Buried-6 (35 page)

‘I know what’l cheer you up,’ she said. ‘A bit of a history quiz.’

A laminated list of prisoner’s rights had been fixed to the desk. Farrel was picking at an edge of it. He looked up, shrugged. ‘Fine.’

‘History’s your favourite, isn’t it?’

‘I said
fine
.’

‘Good on dates? What about February 28th, 1953?’

Farrel tapped a finger against his lips. ‘Battle of Hastings?’

‘Why don’t we ask the audience?’ Kitson said. ‘Mr Wilson?’

Wilson did a little more scribbling. ‘I doubt you’l get any kind of extension if you waste the time you’ve got playing sil y games.’

‘It was the day that Francis Crick and James Watson worked out the structure of DNA.’ Kitson slowly drew a figure of eight on the desktop in front of her. ‘The double helix.’

Farrel looked as though he found this genuinely funny. ‘I won’t forget it now,’ he said.

‘I bet you won’t. We should have a preliminary result by the end of the day, and I know it’s going to be a match.’

This time, Kitson was talking about the result of tests carried out on an
authorised
DNA sample, taken the previous day at the station. Farrel had refused to give permission for this, so Kitson – as she had every right to do in the case of a non-intimate sample – had taken it without consent. As several strands of hair were removed by the attending medical officer, with Stone and another DC providing the necessary restraint, Kitson had seen flashes of an anger a lot less quiet than the one she sensed, simmering inside Adrian Farrel now.

She stared across the table, turning up the heat. ‘And
you
know it’s going to be a match, too, don’t you?’

‘I know al sorts of things.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘I know that you can’t decide how best to talk to me so as to get what you want. I know that you’re either patronising me or pretending that you think I’m
really
clever and
really
mature, but al the time you’re steering a clumsy course between the two you’re just sitting there hating my guts.’ He cocked his head towards Stone. ‘And I know that he just wants to climb across this table and get his hands on me.’

Stone returned the stare, like he wasn’t about to argue.

Kitson caught the look, like a poker player spotting a tel . The puff of the cheeks from Wilson told her he was resigned to the fact that whichever way he’d advised Farrel to behave, the boy thought he knew better. That the fat fee he was doubtless being paid by his client’s parents would be earned without a great deal of effort. Kitson turned back to Farrel , convinced that his solicitor was already thinking about future, fatter fees. Those that might be earned appealing against a guilty verdict.

‘You’re not walking away from this,’ she said.

‘You seem very sure of yourself, but you’re stil not charging me, are you?’

‘Who were the two other boys with you when you attacked Amin Latif?’

‘When I
what?
’

‘Give me the names, Adrian.’

‘Now, you say you can’t promise anything, right? But if I help you, you’l see what you can do about getting my sentence reduced. Or maybe you’l just try to appeal to my conscience, because you’re sure I’ve got one somewhere, and that deep down I want to do the right thing.’

‘What about Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson?’ Kitson asked. ‘Shal we talk to them? You can bet
they’d
give
you
up in a second.’

It was as though Farrel simply hadn’t heard her. ‘Isn’t this where you slide a few pictures of the dead boy across the table?’

Kitson looked to Wilson, then to Stone. The pause was less for effect than to suck up saliva into a mouth that had suddenly gone dry. It was coppery with adrenalin. ‘You’ve got a lot of confidence, Adrian,’ she said. ‘A lot of charm. I’m sure you’re a big hit with young girls and old ladies. But al the charm in the world won’t sway a jury if it’s looking at an eyewitness ID

and a DNA match.’

‘
I’m
confident? If you ask me, you’re the one who’s counting al the chickens. It’s an eyewitness ID six months after the fact. And you keep talking about this DNA match like you’ve already got it.’

Kitson couldn’t resist a smile, remembering the one Farrel had given her, just before he’d spat on to the pavement.

Stone shuffled forward on his chair. ‘I’l tel you who else you’l be a big hit with,’ he said. ‘One or two of the lads you’re likely to find yourself banged up with.’

Wilson groaned in distaste.

‘Are you serious?’ Farrel asked. He held up a hand, apologising for finding what Stone had said so funny. ‘Sorry, I swear I’m not trying to wind you up . . .’

