Mark Billingham - Buried

‘How’s this going to work?’ Thorne asked.

‘I think that’s what we’re all here to try and work out.’

‘Why here, though? Why not Becke House?’

‘We tossed a coin.’ Brigstocke blew across the top of his coffee. ‘I lost.’

Thorne laughed, then realised he was the only one. ‘You’re not joking, are you?’

‘The Kidnap Unit gets home advantage, and I get to make the speech.’

‘Well, it’s nice to see that this is all being handled so professionally.’

‘That’s the point,’ Brigstocke said. ‘None of us has handled anything quite like this before.’

‘We’ve had FSS working their arses off overnight, and none of the blood found at the crime scene belongs to Luke Mullen. But we do know he was there. His fingerprints were all over the smaller of the two bedrooms, which is where he appears to have been held, and where we’re ninety-nine per cent certain the videotape was shot. Luke Mullen’s fingerprints have also been found on the knife which was used to kill Conrad Allen and his girlfriend, who, from the statement given by the car dealer in Wood Green, and from identification found on the premises, we believe to be one Amanda Tickell. Miss Tickell’s mother is due at the mortuary any time now to identify the body formally.’

Brigstocke moved a pace or two to the left and right of centre as he spoke, his voice rather than his body language holding the attention of the fifty-odd men and women in front of him. Though the thick specs and the quiffy hair often lent the DCI a vaguely comic aspect, he could recite the phone book and no one listening would shuffle their feet. Toss of a coin or no, he commanded the attention far better than his opposite number at SO7. Thorne guessed this was why Barry Hignett was doing the listening, standing off to one side and trying to look like he endorsed everything that was being said.

Brigstocke gestured towards a black-clad figure in the front row. ‘Doctor Hendricks is going to say a quick word about how the murders appear to have been carried out.’

Phil Hendricks stood up while Brigstocke stepped further across to stand next to Barry Hignett. Now there was movement, and a murmur or two, and a good deal of coughing as the changeover took place. Thorne took the opportunity to stretch his legs out, groaned quietly as the pain moved up and down in a wave from thigh to ankle. He was sitting in the same row as Holland, Kitson and Stone, while Porter, Parsons and the rest of the Kidnap crew were a couple of rows in front. Thorne read nothing into it beyond the usual demarcation of territory, the polite, run-of-the-mill ‘fuck you’.

It was not quite seven o’clock in the morning, and, bar a nutcase or two, the rest of the huge room was empty beneath its coloured flags.

‘“Appear” is the right word,’ Hendricks said. ‘The postmortems aren’t due to be carried out until later on this morning, so this is based on a cursory examination of the bodies, their positions at the crime scene, the blood spatter, the depth of the wounds and so on.’

Hendricks looked straight at Thorne, but no one could have guessed they were friends. Thorne had seen the professional side of his friend kick in on cue too many times to be surprised by it, but he still admired Hendricks’ ability – especially given the hour – to turn it on like a tap. He was clear and concise, a real bonus when dealing with the average copper, and though he always looked the same, he even managed to soften those flat, Mancunian vowels when the situation demanded it.

‘I’m guessing that although Allen may not have died first,’ Hendricks said, ‘he was the first to be attacked. He was taken by surprise, his killer probably coming at him from behind and reaching round to slash his throat.’ Hendricks raised his arms to demonstrate, his right hand slicing through the air viciously. ‘He might have taken a good few minutes to bleed to death, but from the moment he was attacked, he was out of the game. He’d’ve gone down and stayed there.’

‘How tall would the attacker have been?’ Hignett asked.

‘I can’t be exact…’

‘Be inexact.’

‘From the angle at which the blade passed through the windpipe, I’d say he’d be about the same size as Allen. Around six feet.’

Hignett looked towards his team.

‘Luke is five feet ten,’ Porter said.

Hendricks glanced towards Brigstocke, got the nod to carry on. ‘The woman died from a very different series of stab wounds,’ he said. ‘There are defence cuts on her arms and a far more haphazard pattern to the half a dozen or more wounds around her neck and chest. I’d say she was overpowered. I think she saw what happened to Allen, put up a fight and was just not strong enough.’ He looked to where Hignett was standing, anticipating the next question. ‘She wasn’t a weakling; not for your average junkie, at any rate. There was decent muscle definition…’

‘Luke Mullen does a lot of sport at school,’ Hignett said. ‘I think we can assume he would be strong enough to overpower a woman, knife or no knife.’

Thorne had heard enough. ‘Can we?’ He clenched his jaw, but still felt the blood come to his face as heads turned towards him. ‘Everyone does sport at that school, but it doesn’t mean the kid was particularly sporty… or strong. He’d had an argument with his father the morning he was snatched because he hadn’t got into the rugby team.’

‘We’re just outlining possibilities,’ Hignett said. ‘If this were an explanation of events that we could possibly eliminate, we would.’ He pointed at Hendricks, who seemed unsure whether he should sit down again. ‘None of these are answers I want to hear, trust me.’

‘Fair enough.’ Thorne was trying hard to sound conciliatory. ‘It just sounds like minds are being made up.’

Hignett nodded, but there was a nasty edge creeping into his voice. ‘This unit’s never had a case like this. We’ve had plenty of kidnaps turn into murders. Plenty . But in every case, the hostage has been the victim. It’s not usually the kidnappers that wind up dead, so I hope you’ll forgive us at this stage for considering all the options.’

‘But you’re not considering all the options-’

‘You’re the one who seems to have a closed mind on this one. You certainly don’t appear to care too much about the evidence.’

Thorne could feel the eyes on him. Brigstocke’s and Porter’s. ‘Yes, I do care. I’m not denying the fingerprints and all the rest of it, but I’m also wondering why the door to the flat was locked. Why Luke Mullen should suddenly decide to kill his kidnappers, then run off into the night, taking great care to lock the door behind him.’

‘We’re looking at that.’

‘But most of all, I’m wondering where he is. Why he hasn’t got in touch with us or with his family.’

An SO7 man, two rows ahead, piped up. ‘Perhaps because he’s just killed two people and he’s scared to come forward.’

Porter cleared her throat. ‘Or because he can’t come forward.’

Thorne felt sure that Hignett was the type who would have known exactly how to handle things were he speaking to his own team. As it was, he seemed a little unsure about how to deal with such an unfamiliar situation and looked to Brigstocke, as if they might smooth out the rough edges between them.

Thorne took it as a hopeful sign.

Brigstocke stepped forward again, ushering Phil Hendricks back to his seat as he did so, and making sure Thorne was given a good, hard look before he opened his mouth. Before he tried to move things forward. ‘Like DCI Hignett said, this is a strange one for all of us. So it’s going to be a case of suck it and see, and I’m sure we’ll make mistakes. As to the direction we move in, we’ll react to the evidence, same as we always do. With that in mind, we will have to look at the possibility that, for whatever reason, Luke Mullen killed his kidnappers. But we’ll look just as hard at a scenario involving a third party, as yet unknown, who murdered Allen and Tickell, took Luke and is now holding him at another location.’ He looked over at the SO7 man, who seemed to approve and was keen to press on.