Buried

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Anyway, back then, this building was pretty futuristic for its time, so they used a shot of it in the programme.’ Roper raised his arms. ‘This place was the original Space Patrol headquarters.’

  Thorne couldn’t think of anything to say. Puppets, science fiction, the Metropolitan Police. There were at least half a dozen different punchlines.

  He’d switched off his phone before going in to see Roper. Once he was outside, he checked for messages and found two new ones. Porter’s didn’t seem to be about very much, while Phil Hendricks had rung to say that everything he’d suggested at the briefing – the way that Allen and Tickell had died – had been more or less confirmed by the postmortems. Thorne called Hendricks back first, got an answering machine. ‘What do you want, a bloody gold star? Seriously, Phil, it was a privilege to watch you doing some excellent mime work this morning, and I’d love to pat you on the back personally, but fuck knows when. Give us a call later, if you fancy a natter…’

  Then he called Porter.

  ‘Touching base?’

  ‘It’s just an expression,’ she said. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘It’s a stupid expression. Unless you’re an American teenager and you haven’t told anyone.’

  ‘I was wondering what you were up to, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I’ve stopped sulking. You probably noticed that I’d been sulking since the raid at Bow. But I’ve stopped now.’

  ‘I didn’t notice anything. I just thought that was what you were normally like.’

  ‘If you’re still keen, we could touch base after lunch.’

  She ignored the dig so completely that he started to wonder if he’d really pissed her off.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Have you got a pen?’ Thorne waited, smiled at a uniform eyeing him with suspicion from the Empress’s front entrance. ‘Right, see if you can track down someone called Peter Lardner at the Probation Service. I’m not sure which borough. If you can, fix up an appointment for this afternoon and give me a call back.’

  He could see a greasy spoon on the far side of the road and began walking towards it like a man in a trance. Coffee and Hobnobs had simply not been enough. It was gone midday, and right about then Thorne decided that a full English breakfast sounded like the perfect lunch.

  It was madness, this dividing of himself.

  He’d spoken and spoken, and been spoken to in this meeting and that. And all the time, while he was smiling or looking suitably serious, while he was getting on with normal things, he was thinking about the boy.

  Thinking about what he’d done, and what he was going to do.

  What he was doing was, literally, madness; a textbook example of it. But wasn’t it a different type of insanity that had caused the problem in the first place? Wasn’t that called madness by some people? In some languages it was, certainly, and with good reason. He’d been as mad as a March hare in that way, in the good way, for years now; long before he’d been driven to any of this.

  Driven to stab. To steal children.

  It was the way things went though, wasn’t it? Swings and roundabouts, whatever you wanted to call it. Anything that felt good was ultimately going to hurt you. Cigarettes and chocolate. Sex and sugary deceit.

  The door opened and someone came into the toilets, so he turned on the tap, splashed water into his face to hide the tears.

  He needed to get back to his office anyway. There was plenty to get on with.

  As he pressed the paper towel to his face, he thought about the pithy slogan that dieters used, that he’d seen on a fridge magnet at his sister’s place. The phrase so beloved of those keen to change themselves, to make their lives better. A simple reminder that to give into temptation was to pay for the rest of your life. He smiled at his colleague in the mirror, then turned away towards the door.

  A minute on the lips…

  TEN

  Peter Lardner worked as a probation officer for the Borough of Westminster, based in an office at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. The Guildhall was located on the north side of Parliament Square, which meant that Thorne and Porter met up again after lunch close to where they’d parted company five or six hours before. Porter moaned about having to come all the way south again, but at least the weather had improved since they’d last walked across the square. Thorne’s leather jacket had dried out, and Porter tossed what looked like an expensive waterproof coat across her arm. Thorne thought it was the type favoured by that strange breed who trudged across hills of a weekend, pockets stuffed full of Kendal mint cake.

  ‘Are you a walker?’

  ‘Only as far as the car,’ Porter said.

  For all its gargoyles and ornate Gothic stylings, the Guildhall was less than a century old, but it was an imposing building nevertheless, with a position as historic as any in the city. It had once been the site of the Sanctuary Tower, from where, ironically, the seven-year-old Duke of York had been dragged, en route to being murdered with his elder brother by the future Richard III. Four centuries later, Tothill Fields Prison had stood on the same spot, housing inmates as young as five years old in conditions only slightly less horrific than those a mile or two up the river in Newgate. And the building was still playing its part in constitutional history. Later in the year it was due to close, before reopening in 2008 as the Supreme Court, new home to a dozen fully independent law lords, and the single highest court in the country.