‘It’s a last resort,’ Wilson said. ‘Sordid scare tactics of that nature are only ever made when a case is nowhere near as strong as is being made out.’ He looked over at Kitson, pleased with himself. ‘It’s barrel-scraping.’

‘It’s quite appropriate, I would have thought,’ she said. ‘Bearing in mind what happened to Amin Latif.’

A bubble of fear, or fury, rose to the surface and broke across the boy’s features. He reached for Wilson’s notebook, tore back a page and jabbed a finger at something the solicitor had jotted down earlier.

‘My client is unhappy about the confiscation of some of his property.’

‘My training shoes.’

‘They’ve been taken away for forensic tests,’ Kitson said. There had been no footwear prints or casts taken at the Latif murder scene, but it was standard practice nonetheless. ‘It’s a routine procedure.’

Farrel pushed his chair away from the table, stuck out his feet. ‘These are bloody ridiculous.’ He raised one of the black, elasticated plimsol s with which almost al prisoners were issued. ‘They don’t even fit.’

‘Everyone gets them,’ Stone said.

‘Why can’t I have another pair of my own brought in?’

‘Sorry. It’s part of the uniform. There’s no Latin motto, but—’

‘Those trainers cost a lot of money. They were customised.’

Wilson raised his pen. ‘Can you assure us that they won’t be damaged during any chemical examination?’

Kitson decided there and then to end the interview. She stood up and instructed Stone to complete the formalities: to stop the recording and seal the cassette within sight of the prisoner. Looking back from the door, she could tel that both Farrel and Wilson were taken aback by the abruptness with which she’d brought proceedings to a halt.

‘I’m investigating the sexual assault and murder of a seventeen-year-old-boy,’ she said. ‘And I wil do whatever it takes to get the names of the people who were there with you when it happened. To make sure that al three of you stand trial for brutalising Amin Latif, then kicking him to death.’ She reached behind her, aware of the slightest tremor in her hand as it closed around the door handle. ‘But I wil not sit here and argue with you about fucking shoes.’

Ten minutes later, standing just inside the cage, Kitson saw Farrel ’s solicitor in the backyard, enjoying a cigarette. She walked out to join him.

He offered her the packet but she shook her head: ‘Got anything stronger?’

‘You seemed a little wound up in there,’ Wilson said.

‘Wel , he’s quite a lad, isn’t he?’

The solicitor didn’t bite. He took one last, deep drag, then flicked the butt towards a pair of police motorbikes. ‘Any thoughts on when you might be bringing him up again?’

‘Not specifical y, but I wouldn’t go too far away.’

‘I was wondering if that pub up the road does a traditional Sunday lunch later.’

‘The Oak? It does lunch, but I’m not sure their definition of “traditional” is the same as yours.’

She walked back inside, deciding that once she’d sorted out the paperwork with the custody skipper, she’d grab some breakfast. Then she’d try to track down Tom Thorne.

Everyone had heard about the overnight development on the Mul en case, and Kitson could only guess that Thorne had not yet had a chance to pick up the memo she’d left in his pigeonhole, or return the message she’d left on his mobile.

Compared to the discovery of a body, what she had to tel him was hardly particularly urgent.

NINETEEN

That was why people stopped to look at accidents: the vicarious thril without the inconvenience of being doused in blood or dressed in twisted metal. It was almost certainly the same principle that made watching three senior officers arguing with one another so exhilarating.

It was the row that Hignett had predicted, and it was only surprising that Graham Hoolihan had taken as long as he had before coming down and throwing around some of his considerable weight.

‘I was cooperative when DI Thorne first contacted me. I was more than helpful. And, unlike anyone on this case, I showed a bit of common fucking courtesy.’

‘There’s no point chucking insults at people.’

‘Why not? You clearly don’t understand how the proper channels work.’

Thorne had decided not to get involved, but just to stand there at the back of Brigstocke’s office and watch. Maybe chip in every now and again.

‘I found out about this in the
pub
, for crying out loud,’ Hoolihan said. ‘Because your chief superintendent was at some function or other with mine, and just happened to mention it over the gin and tonics.’

Thorne pictured Trevor Jesmond with one trouser-leg rol ed up, clutching a tumbler and talking shop over the clinking of ice cubes.

‘Look,’ Hignett said, ‘we’d certainly have been making contact with you today. But then we picked up a murder in the early hours and other things became somewhat more important.’

