Mark Billingham - Buried

‘Nobody made you get into the car,’ Kitson said. ‘You jumped to conclusions.’

Just like Thorne had said he would.

‘They threatened me.’ Farrell looked from face to face, repeated the accusation, making sure every copper within earshot was under no misconception. ‘They fucking threatened me.’

Backs were still being patted, hands shaken, as Kitson walked across to the prisoner and stood, waiting for him to stop shouting. After a few moments she gave up and got on with it, spoke the words she had no real need to think about.

Charged Adrian Farrell with the murder of Amin Latif.

As she made the speech, she thought about how much persuasion Thorne had needed to employ on her. He’d reminded her about her ‘acquisition’ of Farrell’s DNA; pointed out that, as she’d already taken several steps in an unorthodox direction, it couldn’t really hurt to take a few more. ‘Welcome to the slippery slope,’ he’d said.

‘… but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on…’

She knew that there would be fallout: questions raised, evidence discounted. Thorne had mentioned Farrell’s solicitor and Trevor Jesmond. He’d offered to open a book on which of them would be the more apoplectic.

But she didn’t care.

She looked at Farrell and she knew she’d got him, that, whatever happened, there was more than enough to put him and both his friends away. She pictured the face of Amin Latif’s mother, and decided that she could live with a slap on the wrist.

She followed a step or two behind as officers escorted Farrell through the cage. When she entered the custody suite she watched as they led him towards the skipper, walking slowly, deliberately slowly, past Samir Karim and his ‘sons’ – the two Asian DCs Kitson had ‘borrowed’ from CID.

Farrell glared, and got it back in spades.

The DC with the goatee sucked his teeth. ‘And they reckon you don’t see white dog-shit any more…’

Thorne was being shown to the door by Juliet Mullen when his phone rang. She walked back towards the kitchen once he’d answered; when he turned away and lowered his voice.

‘Dave?’

‘Where are you?’ Holland asked.

‘I’m at the Mullens’.’

‘Jesus-’

‘How did it go with Farrell?’

Holland sounded flustered, thrown, spluttered an answer: ‘Kitson got the names. Sir, this is important.’

Thorne listened. Holland didn’t call him ‘sir’ very often.

‘I thought I was going mad,’ Holland said. ‘Thought I was just overtired, that I’d looked at the wrong list or something.’ He explained that he’d finally been able to track down the missing member of the MAPPA panel; that the people living at Margaret Stringer’s old address had finally got back to him. They’d been away, but had dug out a phone number they’d been left when they’d bought the place five years before. ‘When I called, I just presumed I’d got confused and dialled the wrong number…’

‘What’s the matter, Dave?’

‘How long have you been at Tony Mullen’s place?’

‘I don’t know… half an hour or so.’

‘You must have heard the phone go, then,’ Holland said. ‘A couple of times in the last fifteen minutes?’

Thorne had heard it, when he was with Juliet in the kitchen. Both times the call had been answered from the sitting room next door.

‘First time, when I realised who I was talking to, I didn’t know what to say. I just talked some shit about a courtesy call. Second time, when I rang again to check, I just hung up.’

‘OK.’ Thorne was only half listening now; trying to put it together.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

Thorne had no idea, but he was in the right place to find out. He had already worked out that a lot of women worked under their maiden names. And he knew what Margaret shortened to…

When he’d hung up, Thorne went back to the kitchen and told Juliet Mullen to go back to her room. Then he walked into the sitting room and sat down without being invited.

Maggie Mullen put down the book she was reading and her husband, somewhat reluctantly, turned off the television.

‘Have you finished?’

‘I haven’t even started,’ Thorne said.

‘Did it not occur to you for one minute that this was going to come out?’ Thorne spoke to them, and looked at them, as if they were children. ‘How could you think we wouldn’t find out about this?’

‘It’s not a big deal,’ Mullen said.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘It was an affair, that’s all. People have them. You’ll just have to forgive us for trying to keep some tiny part of our fucked-up lives private.’

But Thorne was in no mood to forgive anyone. He’d listened with a growing sense of disbelief and anger as Tony Mullen had explained why he’d taken the decision not to mention Grant Freestone. How they’d jointly decided that there would be little point in revealing the affair that his wife had had while serving as an officer of the local education authority on Freestone’s MAPPA panel in 2001.

‘You lied because of this? ’ Thorne said. ‘We’re trying to find your son and you lie because of a bit of screwing around? Whose embarrassment were you trying to save? Your wife’s or your own?’

‘Both,’ Mullen said. ‘Either. Does it really fucking matter?’

‘You messed us around-’

‘Does any of it matter?’ Mullen looked ready to scream, with frustration, exhaustion, rage. ‘Christ, my wife made a mistake years ago. One mistake…’

Mullen was sitting on the sofa, facing the fireplace and the TV. Thorne and Maggie Mullen were opposite each other in the armchairs to either side. Thorne stared at the woman across the Chinese rug, her feet curled underneath her, same as he’d seen her daughter do. She was still, and had spoken barely a word since Thorne had entered the room.

He was unable to tell if she wore a stunned expression or a defiant one.

‘So who did you make this mistake with, then?’

She shook her head slowly, as if she were being asked to submit to something unspeakable.

Mullen groaned. ‘Does it matter?’

‘No more secrets,’ Thorne said.

So Maggie Mullen named the man with whom she’d had her affair. Thorne thought about it for a moment. He could see why it would have upset Tony Mullen so much.

‘You’re obviously enjoying this, Thorne,’ Mullen said. ‘Enjoying our… discomfort.’

‘You think you can claw back one single bloody inch of the moral high ground?’ Thorne asked.

Mullen said nothing, looked across at his wife.

‘You should feel uncomfortable. Jesus. You’re ex-Job, for crying out loud, and your son is missing. You withheld information.’

‘ Irrelevant information.’

‘You sure?’

‘Considering everything that’s going on, do you really think that who my wife slept with five years ago is remotely important?’

‘That depends,’ Thorne said. ‘Does “everything” include another member of the MAPPA panel being murdered this morning?’ He looked from one to the other. It was clear from Tony Mullen’s expression that he hadn’t known. That, despite his connections, this development in the case hadn’t been relayed to him five minutes after it had happened. ‘Someone broke into Kathleen Bristow’s house and killed her, and nobody’s going to convince me that it wasn’t the same person who took your son, so…’

Maggie Mullen began to cry.

‘I wonder if you still think the fact that your wife was on that panel is unimportant. If it’s irrelevant.’