From the Dead tt-9

by Mark Billingham

  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 dates 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 we
re 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…'

  'Did you get off?'

  Thorne just stared as the woman reddened still further.

  She mumbled, 'Sorry, stupid joke,' and proffered a business card. 'My name's Anna Carpenter, and-'

  Thorne took the card without looking at it and gestured towards the security door. 'Let's go up to my office.' He swiped his ID and gave the finger to the desk sergeant, who was still chuckling as Thorne ushered Anna through the door.

  THREE

  Thorne stared down at the card and the photograph on the desk in front of him. He tapped a finger against the dog-eared business card. 'F.A. Investigations'. The name 'Frank Anderson' beneath and an address in Victoria. It looked like one of those you could get printed up in batches of fifty from DIY machines at railway stations. Thin card and a font that made the lettering look like broken-down typing. A cheesy picture of a bloodhound with a magnifying glass.

  'Don't you get your own card?' Thorne asked.

  The woman sitting opposite picked at her thumbnail. 'Mr Anderson keeps saying he'll get around to it,' she said. 'And he makes the administrative decisions. Right now, I think he's got more important things to spend his money on.'

  Thorne nodded his understanding. Like keeping his Cavalier on the road, he thought.

  'This is my case, though.' She waited until Thorne looked up and across at her. 'I mean, Donna's my client.'

  Thorne could see the determination clearly in Anna Carpenter's face, could hear it in her voice. A desire to impress, to impose herself, even if she didn't quite look the part in jeans and a black corduroy jacket. Like a superannuated student, Thorne's father would have said. She was late twenties, Thorne guessed; round-faced and pretty. When she wasn't picking at her fingernails, she tugged at a strand of long, dirty-blonde hair and shifted around in her chair like someone who found it difficult to keep still for more than a few seconds at a time.

  'I never said she wasn't,' Thorne said. He looked down again, turned his attention to the photograph. A man was squinting into the sunshine, grinning at the camera and holding up a glass of beer. He was probably mid-fifties, with the hair on his head a little darker than it would have been naturally, judging by the grey tangle on his flabby, nut-brown chest. The sky behind him was cloudless, with the jagged line of a mountain sloping down to a dark blue streak of sea in the background, a small sail-boat in the far distance. He might have been sitting on a boat himself, or at the end of a pier. In a restaurant near the water's edge, perhaps.

  'Greece? Spain? South of France?' Thorne shook his head. 'Florida, maybe? Your guess is as good as mine.'

  'It's not Birmingham,' Anna said. 'That's about as far as I've got.'

  The man's eyes were all but closed against the glare, but the grin seemed unforced, effortless. 'He looks happy enough.'

  'Got every reason to be,' Anna said. 'Actually, I thought you might recognise him.'

  Thorne looked closer. A bell was ringing, but faintly. 'What's your client's name?'

  There was a pause, the hint of a satisfied smile. 'She was sent that picture last December.' Anna moved her chair forward until she was tight against the desk. 'That was two months before she was released from prison.'

  'What did she do?'

  'Conspiracy to murder her husband.'

  'How long?'

  'Twelve years. She served ten.'

  ' Langford? ' Thorne stared at her. The penny had dropped, hard, but it made no sense. 'Your client is Donna Langford?'

  Anna nodded. 'She's using her maiden name now, but, yes, she was.'

  'Somebody's winding you up, love.'

  'I don't think so.'

  'You know what she did?' Thorne stabbed a finger at the photograph. 'Why this can't possibly be who she thinks it is?'

  'She told me some of it.'

  'Let me tell you all of it,' Thorne said. 'Then we can both stop wasting our time.'

  Thorne had worked on cases within the last six months that he could not remember as clearly as this one, even though it had been more than a decade since Alan Langford was murdered.

  They'd called it the 'Epping Forest Barbecue' in the office.

  Langford had always been a man who made news. He had kept a good few journalists busy over the years, crime and business correspondents both; his property empire growing as fast as his competitors retired suddenly, vanished or met with unfortunate accidents. He finally became front-page f
odder when his charred remains were discovered in his burned-out Jag in Epping Forest. Then the column inches became feet and yards when it emerged that his wife had arranged his murder.

  Donna Langford, an immaculately turned-out businessman's wife, patron of several local charities and lady who lunched, had paid someone to kill her husband.

  'She used her old man's own contacts,' Thorne said. 'Maybe the bloke she hired was in Langford's address-book… under "H" for "Hit-men".'

  'Look at the picture again,' Anna said. 'It's him. You must remember what he looked like back then. You can see that he's aged, surely?'

  Thorne glanced down. 'Yes, well, he's certainly looking a lot better than the last time I saw him.'

  'If you're talking about the body in the car, that wasn't him.'

  'Donna identified him.' Thorne was doing his best not to sound patronising, but it was a struggle. 'It was his car and his jewellery. That was pretty much all that was left, mind you…'

  'She never knew that was how he was going to do it,' Anna said. 'The man she hired.'

  'She never asked.' Thorne leaned back in his chair. 'She calmly paid an Irishman called Paul Monahan twenty-five thousand pounds. He used a few quid of it to buy some petrol and a pair of handcuffs.'

  'When did you know she had been involved?'

  'About thirty seconds after I met her,' Thorne said. 'When she came in to identify the body. I've seen people react in all sorts of ways, but she just stood and… shook. I asked her if she was all right, and she more or less made a confession on the spot, with her old man still stinking like overcooked meat in the corner.'

  'How did you catch Monahan?'

  'Donna gave us his name and then we matched his DNA to a cigarette butt we found at the crime scene. It couldn't have been more straightforward in the end.' Thorne slid the picture across the desk towards Anna. 'Trust me, cases as piss-easy as that one don't come along every day.'

  Anna nodded and cleared her throat. 'Donna's served ten years in prison, Inspector.'