From the Dead Page 9

  ‘I’m perfectly calm.’ Cook folded his arms across his chest and swallowed. His lips were dry and white. ‘And I’m thinking about how many shades of shit my solicitor is going to knock out of you two smartarses.’

  ‘That’ll be pricey,’ Holland said. ‘Hope you’ve got a bit of cash tucked away.’

  A woman appeared behind Cook, asked if everything was all right. He didn’t turn round; just said that he was dealing with something and told her to go back into the living room.

  ‘If we dig hard enough, we’ll find something,’ Thorne said. ‘You need to know that.’

  ‘Have you any idea how long I’ve served as a prison officer?’

  Thorne ignored him. ‘We’ll find the weapon. We’ll find someone who saw you dump it or saw you turn off the security camera. We’ll find someone willing to turn you over—’

  ‘Thirty years.’ He pointed back towards the city, the tip of the cathedral spire just visible in the distance. ‘Longer than most of the bastards in there. So, do you think I’m going to let you pair of clowns get away with this?’

  ‘You’re finished,’ Holland said. ‘Next time you set foot in a prison, you won’t be coming home for your tea.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing else, so you might as well save your breath.’

  ‘We all know what happens to the likes of you inside.’

  Cook shook his head like they were simply being silly. He reached down to a pot near the front door and began pulling the dead leaves from a plant.

  ‘Anything you made on the take gets confiscated,’ Thorne said, ‘and you can forget about your pension.’ He nodded towards the inside of the house. ‘How’s she going to get on when you’ve gone? What’s she going to do with herself while you’re getting spat at and watching your back on a VP wing?’

  ‘Just tell us what you did with the knife,’ Holland said. ‘That would be a good start.’

  Cook slowly straightened up and considered them. He crushed the dead leaves in his fist and tossed the pieces into the flower bed. Then he pushed his shoulders back and stuck out his chin. ‘You go ahead and dig,’ he said. ‘Fill your boots. Get right down there in the muck and see what happens. Because I promise you this: when you’re finished, you’ll be covered in it.’ He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, rocked on the balls of his feet. ‘You’ll find bugger all, because there’s bugger all to find. You’ll look stupid, but from what I’ve been reading lately, I reckon you’re probably used to that.’

  ‘Are you done?’ Thorne asked.

  Cook stepped back and reached across to pull a tabloid newspaper from a table against the wall. He stabbed at the front page. ‘This was your lot, wasn’t it?’ He gleefully turned the paper round to show them.

  There was a picture of Adam Chambers on the front page.

  ‘How much did that little fiasco cost?’

  The day was brighter and still mercifully free from rain, so the view from the southbound train was less depressing, but Thorne felt every bit as frustrated as he had done the day before. Three men, each with a connection of some kind to Alan Langford. One dead and the other two – so far at least – saying nothing. Scared or just bloody-minded, it didn’t much matter, as far as making progress in the case went.

  Brick walls, as solid as any of those around Wakefield Prison.

  Thorne looked across at the table opposite. A young couple sat where the elderly one had been a day earlier, and he wondered if he was in exactly the same carriage, on the same train. He sent Holland to the buffet car for coffees and told him to make sure he got a receipt.

  Then he called Anna Carpenter.

  She sounded pleased to hear from him. Thorne imagined her sitting alone in her office, bored and flicking through a magazine. He told her where he was calling from, where he had spent the best part of the day.

  She laughed. ‘Didn’t trust me to have another crack at Monahan, then.’

  ‘Monahan’s dead.’

  She said nothing for a few seconds, then spluttered a ‘Jesus’.

  ‘So, you know . . . things have changed.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I can’t really go into it,’ Thorne said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I just thought you should be aware that it’s all a bit more serious now.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘Just, you might want to think about . . . Anna?’ He realised that she could no longer hear him and put the phone down on the table. He stared at the handset, waiting for the signal to return, but unsure as to exactly what he would say when it did, or even why he’d called her in the first place. After a minute or so, the icon reappeared on the screen and he called her back. ‘Sorry, lost you. I was just saying—’

  ‘Donna called me,’ Anna said. ‘She was really upset.’