It sounded convincing enough. Brigstocke picked up the baton. ‘As it was, we’d only had Freestone in custody a little over twelve hours anyway.’

‘And there was every reason to believe he could help us with an ongoing enquiry into a kidnap and double murder. So . . .’

‘So it wasn’t as though we were trying to keep the fact that we had him a secret.’

Brigstocke and Hignett were making a decent job of putting on a united front. Thorne was impressed by Hignett’s stance in particular. Under the circumstances, the DCI from the Kidnap Unit could have been forgiven for jumping up and down, pointing the finger elsewhere and tel ing everyone that he’d wanted to hand Grant Freestone over straight away.

‘Why didn’t anyone cal me when he was brought in?’ Hoolihan asked. ‘Just as a common courtesy.’

Brigstocke and Hignett looked at one another, each trying to formulate a nice, polite answer.

It had al kicked off towards the end of the morning’s briefing, which had natural y concentrated on the discovery of the body in Shepherd’s Bush. As ever, the first twenty-four hours were the most crucial, so al efforts would now be channel ed into investigating the murder of Kathleen Bristow. Though this was clearly the best chance they had of making progress on the main case, too, the kidnap itself had barely been talked about.

It had not escaped Thorne’s attention that Luke Mul en’s name was being mentioned less and less as the days went by. Spoken more quietly, when it was. There were the murders to work on now, he understood that; other angles that might prove more productive. But Thorne knew that wasn’t the only reason.

As the briefing had broken up, Graham Hoolihan had appeared, and a heated discussion had rapidly reached boiling point, until a sergeant from another squad had ushered them al towards Brigstocke’s office, like an irate landlord escorting drunks from the premises.

‘You should know that I’ve got written authority to take Freestone back with me to Lewisham.’

Lewisham, Sutton, Earlsfield. The three places Homicide South were based on the other side of the river.

Hoolihan reached down for a briefcase, then swung it on to Brigstocke’s desk. ‘My guvnor got it signed by Commander Walker first thing this morning.’

From where Thorne was standing, it looked as though Hignett and Brigstocke couldn’t quite decide whether to bristle or shudder. Clive Walker was head of Homicide Command, London-wide. He was one of the few men who could make Trevor Jesmond seem like one of the lads.

‘So let’s not waste any more time,’ Hoolihan said. ‘Do you stil have every reason to believe Freestone can assist with your enquiries?’

There seemed little point pretending there was any reason whatsoever. Freestone had been questioned earlier that morning, and had claimed to have been tucked up in bed at his sister’s flat when Kathleen Bristow was having a pil ow put across her face. Predictably, Jane Freestone had confirmed her brother’s story, and, though she was hardly the world’s most reliable witness, the alibi would be tough to dispute.

Not that Thorne could see any reason to even bother trying. He knew that Freestone had no more murdered Kathleen Bristow than he had Amanda Tickel or Conrad Al en; any more than he was behind the kidnapping of Luke Mul en. He thought back to when he and Porter had nicked Freestone in the park the morning before. He hadn’t looked happy, of course, why would he? But he
certainly
hadn’t looked like a man being arrested for a murder he’d committed only a few hours earlier.

The hesitation that fol owed his question seemed to give Hoolihan the answer he desired. ‘Right, wel , let’s get a move on, then.’ He tapped the lid of his briefcase. ‘We’l have plenty of paperwork to push at each other.’

Thorne felt himself stepping forward, then heard himself speaking. ‘For someone who obviously sets so much store by courtesy, I was thinking that maybe a “thank you” might be in order.’ Brigstocke threw him a look, but Thorne ploughed on, making a mental note to adjust his definition of ‘chipping in’. ‘OK, we may not have handled things exactly as you’d have liked them, but the fact remains we did you a bloody big favour.’

Hoolihan pul ed his briefcase to his chest, folded his arms around it and waited for Thorne to continue.

‘You’d taken your eye off the bal as far as Grant Freestone was concerned, or given it up as not being worth the effort. Somebody rubber-stamped the review paperwork once a year, but you weren’t doing much of anything, as far as I can make out. The fact that you’re going to get a nice, fat feather in your cap is down to us. We may not have been as
courteous
as we should have been, but I stil think you should be fucking grateful.’