Buried-6 (43 page)

Thorne stared down at hair that had gone unwashed for days. Only she and the man she’d been with in Sarah Hanley’s house that day knew if she was tel ing the truth. ‘You know that her children discovered the body, don’t you?’

‘Yes . . .’

Tony Mul en’s hands were trembling in his lap. He swal owed hard, then muttered, ‘
Christ
. . .’

‘So, you just walked out,’ Thorne said.

She nodded, but kept her eyes down. ‘Yes, we walked out, and we hoped nobody had seen us.’ She looked up. ‘And nobody had. We went to Kathleen Bristow, who’d assigned us the job of making the visit, and told her that we’d had to cancel it, that we’d never gone. We made up some story about me being poorly. Then, when the body was discovered, it al got forgotten anyway, and it looked like we were safe.’

‘Is that why he kil ed Bristow?’ Thorne asked. ‘Did she keep a record of the fact that you were due to have visited Sarah Hanley?’

‘I suppose so. She certainly knew that he and I were involved with each other. She caught us together in a pub once after one of the meetings. Maybe her knowing that was enough to scare him.’

‘But why
now?
’

She shifted in her chair, let her head fal back and talked to the ceiling. ‘I don’t know what’s in his mind. I can’t pretend to know why he’s done any of this.’

‘Maybe you should have asked him,’ Mul en said. ‘During one of your cosy little chats on the phone.’

‘Please, Tony . . .’

‘I can’t believe that you knew he had Luke, but you said nothing. He had our
son
and you said nothing.’

Thorne looked at what was left of Mul en, and despite everything he’d felt about him until this point, he was overwhelmed by sympathy for the man. He’d lied by omission, thinking only that he was covering up simple adultery, unaware that there was so much more at stake.

‘At the beginning I thought he was just trying to frighten me, you know? Because I’d told him we were finished, and I’d talked about the Sarah Hanley business. He knew this woman from somewhere, paid her to take Luke from the school, and I thought it would just be for a day or something, that he was just making sure I got the message.’

Thorne knew then that he’d been right about the video; about how strange it was that nothing had been addressed to Luke’s father. The boy had been told what to say. The words had been aimed solely at his mother because the message was meant for her and no one else.

‘What did he say?’ Mul en asked. ‘After he’d taken Luke, what did he say when you spoke to him?’

She looked as though this was the hardest answer she’d had to provide so far. ‘He said he was doing it because he loved me so much.’

‘
Sweet Jesus!
’

‘It’s what he believes. He’s not wel .’

‘Why didn’t you sort this out straight away?’ Mul en was reddening, breathing noisily. ‘Why didn’t you agree to everything, anything,
whatever he wanted
, so that he’d let Luke go?

You saw that video, you saw what they were doing to Luke.’

‘He said he didn’t want to make it
easy
. He promised not to hurt him, told me that the drugs weren’t doing him any harm. He told me he wanted to be sure I knew how serious he was.’

‘
Serious?
’ Thorne said.

‘Then, after the first few days, there was nothing I
could
do. I was terrified because everything had escalated.’

Mul en bucked in his seat, punching at the chair around him, swinging at nothing. ‘He kil ed people. He started fucking kil ing people.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ she shouted. ‘I knew that he’d lost control, that I couldn’t predict what he was going to do or how he was going to react. He said he wouldn’t hurt Luke, but I didn’t know what would happen if I told the police.’ She glanced at the telephone. ‘I stil don’t. Al I could do was keep talking to him, make sure that Luke was stil al right.’ Her hand rose to her head, closed around a clump of hair and began to pul . ‘I fucked it al up, I know I did, but it went so completely mad that I didn’t know what to do.’ She looked wildly from her husband to Thorne and back again. ‘I was thinking of Luke al the time. But . . .’

Thorne nodded. He did not want to listen to any more. There were no more tears left, but Maggie Mul en’s face looked as though it were made of cracked plaster. He remembered the words she’d used when she’d described what had happened on the day Sarah Hanley died. ‘Everything just got out of hand,’ he said.

An hour or more passed as slowly as any Thorne could remember. The minutes crawled by on their bel ies, each through the glistening, greasy trail of the one before, as he watched Tony and Maggie Mul en damage themselves and each other. Screams that sliced and flayed. Accusations swung like bludgeons, and the silences burning away the flesh from the little that was left between them.

