Buried

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne pointed a finger and left it there. ‘He tied two kids up in a garage. That’s not a suggestion. How the hell do we know he hasn’t stuffed Luke Mullen in a cupboard with gardening twine round his neck?’

  ‘He’s fine, I swear.’ Freestone closed his eyes, rubbed the back of a hand across his forehead. ‘When’s Tony Mullen getting here? I need to see him.’

  ‘Why did you take him, Grant?’ Thorne waited until it was clear there was nothing coming back. ‘Why no ransom demand? Do you just not need the money? Or did you miss the last bit of the kidnapping correspondence course?’

  Freestone sucked his teeth, thought about it. ‘I’ll talk to Mullen,’ he said.

  Nobody said anything for a few moments after that, but when Porter started to speak, Thorne raised a hand to cut her off. ‘How old is Luke Mullen?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know exactly.’ Freestone blinked. ‘Fifteen? Sixteen?’

  ‘Dark hair? Blond?’

  ‘It’s… dark.’

  ‘What was he wearing when you took him?’

  Freestone was growing increasingly flustered with each question Thorne fired at him, looking at Donovan more than once, and increasingly to Porter. ‘School clothes…’

  ‘Can we stop asking quiz questions?’ Porter snapped. ‘We need to move forward here.’

  Thorne’s smile was ugly. ‘It’s all stuff he could have got from that newspaper story, anyway. He had a paper with him in the park.’

  ‘We have to make sure Luke is safe and unharmed,’ Porter said. ‘That’s the priority here.’ She looked back at Freestone, making sure that he understood what was important as well.

  ‘He’s safe. I haven’t laid a finger on him.’

  ‘Luke’s not the strongest of kids,’ Porter said. ‘We have to check.’

  ‘I’ve been looking after him.’

  ‘That’s good. That helps.’

  ‘You should really get Mullen now.’

  ‘What about the asthma?’ she asked. ‘Has he had any attacks?’

  Freestone shook his head, kept on shaking it.

  ‘Shortness of breath? It’s why I was asking about the air.’

  ‘No, he’s fine.’

  ‘The family are worried because they’re not sure if Luke had his inhaler with him, but it sounds like he wouldn’t have needed it, right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you know if he has it? So I could at least tell them.’

  Freestone closed his eyes again. Let the answer come to him. ‘I think he said something about it.’

  ‘Do you know what an inhaler looks like?’ Porter started to mime it, pushing down on the imaginary pump.

  ‘Of course I do. Jesus…’

  ‘This is important, Grant. We need to know. Has he got one with him?’

  A nod, small and fast, but frozen the second Thorne began to shout: ‘Have you seen Luke Mullen’s inhaler?’

  ‘Yes, I said so! I’ve seen the fucking thing.’ The intense agitation on Freestone’s face turned quickly to alarm when he saw Porter and Thorne relax. When the questions stopped. He turned to Donovan. ‘What’s going on?’

  Donovan’s former career gave him rather more insight than someone in his position might otherwise have had. ‘I think you just gave them the wrong answer,’ he said. ‘Or the right one.’

  Thorne looked at Porter, then up at the camera to share a small moment of success with the two watching DCIs.

  Then he leaned back. Job done.

  After Freestone had been taken back to the cells, they sat for a few seconds, relishing their newly acquired certainty. But each was aware that this feeling of having got something right would soon be replaced with a more familiar one. That of having nowhere else to go.

  It was Thorne who broke the silence. ‘Asthma? That’s fucking genius.’

  ‘We both did a pretty good job,’ Porter said.

  They congratulated each other for a few minutes more on how well they’d played the nice-and-nasty routine. On how they’d let Freestone believe there was tension between them; that he was far better off answering Porter’s questions than Thorne’s. Making him think it was simple confirmation they wanted, rather than proof.

  ‘He was so full of shit,’ Thorne said. ‘All that just to get a bit of leverage. So we’d agree to Mullen coming in.’

  Porter raised her eyebrows. ‘Now, there’s a major question in itself.’

  ‘Like we haven’t got enough of those already.’

