Buried

‘Almost certainly?’

‘We think he’s lying about knowing Luke, for some reason. We know he phoned here on several occasions and we want to make doubly sure it was Luke he was calling. I just came to check that he wasn’t calling your daughter. I don’t think I’ll be more than ten minutes.’

‘What’s this boy’s name?’

Thorne took a little longer this time. ‘Farrell.’

There was no obvious reaction, but Thorne wondered if he’d seen a flicker of something before Mullen turned his head, looked away and spoke to his wife.

Thorne hadn’t noticed Maggie Mullen. She was sitting ten or so feet above them at the top of the stairs, on a small landing before further flights curved up to the second and third floors. She was wearing dark tracksuit bottoms and a brown sweater. Her hair was tied back, much of it the same grey as her face, and as the cigarette ash that Thorne presumed filled the saucer between her feet.

‘You’d better give Jules a call,’ Mullen said.

His wife stared, as though she hadn’t heard him, then glanced at Thorne. He smiled and nodded. Both gestures were small and both felt slightly patronising even as he made them; as though he were reassuring someone very old or very sick.

‘Has she done something wrong?’

‘No, nothing like that,’ Thorne said. ‘It’ll just be a couple of questions.’

Mullen stepped past Thorne, leaned against the banister at the foot of the stairs. ‘Just give her a shout, will you, love?’

Maggie Mullen picked up the saucer and got to her feet. She brushed a few stray ashes from her lap, turned and walked up and out of sight towards Juliet’s room. After half a minute, Thorne heard the faintest of knocks, then a muffled exchange, one voice raised above the other. He heard a door shut and the tread of four feet moving down the stairs.

As he waited in the hall, Thorne studied the family photographs on a table by the front door, then looked at the wallpaper instead when he became uncomfortable. Next to him, he heard Mullen’s head bump gently against the wall as he let his head drop back; heard him say, ‘fuck’ quietly, to no one in particular.

Farrell presumed that the cab firm had been given the address by the custody sergeant when the car had been booked. The driver certainly seemed to know where he was going. The miserable bastard said nothing as they drove, but that suited Farrell well enough. He didn’t want to chat. He wanted to close his eyes and gather his thoughts.

He leaned his head against the window and listened to the rain slapping on the roof and to the squeak of the wipers. It stank of oil in the back, and one of those pine air-fresheners shaped like a tree. Piece of shit probably didn’t even have insurance; the Asians always tried to avoid paying anything if they thought they could get away with it. It was like the joke a few of them had about the Asian kids at school. They used to say that their dads were the ones who owned chains of newsagents’, and posh curry houses, but still went to the headmaster’s office to try and haggle over the fees…

When the car pulled over, Farrell thought that he must have nodded off and slept through most of the journey. It seemed like only five minutes since they’d driven away from the station.

A door opened on either side of him. When they’d closed again, he was sitting between two Asian men.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ But even as he was asking the question, the answer was settling in his stomach and starting to boil.

They didn’t speak to him.

They didn’t look at him, or at each other.

The driver flicked his indicator up and eased slowly into the stream of traffic. He turned on the radio, tuned it into a bhangra station. Moved ahead nice and steadily.

Farrell was still pretty certain that the police had bailed him just so they could watch him for a while; see if he got in touch with either of the others. Wedged tight between the men on either side, he wasn’t able to turn round fully, but he craned his neck as much as he could, desperately hoping that he might be proved right and see a panda behind them. But all he saw was rain, anonymous headlights, and, when he turned round again, the eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. They were cold and flat, and yellowed for a second as the Cavalier passed below a street light.

The digital clock on the chrome range read 21.14. Juliet Mullen sat perched on the black, granite worktop with a can of Diet Coke. Her Converse Allstars bounced gently against the cupboard beneath.

‘He’s the twatty sixth-former with the spiky hair, right?’

‘That’s a good description,’ Thorne said.

‘Fancies himself.’

‘Not a friend of yours, then?’

‘No…’

Thorne sat at the kitchen table. Fresh coffee had been made and he’d helped himself. ‘He’s a good-looking boy, though, to be serious. Wouldn’t you say? I bet some of the girls in your year like him, don’t they?’

‘Maybe some of the sad ones.’

‘But not you?’

She threw him a look drenched in pity. Thorne was convinced. He knew precisely the reaction he’d get were he to ask Juliet Mullen if she’d ever spoken to Adrian Farrell on the phone. ‘What about your brother?’

‘What about him?’

‘Is he a friend of Farrell?’

She took a swig from her can, swallowed the belch. ‘I don’t know all his friends – not that he’s got too many, to be honest – but I seriously doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, Farrell’s a wanker. He’s a poser and Luke’s really good at seeing through all that shit. If someone like Farrell was being matey with Luke, it would probably just be so he could take the piss. Or because he wanted something.’

‘Any idea what that might be?’

‘Not a clue. Help with homework, maybe?’

Thorne nodded. It was the first thing she’d thought of, the most obvious explanation. It was the first thing Farrell himself had thought of, too, when he’d been groping for a lie to explain the phone calls.

Juliet squashed the empty can, dropped down from the worktop and opened a cupboard where there was a recycling bin. ‘Is this to do with what’s happened to Luke?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure…’

‘Do you think Luke’s still alive?’

Thorne looked up at the girl. Her image was designed to project a generalised angst and tension, frustration and despair at nothing in particular. In that moment, though, brightly lit and brutal, there was only a pudgy-faced child whose breathing was suddenly ragged above the low hum of the fridge. Thorne could see beyond the dark make-up and the bitten nails to the consuming pain beneath.

And he could see that lying would not ease it.

‘I’m not sure about that, either.’

Juliet nodded, like she appreciated the honesty. ‘I am,’ she said.

TWENTY-THREE

‘Amin Latif was my nephew,’ the driver said. He nodded towards the men in the back seat. ‘And these are my sons: Amin’s cousins.’

Finally the men on either side of Farrell looked at him. One had a goatee and wore a leather jacket. The other was clean-shaven, with small, round glasses and hair that flopped down across his forehead. Neither of them looked like hard men, Farrell thought. But they both looked hard enough, and intense, like they had something burning in their bellies, too.

‘You look like you’re going to shit yourself,’ the one with the goatee said.

Farrell had spent the ten minutes since they’d climbed in next to him imagining the worst. He’d pictured the car pulling off the road, driving on to some deserted industrial estate. He knew for certain that the men would be carrying knives.

‘How does it feel?’ the one with the glasses asked.

In fact, the driver had steered the Cavalier into the large car park of an entertainment complex. Farrell thought he recognised the place; that maybe he’d been bowling here one night or gone to the pictures. The car had eventually stopped in a far corner behind a Pizza Hut, away from any other vehicles. Out of the light.