Buried Page 9

  ‘How’s your kidnap going, Dave?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Missing us?’

  ‘Listen, Guv, I need to talk to you about the Amin Latif murder.’

  It was a little over six months since the eighteen-year-old Asian, an engineering student at a local sixth-form college, had been beaten to death by three white youths at a bus stop in Edgware. It had been, for all the obvious reasons, a high-profile investigation, but despite the media coverage, an extensive enquiry and even a witness who had provided a detailed description of the main attacker, the case had quickly gone cold.

  Cold, but still tender. Still embarrassing.

  Russell Brigstocke had been the nominal senior investigating officer, but, day to day, Yvonne Kitson had run things. To all intents and purposes, it had been her case, and – at least as far as she was concerned – her failure. She’d known from the moment she’d first looked at the boy’s body – at a bloodied hand, knuckles down in a puddle across double yellow lines – that his death would stay with her, irrespective of whether she caught those responsible. Hate crimes tended to do that. And the Amin Latif murder was about as hateful as they came.

  Holland had her attention immediately.

  He told her that he’d seen a seventeen-year-old, spoken to a seventeen-year-old, whose resemblance to her chief murder suspect was simply too close to be ignored. As he described the boy he and Parsons had interviewed an hour or two earlier, he stared at the picture which he’d called up and printed out from the PNC. The E-fit had been based on the description given by a friend of Amin Latif, a fellow student who had been present at the time of the attack but had escaped with a few broken bones and six months of nightmares. The picture wasn’t identical to the image in his mind’s eye: the blond hair was lank and lay flat against the head, much as it would have done on a night in October when it had been pissing down with rain. But below the hairline, everything else was spot on.

  The face was Adrian Farrell’s.

  ‘Shit . . . shit!’ The exclamation of surprise had quickly been followed by a far harsher one. By annoyance aimed at no one but herself. ‘Butler’s Hall?’

  ‘I know. Who’d’ve thought?’

  ‘We should,’ Kitson snapped. ‘We fucking-well should have thought.’

  Butler’s Hall was several miles from the street where Amin Latif had died, but it was certainly close enough; well within the thick red circle that had been drawn on the map in the Major Incident Room. Well within the scheme of things. There would probably have been ‘Can You Help?’ posters near by, and perhaps a number of its pupils lived at addresses that were canvassed during the house-to-house enquiries. Of course, it would have been impossible to question every student at every school and college in the area, but plenty had been, and Yvonne Kitson would not have bet on too many of them being pupils at Butler’s Hall.

  Assumptions, by their very nature, went unspoken. And racist thugs did not go to public school.

  ‘What was he like, Dave? I don’t mean physically . . .’

  ‘Arrogant, aggressive. Full of himself.’

  ‘You sure you weren’t just seeing that? Projecting it? Are you positive you weren’t making this boy’s behaviour fit because of what you thought?’

  ‘It wasn’t until afterwards that I thought anything,’ Holland said. ‘I was watching the little fucker walk away from us, and when he turned round I knew he was the kid in the picture. The kid with the earring.’

  Kitson said nothing for a few moments. Holland could hear her slurping her coffee, swallowing, deciding. There was a flutter of panic as he realised that, in the past, he’d watched her, Brigstocke and others judging similar pronouncements of certainty from Tom Thorne. He’d also seen the fallout later, when such certainty had proved to be horribly misguided.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Kitson said.

  Holland let out the breath he’d been unconciously holding. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘You’re still working on a kidnap, as far as I know, but I want to have a look at him.’

  ‘You going to bring him in?’

  ‘I want to see him first, just to double-check you’re right to be so worked up about it.’

  Holland had been afraid that talking to Kitson, or anybody else, might shake his conviction a little, but it had done the opposite. As he ran through each detail of the conversation with Adrian Farrell, as he described the look the boy had given Kenny Parsons, he could feel his certainty settling into determination. And now that her initial anger had worn off, he could hear the exhilaration in Kitson’s voice too.

  And she had every right to be excited.

  Finding a murderer was one thing of course, and convicting him was quite another, but what had made this particular killing so uniquely barbaric was also what gave them their best chance of doing just that.

