Buried-6 (25 page)

It didn’t receive much of a reaction, but enough to let Hol and see the question had hit home. Warren turned to the sink and began to wash up the dirty mugs. ‘You asked me if I thought Freestone was capable of kidnapping someone and I’m trying to be straight with you. If you get fucked up enough, you’l do whatever you have to.’

Hol and nodded, waited for him to continue. He wondered, in this instance, if ‘whatever’ might include murder.

‘There’s a point you reach when you don’t think about what you’re doing. You think you’re being clever when in fact you’re doing something real y fucking stupid. You’re just focused on getting the money to buy what you need.’

Warren had been told no more than he needed to know. When Hol and had begun talking about a kidnapping, the counsel or had made the natural assumption about the motive. He didn’t know that, for al his speculation about what a junkie might do if he was desperate enough, the person holding Luke Mul en had yet to make any ransom demand.
Why
was stil as much of a mystery as
who
, but it was starting to look like money had bugger-al to do with it.

Al the same, the drug angle was interesting in at least one respect. ‘Does the name Conrad Al en mean anything, Neil?’

Warren turned from the sink. Shook his head.

‘What about Amanda Tickel ?’

‘Who?’ Warren reached for a tea-towel, spoke again before Hol and had finished repeating the name. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s real y no point to this. I don’t think you’re asking if I play bridge with any of these people, and I can’t discuss anyone who I may or may not know professional y.’

‘Fair enough.’ It was the first thing Heeney had said for a long while.

‘Talking of which, I should get myself into the living room and make sure nothing kicks off.’ He took a step away from the sink, the shift in his position leaving the sun shining straight into Hol and’s face. The cat was back on the window sil .

Hol and narrowed his eyes against the glare. ‘Is Freestone clever enough for this? I mean, I’m taking on board everything you’ve said: the desperation or whatever. But is he actual y smart enough to pul off something like this?’

Warren thought about that one. ‘Wel , there’s smart enough to get into Mensa, and there’s smart enough not to get caught. They’re very different things.’

‘He might be both, of course.’

‘He’s no more than averagely bright in any conventional sense, but he’s developed a few useful tricks. It’s not so much clever as cunning.’

‘Streetwise.’

‘More than that,’ Warren said. ‘He knows how to get by, but to do the things he’s done you also need to fool people for a while. What put him in prison in the first place, what he
is
. . .

You don’t get away with that for long unless you can convince the rest of the world you’re something you’re not. You learn to pretend, and you get so good at it that it becomes second nature. Once you throw an addiction into that mix, something you need to keep secret from those around you, you end up being someone who spends most of their life hiding who they real y are.’ He chewed at a nail, tore, and ground it between his teeth. ‘Yeah . . . I think he’s smart enough.’

Hol and wasn’t any more convinced than anyone else that Grant Freestone was their man, but he’d been given a job to do. He reckoned that as far as Neil Warren went, he’d about done it. He glanced at the wal , saw that it was someone cal ed Eric’s turn to cook dinner that evening and that Andrew was down to clean the bathroom. He looked at the poem below the calendar. It was stil mawkish – and Hol and was strictly a wedding, funeral and Lottery man when it came to God – but he couldn’t help but hope that, wherever Luke Mul en was, he was leaving a single set of footprints.

They were stil waiting for Porter.

The child who had been so upset – Thorne didn’t know if it was Bil y, or even if Bil y was the elder – was now lying quietly in the armchair with his head on his mother’s chest. The boy’s face was expressionless as much as peaceful, but his eyes were wide, and fixed on the man standing by the window. If Thorne were letting his imagination run loose, he might have thought that the child had been taught to be suspicious of policemen nice and early. Or perhaps it was just men . . .

Freestone stroked her child’s head. ‘I don’t appreciate your coming in here, using this place as a shit-house.’

Thorne glanced at the door. ‘I’m sure she’l be out in a minute.’

‘Your lot always does though, one way or another. Maybe she’d like to wipe her skinny arse on the curtains. Or some of my kids’ clothes.’

‘Now you’re just being stupid,’ Thorne said.

‘It’s about respect.’

Along the corridor, the toilet flushed.

‘It’s about you messing us around in the past: talking shit and lying to save your brother.’

