From the Dead tt-9

by Mark Billingham

  Such provocation, the prosecution had countered at the time, might understandably lead victims to lash out with knives and hammers, or, at a push, to slip rat poison into the old man's shepherd's pie. But calmly planning and paying for a gangland-style execution was a very different matter.

  'Alan was spontaneous enough when it came to using his fists,' Donna said. 'But even then he was usually smart enough to avoid hitting me where it would show.' She had been staring at her feet, but now glanced up towards Anna. 'I didn't like what it was doing to Ellie. What he might do to her.' She shook her head, as though correcting herself. 'I never saw him hit her, but I was starting to think it was on the cards, and there was no way I was going to let that happen.'

  Anna placed a hand on Donna's arm.

  'So, it wasn't about the money, then?' Thorne said. He saw the look from Anna but stared right back, hoping she would get the message.

  I know this woman a lot better than you do.

  'Look, I'm not going to deny that I thought I'd be all right when Alan was dead. That I thought I'd be comfortable.' Donna stared across the park. By now, the Micra was stationary and two young men, two kids , were leaning against it, smoking and laughing. 'That wasn't the reason I wanted him gone, though, I swear to you. I had money when I was with him and I was miserable as sin.' She shrugged. 'I wasn't remotely surprised that there was nothing left, either. I always thought he might be squirrelling it away overseas, somewhere the taxman couldn't find it. Now I know he's still alive, I'm damn well sure that's what he did. One more thing he was planning for.'

  'Why the contract killer, though?' Thorne remembered the smell of cooked meat in the forest clearing, and the questions the prosecution had put to the jury during the trial. The same questions that were posed in a dozen magazine articles and a particularly salacious edition of London Tonight. 'Why bother with Paul Monahan? Why not just take a knife to him or batter him while he was asleep?'

  Donna nodded, like they were fair questions. 'Of course, I thought about all those things,' she said. 'All my options. In the end, though, I was just terrified that I wouldn't hit him hard enough. That I wouldn't stab him in the right place, wouldn't get the dosage quite right, whatever. You wouldn't want to be the person who tried to murder him and saw him survive.'

  'I imagine he wouldn't have been too thrilled,' Thorne said.

  'The way I chose to do it, by paying someone to do it for me, felt like the safest bet.' She smiled, genuine enjoyment in it. 'Alan wasn't the only one who was concerned about details. Eventualities.'

  Thorne glanced across and caught another look from Anna. There was enjoyment in her smile, too.

  Maybe you don't know this woman as well as you thought you did.

  'Monahan's dead,' Thorne said. 'You should probably know that.'

  Donna blinked three or four times, her face suddenly pale. She stared at Thorne for a few seconds, then looked to Anna. 'When?'

  'Day before yesterday,' Anna said. 'He was stabbed in his cell.'

  Donna took another moment, then shrugged. 'Well, I'm not going to pretend I give a monkey's.'

  'I wouldn't expect you to,' Thorne said.

  They watched as a man came towards them walking a Jack Russell. He stopped a few feet away and waited, staring blithely into the distance while the dog curled out a good-sized turd in the middle of the path. Then he carried on walking.

  As he passed the bench, Anna said, 'You should pick that up.'

  The man turned, yanked his dog closer and told her to go fuck herself.

  Thorne stood up and stepped across. 'That's not very polite.'

  The man sighed and tried to walk past, but Thorne moved sideways and pushed the flat of his hand into his chest. The dog was jumping and scrabbling at Thorne's knees as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his warrant card.

  'Shit,' the man said.

  'Now.' Thorne held his ID inches from the man's face. 'Pick it up.'

  'I haven't got a bag.'

  'Use your hands.'

  ' What? '

  'It's all right.' Anna stood up and took a crumpled wad of tissues from her pocket. She leaned across and handed them over. The man dragged his dog back along the path, picked up its waste, then walked quickly away in the opposite direction.

  Anna watched until he was out of sight. Muttered, 'Arsehole.'

