Buried-6 (2 page)

‘I don’t real y know what else to say. What else I’m
supposed
to say . . .

‘Except . . . If you want to video the comedy shows I like, that’d be cool. And don’t rent my room out straight away, and please tel everyone at school not to be too devastated. See?

Wel fed, sleeping OK, and I’ve stil got my sense of humour. So, real y, there’s nothing to get yourself worked up about, al right, Mum? I’m fine. Tel you what – when this is al final y sorted out, how about that PS2 game I’ve been going on about? Can’t blame a lad for trying, can you?

‘Look, there’s loads of other things to say, but I’d better not go on too long, and you know the stuff I mean anyway. Mum? You know what I’m trying to say, yeah?

‘Right. That’s it . . .’

The boy’s eyes slide away from the camera, and a man carrying a syringe steps quickly towards him. He sits up, tenses as the man reaches across, driving the bag down over the boy’s head in the few seconds before the picture disappears.

TUESDAY

ONE

There
was
humour, of course there was; off colour usual y, and downright black when the occasion demanded it. Stil , the jokes had not exactly been flying thick and fast of late, and none had flown in Tom Thorne’s direction.

But this was as good a laugh as he’d had in a while.

‘Jesmond asked for
me?
’ he said.

Russel Brigstocke leaned back in his chair, enjoying the surprise that his shock announcement had certainly merited. It was an uncertain world. The Metropolitan Police Service was in a permanent state of flux, and, while precious little could be relied upon, the less than harmonious relationship between DI Tom Thorne and the Chief Superintendent of the Area West Murder Squad was a reassuring constant. ‘He was very insistent.’

‘The pressure must be getting to him,’ Thorne said. ‘He’s losing the plot.’

Now it was Brigstocke’s turn to see the funny side. ‘Why am I suddenly thinking about pots and kettles?’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe you’ve got a thing about kitchenware.’

‘You’ve been going on about wanting something to get stuck into. So—’

‘With bloody good reason.’

Brigstocke sighed, nudged at the frames of his thick, black glasses.

It was warm in the office, with spring kicking in but the radiators stil chucking out heat at December levels. Thorne stood and slipped off his brown leather jacket. ‘Come on, Russel , you know damn wel that I haven’t been given anything worth talking about for near enough six months.’

Six months since he’d worked undercover on the streets of London, trying to catch the man responsible for kicking three of the city’s homeless to death. Six months spent writing up domestics, protecting the integrity of evidence chains, and double-checking pre-trial paperwork. Six months kept out of harm’s way.

‘This is something that
needs
getting stuck into,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Quickly.’

Thorne sat back down and waited for the DCI to elaborate.

‘It’s a kidnapping—’ Brigstocke held up a hand as soon as Thorne began to shake his head; ploughed on over the groaning from the other side of his desk. ‘A sixteen-yearold boy, taken from outside a school in north London three days ago.’

The shake of the head became a knowing nod. ‘Jesmond doesn’t want
me
on this at al , does he? It’s sod al to do with what I can do, or what I might be good at. He’s just been asked to lend the Kidnap Unit a few bodies, right? So he does what he’s told like a good team player, and he gets me out of the way at the same time. Two birds with one stone.’

A spider plant stood on one corner of Brigstocke’s desk, its dead leaves drooping across a photograph of his kids. He snapped off a handful of the browned and brittle stalks and began crushing them between his hands. ‘Look, I know you’ve been pissed off and I know you’ve had good reason to be . . .’

‘
Bloody
good reason,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m feeling much better than I was, you know that. I’m . . . up for it.’

‘Right. But until the decision gets taken to give you a more active role on the team here, I thought you might appreciate the chance to get yourself “out of the way”. And it wouldn’t just be you, either. Hol and’s been assigned to this as wel . . .’

Thorne stared out of the window, across the grounds of the Peel Centre towards Hendon and the grey ribbon of the North Circular beyond. He’d seen prettier views, but not for some time.

‘Sixteen?’

‘His name’s Luke Mul en.’

‘So the kid was taken . . . Friday, right? What’s been happening for the last three days?’

‘You’l be ful y briefed at the Yard.’ Brigstocke glanced down at a sheet of paper on the desktop. ‘Your contact on the Kidnap Unit is DI Porter. Louise Porter.’

