Farrell’s expression started to catch up with his voice. He leaned away from the table, reddening, the desperate smile looking ready to slide off his face at any moment. ‘This is bollocks,’ he said. He turned to Wilson. ‘I’m not saying anything else.’
‘It seems a very odd thing to lie about, that’s all.’
Farrell studied the tabletop.
Thorne glanced at Kitson and understood at once from her expression that this was as rattled as she’d ever seen Adrian Farrell.
‘Maybe we’ll come back to that,’ Thorne said. ‘We wouldn’t want Mr Wilson saying that we bullied you.’
Wilson just sat back and clicked the top of his expensive ballpoint.
‘Is there much bullying at your school?’ Thorne asked. He didn’t wait long for an answer. It was already clear he would be having a more-or-less one-sided conversation. ‘There’s always some, isn’t there? Can’t get rid of it completely, because one or two kids are never going to like themselves very much.
‘They reckon that’s why bullies do it, don’t they? Because of how they feel about themselves. Same for those who take it outside school, if you ask me. The ones who try and make themselves feel better by giving people a kicking on the street. The ones who attack complete strangers because they’ve been looked at the wrong way or imagine they’ve been “disrespected”; who maim, or cripple, or kill someone for no other reason than they’re black, or gay, or wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Then tell themselves they’re being honourable by refusing to grass anyone up when they get caught.’
‘Just tell us their names,’ Kitson said. ‘Tell us and we can stop all this pissing about.’
‘The thing is, I can even understand it, up to a point,’ Thorne said. ‘You can call these crimes “wicked’ or “evil” or whatever you want, but it usually comes down to plain ignorance in the end, and none of us is immune to that, right? There’s a scale, though, isn’t there?’ He traced a line along the tabletop with his finger. ‘I think I’m tolerant, of course I do. Most of us do. But every now and again stuff comes into my head I wouldn’t dream of saying out loud. I don’t know where it’s come from, how it got in there, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t put my hand up to it. I’d never do anything, and I think the people who perpetrate these crimes are shit, scum, whatever… but I know why it happens. I understand that they’re just more ignorant than I am.’
He paused for a few seconds. Watched the red numbers change on the digital clock above the door.
43… 44 … 45…
‘What happened to Amin Latif, though?’ Thorne shook his head. ‘That’s about something else. It’s got to be. I’m not even sure I want to understand why anyone could do that. The first bit’s not too hard to fathom: it’s the sort of thing I’ve just been talking about. It’s ignorance, and trying to make yourself feel better, plain and simple. Amin and his friend are standing at that bus stop and not looking away when you and your mates try to stare them down. Saying something maybe. So they get a kicking, right? Or at least Amin does, because his friend manages to get away, which leaves three against one. Good odds for hard men like you and your mates, right?’
Farrell was bent forward in his chair. He mumbled something. His hands were fists, hanging at his sides.
Kitson leaned in, her head low, trying to catch Farrell’s eye. ‘Just the names, Adrian. Get it over with.’
‘You’re not a virgin, are you?’ Another rhetorical question. Thorne cracked on immediately. ‘Christ, I presume you’re not; not at seventeen. You know what sex is supposed to be about, right? Love, in an ideal world, course it is. Lust, more often than not, if we’re being honest. And habit, and booze, and boredom now and again… But what happened to Amin Latif wasn’t any of those things, was it?’
36… 37 … 38…
‘Let’s imagine for a minute that you weren’t there that night, in the rain, at that bus stop. I’ll tell you what happened, what we know happened from Nabeel Khan’s statement and from the other evidence. I’ll tell you, and you tell me if you’ve got any idea at all what it was about. OK? You see, the job’s done, that’s the strange thing. The Paki bastard’s half-dead in the gutter, right, so why don’t the three of them just piss off? Maybe one or two of them are ready to go, but someone else is calling the shots and he’s got other ideas. He really wants to teach the cheeky fucker a lesson. So he drags him back on to the pavement and turns him over on to his belly. He undoes Amin Latif’s belt and pulls down his jeans. Are you following this OK?’
