Buried-6 (38 page)

‘Basical y, I’ve got a six-hour extension.’ She smiled at Farrel . ‘He’s here until twenty to eleven, if I fancy it.’

Farrel ’s face darkened as he pul ed out the contents of the bag.

‘Don’t say we never do anything for you,’ Thorne said.

The boy pushed Thorne’s ‘present’ back across the table. ‘You’re hysterical.’

Thorne picked up one of the cheap, black plimsol s and examined it. Each had had a Nike-style tick drawn on the side in Tippex. ‘Suit yourself.’ He put the shoes back in the bag.

The interview room was one that had recently been upgraded to CD-ROM. Kitson unwrapped and loaded the fresh discs, made the speech and began the recording.

Thorne didn’t waste any more time. ‘How wel do you know Luke Mul en?’ he asked.

Farrel appeared to be genuinely confused. ‘The kid who disappeared?’

‘You told officers that you barely knew him when they spoke to you at your school.’

‘So what are you asking me again for?’

‘Wel , let’s just say that as you haven’t been entirely honest with us about other matters, we’re thinking that you may have been ful of shit about this as wel .’

Farrel was chewing gum. He held it between his top and bottom teeth, pushed at it with his tongue.

‘This is relevant to your murder enquiry, is it?’ Wilson looked at Kitson. ‘I certainly hope so.’

‘Perhaps you know him a little better than you told us you did,’ Thorne said.

Wilson began writing in his notebook. ‘I think it might be best to say nothing, Adrian.’

Farrel lifted a hand. He pushed a comb of stiff fingers through his hair and began tugging strands up into spikes. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘He was the year below me, so we never had much to do with each other. We weren’t in any teams together; not even in the same house. Maybe exchanged a word in the playground, but that’s about it.’

‘You never phoned him at home?’

‘
No
.’ He looked horrified, as if he’d been accused of something terminal y uncool.

‘You might want to think about this, Adrian.’

It looked as though Farrel were doing exactly what Thorne had advised. He blinked and fidgeted, and though the expression stayed defiant, there was much less confidence in his voice when he spoke again. ‘Maybe I cal ed him once or twice, yeah.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘He was a clever kid, wasn’t he? Maybe I just needed a bit of help with some homework, or something.’

‘I thought
you
were a clever kid.’

‘It was just once or twice.’

Kitson took the printed phone logs from her bag, traced a finger down to the items marked with a highlighter, and read: ‘November 23rd, last year: 8.17 until 8.44 p.m; November 30th: 9.05 until 9.22. January 14th this year, February 12th. Then a cal lasting nearly an hour on February the seventeenth . . .’

‘You must have needed a lot of help,’ Thorne said.

Farrel ’s expression started to catch up with his voice. He leaned away from the table, reddening, the desperate smile looking ready to slide off his face at any moment. ‘This is bol ocks,’ he said. He turned to Wilson. ‘I’m not saying anything else.’

‘It seems a very odd thing to lie about, that’s al .’

Farrel studied the tabletop.

Thorne glanced at Kitson and understood at once from her expression that this was as rattled as she’d ever seen Adrian Farrel .

‘Maybe we’l come back to that,’ Thorne said. ‘We wouldn’t want Mr Wilson saying that we bul ied you.’

Wilson just sat back and clicked the top of his expensive bal point.

‘Is there much bul ying at your school?’ Thorne asked. He didn’t wait long for an answer. It was already clear he would be having a more-or-less one-sided conversation. ‘There’s always
some
, isn’t there? Can’t get rid of it completely, because one or two kids are never going to like themselves very much.

‘They reckon that’s why bul ies do it, don’t they? Because of how they feel about themselves. Same for those who take it outside school, if you ask me. The ones who try and make themselves feel better by giving people a kicking on the street. The ones who attack complete strangers because they’ve been looked at the wrong way or imagine they’ve been

“disrespected”; who maim, or cripple, or kil someone for no other reason than they’re black, or gay, or wearing the wrong kind of shoes. Then tel themselves they’re being honourable by refusing to grass anyone up when they get caught.’

‘Just tel us their names,’ Kitson said. ‘Tel us and we can stop al this pissing about.’

