Mark Billingham - Buried

‘You’re not walking away from this,’ she said.

‘You seem very sure of yourself, but you’re still not charging me, are you?’

‘Who were the two other boys with you when you attacked Amin Latif?’

‘When I what?’

‘Give me the names, Adrian.’

‘Now, you say you can’t promise anything, right? But if I help you, you’ll see what you can do about getting my sentence reduced. Or maybe you’ll just try to appeal to my conscience, because you’re sure I’ve got one somewhere, and that deep down I want to do the right thing.’

‘What about Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson?’ Kitson asked. ‘Shall we talk to them? You can bet they’d give you up in a second.’

It was as though Farrell simply hadn’t heard her. ‘Isn’t this where you slide a few pictures of the dead boy across the table?’

Kitson looked to Wilson, then to Stone. The pause was less for effect than to suck up saliva into a mouth that had suddenly gone dry. It was coppery with adrenalin. ‘You’ve got a lot of confidence, Adrian,’ she said. ‘A lot of charm. I’m sure you’re a big hit with young girls and old ladies. But all the charm in the world won’t sway a jury if it’s looking at an eyewitness ID and a DNA match.’

‘ I’m confident? If you ask me, you’re the one who’s counting all the chickens. It’s an eyewitness ID six months after the fact. And you keep talking about this DNA match like you’ve already got it.’

Kitson couldn’t resist a smile, remembering the one Farrell had given her, just before he’d spat on to the pavement.

Stone shuffled forward on his chair. ‘I’ll tell you who else you’ll be a big hit with,’ he said. ‘One or two of the lads you’re likely to find yourself banged up with.’

Wilson groaned in distaste.

‘Are you serious?’ Farrell asked. He held up a hand, apologising for finding what Stone had said so funny. ‘Sorry, I swear I’m not trying to wind you up…’

‘It’s a last resort,’ Wilson said. ‘Sordid scare tactics of that nature are only ever made when a case is nowhere near as strong as is being made out.’ He looked over at Kitson, pleased with himself. ‘It’s barrel-scraping.’

‘It’s quite appropriate, I would have thought,’ she said. ‘Bearing in mind what happened to Amin Latif.’

A bubble of fear, or fury, rose to the surface and broke across the boy’s features. He reached for Wilson’s notebook, tore back a page and jabbed a finger at something the solicitor had jotted down earlier.

‘My client is unhappy about the confiscation of some of his property.’

‘My training shoes.’

‘They’ve been taken away for forensic tests,’ Kitson said. There had been no footwear prints or casts taken at the Latif murder scene, but it was standard practice nonetheless. ‘It’s a routine procedure.’

Farrell pushed his chair away from the table, stuck out his feet. ‘These are bloody ridiculous.’ He raised one of the black, elasticated plimsolls with which almost all prisoners were issued. ‘They don’t even fit.’

‘Everyone gets them,’ Stone said.

‘Why can’t I have another pair of my own brought in?’

‘Sorry. It’s part of the uniform. There’s no Latin motto, but-’

‘Those trainers cost a lot of money. They were customised.’

Wilson raised his pen. ‘Can you assure us that they won’t be damaged during any chemical examination?’

Kitson decided there and then to end the interview. She stood up and instructed Stone to complete the formalities: to stop the recording and seal the cassette within sight of the prisoner. Looking back from the door, she could tell that both Farrell and Wilson were taken aback by the abruptness with which she’d brought proceedings to a halt.

‘I’m investigating the sexual assault and murder of a seventeen-year-old-boy,’ she said. ‘And I will do whatever it takes to get the names of the people who were there with you when it happened. To make sure that all three of you stand trial for brutalising Amin Latif, then kicking him to death.’ She reached behind her, aware of the slightest tremor in her hand as it closed around the door handle. ‘But I will not sit here and argue with you about fucking shoes.’

Ten minutes later, standing just inside the cage, Kitson saw Farrell’s solicitor in the backyard, enjoying a cigarette. She walked out to join him.

He offered her the packet but she shook her head: ‘Got anything stronger?’

‘You seemed a little wound up in there,’ Wilson said.

‘Well, he’s quite a lad, isn’t he?’

The solicitor didn’t bite. He took one last, deep drag, then flicked the butt towards a pair of police motorbikes. ‘Any thoughts on when you might be bringing him up again?’

‘Not specifically, but I wouldn’t go too far away.’

‘I was wondering if that pub up the road does a traditional Sunday lunch later.’

‘The Oak? It does lunch, but I’m not sure their definition of “traditional” is the same as yours.’

She walked back inside, deciding that once she’d sorted out the paperwork with the custody skipper, she’d grab some breakfast. Then she’d try to track down Tom Thorne. Everyone had heard about the overnight development on the Mullen case, and Kitson could only guess that Thorne had not yet had a chance to pick up the memo she’d left in his pigeonhole, or return the message she’d left on his mobile.

Compared to the discovery of a body, what she had to tell him was hardly particularly urgent.

That was why people stopped to look at accidents: the vicarious thrill without the inconvenience of being doused in blood or dressed in twisted metal. It was almost certainly the same principle that made watching three senior officers arguing with one another so exhilarating.

It was the row that Hignett had predicted, and it was only surprising that Graham Hoolihan had taken as long as he had before coming down and throwing around some of his considerable weight.

‘I was cooperative when DI Thorne first contacted me. I was more than helpful. And, unlike anyone on this case, I showed a bit of common fucking courtesy.’

‘There’s no point chucking insults at people.’

‘Why not? You clearly don’t understand how the proper channels work.’

Thorne had decided not to get involved, but just to stand there at the back of Brigstocke’s office and watch. Maybe chip in every now and again.

‘I found out about this in the pub, for crying out loud,’ Hoolihan said. ‘Because your chief superintendent was at some function or other with mine, and just happened to mention it over the gin and tonics.’

Thorne pictured Trevor Jesmond with one trouser-leg rolled up, clutching a tumbler and talking shop over the clinking of ice cubes.

‘Look,’ Hignett said, ‘we’d certainly have been making contact with you today. But then we picked up a murder in the early hours and other things became somewhat more important.’

It sounded convincing enough. Brigstocke picked up the baton. ‘As it was, we’d only had Freestone in custody a little over twelve hours anyway.’

‘And there was every reason to believe he could help us with an ongoing enquiry into a kidnap and double murder. So…’

‘So it wasn’t as though we were trying to keep the fact that we had him a secret.’

Brigstocke and Hignett were making a decent job of putting on a united front. Thorne was impressed by Hignett’s stance in particular. Under the circumstances, the DCI from the Kidnap Unit could have been forgiven for jumping up and down, pointing the finger elsewhere and telling everyone that he’d wanted to hand Grant Freestone over straight away.