  Before he’d been kicked to death, Amin Latif had been the victim of a serious sexual assault. Semen samples had been taken from his body, had given up the gift of their DNA. Now, on a frozen slide in an FSS lab in Victoria, curled the double helix that might identify a killer; the sequence of letters on every rung of its elegantly twisting ladder just waiting for a match.

  Downstairs, it felt like a bad wake after a good funeral; there was a sense of that sort of desperation.

  In many of the rooms, bright against the darkness that was descending outside, a decent enough effort was being made to generate a degree of conversation and activity; of ordinariness. To keep at bay the tide of gloom that threatened to rush through the house at any moment, as if a black and swollen river were about to burst its banks.

  There were perhaps a dozen people in the Mullens’ home, split fairly evenly between family and friends on the one hand, and police officers on the other. Thorne spoke through a cloud of cigarette smoke to Maggie Mullen and to a DS with a big mouth who drivelled on about a ‘gang snatch in Harlesden that had gone monumentally tits up’. He had to spend five minutes talking football with Tony Mullen’s brother, and fuck-all with the second family liaison officer, before he finally got the chance to speak privately to Louise Porter. He’d collared her as soon as he’d arrived back at the house and passed on what Carol Chamberlain had told him about Grant Freestone. That was half an hour ago, before he’d wandered upstairs and run into Juliet Mullen.

  As soon as he saw the opportunity, he ushered Porter into a good-sized utility room that ran off the kitchen.

  She grinned. ‘This is all a bit sudden . . .’

  ‘I know what was wrong with the video,’ Thorne said. ‘What was bothering me.’

  Porter leaned back against a large chest freezer and waited to be told.

  ‘It’s all to his mum.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Everything Luke says on the tape is aimed at his mum. He says nothing at all to his dad. I’ve got a transcript in my bag and I checked. Have a look if you like—’

  ‘I believe you. Go on . . .’

  ‘Try not to worry, Mum. Nothing to get yourself worked up about, Mum. You know the stuff I mean, Mum. Everything’s for her. It’s like Mullen’s being cut out.’

  Porter thought about it. Behind him, Thorne could hear the boiler clicking and then the rush as the pilot ignited the gas. ‘Maybe Luke was punishing his father,’ Porter said. ‘For the argument they’d had.’

  ‘It must have been one hell of a row, then, don’t you think? If the kid’s still bearing a grudge while he’s being held hostage. While he’s being tied up and drugged.’ Thorne moved across and settled in against the freezer next to Porter. She shuffled along to give him room. ‘Anyway, I talked to Luke’s sister, and she’s positive the row wasn’t that serious.’

  ‘I think you’re reading too much into it.’

  Thorne shrugged, acknowledging the possibility.

  ‘Like you say, the boy’s in trouble. So you’re probably right – he’s not likely to be thinking about whether he’s fallen out with his dad – but it’s perfectly natural for him to be thin
king more about his mum, isn’t it? He’s only a kid.’

  ‘Maybe. He’s obviously trying to be brave for his mum because he doesn’t want her to worry. But shouldn’t there have been something, some message, for his dad? Everyone keeps banging on about how close they are.’

  ‘He didn’t mention his sister, either.’

  That was a good point. Porter had a disconcerting habit of making them. ‘It feels strange, that’s all,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have a lot of choice about what he said.’

  This was something Thorne hadn’t considered. ‘Are you saying it was scripted? You think he was told what to say? It certainly didn’t feel like that.’

  ‘Just thinking aloud,’ Porter said.

  They stopped at the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. They listened, heard the fridge door swing open, and Thorne waited for whoever was helping them-self to leave before he spoke in a whisper. ‘Let’s keep thinking,’ he said.

  Porter’s mobile began ringing as they stepped out of the utility room; just when Tony Mullen walked into the kitchen. Mullen stared, his face giving nothing away, while, for reasons he couldn’t immediately fathom, Thorne felt himself redden.

  Mullen nodded towards the phone in Porter’s hand. ‘I think you’d better get that,’ he said.

