Buried-6 (41 page)

Farrel nodded. Ahead of him, through the rain-streaked windscreen, he could see a smal crowd of people two hundred yards away, mil ing around outside the cinema.

‘But there is a choice you have to make: you can go to prison, or you can go to prison after you’ve had the shit kicked out of you.’ He looked to the men on either side of Farrel , then back to the teenager. ‘Because I
will
let them beat you. In fact, I wil probably
help
them beat you. So there you go . . . It’s not real y much of a choice, if you ask me.’

Hearing the tremor in his voice as he started to speak only made it worse for Farrel . The fear was growing fat inside him, feeding on itself. ‘What do you want?’

‘There were others with you,’ the driver said. ‘Two others, the night you kil ed my nephew. They could have stopped you but they chose to stand by and watch. The police wil probably catch them eventual y, but even if they do, those two bastards won’t get what they deserve. If they get clever lawyers, maybe even clever
Asian
lawyers, to go down wel with the jury, they won’t be sent to prison for murder. They may get a few years, but it’s not enough.’

‘They’re as guilty as you are,’ the man with the glasses said.

‘Fucking
worse
than you, man.’

The driver waved his hand until there was quiet. ‘We want to see them before they’re arrested, that’s al . If the law won’t deal with them properly, then we’l sort things out ourselves.

So, obviously, we need to know who they are.’ He stared at Farrel , brought a thumb to his mouth and chewed at a nail. ‘You can say nothing, that’s up to you, but why the hel would you want to take a beating for them? You get prison
and
a good kicking, and what do they get? That seems stupid to me. What thanks do you get for protecting these fuckers?’

‘If you’re stupid, whatever happens to you tonight can happen again, many times, once you’re in prison.’ The man with the floppy hair took off his glasses. He untucked his T-shirt and wiped the lenses. ‘We can get to you in there. If we want you hurt, we can make it happen, any time we like.’

‘Tel us their names,’ the driver said, ‘we drop you off near a police station and that’s it.’

Farrel wanted to be sick. And to shit, and to cry. If he told them what they wanted, how did he know that they wouldn’t hurt him anyway? He knew that if he asked the question, the beating would probably begin.

‘Two names. Say them quickly and it’s finished.’

Farrel closed his eyes and shook his head. For a wild, unthinking second or two he
wanted
them to hurt him. He wanted it over and done with, and being beaten seemed better than waiting.

Than not knowing . . .

‘I won’t al ow any weapons,’ the driver said. ‘And it wil be over quickly enough. But if you make the wrong choice, and it comes down to it, you need to understand that violence is never precise. It’s hard to keep things . . . reined in. You must know better than anyone what damage can be done with a kick or two, right?’

‘Amin tried to protect his head and it didn’t help.’

‘And there was only
one
person doing the kicking.’

‘Swings and roundabouts, though.’ The driver stuck the key back in the ignition, turned it some of the way. ‘If things get out of hand, I mean. If you end up damaged in some way and in a unit that’s designed for prisoners with special needs, it’l probably be harder for us to get to you later on.’

‘Tel us their names. Last chance.’

Farrel ’s mouth felt dead and scorched inside. He prised open his lips and panted, gulped and choked as he tried to dry swal ow.

‘Sil y,’ the driver said. ‘
Very
sil y.’ He swung himself around again and started the car.

Farrel screamed over the radio and, once the music had been turned down, he started to gabble, breathless, in a whisper that struggled not to become a sob. He said the names over and over until they ran into one another and became meaningless; babbling until he felt hands on his face, closing his mouth, and voices tel ing him to shush.

Tel ing him that he was stil scum, stil a prick and stil a murderer. But at least he was not a
completely
stupid one.

Porter knew that she should knock it on the head. There was little point in ploughing on when she was so tired that she might wel be overlooking stuff anyway. But she real y wanted to get it done.

There were hundreds of files, each containing sometimes dozens of reports and assessments. There was clearly no need to read al of them, or even the majority, but it had quickly become apparent that even skimming through Kathleen Bristow’s records wasn’t going to be a five-minute job.

