Buried-6 (34 page)

At night, Thorne could do what needed to be done and could extract a little comfort from the fact that he was performing a necessary, if ugly, public service by cleaning up the mess before dawn. In a bad mood he might consider such a night’s labours as akin to shovel ing shit uphil . But tonight, standing over the body of an old woman while her neighbours slept, he felt like he was doing his bit to maintain a little of the bliss that ignorance afforded.

He’d already exchanged a few words with Hendricks as they’d climbed into the plastic ful -body suits. It was a runof-the-mil conversation, such as anyone might have before getting down to work:

‘How’re you doing?’

‘Good. Didn’t you get my note?’

‘Yeah, but you’d probably say that anyway.’

‘No, real y. I saw Brendan.’

‘How was that?’

‘Wel , there was no screaming, and I didn’t try to smash his face in, so pretty good, I think . . .’

Now, forty minutes or so into it, the dialogue had taken on a more businesslike tone. The talk was of lividity and core body temperature; of traumatic asphyxia and cadaveric spasm.

As Hendricks dictated a few notes into a smal digital recorder, Thorne watched the team of scene-ofcrime officers move around Kathleen Bristow’s smal bedroom. As always, seeing them work, he felt something nagging at him; irritating, like a rough seam scratching his skin inside the plastic suit. He had come to realise over the years that it was envy: of their certainty; of the scientific boundaries which he imagined must give them the kind of reassurance he had rarely felt himself.

Theirs would be the evidence for the likes of him to label and box up and get to court. Without it, the best he had to offer was guesswork and speculation.

‘So, when are we talking, Phil?’

Hendricks took one of the woman’s dead hands in his own. The flesh was mottled, bluish against the cream of his surgical glove. ‘Rigor’s just starting to fade, so I think we’re talking a little over twenty-four hours. The early hours of yesterday morning, probably. Maybe late the night before.’

The night before they’d nicked Grant Freestone.

But Freestone couldn’t be the kil er, could he? They’d already established that he hadn’t kidnapped anyone, and it would have been too much of a coincidence for Kathleen Bristow’s death
not
to be connected to the abduction of Luke Mul en.

‘I reckon he broke a rib or two as wel ,’ Hendricks said. ‘Pressing down on top of her. Kneeling on her chest, maybe.’

When Hendricks reached forward to push a finger inside Kathleen Bristow’s mouth, to rub a cotton bud across the tears inside her lip, Thorne turned away. He walked out of the room, and downstairs. A SOCO he knew wel was working in the dining room, moving methodical y around the smal table on top of which sat a telephone and answering machine. It was from here that a DI from the on-cal Murder Team had phoned Dave Hol and, having listened to the message he’d left for Kathleen Bristow. As Thorne headed towards the back door, he exchanged a joke with the officer, but he was thinking of how the old woman’s face had seemed to col apse when Hendricks had removed her false teeth.

Outside, Thorne pushed back the hood of the plastic suit, walked over to where Dave Hol and, similarly attired, was leaning against the wal next to the kitchen window. A generator hummed at the front of the house and a powerful arc light brightened the half of the garden nearest the kitchen door.

Hol and took two quick drags of a cigarette, held it up to show Thorne, raised his eyes towards the top floor of the house. ‘Al this seems a good enough reason to give in and have one, you know? But then you feel guilty for enjoying it.’

In direct contrast to most people, Hol and had taken up smoking
after
his child was born. He’d smoked secretly, at work, until his girlfriend had found out and gone bal istic, since when he’d done his best to knock it on the head. But, like he said, there were times when it seemed reasonable to weaken.

‘Doesn’t Sophie smel it on you?’

Hol and nodded. ‘But she understands that nine times out of ten, there’s a bloody good reason, so she doesn’t usual y give me a hard time.’

Thorne pushed himself away from the wal and strol ed to the rear of the garden. Hol and fol owed him into the shadow, beyond the arc light’s reach. They sat on a smal , ornamental bench.

‘You reckon our kidnapper did this?’ Hol and asked.

‘If he didn’t, I haven’t got a fucking clue what’s going on. Not that I’ve got much of an idea anyway.’

‘Maybe we’re getting close to him.’