Thorne knew that Brigstocke was on his side; that he was caught between a loyalty to his team and a responsibility to the brass above him. These days, anyone of his rank was one part copper to nine parts politician. Many at Thorne’s own level worked in much the same way, and Thorne would fight tooth and nail to avoid going down the same dreary route . . .

‘Tom?’

Brigstocke had certainly said the right things. The boy’s age in itself was enough to spark Thorne’s interest. The victims of those who preyed on children for sexual gratification were usual y far younger. It wasn’t that older children were not targeted, of course, but such abuse was often institutionalised or, most tragical y of al , took place within the home itself. For a sixteen-year-old to be taken off the street was unusual.

‘Trevor Jesmond getting involved means there’s pressure to get a result,’ Thorne said. If a shrug and a half smile could be signs of enthusiasm, then he looked mustard-keen. ‘I reckon I could do with a bit of pressure at the minute.’

‘You haven’t heard al of it yet.’

‘I’m listening.’

So Brigstocke enlightened him, and when it was finished and Thorne got up to leave, he looked out of the window one last time. The buildings sat opposite, brown and black and dirty-white; office blocks and warehouses, with pools of dark water gathered on their flat roofs. Thorne thought they looked like the teeth in an old man’s mouth.

Before the car had reached the gates on its way out of the car park, Thorne had slotted a Bobby Bare CD into the player, taken one look at Hol and’s face and swiftly ejected it again. ‘I should make sure there’s always a Simply Red album in the car,’ Thorne said. ‘So as not to offend your sensibilities.’

‘I don’t like Simply Red.’

‘Whoever.’

Hol and gestured towards the CD panel on the dash. ‘I don’t mind
some
of your stuff. It’s just al that twangy guitar shit . . .’

Thorne turned the car on to Aerodrome Road and accelerated towards Colindale tube. Once they hit the A5 it would be a straight run through Cricklewood, Kilburn and south into town.

Having criticised Thorne’s choice of music, Hol and proceeded to score two out of two by turning his sarcastic attentions to the car itself. The yel ow BMW – a 1971 three-litre CS –gave Thorne a good deal of pride and pleasure, but to DS Dave Hol and it was little more than the starting point for an endless series of ‘old banger’ jokes.

For once, though, Thorne did not rise to the bait. There was little anyone could have done to make his mood much worse. ‘The boy’s old man is an ex-copper,’ he said. He jabbed at the horn as a scooter swerved in front of him, spoke as if he were describing something extremely distasteful. ‘
Ex-Detective Chief Superintendent
Anthony Mul en.’

Hol and’s dirty-blond hair was longer than it had been for a while. He pushed it back from his forehead. ‘So?’

‘So, it’s a bloody secret-handshake job, isn’t it? He’s cal ing in favours from his old mates. Next thing you know, we’re getting shunted across to another unit.’

‘It’s not like there was anything better to do, though, is it?’ Hol and said.

The look from Thorne was momentary, but it made its point firmly enough.

‘For
either
of us, I mean. Not a lot of bodies on the books at the moment.’

‘Right.
At the moment
. You never know when something major’s going to come in though.’

‘Sounds almost like you’re hoping.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Like you don’t want to miss out . . .’

Thorne said nothing. His eyes drifted to the wing mirror, stayed there as he flicked up the indicator and waited to pul out.

Neither spoke again for several minutes. Rain had begun to streak the windows, through which Kilburn was giving way to the rather more gentrified environment of Maida Vale.

‘Did you get any more from the DCI?’ Hol and asked.

Thorne shook his head. ‘He knows as much as we do. We find out the rest when we get there.’

‘You had much to do with SO7 before?’

Like many officers, Hol and had not yet got used to the fact that SO units had official y been renamed SCD units, now that they were part of what had become known as the Specialist Crime Directorate. Most people stil used the old abbreviations, knowing ful wel that the brass would change the name again soon enough, next time they were short of something to do. SO7 was the Specialist Operations department whose component command units dealt with everything from contract kil ings to serious drug crime. Aside from the Kidnap Unit, these OCUs included the Flying Squad, the Hostage and Extortion Team, and the Projects Team, with whom Thorne had worked on the joint gangland operation that had ended so badly the previous year.

‘Not the Kidnap Unit, merciful y. They’re high-flyers; they don’t like to mingle with the likes of us. They like to stay a bit
mysterious
.’

‘Wel , I suppose there has to be an element of secrecy, bearing in mind what they do. They have to be a bit more discreet than the rest of us.’