Client files had been organised alphabetical y, and while searching under ‘F’ for Freestone, Porter had found herself reading case notes that she knew were of no real interest. She supposed that even though these were ex-clients of a dead woman, there were stil issues of confidentiality. But that didn’t stop her. She was fascinated, and, on occasion, appal ed.

Francis Bristow had been right when he’d said that his sister had worked with more than a few ‘headcases’.

The documents relating to Grant Freestone put a little unpleasant meat on the bones of what she knew already, but there was nothing that seemed significant. There were transcripts of interviews conducted in prison, and statements from a number of healthcare professionals who’d treated him during his sentence, but there was nothing in the file relating to the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements that came into force after he was released.

Porter was alone in the house. She’d brought a radio upstairs from the kitchen and tuned it to Magic FM. When the songs had become a little too soporific, she’d retuned it to Radio 1, nodding her head in time to the music as she’d hauled out batch after batch of brown and green suspension files.

She hummed along with a dance track she recognised and wondered if Thorne had managed to get away yet. Earlier, on the phone, when he’d asked her what she would be doing, it had sounded like more than just a casual work enquiry, but she’d decided not to push it. She sensed he wasn’t completely relaxed about what had nearly happened, but in that respect he was probably just an average bloke: happy enough to get into her pants but not very comfortable talking about it, or, God forbid, what might happen afterwards.

Porter final y found the MAPPA stuff in the section of files that was organised by year. There were half a dozen wel -stuffed folders relating to Grant Freestone’s 2001 panel. She squatted down and sorted them into piles: ‘Risk Management’; ‘Domestic Arrangements’; ‘Community Sex-Offender Treatment Programme’; ‘Drugs & Alcohol’. She picked up the folder marked ‘Minutes’ and took out a sheaf of papers held together with a bul dog clip. Kathleen Bristow had been as meticulous as always, and the documents, most of which were handwritten, had been filed in strict chronological order. Porter flicked through to the last sheet: the minutes of the meeting that had taken place on 29 March 2001.

She recognised the names under ‘In Attendance’. There were none listed under ‘Apologies for Absence’ . . .

Porter stared at the date.

Sarah Hanley had been kil ed on 7 April, nine days after the meeting. The panel had met weekly until this point and there was no record in these minutes of the decision to tel Hanley about Freestone’s past; the decision that was widely regarded as the reason she had ended up dead. Porter went through the sheets again, sensing that there should have been one more, checking that she hadn’t missed it.

Of course, after what had happened, Kathleen Bristow might have decided that the final meeting was one for which she wanted no record.

It might also have been what her kil er had been after.

Porter made a mental note to check with Roper, Lardner and the others, to confirm that a meeting
had
taken place on 5 April, two days before Sarah Hanley’s death.

Energised suddenly, but stil as knackered as she’d felt in a long time, Porter sat back against a filing cabinet. She reached for the folder marked ‘Drugs & Alcohol’, thinking that either would be more than welcome.

Farrel felt a jolt of something like hope when the car drew close to Colindale station. He’d held his breath for most of the journey back, but suddenly started to believe that his ordeal would soon be over.

The place he’d been so happy to walk out of an hour or so before now seemed like a sanctuary.

But the driver slowed, crept past the front entrance, then took a sharp left.

‘Please,’ Farrel said. ‘Here is OK.’

The driver ignored him, moving along the side of the station and stopping at a security barrier. He wound down the window, leaned out and punched at some buttons.

‘I don’t understand . . .’

The barrier started to rise.

Farrel final y thought he saw what was happening. Anger spread and hardened, cracked into a series of low curses, which grew harsher as the Cavalier turned into the backyard and he saw the officers waiting.

Saw Kitson exchanging nods with the driver as they drew to a halt.

Samir Karim slammed the car door and pul ed on his jacket. He let out a long, slow breath as he walked towards Kitson. She put a hand on his arm and left it there as they exchanged a few words; watching as the two young men in the back seat moved away from the car, and uniformed officers leaned in to drag out Adrian Farrel .

