Buried-6 (28 page)

‘And dead, of course,’ Porter reminded him. ‘Let’s not forget that one.’

Freestone leaned away slowly, taking the chair on to two legs, gripping the edge of the table as he tipped back. He looked from Porter to Thorne, then dropped back down with a crack. ‘No comment,’ he said.

‘It speaks!’ Porter said.

Thorne looked at Donovan. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

Donovan laughed, but put a hand on Freestone’s sleeve and shot him a stern look once he had his attention.

‘I’m sure your legal representative has given you excel ent advice,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m sure you’re in very capable hands.
Experienced
hands, certainly. But this might be a good time to remind you that keeping your mouth shut isn’t quite the safe option it used to be. Should you find yourself in court at some point, the judge may direct a jury to draw an adverse inference from your silence. To read something into it that may not have been there at al . That’s the risk you’re taking, sitting there like Mr Bean. This is a chance to give your account of things, Grant, to get it down right, straight from the off.’ He paused for a few seconds, as Freestone leaned across, raised a hand to shield his mouth and whispered to Donovan. ‘So, bearing in mind that we’re in something of a hurry, now would be a real y good time to tel us anything you know about Luke Mul en. Anything that could help us locate him. I can’t make promises, but I know that if you do give us information now, it can’t possibly hurt when it comes to working out what happens to you later on.’ He watched as the whispering continued.

‘For the tape, the suspect is now conferring with his legal representative . . .’

‘Or licking his ear,’ Porter said, under her breath, ‘we can’t be sure.’

Freestone straightened and shuffled his chair forward a few inches. For the second time in twenty-odd minutes, Thorne wondered if his words might have made a difference; if they were about to hear something useful, or even just unexpected.

It wasn’t like he was any stranger to disappointment.

Freestone laid his hands flat on the table and breathed out slowly. ‘I didn’t kil Sarah Hanley,’ he said.

There were plenty of places where Thorne lowered his expectations as a matter of course: White Hart Lane, natural y; Trevor Jesmond’s office; Irish theme pubs, and any part of London Underground. In the Colindale station canteen, it was best to have no expectations at al .

He cut through the crust of potato on top of his shepherd’s pie. If there was any meat inside, it was heavily disguised. ‘They’re improving,’ he said.

Porter had made what seemed to be the sensible decision to go with a sandwich. It was only moderately awful.

‘This is slumming it for you, I bet,’ Thorne said.

‘Wel , you can’t get fresh sushi at the Yard, either,’ Porter said, ‘but it’s better than this. Mind you, that’s because we’re more important than you are.’

‘I think some people real y believe that.’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Real y, I think they do.’ Thorne pointed with his fork. ‘Because you’re trying to save a life, because you’re
proactive
. Whereas we just
react
to a body. Waste our time trying to catch the people who leave them lying around.’

‘Wel , we’ve got a bit of both on this one.’ She had clearly been expecting a smile, or at least a softening. ‘Look, anyone who seriously thinks that is just stupid.’

‘
Very
bloody stupid.’

‘I know. I said.’

‘How many people who commit a murder might go on to commit another one?’

‘I’m not arguing.’

‘We save lives, too.’

Porter held up her hands in surrender and smiled, irritated now. ‘What are you tel ing
me
for? I agree with you.’ She pushed away the uneaten half of her sandwich. ‘Christ, there are more chips on shoulders around here than there are going soggy on those hotplates.’ She stood up. ‘Do you want coffee?’

‘Thanks . . .’

He watched her walk across to the til , wondering what his problem was, and why he’d taken it out on her. Whether he should go over and pay for the coffee. What she might look like naked.

When she returned to the table, he came as close to an apology as he was likely to, tel ing her that he hadn’t been sleeping wel . That his back was stil giving him hel . She pul ed a sympathetic face, then asked him where he thought they were with Freestone.

‘We got a reaction,’ he said.

‘But to what? We know he had a problem with Tony Mul en.’

‘He might stil have one.’

Porter shifted to one side as two PCs put down trays and began to jabber about a ‘muppet’ on their relief. She lowered her voice. ‘You seriously think Tony Mul en might have fitted him up for the Hanley murder?’

‘No idea,’ Thorne said. ‘But maybe Freestone thinks he did.’

‘None of which helps us find Luke, though, does it?’