  ‘Number one in the hit parade being: if Freestone hasn’t got Luke Mullen…?’

  And there it was. That familiar feeling…

  Thorne’s first thought was that Brigstocke had come down to do his own bit of back-patting, but his face told a different story. As did the face of the man who appeared next to him in the doorway, then barged past into the interview room like he was a heartbeat away from cracking heads open.

  ‘Why wasn’t I told about Grant Freestone?’ Mullen asked. His question was absurd, considering that he obviously had been told: he was there, after all. After a second of incredulity from the others in the room, he condescended to correct himself: ‘Why wasn’t I told officially?’

  Thorne rose from his seat and exchanged a glance with Brigstocke. He was happy to handle this one, though even as he opened his mouth he had no idea how he was going to handle it. ‘Your position as Luke’s parent, and as an ex-officer, makes your role in this case tricky, to say the least…’

  ‘Don’t talk shit to me. Where’s Freestone?’

  ‘He’s probably with the Force Medical Examiner by now, getting a dose of methadone.’

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘What you want is one thing,’ Thorne said, ‘and I do understand that you and Detective Superintendent Jesmond are… close friends. But I don’t think that coming in here and trying to give anyone orders is particularly helpful.’ He caught the look from Brigstocke, the warning to take it easy, but when his eyes returned to Mullen, the fury seemed to have cooled.

  ‘However you’d prefer me to put it, then. I would like to see him. He’s been asking to see me, so I think I have a right.’

  ‘He hasn’t got Luke,’ Thorne said. ‘He told us he had, but we’re pretty sure he was just telling us what we wanted to hear.’

  ‘Pretty sure?’

  ‘We’ve got him talking to us about Luke being asthmatic, for Christ’s sake…’

  Confusion washed across Mullen’s face.

  Porter chipped in to explain. ‘We asked him early on about Allen and Tickell and he blanked us. Later, he was just giving us stuff he could have picked up from the paper. So we needed to feed him something specific, something untrue. To catch him out with it.’

  ‘He isn’t our kidnapper,’ Thorne said.

  Brigstocke stepped towards Mullen. ‘You probably don’t know whether to feel relieved or not. It’s hard, I know.’ He held out an arm as though offering to lead him back out the way he had come. But Mullen wasn’t about to go anywhere.

  ‘I still want to see him,’ he said.

  Brigstocke lowered the arm which had been so studiously ignored. ‘I’m afraid I can’t see much point.’

  ‘What about this connection to the dead girl?’

  Jesmond was certainly keeping his friend very well informed. Thorne looked at Porter. They remained none the wiser about Freestone and Amanda Tickell. About the possibility that they’d both been treated by Neil Warren.

  ‘It’s only theoretical as yet,’ Brigstocke said. ‘And the community of addicts and counsellors is thankfully not as big as the Daily Mail would like to make out. If they did know each other, it may be no more than coincidence.’

  Brigstocke had said it with conviction, but it wasn’t enough to convince Mullen. Or Thorne. Coincidence played a greater part in many investigations than the writers of films and crime novels could ever hope to get away with, but he knew there was more to this than an interesting collision of names and dates. He knew that Free
stone’s connection to the kidnapping was important. But knowing counted for nothing. It wasn’t going to put Luke Mullen in his mother’s arms. While its true significance remained as elusive as it had been before they’d ever arrested Grant Freestone, simple coincidence was the much less frustrating explanation.

  Mullen crossed to a chair, put his hands on the back of it, staking a claim. ‘I’ll see him in here,’ he announced. ‘Whenever the doctor’s finished with him.’

  Thorne tried to sound as though he hadn’t forgotten that the man in front of him was missing a child. Thinking, as he spoke, that what had probably made Mullen a bloody good copper now made him a pain in the arse as a civilian. ‘It’s really not possible,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve eliminated Freestone from any active part in your son’s abduction, there are others who want a crack at him. There’s still the small matter of the murder case he was originally wanted for, and some people already think we’ve had him more than long enough.’ He paused. ‘The Sarah Hanley murder?’ He looked for a reaction but saw none that told him anything useful.

