Buried-6 (21 page)

Kitson stared at him: the wide eyes, the bag stil swinging, like he couldn’t decide what socks to wear. ‘I think you should go home now,’ she said. ‘You should fuck off indoors to Mummy and Daddy, and have your tea.’

The shock at Kitson’s language might have been genuine, might have been another mask. Having lost her own composure, she was suddenly finding him hard to read. Either way, Farrel didn’t need a second invitation to turn on his heel.

He walked for fifty or so yards, then moved to the edge of the pavement and waited to cross. He looked left, then right and held it, making sure that Kitson was stil looking at him.

Thinking about it later, Kitson imagined that she saw that nice, polite smile again, just for a moment, before he hawked a bal of phlegm on to the pavement and jogged across the road.

As Kitson reached the spot where Farrel had crossed, a woman standing behind a large wooden gate caught her eye. She wore a green velour tracksuit and ful make-up, and stooped to empty bottles from a plastic bag into the recycling bin at the end of her drive. The woman nodded towards where Adrian Farrel had disappeared round the corner. ‘Dirty little sod,’ she said. ‘I would have been belted by a copper for that in my day. Not that you can find one of those buggers when you need one now . . .’

Kitson didn’t answer. Just continued to stare down at the spit. Shiny, grey-green against the concrete.

The security light above the garage came on, and Maggie Mul en answered the front door as though she had been waiting on the other side of it. Her eyes moved quickly from Thorne to Porter. Seeing little need for concern, or relief, she waved them inside, through a curtain of cigarette smoke, then stared into the darkness that squatted beyond the bleed of yel ow light, as if she were waiting for stragglers.

On their way along the hal , Thorne and Porter exchanged a word with Kenny Parsons, who emerged from the kitchen clutching a tabloid and a bal point pen. Their visit was unexpected and he searched their faces for news much as Maggie Mul en had done; and much as her husband did when they walked into the living room.

Mul en tossed a paperback on to the chair behind him. ‘Do you want coffee or something?’

Thorne shook his head. Porter said no, that it was fine.

‘Been a long day.’

Thorne wasn’t sure if Mul en was referring to the day that had crawled past for himself and his family or to the one that the officers on the case had endured. Either way, there was little reason to argue.

Mul en sat down on the arm of the sofa. His wife came back into the room, walked past him to an armchair, grabbing cigarettes and ashtray from the mantelpiece as she went. ‘I hope you’re finishing better than you started,’ Mul en said. ‘That certain people have taken their heads from out their arses.’

‘Sir?’ Porter lowered her bag to the floor.

‘I’m presuming the idea that my son’s murdered anybody has been kicked into fucking touch where it belongs. Yes?’

Now it was clear to Thorne that Mul en knew exactly how long a day it had been for everybody. He was plugged into the investigation just as much as the officers working it. Thorne wondered how many times a day he spoke to Jesmond, or cal ed one of his other old mates, to get the inside track.

‘There was evidence which had to be looked at seriously,’ Porter said.

‘Prints on a knife?’

Thorne decided that people were probably cal ing Mul en. He was being updated as comprehensively as if he were the SIO.

‘That’s enough to make you
seriously
believe that my son has gone from kidnap victim to some kind of kil er on the run, is it? If that’s what you’re tel ing me, I’m
seriously
starting to doubt that the right people are on this.’

There was something like a sigh, something like a sob, from the armchair. Mrs Mul en was staring at the Chinese rug, as if she were mesmerised by the dragons and the bridges.

Her hands were clasped in front of her and cigarette smoke rose straight up into her face.

‘It’s not what we think,’ Thorne said. He spoke towards Mrs Mul en, the ‘we’ used as though he were talking about everyone on the case; though, in truth, he could vouch only for those in the room at that moment.

‘Thank Christ for that.’ Mul en walked across to Thorne, dropped a heavy hand on to his shoulder and let it rest. Both Thorne and Porter were given the benefit of a thin and not entirely convincing smile, before Mul en turned and went back to his perch on the arm of the sofa. It had been a strange moment: a gesture of solidarity perhaps, or gratitude, or something else entirely. Al Thorne had understood was the booze he could smel on the man, and he began to hear the faintest trace of it, when Mul en spoke again.

