It wasn’t like he was any stranger to disappointment.
Freestone laid his hands flat on the table and breathed out slowly. ‘I didn’t kill Sarah Hanley,’ he said.
There were plenty of places where Thorne lowered his expectations as a matter of course: White Hart Lane, naturally; Trevor Jesmond’s office; Irish theme pubs, and any part of London Underground. In the Colindale station canteen, it was best to have no expectations at all.
He cut through the crust of potato on top of his shepherd’s pie. If there was any meat inside, it was heavily disguised. ‘They’re improving,’ he said.
Porter had made what seemed to be the sensible decision to go with a sandwich. It was only moderately awful.
‘This is slumming it for you, I bet,’ Thorne said.
‘Well, you can’t get fresh sushi at the Yard, either,’ Porter said, ‘but it’s better than this. Mind you, that’s because we’re more important than you are.’
‘I think some people really believe that.’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘Really, I think they do.’ Thorne pointed with his fork. ‘Because you’re trying to save a life, because you’re proactive. Whereas we just react to a body. Waste our time trying to catch the people who leave them lying around.’
‘Well, we’ve got a bit of both on this one.’ She had clearly been expecting a smile, or at least a softening. ‘Look, anyone who seriously thinks that is just stupid.’
‘Very bloody stupid.’
‘I know. I said.’
‘How many people who commit a murder might go on to commit another one?’
‘I’m not arguing.’
‘We save lives, too.’
Porter held up her hands in surrender and smiled, irritated now. ‘What are you telling me for? I agree with you.’ She pushed away the uneaten half of her sandwich. ‘Christ, there are more chips on shoulders around here than there are going soggy on those hotplates.’ She stood up. ‘Do you want coffee?’
‘Thanks…’
He watched her walk across to the till, wondering what his problem was, and why he’d taken it out on her. Whether he should go over and pay for the coffee. What she might look like naked.
When she returned to the table, he came as close to an apology as he was likely to, telling her that he hadn’t been sleeping well. That his back was still giving him hell. She pulled a sympathetic face, then asked him where he thought they were with Freestone.
‘We got a reaction,’ he said.
‘But to what? We know he had a problem with Tony Mullen.’
‘He might still have one.’
Porter shifted to one side as two PCs put down trays and began to jabber about a ‘muppet’ on their relief. She lowered her voice. ‘You seriously think Tony Mullen might have fitted him up for the Hanley murder?’
‘No idea,’ Thorne said. ‘But maybe Freestone thinks he did.’
‘None of which helps us find Luke, though, does it?’
Thorne knew that she was right. Throughout the rest of the interview, Freestone had said nothing to quicken anybody’s pulse. He had just kept insisting that he hadn’t killed Sarah Hanley. He’d given no indication that he’d played a part in the kidnapping of Luke Mullen, or that he knew anyone who had.
However, in the same way Thorne knew that something was bound to go wrong with his car sooner or later, or that getting pudding would be a serious mistake, he now knew that Grant Freestone had something to give them. A name, a place, a date; a whatever-the-fuck-it-was. He knew that it just needed digging up from wherever it lay, deep or barely hidden, and that everything would make a damn sight more sense once it had been.
Even if Freestone himself had no idea that he possessed it.
‘I’m not sure what else we can do,’ Thorne said. ‘We could try to get a warrant, maybe. Force Warren to tell us if he treated Tickell at the same time as Freestone. But do we want to go through all the palaver of getting one?’
It might have been the coffee that made Porter grimace, but Thorne didn’t think so. The ‘palaver’ he had referred to could involve anything from conclusive evidence of need to permission from the Home Secretary. ‘You saw the state of Allen’s flat,’ she said. ‘What this man’s capable of. We can’t take it for granted that the boy’s got that long.’
For a few minutes after that, they just eavesdropped on the conversation next to them. By all accounts, the ‘muppet’ was only marginally less of a ‘plonker’ than the ‘toerag’ who spent all day ‘crawling up the sergeant’s arse’.
It was like listening to a lexicon of primetime plod-speak.
Thorne was still undecided as to whether coppers had begun to talk more like their television counterparts or if they’d always spoken like that and researchers on The Bill just did their homework. He suspected – he hoped – it was the former. The flash bastards on the Flying Squad had certainly started behaving a lot more like bouncers with warrant cards once Regan and Carter had begun handing out slaps and tearing around TV-London in their gold Granadas.
As he tuned into the conversation again, Thorne made a mental note to give Holland a list of words – to include ‘muppet’, of course, alongside ‘slag’ and ‘snout’ – with instructions to shoot him if he ever used any of them.
When Thorne took the call, it was the uniformed officers’ turn to fall silent and try not to look like they were earwigging. Thorne stared at Porter as he listened, then thanked whoever had passed on what was clearly welcome news.
‘Go on,’ Porter said.
‘Mr Freestone fancies another chat, apparently.’ Thorne looked at what was left of his coffee and pushed back his chair. ‘Says he really wants to talk to us about Luke Mullen.’
‘I didn’t kill Sarah Hanley.’
‘Please don’t tell me I’ve got indigestion for nothing, Grant,’ Thorne said.
