It was like being buried.
The smell of damp and dirt, and the floor above him.
It was dark, as always. Heavy, like the particles in the air would be big and black if you could see them. But he felt sure that it was daytime. If he listened hard enough, he could hear the hum of distant traffic. A motorway, maybe. And when the man had been down before, he’d brought breakfast stuff – tea and toast – and a lot more light had spilled in when he’d opened the door at the top of the stairs.
The man had done what he’d promised to do, and because Luke had not shouted when he hadn’t had the tape around his face, the man had left the rope off his wrists as well. Now he could really explore.
His fingers dug into every crack and hole in the rough walls, his knuckles tearing on stone and nails, splinters slipping into his palms as he moved his hands through the cobwebs and across the ceiling above him. He felt along the shelves caked in grit and dust, and over the bags and sticky tins and picture frames. He added layer after layer of detail to the picture inside his head. He knew where everything was, and he could walk quickly from one side of the room to the other, his hands down by his sides until the very last second.
He thought it was a good sign that the rope and the tape had gone; that the man was starting to like him or something. If the man carried on being nice, and didn’t say any more mad, horrible stuff, maybe he could ask him about sending another message. Maybe the man would let him say what he wanted, not like he’d had to do with Conrad and Amanda.
They were the ones who’d taken him, yes. But they’d not said any stupid, sick shit. They’d been OK with him most of the time, before they’d died.
He tried hard not to think about Conrad and Amanda, because every time he did, he saw them lying in the bedroom, with the blood underneath like the bright red lining of a jacket. Then he would get a lot more scared, because it was obvious that the man had killed them, and he started to believe that the man was going to hurt him, too, no matter how nice he was pretending to be.
Scared. Like that moron of a rugby coach had said he was for pulling out of a tackle; and like his dad had said he was for not sticking up for himself when the rugby coach had given him a hard time about it. Like Juliet said he was for not standing up to his dad a bit more…
The man was still in the house.
Dropping things…
He heard them, whatever they were, falling to the floor somewhere above him. He began to cry. He just couldn’t stop himself. He tried to be rational, to tell himself that the man was just moving stuff around, but he heard the noise as the objects hit the floorboards and he wept, as he imagined dirt being shovelled on top of him. He pushed himself up from the floor and began walking fast from one side of the cellar to the other. Gathering speed, bouncing off the walls and wailing.
Rattling around in the dark.
Like a stillborn baby in a big man’s coffin.
FOURTEEN
It was a contest, there was no getting away from it. Two of them on each side of the table, it was always going to be confrontational, no matter how touchy-feely you tried to make it; no matter how many beanbag sessions you sat through at seminars.
Thorne and Porter one side, up for it. Donovan looking ready for a scrap on the other, and Grant Freestone the only one in the room who seemed as though he didn’t have much idea why any of them were there at all.
Like he still couldn’t believe what had happened.
Thorne announced the time that the interview was recommencing, the location and the names of all those present in the room. He asked Freestone if he had been given something to eat; if he was feeling fit and well enough to be interviewed. Then he waited.
‘You can answer
This was practicality and caution, rather than concern. The last thing they wanted was for Donovan to claim later that his client had been feeling sick or disoriented; that anything he might have said was unreliable, due to his not getting an aspirin or feeling weak through lack of a bacon sandwich.
‘Are you feeling OK, Grant?’
Donovan smiled. He knew how little Thorne cared.
Thorne smiled back. ‘For the benefit of the audio tape, Mr Freestone is nodding.’
It had been a very small nod; economical, like all his gestures. Freestone was a big man, thickset, but graceful and fine-featured. He was the right side of forty, with very pale skin, shoulder-length dark hair tied back, and a neatly trimmed goatee. Thorne said later that he looked like someone who should be discussing fringe theatre on Channel Four, while Porter said he reminded her in a
They went over the facts of the arrest, of the custody record to this point, and of the death of Sarah Janine Hanley, whose body had been discovered by her neighbour and her own two children on 7 April 2001.
‘Did you know Sarah Hanley?’
‘Did you visit Sarah Hanley on April 7th, 2001?’
‘When was the last time you saw Sarah Hanley alive?’
For fifteen minutes, Thorne and Porter asked questions, and for fifteen minutes Grant Freestone studied the table, as if the scars and scratches on its metal surface were the lines on some treasure map. There were long periods of silence, save for the occasional heavy sigh, or the hack of Donovan clearing his throat.
The accusatory approach was clearly going to get nothing other than a Trappist response, but questions about Freestone’s alibi didn’t fare much better.
‘Your sister claims that you were in the park with her children when Miss Hanley was killed. Much as you were this morning, ironically.’
‘Is that true, Grant?’
‘Which park was it?’
‘Come on, Grant. If you were there, why did nobody else see you?’
Donovan sat up straight in his chair suddenly and spoke as if he’d just woken up. Thorne couldn’t be entirely sure that he hadn’t.
‘Lovely as it is to sit and listen to the pair of you, this is getting vaguely silly now.’ He tapped the face of his watch. ‘It might seem like time is standing still in here, but your clock’s running…’
Thorne glanced up at the digital display above the door. Freestone had been booked in at just before half past ten in the morning. They were already three hours into their twenty-four.
‘Thanks for the reminder, Mr Donovan,’ Porter said.
‘Pleasure.’
Sarcasm thinned Porter’s lips a little when she smiled. ‘And they say if you want to know the time, ask a policeman.’
‘Why don’t you talk to me, Grant?’ Thorne said.
Thorne listened politely while Donovan told him he was wasting his time. Freestone looked up at him with an expression that said much the same thing. Thorne leaned in nice and close.
‘Why don’t you talk to me about the kidnap of Luke Mullen?’
Neither Thorne nor Porter had been given the chance to mention Luke Mullen’s name during the first, truncated interview. Now that someone had, though, the reaction was obvious. Freestone’s chin sagged momentarily, before his features reset themselves, tighter than before. Something came to life in his eyes. Though he might just have been opening his mouth and closing it again, it looked to Thorne like the man sitting across from him had said the first part of the surname to himself before he could think about it.
‘That name obviously means something to you.’
Freestone looked to Donovan, who shook his head slowly. Freestone turned back, seeming genuinely confused for the first time. Frightened, even.
‘What about Conrad Allen?’ Porter asked.