Thorne knew that she was right. Throughout the rest of the interview, Freestone had said nothing to quicken anybody’s pulse. He had just kept insisting that he hadn’t kil ed Sarah Hanley. He’d given no indication that he’d played a part in the kidnapping of Luke Mul en, or that he knew anyone who had.

However, in the same way Thorne knew that something was bound to go wrong with his car sooner or later, or that getting pudding would be a serious mistake, he now knew that Grant Freestone had
something
to give them. A name, a place, a date; a whatever-the-fuck-it-was. He knew that it just needed digging up from wherever it lay, deep or barely hidden, and that everything would make a damn sight more sense once it had been.

Even if Freestone himself had no idea that he possessed it.

‘I’m not sure what else we can do,’ Thorne said. ‘We could try to get a warrant, maybe. Force Warren to tel us if he treated Tickel at the same time as Freestone. But do we want to go through al the palaver of getting one?’

It might have been the coffee that made Porter grimace, but Thorne didn’t think so. The ‘palaver’ he had referred to could involve anything from conclusive evidence of need to permission from the Home Secretary. ‘You saw the state of Al en’s flat,’ she said. ‘What this man’s capable of. We can’t take it for granted that the boy’s got that long.’

For a few minutes after that, they just eavesdropped on the conversation next to them. By al accounts, the ‘muppet’ was only marginal y less of a ‘plonker’ than the ‘toerag’ who spent al day ‘crawling up the sergeant’s arse’.

It was like listening to a lexicon of primetime plod-speak.

Thorne was stil undecided as to whether coppers had begun to talk more like their television counterparts or if they’d always spoken like that and researchers on
The Bill
just did their homework. He suspected – he
hoped
– it was the former. The flash bastards on the Flying Squad had certainly started behaving a lot more like bouncers with warrant cards once Regan and Carter had begun handing out slaps and tearing around TV-London in their gold Granadas.

As he tuned into the conversation again, Thorne made a mental note to give Hol and a list of words – to include ‘muppet’, of course, alongside ‘slag’ and ‘snout’ – with instructions to shoot him if he ever used any of them.

When Thorne took the cal , it was the uniformed officers’ turn to fal silent and try not to look like they were earwigging. Thorne stared at Porter as he listened, then thanked whoever had passed on what was clearly welcome news.

‘Go on,’ Porter said.

‘Mr Freestone fancies another chat, apparently.’ Thorne looked at what was left of his coffee and pushed back his chair. ‘Says he real y wants to talk to us about Luke Mul en.’

‘I didn’t kil Sarah Hanley.’

‘Please don’t tel me I’ve got indigestion for nothing, Grant,’ Thorne said.

‘No, you haven’t.’ Freestone’s south London accent was not as pronounced as it might have been, and his voice was soft, light even. It would have been tricky to tel him and his sister apart from their voices alone. ‘I just wanted to say it again. I’ve never
stopped
saying it. It’s just that no fucker’s ever started listening, you know?’

‘You’l have plenty of time to talk to people about what happened to Sarah—’

‘I don’t know what happened to her, al right? I just found her.’

‘OK, Grant.’

‘She was dead when I got there, I swear.’

‘It’s not what we’re here to talk about though,’ Porter said.

Freestone nodded slowly and took a series of short, sharp breaths, like he was gearing up for something. Next to him, Donovan sat low in his chair, sul en and soured; boredom and resentment extinguishing any glimmer of curiosity about what might be said. Control had slipped away from him. Now that his client had chosen to ignore his advice, now that he was surplus to requirements, he would do no more than watch that precious clock of his for as long as he had to. Then he would pocket his firm’s fee and go home to shout at his children for a while.

‘I’m not going back inside,’ Freestone said.

Thorne folded his arms. ‘You asking me or tel ing me?’

‘Doesn’t matter if it’s murder. Doesn’t matter what it is. I could be banged up for forgery, or not paying my fucking income tax, but it’l always be about those kids once I’m inside. I’l always have to watch my back.’

‘You looking for sympathy?’

‘I’m not looking for anything.’

‘Probably best.’

‘You’re just like everyone else . . .’

‘That’s reassuring.’

‘You need to tel us whatever it is you dragged us back down here for,’ Porter said. ‘That would be a good way to start. If you want people to think other things about you, to see a side that doesn’t . . . repulse them. You need to earn al that.’ She sat back, leaving him to it; rummaged in her bag for nothing in particular.