Drawn from the top of the house by the noise, Juliet had appeared in the doorway. Demanding to know what was happening, and understandably reluctant to go upstairs again, she had begun a shouting match with her mother that was just starting to get nasty when Thorne’s mobile rang. Tony Mul en moved quickly to manhandle his daughter from the room as Thorne took the cal .

When it was over, Thorne turned back to them. He raised a hand quickly, a gesture to reassure them that the news was not the worst they could have been expecting. ‘Nobody there,’ he said. ‘They went in five minutes ago and the flat’s empty.’

Mul en’s expression was one Thorne had seen several times since he’d first got involved with the case: relief that washed briefly across a mask of panic, then unthinkable fury.

Maggie Mul en was breathing heavily. ‘They went in there very quickly. How could they be sure it was safe?’

‘They decided that they couldn’t afford to wait,’ Thorne said. ‘Going in fast is always iffy, but waiting might have been riskier, and it certainly didn’t help last time. There was an armed response vehicle close by and they took the chance.’

‘You said there’d be no guns.’ She pointed a shaking finger, spat out the words. ‘You
promised
.’

‘No,’ Mul en said, cold. ‘No, he fucking didn’t.’

‘Is there anywhere else?’ Thorne asked. ‘Anywhere else he might have taken him?’

Thorne could see that as soon as the idea presented itself to her, she knew it was the right one.

‘His mother’s house. She had a cottage somewhere near Luton, in the middle of bloody nowhere.’ She couldn’t look at her husband. ‘I went there once.’

‘Cal him,’ Thorne said.

She closed her eyes and clamped a hand across her mouth, which muffled the end of her refusal.

‘
Call
him . . .
’

It took a few minutes before Mul en and Thorne saw her walk across to her bag, take out her phone. Watched her gather herself, and dial.

Then speak to the man who had kidnapped her son.

She told him that she needed to talk; that she knew it was late but that she was coming to see him. She insisted. She said she knew where he was and swore that she would be coming alone.

She pressed back fresh tears and took a deep breath before she asked how Luke was.

Then she hung up.

Nodded . . .

Mul en was face to face with Thorne before he had completed a step. ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Just try and fucking stop me.’

Thorne looked into Mul en’s eyes and knew that if he
did
, and it got physical, he would be in serious trouble. ‘It’s real y not a good idea,’ he said, brandishing his mobile. ‘Don’t make me get a uniform over here.’

Mul en took a few seconds, but final y stepped away. When Thorne asked where his car keys were, Mul en handed them over. Looking at him, Thorne suddenly remembered what Hendricks had told him about seeing the child on the bed that was real y a mortuary slab. Thorne saw a man who knew that his son’s life was in somebody else’s hands; and that his own pride and stupidity might have helped put it there.

He led Maggie Mul en to the front door and opened it. She walked out without looking back and moved towards the car. Thorne turned to see Juliet Mul en sitting halfway up the stairs and her father climbing towards her.

‘It’l be al right, sir,’ Thorne said.

TWENTY-SIX

Thorne drove, glancing down every now and again at the road atlas open in his lap. At the square of countryside between Luton and Stevenage that Maggie Mul en had identified as their destination. Swal owing up the tarmac in Tony Mul en’s Mercedes, the A1 almost empty as it neared eleven o’clock, it wouldn’t take much more than another twenty minutes to get there.

If they could find it.

He spoke to Porter again as he pushed the car north. Tel ing her where he was heading, talking her through his likeliest route. Porter sounded tense, knowing she could do little but take her team in the same direction and wait for more specific instructions.

‘Goes without saying that you keep me up to speed, right?’

‘So why say it, then?’

‘Tom—’

‘You’l know where as soon as I know,’ Thorne said. ‘
If
I know . . .’

Another glance down, once he’d hung up, and one more at the woman in the passenger seat. They’d barely spoken since they’d left the house in Arkley. Maggie Mul en had spent most of the time staring hard out of the window, not wanting to risk making any kind of contact until she had to, unwil ing, or afraid, to catch Thorne’s eye. To engage.