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘Who do you think took those kids, Jane? Did they tie each other up?’

‘I didn’t lie about Sarah Hanley. We were in the park.’ She moved beneath her son, shifting his head from one side of her chest to the other. ‘It was the last time he saw my kids.’

When Porter walked briskly into the room, there was a look on her face Thorne couldn’t read. But something was different. She spoke to the back of Freestone’s head. ‘We should probably get out of your way,’ she said.

‘Nobody’s arguing.’

‘Sorry we disturbed your Saturday.’

‘I stil don’t know what the fuck you wanted.’

Thorne looked at Porter, trying to work out what she was doing. He caught her eye for a second, but it told him nothing.

‘Look, I’l be honest with you,’ Porter said. ‘You probably wanted us to be here about as much as we did, but the visit was actioned, so here we are. Because we do what we’re told.

Some idiot of a DCI with a tiny dick and an even smal er imagination thought this would be a good idea. Picked your brother’s name out of thin air, as far as I can make out.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Freestone said. ‘This is something to do with kids, right?’

‘It’s sod al to do with anything, if you ask me,’ Porter said. ‘It’s about coppers making decisions based purely on what comes up on a computer screen, and al of us getting the shitty end of the stick. It’s a waste of time, pure and simple.’

‘If this is an apology, it’s nice to hear. But you can stil stick it.’

‘I’l pass that on to our DCI.’ Porter looked at Thorne, who did what he thought she would want, and smiled conspiratorial y. ‘Listen, just treat this as if it’s the routine visit that Hoolihan’s lot never got round to, OK?’

‘Makes no bloody difference.’

‘So, for the record Miss Freestone, just so I can tick a box to say I asked, have you seen your brother since the last time you were interviewed by the police?’

She closed her eyes, rubbed her child’s back. ‘I wish I had. More than anything, I wish I had. I’ve got no fucking idea if Grant’s alive or dead.’

Thorne and Porter drove away without saying a word. At the end of the street, Thorne took a left, cut up a motorbike and pul ed hard into a bus stop.

Porter just looked at him, enjoying it.

‘Are you going to tel me?’ Thorne asked. ‘I’ve no bloody idea what I was playing along with in there. What the fuck was al this “we’re sorry for wasting your time” shit? “DCIs with tiny dicks . . .”’

‘I wanted her to think she had nothing to worry about. That she wouldn’t be seeing us again. I don’t want her warning her brother.’

‘What?’

‘She’s a fucking liar. A good one.’

‘Was this something in the bathroom? Don’t tel me there was a floater in there with Grant Freestone’s name on it?’

‘I found stubble,’ she said.

Thorne tried and failed not to sound patronising. ‘Right. That’l be her boyfriend’s . . .’

‘
Dark
stubble. She’d gone in and done her best to clean up, but I found it under the rim.’

‘Why can’t it be hers?’

Porter shook her head.

‘She’s got dark hair. Women shave their legs, don’t they?’

‘Yes, we do,’ Porter said. ‘But not in the sink.’

Thorne stared ahead through the windscreen, taking in what Porter was saying, considering the implications. ‘Christ, do you think he was in there?’

‘No. I sneaked out of the toilet and checked al the bedrooms.’

‘He may not have stayed there last night, or for any number of nights. That stubble might have been there for a while.’

Porter acknowledged the very real possibility, but there were others she found far more attractive. ‘Or we might have just missed him. He could have gone out early for milk, to get a paper . . .’

‘We were there almost an hour,’ Thorne said. ‘There are shops in the next street.’

‘Maybe he went to the supermarket. Maybe he went for a walk.’ Porter was starting to sound tetchy, as her suggestions grew more desperate. ‘It’s a nice enough morning.’

Thorne watched a young woman on the pavement opposite, struggling with a pushchair and a wayward toddler. He remembered Jane Freestone pointing towards her children’s bedroom, shouting: ‘Go and fucking-wel ask them . . .’

‘Did you see another child?’ Thorne asked. He turned and looked at Porter, the idea taking hold, starting to jump in him. ‘When you checked the bedrooms, did you see her other kid?’