  Porter answered, said nothing for a few seconds, but Thorne could see that whatever she was hearing was important. He glanced across at Mullen and could see that he knew it, too.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘When?’

  Thorne stared until he’d made eye contact, and saw nothing but concentration.

  ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can.’

  Mullen stepped forward, asking the question calmly as soon as she’d ended the call. ‘Have they found him?’

  ‘Mr Mullen . . .’ Porter glanced at Thorne, then hesitated further when she saw Mullen’s wife appear at her husband’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure you understand—’

  Maggie Mullen clutched at her husband’s sleeve, asked him what had happened. He didn’t take his eyes off Porter, and when he spoke his voice was no longer quite so calm. ‘And I’m sure you understand. So let’s hear it.’

  Porter took a second or two, then spoke quickly. ‘It’s good news,’ she said. ‘Apparently the people holding Luke aren’t as clever as we thought they were.’ Her eyes flicked to the screen on her phone, as if searching for more information, before she dropped the handset back into her pocket. ‘We got a good set of prints off the videotape.’

  ‘You’ve got a match?’ Mullen said.

  Porter nodded. ‘We’ve got a name, yes.’ She turned to Thorne. ‘And we’re working on an address.’

  Investigating a murder rarely allowed those involved much of a private life, but the hours devoted to a kidnap case were even more brutal. For those few he’d been given to get his head down, Thorne was offered a room at a small hotel in Victoria where the Met had a permanent block booking, but he decided to make the trip back to Kentish Town instead. The travelling would cut down his free time between shifts, but he wasn’t sleeping much anyway. He preferred lying awake at home to wearing out the thin carpet of an anonymous hotel room; to dunking teabags on strings, listening as the city coughed itself awake, and worrying about the fact that he hadn’t fed the cat.

  Perhaps if it had been a slightly nicer hotel . . .

  He arrived home just after midnight, still early enough to call Phil Hendricks. Five minutes into their conversation and the last can of Sainsbury’s lager, he was starting to relax. To enjoy telling his friend about the celebrated criminal history of a man named Conrad Allen.

  ‘So he waves this plastic Magnum around . . .’

  ‘I presume we’re talking handgun here as opposed to ice-cream . . .’

  ‘I’m not listening,’ Thorne said. ‘He waves it around, comes on like a hard case or whatever, thinks that’s an end to it. But, unfortunately for Conrad, the other bloke’s a little bit pissed off. He gets straight back in his car, dials 999, and fifteen minutes later an armed response unit’s squealing up and Dirty Harry’s face down on the Mile End Road, trying to convince some very pumped-up coppers that he was only having a laugh.’

  ‘So how come he never got done for it?’

  ‘Ask the CPS, mate. He was charged, but when it came to taking it any further, I suppose they just decided it wasn’t worth the effort. But, luckily for us, he was fingerprinted and this was back in 2002 before they changed the law, so the prints never got destroyed after the charge was dropped.’

  ‘What, and the silly bastard just forgot you had them?’

  ‘Forgot that, forgot to wear gloves when he was handling the videotape . . .’

  ‘Not the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer.’

  ‘I don’t think this is his usual line of work, you know?’ Thorne thought about another tape he’d seen a few hours before, back at Central 3000. ‘Some of the boys on the Flying Squad are fairly sure Allen’s the bloke who turned over half a dozen petrol stations and off-licences in Hackney and Dalston last year. Him, another gun that’s probably plastic, and a woman, pretending to be a hostage. A lot of shouting and shit acting.’

  ‘Sounds like an episode of EastEnders,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘It’s a jump from that to kidnapping kids, though, don’t you reckon?’

  The tape of in-store CCTV footage had been biked over to the Yard from Finchley. As he’d watched, Thorne had struggled to equate its images with those on the tape that had been sent to the Mullen family. The picture of the big man in the ski-mask – the violence in his movements and language – failed to gel with that of the figure who’d walked towards Luke Mullen with a syringe. That action was equally violent, every bit as brutal, in its own way, but Thorne simply couldn’t see Conrad Allen moving so easily on to something so clinical.

  Something so quietly vicious.