  ‘She got another photo.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It makes sense, that’s all. Whoever’s sending them hasn’t got what they want yet.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Pass.’

  ‘She sounds like she’s losing it. Keeps going on about how he’s got her daughter.’

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  There was no reply and, after a few seconds, Thorne realised that the connection had been broken again. While he was looking at the phone, Holland returned with the drinks. He sat down and handed over the change and the receipt. Then, while Thorne was putting the money into his wallet, the phone rang.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Anna said. ‘Why don’t we just meet up for a drink tonight?’

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘Any time is good for me.’

  ‘We can sort it out later.’

  ‘Or I could buy you dinner or something.’ She laughed. ‘As long as it’s cheap.’

  ‘A drink is fine.’ He looked across, saw Holland pretending not to listen, staring into his tea.

  ‘Have you got a decent local?’

  ‘I’ll come to you,’ Thorne said.

  TEN

  When it came to bar snacks, Thorne preferred pickled eggs and peanuts to bowls of oversized olives at four quid a pop. And he was never likely to feel too comfortable in a place where conversations had to be conducted above the sound of tuneless jazz and the barmen looked like they belonged on the front cover of GQ. That said, it was preferable to the ersatz bejeezus-ness of an Irish theme pub, or even a ‘proper’ old boozer, where miserable old men propped up the bar and your feet stuck to the floor, where lager-top was considered to be a cocktail, and where, male or female, the person pulling the pints looked as if they’d once been a fair-to-middling heavyweight. In fact, Thorne only ever felt totally relaxed in the upstairs room of the Grafton Arms. Five minutes’ staggering distance from his flat. Playing pool with Phil Hendricks until chucking-out time and putting the world to rights.

  Football and music. Love lives and their attendant headaches. Spatter patterns, rigor mortis and knife wounds.

  Anna Carpenter seemed to be in her element, though, with her hair tied back and dressed in the same corduroy jacket she had worn to her first meeting with Thorne. And she was certainly enjoying the olives. ‘This place isn’t as poncey as it looks,’ she said. ‘And the food’s not bad, as it happens. You sure you don’t want something?’

  ‘I can’t stay that long,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I mean, you get a few idiots in here sometimes, but you get them everywhere, and, if you ask me, when you’re out somewhere it’s down to the company as much as the place itself. Yeah, it’s handy, ’cause it’s midway between the office and my flat, but me and Rob and Angie, they’re probably my best mates, we’ve actually had a few good nights in here. Had a laugh, you know?’

  Thorne nodded. It struck him that she talked just as much when she was relaxed as when she was nervous.

  ‘A couple of shit nights as well, admittedly, but they were with my flatmate and her latest boyfriend.’

  Thorne reached for his glass. ‘What about you?’
>
  ‘What about me, what?’

  ‘No “latest boyfriend”?’

  ‘None worth talking about.’ She used the edge of her hand to sweep the discarded olive stones into the empty bowl, then looked up at Thorne.

  A full stop.

  Thorne swallowed a mouthful of Guinness. ‘Listen, like I said on the phone, I think you should probably step back from all this now.’

  ‘You never said that.’

  ‘It’s what I was trying to say.’

  ‘But it’s my case,’ she said.

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Donna came to me and I told her I would help. I took it on, and I can’t just walk away from it now because things have got a bit heavy.’

  ‘A bit?’

  She shrugged. ‘I took it on.’

  ‘That was when it was just about a photograph,’ Thorne said. ‘Now it’s a murder. A new murder.’ He had already given her the headlines on the Monahan killing: the prime suspect from a few cell doors along, the missing murder weapon and the prison officer who was probably an accessory.

