Mark Billingham - Buried

‘Right.’

‘How was she killed?’

‘Someone broke in and suffocated her.’

‘Nice.’

‘It looks like she held on to a lot of records,’ Holland said. ‘Filing cabinets full of stuff from her old cases and what have you.’ Holland took another small bite of his sandwich while he was waiting for a response. He could hear classical music playing softly from another room.

‘So you think this is connected to your kidnap, do you? To Grant Freestone? To Sarah Hanley, maybe?’

‘We’re keeping an open mind at the moment.’

‘And you just called to keep me informed, did you?’

‘Sir…?’

With the music in the background, it was like being put on hold.

‘Not even going to tell me to make sure my doors and windows are locked?’

‘I would’ve presumed you’d do that anyway, sir,’ Holland said.

‘Present for you…’ Thorne dropped the plastic bag on to the table in front of Adrian Farrell.

‘Your twenty-four’s up in a little over ninety minutes,’ Wilson said.

Kitson glanced up at the clock. ‘At four thirty-eight.’

Farrell looked weary, suspicious. He reached forward and dragged the bag towards him as Thorne and Kitson took their seats.

‘As it happens, I’ve already spoken to my superintendent,’ Kitson said. ‘Assured him I’m carrying out my duties in regard to this case diligently and expeditiously…’

The solicitor made a winding gesture with his finger, urging her to get on with it.

‘Basically, I’ve got a six-hour extension.’ She smiled at Farrell. ‘He’s here until twenty to eleven, if I fancy it.’

Farrell’s face darkened as he pulled out the contents of the bag.

‘Don’t say we never do anything for you,’ Thorne said.

The boy pushed Thorne’s ‘present’ back across the table. ‘You’re hysterical.’

Thorne picked up one of the cheap, black plimsolls and examined it. Each had had a Nike-style tick drawn on the side in Tippex. ‘Suit yourself.’ He put the shoes back in the bag.

The interview room was one that had recently been upgraded to CD-ROM. Kitson unwrapped and loaded the fresh discs, made the speech and began the recording.

Thorne didn’t waste any more time. ‘How well do you know Luke Mullen?’ he asked.

Farrell appeared to be genuinely confused. ‘The kid who disappeared?’

‘You told officers that you barely knew him when they spoke to you at your school.’

‘So what are you asking me again for?’

‘Well, let’s just say that as you haven’t been entirely honest with us about other matters, we’re thinking that you may have been full of shit about this as well.’

Farrell was chewing gum. He held it between his top and bottom teeth, pushed at it with his tongue.

‘This is relevant to your murder enquiry, is it?’ Wilson looked at Kitson. ‘I certainly hope so.’

‘Perhaps you know him a little better than you told us you did,’ Thorne said.

Wilson began writing in his notebook. ‘I think it might be best to say nothing, Adrian.’

Farrell lifted a hand. He pushed a comb of stiff fingers through his hair and began tugging strands up into spikes. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘He was the year below me, so we never had much to do with each other. We weren’t in any teams together; not even in the same house. Maybe exchanged a word in the playground, but that’s about it.’

‘You never phoned him at home?’

‘ No .’ He looked horrified, as if he’d been accused of something terminally uncool.

‘You might want to think about this, Adrian.’

It looked as though Farrell were doing exactly what Thorne had advised. He blinked and fidgeted, and though the expression stayed defiant, there was much less confidence in his voice when he spoke again. ‘Maybe I called him once or twice, yeah.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘He was a clever kid, wasn’t he? Maybe I just needed a bit of help with some homework, or something.’

‘I thought you were a clever kid.’

‘It was just once or twice.’

Kitson took the printed phone logs from her bag, traced a finger down to the items marked with a highlighter, and read: ‘November 23rd, last year: 8.17 until 8.44 p.m; November 30th: 9.05 until 9.22. January 14th this year, February 12th. Then a call lasting nearly an hour on February the seventeenth…’

‘You must have needed a lot of help,’ Thorne said.

Farrell’s expression started to catch up with his voice. He leaned away from the table, reddening, the desperate smile looking ready to slide off his face at any moment. ‘This is bollocks,’ he said. He turned to Wilson. ‘I’m not saying anything else.’

‘It seems a very odd thing to lie about, that’s all.’

Farrell studied the tabletop.

Thorne glanced at Kitson and understood at once from her expression that this was as rattled as she’d ever seen Adrian Farrell.

‘Maybe we’ll come back to that,’ Thorne said. ‘We wouldn’t want Mr Wilson saying that we bullied you.’

Wilson just sat back and clicked the top of his expensive ballpoint.

‘Is there much bullying at your school?’ Thorne asked. He didn’t wait long for an answer. It was already clear he would be having a more-or-less one-sided conversation. ‘There’s always some, isn’t there? Can’t get rid of it completely, because one or two kids are never going to like themselves very much.

‘They reckon that’s why bullies do it, don’t they? Because of how they feel about themselves. Same for those who take it outside school, if you ask me. The ones who try and make themselves feel better by giving people a kicking on the street. The ones who attack complete strangers because they’ve been looked at the wrong way or imagine they’ve been “disrespected”; who maim, or cripple, or kill someone for no other reason than they’re black, or gay, or wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Then tell themselves they’re being honourable by refusing to grass anyone up when they get caught.’

‘Just tell us their names,’ Kitson said. ‘Tell us and we can stop all this pissing about.’

‘The thing is, I can even understand it, up to a point,’ Thorne said. ‘You can call these crimes “wicked’ or “evil” or whatever you want, but it usually comes down to plain ignorance in the end, and none of us is immune to that, right? There’s a scale , though, isn’t there?’ He traced a line along the tabletop with his finger. ‘I think I’m tolerant, of course I do. Most of us do. But every now and again stuff comes into my head I wouldn’t dream of saying out loud. I don’t know where it’s come from, how it got in there, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t put my hand up to it. I’d never do anything, and I think the people who perpetrate these crimes are shit, scum, whatever… but I know why it happens. I understand that they’re just more ignorant than I am.’

He paused for a few seconds. Watched the red numbers change on the digital clock above the door.

43… 44 … 45…

‘What happened to Amin Latif, though?’ Thorne shook his head. ‘That’s about something else. It’s got to be. I’m not even sure I want to understand why anyone could do that. The first bit’s not too hard to fathom: it’s the sort of thing I’ve just been talking about. It’s ignorance, and trying to make yourself feel better, plain and simple. Amin and his friend are standing at that bus stop and not looking away when you and your mates try to stare them down. Saying something maybe. So they get a kicking, right? Or at least Amin does, because his friend manages to get away, which leaves three against one. Good odds for hard men like you and your mates, right?’