She was a friend, but like most people whom Tom Thorne respected, she frightened him a little.
‘Maybe I should call back later,’ Thorne said. ‘Obviously you’re busy worming the cat or doing a crossword or something.’
‘Cheeky bastard. Just because I don’t want to listen to you whingeing.’
‘I called because occasionally you have some decent advice.’
‘Right, and because I know Tony Mullen.’
‘Sorry?’ Thorne put down his sandwich.
‘Didn’t you know that?’
‘If I had, I would have called you straight away. How long have you known him?’
‘I worked with him in CID at Golders Green, twelve or thirteen years ago, something like that. He’d’ve been a DS then, probably, or maybe he was about to be made up. He was being bumped up to chief inspector round about the time I retired, I think.’
Thorne grabbed a scrap of paper, began to scribble notes. ‘So?’
‘So… he was decent enough, I suppose. Straight, as far as I could tell, but that doesn’t mean a great deal. I’ve got a lot of people wrong one way or another over the years.’
‘What about these two names then? Cotterill and Quinn.’ Thorne could hear classical music in the background. Chamberlain’s husband, Jack, was a keen listener.
‘I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I think Jesmond might be right. I can’t see either of those two as kidnappers.’ She paused. ‘I don’t suppose anybody mentioned Grant Freestone, did they?’
‘Should they have?’ Thorne wrote down the name.
‘Well, not everyone maybe, but I’m surprised his name hasn’t come up at all.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Freestone sexually assaulted a number of kids, 1993 or ’94, round there. Boys and girls, I don’t think he was fussy. He kept them in a garage behind his flat.’
Kept them…
Thorne tried to blink away the image of a bag coming down over a boy’s face.
‘I was only on it briefly,’ Chamberlain said. ‘But Tony Mullen was very much involved, might even have been the arresting officer. It was common knowledge that things got nasty, that Freestone was making threats more or less from the moment he was nicked until he got sent down.’
‘Threats against Mullen?’
‘He might well have threatened others, but it’s Mullen I remember. I was in court one of the days and I can still see the look Freestone gave him: not aggressive exactly, but… Well, I can still remember it, so…’
‘Thanks, Carol. I’ll check it out.’
She said nothing for a second or two, then the music was turned down. ‘Let me do it.’
Slowly, Thorne underlined Grant Freestone’s name. ‘I thought, you know, there were cats to worm.’
‘I’m ignoring you. Seriously, Tom, why don’t you let me do some asking around and get back to you?’
Thorne could hear the change in Chamberlain’s voice immediately. The work she did for AMRU was irregular, and frustrating more often than not. He knew how much she relished feeling useful; how keen she was to get her teeth into something, into anything. He also knew that she still had a broad network of contacts and that she was bloody good at what she did. She might come up with a damn sight more than could be gleaned from any computer search.
‘Also, Jack’s had a dodgy back for years,’ she said. ‘He’s got some fantastic stuff he rubs on at night. I can bring it next time I see you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So you’ve had a double result.’
Thorne thought about the video, the man with the syringe. He wondered if this could possibly be the same man whose face Carol Chamberlain still remembered from a courtroom a dozen years earlier. A man who’d taken children before.
With one hand, he reached for his discarded sandwich. The other put pen back to paper and began to scrawl.
Drew box after box after box around the man’s name.
CONRAD
He’d come to realise a long time ago that nearly everything came down to fish and ponds. To how big a fish you were and the size of the pond you swam around in. That and time, of course. He’d decided that time was a very weird thing to get your head round.
Obviously, he’d never read that book about it by the bloke in the wheelchair; the one who spoke through some machine he’d invented and sounded like a Dalek. He wouldn’t have understood it if he had, he knew that much, but he was pretty bloody sure that it would have been interesting. Time never ceased to amaze him, the way it messed you around. How you always got back from somewhere quicker than you got there. How the first week of your summer holiday seemed to last for ages and then the second week flew by and was all over before your skin had started peeling. How time dragged on and on when you were waiting for something to happen.
