Buried

Tony Mullen.

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. Holland came out after it, then Hendricks, who began to clamber out of his plastic suit in readiness for following the body to the mortuary. The stretcher was taken through the gate, the arc light illuminating 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 Farrell for the second time. Now, she was cheerfully 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 Farrell and two others murder Amin Latif on October 17th, last year. Sorry… I should say, “murder Mr Latif after seriously sexually assaulting him”, if we’re being accurate. Although, that said, I think the murder will probably be enough, don’t you?’

Wilson began scribbling something, then casually 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 well have been a shopping list, for all 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 Farrell’s face, the smell 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 cells 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 still water.

‘I know what’ll cheer you up,’ she said. ‘A bit of a history quiz.’

A laminated list of prisoner’s rights had been fixed to the desk. Farrell was picking at an edge of it. He looked up, shrugged. ‘Fine.’

‘History’s your favourite, isn’t it?’

‘I said fine.’

‘Good on dates? What about February 28th, 1953?’

Farrell tapped a finger against his lips. ‘Battle of Hastings?’

‘Why don’t we ask the audience?’ Kitson said. ‘Mr Wilson?’

Wilson did a little more scribbling. ‘I doubt you’ll get any kind of extension if you waste the time you’ve got playing silly games.’

‘It was the day that Francis Crick and James Watson worked out the structure of DNA.’ Kitson slowly drew a figure of eight on the desktop in front of her. ‘The double helix.’

Farrell looked as though he found this genuinely fu

‘I bet you won’t. We should have a preliminary result by the end of the day, and I know it’s going to be a match.’

This time, Kitson was talking about the result of tests carried out on an authorised DNA sample, taken the previous day at the station. Farrell had refused to give permission for this, so Kitson – as she had every right to do in the case of a non-intimate sample – had taken it without consent. As several strands of hair were removed by the attending medical officer, with Stone and another DC providing the necessary restraint, Kitson had seen flashes of an anger a lot less quiet than the one she sensed, simmering inside Adrian Farrell now.

She stared across the table, turning up the heat. ‘And you know it’s going to be a match, too, don’t you?’

‘I know all sorts of things.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘I know that you can’t decide how best to talk to me so as to get what you want. I know that you’re either patronising me or pretending that you think I’m really clever and really mature, but all the time you’re steering a clumsy course between the two you’re just sitting there hating my guts.’ He cocked his head towards Stone. ‘And I know that he just wants to climb across this table and get his hands on me.’

Stone returned the stare, like he wasn’t about to argue.

Kitson caught the look, like a poker player spotting a tell. The puff of the cheeks from Wilson told her he was resigned to the fact that whichever way he’d advised Farrell to behave, the boy thought he knew better. That the fat fee he was doubtless being paid by his client’s parents would be earned without a great deal of effort. Kitson turned back to Farrell, convinced that his solicitor was already thinking about future, fatter fees. Those that might be earned appealing against a guilty verdict.

‘You’re not walking away from this,’ she said.

‘You seem very sure of yourself, but you’re still not charging me, are you?’

‘Who were the two other boys with you when you attacked Amin Latif?’

‘When I what?’

‘Give me the names, Adrian.’

‘Now, you say you can’t promise anything, right? But if I help you, you’ll see what you can do about getting my sentence reduced. Or maybe you’ll just try to appeal to my conscience, because you’re sure I’ve got one somewhere, and that deep down I want to do the right thing.’

‘What about Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson?’ Kitson asked. ‘Shall we talk to them? You can bet they’d give you up in a second.’

It was as though Farrell simply hadn’t heard her. ‘Isn’t this where you slide a few pictures of the dead boy across the table?’

Kitson looked to Wilson, then to Stone. The pause was less for effect than to suck up saliva into a mouth that had suddenly gone dry. It was coppery with adrenalin. ‘You’ve got a lot of confidence, Adrian,’ she said. ‘A lot of charm. I’m sure you’re a big hit with young girls and old ladies. But all the charm in the world won’t sway a jury if it’s looking at an eyewitness ID and a DNA match.’

‘I’m confident? If you ask me, you’re the one who’s counting all the chickens. It’s an eyewitness ID six months after the fact. And you keep talking about this DNA match like you’ve already got it.’

Kitson couldn’t resist a smile, remembering the one Farrell had given her, just before he’d spat on to the pavement.

Stone shuffled forward on his chair. ‘I’ll tell you who else you’ll be a big hit with,’ he said. ‘One or two of the lads you’re likely to find yourself banged up with.’

Wilson groaned in distaste.