Buried

THIRTY

Thorne lay perfectly still in the tight, white tunnel and tried to listen to Johnny Cash.

The music was faint in his headphones, and all but drowned out by the noise of the MRI scanner that was slowly putting together a picture of his spine. Of the state of it. The sound, like a pneumatic drill, made it seem as if he were listening to some radical, techno remix of the Man in Black, but it was still better than the alternative. They’d told him he could choose one of their CDs for the twenty minutes or so he’d be inside the chamber, but Thorne had decided to take no chances and brought The Man Comes Around along with him. Good job he had. Even the little he could hear was preferable to some of the shit on the laminated list he’d found waiting for him in the changing room.

Jamie Cullum, Katie Melua, Norah bloody Jones.

He lay, quite still as he’d been instructed. Straining to hear. His hand around the rubber panic button he’d been told to squeeze if he felt uncomfortable or alarmed for any reason. If he wanted to stop the procedure.

The rhythm of the machine, the repetitive clatter, like a buzz that had been slowed, began to fade. The noise relaxed him. He started to drift and reflect, savoured the luxury of the time, the space inside his head. Like slipping between pristine sheets after too long in a bed that was stained and stinking.

Six days since the end of it. The end of part of it, at any rate.

Everything now would be in the hands of judges and lawyers. All Thorne and the rest of them could do from hereon was present those people with the material, and hope they made decent decisions.

They’d already made a couple of very brave ones.

Luke Mullen had been charged with the murder of Peter Lardner, though there was good reason to believe that when it eventually came to trial, the jury would not convict. Thorne was happy to take the stand as a defence witness, and believed that the extenuating circumstances which would probably see Luke Mullen acquitted – along with the fact of Tony Mullen’s former position – probably accounted for why the magistrate had decided to release the boy into his father’s custody. There were strict conditions, of course: Luke would need to report to a police station at regular intervals. He would not be going back to school.

It had been an equally brave decision to remand Maggie Mullen for trial in Holloway Prison.

Although, in the end, the magistrate had been left with little choice. The charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice, relating to the death of Sarah Hanley, certainly warranted bail, and a surety of fifty thousand pounds was set. However, once Tony Mullen – the only person in a position to act as guarantor – had refused point-blank to do so, prison had been the court’s only option.

Thorne remembered Mullen’s face in the sitting room as his wife had made her confession, and guessed that his decision to see her jailed had probably been easier to make than the magistrate’s.

What had Thorne said to Porter that night?

Not much of a family for him to go back to…

And unbidden, as Thorne remained motionless, different voices started to make themselves heard. Drifting in from nowhere and demanding attention.

A series of remarks and suggestions that began to curl around or lie across one another; to tease and illuminate.

Insisting…

I’ve always thought the sexual element of the attack was more important.

Listen, I accept all the evidence about abusers having been abused themselves.

Maybe it wasn’t Luke he was calling.

We already looked at the parents.

Until one single, big idea crowded out all the others, and the noise in Thorne’s head was louder, harder to ignore, than that coming from the machine.

And what Lardner had said. The last thing he’d said:

Why don’t you tell the inspector all about it? Why you can’t bear to let him touch you…

Thorne pulled off the headphones and began to squeeze the rubber button.

Jane Freestone had stood up and wandered away when she’d seen him coming. Thorne watched her walk to the fence, spit and light a cigarette. Then he sat down next to her brother on the bench.

The same one Grant Freestone had been sitting on when Thorne and Porter had nicked him a week earlier.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Freestone said.

‘Calm down.’

‘I’m here with my sister, all right?’

Freestone had been released from custody in Lewisham on the same day that Maggie Mullen was charged. Now, aside from the compulsory rehab clinic, and weekly visit to sign the Sex Offenders Register, his life was more or less his own again. Though Thorne would soon inform those who needed to know just how often that life seemed to involve sitting in a local park, on the bench nearest to the children’s playground.

‘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.

THIRTY-ONE

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.

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.