Buried

‘Kenny Parsons was telling me a few stories about Porter,’ Holland said.

‘Was he?’

‘She’s quite a character.’

Thorne stared casually up at the British Airways hoarding above them, and fought off the temptation to pump Holland mercilessly for everything he knew. The last thing he wanted was for anybody to think he gave a toss. ‘I’m not that interested in gossip,’ he said. ‘I don’t really think we’ve got time for it on a job like this, do you, Dave?’

Holland said nothing, just turned towards the road, but Thorne could see the trace of a smile and guessed that Holland hadn’t been fooled for a second. He wondered if there was some kind of course you could take to make yourself less transparent when it mattered. He glanced back at the huge picture of a plane, shining above an ocean, and thought about going on holiday alone.

‘I probably will follow up on Bristow and Stringer,’ Holland said. ‘When I get a minute. Just because I’ve already started.’

‘I thought it was Andy Stone who couldn’t resist chasing women.’

Holland smiled broadly this time, and continued: ‘I’ve made a couple of calls and left messages. Waiting to hear back from Bristow and I’m still trying to get a current address for Margaret Stringer.’

‘Can’t you get it out of the education authority?’

As usual, traffic was heavy both ways. They had to raise their voices above the noise of cars and heavy police vehicles heading towards the tube station, or north to join up with the A1.

‘The last one that Bromley Education Authority had for her was years out of date.’

‘Typical,’ Thorne said. ‘I bet their council tax bills go out on time though.’

‘No, she isn’t working for them any more. She must have moved house after she left.’

‘Which was when?’

‘April 2001. And Kathleen Bristow retired just after that.’

Thorne remembered Roper suggesting that Bristow would have been around retirement age, but it was still striking. It was starting to look as if the lives of all those involved on Grant Freestone’s MAPPA panel had been changed in some way by what happened to Sarah Hanley: Bristow and Stringer had both left their jobs; Neil Warren had picked up a needle; Roper and Lardner certainly appeared to have issues.

Guilt and blame again. Poisonous and magical.

It seemed as though no one involved – however indirectly – with the death of a young mother in 2001 had come away unscathed. Thorne walked on, into Colindale station, to talk to the man accused of her murder. He had no idea how or why, and he still couldn’t see Grant Freestone as a kidnapper, but he couldn’t help but wonder if Sarah Hanley’s killing was still fucking people’s lives up five years on.

The interview was suspended before anyone grew too comfortable.

Freestone’s legal representative had stood up two minutes in, insisted that proceedings be brought to a halt and demanded to talk to Thorne and Porter outside.

‘Why the hell are you talking about a kidnap?’

‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Thorne said. ‘Because we are talking about a kidnap, we can’t say too much.’

‘That’s bollocks. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.’

Thorne wasn’t likely to.

Danny Donovan, like a lot of the legal reps working for solicitors’ firms and sent along in similar situations to this one, was an ex-copper. Thrown off the force fifteen years earlier for drink-driving, what he lacked in legal qualifications – which were not strictly necessary for the job – he more than made up for in working nous and know-how. He knew the system. He knew the difference between a loophole and a liberty. He knew his way round a police station, and most important of all, he knew the tricks that the likes of Tom Thorne played, because he’d played them all himself. This alone made characters like him unpopular with those still on the Job, but Donovan did himself no favours. When he wasn’t aggressively reminding people that he’d been there and done that, he was prone to playing the old pals act: calling officers by their first names and swanning into one or other of the CID offices to put the kettle on.

He was fifty-something, and fucked. More than a few reckoned that his life as a ‘legal’ was about sticking two fingers up at the people who’d chucked him out on his ear. Thorne had thought this was a pretty harsh judgement, but he was ready to change his mind. What with Tony Mullen calling up to bad-mouth him to senior officers, Thorne had just about had a bellyful of bolshie ex-coppers.

‘My client was arrested for murder,’ Donovan said. ‘Of which, as we have already established, he claims to be completely innocent.’

‘Wouldn’t expect otherwise.’

‘“Murder”. That’s what it says on the arrest sheet; that’s what it says on the disclosure papers; and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s what you’re going to be questioning him about.’

Thorne knew Donovan very well, but Porter had not had the displeasure. ‘I’m sure you understand what DI Thorne is getting at,’ she said. ‘We think that the murder for which your client has been charged, might be connected with a current case. A highly sensitive case.’

‘Not my problem.’ Donovan sniffed and bowed a finger across his nostrils. His hair seemed to have yellowed rather than greyed, and keyed in rather nicely with his light brown suit and sunbed tan.

‘It’s just a few questions.’

‘It’s a few too many. I conferred with my client on the basis of what I was presented with and now you’re throwing stuff at us for which we’re completely unprepared.’

‘Come on, you know the game,’ Thorne said. ‘Sometimes “unprepared” is exactly the way they’re supposed to be, right?’

The old pals act could work both ways.

Or not at all: ‘Not from where I’m sitting,’ Donovan said. ‘Not when I haven’t been given an indication of any evidence whatsoever.’

Porter tried to sound reluctant, as though Donovan were succeeding in dragging the disclosure from her. ‘Look, there’s a strong possibility that Freestone may have known the woman who was one of our kidnappers. They may have consulted the same drugs counsellor at the same time.’

‘A strong possibility… may have.’ Donovan looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to shout or piss himself. ‘I’ll tell you what you do have, and that’s bugger-all. You must think I’m a mug.’

‘We also have a sixteen-year-old boy,’ Thorne said. ‘Actually, someone else has him, and we’re trying awfully fucking hard to get him back. We could do with a break, Danny.’

‘His dad’s ex-Job, too,’ Porter said. ‘He’s going out of his mind. Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you…’

Thorne knew that Donovan had two kids. He considered going down that road, but decided against laying it on too thick. For a second or two, it looked as though they might have got away with it; as though a simple, no-frills appeal to sentiment might have given them some leverage. But then, what Thorne had taken to be an expression of empathy – compassion, even – became something horribly like a smirk.

‘Sorry. Unless you can come up with more than this very quickly, you know damn well what I’ll have to advise my client to do.’

‘Surprise me,’ Thorne said.

‘In his own interest, I’ll tell him not to say a single word.’ Donovan turned, walked back into the interview room and shut the door behind him.

A single word was all Thorne spoke, loudly, at the closed door. It wasn’t a word he used very often outside a football ground, and he wasn’t even sure that the man it was intended for heard it. But at that moment, it seemed like the only word that would do.

LUKE