Buried

‘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 kill Sarah Hanley,’ he said.

There were plenty of places where Thorne lowered his expectations as a matter of course: White Hart Lane, naturally; 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 all.

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.

‘Well, 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 really believe that.’

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Really, 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.’

‘Well, 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 telling 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 till, 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, telling her that he hadn’t been sleeping well. That his back was still giving him hell. She pulled 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 Mullen.’

‘He might still 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 Mullen 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 killed Sarah Hanley. He’d given no indication that he’d played a part in the kidnapping of Luke Mullen, 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 tell us if he treated Tickell at the same time as Freestone. But do we want to go through all 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 Allen’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 all accounts, the ‘muppet’ was only marginally less of a ‘plonker’ than the ‘toerag’ who spent all day ‘crawling up the sergeant’s arse’.

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

Thorne was still 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 Holland 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 call, it was the uniformed officers’ turn to fall 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 really wants to talk to us about Luke Mullen.’

‘I didn’t kill Sarah Hanley.’

‘Please don’t tell 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 tell 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’ll have plenty of time to talk to people about what happened to Sarah-’

‘I don’t know what happened to her, all 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, sullen 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 telling 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’ll always be about those kids once I’m inside. I’ll 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 tell 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 all that.’ She sat back, leaving him to it; rummaged in her bag for nothing in particular.