Thorne looked back towards the house, stared at the SOCOs inside, moving back and forth past the bedroom window. ‘It’s hard to feel too excited about that,’ he said, ‘right at this minute.’ He stretched his feet out in front of him. The grass smel ed as though it had been mown only a day or two before. It looked grey against the white of the plastic overshoes.

‘I haven’t seen DI Porter for a while,’ Hol and said.

‘And . . .?’

‘Nothing. I just wondered where she was.’

‘Right. She was talking to the photographer, last time I saw her.’ Thorne leaned forward, looked at Hol and, daring him to give anything away.

‘
What?
’

‘Don’t even think about smirking,’ Thorne said. ‘Just shut up and finish your fag . . .’

‘I was only asking.’

‘Or I’l cal your girlfriend and tel her you’re back on twenty a day.’

Hol and did as he was told, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. The smoke drifted away from them towards the light, disappearing at its edge, where moths and midges danced in and out of the beam. When he’d finished, Hol and stubbed out his fag-end on the bottom of the bench and stood up. ‘Best get back in there,’ he said. ‘I reckon they’l be bringing her out in a minute.’

This was the other advantage of working a murder scene at this hour: save for the occasional insomniac dog-walker or crazed jogger, Kathleen Bristow could leave her home for the last time without an audience. During the day, there would be no shortage of gawpers, standing silently, shifting from foot to foot, formulating the story they would tel later around the dinner table or in the pub. Whenever Thorne listened to traffic updates on the motorway, he wondered why the announcer didn’t just tel the truth; why they didn’t come clean and say that the tailback was the result of drivers slowing down to get a good look at the accident.

He raised his head at the rustle of plastic trouser-legs moving against each other and shifted across to let Porter sit down.

‘Hol and giving you a hard time?’ she asked.

‘He knows better.’

Thorne thought Porter probably had more to say about what had nearly gone on at his flat, but he made it obvious that he wasn’t too keen to get into it. He couldn’t help but wonder how he’d feel about discussing it if anything had actual y happened.

‘I spoke to Hendricks,’ she said. ‘So I suppose we should at least ask Freestone where he was on Friday night.’

‘Can’t see the point.’

‘Wel , how about because we haven’t got anyone else even resembling a suspect?’

Thorne shrugged. ‘We can
ask
.’

‘A tenner says he was with his sister anyway, right?’

‘Probably. But whether Freestone’s got an alibi or not, this is the same man that kil ed Al en and Tickel . Has to be. The same man who’s holding Luke.’

A light came on in an upstairs window of the house next door. Looking across, Thorne saw that there were downstairs lights burning on the other side, too. So much for the absence of an audience. In London, he supposed, there was usual y
someone
watching. There would probably be a house-to-house later that morning, and they could only hope that someone had been equal y watchful twenty-four hours earlier.

‘OK, seeing as
who
is pretty much a non-starter, any bright ideas about
why?
’

Bright ideas?
More like guesswork and speculation . . .

‘Did you look in the spare room?’ Thorne asked.

He had noticed the three battered, metal filing cabinets in the second bedroom and remembered something Cal um Roper had said about who was most likely to have kept any records of the MAPPA meetings back in 2001. He ran the idea that had begun to form in his mind past Porter.

Her response suggested that, as pieces of speculation went, it wasn’t the most outlandish she’d ever heard. ‘You think she was kil ed because of something she knew?’

‘Or something she had. Perhaps without even knowing she had it. It’s just a thought . . .’

‘The problem is that without us knowing what was in those filing cabinets, I don’t see how we’re going to work out what might have been taken.’

‘I had a quick look in one of them. There’s a ton of stuff in there, going back years. We can go through it al later, when scene of crime’s finished. If there’s nothing there about Freestone, or the MAPPA project in 2001, I think we should try and find out if there ever was.’

‘We’l need to get back on to whichever social services department she was working for then.’ Porter winced, like she’d just remembered what day it was. ‘Won’t have a lot of luck on a Sunday, mind.’

‘I wouldn’t bank on them having copies of these records themselves,’ Thorne said. ‘Not if what Roper said is true. But they might know what Bristow took with her when she retired, or at least confirm that she kept her own records.’ Even as Thorne said it, the idea was starting to sound vague and flabby; time-consuming at the very least. Though they now had three murders to investigate, there was stil a missing boy whose safety, whose
quick
recovery was, theoretical y, their prime concern.

A boy who, theoretical y, was stil alive.

