‘There was a two-hour window,’ Porter said. ‘And Freestone’s sister claimed he was with her the whole time. Walking in a park with her and her kids.’
‘The point is that she had also given him an alibi six years before that. For the afternoon when the children were snatched.’ Lardner smiled a little sadly. ‘She clearly had the same problems facing up to stuff that her brother did.’
There was a knock at the door. Lardner stood and apologised, moved around the desk and explained that he had another appointment.
Porter said that was fine.
Thorne was still staring at her. Still asking.
On the way down the stairs, he vocalised the question somewhat more forcefully than he’d intended. ‘What fucking sister?’
‘Just what I said in there. Freestone’s sister-’
‘When did you find out about this?’
Porter couldn’t suppress a smirk. ‘I called up the case notes this morning. It wasn’t a big deal at the time.’ She leaned towards the wall as a fully kitted-up barrister charged down the stairs past them. ‘You heard what Lardner said. They discredited her statement because she had a history of lying for her brother.’
They turned at the bottom of the final flight, into the busy corridor that ran alongside the two largest courtrooms. Into a scene they both knew welclass="underline" anxious witnesses and bored coppers; relatives of those on trial and of those they were accused of defrauding, assaulting, abusing; men in new shoes and tight collars; women as glassy-eyed as Debenhams dummies, tensed on benches, desperate to puke or piss, high heels like gunshots against the marble.
All honing the truth or polishing up the turd of a lie. Sweating on the right result.
‘He wasn’t very happy talking about that whole MAPPA business,’ Porter said. ‘Made him very jumpy.’
Thorne agreed. ‘Roper didn’t like it much, either. He talked about it, but there was plenty of stuff he conveniently couldn’t remember too well, that he was just a bit vague about. Know what I mean?’
‘It’s hardly surprising, is it? None of them were exactly covered in glory.’
You didn’t need a degree in criminology to work out why anyone involved in the panel assembled to monitor Grant Freestone would be happier staying off the subject; keeping it as far behind them as possible. A project that had culminated in the death of a young woman – a death for which some thought the panel might be partly responsible – was hardly likely to merit pride of place on anyone’s CV.
‘I think the whole Freestone thing is probably a waste of time,’ Thorne said.
‘Can’t say I disagree.’
‘But I’ll get Holland or someone to track down the other two who were on that panel. Might as well keep it tidy.’
‘I had you down as a messy fucker.’
‘Only when I can’t find anybody else to clean things up.’
‘So which of our white-hot leads do you fancy having a crack at next?’ Porter asked. ‘There are so many, I just can’t make my mind up.’
‘Why don’t we have a look at the sister?’
Porter stopped, began rummaging around in her bag. ‘But you just said-’
‘Freestone’s not a kidnapper, but something won’t let me leave it alone.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘The fact that Tony Mullen never mentioned him.’
She produced a half-eaten tube of mints and dug one out. ‘It couldn’t hurt to go back via Arkley,’ she said.
They stepped out into a square that was thicker with people, as the rush hour started to take hold; and darker, as the day began to dim, running out of breath while those hurrying through the streets at the arse-end of their nine, ten or more hours got a second wind.
Walking past the huge statue of Abraham Lincoln, Porter pointed back to the windows on the third floor of the Guildhall. ‘His office was fucking horrible,’ she said. ‘Did you see the damp? And the mousetrap by the filing cabinet? I’d go mental working somewhere like that all day.’
Thorne said nothing, thinking she did work somewhere like that. All of them did, spending endless hours in other people’s houses and shitty little offices. TV shows were fond of showing coppers, and those they needed to speak to, strolling slowly through the crowd at noisy dog tracks, arguing in meat markets, or blowing cigarette smoke at each other across empty warehouses in the early hours.
It was all about atmosphere, apparently…
But the truth was over-lit and dirty-white. It sounded like the hum of distant traffic and felt sticky against the soles of your shoes. It smelled of old blood or fresh bullshit, and no amount of gasometer-filled skylines was going to make it gritty. The atmosphere – in sweltering front rooms and shitty little offices – could make your guts jump for sure, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention, but truthfully, it was rarely one of menace. Or of danger.
Watching people sob, and rant, and lie. Watching them tremble and gulp down grief.
It was more like embarrassment.
When he stepped off the bus, he looked pretty thrilled with himself; as though his journey home had been a riot of well-told jokes and stirring tales of sporting success. Yvonne Kitson was pleased to see that one look at who was waiting to meet him seemed to change the young man’s mood in an instant. Pissing on Adrian Farrell’s chips made her a very happy woman.
‘Good day at school, Adrian?’
Farrell looked straight through her. He ignored the shouts and the waves of friends banging on the windows of the bus as it moved off and passed him.
‘Did you have history today? I remember you said that was your favourite.’ Kitson was talking on the move now, walking quickly to catch up as Farrell marched through spiky blots of shadow, cast by the trees planted every twenty feet or so along the broad pavement. ‘Got anything planned for the weekend? After you’ve got your homework out of the way, obviously…’
Farrell slowed a little, but he kept on walking, hitched his grey regulation rucksack a little higher on his shoulder.
‘What sort of thing do you and your mates get up to on a Saturday night? My kids are still a bit younger than you, so I’ve really got no idea what goes on, except that I’ve got it all to look forward to. The taxi-service stuff, I mean.’ She was ten, twelve feet behind him. ‘Pub? Clubbing? What?’
Despite their pace, they were moving relatively slowly past a row of detached houses, many of them set back a long way from the road and some with gated drives. Kitson had to quicken her step to get the other side of a Jeep that reversed across the pavement without a great deal of attention.
‘That student who was kicked to death. Remember, I told you about him?’ Kitson said. ‘He was killed on a Saturday night. Saturday, October the seventeenth last year. I’m sure you can’t remember exactly what you were doing that night, but I bet you were enjoying yourself, whatever you were up to…’
Farrell didn’t stop dead, but he slowed to a standstill within a pace or two. He mumbled something as he turned, raised his arms and let them slap back down against his legs. It was a remarkably childish gesture of frustration and annoyance.
‘Good,’ Kitson said, as she drew close to him. ‘Not that I couldn’t have kept up with you all day long. Chasing after three kids keeps you pretty bloody fit.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Farrell said. ‘I talk to someone about this boy in the year below me who’s gone missing. I answer a couple of questions. Next thing I know I’m getting hassled for no good reason.’
‘Nobody’s hassling you.’
‘Right. So nobody’s following me into the precinct in the lunch-hour? You’re not turning up outside my house after school, telling me about your kids?’
‘I’m not here to talk about my kids.’
‘Really?’
A jogger came past, his face twisted into a grimace, as though the song on the iPod he had strapped to his arm was particularly tuneless.