Porter hesitated, as though a little unnerved by the intensity in Thorne’s eyes. ‘I just presumed she’d taken both of them into the living room with her. I never real y looked when I came back in.’

Thorne started the car, pointed towards the glove compartment. ‘There’s an
A–Z
in there,’ he said. ‘Find the nearest park.’

He sat towards the end of the bench against which the boy’s smal , blue and white bike was leaning; so people would know he was looking after it. So they would know he was there with a child.

The boy jumped down from the roundabout while it was stil spinning and ran for three or four steps before he stopped and waved across at him. He waved back, then stuck up a thumb. The boy grinned and ran towards a large wooden tree-house, with a rope bridge and a slide. He shouted across at the boy to be careful, but the boy showed no sign of having heard.

‘I think you’re wasting your time.’ A woman who was leaning against the fence was smiling at him. She dropped her cigarette, stepped on it. ‘Not scared of anything at that age, are they?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re not.’

‘It’s nice, I suppose. That they’re fearless, I mean. It’s natural, isn’t it?’ She laughed, reaching into her handbag for another cigarette. ‘But it does mean you can’t take your eyes off the little buggers. Not my two, anyway.’

He smiled back, picked up the newspaper he’d brought with him and stared at the front page until the woman turned round again.

It was as nice a day as he could remember for a while; perfect for getting out and about. The playground was always popular, even when the weather wasn’t so good, but this morning it was particularly crowded.

There were plenty of boys and girls for his nephew to play with.

Which was good for al sorts of reasons, not least because it meant that he’d been able to slip into the trees for ten minutes and smoke a little joint. He’d get into town later, buy himself something stronger for the weekend, but a bit of dope was a good start. Helped him enjoy the morning, enjoy the
view
, without getting too stupid about things.

‘Excuse me . . .’

He always kept a decent eye on what was happening, on stuff going on around him, and he’d seen the couple coming from a long way away. Hand in hand, honeymoon-period twats, smug and ful of themselves. They’d stopped a few feet from his bench, and he could see the camera in the man’s hand. He could tel that they were embarrassed to ask.

‘Do you want me to take a picture of the two of you?’

‘Would you?’ the woman asked.

He stood up and the man handed over one of those cheap, disposable cameras, same as they sold in his local newsagent’s. He put it to his eye and the couple posed, arms around each other with the playground behind.

‘Cheers.’ The man in the leather jacket stepped towards him.

He held out the camera, but the man grabbed his wrist instead, squeezed it hard, and took hold of his shirt at the shoulder, while the short woman with the dark hair opened up the warrant card and told him he was under arrest for the murder of Sarah Hanley.

After a minute or two of swearing and struggling, he nodded towards the playground and asked what they were going to do about his nephew. The woman told him that he needn’t worry. That the boy would be taken back to his mother.

As the handcuffs were ratcheted around Grant Freestone’s wrists, he glanced across at the woman by the fence. The cigarette drooped from her fat lips, and he couldn’t help noticing that she’d happily taken her eyes off both her little buggers.

THIRTEEN

They were getting used to this sort of meeting by now: ad hoc gatherings to take stock, to regroup, and jointly fight the temptation to panic or run around screaming for a while. To discuss the latest development in a case where surprises were being thrown up faster than dodgy kebabs.

The kidnap case with no ransom demand, two dead kidnappers, and a convicted paedophile arrested for a murder committed years before.

‘Anything we haven’t managed to get in yet?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘Freestone’s stil using, by al accounts, so we’ve got drugs covered. Al we need now is a bit of prostitution, some gun-running maybe.’

Porter laughed.

‘I’m serious. A bomb factory and one or two stolen library books and we’ve got the complete fucking set.’

Just after midday, and four of them were making a good job of fil ing Brigstocke’s office at Becke House: Brigstocke himself, Hignett, Porter and Thorne. The sun was struggling to find its way through a layer of thin cloud and the streaky patina of grime on the window. Thorne hadn’t bothered to take off his jacket. Nobody in the room was sitting down.

‘We should just step back and hand Freestone over,’ Hignett said. ‘Cal in this Hoolihan, enjoy our pat on the back and get on with trying to find Luke Mul en.’

‘Maybe Freestone can help us find him,’ Thorne said.