  Thorne was still breathing heavily a few minutes later when the three of them began walking back towards Donna's flat. Donna nodded over her shoulder towards Anna, who was a step or two behind them. 'Looks like I picked the right girl for the job, doesn't it?' she said.

  At the end of her path, Donna reached into her pocket and produced a brown envelope. 'The latest photo. London postmark, same as before.'

  Thorne took out the photo, not caring about how it was handled. The other photographs had gone to the FSS lab the day before, and he reckoned if there were any fingerprints to be had, they were as likely to be found on those as they were on this one. He would send over the envelope, though. It would not be the first time DNA had been extracted from the back of a stamp.

  The photo was from the same set as the others. Sun, sea, the usual.

  'Why do you think he's doing this?' Thorne asked.

  'Revenge,' Donna said. 'It's not complicated. What I said before, about not wanting Alan to survive and know that I'd tried to kill him? Well, that's what's happened, except that it's taken him ten years to do something about it.' She wrapped her anorak tight around her chest. 'To take Ellie.'

  'So, why now?' Anna asked.

  'It's the perfect time,' Thorne said. He remembered a case from a year or two earlier. A man whose girlfriend and child had been murdered just before his release from prison. It was as cold and brutal an act of revenge as Thorne had ever encountered, and it had gone on to cost many more lives.

  Donna nodded. 'Couldn't be better, could it? He takes her just before I'm due to come out, when all I'm thinking about is being with her again.'

  'You think he planned that, too?' Anna asked.

  'Oh yeah.'

  'Ten years ago?'

  'You don't know him,' Donna said. Her voice dropped away as the anger took hold. 'First he… takes her. Then he sends these photographs to rub it in. To make sure I suffer as much as possible.' She had taken out another cigarette and was struggling with a disposable lighter. 'He's showing me how great his life is, now that I've got nothing.'

  Anna stepped in and steadied Donna's hand so she could light her cigarette.

  'Now that he's taken away the only good thing I ever had.'

  'We'll find her,' Anna said.

  'I'm dead if you don't, simple as that.' Donna sucked hard at the cigarette, her cheeks sinking with each draw. 'Dead in all the ways that matter, anyway. You lose a child, the best bit of you dies, that's all there is to it.'

  Anna stepped back. She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and looked at the pavement.

  'Any idea at all where he might be?' Thorne asked. 'I know you must have thought about it…'

  'Spain's a bit obvious, but he did know a few people down there. Ex-business colleagues of one sort or another.'

  'Remember any names?'

  'You'd be better off asking some of your lot,' she said. 'The organised crime mob, or whatever they're called now. We had so many of that bunch knocking on the door over the years that Alan was on first-name terms with most of them.'

  If Langford was in Spain, it would certainly make sense to speak to the people Donna was talking about. These days that meant SOCA, so Thorne made a mental note to ask Brigstocke how he'd got on with them. Then he would chase up Dennis Bethell, see if his friendly neighbourhood pornographer had made any progress with the photographs.

  'We'll be in touch,' Thorne said.

  Donna took care to give Anna a hug before turning and walking up the path. Thorne did not even warrant a goodbye. Standing at the car door, he could see Kate looking down from an upstairs window, though whether she was watching him or
Donna, he could not be sure.

  Thorne started the engine, cranked up the bluegrass CD. Then he turned and saw the look on Anna's face.

  'What?' He turned off the engine. 'Anna?'

  There were no tears, but it looked as though they might be on the cards. 'It's just all that stuff about her daughter,' Anna said. 'It upsets me.' She shook her head, said, 'Stupid,' and glanced at him. 'I'm sure you have to get… hardened or whatever to that kind of thing, what with some of the stuff you see. I mean, it's just stories in the newspapers for the rest of us, you know? Dead kids…'

  'You don't get hardened,' Thorne said.

  'Sorry, I'll be OK in a minute.'

  'Take your time.'

  'Have you got kids?'

  'No,' Thorne said. He started the engine again, told her he would run her back to Victoria.