‘No, you haven’t.’ Freestone’s south London accent was not as pronounced as it might have been, and his voice was soft, light even. It would have been tricky to tell him and his sister apart from their voices alone. ‘I just wanted to say it again. I’ve never stopped saying it. It’s just that no fucker’s ever started listening, you know?’
‘You’ll have plenty of time to talk to people about what happened to Sarah-’
‘I don’t know what happened to her, all right? I just found her.’
‘OK, Grant.’
‘She was dead when I got there, I swear.’
‘It’s not what we’re here to talk about though,’ Porter said.
Freestone nodded slowly and took a series of short, sharp breaths, like he was gearing up for something. Next to him, Donovan sat low in his chair, sullen and soured; boredom and resentment extinguishing any glimmer of curiosity about what might be said. Control had slipped away from him. Now that his client had chosen to ignore his advice, now that he was surplus to requirements, he would do no more than watch that precious clock of his for as long as he had to. Then he would pocket his firm’s fee and go home to shout at his children for a while.
‘I’m not going back inside,’ Freestone said.
Thorne folded his arms. ‘You asking me or telling me?’
‘Doesn’t matter if it’s murder. Doesn’t matter what it is. I could be banged up for forgery, or not paying my fucking income tax, but it’ll always be about those kids once I’m inside. I’ll always have to watch my back.’
‘You looking for sympathy?’
‘I’m not looking for anything.’
‘Probably best.’
‘You’re just like everyone else…’
‘That’s reassuring.’
‘You need to tell us whatever it is you dragged us back down here for,’ Porter said. ‘That would be a good way to start. If you want people to think other things about you, to see a side that doesn’t… repulse them. You need to earn all that.’ She sat back, leaving him to it; rummaged in her bag for nothing in particular.
Thorne watched the four small
wheels moving round on the twin cassette decks. The tiny, spinning teeth…
‘I want to see Tony Mullen,’ Freestone said.
Thorne and Porter said nothing. Exchanged a glance and tried to look as though Freestone had asked for no more than a cigarette, or a Kit Kat with his tea.
Freestone looked from one to the other, then spoke again, in case he hadn’t made himself clear enough. ‘Luke Mullen’s father.’
Thorne nodded to indicate they knew exactly who Tony Mullen was. ‘And I want to win the Lottery,’ he said. ‘But I’m not holding my breath.’
‘That’s it,’ Freestone said.
‘That’s what?’
Porter looked tense, but her tone stayed reasonable, while Thorne’s had become jagged at the edges. ‘That’s it, as in you have no further requests? Or that’s the end of the discussion?’
Freestone shook his head quickly, and waved his hands. ‘That’s all there is to it, that’s the deal, if you want to look at it like that. I want him to come down here and I want to speak to him privately. Just him and me. No tapes, and not in here, either.’ He looked up at the camera in the corner of the room. ‘No video, nothing like that. So…’
Porter opened her mouth, but Thorne was quicker. ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘The only dealing that’s going to be happening round here is in the office upstairs, where there’s usually a game of three-card brag going on at the end of a shift, so fuck knows where you got that idea from. Second, and more importantly, if you have anything at all to say about Luke Mullen, you’re going to say it to us. Now. On tape. On camera. Broadcast live to the nation if the fancy takes us.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘So…’
Even Donovan was sitting up straight and paying attention.
‘Mr Mullen is no longer a police officer,’ Porter said. ‘Obviously, he’s not investigating this case.’
‘He’s the kid’s father though, isn’t he? That’s more important, surely.’
‘It’s not happening,’ Thorne said.
‘Why not?’
‘We don’t have to give reasons.’
‘Well, then, I don’t have to tell you anything.’
‘For someone who’s so keen to avoid going back to prison, you’re not doing yourself any favours.’
‘There won’t be any favours, whatever I say.’
‘You might be right,’ Thorne said, starting to lose it. ‘But here’s something else to think about. If you’ve got information about Luke Mullen, and you keep it to yourself, I’ll personally make sure that when you do go back to prison, every nutter in there with an axe to grind will know you’re coming.’
Freestone shrugged, looked to Donovan and back to Thorne, but he was thinking about it. It was almost a minute before he spoke again. ‘I need to see Mullen.’
Thorne lifted his jacket from the back of the chair as he stood. He spoke to Porter, then to the cassette recorder. ‘I’m going to finish my lunch. This interview is suspended at-’
‘Just let me talk to him.’
‘Tell us about Luke,’ Porter said.
‘Let me talk to his father first.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not asking for a fucking helicopter. I just want five minutes-’
‘Give me one good reason,’ Thorne said. ‘Any reason at all why we should even think about arranging this.’
‘Because it’s going to get serious if you don’t do what I want. If you don’t start taking what I want seriously.’
Freestone’s voice had changed now, and nobody around the table could fail to be shocked by the range and power of it. They’d listened to the voice that could cajole, that could charm children into garages. Now they were being treated to a voice they could only pray those children had never heard.
