From the Dead tt-9

by Mark Billingham

  'Just bullshit and bravado,' Thorne said. 'The sound of someone running out of time.'

  Langford lay back on his sunbed. 'Yeah, the pressure's terrible.' He reached for a paperback on a small table, then, almost as if he'd forgotten that Thorne was there at all, said, 'You can let yourself out.'

  Thorne watched, feeling the hate bubble up and the blood beating in his veins. Then he saw Langford glance towards the doors and sit up suddenly. He heard Ellie say, 'Dad…?'

  Donna walked calmly on to the deck, pointing a gun. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, and when she spoke her voice was flat and low, almost robotic. 'Old habits, eh, Alan? Always slept with one of these near the bed. Always thinking ahead.'

  Langford climbed cautiously off the lounger and backed away, his arms held out towards her. Ellie stood up too and edged towards her father. Thorne stayed where he was.

  'This is stupid, Donna,' he said. 'Give the gun to me.'

  He could not be sure if she heard him, if whatever voice was guiding her was simply too loud. She held the gun out further, two hands trembling around the butt as she continued to point it at Langford.

  'He's right, it's stupid,' Langford said. He stepped towards Ellie and, for a second, Thorne thought he was going to use his daughter as a shield. He could not help but wonder, as time seemed to stand still, which of them would be the greater loss to the gene pool. 'What's the point of this, Donna?'

  'I'm giving Ellie what she wanted,' Donna said. 'She wanted me to spend the rest of my life in prison and this seems as good a way as any. The best way, as a matter of fact.'

  'I didn't mean it,' Ellie shouted.

  'She didn't mean any of it.' Langford took a tentative step towards his ex-wife. 'The photos were just a bit of fun, that's all, love. Just a joke, for Pete's sake.'

  Donna nodded slowly, said, 'Not funny,' then shot Langford in the chest.

  Time had caught up with itself and then sped ahead long before the ringing in Thorne's ears had died down. Ellie screamed and kept screaming as Donna lowered the gun. Langford took two paces back and dropped, first to one knee, then on to his back at the side of the pool. Thorne heard Samarez shouting, 'Armed police!' and 'Drop the gun!' and watched Donna do as she was told, her face as calm as the water in the pool while the weapon slipped from her hand and clattered on to the deck.

  Just a pop…

  Samarez, Boyle and Thorne all ran to Donna, while Ellie rushed towards Langford and dropped to her knees beside his head. He was still moving, rocking up on to his side before collapsing back again. As soon as Donna had been restrained, Samarez walked back into the living area and took out his phone.

  'Is someone going to do something?' Ellie shouted.

  Thorne could hear Samarez talking fast, calling an ambulance or doing something far more important, such as letting his wife know that he'd be late for dinner. Gary Brand was standing near the piano, saying, 'What the hell happened?' as Boyle started to lead Donna inside. She mumbled a thank-you and there was the suggestion of a smile as she passed Thorne, although she never looked up at him.

  Ellie Langford lifted her father's head off the ground and on to her lap. She removed a sliver of green glass from his neck and pressed her fingers to the wound as blood began to bubble and pulse. Not as much as was pouring from his chest, though, already dark and shiny against the cream tiles and spreading towards the edge of the pool.

  Thorne walked slowly across and while the girl screamed abuse at him and reached up to pull at his shirt, he leaned forward to watch the first drops of Alan Langford's blood slide over the edge, plop quietly into the water and start to sink.

  Each one breaking up just a little as it went down.

  And between the sobs and the groans and the shouting from somewhere inside, the sound of the pool cleaner, still ticking and slurping as it went about its business.

  PART FOUR

  ALL RIGHT TO TELL

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The swings were every bit as rusty and the goalposts still had no nets, but the small park in Seven Sisters now felt a little more like a place where someone might actually want to stroll or to sit for a while. The weather helped, of course. A spot of sunshine and a few clumps of daffodils always made things look better, no matter how much pain people were in.

  'I'll wait for her, you know,' Kate said.