‘The thing is, I can even understand it, up to a point,’ Thorne said. ‘You can cal these crimes “wicked’ or “evil” or whatever you want, but it usual y comes down to plain ignorance in the end, and none of us is immune to that, right? There’s a
scale
, though, isn’t there?’ He traced a line along the tabletop with his finger. ‘I think I’m tolerant, of course I do.
Most
of us do.

But every now and again stuff comes into my head I wouldn’t dream of saying out loud. I don’t know where it’s come from, how it got in there, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t put my hand up to it.

I’d never
do
anything, and I think the people who perpetrate these crimes are shit, scum, whatever . . . but I know
why
it happens. I understand that they’re just more ignorant than I am.’

He paused for a few seconds. Watched the red numbers change on the digital clock above the door.

43
. . .
44
. . .
45
. . .

‘What happened to Amin Latif, though?’ Thorne shook his head. ‘That’s about something else. It’s got to be. I’m not even sure I want to understand why anyone could do that. The first bit’s not too hard to fathom: it’s the sort of thing I’ve just been talking about. It’s ignorance, and trying to make yourself feel better, plain and simple. Amin and his friend are standing at that bus stop and not looking away when you and your mates try to stare them down.
Saying
something maybe. So they get a kicking, right? Or at least Amin does, because his friend manages to get away, which leaves three against one. Good odds for hard men like you and your mates, right?’

Farrel was bent forward in his chair. He mumbled something. His hands were fists, hanging at his sides.

Kitson leaned in, her head low, trying to catch Farrel ’s eye. ‘Just the names, Adrian. Get it over with.’

‘You’re not a virgin, are you?’ Another rhetorical question. Thorne cracked on immediately. ‘Christ, I
presume
you’re not; not at seventeen. You know what sex is
supposed
to be about, right? Love, in an ideal world, course it is. Lust, more often than not, if we’re being honest. And habit, and booze, and boredom now and again . . . But what happened to Amin Latif wasn’t any of those things, was it?’

36
. . .
37
. . .
38
. . .

‘Let’s imagine for a minute that you weren’t there that night, in the rain, at that bus stop. I’l tel you what happened, what we
know
happened from Nabeel Khan’s statement and from the other evidence. I’l tel you, and you tel me if you’ve got any idea at al what it was about. OK? You see, the job’s done, that’s the strange thing. The Paki bastard’s half-dead in the gutter, right, so why don’t the three of them just piss off? Maybe one or two of them are ready to go, but someone else is cal ing the shots and he’s got other ideas. He real y wants to teach the cheeky fucker a lesson. So he drags him back on to the pavement and turns him over on to his bel y. He undoes Amin Latif’s belt and pul s down his jeans. Are you fol owing this OK?’

Farrel ’s breathing was heavier,
wetter
. . .

‘Then he pul s down his own trousers, and pants, and by this time I’m guessing that his two mates have backed right off. They want nothing to do with any of
this
. Maybe they’re shouting at him to leave it, tel ing him he’s a fucking perv, but he doesn’t care by this point. He’s not thinking about anything else. He’s got carried away and he’s already getting his tiny little dick out . . . He’s already dropping down to his knees . . .’

‘You’re being stupid for no reason . . .’ Kitson said.

‘Trying to stick it into Amin Latif.’

‘If we pul in Damien Herbert and Michael Nelson, and it turns out to be them, they’re going to think it was down to you anyway.’

12
. . .
13
. . .
14
. . .

‘But the Paki bastard – which was how he was described during the initial attack – he puts up a fight. At this point, al he’s got are a couple of broken bones. At
this
point, the shitbag kneeling behind him can walk away and be looking at a lot less than life imprisonment. But he chooses not to. And Amin Latif makes his own choice: he struggles, and refuses to raise his arse up off the pavement; refuses to submit to this animal who’s trying to rape him, who’s trying to prove how much of a man he is. So the animal eventual y gives up. He gets back to his feet and takes hold of himself. And, while his mates laugh, he masturbates. And even before he’s finished coming, he’s begun kicking his victim in the side and in the head, and he doesn’t stop until Amin Latif is completely stil . Lying in the gutter. Covered in rain and blood and cum . . .’

When Farrel looked up suddenly, it was clear that he’d been crying for a while without making any sound. The neck of his sweatshirt was already darkened with tears. The sobs exploded from him as he began to curse and thrash in his chair like someone burning. He cal ed them bitches and cunts, and pul ed away violently when Wilson reached over and tried to put a hand on his arm.