‘Because, I’m the only person who knows where Luke Mullen is, and if you don’t do what I’m asking, if you don’t get it arranged, I’ll just sit here like Mr fucking Bean and say nothing. I’ll turn to stone, I swear to God, and you’re going to have to carry the can for that. Fair enough? I’ll sit here and say nothing for as long as it takes and you’ll never find him. Not while it’ll do any good, anyway.’ He pushed himself away from the table, raised an arm to scratch at a shoulder-blade. ‘If you don’t do what I’m asking, Luke Mullen’s going to die.’
FIFTEEN
DI Chris Wilmot surveyed the footage of the suspect one final time, then went to work. The movements of the mouse around the mat were small, precise, but the cursor flew around the screen as he shifted and clicked, cutting and pasting using the specially developed software to call up, then select, subjects that would be a close enough match for the parade.
The traditional method, whereby an eyewitness might identify a suspect in the flesh, was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. It was time-consuming and expensive, with only a handful of stations capable of setting up and running a full parade. Wilmot was one of several roving officers who had been specially trained in newer identification procedures and, as such, he was able to oversee a video parade almost anywhere it was needed. He’d been informed well in advance of the impending arrest and had presented himself at Colindale within ten minutes of the suspect’s arrival in the custody suite.
Wilmot drew from a database of several thousand individuals on video, using half a dozen different search criteria to narrow them down to those of a similar age and ethnic background; those whose height, weight and colouring were within acceptable parameters. After half an hour, he’d assembled the eight fifteen-second clips he would be using alongside the footage he’d already shot of the suspect. Now, it was simply a question of editing them all together into a sequence for the witness to watch. With random selection of the chosen extracts built into the software, Wilmot did not even have to think about it, and would not be aware of the running order himself until the finished sequence was shown to the witness.
Wishing all elements of the job were as straightforward, as foolproof, Wilmot pushed a button and let the computer do it all for him…
Yvonne Kitson sat in the far corner, watching the ID officer make his final preparations. He was clearly efficient and cared about what he was doing, and there was no reason to think that things would not go the way she was hoping. Yet still she felt as knotted with nerves as she could ever remember. Getting everything right from this point on was hugely important to her, personally as well as professionally. Though she knew there was every reason to feel confident, she’d seen many cases a damn sight more buttoned up than this one fall apart at the last minute.
She wanted so badly to enjoy the reaction when she told Amin Latif’s family that she’d found their son’s killer; to see his mother’s face when the right verdict was reached and a suitable sentence handed down. But she knew she’d have to wait a while, that she should assume nothing. And all the time, the very possibility that such things might not happen tied those knots a little tighter.
Despite the news she’d been given that afternoon by a contact at the Forensic Science Service…
She’d arrested Farrell at the parental home at 4 p.m., an hour after the call from the FSS. While Adrian was being taken to Colindale, she’d stayed on to speak to the parents. The encounter had been characterised by a great deal of shouting and crying; by the suggestion that Kitson was not up to her job; by patronising speeches and veiled threats from Farrell’s father, which Kitson ignored, despite the huge temptation to stick him in the back of the car as well and do two for the price of one. When she’d finally been allowed to speak, Kitson had informed the Farrells that, aside from the solicitor they had already announced they would be sending to the station, they were not allowed to inform anyone of their son’s arrest. This was not up for discussion. The identity of others who had taken part in the attack for which their son had been arrested was yet to be ascertained, and as police believed he was in a position to pass on those names, Adrian would be held incommunicado, with even the usual telephone call denied him. After listening to another rant from Mr Farrell
– this time on the subject of the rights of those in custody – and a suggestion that Kitson was making a career-threatening mistake, she informed them that she would be back later with a warrant to search the house. Then she left, eager to get to work on Adrian Farrell, in no doubt as to where he inherited his confidence from.
Watching as final touches were put to the video parade, she wondered if the boy sitting downstairs in a cell was quite so confident now.
‘We’re about there,’ Wilmot said.
Kitson opened the door, exchanged a few words with an officer on duty outside, and half a minute later Nabeel Khan was shown into the room.
He looked a little better than the last time Kitson had seen him, but that was hardly saying much. The bruises had healed, but she knew she was not looking at the teenager she imagined him to have once been. Before he and his friend Amin had stood waiting too long for a bus one night, six months before.
He took off his coat and nodded nervously in her direction. ‘How you doing, miss?’
Kitson could talk to him now. For obvious reasons, until this point, she had not been allowed any contact with the witness. To ensure that any evidence he might provide could not be seen as tainted, officers unconnected with the original case had collected him from his home, then waited with him while preparations were being made. Now that the video parade was itself being videoed, and any conversation would be a matter of record, Kitson could speak freely to the boy.
‘I’m pretty good, Nabeel,’ she said. There was no need to ask how he was.
She talked to him as he took a seat next to Wilmot; told him that the whole thing would only take a couple of minutes, that it was all very simple and that he needn’t worry. He seemed relaxed enough. He told her that he was much happier doing it this way, on the computer; that he was relieved he wouldn’t have to stand in full view of anyone. He laughed when Kitson tried to tell him that wouldn’t have happened; said he’d seen it on TV and knew all about the two-way mirrors and stuff…
Then Wilmot took over, began the official preamble, and Kitson could do little but sit back and watch.
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