‘That’s the kiss of bloody death,’ Thorne said.
Holland was clearly still thinking about what had been said a few minutes earlier. ‘I think you just see these things differently,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve got kids, you know?’
Thorne grunted.
‘If something happens to somebody else’s-’
‘You think I was being insensitive?’ Thorne asked. ‘What I said.’
‘Just a bit.’
‘If I was really being insensitive, I’d say it was divine retribution.’ He glanced across and raised an eyebrow. This time, the smile he received in return was genuine, but it still seemed to sit less easily on Holland’s face than Thorne might once have expected.
Holland had never been quite as fresh-faced, as green and keen, as Thorne remembered; but when he’d been drafted on to Thorne’s team six years before as a twenty-five-year-old DC, there had certainly been a little more enthusiasm. And there had been belief. Of course, he and his girlfriend had been through domestic upheavals since then: there’d been the affair with a fellow officer who’d later been murdered on duty; then the birth of his daughter, who would be two years old later in the year.
And there’d been a good many bodies.
An ever-expanding gallery of those you only ever got to know once their lives had been taken from them. People whose darkest intimacies might be revealed to you, but whose voices you would never hear, whose thoughts you could never be privy to. An exhibition of the dead, running alongside another of the murderous living. And of those left behind; the pickers-up of lives.
Thorne and Holland, and others who came into contact with such things, were not defined by violence and grief. They did not walk and wake with it, but neither were they immune. It changed everything, eventually.
The belief became blunted…
‘How’s everything at home, Dave?’
For a second or two, Holland looked surprised, then pleased, before he closed up, just a little. ‘It’s good.’
‘Chloe must be getting big.’
Holland nodded, relaxing. ‘She’s changing every five minutes. Discovering stuff, you know? Doing something different every time I get home. She’s really into music at the moment, singing along with whatever’s on.’
‘Nothing with twangy guitars, though.’
‘I keep thinking I’m missing it all. Doing this…’
Thorne guessed there was little point in asking about Holland’s girlfriend. Sophie was not exactly Thorne’s greatest fan. He knew very well that his name was far more likely to be shouted than spoken in the small flat Holland and Sophie shared in Elephant & Castle; that he might well have caused a fair number of the arguments in the first place.
The BMW finally hit thirty again on Park Lane. From here, they would continue down to Victoria, then cut across to St James’s and the Yard.
Holland turned to Thorne as they slowed at Hyde Park Corner. ‘Oh, by the way, Sophie told me to say “hello”,’ he said.
Thorne nodded, and nosed the car into the stream of traffic that was rushing around the roundabout.
This was not his favourite place.
It was here that he’d spent a few hideous weeks the year before; perhaps the most miserable he’d ever endured. Back then, when he’d been taken off the team, and given what was euphemistically called ‘gardening leave’, Thorne had known very well that he wasn’t being himself, that he hadn’t been coping since the death of his father. But hearing it from the likes of Trevor Jesmond had been something else; being told he was ‘dead wood’ and casually wafted away like a bad smell. It was the undercover job that had thankfully provided a means of escape, and the subsequent weeks spent sleeping on the streets had been infinitely preferable to those he’d spent stewing in a windowless cupboard at New Scotland Yard.
As they walked towards the entrance, Thorne scowled at a group of tourists taking photographs of each other in front of the famous revolving sign.
‘What did you do when you were here?’ Holland asked.
Thorne took out his warrant card and showed it to one of the officers on duty at the door. ‘I tried to work out how many bottles would constitute a fatal dose of Tippex…’
Kidnapping and Specialist Investigations was one of a number of SO units based in Central 3000, a huge, open-plan office that took up half of the fifth floor. Each unit’s area was colour-coded, its territory marked out by a rectangular flag suspended from the low ceiling: the Tactical Firearms Unit was black; the Surveillance Unit was green; the Kidnap Unit was red. Elsewhere, other colours indicated the presence of the Technical Support and Intelligence units, either of which could make use of an enormous bank of TV monitors, each one able to tap into any CCTV camera in the metropolitan area or broadcast live pictures directly from any Met helicopter.
Thorne and Holland took it all in. ‘And we were wondering why we couldn’t afford a new kettle at our place,’ Holland said.
A short, dark-haired woman rose from a desk in the red area and introduced herself as DI Louise Porter. Holland ran the kettle line past her during the minute or two of small talk. He looked pleased that she seemed to find it funny. Thorne was impressed with the effort she put in to pretending.
Porter quickly ran through the set-up of the team, one of three on the unit. It was a more or less standard structure. She was one of two DIs heading things up, with a dozen or so other officers, all working to a detective chief inspector. ‘DCI Hignett told me to apologise for not being here to meet you himself,’ Porter said, ‘but he’ll catch up with you later. And it’s three DIs now, of course.’ She nodded towards Thorne. ‘Thanks for mucking in.’
‘No problem,’ Thorne said.
‘Not that you had any choice though, right?’
‘None at all.’
‘Sorry about that, but we can always do with the help.’ She glanced down. ‘Are you OK?’
