Buried

She recognised the names under ‘In Attendance’. There were none listed under ‘Apologies for Absence’…

Porter stared at the date.

Sarah Hanley had been killed on 7 April, nine days after the meeting. The panel had met weekly until this point and there was no record in these minutes of the decision to tell Hanley about Freestone’s past; the decision that was widely regarded as the reason she had ended up dead. Porter went through the sheets again, sensing that there should have been one more, checking that she hadn’t missed it.

Of course, after what had happened, Kathleen Bristow might have decided that the final meeting was one for which she wanted no record.

It might also have been what her killer had been after.

Porter made a mental note to check with Roper, Lardner and the others, to confirm that a meeting had taken place on 5 April, two days before Sarah Hanley’s death.

Energised suddenly, but still as knackered as she’d felt in a long time, Porter sat back against a filing cabinet. She reached for the folder marked ‘Drugs & Alcohol’, thinking that either would be more than welcome.

Farrell felt a jolt of something like hope when the car drew close to Colindale station. He’d held his breath for most of the journey back, but suddenly started to believe that his ordeal would soon be over.

The place he’d been so happy to walk out of an hour or so before now seemed like a sanctuary.

But the driver slowed, crept past the front entrance, then took a sharp left.

‘Please,’ Farrell said. ‘Here is OK.’

The driver ignored him, moving along the side of the station and stopping at a security barrier. He wound down the window, leaned out and punched at some buttons.

‘I don’t understand…’

The barrier started to rise.

Farrell finally thought he saw what was happening. Anger spread and hardened, cracked into a series of low curses, which grew harsher as the Cavalier turned into the backyard and he saw the officers waiting.

Saw Kitson exchanging nods with the driver as they drew to a halt.

Samir Karim slammed the car door and pulled on his jacket. He let out a long, slow breath as he walked towards Kitson. She put a hand on his arm and left it there as they exchanged a few words; watching as the two young men in the back seat moved away from the car, and uniformed officers leaned in to drag out Adrian Farrell.

Farrell struggled and swore as the handcuffs were put on, his body straining towards where Kitson and Karim were huddled, twenty feet away, near the back entrance. ‘You told me you were a cab driver, you fucker. You told me.’

Karim turned, equally angry, but marshalling it. ‘That’s bollocks. I said nothing. You took one look at me and you presumed I was your driver.’

‘Nobody made you get into the car,’ Kitson said. ‘You jumped to conclusions.’

Just like Thorne had said he would.

‘They threatened me.’ Farrell looked from face to face, repeated the accusation, making sure every copper within earshot was under no misconception. ‘They fucking threatened me.’

Backs were still being patted, hands shaken, as Kitson walked across to the prisoner and stood, waiting for him to stop shouting. After a few moments she gave up and got on with it, spoke the words she had no real need to think about.

Charged Adrian Farrell with the murder of Amin Latif.

As she made the speech, she thought about how much persuasion Thorne had needed to employ on her. He’d reminded her about her ‘acquisition’ of Farrell’s DNA; pointed out that, as she’d already taken several steps in an unorthodox direction, it couldn’t really hurt to take a few more. ‘Welcome to the slippery slope,’ he’d said.

‘… but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on…’

She knew that there would be fallout: questions raised, evidence discounted. Thorne had mentioned Farrell’s solicitor and Trevor Jesmond. He’d offered to open a book on which of them would be the more apoplectic.

But she didn’t care.

She looked at Farrell and she knew she’d got him, that, whatever happened, there was more than enough to put him and both his friends away. She pictured the face of Amin Latif’s mother, and decided that she could live with a slap on the wrist.

She followed a step or two behind as officers escorted Farrell through the cage. When she entered the custody suite she watched as they led him towards the skipper, walking slowly, deliberately slowly, past Samir Karim and his ‘sons’ – the two Asian DCs Kitson had ‘borrowed’ from CID.

Farrell glared, and got it back in spades.

The DC with the goatee sucked his teeth. ‘And they reckon you don’t see white dog-shit any more…’

Thorne was being shown to the door by Juliet Mullen when his phone rang. She walked back towards the kitchen once he’d answered; when he turned away and lowered his voice.

‘Dave?’

‘Where are you?’ Holland asked.

‘I’m at the Mullens’.’

‘Jesus-’

‘How did it go with Farrell?’

Holland sounded flustered, thrown, spluttered an answer: ‘Kitson got the names. Sir, this is important.’

Thorne listened. Holland didn’t call him ‘sir’ very often.

‘I thought I was going mad,’ Holland said. ‘Thought I was just overtired, that I’d looked at the wrong list or something.’ He explained that he’d finally been able to track down the missing member of the MAPPA panel; that the people living at Margaret Stringer’s old address had finally got back to him. They’d been away, but had dug out a phone number they’d been left when they’d bought the place five years before. ‘When I called, I just presumed I’d got confused and dialled the wrong number…’

‘What’s the matter, Dave?’

‘How long have you been at Tony Mullen’s place?’

‘I don’t know… half an hour or so.’

‘You must have heard the phone go, then,’ Holland said. ‘A couple of times in the last fifteen minutes?’

Thorne had heard it, when he was with Juliet in the kitchen. Both times the call had been answered from the sitting room next door.

‘First time, when I realised who I was talking to, I didn’t know what to say. I just talked some shit about a courtesy call. Second time, when I rang again to check, I just hung up.’

‘OK.’ Thorne was only half listening now; trying to put it together.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

Thorne had no idea, but he was in the right place to find out. He had already worked out that a lot of women worked under their maiden names. And he knew what Margaret shortened to…

When he’d hung up, Thorne went back to the kitchen and told Juliet Mullen to go back to her room. Then he walked into the sitting room and sat down without being invited.

Maggie Mullen put down the book she was reading and her husband, somewhat reluctantly, turned off the television.

‘Have you finished?’

‘I haven’t even started,’ Thorne said.