  ‘I still don’t understand why Monahan was killed,’ she said. ‘I mean, we’d already talked to him and he didn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘Langford didn’t know that, though.’ Thorne sat back, thinking out loud. ‘Or even if he did, he didn’t know what Monahan might decide to say further down the line, once he’d had a bit of time to weigh up his options. Monahan was the only person who could finger Langford for the murder ten years ago, or for conspiracy to murder at the very least. So, as soon as Langford found out he was on our radar again, he couldn’t take that chance.’

  ‘He was getting rid of a potential witness.’

  ‘Right.’

  Anna nodded, taking it in. She leaned towards her wine glass, then stopped. ‘But how did Langford know?’ she asked. ‘That we’d talked to Monahan, I mean.’

  ‘It’s a very good question.’ What had he said to Holland? A seriously good set of jungle drums . . .

  ‘Maybe Grover told him?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘That would make sense, don’t you think? Let’s say Grover was his mole inside the prison, keeping an eye on Monahan for him. Grover tells Langford that we’ve been in to see Monahan . . .’

  ‘It’s possible, but—’

  ‘. . . then Langford tells Grover to kill Monahan.’

  ‘It happened too fast, though.’

  ‘Like you said, he couldn’t afford to take any chances.’

  Thorne was not convinced. ‘The likes of Alan Langford try not to get too closely involved,’ he said. ‘There was probably a go-between. More than one, even.’

  ‘What about the bent prison guard, then? Cook?’

  ‘I reckon we’ll find out soon enough,’ Thorne said. He was in no hurry to head back up north and had been happy to delegate, to leave Howard Cook and Jeremy Grover to the less-than-tender mercies of his West Yorkshire counterpart. Much as he had taken a dislike to DI Andy Boyle, Thorne felt sure that when it came to putting the squeeze on, the Yorkshireman would make a decent job of it. He emptied his glass and caught the half-smile on Anna’s face. ‘What?’

  ‘This is good, isn’t it?’ She moved her hand backwards and forwards. ‘The pair of us batting ideas around, trying to work stuff out.’ She finished her own drink. ‘It’s what I thought it would be like all the time, being a detective.’

  Thorne went to fetch more drinks. He waited at the bar, wishing that the background music would fade a little further into the background and failing to catch the eye of a barmaid who was every bit as attractive as her male colleagues. He was finally served by one of the GQ boys and carried the drinks back to the table.

  ‘What you said before’ – Thorne handed Anna her glass of Merlot – ‘about what you thought it was going to be like. Sounds like you’ve been disappointed.’

  ‘I think I was just naïve,’ she said.

  ‘So, not the cleverest career move, then?’

  She told him about how unhappy she had been working at the bank. How fearful. Drifting towards a future that had seemed mapped out, the pressure of it becoming increasingly unbearable and nudging her towards a potentially dangerous depression every day. How a move as rash and off the wall as the one she had eventually made had come to feel in the end like the only option she had left. ‘I never fitted in,’ she said. ‘Not really. Never said the right thing, wore the right thing, did the right thing.’ She thought for a few seconds. ‘Never have, if I’m being honest.’ She looked down and rubbed at the edge of the table with a finger. ‘Fitted in, I mean.’

  ‘It’s overrated,’ Thorne said.

  ‘The stupid thing is that, for a while, I really thought I’d landed on my feet. Frank Anderson said he needed someone like me, and I felt . . . vindicated, you know? I thought he meant someone enthusiastic, eager to learn the ropes, all that. Actually, he just wanted someone who could keep the agency records straight and nip to the off licence when he ran out of Scotch.’ She took a sip of wine, then another. ‘Plus, he knew there was decent money to be made if he could get into the honey-trap market, and he couldn’t really provide the honey himself. ’

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘So, back on with the slap and the high heels again.’ Anna’s face was not quite as red as her wine, but there was not a great deal in it. ‘Who would have thought anything could be less sexy than banking, eh?’

