Buried

‘He was so full of shit,’ Thorne said. ‘All that just to get a bit of leverage. So we’d agree to Mullen coming in.’

Porter raised her eyebrows. ‘Now, there’s a major question in itself.’

‘Like we haven’t got enough of those already.’

‘Number one in the hit parade being: if Freestone hasn’t got Luke Mullen…?’

And there it was. That familiar feeling…

Thorne’s first thought was that Brigstocke had come down to do his own bit of back-patting, but his face told a different story. As did the face of the man who appeared next to him in the doorway, then barged past into the interview room like he was a heartbeat away from cracking heads open.

‘Why wasn’t I told about Grant Freestone?’ Mullen asked. His question was absurd, considering that he obviously had been told: he was there, after all. After a second of incredulity from the others in the room, he condescended to correct himself: ‘Why wasn’t I told officially?’

Thorne rose from his seat and exchanged a glance with Brigstocke. He was happy to handle this one, though even as he opened his mouth he had no idea how he was going to handle it. ‘Your position as Luke’s parent, and as an ex-officer, makes your role in this case tricky, to say the least…’

‘Don’t talk shit to me. Where’s Freestone?’

‘He’s probably with the Force Medical Examiner by now, getting a dose of methadone.’

‘I want to see him.’

‘What you want is one thing,’ Thorne said, ‘and I do understand that you and Detective Superintendent Jesmond are… close friends. But I don’t think that coming in here and trying to give anyone orders is particularly helpful.’ He caught the look from Brigstocke, the warning to take it easy, but when his eyes returned to Mullen, the fury seemed to have cooled.

‘However you’d prefer me to put it, then. I would like to see him. He’s been asking to see me, so I think I have a right.’

‘He hasn’t got Luke,’ Thorne said. ‘He told us he had, but we’re pretty sure he was just telling us what we wanted to hear.’

‘Pretty sure?’

‘We’ve got him talking to us about Luke being asthmatic, for Christ’s sake…’

Confusion washed across Mullen’s face.

Porter chipped in to explain. ‘We asked him early on about Allen and Tickell and he blanked us. Later, he was just giving us stuff he could have picked up from the paper. So we needed to feed him something specific, something untrue. To catch him out with it.’

‘He isn’t our kidnapper,’ Thorne said.

Brigstocke stepped towards Mullen. ‘You probably don’t know whether to feel relieved or not. It’s hard, I know.’ He held out an arm as though offering to lead him back out the way he had come. But Mullen wasn’t about to go anywhere.

‘I still want to see him,’ he said.

Brigstocke lowered the arm which had been so studiously ignored. ‘I’m afraid I can’t see much point.’

‘What about this co

Jesmond was certainly keeping his friend very well informed. Thorne looked at Porter. They remained none the wiser about Freestone and Amanda Tickell. About the possibility that they’d both been treated by Neil Warren.

‘It’s only theoretical as yet,’ Brigstocke said. ‘And the community of addicts and counsellors is thankfully not as big as the Daily Mail would like to make out. If they did know each other, it may be no more than coincidence.’

Brigstocke had said it with conviction, but it wasn’t enough to convince Mullen. Or Thorne. Coincidence played a greater part in many investigations than the writers of films and crime novels could ever hope to get away with, but he knew there was more to this than an interesting collision of names and dates. He knew that Freestone’s co

Mullen crossed to a chair, put his hands on the back of it, staking a claim. ‘I’ll see him in here,’ he a

Thorne tried to sound as though he hadn’t forgotten that the man in front of him was missing a child. Thinking, as he spoke, that what had probably made Mullen a bloody good copper now made him a pain in the arse as a civilian. ‘It’s really not possible,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve eliminated Freestone from any active part in your son’s abduction, there are others who want a crack at him. There’s still the small matter of the murder case he was originally wanted for, and some people already think we’ve had him more than long enough.’ He paused. ‘The Sarah Hanley murder?’ He looked for a reaction but saw none that told him anything useful.

‘This room wouldn’t have been any good anyway,’ Porter said. ‘He was insisting it was private. No cameras or tapes.’

‘Was he?’

‘Why do you think that was?’

‘God knows.’ Mullen’s jawbone bulged beneath the skin as he gritted his teeth. ‘Probably so he could threaten me again, without any record of it. But since when do the likes of him need a good reason to do anything?’

‘Is that really why he wanted to see you, do you think?’ Thorne asked. ‘Just to make a few more threats?’

‘I’d presumed it was about Luke. If Freestone had taken him, I thought he was going to tell me why. Tell me what he wanted.’

‘Right.’ Thorne nodded, but his face suggested that this was only one explanation.

‘Well, what the hell else could it have been? Like you said, it was hardly so he could remind me I was off his Christmas-card list.’

Thorne didn’t speak for several seconds. He just watched Mullen’s knuckles turn white on the back of the metal chair. Finally, he said, ‘We’ll never know now, will we?’

At first, Thorne thought the noise was coming from the back of Mullen’s throat. Then he realised it was the sound of the chair scraping against the floor. He watched as Mullen closed his eyes, lifted the chair a foot or so off the ground, held it there for a few seconds, then smashed it back down, shouting what might have been ‘fuck’ or ‘no’ as it hit the floor. Mullen took a few seconds to gather himself before turning slowly to look at the senior officer; seeking confirmation that there was no further argument to be had.

‘I think you should go home, sir,’ Brigstocke said.

In turn, Mullen gave Porter, then Thorne, the benefit of a flint-hard stare before spi

‘That’s your privilege,’ Brigstocke said.

The older man took a step closer to him. ‘How many kids have you got?’

‘Three.’

Mullen snapped his fingers. ‘Let’s say it’s two.’ Snapped them again. ‘Just like that, you wake up and one’s gone. Imagine really hard for a few minutes what that would be like. Then try and lose that fucking sanctimonious tone.’

Thorne hadn’t meant to follow Mullen. He wasn’t seeing him off the premises or anything like that, but it was clear that others didn’t view it in quite the same way. Thorne stood in the lobby, watching through the glass doors, as Mullen crossed the road and walked to a BMW somewhat newer than his own. Mullen opened the door and stared back towards the station. The orange from the street lamp and the paler wash from the car’s interior cast enough light on his face to make the thoughts sculpting its expression clear enough.

Thorne didn’t look away, but wondered if his own state of mind was equally transparent.

Fuck. Bastard, bloody, fuckety-fuck…

Lately, it was becoming hard to tell whether the voice in his head was his own or his father’s.