Thorne stopped moving from foot to foot, realised that he was grimacing. ‘Dodgy back,’ he said. ‘Must have twisted something.’ The truth was that he’d been suffering badly for some time, the pain down his left leg far worse after any period spent sitting in a car or, God forbid, at a desk. At first he’d put it down to something muscular – a hangover from the nights spent sleeping outdoors, perhaps – but now he suspected that there was a more deep-seated problem. It would sort itself out, but in the meantime he was getting through a lot of painkillers.
Porter introduced Thorne and Holland to those members of the team who were around. Most of them seemed friendly enough. They all looked busy.
‘Obviously a lot of the lads are out and about,’ Porter said. ‘Chasing up what we laughably call “leads”.’
Holland leaned back against an empty desk. ‘At least you’ve got some.’
‘Just the one, really. A couple of witnesses saw Luke Mullen get into a car on the afternoon he disappeared.’
‘Number plate?’ Thorne asked.
‘Bits of it. Blue or black. And it might be a Passat. This is from the other kids at the school, all just finished for the day, too busy talking about music or skateboards or whatever the hell they do.’
Holland grinned. ‘Not got any yourself, then?’
‘“Get into a car”,’ Thorne said. ‘So it didn’t look like he was being forced?’
‘He got into the car with a young woman. Attractive. I think the other boys were too busy eyeing her up to pay much attention to the car.’
‘Maybe Luke had a new girlfriend,’ Holland suggested.
‘That’s what some of the boys think, certainly. They’d seen him with her before.’
‘So, isn’t it possible?’ Thorne asked. ‘He’s a sixteen-year-old boy. Maybe he’s just buggered off to a hotel somewhere with a glamorous older woman.’
‘It’s possible.’ Porter began to gather a few things from her desk, then grabbed a handbag from the back of a chair. ‘But this was last Friday. Why hasn’t he been in touch?’
‘He’s probably got better thin
gs to do.’
Porter cocked her head, acknowledging a theory that she had clearly dismissed. ‘Who goes away for a dirty weekend with nothing but a school blazer and a sweaty games kit?’ She let it sink in, then walked past Thorne and Holland towards the door, leaving them in little doubt that they were expected to follow.
Holland waited until she was out of earshot. ‘Well, she doesn’t seem to fancy herself too much…’
Outside, in the lobby, another member of the team stepped out of the lift. Porter introduced the woman to Thorne and Holland before the three of them took her place. Porter exchanged a few quick words with her colleague, then punched a button and glanced round at Thorne as the doors closed. ‘She’s one of two family liaison officers who’ve been at the house on rotation since we were brought in. You’ll meet the other one when we get there.’
‘Right.’
Porter’s eyes shifted to the display of illuminated numbers above the doors. Thorne wondered if she was always this anxious; in this much of a hurry.
‘I want to get a good couple of hours with the Mullens today if I can. These first few conversations with the family are the important ones, obviously.’
It took a second or two to sink in. ‘“First few”?’ Thorne said.
Porter turned to look at him.
‘I’m not clear about-’
‘We only got brought into this yesterday afternoon,’ she said. ‘The kidnap wasn’t reported straight away.’
Thorne caught a look from Holland, who was obviously every bit as confused as he was. ‘Was there some kind of threat?’ he asked. ‘Were the family told not to involve the police?’
‘Whoever took Luke has made no contact with the family whatsoever.’
The lift reached the ground floor and the doors opened, but Thorne made no move to go anywhere.
‘At the moment, your guess is as good as mine,’ Porter said.
‘And what would that be?’
‘What’s the point in guessing? The simple fact is that Luke Mullen was kidnapped on Friday afternoon, but for reasons best known to themselves, his parents decided to wait a couple of days before telling anybody.’
CONRAD
Say you’re a dwarf, OK?
It doesn’t mean that you only fancy other dwarves, does it? That you can’t be excited about a fumble with someone you might have to stand on a chair to have a proper snog with? Actually, it’s normal to want to be with someone different, isn’t it? Just to see what it would be like.
He knew damn well that he was meant to be with a woman who worked on the till in Asda and wore fake Burberry and knock-off perfume, so when Amanda had come sniffing round, deliberately dropping her aitches and knocking back the alcopops like there was no tomorrow, he’d been in there like a rat up a drainpipe. Why wouldn’t he? He’d always fantasised about a bit of posh, and even though he knew deep down she was only slumming it, everything had seemed to be working out very nicely.
Recently, though, he’d started to feel like something was missing, and it wasn’t just the sex falling off a bit, which it always did anyway a few months in. It was more than that. He’d started to feel like everything was a bit unreal. She could call herself Mandy all she liked, and dress down, but she would always be an ‘Amanda’ and he would never really be in her league when it came to breeding or brains. Not that he was stupid; far from it. He knew what was what, pretty much. But when it came to doing stuff, to making a living and all the rest of it, he tended to go where other people took him. That was fine, though, because he knew his limitations. Which made him clever enough, he reckoned.