  She and Thorne were on the same bench that he, Donna and Anna had chosen almost three months earlier. The day Anna had confronted the man with the dog. Thorne couldn't even hazard a guess as to when Donna might have the chance to sit there again. She was on remand in Holloway Prison, awaiting trial for the manslaughter of Alan Langford.

  'You might be waiting a while,' he said.

  'It's fine,' Kate said. 'Least I can do.'

  'You shouldn't feel guilty.'

  'Shouldn't I?'

  'None of it was your fault.'

  'If I'd told her, things would never have gone as far as they did.' She leaned back. The tattoo was partially visible above the collar of her black T-shirt, the first few letters of Donna's name. 'If I'd told her what a bitch her daughter was.'

  'She would've been devastated,' Thorne said. 'And she would've hated you for it.'

  'If I'm honest, that's what I was really afraid of. I keep telling myself that I kept my mouth shut to protect her, but really I was trying to protect the both of us.'

  'Nothing wrong with that,' Thorne said.

  Three boys ran on to the grass from the other side of the park. One of them kicked a ball high into the air, and there was a good deal of swearing as they argued about who would be going in goal.

  'Your friend might still be alive as well,' Kate said.

  Thorne said nothing. He was not interested in blaming anyone but himself. Anna was his scab to pick at.

  'Donna was really upset about that. She really liked her.'

  'There was a lot to like.'

  Kate looked at him. 'You two were close, yeah?'

  'She was a friend, that's all.'

  'And that was all you wanted, was it?'

  'Yeah, I think so. I don't know.' Thorne watched the kids playing football, two Arsenal shirts and one bare-chested. 'I didn't know her long enough for it to be anything, really. It was all just… silly.'

  'You should have said something.'

  Thorne shook his head.

  'Best to be honest, trust me.'

  'Maybe,' Thorne said. Whatever his feelings for Anna had been – and beyond a few moments of sheer fantasy, they had never been overtly sexual – they had been a symptom of something else. It was time to be honest with himself… and Louise. 'So, what are you going to do?' he asked. 'While you're waiting.'

  Kate shrugged, smiled. She looked much older than the last time Thorne had seen her, and she would be a damn sight older still before she and Donna could be together again. 'Go to see her. Make sure she knows I'm not going anywhere, you know?'

  'She knows,' Thorne said. He believed it, but he also believed that prison was exactly where Donna wanted to be right now. It was the only place where she felt she truly belonged.

  'Fancy a drink?'

  'When?'

  'Now? The pub, or I've got a bottle indoors.'

  Thorne glanced at his watch and said that he needed to be getting back. Kate told him that was fine, that she had things to do herself. It was clear that she knew exactly where he was going. The case against Donna was still being prepared, with statements being taken from all those present at the killing and Thorne himself as the main prosecution witness.

  He would not lie about the shooting, of course, but nor would he hold back when describing the extent of the provocation Donna Langford received from her ex-husband and daughter; the mental torment that drove her to pull the trigger.

  Best to be honest…

  'What about tonight?' Kate asked.

  'Sorry, I can't,' Thorne said. Andy Boyle was down from Wakefield and Thorne had promised to take him for a drink. It was likely to be a heavy session. 'I'll
call you and we can fix up a night next week, maybe.'

  'It's fine,' Kate said. 'I know you're busy.'

  They sat for a few more minutes, then stood up and shook hands.

  'I meant to say sorry,' Thorne said. 'That day when I was going on about what you did twenty years ago.'

  Kate nodded, uncomfortable.

  'You said I was out of order and you were right.'

  'Just doing your job.'

  'I shouldn't have dragged all that up.'

  'It's not like I'd forgotten it,' Kate said. 'First thing I think of when I open my eyes in the morning.' She took a step away, then stopped. 'Maybe the second thing, now…'

  Thorne was halfway back to Colindale when his mobile rang. Brigstocke told him he was in Jesmond's office and suggested, if Thorne were not hands-free, that he might want to think about pulling over. Thorne laughed and said it sounded serious. Then Jesmond cut in. His voice was tinny on the speaker-phone, but the severity of his tone came through loud and clear as he calmly told Thorne that Andrea Keane had walked into a Brighton police station at ten-thirty the night before.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  'Where have you been, Andrea? I mean… the best part of a year .'

