Buried by Mark Billingham

Author:Mark Billingham
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2006-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

‘I’d have to say Grant Freestone could be capable of almost anything.’

Holland, Heeney and Warren were alone again in the kitchen. Danny, the boy who had been so upset, had gone back into the living room to apologise to the rest of the group for his stinking thinking; to get back ‘on the programme’. Warren had told him he should think a little more about what he wanted. That he should count himself lucky he wouldn’t be spending the rest of the day with a bog seat for a necklace.

‘I’d better qualify that,’ Warren added. ‘If he’s still doing drugs, he’d be capable of anything.’

‘You think he might be?’ Holland asked.

‘Who knows? He had a problem when he came out of prison, and I doubt it had completely gone away by the time his girlfriend was killed.’

It was an interesting choice of phrase. ‘So maybe he was high when he attacked her?’

‘I’m not going to speculate about that. Can’t see the point. Make no mistake, though, even if Grant had been close to getting clean, that’s exactly the kind of thing that’s going to dirty you right back up again.’

Holland remembered when Warren himself had started taking drugs. Could guilt about Sarah Hanley’s death have been the trigger for his addiction? ‘You think?’ he said.

It didn’t receive much of a reaction, but enough to let Holland see the question had hit home. Warren turned to the sink and began to wash up the dirty mugs. ‘You asked me if I thought Freestone was capable of kidnapping someone and I’m trying to be straight with you. If you get fucked up enough, you’ll do whatever you have to.’

Holland nodded, waited for him to continue. He wondered, in this instance, if ‘whatever’ might include murder.

‘There’s a point you reach when you don’t think about what you’re doing. You think you’re being clever when in fact you’re doing something really fucking stupid. You’re just focused on getting the money to buy what you need.’

Warren had been told no more than he needed to know. When Holland had begun talking about a kidnapping, the counsellor had made the natural assumption about the motive. He didn’t know that, for all his speculation about what a junkie might do if he was desperate enough, the person holding Luke Mullen had yet to make any ransom demand. Why was still as much of a mystery as who, but it was starting to look like money had bugger-all to do with it.

All the same, the drug angle was interesting in at least one respect. ‘Does the name Conrad Allen mean anything, Neil?’

Warren turned from the sink. Shook his head.

‘What about Amanda Tickell?’

‘Who?’ Warren reached for a tea-towel, spoke again before Holland had finished repeating the name. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s really no point to this. I don’t think you’re asking if I play bridge with any of these people, and I can’t discuss anyone who I may or may not know professionally.’

‘Fair enough.’ It was the first thing Heeney had said for a long while.

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