Now, though, he’d started to think about other women. Nobody specific; just other types of woman. His types. He’d started to drift off, even in the middle of bloody important stuff like what to do with the kid and what have you, and imagine himself with women who had dirty bra straps and read crappy magazines. He thought about women who made a bit more noise in bed and treated him properly and didn’t tell him where to put his fingers. It made him feel guilty at first, but lately he’d been telling himself that she probably felt exactly the same way. She probably dreamed about rugger-buggers called Giles or Nigel when they were doing it and maybe his accent was starting to put her teeth on edge as much as hers was doing to his…
Maybe it was all down to this business with the kid. It had seemed like easy money at the time and it hadn’t taken long to agree to it, but, Christ, it was a damn sight more stressful than knocking over some old duffer or talking your way into a pensioner’s flat. Both of them were acting a bit funny, and maybe, when this was all over and they had some real cash to play with, he’d start to feel more like himself again. Maybe they could get away somewhere.
What was he thinking? It would make bloody good sense to get away somewhere. And maybe then he’d stop thinking about those other girls…
When Amanda came into the room five minutes later, he thought for one horrible minute that she could see what he’d been thinking. That it was as obvious as the semi in his lap that he’d swiftly covered up with a Daily Star. But everything was cool. She asked him if he was OK and kissed him on the top of his head when he asked her the same thing. She walked over and helped herself to one of his fags, then had a quick look to see if there was anything decent on the box.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed and began to talk about what they were going to do with the boy.
TWO
‘He’s not exactly a baby, is he?’ Holland leaned forward, dropped a hand on to each of the front headrests. ‘They were probably just waiting for him to come waltzing back home again.’
‘That’s more or less how they explained it.’
‘He might have done this sort of thing before.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Porter said. She took the unmarked Saab Turbo past a silver 4×4, glared hard at the driver, who was talking animatedly into her mobile phone. ‘But like I said, we haven’t spoken to the parents that much yet. Hopefully we’ll find out a bit more over the next couple of hours.’
‘Presuming we get there in one piece.’ Thorne was sitting a little stiffly in the passenger seat, unnerved to discover that Porter was just as impatient behind the wheel as she had been back in the office. Her frequent glances into the rear-view mirror had more to do with the purpose of their journey than it did with road safety.
‘Obviously, any kind of threat and we wouldn’t be interviewing the family at home. We’d stay well clear; find some way of talking to them on neutral territory.’
‘That can’t always be easy,’ Holland said.
‘It isn’t, but if you have to visit the home address, there are ways and means. You just need to be a bit inventive.’
‘What, like disguises and stuff?’
Thorne turned, and pulled a face at Holland. ‘Disguises? How old are you, six?’
‘Right,’ Porter said. ‘We’ve got a big dressing-up box back at the office. Gas Board uniforms and postmen’s outfits.’ She took a long look at the rear-view. ‘There’s no reason to believe that visiting the Mullens at home places Luke in any kind of extra danger, but there are procedures you follow whatever the circumstances. You make sure the lid stays on. You make sure there’s no uniformed involvement.’ Another check in the mirror. ‘And you keep your bloody eyes open.’
The crash course in kidnap investigation techniques had lasted from the car park at the Yard as far as Arkley – a leafy Hertfordshire suburb a dozen or so miles north of the centre of London. It had become clear that the unit’s protocols were infinitely flexible and that everything happened much faster than elsewhere. Though kidnapping was little different from murder – in that the unit would never have any such thing as a ‘typical’ case – Thorne was surprised at the enormous range of crimes that fell within its remit. Though the majority of kidnaps were subject to a press blackout and so never became public knowledge, there could be no doubt that it was a growth industry.
‘And a relatively safe one for the kidnappers,’
Porter said. She told them that over half of all her cases involved hardcore foreign drug gangs, distributors and smugglers; that fewer than one in five ever resulted in a conviction. ‘Most of the victims never testify, the ungrateful fuckers. We rescued an old guy last year who’d been tied up in a loft and tortured for a couple of weeks. They cut both the poor bastard’s ears off and he still wouldn’t give evidence in case others in the gang came after him.’
‘You can understand him being scared,’ Holland said. ‘He wouldn’t hear them coming.’
Thorne sighed, shifted in his seat. ‘Sounds like you’re all getting plenty of overtime,’ he said.
Porter grunted her agreement. ‘Heavy-duty dealers are getting lifted every other week. Yardies, Russians, Albanians, whatever. It’s a quick way of scoring cash or merchandise – putting the shits up a rival. We’re not short of jobs, but maybe the wheels don’t turn quite so quickly when it comes to some of our less than law-abiding kidnap victims.’
Thorne knew very well what she meant. He’d worked on a case the year before; the case during which his father had died. The squad, and Thorne in particular, had found themselves caught in the middle of a vicious gang war. He explained to Porter that one side had been involved in a people-smuggling racket; that though a fair number of gang members had died, few could bring themselves to care a great deal, or argue that the city wasn’t a better place without them.
‘That stuff’s down to us, too,’Porter said. ‘If people are brought here and then used as slave labour, they’ve basically become hostages. They’re held against their will and usually there’s an implied threat to their families back at home.’ She slowed the car to a stop a hundred yards from a driveway. ‘It’s also the main reason why people are queuing up to work on the unit,’ she continued. ‘So far this year I’ve been to China, Turkey, the Ukraine. It’s all business class, and we get the air miles.’
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