Thorne watched the four smal wheels moving round on the twin cassette decks. The tiny, spinning teeth . . .

‘I want to see Tony Mul en,’ Freestone said.

Thorne and Porter said nothing. Exchanged a glance and tried to look as though Freestone had asked for no more than a cigarette, or a Kit Kat with his tea.

Freestone looked from one to the other, then spoke again, in case he hadn’t made himself clear enough. ‘Luke Mul en’s father.’

Thorne nodded to indicate they knew exactly who Tony Mul en was. ‘And I want to win the Lottery,’ he said. ‘But I’m not holding my breath.’

‘That’s it,’ Freestone said.

‘That’s what?’

Porter looked tense, but her tone stayed reasonable, while Thorne’s had become jagged at the edges. ‘
That’s it
, as in you have no further requests? Or that’s the end of the discussion?’

Freestone shook his head quickly, and waved his hands. ‘That’s al there is to it, that’s the deal, if you want to look at it like that. I want him to come down here and I want to speak to him privately. Just him and me. No tapes, and not in here, either.’ He looked up at the camera in the corner of the room. ‘No video, nothing like that. So . . .’

Porter opened her mouth, but Thorne was quicker. ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘The only dealing that’s going to be happening round here is in the office upstairs, where there’s usual y a game of three-card brag going on at the end of a shift, so fuck knows where you got
that
idea from. Second, and more importantly, if you have anything at al to say about Luke Mul en, you’re going to say it to us. Now. On tape. On camera. Broadcast live to the nation if the fancy takes us.’ He stopped and smiled. ‘
So
. . .’

Even Donovan was sitting up straight and paying attention.

‘Mr Mul en is no longer a police officer,’ Porter said. ‘Obviously, he’s not investigating this case.’

‘He’s the kid’s father though, isn’t he? That’s more important, surely.’

‘It’s not happening,’ Thorne said.

‘Why not?’

‘We don’t have to give reasons.’

‘Wel , then, I don’t have to tel you anything.’

‘For someone who’s so keen to avoid going back to prison, you’re not doing yourself any favours.’

‘There won’t be any favours, whatever I say.’

‘You might be right,’ Thorne said, starting to lose it. ‘But here’s something else to think about. If you’ve got information about Luke Mul en, and you keep it to yourself, I’l personal y make sure that when you do go back to prison, every nutter in there with an axe to grind wil know you’re coming.’

Freestone shrugged, looked to Donovan and back to Thorne, but he was thinking about it. It was almost a minute before he spoke again. ‘I need to see Mul en.’

Thorne lifted his jacket from the back of the chair as he stood. He spoke to Porter, then to the cassette recorder. ‘I’m going to finish my lunch. This interview is suspended at—’

‘Just let me talk to him.’

‘Tel us about Luke,’ Porter said.

‘Let me talk to his father first.’

‘No.’

‘I’m not asking for a fucking helicopter. I just want five minutes—’

‘Give me one good reason,’ Thorne said. ‘Any reason at al why we should even think about arranging this.’

‘Because it’s going to get serious if you don’t do what I want. If you don’t start taking what I want seriously.’

Freestone’s voice had changed now, and nobody around the table could fail to be shocked by the range and power of it. They’d listened to the voice that could cajole, that could charm children into garages. Now they were being treated to a voice they could only pray those children had never heard.

‘Because, I’m the only person who knows where Luke Mul en is, and if you don’t do what I’m asking, if you don’t get it arranged, I’l just sit here like Mr
fucking
Bean and say nothing.

I’l turn to stone, I swear to God, and you’re going to have to carry the can for that. Fair enough? I’l sit here and say nothing for as long as it takes and you’l
never
find him. Not while it’l do any good, anyway.’ He pushed himself away from the table, raised an arm to scratch at a shoulder-blade. ‘If you don’t do what I’m asking, Luke Mul en’s going to die.’

FIFTEEN

DI Chris Wilmot surveyed the footage of the suspect one final time, then went to work. The movements of the mouse around the mat were smal , precise, but the cursor flew around the screen as he shifted and clicked, cutting and pasting using the special y developed software to cal up, then select, subjects that would be a close enough match for the parade.