Mark Billingham - Buried

Drawn from the top of the house by the noise, Juliet had appeared in the doorway. Demanding to know what was happening, and understandably reluctant to go upstairs again, she had begun a shouting match with her mother that was just starting to get nasty when Thorne’s mobile rang. Tony Mullen moved quickly to manhandle his daughter from the room as Thorne took the call.

When it was over, Thorne turned back to them. He raised a hand quickly, a gesture to reassure them that the news was not the worst they could have been expecting. ‘Nobody there,’ he said. ‘They went in five minutes ago and the flat’s empty.’

Mullen’s expression was one Thorne had seen several times since he’d first got involved with the case: relief that washed briefly across a mask of panic, then unthinkable fury.

Maggie Mullen was breathing heavily. ‘They went in there very quickly. How could they be sure it was safe?’

‘They decided that they couldn’t afford to wait,’ Thorne said. ‘Going in fast is always iffy, but waiting might have been riskier, and it certainly didn’t help last time. There was an armed response vehicle close by and they took the chance.’

‘You said there’d be no guns.’ She pointed a shaking finger, spat out the words. ‘You promised.’

‘No,’ Mullen said, cold. ‘No, he fucking didn’t.’

‘Is there anywhere else?’ Thorne asked. ‘Anywhere else he might have taken him?’

Thorne could see that as soon as the idea presented itself to her, she knew it was the right one.

‘His mother’s house. She had a cottage somewhere near Luton, in the middle of bloody nowhere.’ She couldn’t look at her husband. ‘I went there once.’

‘Call him,’ Thorne said.

She closed her eyes and clamped a hand across her mouth, which muffled the end of her refusal.

‘ Call him… ’

It took a few minutes before Mullen and Thorne saw her walk across to her bag, take out her phone. Watched her gather herself, and dial.

Then speak to the man who had kidnapped her son.

She told him that she needed to talk; that she knew it was late but that she was coming to see him. She insisted. She said she knew where he was and swore that she would be coming alone.

She pressed back fresh tears and took a deep breath before she asked how Luke was.

Then she hung up.

Nodded…

Mullen was face to face with Thorne before he had completed a step. ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Just try and fucking stop me.’

Thorne looked into Mullen’s eyes and knew that if he did , and it got physical, he would be in serious trouble. ‘It’s really not a good idea,’ he said, brandishing his mobile. ‘Don’t make me get a uniform over here.’

Mullen took a few seconds, but finally stepped away. When Thorne asked where his car keys were, Mullen handed them over. Looking at him, Thorne suddenly remembered what Hendricks had told him about seeing the child on the bed that was really a mortuary slab. Thorne saw a man who knew that his son’s life was in somebody else’s hands; and that his own pride and stupidity might have helped put it there.

He led Maggie Mullen to the front door and opened it. She walked out without looking back and moved towards the car. Thorne turned to see Juliet Mullen sitting halfway up the stairs and her father climbing towards her.

‘It’ll be all right, sir,’ Thorne said.

Thorne drove, glancing down every now and again at the road atlas open in his lap. At the square of countryside between Luton and Stevenage that Maggie Mullen had identified as their destination. Swallowing up the tarmac in Tony Mullen’s Mercedes, the A1 almost empty as it neared eleven o’clock, it wouldn’t take much more than another twenty minutes to get there.

If they could find it.

He spoke to Porter again as he pushed the car north. Telling her where he was heading, talking her through his likeliest route. Porter sounded tense, knowing she could do little but take her team in the same direction and wait for more specific instructions.

‘Goes without saying that you keep me up to speed, right?’

‘So why say it, then?’

‘Tom-’

‘You’ll know where as soon as I know,’ Thorne said. ‘ If I know…’

Another glance down, once he’d hung up, and one more at the woman in the passenger seat. They’d barely spoken since they’d left the house in Arkley. Maggie Mullen had spent most of the time staring hard out of the window, not wanting to risk making any kind of contact until she had to, unwilling, or afraid, to catch Thorne’s eye. To engage.

They drove on in silence, save for the low hum of the big engine and the hiss of the tyres against a still slick road, though the rain had stopped. It would have been wrong, of course, horribly inappropriate, but just for a second or two Thorne had considered reaching for the stereo, as the atmosphere in the car grew more uncomfortable with every minute and every mile.

He wondered what Tony Mullen’s taste in music might be. The trivial nature of the thought was a welcome relief from the darker ones that sloshed around in his brain. The blackness spreading, discolouring the contents. He thought about Tony Mullen waiting back at the house. Had he got on the phone to Jesmond or any of his other friends in high places yet? What on earth would he have said to them if he had?

Thorne touched 110 in the outside lane. Hoped the Hertfordshire traffic boys were a long way away.

‘You think I should have spoken up?’ she said suddenly.

Thorne focused on the tail-lights ahead of him. ‘Fuck, yes.’

‘I was trying to protect Luke.’

‘You’re well aware how ridiculous that sounds, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘That’s obvious…’

‘I knew he wouldn’t hurt him.’

‘You still sure?’

She hesitated.

‘And are you sure that keeping all this to yourself had nothing to do with Sarah Hanley? With the fact that you’d be in just as much trouble as he was if it came out?’

Her answer wasn’t quick in coming. ‘He said we’d both go to prison for it.’

‘Right. Turned your stupid threat back on you, didn’t he?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’

Thorne grunted, satisfied. ‘You didn’t want to go to prison…’

‘He asked me what it felt like, being without my son,’ she said. There was an edge to her voice, and a hardness in her expression when Thorne glanced across. ‘He asked me how I thought I’d feel if I lost both of them. If I spent however many years it might be inside, while they grew up without me.’ She straightened out the seat belt across her chest. ‘No, I didn’t want to go to prison.’

‘It’s no excuse,’ Thorne said. ‘You said yourself that you didn’t know what was going on in this man’s head. That you were scared, that he was out of control.’

‘I talked to him,’ she said. ‘I tried to keep him calm, to reassure him, if you like, but it was all for Luke…’

The thought struck Thorne with such force that Maggie Mullen slid away from him, inching towards the passenger door when he turned and looked at her again. ‘What did you tell him about the case?’

The silence was answer enough.

‘You told him that we had the fingerprints, didn’t you? That we got Conrad Allen’s prints off the videotape. That we were close to an address.’

‘I thought he’d stop it if he knew the police were coming. I wanted him to give up.’

‘What about Kathleen Bristow?’ Thorne was asking himself as much as he was asking her, working through the chronology in his head, putting the pieces in the correct order. Had Kathleen Bristow died before or after her killer had been interviewed? ‘He knew we were coming to see him, didn’t he? You told him we were asking about Grant Freestone, that we’d be talking to members of the panel…’