  Thorne laughed.

  ‘Not to mention making me feel even less good about what I was doing for a living.’

  ‘I gave up worrying about that a long time ago,’ Thorne said.

  ‘So, yeah, I’ve been disappointed.’ She tapped a finger against the rim of her glass, staring down at a fingernail that Thorne could see was chipped and bitten. ‘But not as disappointed as some.’ She looked up. ‘My parents weren’t exactly thrilled.’

  ‘You can see their point.’

  ‘They couldn’t see mine, though.’ Her tone was casual enough, but there was tension around her mouth. ‘My mum especially. We had words.’

  Thorne struggled for something to say. He thought about some of the words he had exchanged with his father, both before and after the old man’s death a few years earlier. He had learned since that the fire in which his father had died had not been accidental, that Jim Thorne had been targeted because of him.

  Thorne still woke up sometimes stinking of sweat, tasting the smoke.

  He looked across at Anna and thought about saying ‘Sorry’ or ‘Be glad you’ve still got them.’ In the end, though, he settled for an understanding nod and the safety of his beer glass.

  ‘I think I’ll go and see Donna tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘OK, but I already told you what she told me.’

  ‘Right, but I need to pick up this latest photo. And I want to talk to her about Langford. I know she hasn’t clapped eyes on him for ten years, but she still knows him better than anybody else.’ He caught Anna’s look. ‘What?’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  It was a fair point. Donna Langford had not known too much about what her husband was thinking ten years earlier. She had not known that he had rumbled her, that he planned to fake his own death and skip off with everything, leaving her to rot in prison. She had not known he would come back years later and snatch their daughter. ‘OK, but she’s the closest thing I’ve got to him,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Sounds like a plan, then.’

  ‘This is what being a detective’s like, most of the time. Making it up as you go along.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Donna trusts me.’

  ‘I told you, you need to back away.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but—’

  ‘Langford found out we’d been to see Monahan, so he’ll also know we’re talking to Donna.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ Anna said.

  Thorne could see that she meant it. ‘Then you’re stupid,’ he said. �
��And I need to get home . . .’

  When Thorne came out of the Gents’ she was waiting for him, standing by the bar’s main door, with her hands in her pockets. He offered to run her home, but she reminded him that her flat was only a five-minute walk away.

  ‘Good luck tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I mean obviously you’d get more out of Donna if I was there.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to make up quite so much as you went along.’

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  She pushed open the door to the street and they both grimaced at the blast of cold air.

  ‘That’s something we’ve got in common,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ELEVEN

  He carried a bottle of decent wine out on to the balcony, sat and poured himself a glass, hoping it might help him relax.

  When he was younger, marauding around the pubs of Hackney and Dalston, playing the big man, booze always fired him up; made a bad temper worse and turned a minor niggle into something worth pulling a knife for. Once he’d got into his thirties, with a few quid and a reputation behind him, alcohol started to have the opposite effect. Now, much to his and everybody else’s relief, a good drink was more likely to put the brakes on and calm him down. He guessed that was because he was smarter than he used to be. Or just older. Then again, it could be down to the quality of what he was drinking these days.

  Either way, it usually did the trick. And right now, he needed calming down.

  He drank a glass, then another, and felt his mood gradually begin to lift a little. He stared down towards the lights of the town a few miles below, and the bright slice of moon reflected in the sea beyond.

  Silly bastard, he was. Still playing the big man.

  He had overreacted, he knew that. He should never have raised his hands, how stupid was that? He would apologise to the bloke, sort things out, send over a good bottle of single malt in the morning.

  It wasn’t as if nobody ever called him by his real name any more, or that he didn’t occasionally hear it whispered in a bar. What did he expect? OK, it hadn’t been what he’d called himself for ten years, and the face and hair weren’t exactly the same, but ‘Alan Langford’ was still basically the bloke he saw when he looked in the mirror.