Farrell’s breathing was heavier, wetter…
‘Then he pulls down his own trousers, and pants, and by this time I’m guessing that his two mates have backed right off. They want nothing to do with any of this. Maybe they’re shouting at him to leave it, telling him he’s a fucking perv, but he doesn’t care by this point. He’s not thinking about anything else. He’s got carried away and he’s already getting his tiny little dick out… He’s already dropping down to his knees…’
‘You’re being stupid for no reason…’ Kitson said.
‘Trying to stick it into Amin Latif.’
‘If we pull in Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson, and it turns out to be them, they’re going to think it was down to you anyway.’
12… 13 … 14…
‘But the Paki bastard – which was how he was described during the initial attack – he puts up a fight. At this point, all he’s got are a couple of broken bones. At this point, the shitbag kneeling behind him can walk away and be looking at a lot less than life imprisonment. But he chooses not to. And Amin Latif makes his own choice: he struggles, and refuses to raise his arse up off the pavement; refuses to submit to this animal who’s trying to rape him, who’s trying to prove how much of a man he is. So the animal eventually gives up. He gets back to his feet and takes hold of himself. And, while his mates laugh, he masturbates. And even before he’s finished coming, he’s begun kicking his victim in the side and in the head, and he doesn’t stop until Amin Latif is completely still. Lying in the gutter. Covered in rain and blood and cum…’
When Farrell looked up suddenly, it was clear that he’d been crying for a while without making any sound. The neck of his sweatshirt was already darkened with tears. The sobs exploded from him as he began to curse and thrash in his chair like someone burning. He called them bitches and cunts, and pulled away violently when Wilson reached over and tried to put a hand on his arm.
Neither Kitson nor Thorne could be sure if the hatred was aimed solely at them; for what was happening, for the state they’d reduced him to. The tears that flew off his face as he jerked and spat out his insults certainly pointed to something aimed at least partly at himself, for what he’d done.
For what he was.
Kitson had to raise her voice to terminate the interview.
Farrell was still swearing, hoarse and red-faced, when they sealed up the discs and called the jailer into the room.
It was pleasant enough for people to be enjoying a late afternoon pint outside the Oak, or pottering in the tiny front gardens of the estate next door.
Thorne and Kitson made their way back towards the Peel Centre, in silence for the first couple of minutes. Thorne could see that Kitson was smarting at the continued failure to get the names she was after. He, too, was thinking about the extreme manner in which the interview had ended, but also about the boy’s even stranger reaction to being questioned about the calls to Luke Mullen.
‘Where does all that come from?’ Kitson asked. ‘What he did to Latif. What he tried to do.’
‘You thinking he might have been abused?’
‘I don’t know. You just look for something that makes sense, don’t you?’
‘What about the father?’
‘I didn’t exactly take to him, but I wouldn’t know beyond that.’
They crossed the road, taking out IDs as they approached the security barrier.
‘What you said in the interview, about stuff in your head.’ Kitson looke
d at him. ‘Were you just making that up?’
‘I suppose so, yeah, for the most part. But none of us are saints, are we?’ He showed his card and walked on. ‘If I see someone with a scar on his face, I think about where he might have got it, and I tell myself he’s probably aggressive, violent. I never see him as a victim. Is that really any different from a woman seeing a young black man coming towards her at night and worrying that he’s going to mug her?’
‘The job makes you see the worst in people,’ Kitson said.
‘It’s still a sort of prejudice though, right?’
They stopped for a few seconds before they walked into Becke House, watched a group of recruits in gym kit kicking a ball around on the sports field. All of them full of piss and vinegar. All up for it.
He caught Porter in her car, on her way back to the Bristow murder scene in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘Hang on, I’m not hands-free…’
Thorne could hear a siren. He guessed that she’d lowered the phone, knowing that to nick a DI for driving without due care and attention would make the average uniformed copper’s afternoon.