  As Thorne and Porter climbed the stone stairs towards the Probation Service offices, Thorne decided that the Princes in the Tower killings would almost certainly be handled nowadays by Roper and his Sexy enquiries team. And that, although those sitting nervously outside several courtrooms were much older than five, he doubted that a single one of them was there because they’d stolen a loaf of bread…

  Though most of the seven courtrooms were as austere and darkly elegant as the fabric of the building itself, many of the offices attached to them were more basic. The room Thorne and Porter found themselves sitting in was dingy and utilitarian; and, if Callum Roper’s appearance had been as immaculate as his shiny new home, Peter Lardner reflected his own, dowdier surroundings equally well.

  He looked as miserable as the shittiest kind of sin.

  ‘I know what Grant Freestone would say.’ Lardner pushed his hands out in front of him. Slid his arms across the top of his desk, as if he wanted nothing so much as to lay his head down on top of them and go to sleep. He answered Thorne’s question in a low voice, all but free from expression, speaking to a point on the coarse, grey carpet somewhere between his desk and the chairs in front of it. ‘He’d deny it. Same as he’d probably deny killing the woman he pushed through that coffee table. He denied taking those kids as well, even after they found them tied up with gardening twine in his garage.’

  ‘Had a problem facing up to stuff, did he, Mr Freestone?’ Porter asked.

  ‘He thought the world was out to get him.’

  ‘It might well have been,’ Thorne said. He knew a decent-sized corner of the world where they plastered pictures of alleged paedophiles on the front pages of their newspapers. Where the police might be waiting at Boots when you went to pick up photos of your child in a paddling pool. Where a paediatrician could have her house burned down, because some idiot got their words confused. If that world was going to get anyone, it would be a man like Grant Freestone.

  ‘He certainly got a few good kickings inside,’ Lardner said. ‘He got used to the taste of tea with piss in it.’

  ‘He must have been to our canteen,’ Porter said.

  Lardner nodded, acknowledging the joke, but not quite able to laugh at it. Later, Thorne and Porter would both admit to having had him down as someone who didn’t find too many things funny, but they both conceded that if they had to spend as much time as Lardner did talking to criminals, they wouldn’t have much to chortle about, either. Just trying to catch the buggers was enough of a pain in the arse.

  Thorne put the man somewhere in his late forties. Though
the hair showed few signs of grey, it was thinning on top, and the eyes were pale and bright behind metal-framed glasses. He wore what was, strictly speaking, a suit and tie, but the various items of clothing looked tired and pissed off with each other. He reminded Thorne of a teacher he’d liked at school, a man who would stop halfway through a geography lesson, tell them it was all a waste of time and read them stories instead. Sherlock Holmes and The Thirty-nine Steps…

  ‘What do you think, though?’ Thorne asked. ‘You probably knew him better than anyone on that panel, and, obviously, we don’t know anybody who’s seen him since he did a runner. Do you reckon he’s capable of taking a kid for an altogether different reason?’

  ‘Do I see him as a kidnapper?’

  They had not told Lardner anything beyond the basic fact of the kidnap and the suspicion about a long-held grudge. He knew nothing about the double murder at the flat in Bow. As Thorne asked the question, he was mentally putting a more complete version of it to himself, and the answer was unequivocal.

  Do you see Grant Freestone as a man who somehow convinced two other people to do the kidnapping, then killed them and took over the job himself?

  Not in a million years…

  ‘I’m not convinced,’ Lardner said. He straightened up, suddenly a little more energised than he had been. ‘He wasn’t what you’d call “organised”. In the sense of getting your shit together, turning up on time and whatever. Or in the way they use that word to describe certain types of criminal.’

  ‘Killers, usually,’ Porter said.

  ‘Right. Which, as far as Freestone goes, is something else I’m not completely convinced of. You’ve got to be organised, wouldn’t you say, to carry out a kidnapping? It’s not just something you do on impulse, is it? You don’t just grab a kid off the street on a whim, even if you are pissed off with his father.’

  ‘What about those kids in his garage?’ Thorne said.

  Porter tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘He seemed to manage that OK.’

  ‘That was an urge he couldn’t control,’ Lardner said. ‘That wasn’t planned. Which is precisely why they caught him.’

  Thorne and Porter shared a look; they both knew that was probably untrue. It was often those who did what they did instinctively – the rapists, the killers – who were the hardest to stop. Those who thought could make life too complicated for themselves eventually, end up thinking themselves right into Broadmoor or Belmarsh.

