‘How many people have you seriously pissed off, Detective Inspector Thorne? You needn’t include the ones you were supposed to be working with.’
Thorne thought then that perhaps Jesmond had been a little more candid in his description of him after all. Or perhaps Tony Mullen was just a good judge of character. He said nothing; just considered what Mullen had told him about putting a list together. Thorne himself would have much less trouble, and doubted that he was unique. When it came to those who might have posed a serious threat to him, or to anyone he cared about, Thorne had no problem recalling every last one of them.
Holland and Parsons appeared in the doorway at the same moment that the phone rang. Everyone, Thorne included, jumped slightly, and Maggie Mullen was first to her feet.
‘It’s important to try and stay calm…’
‘Love…’
If she heard what either Porter or her husband said, Maggie Mullen chose to ignore it. Her eyes were fixed only on the phone as she crossed to where it sat on a low table near the window.
A trace/intercept had, of course, been set up on the Mullens’ home number as soon as the Kidnap Unit had been scrambled, with all incoming calls monitored by Technical Support back at the Yard. If, as was most likely, the all-important call were to come from an unregistered mobile, the Telephone Unit would immediately begin working on cell-site location, moving from place to place where required in a vehicle equipped with the necessary, state-of-the-art gadgetry.
When she reached the phone, Mrs Mullen held out a hand; she turned and looked first at her husband, then across at Porter and Thorne.
Porter nodded.
Mrs Mullen took a deep breath and picked up the phone. She spoke the number quickly, waited, then shook her head. Her eyes closed and she turned away, muttering into the mouthpiece, fingers dragging through her long brown hair for the few seconds before she hung up.
‘Mags?’
She walked slowly towards her husband’s chair, her voice splintering as she spoke, and Thorne could see relief and disappointment, inseparable, fighting it out in the fall of her face, and of her shoulders. He saw how well-matched, how brutal, the two feelings could be.
‘Hannah. One of Juliet’s friends.’
‘It’s OK, love.’ Mullen was on his feet, moving to meet her.
‘Obviously we told everyone we could not to call,’ she said. ‘We wanted to make sure the line stayed clear, you know, in case Luke got in touch. In case anyone who had him tried to contact us. We tried to think of everyone, but there are a few people we must have forgotten…’
Then Mullen’s arms were around her and pulling her close. Her own hung at her sides, as though she suddenly lacked the strength to lift them. Her head bowed as she sobbed hard into his neck.
Thorne beckoned Holland and Parsons into the room with the coffee tray, then glanced at Porter, who raised her eyes from the floor to meet his. He was heartened to see that she found watching the embrace just as difficult as he did.
AMANDA
Everything changed the first time Conrad put a gun to her head in that petrol station in Tooting.
The set-up had certainly looked real, and she’d made a convincing enough hostage, so he hadn’t needed to go such a long way over the top: to pull her hair quite so much, to press the barrel of the toy gun so hard into the side of her head. Later that night, after they’d counted the money and got completely wrecked, she’d read him the Riot Act. Yes, obviously they had to be convincing, but they weren’t fucking method actors! He hadn’t known exactly what she meant, of course, so she’d explained it to him in simpler terms until he did. He was terribly sorry and upset, and only too happy to listen when she told him how they could do things better the next time.
That was when she’d fully understood that she was the one in charge.
All she’d wanted in the beginning was someone to get heavy with a dealer she owed money to. Conrad had managed that easily enough, then they’d just carried on seeing each other. It helped that he was OK looking, that he knew his way around and that he seemed to like looking after her. He’d racked his brains for ways to come up with cash, to pay for what she needed. She was touched and relieved, happy to have found the first man who would really take care of her since her father. The fake robbery idea had been Conrad’s, as it happened, but everything since had come from her.
To get your own way, of course, it helped if you knew what the other person was thinking. If you could predict which way they were liable to jump. Conrad had never been particularly good at pretending he was feeling one thing when what was really in his heart and head was written all over his face. She liked that about him. She’d always been wary of men who were better liars than she was.
Her daddy hadn’t been a good liar, either. Didn’t have it in him. Of course, he may have had some sordid secret life that he’d kept hidden from Amanda and her mother. He may have visited rent boys, or kept a string of mistresses – and, with the marriage he had, who could have blamed him? – but she preferred to imagine him as she remembered him: perfect, right until the day he left. As handsome as he’d been the moment before he went through the windscreen of his Mercedes.
Conrad hadn’t gone for the kidnap idea straight away. He’d needed a little convincing. She’d told him that it would be easy money; that, more importantly, it would be far bigger money than they could get from any branch of Threshers or a BP station. She promised him that afterwards they could make a fresh start somewhere, that she could afford to get some proper help and maybe get herself cleaned up. That had sorted him out; those promises, and the ones she’d made in the dark with her skinny little body.
And now there was the boy. Their overgrown baby hostage.
He’d responded to promises, same as any other man: that he wouldn’t be hurt if he behaved himself; that he would be home soon; that everything was going to be all right.
She looked across to where he lay sleeping, his head on the hands that she’d tied at the wrists with crêpe bandage. She wondered if she should give him another dose to keep him asleep, or let him wake up and see if he’d learned his lesson. The knife seemed to have calmed him down a bit, scared him into being a good lad. Like most blokes she’d ever known, if promises weren’t enough, threats would usually do the trick.
He was a good-looking boy, she decided. His personality wasn’t easy to read, given the circumstances, but he seemed nice enough. She thought he would probably break a heart or two, if he ever got the chance.
THREE
‘Shouldn’t we be doing this in summer?’ Hendricks suggested. ‘I’m freezing my cobs off.’
‘Put your coat on then.’
Whatever the Job euphemistically chose to call a sudden and inexplicable leave of absence, such as that imposed upon him the previous year, this had been about as close to ‘gardening’ as Thorne had come. Or was ever likely to. Half an hour in B & Q one Saturday afternoon and a weekend of self-assembly hell had been all the time necessary to work a small miracle on the few square feet of cracked and manky paving slabs behind his kitchen.
‘I wanted a bit of sympathy, obviously,’ Hendricks said. ‘I mean, that’s why I came. And beer’s always a bonus. But I hadn’t banked on double pneumonia.’
Thorne drank the last from a can of Sainsbury’s own-label Belgian lager and looked across what any self-respecting estate agent – if that were not a contradiction in terms – would now describe as ‘a small but well-appointed patio area’. A couple of plants in plastic pots, a wonky barbecue on wheels, a heater on a stand.
And a weeping pathologist…
In fact, Hendricks seemed to be past the worst of it, but his bloodshot eyes still looked as though they might brim and leak at any moment, and the tremble at the centre of his chin hadn’t quite disappeared. Thorne had seen his friend cry before, and, though it was always uncomfortable, he could never help but be struck by the painful incongruity of the spectacle. He knew better than anyone how strongly the Mancunian could take things to heart, yet Phil Hendricks remained – in appearance at least – an imposing, even aggressive, figure. He was a shaven-headed Goth, with dark clothes and tattoos; with rings, studs and spikes through assorted areas of flesh. Watching him in genuine distress was like seeing pensioners touch tongues, or a Hell’s Angel cradle a mewling newborn. It was disconcerting. It was like staring at an arty postcard.