It didn’t seem like five minutes since Amanda had danced across and stuck her tits out at him. Since she’d been happy to let him get his end away for a few Bacardi Breezers and the promise of a favour. Five minutes… six months… whatever… and now they were shooting a kid full of drugs and sitting and waiting for something to happen.
To be honest, he’d been happier doing what they’d done before. It was easy – in and out – and if anyone got hurt it was only because they really asked for it. People who were stupid enough to get all heroic – with money that belonged to fucking Esso or whoever – deserved a kicking, as far as he was concerned. This was different, though. There was no guts in it, nothing to make you feel like you’d earned what you’d made. It felt shameful, like something only a pussy or a wanker would do. It was a weakling’s crime.
Maybe he’d feel different when the two of them were sitting somewhere warm, spending the money. Maybe then he could forget how they’d come by it. He hoped so, anyway.
Amanda was in the kitchen. Cheese on toast, probably; baked beans or something. She kept telling him that they’d splash out on somewhere flashy, go to a place with a doorman and photographers outside when the money came through. He’d asked when that was likely to be; told her that he was getting fed up sitting around with his thumb up his arse. That he wanted it finished. She’d told him that it wouldn’t be much longer. That it would be over and done with soon enough, one way or another. He’d thought that sounded a bit fucking ominous. He’d looked across at the boy then, slumped in a corner of the bedroom, and thought that it sounded very fucking scary…
That had been a while ago. Hours and hours. Days, even. Time dragging its feet like some poor bastard who knows he’s got a beating coming.
He knew it was all his own fault. That he’d had the chance to say ‘no’ early on, to say that it was a stupid idea. He couldn’t lay all this at Amanda’s door; but still, he hated it.
Waiting and not knowing.
And feeling like a very small fish.
SIX
There were posters covering almost every inch of the pale green Anaglypta: the Spurs team of 1975, with Steve Perryman in front holding the ball; a futuristic Roger Dean landscape; the female tennis player walking away from camera scratching at a bare buttock. In the corner of the room, a music centre sat on a shelf supported by house-bricks, Bowie and Deep Purple gatefolds spread out across its Perspex lid and leaning against its speakers. Books and piles of magazines were strewn across an old dining table, carried up from downstairs to be used as a desk: Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Shoot!, Jaws, Chariots of the Gods, a couple of tattered Sven Hassel paperbacks. A Jilly Johnson calendar and a Woolworth’s dartboard on the wall next to the window…
Thorne blinked and looked again at these newer walls. Smooth and orchid pale.
There were reproductions of ancient maps, architectural blueprints with elaborate French calligraphy, posters for exhibitions at the V & A and Tate Modern. Some had been mounted in simple clip-frames while others were stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack. Standing in the centre of a very different bedroom from the one that had once been his own, Thorne decided that what Parsons had sa
id the day before was about right: Luke Mullen was hardly a typical sixteen-year-old.
He walked across to the metal and glass workstation, surprised to see an Arsenal diary on top of the papers stacked to one side. He reached for it, curious, and somewhat relieved that the boy – though clearly misguided in his choice of team – had at least one passion with which Thorne was able to identify. He flicked through the first few pages, saw immediately that it was no more than a homework diary.
There was a rectangular patch of dust on the glass, where Luke’s laptop had sat. The tech boys were still working on the hard drive, digging around for anything that might have been well hidden by anyone who knew what they were doing. But from what they’d been able to establish thus far, there was no significant email correspondence, nothing on any computerised diary to suggest that Luke had been planning to go anywhere. He hadn’t spent time in chat rooms, and it didn’t appear that he’d struck up a recent relationship with anyone online.
Little more had been gleaned from the details of his mobile-phone activity. The phone itself had been in Luke’s possession when he’d gone missing, so it had not been possible to check his contacts list, but records of calls and text messages provided by the phone company had yet to reveal anything that looked important. Luke had called his sister more than anybody else.
