everything that one was not, and probably most wanted to be.

  Holland, if he was honest, had been as neither boy himself. At secondary school in Kingston twenty years before, he’d slogged it out somewhere between the two extremes. Head down; unhappily anonymous.

  The four boys were already starting to amble away, but Kenny Parsons walked quickly after them, moved ahead and halted their progress. ‘Hang on, lads, we haven’t finished.’

  ‘Haven’t we?’ the boy with the earring asked.

  ‘One of your friends is missing.’

  ‘I barely know him.’ One of the others laughed. The boy with the earring shot him a look, shut him up instantly.

  ‘So you�
��re not in the same class?’

  ‘Correct. We’re not.’

  ‘Same year?’

  ‘Also correct. I don’t see how any of this is really helping, though, do you?’ He was already on the move again, hitching his bag across his shoulder and walking towards the main road.

  Holland watched the boy and his friends depart. Something familiar about the boy’s face, too; something important. Thinking about the way he’d spoken to Parsons; the way he’d looked at a police officer.

  A black police officer . . .

  ‘Cheeky little fucker,’ Parsons said.

  It was a jolt, like the gut-lurch you feel driving over a humpback bridge, when Holland finally dragged the picture into focus. The cross dangling from the ear. A face he’d seen before.

  ‘I thought these posh kids had better manners than that.’

  Holland nodded, knowing that this was exactly the point; that, if he was right, ‘cheeky’ was not the half of it.

  The boy with the earring could afford to be sure of himself. It went with the uniform and the accent, for sure, but it also went with the fact that people made judgements about character on the strength of how you looked and sounded. Most people believed what such things had always told them.

  Holland collared the next kid who passed and pointed towards the boy with the spiky hair. He asked the question and was given a name. Then he watched the boy called Adrian Farrell turn to look at them and walk slowly backwards down the drive, the blond hair still visible as he was absorbed, uniform by uniform, into the exodus of blue and grey.

  The boy could well afford to be confident, because appearances were just that. And police officers, just like everybody else, made stupid assumptions.

  Thorne, though usually more likely to brood than complain, was not beyond a decent moan every so often; and Carol Chamberlain, if she was in the right mood, could be a good listener. He grumbled into the phone about his back, about being shifted to the Kidnap Unit, about the fact that his only real avenue of investigation was rapidly turning into a cul-de-sac.