Mark Billingham - Buried

‘If this is an apology, it’s nice to hear. But you can still stick it.’

‘I’ll pass that on to our DCI.’ Porter looked at Thorne, who did what he thought she would want, and smiled conspiratorially. ‘Listen, just treat this as if it’s the routine visit that Hoolihan’s lot never got round to, OK?’

‘Makes no bloody difference.’

‘So, for the record Miss Freestone, just so I can tick a box to say I asked, have you seen your brother since the last time you were interviewed by the police?’

She closed her eyes, rubbed her child’s back. ‘I wish I had. More than anything, I wish I had. I’ve got no fucking idea if Grant’s alive or dead.’

Thorne and Porter drove away without saying a word. At the end of the street, Thorne took a left, cut up a motorbike and pulled hard into a bus stop.

Porter just looked at him, enjoying it.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ Thorne asked. ‘I’ve no bloody idea what I was playing along with in there. What the fuck was all this “we’re sorry for wasting your time” shit? “DCIs with tiny dicks…”’

‘I wanted her to think she had nothing to worry about. That she wouldn’t be seeing us again. I don’t want her warning her brother.’

‘What?’

‘She’s a fucking liar. A good one.’

‘Was this something in the bathroom? Don’t tell me there was a floater in there with Grant Freestone’s name on it?’

‘I found stubble,’ she said.

Thorne tried and failed not to sound patronising. ‘Right. That’ll be her boyfriend’s…’

‘ Dark stubble. She’d gone in and done her best to clean up, but I found it under the rim.’

‘Why can’t it be hers?’

Porter shook her head.

‘She’s got dark hair. Women shave their legs, don’t they?’

‘Yes, we do,’ Porter said. ‘But not in the sink.’

Thorne stared ahead through the windscreen, taking in what Porter was saying, considering the implications. ‘Christ, do you think he was in there?’

‘No. I sneaked out of the toilet and checked all the bedrooms.’

‘He may not have stayed there last night, or for any number of nights. That stubble might have been there for a while.’

Porter acknowledged the very real possibility, but there were others she found far more attractive. ‘Or we might have just missed him. He could have gone out early for milk, to get a paper…’

‘We were there almost an hour,’ Thorne said. ‘There are shops in the next street.’

‘Maybe he went to the supermarket. Maybe he went for a walk.’ Porter was starting to sound tetchy, as her suggestions grew more desperate. ‘It’s a nice enough morning.’

Thorne watched a young woman on the pavement opposite, struggling with a pushchair and a wayward toddler. He remembered Jane Freestone pointing towards her children’s bedroom, shouting: ‘Go and fucking-well ask them…’

‘Did you see another child?’ Thorne asked. He turned and looked at Porter, the idea taking hold, starting to jump in him. ‘When you checked the bedrooms, did you see her other kid?’

Porter hesitated, as though a little unnerved by the intensity in Thorne’s eyes. ‘I just presumed she’d taken both of them into the living room with her. I never really looked when I came back in.’

Thorne started the car, pointed towards the glove compartment. ‘There’s an A-Z in there,’ he said. ‘Find the nearest park.’

He sat towards the end of the bench against which the boy’s small, blue and white bike was leaning; so people would know he was looking after it. So they would know he was there with a child.

The boy jumped down from the roundabout while it was still spinning and ran for three or four steps before he stopped and waved across at him. He waved back, then stuck up a thumb. The boy grinned and ran towards a large wooden tree-house, with a rope bridge and a slide. He shouted across at the boy to be careful, but the boy showed no sign of having heard.

‘I think you’re wasting your time.’ A woman who was leaning against the fence was smiling at him. She dropped her cigarette, stepped on it. ‘Not scared of anything at that age, are they?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re not.’

‘It’s nice, I suppose. That they’re fearless, I mean. It’s natural, isn’t it?’ She laughed, reaching into her handbag for another cigarette. ‘But it does mean you can’t take your eyes off the little buggers. Not my two, anyway.’

He smiled back, picked up the newspaper he’d brought with him and stared at the front page until the woman turned round again.

It was as nice a day as he could remember for a while; perfect for getting out and about. The playground was always popular, even when the weather wasn’t so good, but this morning it was particularly crowded.

There were plenty of boys and girls for his nephew to play with.

Which was good for all sorts of reasons, not least because it meant that he’d been able to slip into the trees for ten minutes and smoke a little joint. He’d get into town later, buy himself something stronger for the weekend, but a bit of dope was a good start. Helped him enjoy the morning, enjoy the view , without getting too stupid about things.

‘Excuse me…’

He always kept a decent eye on what was happening, on stuff going on around him, and he’d seen the couple coming from a long way away. Hand in hand, honeymoon-period twats, smug and full of themselves. They’d stopped a few feet from his bench, and he could see the camera in the man’s hand. He could tell that they were embarrassed to ask.

‘Do you want me to take a picture of the two of you?’

‘Would you?’ the woman asked.

He stood up and the man handed over one of those cheap, disposable cameras, same as they sold in his local newsagent’s. He put it to his eye and the couple posed, arms around each other with the playground behind.

‘Cheers.’ The man in the leather jacket stepped towards him.

He held out the camera, but the man grabbed his wrist instead, squeezed it hard, and took hold of his shirt at the shoulder, while the short woman with the dark hair opened up the warrant card and told him he was under arrest for the murder of Sarah Hanley.

After a minute or two of swearing and struggling, he nodded towards the playground and asked what they were going to do about his nephew. The woman told him that he needn’t worry. That the boy would be taken back to his mother.

As the handcuffs were ratcheted around Grant Freestone’s wrists, he glanced across at the woman by the fence. The cigarette drooped from her fat lips, and he couldn’t help noticing that she’d happily taken her eyes off both her little buggers.

They were getting used to this sort of meeting by now: ad hoc gatherings to take stock, to regroup, and jointly fight the temptation to panic or run around screaming for a while. To discuss the latest development in a case where surprises were being thrown up faster than dodgy kebabs.

The kidnap case with no ransom demand, two dead kidnappers, and a convicted paedophile arrested for a murder committed years before.

‘Anything we haven’t managed to get in yet?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘Freestone’s still using, by all accounts, so we’ve got drugs covered. All we need now is a bit of prostitution, some gun-running maybe.’

Porter laughed.

‘I’m serious. A bomb factory and one or two stolen library books and we’ve got the complete fucking set.’

Just after midday, and four of them were making a good job of filling Brigstocke’s office at Becke House: Brigstocke himself, Hignett, Porter and Thorne. The sun was struggling to find its way through a layer of thin cloud and the streaky patina of grime on the window. Thorne hadn’t bothered to take off his jacket. Nobody in the room was sitting down.