Thorne stared at the dust, at the shape of it, marking the absence of something, and found himself holding his breath. He imagined a young, alert mind racing, and fighting hard as the drug took hold, as eyelids dropped and thoughts slipped into the wet. Sopping and inky-black…
He pulled down the sleeve of his jacket, gripped it between fingers and palm and leaned down to wipe away the marks from the glass.
‘You won’t find him in here.’
Thorne turned to see Juliet Mullen standing in the doorway of her brother’s room. He slapped the grey dust marks from his sleeve. ‘Actually, I’ve found quite a lot of him,’ he said.
The girl rolled her eyes and walked past him into the room, clearly unimpressed, and unwilling to discuss anything as tedious as an abstract concept. She leaned back against a wall and slid slowly down it until she was sitting on the grey carpet. ‘So…?’
Thorne looked around, then back at Juliet. ‘Well, Luke was certainly tidy.’
‘Nothing gets past you, does it?’
‘I am a detective.’
‘Can you prove that?’
‘I’ve taken exams.’
‘They must have lowered the pass rate.’
She wasn’t smiling, but Thorne sensed that behind the studied air of boredom and irritation, it was a struggle not to; that she was enjoying the banter. Her hair was long, the same charcoal as the make-up around her eyes and the hooded top she wore over baggy jeans. Skateboarder chic, Thorne thought it might be called. Or grunge, or something. He thought about asking her, then decided it wasn’t such a great idea.
‘What was on the video?’ she said suddenly.
It took Thorne a moment to work out what she was talking about; a moment before deciding he would not answer.
‘Mum and Dad watched it this morning, before they called Porter. Just the once, I think, but it was enough. Obviously they wouldn’t let me see it. And they didn’t want to talk about it afterwards, so…’
‘So?’
‘So… I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask.’
Thorne watched her draw her knees up, shrinking into the corner of the room. He couldn’t help but be reminded of the previous evening with Phil Hendricks. Now, as then, he could see the pain and the longing beneath the pose; the anguish, raw behind the flippant remark. It couldn’t hurt to tell her.
‘It was Luke. Just Luke on the tape.’
She nodded quickly, as though something she already knew had been confirmed. It was a mature gesture, self-possessed, but in the next instant a tremor in the soft flesh around her mouth turned her back into a child again. ‘What did he say? Did he say anything?’
‘Juliet, I can’t-’
‘They were crying after they’d watched it, the pair of them. They pretended they weren’t, which was a bit bloody pointless, if you ask me. I mean, I knew what it was, you know? I didn’t think they were watching porno at nine o’clock in the morning.’
‘They didn’t want you to get upset,’ Thorne said.
‘Right, that’s brilliant. So now all I can think about is what might have been on the tape. What whoever’s got Luke might have been doing to him. How much pain he might have been in.’
‘He’s doing OK. Honestly.’
‘Define “OK”.’
Thorne took a deep breath.
‘“OK” as in having a whale of a time?’ She began plucking at the pile of the carpet. ‘Or “OK” as in still breathing?’
It was as tough a question as had been thrown at Thorne in a long time. ‘Nobody’s hurting him.’
Her head dropped to her knees. When she heaved it up again fifteen or twenty seconds later, the eyeliner was beginning to run. ‘He’s got a year and a bit on me, but sometimes it’s like I’m the older sister.’ Her eyes roamed from one part of the room to another, like she was searching to prove her point. ‘I have to look after him in loads of ways. You know what I mean?’
Thorne stepped across and sat down on the edge of the bed. The duvet was dark blue and neatly squared away. He guessed that Luke had probably made the bed himself before leaving for school on Friday. ‘Yeah, I think I do,’ he said.
She sniffed. ‘Pain in the fucking arse…’
The silence that followed was probably more uncomfortable for the girl than it was for Thorne. It was less than half a minute before she pulled herself to her feet. ‘Right…’ Like she had a lot to be getting on with.
