Buried-6 (31 page)

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 Mul en, 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 tel ing 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 Mul en’s face.

Porter chipped in to explain. ‘We asked him early on about Al en and Tickel 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 Mul en. ‘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 Mul en wasn’t about to go anywhere.

‘I stil 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 wel informed. Thorne looked at Porter. They remained none the wiser about Freestone and Amanda Tickel . 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 counsel ors is thankful y 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 Mul en. 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 col ision of names and dates. He knew that Freestone’s connection to the kidnapping was important. But knowing counted for nothing. It wasn’t going to put Luke Mul en 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.

Mul en crossed to a chair, put his hands on the back of it, staking a claim. ‘I’l 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 Mul en a bloody good copper now made him a pain in the arse as a civilian. ‘It’s real y 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 stil the smal matter of the murder case he was original y 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.’ Mul en’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 real y 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 tel me why. Tel me what he wanted.’

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

‘Wel , what the hel 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 Mul en’s knuckles turn white on the back of the metal chair. Final y, he said, ‘We’l never know now, wil we?’

At first, Thorne thought the noise was coming from the back of Mul en’s throat. Then he realised it was the sound of the chair scraping against the floor. He watched as Mul en 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. Mul en 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, Mul en 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’l 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.’

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

Thorne hadn’t meant to fol ow Mul en. 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 Mul en crossed the road and walked to a BMW somewhat newer than his own. Mul en 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 equal y transparent.

Fuck. Bastard, bloody, fuckety-fuck
. . .

Lately, it was becoming hard to tel 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 stil pul ed on her coat. ‘Better days?’ she said.

Obviously he was as transparent as usual . . .

‘Wel , 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’l tel 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 Farrel Towers. We took a ton of stuff away and I’m stil waiting on phone records, but there might be something we missed. It’l be a chance to have another lovely chat with his delightful parents, anyway.’

A teenager stood up from the bench in the smal waiting area and sauntered over to them. He was probably around the same age as Adrian Farrel , 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 stil believed that Freestone, or the Sarah Hanley kil ing, or both were somehow connected to Luke Mul en’s kidnap and the murders of Amanda Tickel and Conrad Al en. They nattered for a few minutes. Kitson complained that it often got harder to see where you were going as you col ected more information, as the map of a case became more detailed. ‘Wood and trees and al that shit,’ she said.

‘Never mind,’ Thorne said. ‘
You
might get lucky . . . Find an address book at Farrel ’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 Farrel 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 stil worth keeping one eye out for anything linking Farrel to Luke Mul en. Beyond them playing the odd game of footbal 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 wel 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 stil 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 stil 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 wal s. 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 fel .

Curiously, as the space around you increased, a feeling of claustrophobia took hold, while, outside, you knew only too wel that crimes you would have to deal with the fol owing 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 al but shut down until the morning. Adrian Farrel ’s solicitor had insisted that his client be al owed to return to his cel and get eight hours’ sleep. Within the hour, Danny Donovan had demanded the same for Freestone and with the only lead on the Luke Mul en kidnap put to bed, there was nothing else that anyone could useful y 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.

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

‘Beautiful y put,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m not arguing.’

Porter rose to her feet. ‘Are you sure, Guv?’ But she was already reaching for her bag.

‘I’l need you back here in seven . . . and rested. So I don’t real y want to see anyone getting nightcaps at the Oak.’

Thorne put on his leather jacket. ‘
See
anyone? You planning to go over there later then?’

‘I’m planning to get home, eventual y.’ Brigstocke dropped into the seat that Porter had vacated. ‘Not that there’s much point.’

‘When did you last see your kids?’ Porter asked.

Brigstocke stared up at her in mock amazement. ‘I’ve got
kids?
’

In the lobby, Thorne nodded to the uniform behind the screen, who nodded sheepishly in return and went back to being stumped by the
Sun
’s crossword.

‘How are you getting home?’ he asked Porter.

‘I should just make the last train from Colindale,’ she said. ‘Be there in an hour, with a bit of luck. Cab, otherwise.’