Thorne strolled around the sofa, walked to the opposite side of the fireplace to where Maggie Mullen was crushing her cigarette butt into an ashtray. ‘Sorry, I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but your wife certainly implied that you were worried; or at least concerned. That’s why I was asking about what time your post arrived.’ Thorne caught Porter’s eye; saw that she understood. ‘I think you were expecting a ransom demand. I think you presumed that someone had snatched Luke and that you’d hear from them yesterday morning. I think you were probably waiting to find out exactly what they wanted and that you were planning to handle it yourself. When you didn’t get anything in the post, that’s when you really started to worry, when you started to wonder what might have happened. That’s when you called us.’
Maggie Mullen walked across the room and sat down on the arm of her husband’s chair. Her hand moved very briefly to his, then back into her lap. ‘Tony tends to look on the blacker side of things a lot of the time.’
‘The Job does that to most of us,’ Porter said.
‘Look, it’s understandable.’ Thorne was still trying to connect with Tony Mullen. ‘I’m sure I would have thought the same thing.’
‘I knew he’d been kidnapped before I went to bed on Friday night,’ Mullen said. He looked up at Thorne, something like relief on his face. ‘I was brushing my teeth and Maggie was sorting the dog out downstairs, and I knew someone had taken him. Was holding him. Luke wasn’t the type to just go off, certainly not without letting us know where he was.’
‘Like I said, it’s understandable. In light of your career, you’ve got every reason to believe there might be people who would want to hurt you. Or hurt those close to you.’
Mullen said something, but Thorne couldn’t make it out.
He couldn’t hear much for a second or two.
He was straining to make out the voice of his father above the roar and hot spit of long-dead flames…
‘We’ll need a list,’ he said, finally. ‘Anyone who might bear a grudge. Anyone who issued threats.’
Mullen nodded. ‘I’ve been trying to work on one over the weekend.’ His tone and the look he gave his wife were guilty, confessional, as though the fact that he’d been thinking about such things at all meant he’d been assuming the worst. ‘But I don’t think it’ll be much help. Either my memory’s going or I didn’t make as many enemies as I thought.’
‘Well, that makes our job easier,’ Porter said.
‘Right. Good.’ Thorne was trying to sound equally positive, but he must have looked every bit as dubious as he felt.
Mullen’s expression hardened. ‘Would you remember every one?’
Thorne tried to stay composed and encouraging, tried to put the edge in Mullen’s voice down to stress, to blame the aggression on guilt and panic. ‘Probably not.’
‘How many people have you seriously pissed off, Detective Inspector Thorne? You needn’t include the ones you were supposed to be working with.’
Thorne thought then that perhaps Jesmond had been a little more candid in his description of him after all. Or perhaps Tony Mullen was just a good judge of character. He said nothing; just considered what Mullen had told him about putting a list together. Thorne himself would have much less trouble, and doubted that he was unique. When it came to those who might have posed a serious threat to him, or to anyone he cared about, Thorne had no problem recalling every last one of them.
Holland and Parsons appeared in the doorway at the same moment that the phone rang. Everyone, Thorne included, jumped slightly, and Maggie Mullen was first to her feet.
‘It’s important to try and stay calm…’
‘Love…’
If she heard what either Porter or her husband said, Maggie Mullen chose to ignore it. Her eyes were fixed only on the phone as she crossed to where it sat on a low table near the window.
A trace/intercept had, of course, been set up on the Mullens’ home number as soon as the Kidnap Unit had been scrambled, with all incoming calls monitored by Technical Support back at the Yard. If, as was most likely, the all-important call were to come from an unregistered mobile, the Telephone Unit would immediately begin working on cell-site location, moving from place to place where required in a vehicle equipped with the necessary, state-of- the-art gadgetry.
When she reached the phone, Mrs Mullen held out a hand; she turned and looked first at her husband, then across at Porter and Thorne.
Porter nodded.
Mrs Mullen took a deep breath and picked up the phone. She spoke the number quickly, waited, then shook her head. Her eyes closed and she turned away, muttering into the mouthpiece, fingers dragging through her long brown hair for the few seconds before she hung up.
‘Mags?’
She walked slowly towards her husband’s chair, her voice splintering as she spoke, and Thorne could see relief and disappointment, inseparable, fighting it out in the fall of her face, and of her shoulders. He saw how well- matched, how brutal, the two feelings could be.
‘Hannah. One of Juliet’s friends.’
‘It’s OK, love.’ Mullen was on his feet, moving to meet her.
‘Obviously we told everyone we could not to call,’ she said. ‘We wanted to make sure the line stayed clear, you know, in case Luke got in touch. In case anyone who
Then Mullen’s arms were around her and pulling her close. Her own hung at her sides, as though she suddenly lacked the strength to lift them. Her head bowed as she sobbed hard into his neck.
Thorne beckoned Holland and Parsons into the room with the coffee tray, then glanced at Porter, who raised her eyes from the floor to meet his. He was heartened to see that she found watching the embrace just as difficult as he did.
AMANDA
Everything changed the first time Conrad put a gun to her head in that petrol station in Tooting.
The set-up had certainly looked real, and she’d made a convincing enough hostage, so he hadn’t needed to go such a long way over the top: to pull her hair quite so much, to press the barrel of the toy gun so hard into the side of her head. Later that night, after they’d counted the money and got completely wrecked, she’d read him the Riot Act. Yes, obviously they had to be convincing, but they weren’t fucking method actors! He hadn’t known exactly what she meant, of course, so she’d explained it to him in simpler terms until he did. He was terribly sorry and upset, and only too happy to listen when she told him how they could do things better the next time.
That was when she’d fully understood that she was the one in charge.
All she’d wanted in the beginning was someone to get heavy with a dealer she owed money to. Conrad had managed that easily enough, then they’d just carried on seeing each other. It helped that he was OK looking, that he knew his way around and that he seemed to like looking after her. He’d racked his brains for ways to come up with cash, to pay for what she needed. She was touched and relieved, happy to have found the first man who would really take care of her since her father. The fake robbery idea had been Conrad’s, as it happened, but everything since had come from her.
To get your own way, of course, it helped if you knew what the other person was thinking. If you could predict which way they were liable to jump. Conrad had never been particularly good at pretending he was feeling one thing when what was really in his heart and head was written all over his face. She liked that about him. She’d always been wary of men who were better liars than she was.
Her daddy hadn’t been a good liar, either. Didn’t have it in him. Of course, he may have had some sordid secret life that he’d kept hidden from Amanda and her mother. He may have visited rent boys, or kept a string of mistresses – and, with the marriage he had, who could have blamed him? – but she preferred to imagine him as she remembered him: perfect, right until the day he left. As handsome as he’d been the moment before he went through the windscreen of his Mercedes.