  ‘This room wouldn’t have been any good anyway,’ Porter said. ‘He was insisting it was private. No cameras or tapes.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘God knows.’ Mullen’s jawbone bulged beneath the skin as he gritted his teeth. ‘Probably so he could threaten me again, without any record of it. But since when do the likes of him need a good reason to do anything?’

  ‘Is that really why he wanted to see you, do you think?’ Thorne asked. ‘Just to make a few more threats?’

  ‘I’d presumed it was about Luke. If Freestone had taken him, I thought he was going to tell me why. Tell me what he wanted.’

  ‘Right.’ Thorne nodded, but his face suggested that this was only one explanation.

  ‘Well, what the hell else could it have been? Like you said, it was hardly so he could remind me I was off his Christmas-card list.’

  Thorne didn’t speak for several seconds. He just watched Mullen’s knuckles turn white on the back of the metal chair. Finally, he said, ‘We’ll never know now, will we?’

  At first, Thorne thought the noise was coming from the back of Mullen’s throat. Then he realised it was the sound of the chair scraping against the floor. He watched as Mullen closed his eyes, lifted the chair a foot or so off the ground, held it there for a few seconds, then smashed it back down, shouting what might have been ‘fuck’ or ‘no’ as it hit the floor. Mullen took a few seconds to gather himself before turning slowly to look at the senior officer; seeking confirmation that there was no further argument to be had.

  ‘I think you should go home, sir,’ Brigstocke said.

  In turn, Mullen gave Porter, then Thorne, the benefit of a flint-hard stare before spinning on his heel and striding towards the door. He stopped dead when he drew level with Brigstocke. Pushed back his shoulders. ‘You know I’ll take this higher, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s your privilege,’ Brigstocke said.

  The older man took a step closer to him. ‘How many kids have you got?’

  ‘Three.’

  Mullen snapped his fingers. ‘Let’s say it’s two.’ Snapped them again. ‘Just like that, you wake up and one’s gone. Imagine really hard for a few minutes what that would be like. Then try and lose that fucking sanctimonious tone.’

  Thorne hadn’t meant to follow Mullen. He wasn’t seeing him off the premises or anything like that, but it was clear that others didn’t view it in quite the same way. Thorne stood in the lobby, watching through the glass doors, as Mullen crossed the road and walked to a BMW somewhat newer than his own. Mullen opened the door and stared back towards the station. The orange from the street lamp and the paler wash from the car’s interior cast enough light on his face to make the thoughts sculpting its expression clear enough.

  Thorne didn’t look away, but wondered if his own state of mind was equally transparent.

  Fuck. Bastard, bloody, fuckety-fuck…

  Lately, it was becoming hard to tell whether the voice in his head was his own or his father’s.

  As the BMW accelerated away and Thorne turned back to the access door, Kitson came through it on her way out. She gazed at the weather. The evening looked as though it would stay dry, but she still pulled on her coat. ‘Better days?’ she said.

  Obviously he was as transparent as usual…

  ‘Well, making the father of a kidnap victim want to rip my head off is not the cleverest thing I’ve ever done.’ He noted her reaction. ‘I’ll tell you later. How’s things with the baby-faced Nazi?’

  ‘Smartarse has done a pretty good job,’ Kitson said. ‘I can’t get much more than a sick smile out of him, so I don’t see him giving me these names in a hurry.’

  ‘Knocked it on the head for the night?’

  ‘Somebody else is having a crack at him, so I’m going back to poke around at Farrell Towers. We took a ton of stuff away and I’m still waiting on phone records, but there might be something we missed. It’ll be a chance to have another lovely chat with his delightful parents, anyway.’

  A teenager stood up from the bench in the small waiting area and sauntered over to them. He was probably around the same age as Adrian Farrell, but his skin, teeth and watery eyes could have belonged to someone fifteen years older. He stank of beer and smoke, as he leaned in close to ask Thorne and Kitson for a cigarette. They both shook their heads. The duty officer behind the screen told the boy firmly to sit back down; that someone would be out to see him in a few minutes.

