Mark Billingham - Buried

When the door opened, it was Mullen himself Thorne saw first. Then Luke, pulling at his father’s tracksuit top, clearly distraught.

Jesus…

The boy disappeared from view, eased gently back inside the house, and the door half closed again, before two officers – a man and a woman – stepped out. They began leading Tony Mullen down the drive towards the cars.

There were no handcuffs.

Just questions, at this stage…

Thorne knew that there would be three or four more officers still inside. That they would start bringing out paperwork, computers, boxes of videotapes and DVDs, once all the occupants of the house had left.

A few minutes after Mullen had been driven away, they brought out the kids.

Thorne watched Luke Mullen move like a sleepwalker down the drive, his sister’s arm around his waist, the hand of a WPC resting gently on his shoulder. He wondered again, never stopped wondering, about Tony Mullen and his children.

Thorne remembered Adrian Farrell’s desperate excuses in the bin, when they’d questioned him about the phone calls. Thorne had come to realise that Farrell, in spite of what they now suspected he’d been through, had been trying to protect his father, rather than himself.

Thorne could not say whether Tony Mullen’s children had suffered at the hands of their father. It was wishful thinking, obviously, but it made some sense that at least one of them had escaped abuse at home. Maggie Mullen had been terrified by the thought of what Lardner had told her son; she had seemed convinced that Luke had not already known.

Denial. Belief.

Maggie Mullen was ravaged by both…

‘Why stay with him?’

‘I did leave once. Years ago.’ Maggie Mullen scratched at the scarred surface of the table with what was left of her fingernail. It was chilly in the Legal Visits Room, and Thorne hadn’t taken off his coat, but the prisoner didn’t seem bothered by the cold. ‘I didn’t stay away for long.’

‘Why did you go back?’

‘The children, of course.’

‘You could have taken them. You’d have got the kids in any divorce.’

‘They love their father,’ she said. ‘He loves them too, more than anything…’

Thorne had not gone to Holloway Prison because he thought it might help the case against Tony Mullen. He had no idea if Mullen would even face a trial. It was out of his hands now.

The answers he’d gone there after were for nobody’s benefit but his own.

‘Tony never touched our children,’ she said. ‘Never.’

Thorne wanted to ask if she was sure, how she could ever really be sure, but the pause was filled with a plea for him to ask no such thing.

‘You saw what it did to Luke,’ she said, ‘what Lardner told him. He loves his dad. So does Juliet.’

‘What about you? I can’t see how you-’

‘I did love him.’ Her expression made it clear that she didn’t know if she was being a martyr or moron. ‘I pity him, because he’s broken. He hates what he did…’

‘ Did. Past tense.’

‘Past tense…’

Thorne waited.

‘It was just pictures,’ she said. ‘Some pictures of little girls, years ago. There was nothing else.’

Again, Thorne wanted to ask how in God’s name she could be certain, but he knew there was little point. It was a question she’d have asked herself plenty of times.

Like the question Thorne had been asking himself about Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond. About why he had never mentioned Grant Freestone. Thorne still could not decide whether to voice his concerns to those who might act on them. Could not be sure if the question sprang from gut instinct or from something more malicious…

Maggie Mullen pushed back her chair. Ready to go.

‘You loved Peter Lardner, though,’ Thorne said. ‘Didn’t you?’ He’d seen it at the end. Seen it in the blood that had bubbled and flowed across her as she’d cradled her former lover. Now, for the first time since she’d been led into the small, cold room, Thorne saw a softening in the woman’s features. Saw the pain in her eyes and around her mouth.

‘I was obsessed by him, once. As obsessed as he was.’

‘But you could have been together. That’s what I can’t understand. You and Lardner, and the kids…’

Grief and desperation took up residence again, settled back into the folds of her face, while she thought of something to say. ‘Have you always done the right thing?’

The lie came easily. ‘Always,’ Thorne said.

Maggie Mullen gave little sign of believing or disbelieving him as she dragged herself slowly from the chair and walked past Thorne towards the door and the waiting prison officer. Eyes wide, fixed front.

The same eyes as her son’s…

Eyes wide and fixed front, Luke’s face was grey beneath the peak of a baseball cap. Thorne watched as he was led to the far side of the car, as he bent to climb inside.

Thorne looked back and found himself staring straight at Juliet Mullen. It was for only a few seconds, and there was no more expression on her face than there had been on her brother’s, but Thorne saw only an accusation.

He started the car and turned up the music.

Asked himself why, nine times out of ten, doing the right thing felt so bloody awful.

Thorne regained consciousness thirsty and dribbling, with tears in his eyes.

He’d seen the old man knocking around while he was under. Not saying a lot, just there at the edge of it, keeping an eye on things. He felt as if his father had been drifting, shadowy, same as he was. When he came out of it, Thorne had the powerful sense that he’d said goodbye to more than just the pain.

Like both his phantoms had left at the same time.

He sat up on three pillows and stared at the TV screen. Watching the coverage of a criminal trial was something of a busman’s holiday, but it was irresistible. In the United States, one of the world’s most recognisable celebrities was facing a major prison sentence, and the past three weeks had been taken up with the farce of jury selection. Candidate after candidate was rejected on the grounds that they knew who the defendant was and would therefore make assumptions. The prosecution demanded to know where they were meant to find jurors who didn’t know the mega-famous celebrity and what he was alleged to have done.

Thorne, still sleepy, closed his eyes and conjured a wonderful picture of a jury consisting of an Eskimo, a Kalahari Bushman, one of those African tribesmen with a saucer in his bottom lip…

Assumptions.

Boys and girls from nice homes and good schools don’t become racist murderers. Don’t grow up and snatch kids.

The ex-copper must be the parent being targeted when his child is kidnapped.

Children are safe with those closest to them.

He knew that everyone had prejudices and preconceptions. That they made fucking idiots out of good people as well as bad. That most of them were based on simple experience. But still…

When it came to matters of guilt and innocence, of trust or misgiving, Thorne knew better than most that making assumptions was a dangerous thing.

It was stinking thinking.

The door opened at the far end of the room and Hendricks stepped out of the bathroom, wiping his hands.

‘Nice facilities.’

Hedley Grange was a private hospital and convalescent home on the banks of the Thames, near Kingston. It was where the Met sent all officers injured in the line of duty; where Thorne would be recovering from an operation on the ‘back injury’ he’d received when rescuing Luke Mullen from the cottage in St Paul’s Walden.

‘Might as well get something out of it,’ Holland had said.