‘We need to move forward,’ he said. ‘Work out who contracted Al en and his girlfriend to do this. Why Luke was taken. We’ve got bodies now, and you can always get something from bodies, right?’

‘We’ve been talking to people who knew Grant Freestone today,’ Thorne said.

Mul en blinked.

Thorne spotted the movement and turned to see Maggie Mul en’s arm move towards the ashtray; watched as an inch or more of ash dropped on to the rug. She didn’t bend to brush it up.

‘Wel ,
some
heads are obviously stil up arses,’ Mul en said. He was smiling but angry. ‘A long way up.’

‘Why didn’t you give us Freestone’s name when we asked you for the “grudge” list?’ Porter said.

‘God knows. I probably should have done, thinking about it. But I was hardly thinking straight, was I?’

‘What kind of threats did he make against you?’ Thorne walked across the rug and sat on the sofa.

‘The usual. He was “going to get me”. I was “going to be sorry”. Stuff you’ve heard a dozen times. I was certainly no more worried about him than I was about the others on that list.’

‘No?’

‘What about them? Cotteril and Quinn? Have you eliminated them?’

Thorne and Porter had not heard back from Hol and and his partner, nor from Heeney and Stone. ‘Not as yet.’

‘There you are, then. So why are you wasting so much time and energy on a pointless prick like Freestone?’

‘Just trying to move forward,’ Thorne said.

‘
Jesus
. . .’

Porter opened her mouth to speak.

‘Do you think this man kidnapped Luke?’ The question came from Maggie Mul en.

Al heads turned towards her.

‘No, of course he doesn’t.’ Mul en stood and moved behind the sofa, looked hard at Thorne. ‘Not unless he’s one chromosome short of a special parking permit.’

Porter cleared her throat, but again failed to fol ow it up with anything. Thorne could feel Mul en’s fingers digging into the back of the sofa behind him.

Mrs Mul en leaned down to stub out her cigarette, then looked up, smiling. ‘Let’s have some coffee,’ she said. ‘Who wants one?’

‘I already offered,’ Mul en snapped.

‘Wel , what about a glass of wine, then? Have you finished that bottle you opened when we had dinner?’

The colour was rising in Mul en’s face. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be so stupid. I put it back in the—’

‘
Don’t
talk to me like that.’ Her voice was jagged, but her expression, and the finger she pointed, were fixed and severe. ‘Like I’m a piece of shit.’

A few moments later, when Maggie Mul en flipped open the top of the cigarette packet again, Thorne dragged his eyes away and tried to find Porter’s, but she was concentrating hard on those dragons and bridges.

More like embarrassment
. . .

ELEVEN

The privileged few taking advantage of the Friday night lock-in at the Royal Oak were much the same as any other gathering of social, semi-serious or hardcore drinkers, save for there being one or two more women, fewer black and Asian faces, and the fact that the vast majority were carrying warrant cards.The Oak was an unofficial social club for anyone working at Colindale Station, or up the road at the Peel Centre, and though not a particularly attractive or friendly boozer, it had the advantage of being
close
, which was deemed more important than smiles or quiz nights. It also happened to be among those pubs less likely than some to be raided for after-hours drinking.

Thorne and Porter stared briefly into their own bit of space over pints of Guinness and lager-top. Letting the beer work at some of the rougher edges. Giving the tiredness elbow room.

‘You reckon Mul en drinks that much normal y?’ Porter asked.

Thorne shook his head and swal owed. ‘No idea. Same with her and the fags. Can’t blame either of them for needing a bit of help, though, considering.’

By the time they had got back to Becke House from the Mul ens’ place, written up the work, been taken through a debrief and discussed the fol owing day, it was after midnight. It was shaping up into an eighteen- or nineteen-hour tour, door to door, and though most of the team would be on again before the sun was up, the majority had decided that unwinding over a beer or two was worth an hour’s sleep.

For Thorne, it hadn’t been a tricky decision.

‘Yeah, I suppose it’s fair enough,’ Porter said. ‘If it was one of my kids, I’d be shooting up smack by now.’

‘How many have you got?’

Porter shook her head. ‘Oh, I haven’t. I was just saying . . .’