  Thorne gave Kitson the highlights of the most recent interview. Told her that, despite everything, he still believed that Freestone, or the Sarah Hanley killing, or both were somehow connected to Luke Mullen’s kidnap and the murders of Amanda Tickell and Conrad Allen. They nattered for a few minutes. Kitson complained that it often got harder to see where you were going as you collected more information, as the map of a case became more detailed. ‘Wood and trees and all that shit,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind,’ Thorne said. ‘You might get lucky… Find an address book at Farrell’s place with a section marked “Others involved in murder”. Maybe a nice pile of BNP leaflets under his bed. Then you can go home and get yourself an early night.’

  Kitson smiled for a few seconds, then shook her head. ‘I know the fact that Latif and Khan were Asian is crucial, and I’m not saying it wasn’t a race crime as well, but I’ve always thought the sexual element of the attack was more important. It makes it something else.’

  ‘It makes Adrian Farrell seriously fucked up,’ Thorne said.

  Kitson’s smile returned, but it was the sort people made around hospital beds. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said. ‘See where he gets it from.’

  Thorne suddenly thought of something and stopped her. ‘I know we talked about this, but it’s still worth keeping one eye out for anything linking Farrell to Luke Mullen. Beyond them playing the odd game of football in the playground.’

  ‘I was planning to.’

  ‘Comes firmly under “clutching at straws”, but you never know…’

  When Kitson had gone, Thorne took out his ID card, ready to swipe it through the reader on the access door, but he walked to the counter first. He was aware that the duty officer had been listening to the conversation he’d had with Kitson. He imagined that the young PC saw a career in plain clothes, on a murder squad, as a glamorous alternative to passing messages and getting shouted at. To dealing with people you knew damn well were just oiks and lowlifes, and doing your own bit of shouting when you’d had enough of it.

  Thorne glanced at the teenager who was still sitting on the bench looking pissed off, then back to the uniformed officer, who he’d spoken to a couple of times and knew to be thick as a brick. ‘You’re better off where you are, mate.’

  The officer straightened his back. ‘Sir?’

  Thorne tapped on the screen. ‘You’ve got one of these. Decent bit of reinforced plastic between
you and the rest of the world. Lose this and you’re in trouble, because that’s when you realise it’s not spit or fists you’ve got to worry about.’ He turned and walked towards the door. ‘Once that screen goes, mate, you’re stuffed.’

  By midnight, the majority of the five hundred or so officers and police staff who worked at Colindale during the day had gone home, and the buzz around the station had faded to a barely discernible sputter. There was still a night-duty CID, of course, and a custody team, but as most of the rooms and offices had emptied, the place had taken on the slightly surreal atmosphere that many buildings acquired after hours: a thickening of the air and a humming in bright-white walls. Thorne remembered being in a school play once, rehearsing in the evening after he’d rushed home first to change out of his uniform. It had felt so weird and fantastic, so invigorating, to be in the building when it was empty. He’d run from classroom to classroom, charged into the gym in his Oxford bags and beetle-crusher shoes, and shouted swear words down the unlit corridors.

  There was no such excitement in a police station once darkness fell.

  Curiously, as the space around you increased, a feeling of claustrophobia took hold, while, outside, you knew only too well that crimes you would have to deal with the following day were taking place. Some types more than others, of course. Fraud happened during daylight hours, and drug-smuggling, and many kinds of theft. But night was when brutality flourished; when people suffered and died violently.

  At night, in a police station, it felt like something was coming.

  As far as the current cases went, the investigations had all but shut down until the morning. Adrian Farrell’s solicitor had insisted that his client be allowed to return to his cell and get eight hours’ sleep. Within the hour, Danny Donovan had demanded the same for Freestone and with the only lead on the Luke Mullen kidnap put to bed, there was nothing else that anyone could usefully be chasing. Now, there was little to be done but write the day up, drink too much coffee, then sit around feeling depressed and caffeined off your tits at the same time.

  Russell Brigstocke walked into the CID room looking as though another cup or two of coffee wouldn’t hurt. ‘You two might as well piss off home,’ he said.