‘Right, I’m all yours again.’
He told her about the interview with Adrian Farrell, about the boy’s cagey response when he’d been confronted with the phone records. ‘It was cock and bull,’ Thorne said. ‘I just wish I had a fucking clue what any of it means.’
Porter said something, but the signal broke up and Thorne caught only fragments. He asked her to say it again.
‘Maybe it wasn’t Luke he was calling.’
‘We already looked at the parents-’
‘What if the racist thing runs in the family? Maybe Tony Mullen’s a closet BNP member and Farrell’s old man is calling him up to organise meetings or whatever.’
‘Kitson checked. They hardly know each other.’
‘He might have been calling the sister, of course: Juliet.’
Thorne sat a little straighter at his desk. They hadn’t considered that. ‘OK… but why would he bother lying about it? He’s been cocky as fuck about being accused of murder, even now he must know we’ve got him. Why react like he did in the bin? Why start making shit up, just to avoid us finding out he’s seeing Juliet Mullen?’
‘Because she’s fourteen,’ Porter said. ‘If he’s having sex with her, that’s exactly how he would react. It’s a machismo thing, about respect or whatever. If he gets sent down for the Latif murder, he goes down all guns blazing, doesn’t he? He keeps quiet, he’s a hero to his mates, to the other idiots who think the same way he does. Sleeping with an underage girl doesn’t exactly fit in with that image.’
There was a twisted logic that made as much sense as anything else in the case so far. Thorne told Porter that he’d talk to Juliet Mullen. Porter suggested that he do so in person, so he said that he’d try to get over to the Mullen place later on. Then he asked her what she was going to be doing, if they would see each other.
‘I’m not sure how long I’m going to be at Kathleen Bristow’s. I’m hoping SOCO will be about done, and I want to have a good go at those filing cabinets. Maybe what’s in there can give us a clue about what might have been taken.’
‘How did it go with the brother and his wife?’
It took no more than the sigh and the traffic noise, a second or two of the pause before she began to answer, for Thorne to realise that he’d asked cleverer questions.
TWENTY-ONE
A makeshift stage had been set up in his old man’s front room.
Sitting on the solitary chair, Thorne could hear the voices from behind the hastily rigged-up curtain, as his father and his father’s friend Victor got themselves ready. Thorne glanced over at his mum’s old clock on the mantelpiece. He needed to get back to work and didn’t really have time for this.
‘Are you going to be much longer?’
His father yelled back from behind the curtain, ‘Keep your fucking wig on!’
Thorne froze as he saw the smoke curling underneath the thick, black material. He got up and ran for the curtain, but found himself unable to reach it. He clawed at fresh air and shouted to his father on the other side, screaming at him to get out.
‘Relax,’ his father said. ‘Sit down. We’ll be ready in a minute.’
‘There’s smoke…’
‘No, there fucking isn’t.’
‘Stop swearing.’
‘I can’t fucking help it.’
The curtain rose and Thorne fell back in his chair as his father and Victor stepped forward through waist-high dry ice.
Jim Thorne grinned and winked. ‘Told you it wasn’t smoke, you big cock!’
The show itself wasn’t bad.
Victor walked across to a piano and started to play. Thorne’s father began to sing, but the cheesy rendition of ‘Memories’ fell apart when he forgot the words almost straight away, mugging furiously as he gave it up as a waste of time. Then they went into the patter…
‘Do you know they’ve spent more money on developing Viagra than they have on research into Alzheimer’s?’
‘That’s terrible,’ Victor said.
‘You’re telling me. I’m walking around with a permanent stiffy and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do with it!’
Then more of the same. All the usual jokes, reeled off one after the other, with Victor playing straight man and cheerily feeding the set-ups to his old friend. Stuff from Thorne’s father about how Alzheimer’s wasn’t all bad: how at least he never had to watch repeats on TV, and how he could hide his own Easter eggs, and how he was always meeting new friends.