They drove on in silence, save for the low hum of the big engine and the hiss of the tyres against a stil slick road, though the rain had stopped. It would have been wrong, of course, horribly inappropriate, but just for a second or two Thorne had considered reaching for the stereo, as the atmosphere in the car grew more uncomfortable with every minute and every mile.

He wondered what Tony Mul en’s taste in music might be. The trivial nature of the thought was a welcome relief from the darker ones that sloshed around in his brain. The blackness spreading, discolouring the contents. He thought about Tony Mul en waiting back at the house. Had he got on the phone to Jesmond or any of his other friends in high places yet? What on earth would he have said to them if he had?

Thorne touched 110 in the outside lane. Hoped the Hertfordshire traffic boys were a long way away.

‘You think I should have spoken up?’ she said suddenly.

Thorne focused on the tail-lights ahead of him. ‘Fuck, yes.’

‘I was trying to protect Luke.’

‘You’re wel aware how ridiculous that sounds, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘That’s obvious . . .’

‘I knew he wouldn’t hurt him.’

‘You stil sure?’

She hesitated.

‘And are you sure that keeping al this to yourself had nothing to do with Sarah Hanley? With the fact that you’d be in just as much trouble as he was if it came out?’

Her answer wasn’t quick in coming. ‘He said we’d both go to prison for it.’

‘Right. Turned your stupid threat back on you, didn’t he?’

She closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’

Thorne grunted, satisfied. ‘You didn’t want to go to prison . . .’

‘He asked me what it felt like, being without my son,’ she said. There was an edge to her voice, and a hardness in her expression when Thorne glanced across. ‘He asked me how I thought I’d feel if I lost
both
of them. If I spent however many years it might be inside, while they grew up without me.’ She straightened out the seat belt across her chest. ‘No, I didn’t want to go to prison.’

‘It’s no excuse,’ Thorne said. ‘You said yourself that you didn’t know what was going on in this man’s head. That you were scared, that he was out of control.’

‘I talked to him,’ she said. ‘I tried to keep him calm, to reassure him, if you like, but it was al for Luke . . .’

The thought struck Thorne with such force that Maggie Mul en slid away from him, inching towards the passenger door when he turned and looked at her again. ‘What did you tel him about the case?’

The silence was answer enough.

‘You told him that we had the fingerprints, didn’t you? That we got Conrad Al en’s prints off the videotape. That we were close to an address.’

‘I thought he’d stop it if he knew the police were coming. I wanted him to give up.’

‘What about Kathleen Bristow?’ Thorne was asking himself as much as he was asking her, working through the chronology in his head, putting the pieces in the correct order. Had Kathleen Bristow died before or after her kil er had been interviewed? ‘He knew we were coming to see him, didn’t he? You told him we were asking about Grant Freestone, that we’d be talking to members of the panel . . .’

‘It was al going to come out anyway,’ she said. ‘What had happened, I mean. I thought if I could make him understand that, he would let me have Luke back.’

‘You thought wrong.’ Thorne was forcing the accelerator to the floor, squeezing the wheel. ‘He kil ed her, same as he kil ed Conrad Al en and Amanda Tickel . It sounds to me like those three deaths are down to you.’

‘Please . . .’

‘Three
more
deaths.’

She turned away. Leaned her forehead against the window.

‘Whatever you
thought
you were doing, you were just pushing al the buttons.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘I hope Luke’s alive, that he hasn’t been hurt; more than anything, I hope that. But if he isn’t . . .’

She moaned, her head sliding against the glass.

‘It’s probably no more than you deserve.’

Thorne drove on, past signs for Welham Green and Hatfield, past the turn-off to St Albans that he’d taken so many times when his father was alive.

The water on the road was like a long, lonely
shush
beneath them.

Without turning, Maggie Mul en said, ‘She was dead when we left. Sarah. She’d lost such a lot of blood.’

Thorne thought she sounded pathetic. He felt numb, cold, without anything even close to sympathy. Knowing what might be waiting for him when they arrived at their destination, he thought it was probably the best way to be. ‘Right. And you watched her die.’

They turned off the A1 just past Welwyn Garden City. That much she could remember. But from there on it was hit and hope. There were some fragmented memories of the vil age they were looking for – a large house on its outskirts, a church – but no more than that.