‘Talking of which, I should get myself into the living room and make sure nothing kicks off.’ He took a step away from the sink, the shift in his position leaving the sun shining straight into Holland’s face. The cat was back on the window sill.
Holland narrowed his eyes against the glare. ‘Is Freestone clever enough for this? I mean, I’m taking on board everything you’ve said: the desperation or whatever. But is he actually smart enough to pull off something like this?’
Warren thought about that one. ‘Well, there’s smart enough to get into Mensa, and there’s smart enough not to get caught. They’re very different things.’
‘He might be both, of course.’
‘He’s no more than averagely bright in any conventional sense, but he’s developed a few useful tricks. It’s not so much clever as cunning.’
‘Streetwise.’
‘More than that,’ Warren said. ‘He knows how to get by, but to do the things he’s done you also need to fool people for a while. What put him in prison in the first place, what he is… You don’t get away with that for long unless you can convince the rest of the world you’re something you’re not. You learn to pretend, and you get so good at it that it becomes second nature. Once you throw an addiction into that mix, something you need to keep secret from those around you, you end up being someone who spends most of their life hiding who they really are.’ He chewed at a nail, tore, and ground it between his teeth. ‘Yeah… I think he’s smart enough.’
Holland wasn’t any more convinced than anyone else that Grant Freestone was their man, but he’d been given a job to do. He reckoned that as far as Neil Warren went, he’d about done it. He glanced at the wall, saw that it was someone called Eric’s turn to cook dinner that evening and that Andrew was down to clean the bathroom. He looked at the poem below the calendar. It was still mawkish – and Holland was strictly a wedding, funeral and Lottery man when it came to God – but he couldn’t help but hope that, wherever Luke Mullen was, he was leaving a single set of footprints.
They were still waiting for Porter.
The child who had been so upset – Thorne didn’t know if it was Billy, or even if Billy was the elder – was now lying quietly in the armchair with his head on his mother’s chest. The boy’s face was expressionless as much as peaceful, but his eyes were wide, and fixed on the man standing by the window. If Thorne were letting his imagination run loose, he might have thought that the child had been taught to be suspicious of policemen nice and early. Or perhaps it was just men…
Freestone stroked her child’s head. ‘I don’t appreciate your coming in here, using this place as a shit-house.’
Thorne glanced at the door. ‘I’m sure she’ll be out in a minute.’
‘Your lot always does though, one way or another. Maybe she’d like to wipe her skinny arse on the curtains. Or some of my kids’ clothes.’
‘Now you’re just being stupid,’ Thorne said.
‘It’s about respect.’
Along the corridor, the toilet flushed.
‘It’s about you messing us around in the past: talking shit and lying to save your brother.’
‘I didn’t lie.’
‘Who do you think took those kids, Jane? Did they tie each other up?’
‘I didn’t lie about Sarah Hanley. We were in the park.’ She moved beneath her son, shifting his head from one side of her chest to the other. ‘It was the last time he saw my kids.’
When Porter walked briskly into the room, there was a look on her face Thorne couldn’t read. But something was different. She spoke to the back of Freestone’s head. ‘We should probably get out of your way,’ she said.
‘Nobody’s arguing.’
‘Sorry we disturbed your Saturday.’
‘I still don’t know what the fuck you wanted.’
Thorne looked at Porter, trying to work out what she was doing. He caught her eye for a second, but it told him nothing.
‘Look, I’ll be honest with you,’ Porter said. ‘You probably wanted us to be here about as much as we did, but the visit was actioned, so here we are. Because we do what we’re told. Some idiot of a DCI with a tiny dick and an even smaller imagination thought this would be a good idea. Picked your brother’s name out of thin air, as far as I can make out.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Freestone said. ‘This is something to do with kids, right?’
‘It’s sod all to do with anything, if you ask me,’ Porter said. ‘It’s about coppers making decisions based purely on what comes up on a computer screen, and all of us getting the shitty end of the stick. It’s a waste of time, pure and simple.’
‘If this is an apology, it’s nice to hear. But you can still stick it.’
‘I’ll pass that on to our DCI.’ Porter looked at Thorne, who did what he thought she would want, and smiled conspiratorially. ‘Listen, just treat this as if it’s the routine visit that Hoolihan’s lot never got round to, OK?’
‘Makes no bloody difference.’
‘So, for the record Miss Freestone, just so I can tick a box to say I asked, have you seen your brother since the last time you were interviewed by the police?’
She closed her eyes, rubbed her child’s back. ‘I wish I had. More than anything, I wish I had. I’ve got no fucking idea if Grant’s alive or dead.’
Thorne and Porter drove away without saying a word. At the end of the street, Thorne took a left, cut up a motorbike and pulled hard into a bus stop.
Porter just looked at him, enjoying it.
‘Are you going to tell me?’ Thorne asked. ‘I’ve no bloody idea what I was playing along with in there. What the fuck was all this “we’re sorry for wasting your time” shit? “DCIs with tiny dicks…”’
‘I wanted her to think she had nothing to worry about. That she wouldn’t be seeing us again. I don’t want her warning her brother.’
‘What?’
‘She’s a fucking liar. A good one.’
‘Was this something in the bathroom? Don’t tell me there was a floater in there with Grant Freestone’s name on it?’
‘I found stubble,’ she said.
Thorne tried and failed not to sound patronising. ‘Right. That’ll be her boyfriend’s…’
‘Dark stubble. She’d gone in and done her best to clean up, but I found it under the rim.’
‘Why can’t it be hers?’
Porter shook her head.
‘She’s got dark hair. Women shave their legs, don’t they?’
‘Yes, we do,’ Porter said. ‘But not in the sink.’
Thorne stared ahead through the windscreen, taking in what Porter was saying, considering the implications. ‘Christ, do you think he was in there?’
‘No. I sneaked out of the toilet and checked all the bedrooms.’
‘He may not have stayed there last night, or for any number of nights. That stubble might have been there for a while.’
Porter acknowledged the very real possibility, but there were others she found far more attractive. ‘Or we might have just missed him. He could have gone out early for milk, to get a paper…’
‘We were there almost an hour,’ Thorne said. ‘There are shops in the next street.’
‘Maybe he went to the supermarket. Maybe he went for a walk.’ Porter was starting to sound tetchy, as her suggestions grew more desperate. ‘It’s a nice enough morning.’
Thorne watched a young woman on the pavement opposite, struggling with a pushchair and a wayward toddler. He remembered Jane Freestone pointing towards her children’s bedroom, shouting: ‘Go and fucking-well ask them…’
‘Did you see another child?’ Thorne asked. He turned and looked at Porter, the idea taking hold, starting to jump in him. ‘When you checked the bedrooms, did you see her other kid?’
Porter hesitated, as though a little unnerved by the intensity in Thorne’s eyes. ‘I just presumed she’d taken both of them into the living room with her. I never really looked when I came back in.’