Mark Billingham - Buried

‘You shouldn’t be so arsey,’ Thorne said. ‘If it wasn’t for some of us, you’d be on remand for Sarah Hanley by now. Watching your back in Belmarsh or Brixton.’

‘ Thanks . But let’s not forget you’re the fuckers who nicked me in the first place.’

It was a fair point.

‘All worked out, though,’ Thorne said.

There was a breeze, but it was a warm afternoon. Thorne took off his jacket and laid it across his knees. Petals of cherry blossom drifted gently along the path, and an ice-cream wrapper clung to the side of the litter bin next to the bench.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard,’ Freestone said. ‘That woman, I mean: Tony Mullen’s missus. And her boyfriend.’

‘Did you ever meet her? Back then, when she was Margaret Stringer?’

‘I only ever really had dealings with the social worker, Miss Bristow.’ He turned to Thorne. ‘I was upset to hear about her. She was all right. Bloke that killed her deserved everything he got, if you ask me.’

Thorne shifted his position slightly, and again, until the pain had subsided. ‘So it was a surprise, then, when you found out what really happened to Sarah Hanley?’

‘Big one, yeah.’

‘Surprised to hear that it was Tony Mullen’s wife, and not Tony Mullen himself, right?’

‘ Sorry?’

‘I’m guessing you thought that Mullen had set you up for it. I’m not saying you thought he did it himself, but maybe he was happy enough to put you in the frame for it. He would have been well chuffed to get you out of the way. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?’

Freestone shrugged, worried at his goatee.

‘There’s no good reason not to tell me, Grant. Mullen’s in no position to do you any damage now. Or to do you any favours.’

This was where Thorne found himself, the series of jumps he’d made. A sequence of bleak possibilities that pointed into the dark, lit the blackest corner of it…

If the nature of Adrian Farrell’s crime had been, at some level, a reaction to his own abuse, might he have suffered that abuse at home?

If the calls from the Farrell house to the Mullen house had been from father to father, rather than son to son, what would they have had to discuss?

And what was Maggie Mullen so afraid that Peter Lardner would reveal? Or had already revealed, whispering home truths in the dusty dark of that cellar.

Thorne might never know for sure if he’d got there by the correct route, but he felt like he was in the right place. Felt fairly certain that in not mentioning Grant Freestone, it was more than just his wife’s affair that Tony Mullen had been trying to cover up.

Only Freestone could tell him for sure.

‘You don’t look like someone who fancies kids to me,’ Thorne said.

Freestone turned, his lips whitening across his teeth.

‘You don’t . That’s just a fact. I’ve no more idea what someone who’s into kids looks like than anybody else.’ He nodded towards two old men, deep in conversation a couple of benches along, then at a younger man jogging towards them alongside a young woman. ‘ They don’t look like paedophiles… He doesn’t.’ Thorne pointed at a skinny man, looking the other way while his dog defecated on the grass verge. ‘Now, see, he does, and what’s the betting I’m way off the mark?’

‘What am I supposed to say?’

‘Most of us have no real… sense of it; that’s my point. We can’t recognise someone who has these drives, or desires. We can’t pick up the signals, the signs, presuming there are any.’ He straightened his leg, pushed back his shoulders. ‘But I wonder if you can?’

Freestone said nothing.

‘You didn’t threaten Tony Mullen with violence,’ Thorne said. ‘You didn’t make promises to get him, or members of his family. You threatened to expose him. You knew what he was.’

They waited, watched as the joggers passed.

‘It wasn’t like I could just tell,’ Freestone said. ‘Any more than you could. That’s bollocks.’

‘So what was it like?’

‘I’d met him before, hadn’t I? Sunday afternoon barbecue round at a… third party’s place. We talked about stuff, a few of us; there was an exchange of material later, upstairs. Nothing too heavy. But he definitely knew a lot of the people. He knew where all the best websites were… not that there were too many back then. I never realised he was a copper, obviously, but he was hardly likely to broadcast the fact, was he?’

‘Not really.’

‘He nearly shat himself when he walked into that interview room and saw me looking back at him.’

‘So you made threats?’

‘Didn’t do me any fucking good, did it? Mullen said I could say what I liked. Told me he’d just claim he’d been working undercover off his own bat, getting in with a known paedophile ring, gathering evidence, whatever.’

‘He would have had a hard time pulling that off.’

‘That’s what I thought. But he wasn’t bothered anyway; he had other options. He told me he’d make sure I got seriously worked over inside if I said anything. Now, I knew he could get away with that, so I just kept my mouth shut.’

‘Different business when you came out, though,’ Thorne suggested.

One of Jane Freestone’s kids, the one who had been there when he and Porter had first gone round, came running over, asking if he could have some sweets. Freestone told him maybe later, and the boy turned away unconcerned, as though he couldn’t even remember what it was he’d asked for.

‘He came to see me,’ Freestone said. ‘Not quite so full of himself. A bit more of the politics, or whatever you want to call it, now he was a chief inspector.’

Thorne couldn’t help but smile at that.

‘He told me there were things he could do to help if I kept certain information to myself. Said that he had some influence on how everything worked out for me.’

‘Because his wife was on your MAPPA panel.’

‘I didn’t know that at the time, did I? I had no idea what he was on about. But then all the shit happened with Sarah, and it didn’t matter. I was away…’

‘So did you think that was down to Mullen?’

He sniffed. ‘It crossed my mind. But it didn’t make any difference in the end, did it? I wasn’t going to hang around and try and convince anybody.’

‘This “material”…’ Thorne said.

Freestone shut his eyes for a few seconds. ‘You know: photographs, some tapes, whatever.’

Whatever…

‘Does the name “Farrell” mean anything?’

Freestone shook his head. ‘Are you going to nick Mullen?’

‘How would you feel about it if we did?’ Thorne asked. ‘I know you’ve got good reason to not like him, but aren’t you at all… sympathetic? Do you think he’s actually guilty of anything?’

Freestone slumped a little, let out a long breath like he’d had enough, and stuck out his arms. ‘Look, it’s a nice day, OK? I come here for the scenery.’

‘You’d better be talking about the trees,’ Thorne said.

He watched Freestone walk away towards his sister and nephews. There was cherry blossom stuck to the soles of his shoes.

It was just starting to get dark, just starting to spit with rain.

Thorne sat in the BMW opposite the house. He rubbed his neck – aching from where he’d turned his head to face the front door – and looked at his watch. He knew what time SO5 had been planning to knock.

They’d already been in there an hour and a half.

He imagined that Mullen had been unconcerned at first, even bored. He’d got used to being shown warrant cards on his doorstep. Thorne wondered how quickly the expression had soured when the officers had explained which unit they were from.