Buried

coming towards her at night and worrying that he’s going to mug her?’

‘The job makes you see the worst in people,’ Kitson said.

‘It’s still a sort of prejudice though, right?’

They stopped for a few seconds before they walked into Becke House, watched a group of recruits in gym kit kicking a ball around on the sports field. All of them full of piss and vinegar. All up for it.

He caught Porter in her car, on her way back to the Bristow murder scene in Shepherd’s Bush.

‘Hang on, I’m not hands-free…’

Thorne could hear a siren. He guessed that she’d lowered the phone, knowing that to nick a DI for driving without due care and attention would make the average uniformed copper’s afternoon.

‘Right, I’m all yours again.’

He told her about the interview with Adrian Farrell, about the boy’s cagey response when he’d been confronted with the phone records. ‘It was cock and bull,’ Thorne said. ‘I just wish I had a fucking clue what any of it means.’

Porter said something, but the signal broke up and Thorne caught only fragments. He asked her to say it again.

‘Maybe it wasn’t Luke he was calling.’

‘We already looked at the parents-’

‘What if the racist thing runs in the family? Maybe Tony Mullen’s a closet BNP member and Farrell’s old man is calling him up to organise meetings or whatever.’

‘Kitson checked. They hardly know each other.’

‘He might have been calling the sister, of course: Juliet.’

Thorne sat a little straighter at his desk. They hadn’t considered that. ‘OK… but why would he bother lying about it? He’s been cocky as fuck about being accused of murder, even now he must know we’ve got him. Why react like he did in the bin? Why start making shit up, just to avoid us finding out he’s seeing Juliet Mullen?’

‘Because she’s fourteen,’ Porter said. ‘If he’s having sex with her, that’s exactly how he would react. It’s a machismo thing, about respect or whatever. If he gets sent down for the Latif murder, he goes down all guns blazing, doesn’t he? He keeps quiet, he’s a hero to his mates, to the other idiots who think the same way he does. Sleeping with an underage girl doesn’t exactly fit in with that image.’

There was a twisted logic that made as much sense as anything else in the case so far. Thorne told Porter that he’d talk to Juliet Mullen. Porter suggested that he do so in person, so he said that he’d try to get over to the Mullen place later on. Then he asked her what she was going to be doing, if they would see each other.

‘I’m not sure how long I’m going to be at Kathleen Bristow’s. I’m hoping SOCO will be about done, and I want to have a good go at those filing cabinets. Maybe what’s in there can give us a clue about what might have been taken.’

‘How did it go with the brother and his wife?’

It took no more than the sigh and the traffic noise, a second or two of the pause before she began to answer, for Thorne to realise that he’d asked cleverer questions.

TWENTY-ONE

A makeshift stage had been set up in his old man’s front room.

Sitting on the solitary chair, Thorne could hear the voices from behind the hastily rigged-up curtain, as his father and his father’s friend Victor got themselves ready. Thorne glanced over at his mum’s old clock on the mantelpiece. He needed to get back to work and didn’t really have time for this.

‘Are you going to be much longer?’

His father yelled back from behind the curtain, ‘Keep your fucking wig on!’

Thorne froze as he saw the smoke curling underneath the thick, black material. He got up and ran for the curtain, but found himself unable to reach it. He clawed at fresh air and shouted to his father on the other side, screaming at him to get out.

‘Relax,’ his father said. ‘Sit down. We’ll be ready in a minute.’

‘There’s smoke…’

‘No, there fucking isn’t.’

‘Stop swearing.’

‘I can’t fucking help it.’

The curtain rose and Thorne fell back in his chair as his father and Victor stepped forward through waist-high dry ice.

Jim Thorne grinned and winked. ‘Told you it wasn’t smoke, you big cock!’

The show itself wasn’t bad.

Victor walked across to a piano and started to play. Thorne’s father began to sing, but the cheesy rendition of ‘Memories’ fell apart when he forgot the words almost straight away, mugging furiously as he gave it up as a waste of time. Then they went into the patter…

‘Do you know they’ve spent more money on developing Viagra than they have on research into Alzheimer’s?’

‘That’s terrible,’ Victor said.

‘You’re telling me. I’m walking around with a permanent stiffy and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do with it!’

Then more of the same. All the usual jokes, reeled off one after the other, with Victor playing straight man and cheerily feeding the set-ups to his old friend. Stuff from Thorne’s father about how Alzheimer’s wasn’t all bad: how at least he never had to watch repeats on TV, and how he could hide his own Easter eggs, and how he was always meeting new friends.

‘As long as you don’t forget your old ones,’ Victor said.

‘Of course not.’ Beat. Look. ‘Who are you again?’

Thorne enjoyed every minute of it, thrilled to see his father so happy. He forgot about the time and about the work he should be doing as those expressions of loss and confusion he had always dreaded seeing were transformed into something comical, as his father stared out at him in mock-bewilderment, his eyes bright.

Thorne laughed, and applauded another badly timed gag. The noise of his clapping faded on cue as his father turned to Victor and stage-whispered from the side of his mouth: ‘I’m killing ’em.’

‘You’re on fire, Jim.’

‘Too bloody true I am!’

Thorne whistled as the old man turned, revealing the elaborate and colourful flame design that had been embroidered on to the back of his jacket. He stamped his feet as Jim Thorne began to dance, as he moved his hips and rolled his shoulders, so the flames appeared to be climbing slowly up his back.

‘Dad…’

His father turned to look at him. ‘Don’t panic, Son. It’s not what it looks like.’

But, suddenly, Thorne knew that the flames were real; that they were burning through his father’s polyester suit and eating away at the flesh beneath.

He could smell exactly how real it was.

He reached across to slam down the large red button by the side of his chair and a bell began to ring; deafeningly loud, but fading, just as his applause had done, each time his father said something.

‘That is so rude.’

‘What is?’ Victor asked.

‘Fancy not turning off your mobile phone during a show!’

Thorne’s hands were over his ears. He couldn’t hear himself screaming at his father to shut up and get out, or begging Victor for help.

‘Bloody funny-sounding ice-cream van,’ Jim Thorne said.