Freestone over for the Hanley murder. Which, by the way, I also have serious doubts about-’
Hignett held up a hand to cut Thorne off, used it to point at Brigstocke and then himself. ‘When you eventually hand Freestone over,
‘Why can’t we have just one crack at him?’ Thorne asked.
‘Because you haven’t got a single good reason to do so.’ Hignett looked as though it were his last word on the subject. He stepped towards the door, which, after a perfunctory knock, opened as he reached for the handle.
Holland had saved Thorne’s life a couple of years earlier, storming into Thorne’s bedroom with an empty wine bottle as his only weapon. It was the night Thorne had received the scar across his chin, and one or two more that weren’t as visible.
Holland’s timing now was almost as perfect as it had been then. ‘Looks like I’ve missed all the excitement,’ he said.
‘If you mean Freestone,’ Hignett said, ‘there’s nothing to get excited about.’
Holland caught Thorne’s eye as he moved further into the room. A silent exchange assuring Holland that he would be brought up to speed later.
‘How did it go with Warren?’ Thorne asked.
‘Strange bloke: ex-junkie himself, turned to God. But I think we got something.’ Holland had everyone’s attention. ‘He was concerned about client confidentiality, so he never actually said as much, but I had a very strong feeling that he knew Amanda Tickell. That she’d been a client at some point.’
‘Which connects her to Grant Freestone,’ Porter said.
Thorne had been fired up by the morning’s result, but had felt the energy pissing out of him ever since he’d walked back into Becke House. Now he could feel a buzz beginning to lick at his nerve endings, the ticking in his blood starting to build. ‘They might have been clients of Warren’s at the same time,’ he said. ‘If they did know each other, we’ve got a direct link between Freestone and the Mullen kidnap.’ He looked at Hignett. Then, to Brigstocke: ‘Sir?’
Hignett could do nothing but blink, like he’d just walked into something.
‘Sounds like our single good reason,’ Brigstocke said.
Having wrapped up the meeting, he asked Thorne to stay behind, announced that he needed a word about a death by dangerous driving case for which Thorne had done the pre-trial paperwork.
‘Tony Mullen is already upset,’ Brigstocke said, as soon as they were alone.
‘He knows about Freestone?’
‘Upset with
‘Ah…’
‘What the fuck happened at his place last night?’ Brigstocke moved behind his desk, sat down like he didn’t plan on getting up again for some time.
‘Trevor Jesmond been by to say hello, has he?’
‘He called.’
‘I bet he’s sorry he asked for me now.’
‘Mullen says you were harassing him and his wife.’
‘Talk to Porter,’ Thorne said. ‘She was there. To be honest, it was Mullen and his missus who were doing all the shouting.’
‘He says you caused the trouble.’
‘He’s full of it.’
‘I’m just telling you.’
Thorne turned towards the door. It always amazed him that a good feeling could disappear so fast you could barely remember having had it. ‘Thanks, I’ll consider myself told.’
Brigstocke hadn’t finished. ‘You shouldn’t be making an enemy out of Barry Hignett, either.’
‘Are you about to tell me that I’ve got enough enemies as it is?’
‘No. It would be stupid, that’s all. Hignett’s not a bad copper and he’s not a twat. He’s just one of those strange fuckers who takes a position, you know? Who sticks to his guns, because he doesn’t want to look indecisive. He’s the opposite of that character on The Fast Show, the one who agrees with anything anybody tells him and keeps changing his mind.’
‘Right.’ Thorne knew who Brigstocke meant. The show had been one of his father’s favourites. The old man had been fond of shouting out the catchphrases at inappropriate moments.
‘It’s good to have people like Hignett around,’ Brigstocke continued. ‘Sometimes he’s going to be taking a
‘More, I should think,’ Thorne said. He reached for the door. ‘Almost certainly…’
You’d drive if it was pissing down, maybe, but by the time you’d negotiated assorted security barriers and wrestled with the limited car-parking space at either end, it was just as quick to walk between the Peel Centre and Colindale station. Thorne and Holland had made the journey often enough for their steps to be automatic. They crossed Aerodrome Road where they always did, walked at their regular pace, with Holland keeping to the left of Thorne, as usual.
They quickly completed the short conversation they’d begun wordlessly in Brigstocke’s office half an hour earlier. Thorne told Holland what Hignett’s objections had been and thanked him for his timely interruption. Holland said he was only too pleased to help, that it was another one up for the Murder Squad team, not that anyone was keeping score.
They never talked about the earlier incident, the one with the empty wine bottle, quite so easily.
‘God told this bloke to get off the coke then, did he?’
‘Apparently,’ Holland said. ‘Says a prayer instead of doing a line.’
‘Knackering your knees certainly beats losing your septum.’
Holland lengthened his stride to avoid a spatter of dogshit. ‘If Warren
‘Can’t see any point,’ Thorne said. ‘Why on earth would he want to kidnap Luke Mullen? Unless God told him to do it, of course.’
Though there was no option but to walk all the way around, Colindale station was clearly visible – its three storeys broken up into units of brown and white – across the quarter-mile of bleak scrub that separated it from the Peel Centre. The station had been designed along the lines of an airfield observation tower, standing as it did on the site of the old Hendon aerodrome, and next door to the RAF museum. Signs along the edge of the land proclaimed it to be ‘dangerous’. Thorne guessed that this was to do with the state of some of the disused buildings, but liked to imagine that it was something more sinister. He pictured London’s criminal fraternity throwing a hell of a party when it was announced that one of the city’s largest police facilities had been sited on top of a toxic-waste dump…
‘What about those two women on the MAPPA panel?’ Holland said. ‘Kathleen Bristow and Margaret Stringer. Do you need me to talk to them as well?’
‘Only if you’ve really got sod-all else to do. Now we’ve got Freestone, we can get it from the horse’s mouth. Whatever the hell there is to get.’
‘Fair enough, but Porter told me you were banging on about being tidy.’
‘Did she? What else did she say?’
‘Nothing. It just came up, that’s all…’
Further along, sight of the station was cut off by newly erected fencing. A sign on the gate announced the imminent building of ‘luxury studios and apartments’. Having seen similar developments spring up in recent years, Thorne wasn’t putting money on the view from his office window being significantly improved.
They turned right at the traffic island, where daffodils fought gamely for space with crisp packets and fast-food containers. For no good reason that they could fathom, two young women stood on the edge of the island, watching the cars move around it. Holland suggested that they were trainee WPCs failing a road traffic exam. Thorne wondered if they might be extremely misguided tourists who thought it was a small park.