‘As long as you don’t forget your old ones,’ Victor said.
‘Of course not.’ Beat. Look. ‘Who are you again?’
Thorne enjoyed every minute of it, thrilled to see his father so happy. He forgot about the time and about the work he should be doing as those expressions of loss and confusion he had always dreaded seeing were transformed into something comical, as his father stared out at him in mock-bewilderment, his eyes bright.
Thorne laughed, and applauded another badly timed gag. The noise of his clapping faded on cue as his father turned to Victor and stage-whispered from the side of his mouth: ‘I’m killing ’em.’
‘You’re on fire, Jim.’
‘Too bloody true I am!’
Thorne whistled as the old man turned, revealing the elaborate and colourful flame design that had been embroidered on to the back of his jacket. He stamped his feet as Jim Thorne began to dance, as he moved his hips and rolled his shoulders, so the flames appeared to be climbing slowly up his back.
‘Dad…’
His father turned to look at him. ‘Don’t panic, Son. It’s not what it looks like.’
But, suddenly, Thorne knew that the flames were real; that they were burning through his father’s polyester suit and eating away at the flesh beneath.
He could smell exactly how real it was.
He reached across to slam down the large red button by the side of his chair and a bell began to ring; deafeningly loud, but fading, just as his applause had done, each time his father said something.
‘That is so rude.’
‘What is?’ Victor asked.
‘Fancy not turning off your mobile phone during a show!’
Thorne’s hands were over his ears. He couldn’t hear himself screaming at his father to shut up and get out, or begging Victor for help.
‘Bloody funny-sounding ice-cream van,’ Jim Thorne said.
‘It’s a fire alarm, you stupid old bastard.’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’
‘We need to leave now. It’s a fire alarm.’
His father’s smile was visible in flashes through the crown of flames. The mischief in his voice was clearly audible above the spatter, and the crackle of burning hair.
‘Is it, Tom? Are you sure?’
Thorne lifted his head and reached for the phone, wiped away the string of drool that hung between his cheek and the deskt
op.
‘Were you asleep?’
‘No…’
‘You’re such a shit liar,’ Hendricks said. He recognised something in Thorne’s tone, or in the silence. ‘Same dream?’
Thorne sat up straight, then rose slowly to his feet. ‘More or less,’ he said. He groaned, rolling his head around. His back was complaining and he felt as if someone had been standing on his neck.
‘I wish I had time to take naps,’ Hendricks said.
‘It’s been a very long day.’
‘For you and me both, mate.’
‘Yeah, sorry. I almost forgot you were there this morning.’
‘Trust me, I’d rather not have been. There’s times I wish I’d never gone into medicine. When I think I should have listened to my parents and studied hard to be a ballerina, like they wanted.’
Spoken in Hendricks’ flat, Mancunian accent, such comments rarely failed to improve Thorne’s mood. The dream was already fading, though the smell was still strong enough…
‘No surprises on the PM?’
‘None at all in terms of cause of death. I found a large tumour in Kathleen Bristow’s stomach, though. I’ve no idea if she even knew about it.’
The woman was dead, so there was no real reason for Thorne to find this as depressing as he did.
‘What time d’you think you might be getting away?’ Hendricks asked.
Thorne looked at his watch. It was nearly half past seven. He’d slept for around half an hour, but it had been light outside when he’d closed his eyes and now it was starting to get dark. He’d check with Brigstocke, but bearing in mind he’d racked up back-to-back eighteen-hour shifts, he didn’t think there’d be much objection to him heading off. ‘I’ve got to shoot up to Arkley, but that shouldn’t take too long. Home by nine-thirty, ten o’clock, I would have thought.’
‘Fancy a late one in the Prince? Couple of games of pool?’
Thorne still didn’t know if he’d be seeing Porter later, but he reckoned Hendricks wouldn’t mind being stood up if it came to it. ‘Yeah, why not? I won’t sleep much anyway…’
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