From the Dead (2010) Page 2

  'You're kidding yourself, love,' he'd said. 'If you think you're not a hooker.'

  On the tube back to Victoria, Anna picked up a tattered Metro and tried to read. Did her best not to think about her afternoon's work.

  You're kidding yourself . . .

  She knew that the man whose marriage she had probably screwed up was bang on the money in more ways than one; that almost everything about what she was doing was wrong. She'd seen some of the flashier websites and knew how the bigger and better agencies handled the more radical end of 'specialist matrimonial investigations'. There were always at least two investigators involved in any honey-trap operation. The well-being and safety of the investigator were always put first. There were hidden cameras and microphones and pre-arranged secret signals.

  Yeah, right.

  She could see the sneer on Frank's face; hear his gravelly voice thick with sarcasm.

  'So, why don't you sod off and work for one of the bigger and better agencies, then?'

  She imagined herself calmly dishing it right back. Blithely announcing that one of these days she just might do exactly that. The truth was, though, even if she had walked into that sushi restaurant with armed back-up, a concealed tape-recorder and a pen that squirted acid hidden in her knickers, she would not have felt any better about what she was doing.

  The direction her life was taking.

  Money might have helped a little, might have eased her discomfort, but there was not a great deal of that, either. In one of those rare moments when Frank Anderson had not been angry or pissed or unreasonably vituperative, he had sat Anna down and tried to explain the financial situation.

  'I'd love to pay you a bit more,' he had said, sounding almost, just for a second or two, as though he meant it. 'I'd love to, but look around. Everything's gone tits up in specialist services like ours and this credit crunch is biting us all in the arse. You understand?'

  Anna had considered reminding Frank that she had a good economics degree, but guessed where the conversation would end.

  'So, why don't you sod off back to that flashy bank, then?'

  That was a tricky question to answer.

  Because you promised me things. Because I thought this would be a challenge. Because I was bored stupid playing with other people's money and you told me that if there was one job that was never predictable, that was always interesting, it was this one.

  Because going back means giving up.

  Anna thought back to the day she'd phoned F.A. Investigations, excited about the ad she'd seen in the local paper; keen as mustard and green as grass. Eighteen months and a lifetime ago. What the hell had she thought she was doing, walking out on a well-paid job, on friends and colleagues, for . . . this?

  Ten pounds an hour to make tea and keep Frank's accounts in order. To answer the phone and come on to men who couldn't keep it in their pants.

  And yet, despite the way things had panned out, Anna knew that her instincts had been right, that there had been nothing wrong with her ambition. How many people were stuck, too afraid to make a change, however much they yearned for it?

  How many settled for jobs, partners, lives?

  She had wanted something different, that was all. She had thought that in helping other people she would help herself. That, at the very least, it would stop her turning into one of those hard-faced City bitches who click-clacked past her all day long in their Jimmy Choos. And, yes, she had thought it might be a little more exciting than futures and sodding hedge funds.

  Kidding herself.

  Same as she had been when she picked up the leaflet about joining the army, or when she'd thought about a career in the police force for all of five minutes. A year and a half ago, several of her friends had described her radical career shift from banker to private detective as 'brave'. 'Braver than me,' Angie, a triage nurse, had said. Rob, a teacher in a rough north London school, had nodded his agreement. Anna had suspected they really meant 'stupid', but she had relished the compliment all the same.

  A soldier, though? A copper? Certainly not brave enough for that . . .

  Anna stood as the train pulled into Victoria and caught the eye of the woman who had been sitting opposite. She tried to summon a smile but had to look away, convinced suddenly and for no good reason that the woman had got the measure of her. Could see what she was.

  She felt over-wound and light-headed as the escalator carried her up towards the street; desperate now to get back to the office and change. She wanted to get out of the stupid heels she was click-clacking around in and back into her trainers. She wanted the day to end and the dark to wrap itself around her. She wanted to drink and sleep. It wasn't until she got to the ticket barrier and fumbled for her Oyster card that she realised she had a torn page of the Metro crushed into her fist.

  The office was wedged between a dry-cleaner's and a betting shop; a cracked brown door with dirty glass. As Anna was reaching into her handbag for the keys, a woman who had been hovering at the kerb walked towards her. Forty-odd, and something fierce in her eyes.

  Anna backed off half a step. Got ready to say 'no'. The typical London response.

  'Are you a detective?' the woman asked.

  Anna just stared. No, not fierce, she thought. Desperate.

  'I saw your ad, and I need a bit of help with something, so . . .'

  There was no light visible through the glass, and Anna guessed that Frank's lunchtime drink had turned into several. He would have diverted any calls for F.A. Investigations to his mobile and would almost certainly not be back for the rest of the afternoon.

  'Yes,' Anna said. 'I am.' She took out her keys and stepped towards the door. 'Come on up.'