  ‘Besides,’ Lardner added, ‘why would Freestone wait until now to get his own back? All this “dish best served cold” stuff is crap. I’ve had enough clients down the years with axes to grind to know that much. If you do these things at all, you do them in the heat of the moment. You don’t wait years. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  But what Lardner was suggesting certainly did. Roper had said much the same thing, and it wasn’t getting any easier to argue with. Even if someone like Grant Freestone were to decide, years down the line, to settle a score, was it likely he’d go about it in such a roundabout way? That he’d involve other people?

  ‘Did Freestone ever associate with a Conrad Allen or an Amanda Tickell?’

  Lardner looked blank. ‘I don’t recall the names. He didn’t associate with a great many people, to be honest.’

  It hadn’t hurt to ask, but life was never that simple.

  ‘Something you said before,’ Thorne said, ‘about Freestone not being a killer. It sounds like you don’t think he killed Sarah Hanley. Like you’re someone else who’s going along with the accident theory.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Lardner suddenly looked a little uncomfortable.

  ‘What did the others on the MAPPA panel think?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Did you talk about it afterwards? People must have had opinions?’

  ‘No.’ More than a little uncomfortable now. ‘We didn’t talk about it.’

  ‘You seem to be hedging your bets, that’s all. Are you saying that Freestone didn’t do it?’

  ‘Oh, he did it all right. But there’s a difference between pushing someone just to push them and pushing someone to push them through a sheet of glass, isn’t there? I’ve got a client on my list right now who did four years because some drunk he shoved outside a pub one night happened to have an abnormally thin skull. Do you see what I mean? I’ve had countless similar cases over the years, and I still find the whole issue of “intent” a horribly grey area.’ He held Thorne’s eye for a few seconds before turning away again and shaking his head. ‘I don’t know…’

  Thorne saw his old teacher again. It’s all a waste of time. He half expected Lardner to open a drawer and take out the John Buchan.

  ‘What about the sister?’ Porter asked.

  ‘Well, that’s something else entirely.’

  ‘She gave Freestone an alibi…’

  Thorne looked over to Porter. His eyes wide, asking the question.

  ‘Sister… ?’

  ‘I think the police were right, on balance, to discredit her statement,’ Lardner said. He raised a hand, swept what little hair there was straight back. ‘If I remember rightly, the pathologist was a little vague about the time of death.’

  ‘There was a two-hour window,’ Porter said. ‘And Freestone’s sister claimed he was with her the whole time. Walking in a park with her and her kids.’

  ‘The point is that she had also given him an alibi six years before that. For the afternoon when the children were snatched.’ Lardner smiled a little sadly. ‘She clearly had the same problems facing up to stuff that her brother did.’

  There was a knock at the door. Lardner stood and apologised, moved around the desk and explained that he had another appointment.

  Porter said that was fine.

  Thorne was still staring at her. Still asking.

  On the way down the stairs, he vocalised the question somewhat more forcefully than he’d intended. ‘What fucking sister?’

  ‘Just what I said in there. Freestone’s sister-’

  ‘When did you find out about this?’

  Porter couldn’t suppress a smirk. ‘I called up the case notes this morning. It wasn’t a big deal at the time.’ She leaned towards the wall as a fully kitted-up barrister charged down the stairs past them. ‘You heard what Lardner said. They discredited her statement because she had a history of lying for her brother.’

  They turned at the bottom of the final flight, into the busy corridor that ran alongside the two largest courtrooms. Into a scene they both knew well: anxious witnesses and bored coppers; relatives of those on trial and of those they were accused of defrauding, assaulting, abusing; men in new shoes and tight collars; women as glassy-eyed as Debenhams dummies, tensed on benches, desperate to puke or piss, high heels like gunshots against the marble.

  All honing the truth or polishing up the turd of a lie. Sweating on the right result.

  ‘He wasn’t very happy talking about that whole MAPPA business,’ Porter said. ‘Made him very jumpy.’

  Thorne agreed. ‘Roper didn’t like it much, either. He talked about it, but there was plenty of stuff he conveniently couldn’t remember too well, that he was just a bit vague about. Know what I mean?’

  ‘It’s hardly surprising, is it? None of them were exactly covered in glory.’

  You didn’t need a degree in criminology to work out why anyone involved in the panel assembled to monitor Grant Freestone would be happier staying off the subject; keeping it as far behind them as possible. A project that had culminated in the death of a young woman – a death for which some thought the panel might be partly responsible – was hardly likely to merit pride of place on anyone’s CV.

  ‘I think the whole Freestone thing is probably a waste of time,’ Thorne said.

  ‘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.