Buried

Wilson began writing in his notebook. ‘I think it might be best to say nothing, Adrian.’

Farrell lifted a hand. He pushed a comb of stiff fingers through his hair and began tugging strands up into spikes. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘He was the year below me, so we never had much to do with each other. We weren’t in any teams together; not even in the same house. Maybe exchanged a word in the playground, but that’s about it.’

‘You never phoned him at home?’

‘No.’ He looked horrified, as if he’d been accused of something terminally uncool.

‘You might want to think about this, Adrian.’

It looked as though Farrell were doing exactly what Thorne had advised. He blinked and fidgeted, and though the expression stayed defiant, there was much less confidence in his voice when he spoke again. ‘Maybe I called him once or twice, yeah.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘He was a clever kid, wasn’t he? Maybe I just needed a bit of help with some homework, or something.’

‘I thought you were a clever kid.’

‘It was just once or twice.’

Kitson took the printed phone logs from her bag, traced a finger down to the items marked with a highlighter, and read: ‘November 23rd, last year: 8.17 until 8.44 p.m; November 30th: 9.05 until 9.22. January 14th this year, February 12th. Then a call lasting nearly an hour on February the seventeenth…’

‘You must have needed a lot of help,’ Thorne said.

Farrell’s expression started to catch up with his voice. He leaned away from the table, reddening, the desperate smile looking ready to slide off his face at any moment. ‘This is bollocks,’ he said. He turned to Wilson. ‘I’m not saying anything else.’

‘It seems a very odd thing to lie about, that’s all.’

Farrell studied the tabletop.

Thorne glanced at Kitson and understood at once from her expression that this was as rattled as she’d ever seen Adrian Farrell.

‘Maybe we’ll come back to that,’ Thorne said. ‘We wouldn’t want Mr Wilson saying that we bullied you.’

Wilson just sat back and clicked the top of his expensive ballpoint.

‘Is there much bullying at your school?’ Thorne asked. He didn’t wait long for an answer. It was already clear he would be having a more-or-less one-sided conversation. ‘There’s always some, isn’t there? Can’t get rid of it completely, because one or two kids are never going to like themselves very much.

‘They reckon that’s why bullies do it, don’t they? Because of how they feel about themselves. Same for those who take it outside school, if you ask me. The ones who try and make themselves feel better by giving people a kicking on the street. The ones who attack complete strangers because they’ve been looked at the wrong way or imagine they’ve been “disrespected”; who maim, or cripple, or kill someone for no other reason than they’re black, or gay, or wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Then tell themselves they’re being honourable by refusing to grass anyone up when they get caught.’

‘Just tell us their names,’ Kitson said. ‘Tell us and we can stop all this pissing about.’

‘The thing is, I can even understand it, up to a point,’ Thorne said. ‘You can call these crimes “wicked’ or “evil” or whatever you want, but it usually comes down to plain ignorance in the end, and none of us is immune to that, right? There’s a scale, though, isn’t there?’ He traced a line along the tabletop with his finger. ‘I think I’m tolerant, of course I do. Most of us do. But every now and again stuff comes into my head I wouldn’t dream of saying out loud. I don’t know where it’s come from, how it got in there, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t put my hand up to it. I’d never do anything, and I think the people who perpetrate these crimes are shit, scum, whatever… but I know why it happens. I understand that they’re just more ignorant than I am.’

He paused for a few seconds. Watched the red numbers change on the digital clock above the door.

43… 44 … 45…

‘What happened to Amin Latif, though?’ Thorne shook his head. ‘That’s about something else. It’s got to be. I’m not even sure I want to understand why anyone could do that. The first bit’s not too hard to fathom: it’s the sort of thing I’ve just been talking about. It’s ignorance, and trying to make yourself feel better, plain and simple. Amin and his friend are standing at that bus stop and not looking away when you and your mates try to stare them down. Saying something maybe. So they get a kicking, right? Or at least Amin does, because his friend manages to get away, which leaves three against one. Good odds for hard men like you and your mates, right?’

Farrell was bent forward in his chair. He mumbled something. His hands were fists, hanging at his sides.

Kitson leaned in, her head low, trying to catch Farrell’s eye. ‘Just the names, Adrian. Get it over with.’

‘You’re not a virgin, are you?’ Another rhetorical question. Thorne cracked on immediately. ‘Christ, I presume you’re not; not at seventeen. You know what sex is supposed to be about, right? Love, in an ideal world, course it is. Lust, more often than not, if we’re being honest. And habit, and booze, and boredom now and again… But what happened to Amin Latif wasn’t any of those things, was it?’

36… 37 … 38…

‘Let’s imagine for a minute that you weren’t there that night, in the rain, at that bus stop. I’ll tell you what happened, what we know happened from Nabeel Khan’s statement and from the other evidence. I’ll tell you, and you tell me if you’ve got any idea at all what it was about. OK? You see, the job’s done, that’s the strange thing. The Paki bastard’s half-dead in the gutter, right, so why don’t the three of them just piss off? Maybe one or two of them are ready to go, but someone else is calling the shots and he’s got other ideas. He really wants to teach the cheeky fucker a lesson. So he drags him back on to the pavement and turns him over on to his belly. He undoes Amin Latif’s belt and pulls down his jeans. Are you following this OK?’

Farrell’s breathing was heavier, wetter…

‘Then he pulls down his own trousers, and pants, and by this time I’m guessing that his two mates have backed right off. They want nothing to do with any of this. Maybe they’re shouting at him to leave it, telling him he’s a fucking perv, but he doesn’t care by this point. He’s not thinking about anything else. He’s got carried away and he’s already getting his tiny little dick out… He’s already dropping down to his knees…’

‘You’re being stupid for no reason…’ Kitson said.

‘Trying to stick it into Amin Latif.’

‘If we pull in Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson, and it turns out to be them, they’re going to think it was down to you anyway.’

12… 13 … 14…

‘But the Paki bastard – which was how he was described during the initial attack – he puts up a fight. At this point, all he’s got are a couple of broken bones. At this point, the shitbag kneeling behind him can walk away and be looking at a lot less than life imprisonment. But he chooses not to. And Amin Latif makes his own choice: he struggles, and refuses to raise his arse up off the pavement; refuses to submit to this animal who’s trying to rape him, who’s trying to prove how much of a man he is. So the animal eventually gives up. He gets back to his feet and takes hold of himself. And, while his mates laugh, he masturbates. And even before he’s finished coming, he’s begun kicking his victim in the side and in the head, and he doesn’t stop until Amin Latif is completely still. Lying in the gutter. Covered in rain and blood and cum…’

When Farrell looked up suddenly, it was clear that he’d been crying for a while without making any sound. The neck of his sweatshirt was already darkened with tears. The sobs exploded from him as he began to curse and thrash in his chair like someone burning. He called them bitches and cunts, and pulled away violently when Wilson reached over and tried to put a hand on his arm.