Porter, though, seemed energised by Thorne’s idea. While Thorne himself could only hope that he didn’t look as bad as he felt, her face showed no sign of the fact that she was approaching what must have been twenty-four hours without sleep.

‘Maybe it’s Freestone’s connection to this MAPPA business that’s important,’ she suggested. ‘Not the threats he made before he went to prison.’

Three murders . . .

‘Wel , something’s
seriously
important to someone,’ Thorne said.

‘What about Luke?’

There was guesswork and there was speculation. And there were some things that just became horribly obvious. ‘He’l kil Luke if he has to,’ Thorne said.

Porter nodded, like Thorne had confirmed what she already knew. She lifted her feet on to the bench, wrapped her arms around her knees, and said, ‘I’ve only ever lost two.’

For a minute or more, Thorne searched for something to say, but before anything suitable could come to him Porter had chased away the need for reassurance and was getting to her feet.

‘We need to get a fucking shift on,’ she said. ‘Maybe coming at it from this new angle might help.’

‘Maybe.’ Thorne hauled himself upright, hoping that her optimism would prove justified. There was no doubt that the map of the case was being freshly laid out on memos and whiteboards; was redrawing itself in Thorne’s head. But as lines snaked in new directions and intersected for the first time with others, one name – whatever else was happening – kept drifting towards an area where it should not, by rights, belong. It kept floating away from that part of the map reserved for victims and witnesses and heading towards an altogether murkier, unlabel ed zone.

Tony Mul en.

A wave from just inside the kitchen door indicated that the body of Kathleen Bristow was being brought out. Porter started walking back towards the house, with Thorne a few paces behind her.

The joking always stopped at this point, for a few minutes at least, until the mortuary vehicle had driven away. Then the bagging and the scraping, and the banter, could resume; with the volume cranked up a notch or two.

Once the body had gone, the murder scene could let out the breath it had been holding.

Thorne watched as the stretcher was lifted over the step at the back door and into the garden. Hol and came out after it, then Hendricks, who began to clamber out of his plastic suit in readiness for fol owing the body to the mortuary. The stretcher was taken through the gate, the arc light il uminating its path along the side of the house towards the road.

Thorne walked back into the house, thinking that cigarette smoke wasn’t the worst thing you could go home stinking of.

Custody reviews took place six and fifteen hours into the twenty-four. Thirty minutes earlier, at 8 a.m., Kitson and Brigstocke had reviewed the ongoing custody of Adrian Farrel for the second time. Now, she was cheerful y passing on the news to the prisoner himself: that should matters not proceed to her satisfaction, she and her DCI would be going to the superintendent to seek a six-hour extension.

Smartarse, the solicitor – who preferred the name Wilson – was less than impressed. ‘And this is on the basis of a video parade, is it?’

‘A positive identification from an eyewitness who says he watched Mr Farrel and two others murder Amin Latif on October 17th, last year. Sorry . . . I should say, “murder Mr Latif after seriously sexual y assaulting him”, if we’re being accurate. Although, that said, I think the murder wil probably be enough, don’t you?’

Wilson began scribbling something, then casual y slid his forearm across the top of his notepad, like a schoolboy protecting his answers.

Kitson watched him write, thinking that it might just as wel have been a shopping list, for al the help it was going to be to his client. Next to her, Andy Stone did up the buttons on his jacket. Stone was just there to make up the numbers, and seemed happy enough with his role.

‘You warm enough, Adrian?’ he asked.

The interview room was cold, which was probably a good thing, as someone brought in overnight after a knife attack outside a bar had thrown up in the corner. Heating would almost certainly have made the stench of stale puke and disinfectant unbearable.

Judging by the expression on Adrian Farrel ’s face, the smel was bad enough as it was.

He looked very different out of uniform; away from school and everything that went with it. He wore jeans, and a red hooded top with ‘NEW YORK’ emblazoned across the chest. The blond hair was messy, but had certainly not been styled that way, and the face it framed showed every sign of having spent a night as uncomfortable as those in the cel s were supposed to be. He was trying to look bored and mildly irritated, but lack of sleep was obviously affecting his ability to keep up the act. Where previously she had caught only glimpses, Kitson was starting to get a better look at the fear, and at the dark, quiet anger which settled across his features, like scum on the surface of stil water.