  Instead, he’d found himself watching the woman: staring at the screen as she screamed and begged for her life, pleading first with the robber and then with each terrified cashier and shop assistant to hand over the money before she was killed. If the man with the gun to her head was Conrad Allen, then the chances were that she was the woman who’d charmed a sixteen-year-old boy into her car. She might not be the greatest actress in the world, but Thorne had little trouble believing what she might be capable of. It was easier to imagine her as the driving force, as the one who’d come up with a way to make a lot more money than could be grabbed from the average till. Why she’d targeted Luke Mullen was a totally different matter . . .

  Thorne became aware of what sounded suspiciously like chuckling on the line. ‘Is this the EastEnders crack? Are you laughing at your own jokes again, Hendricks?’

  ‘One of us has to.’

  ‘Good. I was hoping this would cheer you up a bit. I presume you do still need cheering up. You’ve not really given much away.’

  Back when Thorne had first called, Hendricks had sounded reluctant to say a great deal about the Brendan situation. Now, as then, he seemed keen to talk about almost anything else. Just a grunt or two. A muted ‘y’know’ before a grinding change of subject.

  ‘How’s the back holding up?’

  Thorne rubbed his calf. ‘If anything, it’s my bloody leg more than my back.’

  ‘I’ve told you, it sounds like you’ve herniated the disc. You really need to get it sorted.’

  ‘Not a lot of time at the minute.’

  ‘It’s a phantom pain in the leg, you know that, don’t you? Where the disc’s pressing on the sciatic nerve. Your brain’s being told your leg hurts, but there’s nothing really wrong with it.’

  ‘Hang on . . .’ Thorne took a fast mouthful of lager. As time wore on, it was finally starting to taste of something. ‘I thought it was the brain that did the telling.’

  ‘Some parts of the body shout a bit louder than others,’ Hendricks said. ‘And of course, there’s one or two with minds of their own.’

  The cat wa
ndered in from the kitchen, grumbled and was ignored.

  Thorne sat there, thinking that although the ‘part’ Hendricks was talking about – Thorne’s part at any rate – had been fairly subdued for a while, it had started speaking up for itself rather more than usual in the last couple of days.

  AMANDA

  She was happy enough about it herself, but she knew Conrad would be utterly thrilled that things were finally moving. That it would all be sorted very soon. He was in the bedroom talking to the boy, but she’d tell him as soon as he came out. They’d need to get themselves together, get ready to make a move.

  The spoonful she’d been cooking up when the phone had started to ring would balance her out a little . . .

  She’d screened the call, just as she’d been doing ever since they’d got back to the flat on Friday after the pick-up. All part of keeping their heads down, quiet as mice, and it was mostly people phoning up trying to sell shit, anyway. They’d given the kid enough stuff to knock out a horse as soon as they’d had the chance: the minute she’d driven far enough away from the school, pulled over and let Conrad in. Then they’d waited until it was dark and carried him inside, wrapped in the cheap picnic blanket they’d bought from Halford’s and stashed in the boot. They’d made sure there was lots of food and booze in, so there was no need to go out, no need to talk to anybody. All they’d had to do was sit and wait it out, and now they were on the last leg.

  She’d screened the call . . . then, as soon as she’d recognised the voice, she’d grabbed at the phone, picked up and listened.

  She was relieved, and pleased, that it looked like working out, looked like nobody was going to get hurt. She’d always insisted on that, even when they were pulling the hold-up thing. Nobody should get badly hurt if it could be avoided. She thought that this side of her, the side that wanted everyone to come out of a situation OK, said something good about her character. Something to be proud of. After all, with everything she’d been through, the shitty stuff she’d had to deal with when she was a girl, it would have been understandable if she’d turned into a vicious, vindictive cow; if she’d wanted others to feel pain just to make herself feel better. She knew people like that, and she despised them. No, she just wanted to have a good time and get enough of whatever she needed; to forget about all the bad stuff. And, while she was doing that, she was always happier when no one else was suffering. Not through any fault of hers, anyway. There’d been the odd idiot who hadn’t played along, of course; there were always accidents. And there was that dealer she’d asked Conrad to sort out, but lowlife like him didn’t count and deserved everything they got.