Farrel struggled and swore as the handcuffs were put on, his body straining towards where Kitson and Karim were huddled, twenty feet away, near the back entrance. ‘You told me you were a cab driver, you fucker. You told me.’

Karim turned, equal y angry, but marshal ing it. ‘That’s bol ocks. I said nothing. You took one look at me and you
presumed
I was your driver.’

‘Nobody made you get into the car,’ Kitson said. ‘You jumped to conclusions.’

Just like Thorne had said he would.

‘They threatened me.’ Farrel looked from face to face, repeated the accusation, making sure every copper within earshot was under no misconception. ‘They fucking
threatened
me.’

Backs were stil being patted, hands shaken, as Kitson walked across to the prisoner and stood, waiting for him to stop shouting. After a few moments she gave up and got on with it, spoke the words she had no real need to think about.

Charged Adrian Farrel with the murder of Amin Latif.

As she made the speech, she thought about how much persuasion Thorne had needed to employ on her. He’d reminded her about her ‘acquisition’ of Farrel ’s DNA; pointed out that, as she’d already taken several steps in an unorthodox direction, it couldn’t real y hurt to take a few more. ‘Welcome to the slippery slope,’ he’d said.

‘. . . but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on . . .’

She knew that there would be fal out: questions raised, evidence discounted. Thorne had mentioned Farrel ’s solicitor and Trevor Jesmond. He’d offered to open a book on which of them would be the more apoplectic.

But she didn’t care.

She looked at Farrel and she knew she’d got him, that, whatever happened, there was more than enough to put him
and both his friends
away. She pictured the face of Amin Latif’s mother, and decided that she could live with a slap on the wrist.

She fol owed a step or two behind as officers escorted Farrel through the cage. When she entered the custody suite she watched as they led him towards the skipper, walking slowly,
deliberately
slowly, past Samir Karim and his ‘sons’ – the two Asian DCs Kitson had ‘borrowed’ from CID.

Farrel glared, and got it back in spades.

The DC with the goatee sucked his teeth. ‘And they reckon you don’t see white dog-shit any more . . .’

Thorne was being shown to the door by Juliet Mul en when his phone rang. She walked back towards the kitchen once he’d answered; when he turned away and lowered his voice.

‘Dave?’

‘Where are you?’ Hol and asked.

‘I’m at the Mul ens’.’

‘Jesus—’

‘How did it go with Farrel ?’

Hol and sounded flustered, thrown, spluttered an answer: ‘Kitson got the names. Sir, this is important.’

Thorne listened. Hol and didn’t cal him ‘sir’ very often.

‘I thought I was going mad,’ Hol and said. ‘Thought I was just overtired, that I’d looked at the wrong list or something.’ He explained that he’d final y been able to track down the missing member of the MAPPA panel; that the people living at Margaret Stringer’s old address had final y got back to him. They’d been away, but had dug out a phone number they’d been left when they’d bought the place five years before. ‘When I cal ed, I just presumed I’d got confused and dial ed the wrong number . . .’

‘What’s the matter, Dave?’

‘How long have you been at Tony Mul en’s place?’

‘I don’t know . . . half an hour or so.’

‘You must have heard the phone go, then,’ Hol and said. ‘A couple of times in the last fifteen minutes?’

Thorne
had
heard it, when he was with Juliet in the kitchen. Both times the cal had been answered from the sitting room next door.

‘First time, when I realised who I was talking to, I didn’t know what to say. I just talked some shit about a courtesy cal . Second time, when I rang again to check, I just hung up.’

‘OK.’ Thorne was only half listening now; trying to put it together.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

Thorne had no idea, but he was in the right place to find out. He had already worked out that a lot of women worked under their maiden names. And he knew what Margaret shortened to . . .

When he’d hung up, Thorne went back to the kitchen and told Juliet Mul en to go back to her room. Then he walked into the sitting room and sat down without being invited.

Maggie Mul en put down the book she was reading and her husband, somewhat reluctantly, turned off the television.

‘Have you finished?’

‘I haven’t even started,’ Thorne said.

TWENTY-FOUR