Mark Billingham - Buried

‘Besides,’ Lardner added, ‘why would Freestone wait until now to get his own back? All this “dish best served cold” stuff is crap. I’ve had enough clients down the years with axes to grind to know that much. If you do these things at all, you do them in the heat of the moment. You don’t wait years. It doesn’t make any sense.’

But what Lardner was suggesting certainly did. Roper had said much the same thing, and it wasn’t getting any easier to argue with. Even if someone like Grant Freestone were to decide, years down the line, to settle a score, was it likely he’d go about it in such a roundabout way? That he’d involve other people?

‘Did Freestone ever associate with a Conrad Allen or an Amanda Tickell?’

Lardner looked blank. ‘I don’t recall the names. He didn’t associate with a great many people, to be honest.’

It hadn’t hurt to ask, but life was never that simple.

‘Something you said before,’ Thorne said, ‘about Freestone not being a killer. It sounds like you don’t think he killed Sarah Hanley. Like you’re someone else who’s going along with the accident theory.’

‘Possibly.’ Lardner suddenly looked a little uncomfortable.

‘What did the others on the MAPPA panel think?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Did you talk about it afterwards? People must have had opinions?’

‘No.’ More than a little uncomfortable now. ‘We didn’t talk about it.’

‘You seem to be hedging your bets, that’s all. Are you saying that Freestone didn’t do it?’

‘Oh, he did it all right. But there’s a difference between pushing someone just to push them and pushing someone to push them through a sheet of glass, isn’t there? I’ve got a client on my list right now who did four years because some drunk he shoved outside a pub one night happened to have an abnormally thin skull. Do you see what I mean? I’ve had countless similar cases over the years, and I still find the whole issue of “intent” a horribly grey area.’ He held Thorne’s eye for a few seconds before turning away again and shaking his head. ‘I don’t know…’

Thorne saw his old teacher again. It’s all a waste of time. He half expected Lardner to open a drawer and take out the John Buchan.

‘What about the sister?’ Porter asked.

‘Well, that’s something else entirely.’

‘She gave Freestone an alibi…’

Thorne looked over to Porter. His eyes wide, asking the question.

‘ Sister … ?’

‘I think the police were right, on balance, to discredit her statement,’ Lardner said. He raised a hand, swept what little hair there was straight back. ‘If I remember rightly, the pathologist was a little vague about the time of death.’

‘There was a two-hour window,’ Porter said. ‘And Freestone’s sister claimed he was with her the whole time. Walking in a park with her and her kids.’

‘The point is that she had also given him an alibi six years before that. For the afternoon when the children were snatched.’ Lardner smiled a little sadly. ‘She clearly had the same problems facing up to stuff that her brother did.’

There was a knock at the door. Lardner stood and apologised, moved around the desk and explained that he had another appointment.

Porter said that was fine.

Thorne was still staring at her. Still asking.

On the way down the stairs, he vocalised the question somewhat more forcefully than he’d intended. ‘What fucking sister?’

‘Just what I said in there. Freestone’s sister-’

‘When did you find out about this?’

Porter couldn’t suppress a smirk. ‘I called up the case notes this morning. It wasn’t a big deal at the time.’ She leaned towards the wall as a fully kitted-up barrister charged down the stairs past them. ‘You heard what Lardner said. They discredited her statement because she had a history of lying for her brother.’

They turned at the bottom of the final flight, into the busy corridor that ran alongside the two largest courtrooms. Into a scene they both knew well: anxious witnesses and bored coppers; relatives of those on trial and of those they were accused of defrauding, assaulting, abusing; men in new shoes and tight collars; women as glassy-eyed as Debenhams dummies, tensed on benches, desperate to puke or piss, high heels like gunshots against the marble.

All honing the truth or polishing up the turd of a lie. Sweating on the right result.

‘He wasn’t very happy talking about that whole MAPPA business,’ Porter said. ‘Made him very jumpy.’

Thorne agreed. ‘Roper didn’t like it much, either. He talked about it, but there was plenty of stuff he conveniently couldn’t remember too well, that he was just a bit vague about. Know what I mean?’

‘It’s hardly surprising, is it? None of them were exactly covered in glory.’

You didn’t need a degree in criminology to work out why anyone involved in the panel assembled to monitor Grant Freestone would be happier staying off the subject; keeping it as far behind them as possible. A project that had culminated in the death of a young woman – a death for which some thought the panel might be partly responsible – was hardly likely to merit pride of place on anyone’s CV.

‘I think the whole Freestone thing is probably a waste of time,’ Thorne said.

‘Can’t say I disagree.’

‘But I’ll get Holland or someone to track down the other two who were on that panel. Might as well keep it tidy.’

‘I had you down as a messy fucker.’

‘Only when I can’t find anybody else to clean things up.’

‘So which of our white-hot leads do you fancy having a crack at next?’ Porter asked. ‘There are so many, I just can’t make my mind up.’

‘Why don’t we have a look at the sister?’

Porter stopped, began rummaging around in her bag. ‘But you just said-’

‘Freestone’s not a kidnapper, but something won’t let me leave it alone.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘The fact that Tony Mullen never mentioned him.’

She produced a half-eaten tube of mints and dug one out. ‘It couldn’t hurt to go back via Arkley,’ she said.

They stepped out into a square that was thicker with people, as the rush hour started to take hold; and darker, as the day began to dim, running out of breath while those hurrying through the streets at the arse-end of their nine, ten or more hours got a second wind.

Walking past the huge statue of Abraham Lincoln, Porter pointed back to the windows on the third floor of the Guildhall. ‘His office was fucking horrible,’ she said. ‘Did you see the damp? And the mousetrap by the filing cabinet? I’d go mental working somewhere like that all day.’

Thorne said nothing, thinking she did work somewhere like that. All of them did, spending endless hours in other people’s houses and shitty little offices. TV shows were fond of showing coppers, and those they needed to speak to, strolling slowly through the crowd at noisy dog tracks, arguing in meat markets, or blowing cigarette smoke at each other across empty warehouses in the early hours.

It was all about atmosphere, apparently…

But the truth was over-lit and dirty-white. It sounded like the hum of distant traffic and felt sticky against the soles of your shoes. It smelled of old blood or fresh bullshit, and no amount of gasometer-filled skylines was going to make it gritty . The atmosphere – in sweltering front rooms and shitty little offices – could make your guts jump for sure, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention, but truthfully, it was rarely one of menace. Or of danger.

Watching people sob, and rant, and lie. Watching them tremble and gulp down grief.