Buried

‘A few months, I suppose.’

‘Six months?’

‘Did I know them on October 17th last year, you mean?’

‘That’s as good a date as any.’

Farrell nodded, understanding, and raised his eyes as though racking his brains. After a few seconds he snapped his fingers, grinned and pointed at Kitson. ‘I think it was “Immortal Invisible, God Only Wise”,’ he said. ‘I knew it would come to me.’

The urge to lay hands on him was getting harder and harder to ignore. Kitson pointed to the school crest, embroidered on the pocket of Farrell’s blazer. ‘What’s it say on the badge, Adrian? What’s the motto?’

‘I’m really shit at Latin,’ he said. ‘Sorry…’

She reached slowly into her bag, took out a piece of paper. ‘So, without wishing to labour the point, we’ve established that the name Amin Latif doesn’t really mean very much to you. Yes?’

‘Not a great deal, I’m sorry to say.’

‘What about Nabeel Khan?’

A shrug. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘That’s funny.’ Kitson unfolded the piece of paper, turned it the right way up. ‘Because he seems to know you. See?’

Farrell looked at the picture and the impatience suddenly gave way to panic, then genuine anger. He pulled the heavy bag from his shoulder, let it drop, and swung it back and forth in front of him. ‘I’m not sure what you think that proves.’

‘I’m not sure it proves anything,’ Kitson said. ‘I just thought your parents might like to put one in a frame. Pop it on the piano.’

‘I’m saying nothing more without a solicitor present.’

‘Fine. Come to the station with me and we can organise one.’

‘We already have one.’

For a second or two, Kitson wasn’t certain who ‘we’ were. She wondered if Farrell meant himself and his friends. Then she realised he was talking about his family. ‘Whatever you like,’ she said.

‘Are you arresting me?’

‘Do I need to?’

‘Definitely.’ A twitch at the edge of the mouth; an aborted smile. ‘If you want to talk to me again, I mean. I think that you aren’t arresting me because, whatever you’ve convinced yourself I’ve done – and you’ve given me some fairly major clues – you don’t have any evidence whatsoever to back your ideas up. None at all. I think you’re worried, with fairly good reason, that if you did arrest me, you’d only end up giving yourself unnecessary paperwork. That all you’d have caused by the end of it was huge inconvenience to other people, and a lot of professional embarrassment personally. Is that about right?’

Kitson said nothing.

‘This is lame.’ He jabbed a finger at the E-fit. ‘It’s borderline mental, if you want to know what I really think.’ If Farrell had lost his composure, it had been for only a few seconds; it never seemed to be any longer than that. ‘Come to mention it, have you ever shown me any identification? How do I know you’re who you say you are? You might be some kind of nutter.’

Kitson stared at him: the wide eyes, the bag still swinging, like he couldn’t decide what socks to wear. ‘I think you should go home now,’ she said. ‘You should fuck off indoors to Mummy and Daddy, and have your tea.’

The shock at Kitson’s language might have been genuine, might have been another mask. Having lost her own composure, she was suddenly finding him hard to read. Either way, Farrell didn’t need a second invitation to turn on his heel.

He walked for fifty or so yards, then moved to the edge of the pavement and waited to cross. He looked left, then right and held it, making sure that Kitson was still looking at him. Thinking about it later, Kitson imagined that she saw that nice, polite smile again, just for a moment, before he hawked a ball of phlegm on to the pavement and jogged across the road.

As Kitson reached the spot where Farrell had crossed, a woman standing behind a large wooden gate caught her eye. She wore a green velour tracksuit and full make-up, and stooped to empty bottles from a plastic bag into the recycling bin at the end of her drive. The woman nodded towards where Adrian Farrell had disappeared round the corner. ‘Dirty little sod,’ she said. ‘I would have been belted by a copper for that in my day. Not that you can find one of those buggers when you need one now…’

Kitson didn’t answer. Just continued to stare down at the spit. Shiny, grey-green against the concrete.

The security light above the garage came on, and Maggie Mullen answered the front door as though she had been waiting on the other side of it. Her eyes moved quickly from Thorne to Porter. Seeing little need for concern, or relief, she waved them inside, through a curtain of cigarette smoke, then stared into the darkness that squatted beyond the bleed of yellow light, as if she were waiting for stragglers.

On their way along the hall, Thorne and Porter exchanged a word with Kenny Parsons, who emerged from the kitchen clutching a tabloid and a ballpoint pen. Their visit was unexpected and he searched their faces for news much as Maggie Mullen had done; and much as her husband did when they walked into the living room.

Mullen tossed a paperback on to the chair behind him. ‘Do you want coffee or something?’

Thorne shook his head. Porter said no, that it was fine.

‘Been a long day.’

Thorne wasn’t sure if Mullen was referring to the day that had crawled past for himself and his family or to the one that the officers on the case had endured. Either way, there was little reason to argue.

Mullen sat down on the arm of the sofa. His wife came back into the room, walked past him to an armchair, grabbing cigarettes and ashtray from the mantelpiece as she went. ‘I hope you’re finishing better than you started,’ Mullen said. ‘That certain people have taken their heads from out their arses.’

‘Sir?’ Porter lowered her bag to the floor.

‘I’m presuming the idea that my son’s murdered anybody has been kicked into fucking touch where it belongs. Yes?’

Now it was clear to Thorne that Mullen knew exactly how long a day it had been for everybody. He was plugged into the investigation just as much as the officers working it. Thorne wondered how many times a day he spoke to Jesmond, or called one of his other old mates, to get the inside track.

‘There was evidence which had to be looked at seriously,’ Porter said.

‘Prints on a knife?’

Thorne decided that people were probably calling Mullen. He was being updated as comprehensively as if he were the SIO.

‘That’s enough to make you seriously believe that my son has gone from kidnap victim to some kind of killer on the run, is it? If that’s what you’re telling me, I’m seriously starting to doubt that the right people are on this.’

There was something like a sigh, something like a sob, from the armchair. Mrs Mullen was staring at the Chinese rug, as if she were mesmerised by the dragons and the bridges. Her hands were clasped in front of her and cigarette smoke rose straight up into her face.

‘It’s not what we think,’ Thorne said. He spoke towards Mrs Mullen, the ‘we’ used as though he were talking about everyone on the case; though, in truth, he could vouch only for those in the room at that moment.

‘Thank Christ for that.’ Mullen walked across to Thorne, dropped a heavy hand on to his shoulder and let it rest. Both Thorne and Porter were given the benefit of a thin and not entirely convincing smile, before Mullen turned and went back to his perch on the arm of the sofa. It had been a strange moment: a gesture of solidarity perhaps, or gratitude, or something else entirely. All Thorne had understood was the booze he could smell on the man, and he began to hear the faintest trace of it, when Mullen spoke again.

‘We need to move forward,’ he said. ‘Work out who contracted Allen and his girlfriend to do this. Why Luke was taken. We’ve got bodies now, and you can always get something from bodies, right?’

‘We’ve been talking to people who knew Grant Freestone today,’ Thorne said.

Mullen blinked.

Thorne spotted the movement and turned to see Maggie Mullen’s arm move towards the ashtray; watched as