  TWO

  Had they been sitting side by side or staring at each other across the table in an interview room, the crucial difference between the two men might not have been obvious. Not to the casual observer, at any rate. Had one not been standing in a dock and the other in the witness box, it would have been tough to tell cop from killer.

  Both were wearing suits and looking unhappy about the fact. Both stood reasonably still and, for the most part, stared straight ahead. Both seemed collected enough and, although only one was talking, both gave the impression, if you searched their expressions for more than a few moments, that there was plenty going on behind the facade of unflappable calm.

  Both looked dangerous.

  The man on the witness stand was well into his forties: stocky and round-shouldered, with dark hair that was greying a little more on one side than the other. He spoke slowly. He took care to say no more than he needed to as he gave his evidence, choosing his words carefully, but without letting that care look like doubt or hesitation.

  'And there was no question in your mind that you were dealing with a murder?'

  'No question whatsoever.'

  'You have told us that the defendant was "relaxed" when he was first interviewed. Did his demeanour change when you questioned him subsequent to his arrest?'

  As Detective Inspector Tom Thorne described the five separate interviews he had conducted with the man on trial, he did his best to keep his eyes fixed on the prosecuting counsel. But he could not quite manage it. Two or three times, he glanced across at the dock to see Adam Chambers staring right back at him; the eyes flat, unblinking. Once, he looked up for a few seconds to the public gallery, where the family of the young woman Chambers had murdered was gathered. He saw the hope and the rage in the faces of Andrea Keane's parents. The hands that clutched at those of others, or lay trembling in laps, wrapped tight around wads of damp tissue.

  Thorne saw a group of people united in their grief and anger, and for whom justice - should it be meted out to their satisfaction - would be real and raw. Justice, of a sort, for an eighteen-year-old girl who Thorne knew beyond any doubt to be dead.

  Despite the fact that no body had ever been found.

  'Inspector Thorne?'

  His voice stayed calm as he finished his testimony, reiterating d
ates and times, names and places: those details he hoped would linger in the minds of the jurors; combining to do their job as effectively as those precious, damning strands of blonde hair, the lies exposed by a mobile-phone record, and the smiling face of a girl in a photograph, taken days before she was killed.

  'Thank you, Inspector. You may stand down.'

  Thorne slipped his notebook back into the pocket of his jacket and stepped from the witness box. He walked slowly towards the rear doors of the courtroom, a fingertip moving back and forth across the small, straight scar on his chin. Eyes moving too, as he drew closer, towards the figure in the dock.

  Thinking:

  I don't want to see you again . . .

  Not in the flesh, obviously not that, because you'll be banged up, thank God, and growing old. Watching your back and feeling that great big brain of yours turn to mush and staying on the right side of men who'd be happy to carve you up for looking at them funny. Because of what you are. I don't want to see you at night, I mean. Hanging around where you're not wanted and messing with me. Your smug face and your croaky 'no comment' dancing into my dreams . . .

  As he passed beneath the dock, Thorne turned his face towards Adam Chambers. He paused for a second or two. He found the man's eyes, and he held them.

  Then he winked.

  Thorne shared a ride back to Hendon with DS Samir Karim. As Exhibits Officer on the case, Karim was responsible for the evidence chain and for maintaining the integrity of its key pieces.

  A hairbrush. A mobile phone. A glass with Andrea Keane's fingerprints.

  It was a typical February day that had begun for Thorne by scraping frost from his windscreen with a CD case, but still he opened his window and leaned towards it as the car moved slowly out of central London in heavy traffic. Over the rush of cold air, he could hear Karim telling him how well he had done. That there was no more he could have done. That it was as good as in the bag.

  Thorne hoped the sergeant was right. Certainly, without the most conclusive piece of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service had to be pretty confident of securing a conviction before they would go to trial. On top of which, Thorne and the rest of the team had done everything that was asked of them. They had worked as hard as Thorne could ever remember to prove the three things vital to securing a conviction in a 'no-body' murder case.

  That Andrea Keane was dead.

  That she had been murdered.

  That she had been murdered by Adam Chambers.

  Andrea Keane had disappeared eight months earlier, after a judo lesson at a sports centre in Cricklewood. Adam Chambers, a man with a history of violent sexual assault, had been her instructor. When he was initially questioned, he denied that he had seen Andrea after the lesson had finished, though later, when forensic evidence was found in his flat, he admitted that she had been there several times in the past. While Thorne and his team began to build a case against him, Chambers maintained that he had not seen Andrea the night she went missing, claiming that he had gone straight round to his girlfriend's after his lesson. It was an alibi that the girlfriend confirmed, up until the point when cell-site data proved that Chambers had phoned her that night from his own flat. Then the story changed. Andrea had come round after her judo lesson, Chambers had said, but had only stayed for one drink before he'd told her she needed to go. She had been a bit emotional, Chambers told them, ranting at him about his girlfriend.