  They were sitting in one of the briefing rooms at Becke House. It was not a formal interview, although Jesmond was seriously looking into bringing a charge of wasting police time against her.

  'It might make us look a little less like bloody idiots,' he had said.

  The Chief Superintendent had said a number of things since Andrea Keane's reappearance that Thorne would remember for a while. His favourite was: 'Well, the good news is she's alive. Hip-hip-hoo-bloody-ray. The bad news is we're fucked. All of us, but especially you…'

  'Andrea…?'

  She was sitting across the table from Thorne, holding hands with her father. She looked very different from the girl in the pictures that had been so widely distributed after she had gone missing ten months before. She was at least a stone lighter and her hair had been cut short and dyed black.

  She looked terrified.

  'Have you any idea how much effort went into looking for you?' Thorne asked. 'Never mind the cost…'

  'I'm sorry.' She looked at her father. He squeezed her hand. 'I don't know what else to say.'

  'Just tell us the truth.'

  Jesmond cleared his throat. He was sitting next to Thorne, though not quite close enough to hold hands. 'Take your time, Miss Keane. I know this must be difficult.'

  Thorne could not resist a sideways glance. He felt like leaning across the table and letting Andrea and her father know what the caring – sharing chief superintendent really thought. Perhaps he could pass on a few of his senior officer's more sensitive pronouncements:

  'OK, we lost the case, but with her alive we've lost the moral high ground as well.'

  'What's going on around here? Why the hell can't the dead stay dead?'

  But Thorne said nothing, largely because, deep down, he shared many of Jesmond's frustrations. He was not sorry that Andrea was still alive, never that: the look on Stephen Keane's face was enough to cheer anyone with an ounce of humanity. Even so, Thorne was sickened by the thought of the field day Adam Chambers and his high-powered friends would be enjoying right now. The self-righteous bilge that the newspapers would print over the days to follow. The shocking final chapter in Nick Maier's nauseating expose.

  'I was in Brighton for a while,' Andrea said. 'At Sarah's. Then I moved around a bit after that.'

  'You were staying with Sarah Jackson?'

  Andrea nodded.

  Thorne sighed and looked at Jesmond. 'We interviewed her. Twice.'

  'She's my mate, so she lied.'

  'She deserves an Oscar, the performance she gave.'

  'Is she going to get in trouble?'

  'Maybe,' Thorne said. He watched Andrea nod slowly and try to blink back the tears that were brimming. 'What have you been doing? How did you live?'

  'I just stayed at Sarah's flat for the first few months, until things had died down. Then she helped me get a cleaning job, cash in hand, so I was able to give her something for putting me up. Hiding me, like.'

  'You've no idea,' Stephen Keane said.

  'No, I haven't.'

  'What she went through.'

  Thorne nodded, said, 'You are going to have to tell us why, Andrea.'

  'Yeah, I know.' Her voice was suddenly very small. A child's.

  'It's all right, baby.' Stephen Keane leaned across to whisper and squeezed his daughter's hand again. 'It's all right to tell.'

  She started talking fast, as though it were the only way she would be able to get it out, her eyes fixed on the edge of the desk and the hand that was not clasped inside her father's wrapped tight around the arm of her plastic chair. 'That night, I went back to his place… to Adam's place, after the lesson had finished. We had a couple of drinks, talked about other people in the class, just chatting, you know?' She took a deep breath, then ploughed on. 'I fancied him, if I'm honest. He was fit and he seemed dead nice. I knew he had a girlfriend, but he said things weren't so great between them, so I didn't feel too bad about it… Like I said, we had a few drinks, listened to some music. He was pretending he knew a lot about wine, sniffing the cork when it came out of the bottle and stuff, and I knew he was full of shit but I didn't really care. He put his arm round me and I let him. I wanted him to.'