Hol and stopped on his way to the bar, already a little ahead of them. They turned down his offer of a drink, happy to take things a bit slower, and to avoid getting involved in big rounds. Hol and was sitting at an adjacent table, trading sick jokes with Sam Karim and Andy Stone. Heeney, Parsons, and some others sat a few feet away, on the other side of the fruit machine. Despite the operational insistence on cooperation, the Kidnap and Murder teams were keeping themselves to themselves now that they were off the clock.

‘We should try and give the Mul ens a wide berth tomorrow,’ Thorne suggested. ‘Once he sees the paper, he’l go fucking bal istic.’

‘I’m happy to stay wel clear of
that
.’ Porter took a drink. ‘Kenny Parsons wil be back there first thing, so we’l get the highlights from him later.’

‘Mul en wil be straight on the phone to Jesmond, or somebody else he used to play golf with and then your bloke’s going to get it in the neck.’

‘Hignett’s got some support on this.’

‘Fine. Let the brass fight it out. We’l make ourselves scarce.’

Despite what Thorne had told Tony and Maggie Mul en a few hours before, the possibility that Luke Mul en was not being held against his wil but had gone into hiding after kil ing his kidnappers was yet to be ful y disregarded. Owing to the somewhat unusual turn that the case had taken, a decision had been taken partial y to lift the press embargo and run a story the fol owing day about Luke’s disappearance.

It would not be front page.

It would not be scary stuff about children vanishing.

It would be a smal story, about a teenage boy who’d gone missing after school, with a photo and an appeal to anyone with information as to his whereabouts to come forward. With an appeal to the boy himself, should he be reading the story, to do the same.

‘You can’t real y blame Hignett.’

‘Can I stil think he’s an arsehole?’

‘He’s just covering his bases,’ Porter said. ‘It’s a straightforward appeal for witnesses; plus there’s a message for the kid if he’s just hiding out somewhere, afraid to come home.

Until we get evidence confirming that someone’s taken him, Hignett’s shit scared about ignoring the other possibility. It could seriously bite him in the bol ocks if it turns out to be what happened.’

‘It
isn’t
what happened.’

‘
We
can afford to be that sure. The DCI has to be more cautious, consider the unlikely scenarios as wel . He’s safe that way.’

‘Safe, until the kidnapper sees tomorrow’s paper and sends us a few of Luke Mul en’s fingers wrapped up in it.’

Porter stared at him, her open mouth eventual y creasing into a grin as she snorted in comic derision. Thorne was unable to maintain the over-earnest expression and laughed along with her. They drank, worked their way through four packets of crisps between them, and Thorne realised that Porter was probably right. As far as the newspaper coverage went, what Hignett was doing made political sense; and besides, apart from backing out of one dead end after another, there wasn’t a fat lot else they could do.

Harry Cotteril had been on his way back from a booze cruise, his Transit stuffed with cheap Belgian lager, when Conrad Al en and Amanda Tickel were being carved up. No one had yet managed to track down Philip Quinn, but his girlfriend swore blind he was somewhere in Newcastle. She’d been pissed off enough with him to tel the police exactly how many different laws he was breaking while he was up there, giving her story, and his alibi, the depressing ring of truth.

As far as the murder victims went, nothing the team had discovered was helping a great deal. They’d put together a sketchy outline of Amanda Tickel ’s life: wel -heeled parents; a car accident that kil ed her father when she was a child; adolescent rebel ion spiral ing out of control and into addiction. With what they already knew about Conrad Al en, a clear enough picture had developed of a third-division Bonnie and Clyde, but nothing pointed towards any figure for whom they might have been working. They’d spoken to a few likely dealers, working on the theory that Al en and Tickel had got into the kidnapping business to pay off a drug debt. From there, a more elaborate theory had emerged, in which the drug dealer, aware of what was happening, had seen a way to take al the money for himself and had muscled in by kil ing Al en and Tickel and taking Luke. But where was the ransom demand?

It was only the second-stupidest idea that anyone had come up with, and there was no point getting too stressed about ‘what the brass were thinking’. Some coppers were just genetical y programmed to hedge their bets, men like Hignett and Jesmond with fence-friendly arse-cracks who never left their Airwaves in a drawer.

‘I need to say sorry to you,’ Porter said.

‘For what?’

‘For playing sil y buggers when we went into Al en’s flat. Cutting you out of that was nobody’s decision but mine. It was just about territory, and I was a complete tosser about it. So, sorry.’