Neither Kitson nor Thorne could be sure if the hatred was aimed solely at them; for what was happening, for the state they’d reduced him to. The tears that flew off his face as he jerked and spat out his insults certainly pointed to something aimed at least partly at himself, for what he’d done.

For what he
was
.

Kitson had to raise her voice to terminate the interview.

Farrel was stil swearing, hoarse and red-faced, when they sealed up the discs and cal ed the jailer into the room.

It was pleasant enough for people to be enjoying a late afternoon pint outside the Oak, or pottering in the tiny front gardens of the estate next door.

Thorne and Kitson made their way back towards the Peel Centre, in silence for the first couple of minutes. Thorne could see that Kitson was smarting at the continued failure to get the names she was after. He, too, was thinking about the extreme manner in which the interview had ended, but also about the boy’s even stranger reaction to being questioned about the cal s to Luke Mul en.

‘Where does al that come from?’ Kitson asked. ‘What he did to Latif. What he tried to do.’

‘You thinking he might have been abused?’

‘I don’t know. You just look for something that makes sense, don’t you?’

‘What about the father?’

‘I didn’t exactly take to him, but I wouldn’t know beyond that.’

They crossed the road, taking out IDs as they approached the security barrier.

‘What you said in the interview, about stuff in your head.’ Kitson looked at him. ‘Were you just making that up?’

‘I suppose so, yeah, for the most part. But none of us are saints, are we?’ He showed his card and walked on. ‘If I see someone with a scar on his face, I think about where he might have got it, and I tel myself he’s probably aggressive, violent. I never see him as a victim. Is that real y any different from a woman seeing a young black man coming towards her at night and worrying that he’s going to mug her?’

‘The job makes you see the worst in people,’ Kitson said.

‘It’s stil a sort of prejudice though, right?’

They stopped for a few seconds before they walked into Becke House, watched a group of recruits in gym kit kicking a bal around on the sports field. Al of them ful of piss and vinegar. Al up for it.

He caught Porter in her car, on her way back to the Bristow murder scene in Shepherd’s Bush.

‘Hang on, I’m not hands-free . . .’

Thorne could hear a siren. He guessed that she’d lowered the phone, knowing that to nick a DI for driving without due care and attention would make the average uniformed copper’s afternoon.

‘Right, I’m al yours again.’

He told her about the interview with Adrian Farrel , about the boy’s cagey response when he’d been confronted with the phone records. ‘It was cock and bul ,’ Thorne said. ‘I just wish I had a fucking clue what any of it means.’

Porter said something, but the signal broke up and Thorne caught only fragments. He asked her to say it again.

‘Maybe it wasn’t Luke he was cal ing.’

‘We already looked at the parents—’

‘What if the racist thing runs in the family? Maybe Tony Mul en’s a closet BNP member and Farrel ’s old man is cal ing him up to organise meetings or whatever.’

‘Kitson checked. They hardly know each other.’

‘He might have been cal ing the sister, of course: Juliet.’

Thorne sat a little straighter at his desk. They hadn’t considered that. ‘OK . . . but why would he bother lying about it? He’s been cocky as fuck about being accused of murder, even now he must know we’ve got him. Why react like he did in the bin? Why start making shit up, just to avoid us finding out he’s seeing Juliet Mul en?’

‘Because she’s fourteen,’ Porter said. ‘If he’s having sex with her, that’s
exactly
how he would react. It’s a machismo thing, about respect or whatever. If he gets sent down for the Latif murder, he goes down al guns blazing, doesn’t he? He keeps quiet, he’s a hero to his mates, to the other idiots who think the same way he does. Sleeping with an underage girl doesn’t exactly fit in with that image.’

There was a twisted logic that made as much sense as anything else in the case so far. Thorne told Porter that he’d talk to Juliet Mul en. Porter suggested that he do so in person, so he said that he’d try to get over to the Mul en place later on. Then he asked her what she was going to be doing, if they would see each other.

‘I’m not sure how long I’m going to be at Kathleen Bristow’s. I’m hoping SOCO wil be about done, and I want to have a good go at those filing cabinets. Maybe what’s in there can give us a clue about what might have been taken.’