Buried

floor.

‘Did you not get my message?’ she asked.

Thorne gulped down his tea. It wasn’t quite twelve yet, and he was wondering if it was too early to get some lunch. ‘Sorry, it’s been a pig of a morning.’

‘I heard.’

‘Actually, the murder scene was a doddle,’ Thorne said. ‘There wasn’t any blood spilled until we got back here.’

Kitson’s shoes were new. She kicked them off when she sat down next to Thorne. Began to rub at tender heels and toes through her tights. ‘Listen, I’ve got Adrian Farrell’s phone records.’

‘Any help?’

‘Not yet. But there are plenty of numbers to check out, so we might get lucky. There was something, though. Remember I said I’d look for any connection to Luke Mullen…?’

‘What have you got?’

‘There was nothing on Farrell’s mobile, but when I checked the landline the Mullen number came up. More than once.’

Thorne’s heartbeat accelerated even more. ‘Why not the mobile? I thought these kids were never off their bloody phones, sending text messages or whatever.’

‘He’s got a pay-as-you-go, right? But he’s also got a phone in his bedroom. I reckon he was just trying to save money. He can use the landline from his room and make private calls whenever he likes on Mum and Dad’s bill.’

‘When you say more than once…?’

‘Half a dozen calls in the three weeks before Luke was taken. More before that.’

Thorne sat back, trying to take in what Kitson was saying. ‘When Dave talked to the kids at the school, Farrell told him he hardly knew Luke Mullen. He knew he’d gone missing, but that was about it, right?’

‘Right, but I don’t have to tell you that he’s a very good liar.’

‘Hang on. Are we sure this was Adrian Farrell making the calls? Maybe Mrs Farrell and Luke Mullen’s mum both work on the PTA committee or something.’

Kitson shook her head. ‘I checked with his mother, and the parents hardly know each other. A few words over coffee at a school concert, nods at the school gates, no more than that.’

‘OK…’

Thorne’s mind, dulled by fatigue and hunger, tossed around possibilities like a tumble dryer on its last legs. Could Luke Mullen’s kidnapping be connected with Farrell, or some of Farrell’s friends? Was he taken because of something he knew about them? If that were the case, why was the video sent to Luke’s parents? And what the hell could any of it have to do with the murder of Kathleen Bristow?

‘These are not quick calls either, Tom,’ Kitson said. ‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’

‘What does Farrell say?’

‘I haven’t gone at him with any of this yet. I wondered if you fancied coming into the bin with me and having a bash yourself.’

Thorne grunted a yes as ideas continued to tumble and tangle.

‘One more thing.’ Kitson said it as though it were an afterthought, an irrelevance. ‘When you’re talking to Farrell, if you could squeeze out the names of the other two who helped him kill Amin Latif, there’s half a shandy in it for you.’

They enjoyed the moment, and sat there, and took a minute. Rubbing at sore feet and cradling paper cups of tea, like any other pair of workers on a break. Catching their breaths.

Thorne sensed that it might be their last chance to do so for a while. There had been times, on previous cases, when it had felt as if he were on a collision course with whoever he was trying to catch. As though the speed had increased until in the end it had just been a question of where the crash was going to happen.

This case felt different.

There was the same inevitability, like something rising from the guts into the mouth, the same sense that the end was coming. But it wasn’t a question of getting closer, or even of something gaining on them.

Thorne simply felt like they were running out of time.

He hadn’t meant to hurt the boy.

That didn’t excuse the fact that he had; that he’d known his words were like slaps, like punches. But he genuinely hadn’t wanted to. Everything was more complicated than that, of course; and more simple. It was someone else he wanted to hurt. Someone who would see how much a child they loved had suffered and would feel that pain a thousandfold.

That would make them see sense, wouldn’t it? Would make them look at things a little differently.

It had been such a straightforward idea, but from the moment he’d started to put it into pracice he’d felt it going away from him. Now he honestly didn’t know if things were going to work out as they’d been supposed to. It had all got out of control. He was out of control.

But at least he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t recognise what was happening. He was still aware. He’d seen it too many times himself: car accidents on two legs who had ruined lives – their own and those of everyone around them; fuck-ups and hard-luck merchants whose tears were real enough, whose anguish could suck the air out of a room, but who couldn’t seem to grasp that it was not an excuse.

I didn’t mean to hurt anyone…

He knew very well that he’d done terrible things. That good intentions counted for nothing with blood on his hands and the noise from the cellar. And that, although he had no idea how, it would end.

There were bells ringing across the field.

He sat and thought about engineering some sort of resolution himself. If he just opened the door and stood back, things would sort themselves out quickly enough. The boy would run towards the sound of the bells, towards a place where there was a phone, and it would all be over.

But that was hypothetical nonsense, because too much had happened now for everything to finish as simply as that. The slate could no longer be wiped clean. But it felt good to know that he wouldn’t be the only one paying the price.

When the bells finally stopped, he could hear the sobbing again. Coming up through the floor: a stutter, a desperate beat; rising every few breaths to something cracked and sore.

He closed his eyes, tried to forget how stupid he’d been, until he could almost believe that what he heard was only the sound of water and rust, and the pipes expanding.

LUKE

The religious stuff was sort of taken for granted at Butler’s Hall. It wasn’t a church school, as such, but there were hymns in assembly every day, and, even though it wasn’t forced down your throat in RE lessons, the presumption was that anyone whose parents had not stated otherwise was C of E.

He knew that the chaplain would have made speeches. Something about lost sheep, most likely. That teachers would have lined up on stage and bowed their heads, and that prayers would have been said for him every morning.

Now he’d started saying them himself.

He’d been filling his head with all manner of rubbish, trying to force out the stuff he couldn’t bear to have in there. Thinking about whatever else he could while the man was talking to him; and later, when it had finished and the man had gone. Sequences of streets and underground stations; rules of games he’d played with Juliet when they were younger; the names of his old soft toys… Anything.

Now God had elbowed His way in there as well.

Neither his mum nor his dad was big on church, save for the odd nativity play or whatever, and Juliet seemed