Luke Mullen had been charged with the murder of Peter Lardner, though there was good reason to believe that when it eventually came to trial, the jury would not convict. Thorne was happy to take the stand as a defence witness, and believed that the extenuating circumstances which would probably see Luke Mullen acquitted – along with the fact of Tony Mullen’s former position – probably accounted for why the magistrate had decided to release the boy into his father’s custody. There were strict conditions, of course: Luke would need to report to a police station at regular intervals. He would not be going back to school.
It had been an equally brave decision to remand Maggie Mullen for trial in Holloway Prison.
Although, in the end, the magistrate had been left with little choice. The charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice, relating to the death of Sarah Hanley, certainly warranted bail, and a surety of fifty thousand pounds was set. However, once Tony Mullen – the only person in a position to act as guarantor – had refused point-blank to do so, prison had been the court’s only option.
Thorne remembered Mullen’s face in the sitting room as his wife had made her confession, and guessed that his decision to see her jailed had probably been easier to make than the magistrate’s.
What had Thorne said to Porter that night?
Not much of a family for him to go back to…
And unbidden, as Thorne remained motionless, different voices started to make themselves heard. Drifting in from nowhere and demanding attention.
A series of remarks and suggestions that began to curl around or lie across one another; to tease and illuminate.
Insisting…
I’ve always thought the sexual element of the attack was more important.
Listen, I accept all the evidence about abusers having been abused themselves.
Maybe it wasn’t Luke he was calling.
We already looked at the parents.
Until one single, big idea crowded out all the others, and the noise in Thorne’s head was louder, harder to ignore, than that coming from the machine.
And what Lardner had said. The last thing he’d said:
Why don’t you tell the inspector all about it? Why you can’t bear to let him touch you…
Thorne pulled off the headphones and began to squeeze the rubber button.
Jane Freestone had stood up and wandered away when she’d seen him coming. Thorne watched her walk to the fence, spit and light a cigarette. Then he sat down next to her brother on the bench.
The same one Grant Freestone had been sitting on when Thorne and Porter had nicked him a week earlier.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Freestone said.
‘Calm down.’
‘I’m here with my sister, all right?’
Freestone had been released from custody in Lewisham on the same day that Maggie Mullen was charged. Now, aside from the compulsory rehab clinic, and weekly visit to sign the Sex Offenders Register, his life was more or less his own again. Though Thorne would soon inform those who needed to know just how often that life seemed to involve sitting in a local park, on the bench nearest to the children’s playground.
‘You shouldn’t be so arsey,’ Thorne said. ‘If it wasn’t for some of us, you’d be on remand for Sarah Hanley by now. Watching your back in Belmarsh or Brixton.’
‘Thanks. But let’s not forget you’re the fuckers who nicked me in the first place.’
It was a fair point.
‘All worked out, though,’ Thorne said.
There was a breeze, but it was a warm afternoon. Thorne took off his jacket and laid it across his knees. Petals of cherry blossom drifted gently along the path, and an ice-cream wrapper clung to the side of the litter bin next to the bench.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard,’ Freestone said. ‘That woman, I mean: Tony Mullen’s missus. And her boyfriend.’
‘Did you ever meet her? Back then, when she was Margaret Stringer?’
‘I only ever really had dealings with the social worker, Miss Bristow.’ He turned to Thorne. ‘I was upset to hear about her. She was all right. Bloke that killed her deserved everything he got, if you ask me.’
Thorne shifted his position slightly, and again, until the pain had subsided. ‘So it was a surprise, then, when you found out what really happened to Sarah Hanley?’
‘Big one, yeah.’
‘Surprised to hear that it was Tony Mullen’s wife, and not Tony Mullen himself, right?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m guessing you thought that Mullen had set you up for it. I’m not saying you thought he did it himself, but maybe he was happy enough to put you in the frame for it. He would have been well chuffed to get you out of the way. That’s what you thought, isn’t it?’
Freestone shrugged, worried at his goatee.
‘There’s no good reason not to tell me, Grant. Mullen’s in no position to do you any damage now. Or to do you any favours.’
This was where Thorne found himself, the series of jumps he’d made. A sequence of bleak possibilities that pointed into the dark, lit the blackest corner of it…
If the nature of Adrian Farrell’s crime had been, at some level, a reaction to his own abuse, might he have suffered that abuse at home?
If the calls from the Farrell house to the Mullen house had been from father to father, rather than son to son, what would they have had to discuss?
And what was Maggie Mullen so afraid that Peter Lardner would reveal? Or had already revealed, whispering home truths in the dusty dark of that cellar.
Thorne might never know for sure if he’d got there by the correct route, but he felt like he was in the right place. Felt fairly certain that in not mentioning Grant Freestone, it was more than just his wife’s affair that Tony Mullen had been trying to cover up.
Only Freestone could tell him for sure.
‘You don’t look like someone who fancies kids to me,’ Thorne said.
Freestone turned, his lips whitening across his teeth.
‘You don’t. That’s just a fact. I’ve no more idea what someone who’s into kids looks like than anybody else.’ He nodded towards two old men, deep in conversation a couple of benches along, then at a younger man jogging towards them alongside a young woman. ‘They don’t look like paedophiles… He doesn’t.’ Thorne pointed at a skinny man, looking the other way while his dog defecated on the grass verge. ‘Now, see, he does, and what’s the betting I’m way off the mark?’
‘What am I supposed to say?’
‘Most of us have no real… sense of it; that’s my point. We can’t recognise someone who has these drives, or desires. We can’t pick up the signals, the signs, presuming there are any.’ He straightened his leg, pushed back his shoulders. ‘But I wonder if you can?’
Freestone said nothing.
‘You didn’t threaten Tony Mullen with violence,’ Thorne said. ‘You didn’t make promises to get him, or members of his family. You threatened to expose him. You knew what he was.’
They waited, watched as the joggers passed.
‘It wasn’t like I could just tell,’ Freestone said. ‘Any more than you could. That’s bollocks.’
‘So what was it like?’
‘I’d met him before, hadn’t I? Sunday afternoon barbecue round at a… third party’s place. We talked about stuff, a few of us; there was an exchange of material later, upstairs. Nothing too heavy. But he definitely knew a lot of the people. He knew where all the best websites were… not that there were too many back then. I never realised he was a copper, obviously, but he was hardly likely to broadcast the fact, was he?’
‘Not really.’
‘He nearly shat himself when he walked into that interview room and saw me looking back at him.’
‘So you made threats?’
‘Didn’t do me any fucking good, did it? Mullen said I could say what I liked. Told me he’d just claim he’d been working undercover off his own bat, getting in with a known paedophile ring, gathering evidence, whatever.’