Buried

‘It’s not his head I’m worried about.’ She paused before asking the question, as if Thorne’s answer was important to her. ‘Do you think people like Freestone can change what they are?’

‘Bloody hell,’ Thorne said. ‘Do we really need to get into this?’

‘We’re just talking.’

‘Like you said, it’s a preference, and whatever they might be, most of us are stuck with them.’ He hesitated, feeling awkward, searching for a way to articulate it. ‘I suppose… I’m not convinced that you could make me start fancying blokes, however much therapy you gave me.’

‘Right. And listen, I accept all the evidence about abusers having been abused themselves. It’s just-’

‘I know…’

‘I’ve been putting myself in her shoes, in Jane’s shoes, and I couldn’t do it. It’s hypothetical, obviously, but I think I would have had to cut myself off from him. Me and the kids. I mean, Jesus, if you’ve got some of your own, you know what the parents of the kids he hurt have gone through, don’t you? You’ve got that to live with as well.’

‘I suppose so,’ Thorne said.

She shook her head. Disgusted, adamant. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted him to come out of prison.’

They were sitting in one of the large CID offices on the third floor. Cut off from their own incident room back at Becke House, this was about the only place they could talk with any degree of privacy; to discuss progress, or the lack of it. To take a few minutes.

But they were still interrupted. Officers from various station squads moved in and out of the room at regular intervals, and the conversation was friendly enough. This was unusual, as ordinarily there was resentment between those who worked at Colindale full time and those, like Porter and Thorne, who were using it as little more than a facilities house. It was petty, territorial stuff: our interview room, our custody suite, our tea and biscuits. But, thus far, there had been only genuine enquiries as to how things were going, and both Thorne and Porter had been wished good luck on numerous occasions.

Word went round a station when there was a major case on the premises. It changed the mood of the place.

It was clear from many of the comments, passed openly or whispered too loudly in corners, that Grant Freestone’s record – the crimes for which he had been convicted in the mid-nineties – was colouring opinion; preying on the minds of others just as much as it was on Louise Porter’s. This certainly explained all those messages of good luck…

Thorne drank his tea and watched Porter work her way through a can of Diet Coke and her second packet of crisps. On the far wall, a large whiteboard was covered in names, pictures and numbered bullet points. Lines and arrows, up and across in red marker pen, linked a face to a blown-up section of the A-Z, a registration number to the photograph of a woman who had been severely beaten. Porter stared at the familiar map of an enquiry; the blood and beating heart of a case they knew nothing about. But Thorne knew that her mind was racing; was full of doubts and questions about their own case. Its fluttering, irregular heartbeat.

‘Are we so sure this is the right thing?’ Porter asked. ‘We could just play safe and do what he’s asking. Would getting Mullen in here do any harm?’

‘It’s not about playing safe. It’s about refusing to be dictated to by a suspect, unless you’re certain there are no other options.’

‘So it’s about who’s in charge, is it?’

‘I don’t want Mullen in here.’

‘I’m thinking about Luke.’

‘So am I.’ Thorne tried to sound thoughtful as opposed to plain sullen, but he wasn’t certain he’d pulled it off.

‘Well, then, can we afford not to do what Freestone’s asking?’

‘Demanding.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘He’s pissing us around.’

‘Well, hopefully we’ll know soon enough.’

‘Why is he insisting that he has to talk to Mullen in private anyway? Why all the secrecy?’

‘Look, I don’t trust him any more than you do, but-’

‘I don’t trust either of them,’ Thorne said.

Porter rolled her eyes, but she obviously agreed, to some extent at least.

Thorne watched her lift up the packet, tip her head back and pour the remaining crisps into her mouth. Still chewing, she nodded towards the door and Thorne looked round to see Brigstocke and Hignett hovering, like funeral directors come to collect a body.

‘Shall we get this done?’ Brigstocke said.

The four of them took the stairs down to the ground floor, Porter and Hignett a few steps ahead of the two men from the Murder Squad. Thorne thought Brigstocke looked tired, guessed the DCI was probably getting even less sleep than he was.

As they stepped on to a small landing, with the other pair now a full flight below them, Brigstocke turned to Thorne. ‘Any thoughts on how you and Porter are going to run this?’

‘We thought we’d try to play it by ear,’ Thorne said.

A few steps on, Brigstocke shook his head, mumbled, ‘God help us…’

On the way to the custody suite, they met Yvonne Kitson coming from another direction. Thorne let the others go ahead.

‘Crowded in here today,’ he said. ‘I heard you brought your schoolboy in.’

Kitson grinned. ‘Sounds like you’re not doing too badly yourself.’

‘When either of us gets five minutes, we should drink to something.’

‘All being well.’

‘Have you had a chat with Farrell yet?’

‘Just on my way,’ Kitson said. ‘Got him in the bin.’ She brandished a sheaf of papers; passed them across for Thorne to take a look at.

Thorne studied the disclosure paperwork: a series of documents to be handed to the suspect’s legal adviser; all at once, or strategically drip-fed if it was deemed to be useful. By law, the papers had to include everything from completed custody records to copies of the ‘first description’ – in this case the statement given by Nabeel Khan at the murder scene and reproduced verbatim from the attending officer’s pocketbook. Thorne flicked through copies of the incriminating E-fit and Farrell’s arrest log, then pointed to a sheet outlining the results of the video ID parade. ‘This should do you nicely,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t very easy for the witness.’ Kitson blinked away the memory of something, but managed to crank up the smile again. ‘Should put the wind up his smartarse solicitor, though.’

‘One of those, is it?’

‘You know the firm: Smartarse, Posh and Fullovit.’

‘I know them too bloody well…’

They moved on together, laughing, towards the interview rooms; through the door that separated the rest of the prison from the custody suite.

‘Suite’ was something of a misnomer, suggesting that the area was rather more comfortable and well appointed than it was. In fact, this was where industrial grey carpet gave way to concrete floors, where panic strips ran along the walls, and where an atmosphere of heightened awareness came close to one charged with aggression.

This was where the station became a prison.

A pair of custody sergeants, or ‘skippers’, sat on a raised platform at the centre, booking people in, working at computer screens and monitoring the CCTV images fed from cells and corridors. The ‘cage’ was off to one side, through which prisoners were brought in from the backyard, and where, if necessary, UV light would show up any property-marked items that they might be carrying. Corridors in two directions led to the twenty-seven cells which ringed the suite. Each was tiled from floor to high ceiling, with a metal toilet on one side and a blue plastic mattress along the back wall. A double doorway led through to an exercise yard, to which prisoners were taken if they