  'That's miles out of your way.' She rooted in her bag, pulled out a small pack of tissues. 'Haven't you got to get back to Hendon?'

  'It's really not a problem.'

  'I'll be fine,' she said. 'Just drop me at a tube.'

  The argument picked up where it had left off; Kate on her way down the stairs as Donna came through the front door.

  'How did that go?'

  Donna ignored the question, threw her coat across the banister and walked past her girlfriend into the kitchen. Kate followed, asked the same question.

  'Why would you care?'

  'Come on, Don…'

  'You've already made your opinion perfectly clear.'

  Kate sat at the small table. 'Look, I was just warning you about getting your hopes up.'

  'My hopes?'

  'I don't want you to be miserable.'

  'You're making me miserable, because you're not supporting me.'

  'You're wrong,' Kate said.

  'I don't need people being negative.' Donna slapped her hand against a cupboard door. 'I've had years of that. I need you to back me up.'

  'I've always backed you up. I'm just saying go steady, that's all. You're pinning everything on that copper and that soppy girl and if you're not careful-'

  'What?'

  'You just might be in for a shock, that's all.'

  'You think she's dead, don't you?'

  'I never said that.'

  'You think my Ellie's dead? I will not listen to that crap.'

  'You're not listening to anything…'

  Donna flicked the kettle on, paced up and down the five feet of worn linoleum. 'I know what this is about,' she said.

  'It's not about anything, OK? I just think you need to be realistic.'

  'You're threatened by her,' Donna said. 'You're threatened by Ellie.'

  'Don't be stupid.'

  Donna nodded, suddenly sure of herself. Spitting out the words. 'You think that if I had my daughter around, I wouldn't have time for you. You're scared shitless about being number two.'

  'You're pathetic.'

  'I should have worked it out before,' Donna said. 'Same as when we were inside. You were always a stupid, jealous bitch.'

  'How can I be jealous of someone who isn't even here? Someone you don't even know?'

  'I know you, though,' Donna said. 'I fucking know you!'

  'You don't know anything.' Kate stood up and walked to the door. 'You don't know anything, and I can't help you.'

  They stared at each other for a few seconds, until Kate turned and walked out. Donna leaned against the kitchen worktop, feeling the anger and the panic wheeze in her chest as the grumbling of the kettle grew louder behind her.

  THIRTEEN

  No more than a couple of days into it, Dave Holland had to face the fact that they might never discover the identity of the man who had died in Alan Langford's place.

  It wasn't that the numbers were daunting. Although more than two hundred thousand people were reported missing each year, only a third of them were adults. Of those, the majority were found safe and well within seventy-two hours, and almost ninety-nine per cent turned up within a year. So the number still missing ten years on was in the dozens rather than the hundreds. The parameters within which Holland was working narrowed down the search even further. He was looking for a man of roughly the same height and build as Alan Langford, who had probably been reported missing a week or two either side of the body being discovered in Epping Forest.

  Thus far, however, there was only one name on the list of likely candidates.

  Jack Shit.

  Holland had started from the assumption that, when faking his own death, Alan Langford had barbecued two birds in one Jag and got rid of someone he wanted dead. It was the ideal opportunity to knock off a business rival, or at the very least to get shot of someone who had simply pissed him off. But having cross-referenced the Police National Computer, the National Policing Improvement Agency's Missing Persons' Bureau and the relevant section of every police force website in the country, no obvious name had emerged. No gangsters, major or minor, no legitimate businessman who might have found themselves in Alan Langford's way, in fact nobody with any visible connection whatsoever to him who had been reported missing around the time that the man himself had apparently been killed.

  It was a shame, but hardly unprecedented in this sort of case. The optimism had been knocked out of Dave Holland long ago, and these days he was surprised when any aspect of an inquiry turned out to be a walk in the park.