  She glanced up at Thorne, then turned to look at her father. He smiled and nodded. Said, 'It's OK.'

  'We were kissing or whatever for a few minutes and then suddenly his hands were all over the place.' Her own hand moved from the arm of the chair as she spoke, passed lightly across her chest and down to her lap. 'They were everywhere, you know… his fingers. I told him I had to get home because I had an early start, but really I was starting to feel like it was a big mistake, like I'd really messed up, even though he was whispering and telling me how great it was going to be. How long he could… keep going. I told him to stop.' She looked up again and suddenly there was strength in her voice. 'I told him to stop and I wasn't drunk. It was just a couple of glasses and I was… not drunk.

  'But he was really strong, you know? He used to show off during the lessons, bench-pressing and all that, using a few of the girls like they were weights, so when he started to get rough there was nothing I could do. He kept talking to me… while he was doing it, saying he knew how much I wanted it, that his girlfriend used to pretend that she didn't like it rough, but he knew she was a lying bitch as well. I just closed my eyes until it was over, tried not to make any noise, but… he hurt me.

  'He hurt me…

  'Then I got dressed and he was watching me, saying there was no point telling anybody, because I'd wanted to go back to his flat and I'd been drinking and nobody would believe that I hadn't been begging him for it.'

  She paused and Jesmond began to say something about how sensitively offences of this nature were now handled. But Thorne was not really listening and neither was Andrea Keane.

  'When I left,' she said, looking at Thorne, 'he just sat there, sniffing his fingers, same as he'd done with the cork. Appreciating it. Like I was just some… bottle he'd opened.'

  Her father moaned next to her.

  'I couldn't go home, I couldn't bear facing anyone for a while, so I called Sarah and she drove up to collect me. I didn't mean to stay away for so long. I mean, it wasn't like I had a plan or anything, but when I knew everyone was looking for me it just got harder and harder to come back. Then I saw that he'd been arrested, so…'

  She looked up and it was clear that she'd finished. Now her father's face was streaked with tears. Jesmond reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, but it was ignored.

  'So, why now?' Thorne asked. 'Why did you come back now?'

  'Because he got off. Because he walked out of that courtroom like butter wouldn't melt and I watched him on the TV and saw him in the papers and it felt like he was doing it to me all over again. Like he was doing it to e
veryone.'

  'What if he hadn't got off? Would you have done nothing and let him go down for murder?'

  'Like a shot,' she said. 'Even if it meant staying away for good. Knowing he'd been punished for something would have made that worth it.'

  'What about your parents? How could you not have told them you were OK?' Thorne blinked as he remembered asking Ellie Langford almost exactly the same question a few weeks before.

  'I would have let them know,' Andrea said. 'And they would have understood.' She looked at her father. 'They'd have kept the secret.'

  Stephen Keane nodded, sat back and wiped his face. 'So… that's it.'

  'Right,' Jesmond said. 'Thanks…'

  As the chief superintendent started to talk about taking statements, sympathy and determination seemed to be etched in equal measure across his puffy features. But Thorne knew how skilled the man was at showing people what they needed or wanted to see. In reality, Jesmond was feeling nothing but pure and simple relief.

  Thorne felt something a whole lot darker.

  FORTY-NINE

  Thorne and Kitson were sitting in an unmarked car outside a house in Cricklewood. The street was quiet, lined with flowering oaks. Adam Chambers had moved in only a few weeks before, and Thorne wondered how much assorted publishers and tabloid editors were contributing to the mortgage.

  'What are you waiting for?' Kitson asked. She did not receive an answer. 'Come on, we know he's in there.'

  'There's no rush.'

  'Really? You must have averaged sixty miles an hour all the way here…'

  Thorne stared at the house. He tried to sort things out in his mind, to compartmentalise, but it was impossible. A few months earlier, Andrea Keane had become Ellie Langford, then Candela Bernal, and now, however much he tried to be professional and pretend otherwise, all of the victims were blurring into one. A young woman who had not been cut out to work in a bank. Who talked too much and told stupid jokes, and who had been absolutely right when she'd called him a fuck-up.