Thorne stood, too. He cocked his head towards the doorway, towards the rest of the house. ‘It’s good that you’re all so… close. At a time like this, you know?’
Juliet Mullen nodded, pushed her hair back behind her ears.
‘What did they argue about?’ Thorne walked back to the workstation and looked at the photograph pinned to a corkboard above it: Luke on his father’s shoulders, eyes wide behind orange swimming goggles; the pair of them grinning like idiots and the sun bouncing off the blue water around them. ‘Luke and your dad, last Friday morning.’
‘Stupid stuff about school.’
‘Work stuff?’
‘About Luke not making the rugby team or something. It wasn’t a big deal.’
‘Your dad seems to think it was.’
‘That’s just because of what’s happened. Because he’s feeling guilty. Because the last time he saw Luke, the two of them were shouting at each other.’ She took a pace towards the bed and leaned down to smooth out the duvet where Thorne had been sitting. ‘Luke was already feeling bad about it by the time we got to school. He told me he was going to say “sorry” when he got home, that it was all his fault for being cheeky or whatever.’
‘Was it?’ Thorne asked.
‘I can’t even remember. It was just bloody silly because those two never argue, you know? They’re really close. It’s that whole father-son thing?’ It sounded like a question at the end, as though she were making sure Thorne knew what she meant.
‘Right.’
‘See you later.’
Thorne watched her leave. He knew exactly what she’d meant and, more importantly, he now also knew what had bothered him about the video.
What it was that Luke had said… or hadn’t said.
He stopped on his way out, seeing that the corner of a poster near the door had come unstuck, and when he reached across to press it back in place, he noticed the writing beneath. He peered at the words, at the small, neat letters written in black ink on the wallpaper. A stark and secret litany of frustration, impatience or rage.
Fuck off
Fuck off
Fuck off!
From the school, Holland had gone straight back to Central 3000 and found himself a desk out of the way. He needed t
en or fifteen minutes to gather his thoughts, to get into the Police National Computer system and to go over the relevant material. It was only when he’d done both, when he was as certain as he could be that he had something worth shouting about, that he called Becke House and spoke to Yvonne Kitson.
‘How’s your kidnap going, Dave?’
‘Fine.’
‘Missing us?’
‘Listen, Guv, I need to talk to you about the Amin Latif murder.’
It was a little over six months since the eighteen-year-old Asian, an engineering student at a local sixth-form college, had been beaten to death by three white youths at a bus stop in Edgware. It had been, for all the obvious reasons, a high-profile investigation, but despite the media coverage, an extensive enquiry and even a witness who had provided a detailed description of the main attacker, the case had quickly gone cold.
Cold, but still tender. Still embarrassing.
Russell Brigstocke had been the nominal senior investigating officer, but, day to day, Yvonne Kitson had run things. To all intents and purposes, it had been her case, and – at least as far as she was concerned – her failure. She’d known from the moment she’d first looked at the boy’s body – at a bloodied hand, knuckles down in a puddle across double yellow lines – that his death would stay with her, irrespective of whether she caught those responsible. Hate crimes tended to do that. And the Amin Latif murder was about as hateful as they came.
Holland had her attention immediately.
He told her that he’d seen a seventeen-year-old, spoken to a seventeen-year-old, whose resemblance to her chief murder suspect was simply too close to be ignored. As he described the boy he and Parsons had interviewed an hour or two earlier, he stared at the picture which he’d called up and printed out from the PNC. The E-fit had been based on the description given by a friend of Amin Latif, a fellow student who had been present at the time of the attack but had escaped with a few broken bones and six months of nightmares. The picture wasn’t identical to the image in his mind’s eye: the blond hair was lank and lay flat against the head, much as it would have done on a night in October when it had been pissing down with rain. But below the hairline, everything else was spot on.
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