Mark Billingham - Buried

They didn’t speak to him.

They didn’t look at him, or at each other.

The driver flicked his indicator up and eased slowly into the stream of traffic. He turned on the radio, tuned it into a bhangra station. Moved ahead nice and steadily.

Farrell was still pretty certain that the police had bailed him just so they could watch him for a while; see if he got in touch with either of the others. Wedged tight between the men on either side, he wasn’t able to turn round fully, but he craned his neck as much as he could, desperately hoping that he might be proved right and see a panda behind them. But all he saw was rain, anonymous headlights, and, when he turned round again, the eyes of the driver in the rear-view mirror. They were cold and flat, and yellowed for a second as the Cavalier passed below a street light.

The digital clock on the chrome range read 21.14. Juliet Mullen sat perched on the black, granite worktop with a can of Diet Coke. Her Converse Allstars bounced gently against the cupboard beneath.

‘He’s the twatty sixth-former with the spiky hair, right?’

‘That’s a good description,’ Thorne said.

‘Fancies himself.’

‘Not a friend of yours, then?’

‘No…’

Thorne sat at the kitchen table. Fresh coffee had been made and he’d helped himself. ‘He’s a good-looking boy, though, to be serious. Wouldn’t you say? I bet some of the girls in your year like him, don’t they?’

‘Maybe some of the sad ones.’

‘But not you?’

She threw him a look drenched in pity. Thorne was convinced. He knew precisely the reaction he’d get were he to ask Juliet Mullen if she’d ever spoken to Adrian Farrell on the phone. ‘What about your brother?’

‘What about him?’

‘Is he a friend of Farrell?’

She took a swig from her can, swallowed the belch. ‘I don’t know all his friends – not that he’s got too many, to be honest – but I seriously doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, Farrell’s a wanker. He’s a poser and Luke’s really good at seeing through all that shit. If someone like Farrell was being matey with Luke, it would probably just be so he could take the piss. Or because he wanted something.’

‘Any idea what that might be?’

‘Not a clue. Help with homework, maybe?’

Thorne nodded. It was the first thing she’d thought of, the most obvious explanation. It was the first thing Farrell himself had thought of, too, when he’d been groping for a lie to explain the phone calls.

Juliet squashed the empty can, dropped down from the worktop and opened a cupboard where there was a recycling bin. ‘Is this to do with what’s happened to Luke?’

‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure…’

‘Do you think Luke’s still alive?’

Thorne looked up at the girl. Her image was designed to project a generalised angst and tension, frustration and despair at nothing in particular. In that moment, though, brightly lit and brutal, there was only a pudgy-faced child whose breathing was suddenly ragged above the low hum of the fridge. Thorne could see beyond the dark make-up and the bitten nails to the consuming pain beneath.

And he could see that lying would not ease it.

‘I’m not sure about that, either.’

Juliet nodded, like she appreciated the honesty. ‘I am,’ she said.

‘Amin Latif was my nephew,’ the driver said. He nodded towards the men in the back seat. ‘And these are my sons: Amin’s cousins.’

Finally the men on either side of Farrell looked at him. One had a goatee and wore a leather jacket. The other was clean-shaven, with small, round glasses and hair that flopped down across his forehead. Neither of them looked like hard men, Farrell thought. But they both looked hard enough , and intense, like they had something burning in their bellies, too.

‘You look like you’re going to shit yourself,’ the one with the goatee said.

Farrell had spent the ten minutes since they’d climbed in next to him imagining the worst. He’d pictured the car pulling off the road, driving on to some deserted industrial estate. He knew for certain that the men would be carrying knives.

‘How does it feel?’ the one with the glasses asked.

In fact, the driver had steered the Cavalier into the large car park of an entertainment complex. Farrell thought he recognised the place; that maybe he’d been bowling here one night or gone to the pictures. The car had eventually stopped in a far corner behind a Pizza Hut, away from any other vehicles. Out of the light.

‘I could have such a good time using a blade on you.’ The man with the glasses was inches from Farrell’s face. Farrell could smell the chewing gum on his breath. ‘Not quick, either. There are halal butchers in our family. You understand what that is?’

‘He knows how to bleed an animal properly.’

‘And you still wouldn’t have paid for what you did to Amin… nowhere near. For what you did before you killed him.’

Farrell heard himself say, ‘please’. Felt the heat that was rising inside him spread out and bubble across every inch of his skin.

The driver, a big man, heaved himself further round in his seat. ‘OK, let’s calm down. Nobody’s using knives on anyone.’ He pointed a finger at Farrell. ‘You’re going to prison, don’t be in any doubt about that. That’s how you’re going to pay for Amin. With years and years of stale air, and shitting where you eat. Of worrying what might happen every time an Asian face stares at you in the canteen or across the exercise yard. You clear about that?’

Farrell nodded. Ahead of him, through the rain-streaked windscreen, he could see a small crowd of people two hundred yards away, milling around outside the cinema.

‘But there is a choice you have to make: you can go to prison, or you can go to prison after you’ve had the shit kicked out of you.’ He looked to the men on either side of Farrell, then back to the teenager. ‘Because I will let them beat you. In fact, I will probably help them beat you. So there you go… It’s not really much of a choice, if you ask me.’

Hearing the tremor in his voice as he started to speak only made it worse for Farrell. The fear was growing fat inside him, feeding on itself. ‘What do you want?’

‘There were others with you,’ the driver said. ‘Two others, the night you killed my nephew. They could have stopped you but they chose to stand by and watch. The police will probably catch them eventually, but even if they do, those two bastards won’t get what they deserve. If they get clever lawyers, maybe even clever Asian lawyers, to go down well with the jury, they won’t be sent to prison for murder. They may get a few years, but it’s not enough.’

‘They’re as guilty as you are,’ the man with the glasses said.

‘Fucking worse than you, man.’

The driver waved his hand until there was quiet. ‘We want to see them before they’re arrested, that’s all. If the law won’t deal with them properly, then we’ll sort things out ourselves. So, obviously, we need to know who they are.’ He stared at Farrell, brought a thumb to his mouth and chewed at a nail. ‘You can say nothing, that’s up to you, but why the hell would you want to take a beating for them? You get prison and a good kicking, and what do they get? That seems stupid to me. What thanks do you get for protecting these fuckers?’

‘If you’re stupid, whatever happens to you tonight can happen again, many times, once you’re in prison.’ The man with the floppy hair took off his glasses. He untucked his T-shirt and wiped the lenses. ‘We can get to you in there. If we want you hurt, we can make it happen, any time we like.’