  He had leaned across the table in an interview room at Colindale station, with a leer that Thorne would need a long time to forget.

  Said, 'She had a thing for me. What do you want me to say?'

  From the moment he and his girlfriend had been charged and the lawyers had been appointed, Chambers changed his tactic. The ebullient swagger was replaced by a sullen refusal to cooperate; the wide-boy patter by two words.

  No comment.

  Thorne started a little as Karim leaned on the horn, cursing a cyclist who had jumped the lights ahead of him. Karim turned to look at Thorne. 'Yeah, in the bag, mate,' he said again. 'I'm telling you.'

  'So, what are the odds?' Thorne asked.

  Karim shook his head.

  'Come on, you're not telling me you haven't worked them out.'

  Karim was something of a gambler, and often ran a book on the result of a major case. It was officially frowned upon, but most of the senior officers turned a blind eye, had the occasional flutter themselves.

  'No point,' Karim said. 'Odds against are way too long. Besides, who's going to bother?'

  Thorne knew what his colleague meant. With a case like this one, with a defendant like Adam Chambers, nobody would want to bet, or be seen to bet, on an acquittal.

  Nobody would want to tempt fate.

  Karim slapped out a drum-roll on the steering wheel. 'It's solid, mate, this one. Solid.'

  As the investigation had gathered momentum and the circumstantial evidence had begun to mount up, Thorne had set about the task of proving that Andrea Keane was dead. Checks were run with every medical facility in the city. Unidentified bodies were re-examined and eliminated from the inquiry. Phone and financial records were analysed, CCTV footage was studied, and all travel companies supplied the documentation to prove that Andrea had not left the area voluntarily. While a massive search continued nationwide and all the major social networking sites were monitored round the clock, a criminal psychologist constructed a detailed and credible profile of a young woman with genuine ambition.

  Someone who had made plans for her future.

  Someone with no reason to run away or take her own life.

  The media had, of course, been utilised extensively, but as was often the case, had proved to be more trouble than it was worth. A good deal of time and effort had been wasted chasing up dozens of 'sightings' phoned into the incident room every week after appeals on TV or in the newspapers. Each one, including those from overseas, had to be thoroughly checked out and discredited, but that had not stopped Chambers' defence team seizing upon them. Had not stopped his bullish, female solicitor suggesting in court that while Andrea Keane was still being spotted on a regular basis, it would be frankly ridiculous to convict anyone of her murder.

  Thorne had stood his ground, drawing the jury's attention to the 'Presumption of Death' chart - a fourteen-page document outlining every inquiry undertaken to support the assertion that Andrea Keane was no longer alive. He had brandished his copy, looked hard at Chambers' solicitor, and told her it was frankly ridiculous to believe that Andrea Keane had not been murdered.

  He had lain the document down again as calmly as was possible, aware of the movement, the noise of a muffled sob or grunt from the public gallery. He had kept his eyes on the chart, swallowed hard as they fixed on a highlighted bullet-point in the clinical psychologist's report:

  Hopes and Aspirations * The missing girl was variously described by friends as 'happy', 'full of beans', etc.

  * She was looking for a flat to rent.

  * She was training to be a nurse.

  'Stick some music on, Sam.'

  Karim leaned across and flicked on the radio. It was pre-tuned to Capital, and Karim immediately began nodding his head in time to some soulless remix. Thorne toyed with pulling rank, but decided he could not be arsed. Instead, he closed his eyes and kept them shut, tuning out the music, tuning out everything, for the rest of the journey north.

  When they finally turned into the car park at the Peel Centre, it was almost lunchtime. Walking towards Becke House, Thorne was trying to decide between braving the canteen or a pub lunch at the Oak when an officer on his way out told him that he had a visitor waiting.

  'A private detective.'

  'What?'

  'Good luck.'

  The officer clearly thought this was hilarious, and that Thorne's reaction made it funnier still: a groan and a slump of the shoulders as Thorne continued, with no enthusiasm, up the steps and into the foyer at Becke House.

  Thorne spotted his visitor immediately and made his way
towards him. Fifty-ish and unkempt, a symphony in brown and beige with dirty hair and Hush Puppies, confirming just about every prejudice Thorne had about sad little men who drove Cavaliers and stuck their noses into other people's business for a living.

  'I'm DI Thorne,' he said.

  The man looked up at him, confused. 'And?'

  'You're not much of a detective, are you?'

  Thorne turned at the voice from across the foyer. He saw a young woman take a step towards him, reddening as she did so.

  'I think you're looking for me.'

  Thorne reached instinctively for his tie and loosened it. 'Sorry.' He could sense the man he had spoken to smirking behind him. 'I've been in court all morning, so . . .'