  With no obvious enemy fitting the bill, everybody else had to be checked out – those few dozen men of the requisite build who were still unaccounted for ten years after their loved ones had first reported them missing. After two days, Holland was already ranking this as one of the most unpleasant spells of donkey-work he had ever done. Calling the relatives of the missing men, he was always careful not to raise their hopes by suggesting that their loved ones might have been found, especially when that hope would quickly turn to horror as soon as the circumstances were explained. So he was as vague, occasionally as evasive, as he needed to be until he felt sufficiently confident to ask the person on the other end of the line if they would be willing to provide a DNA sample. 'This is purely to help us eliminate your son/brother/father from our inquiries…' That usually did the trick. The sample could then be compared with tissue taken at the original post-mor tem and now stored at the FSS lab in Lambeth.

  But plenty of people could be ruled out before that stage. The PM report had detailed two metal pins holding together the bones of the victim's right leg and though there was little of anything left, Phil Hendricks had been unable to find any trace of an appendix in the victim's body. At the time, in light of Donna Langford's confession, no one had felt it necessary to check whether her husband had suffered a serious leg injury and undergone an appendectomy.

  'You look like you could do with this.'

  Holland looked up and smiled, relieved to see an attractive trainee detective constable brandishing a cup of coffee. She had been paying him a good deal of attention over the previous few weeks, but he couldn't decide if she fancied him or was just arse-licking. He was happy enough either way and certainly grateful for the drink.

  'Bit of a slog, is it?'

  Holland had just got off the phone with a woman whose younger brother, a soldier in the British Army, had disappeared after going AWOL from his unit.

  'Can't you just tell me if he's dead?' The woman had sounded wrung out. 'It'd be so much bloody easier if we knew he was dead…'

  'Yeah, a slog,' Holland said.

  He had found himself constructing scenarios in a bid to explain the often baffling disappearances laid out in the files before him. The twenty-eight-year-old who had vanished on the way home from the pub during a stag weekend in Newquay could have been bundled into a car by Alan Langford or one of his cronies. Equally, he could simply have wandered off the road, three sheets to the wind, and tumbled into the sea from a cliff-top. The thirty-seven-year-old man with a history of mental illness last seen at a bus stop in Willesden could have been picked up by Langford. But he was more likely to have drift
ed into the shadows and lost himself, to die later in rather more banal circumstances than the man Dave Holland was looking for.

  It was a long and laborious process: tracing the relatives; dispatching officers to collect samples; testing the DNA. With no guarantee of a result at the end of it. There was a real possibility that Langford had deliberately selected someone whose disappearance might not even be noted; someone who had already slipped through society's cracks and would not merit a missing person's report. It made a sick kind of sense, Holland understood that, and was far less risky than targeting someone whose nearest and dearest would go running to the police as soon as he didn't show up for his dinner.

  If that were the case, they might never identify the victim.

  They might never pin the murder on Alan Langford.

  Holland took the tea, asked where the biscuits were, then told the blushing TDC that he was only kidding. 'Pull up a chair,' he said. 'I'll take you through it.'

  As soon as Thorne returned to the office, he called Gary Brand, the DI he had spoken to in the Oak a few nights earlier. Before being drafted into the Langford inquiry ten years earlier, Brand had worked on the old Serious and Organised Crime Squad. In fact, his expertise in that area had been the very reason why he had been drafted in.

  Thorne hoped that same expertise might come in handy again.

  'I heard about Monahan,' Brand said. 'Sounds like you've opened a right can of worms.'

  'It was opened for me,' Thorne said.

  'Doesn't really matter, does it?'

  Thorne told Brand about his conversations with Jeremy Grover and with Cook, the bent prison officer. Brand did not seem remotely shocked at any of it, but he was more surprised when Thorne told him what Donna had said about the possibility of Langford being in Spain.

  'Really? I mean, it was my first thought when you told me about the photograph, but you would have thought he'd be slightly more imaginative. The Costa del Crime's a bit bloody predictable, don't you reckon?'

  'We'd never catch any of these buggers if they weren't occasionally predictable,' Thorne said.

  Brand laughed. 'True enough, mate.'

  'Look, it's a possibility, that's all, but she said he used to know a few people who were holed up over there. I wondered if you might be able to come up with some names.'