Buried

Thorne took out his warrant card and showed it to one of the officers on duty at the door. ‘I tried to work out how many bottles would constitute a fatal dose of Tippex…’

Kidnapping and Specialist Investigations was one of a number of SO units based in Central 3000, a huge, open-plan office that took up half of the fifth floor. Each unit’s area was colour-coded, its territory marked out by a rectangular flag suspended from the low ceiling: the Tactical Firearms Unit was black; the Surveillance Unit was green; the Kidnap Unit was red. Elsewhere, other colours indicated the presence of the Technical Support and Intelligence units, either of which could make use of an enormous bank of TV monitors, each one able to tap into any CCTV camera in the metropolitan area or broadcast live pictures directly from any Met helicopter.

Thorne and Holland took it all in. ‘And we were wondering why we couldn’t afford a new kettle at our place,’ Holland said.

A short, dark-haired woman rose from a desk in the red area and introduced herself as DI Louise Porter. Holland ran the kettle line past her during the minute or two of small talk. He looked pleased that she seemed to find it funny. Thorne was impressed with the effort she put in to pretending.

Porter quickly ran through the set-up of the team, one of three on the unit. It was a more or less standard structure. She was one of two DIs heading things up, with a dozen or so other officers, all working to a detective chief inspector. ‘DCI Hignett told me to apologise for not being here to meet you himself,’ Porter said, ‘but he’ll catch up with you later. And it’s three DIs now, of course.’ She nodded towards Thorne. ‘Thanks for mucking in.’

‘No problem,’ Thorne said.

‘Not that you had any choice though, right?’

‘None at all.’

‘Sorry about that, but we can always do with the help.’ She glanced down. ‘Are you OK?’

Thorne stopped moving from foot to foot, realised that he was grimacing. ‘Dodgy back,’ he said. ‘Must have twisted something.’ The truth was that he’d been suffering badly for some time, the pain down his left leg far worse after any period spent sitting in a car or, God forbid, at a desk. At first he’d put it down to something muscular – a hangover from the nights spent sleeping outdoors, perhaps – but now he suspected that there was a more deep- seated problem. It would sort itself out, but in the meantime he was getting through a lot of painkillers.

Porter introduced Thorne and Holland to those members of the team who were around. Most of them seemed friendly enough. They all looked busy.

‘Obviously a lot of the lads are out and about,’ Porter said. ‘Chasing up what we laughably call “leads”.’

Holland leaned back against an empty desk. ‘At least you’ve got some.’

‘Just the one, really. A couple of witnesses saw Luke Mullen get into a car on the afternoon he disappeared.’

‘Number plate?’ Thorne asked.

‘Bits of it. Blue or black. And it might be a Passat. This is from the other kids at the school, all just finished for the day, too busy talking about music or skateboards or whatever the hell they do.’

Holland grinned. ‘Not got any yourself, then?’

‘“Get into a car”,’ Thorne said. ‘So it didn’t look like he was being forced?’

‘He got into the car with a young woman. Attractive. I think the other boys were too busy eyeing her up to pay much attention to the car.’

‘Maybe Luke had a new girlfriend,’ Holland suggested.

‘That’s what some of the boys think, certainly. They’d seen him with her before.’

‘So, isn’t it possible?’ Thorne asked. ‘He’s a sixteen-year-old boy. Maybe he’s just buggered off to a hotel somewhere with a glamorous older woman.’

‘It’s possible.’ Porter began to gather a few things from her desk, then grabbed a handbag from the back of a chair. ‘But this was last Friday. Why hasn’t he been in touch?’

‘He’s probably got better things to do.’

Porter cocked her head, acknowledging a theory that she had clearly dismissed. ‘Who goes away for a dirty weekend with nothing but a school blazer and a sweaty games kit?’ She let it sink in, then walked past Thorne and Holland towards the door, leaving them in little doubt that they were expected to follow.

Holland waited until she was out of earshot. ‘Well, she doesn’t seem to fancy herself too much…’

Outside, in the lobby, another member of the team stepped out of the lift. Porter introduced the woman to Thorne and Holland before the three of them took her place. Porter exchanged a few quick words with her colleague, then punched a button and glanced round at Thorne as the doors closed. ‘She’s one of two family liaison officers who’ve been at the house on rotation since we were brought in. You’ll meet the other one when we get there.’

‘Right.’

Porter’s eyes shifted to the display of illuminated numbers above the doors. Thorne wondered if she was always this anxious; in this much of a hurry.

‘I want to get a good couple of hours with the Mullens today if I can. These first few conversations with the family are the important ones, obviously.’

It took a second or two to sink in. ‘“First few”?’ Thorne said.

Porter turned to look at him.

‘I’m not clear about-’

‘We only got brought into this yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘The kidnap wasn’t reported straight away.’

Thorne caught a look from Holland, who was obviously every bit as confused as he was. ‘Was there some kind of threat?’ he asked. ‘Were the family told not to involve the police?’

‘Whoever took Luke has made no contact with the family whatsoever.’

The lift reached the ground floor and the doors opened, but Thorne made no move to go anywhere.

‘At the moment, your guess is as good as mine,’ Porter said.

‘And what would that be?’

‘What’s the point in guessing? The simple fact is that Luke Mullen was kidnapped on Friday afternoon, but for reasons best known to themselves, his parents decided to wait a couple of days before telling anybody.’

CONRAD

Say you’re a dwarf, OK?

It doesn’t mean that you only fancy other dwarves, does it? That you can’t be excited about a fumble with someone you might have to stand on a chair to have a proper snog with? Actually, it’s normal to want to be with someone different, isn’t it? Just to see what it would be like.

He knew damn well that he was meant to be with a woman who worked on the till in Asda and wore fake Burberry and knock-off perfume, so when Amanda had come sniffing round, deliberately dropping her aitches and knocking back the alcopops like there was no tomorrow, he’d been in there like a rat up a drainpipe. Why wouldn’t he? He’d always fantasised about a bit of posh, and even though he knew deep down she was only slumming it, everything had seemed to be working out very nicely.

Recently, though, he’d started to feel like something was missing, and it wasn’t just the sex falling off a bit, which it always did anyway a few months in. It was more than that. He’d started to feel like everything was a bit unreal. She could call herself Mandy all she liked, and dress down, but she would always be an ‘Amanda’ and he would never really be in her league when it came to breeding or brains. Not that he was stupid; far from it. He knew what was what, pretty much. But when it came to doing stuff, to making a living and all the rest of it, he tended to go where other people took him. That was fine, though, because he knew his limitations. Which made him clever enough, he reckoned.

Now, though, he’d started to think about other women. Nobody specific; just other types of woman. His types. He’d started to drift off, even in the middle of bloody important stuff like what to do with the kid and what have you, and imagine himself with women who had dirty bra straps and read crappy magazines. He thought about women who made a bit more noise in bed and treated him properly and didn’t tell him