Thorne looked unconvinced. ‘They fancy themselves.’ He leaned across and turned on the radio, tuned it in to Talk Sport.

‘So this bloke Mul en knows Jesmond, does he?’

‘Known him for years.’

‘Same sort of age, then?’

‘I think Mul en’s a few years older,’ Thorne said. ‘They worked together on an old AMIP unit south of the river somewhere. The DCI reckons Mul en was the one responsible for bringing Jesmond on. Pul ed our Trevor up through the ranks.’

‘Right . . .’

‘Remind me to punch the fucker, would you?’

Hol and smiled, but looked uncomfortable.

‘What?’

‘Someone’s kidnapped his son . . .’ Hol and said.

On the final stretch of the Edgware Road, approaching Marble Arch, the traffic began to snarl up. Thorne grew increasingly frustrated, thinking that if the congestion charge had made a difference, it was only to people’s wal ets. On the radio, they were talking about the game Spurs were due to play the fol owing evening. The studio expert said they were favourites to take three points off Fulham, after three wins on the bounce.

‘That’s the kiss of bloody death,’ Thorne said.

Hol and was clearly stil thinking about what had been said a few minutes earlier. ‘I think you just see these things differently,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve got kids, you know?’

Thorne grunted.

‘If something happens to somebody else’s—’

‘You think I was being insensitive?’ Thorne asked. ‘What I said.’

‘Just a bit.’

‘If I was
really
being insensitive, I’d say it was divine retribution.’ He glanced across and raised an eyebrow. This time, the smile he received in return was genuine, but it stil seemed to sit less easily on Hol and’s face than Thorne might once have expected.

Hol and had never been quite as fresh-faced, as green and keen, as Thorne remembered; but when he’d been drafted on to Thorne’s team six years before as a twenty-five-year-old DC, there had certainly been a little more enthusiasm. And there had been belief. Of course, he and his girlfriend had been through domestic upheavals since then: there’d been the affair with a fel ow officer who’d later been murdered on duty; then the birth of his daughter, who would be two years old later in the year.

And there’d been a good many bodies.

An ever-expanding gal ery of those you only ever got to know once their lives had been taken from them. People whose darkest intimacies might be revealed to you, but whose voices you would never hear, whose thoughts you could never be privy to. An exhibition of the dead, running alongside another of the murderous living. And of those left behind; the pickers-up of lives.

Thorne and Hol and, and others who came into contact with such things, were not
defined
by violence and grief. They did not walk and wake with it, but neither were they immune. It changed everything, eventual y.

The belief became blunted . . .

‘How’s everything at home, Dave?’

For a second or two, Hol and looked surprised, then pleased, before he closed up, just a little. ‘It’s good.’

‘Chloe must be getting big.’

Hol and nodded, relaxing. ‘She’s changing every five minutes. Discovering stuff, you know? Doing something different every time I get home. She’s real y into music at the moment, singing along with whatever’s on.’

‘Nothing with twangy guitars, though.’

‘I keep thinking I’m missing it al . Doing this . . .’

Thorne guessed there was little point in asking about Hol and’s girlfriend. Sophie was not exactly Thorne’s greatest fan. He knew very wel that his name was far more likely to be shouted than spoken in the smal flat Hol and and Sophie shared in Elephant & Castle; that he might wel have caused a fair number of the arguments in the first place.

The BMW final y hit thirty again on Park Lane. From here, they would continue down to Victoria, then cut across to St James’s and the Yard.

Hol and turned to Thorne as they slowed at Hyde Park Corner. ‘Oh, by the way, Sophie told me to say “hel o”,’ he said.

Thorne nodded, and nosed the car into the stream of traffic that was rushing around the roundabout.

This was not his favourite place.

It was here that he’d spent a few hideous weeks the year before; perhaps the most miserable he’d ever endured. Back then, when he’d been taken off the team, and given what was euphemistical y cal ed ‘gardening leave’, Thorne had known very wel that he wasn’t being himself, that he hadn’t been coping since the death of his father. But hearing it from the likes of Trevor Jesmond had been something else; being told he was ‘dead wood’ and casual y wafted away like a bad smel . It was the undercover job that had thankful y provided a means of escape, and the subsequent weeks spent sleeping on the streets had been infinitely preferable to those he’d spent stewing in a windowless cupboard at New Scotland Yard.