But Kate was already at the door, her back to them, waggling her fingers in a goodbye.
When the door closed, Donna said, 'I couldn't do this without her.'
'Do what?'
'You saw the photograph of Alan.'
'I saw a photograph,' Thorne said.
'Come on, you know it's him.' She leaned forward in her chair. 'You know Alan's still alive.'
Thorne took a slurp of tea. Deciding he might just as well stay until he had finished it, he went over some of the same ground he had covered with Anna Carpenter. Donna had received the photograph two months earlier in a plain brown envelope addressed to her at HMP Holloway. There had been no accompanying note. Two more pictures had followed, both delivered in the same way. Then, a fortnight ago, after her release, a fourth had arrived at the flat.
Donna showed Thorne the three other photos. They were all from the same batch, dated three months earlier, each shot showing the man in more or less the same pose, holding up his glass of beer or drinking from it. The same triumphant grin. The same sea and sky, the same black mountain and distant boat.
'No helpful postmark, I suppose?' Thorne asked.
'All posted in London,' Donna said.
'You keep the envelopes?'
'I didn't think. Sorry.'
Thorne stared down at the photographs laid out on the table, listened to the rustle and click of the lighter, the faint hiss as Donna lit another cigarette.
'Why didn't you come to us straight away?' Thorne asked.
'Because I knew you'd be like this. Suspicious. I knew you'd think I was full of shit.'
'But you didn't mind when Anna came to see me?'
'She's a nice girl,' Donna said. 'But to be honest, I don't think she does much more than fetch and carry. I'd rather you lot weren't involved, no point me pretending otherwise, but if it's the only way I'm going to find out . . .'
'Find out why the photos are being sent?'
Donna nodded. Her eyes were closed and smoke drifted from the corner of her mouth.
'And who's sending them?'
'Where he is,' she said. 'I want to know where that bastard is.'
Thorne fought the temptation to make some crack about knowing exactly where Donna's ex-husband was, about there not being an awful lot left of him, seeing as how he had essentially been cremated twice. He watched as Donna reached for another stack of photographs from a small sideboard, flicked through them, then passed a couple across.
These were much older. Donna and Alan Langford dressed up to the nines on an evening out. Black tie for him, cocktail dress for her, and best smiles for the camera.
'Looks fancy,' Thorne said.
'Some charity bash or other.' Donna spat the words out as if she now saw what a sham her life had been back then. The contented wife. The gangster masquerading as philanthropist. She pointed from one image of her ex-husband to the other; from a photograph taken a dozen years earlier to one dated a few months ago. 'You can see it's him, can't you?'
Thorne looked. He could not deny the resemblance.
'Alan had a scar,' Donna said. 'He got knifed in the belly when he was a teenager, some ruck in the local pub.' She pointed again at the photo of the older man and Thorne saw the mark: a pale line just above the crinkled waistband of the swimming shorts, clear against the sagging, brown gut. 'I reckon he's had a bit of work done - something around the eyes is different and he's dyed his hair - but it's definitely him.'
'All right, for the sake of argument, let's say it's him . . .'
'Christ Almighty!' She sighed, dropped back in her chair. 'Your eyesight going as well, is it?'
'Look, if it's him, it's a fair bet he's not spending his time playing bowls and doing the gardening, right?'
She nodded. 'He'll be into something dodgy.'
'So, I'll put in a word with SOCA and see what they want to do with it, OK? I can't really do any more than that.'
'If it's him, don't you want to know how?' She knocked the worm of ash from her cigarette. 'How he can still be alive, swanning around in the sunshine, when he burned to death ten years ago in Epping Forest? If it's him, don't you want to know whose body was in that car?'
Hypothetical as he still believed - just believed - the question was, it had been rattling around in Thorne's head ever since Anna Carpenter's visit to Becke House. Somebody had been handcuffed to the wheel of that car, even if it had not been Alan Langford. Somebody's flesh had spat and melted on to the leather seats.
'Granted,' Thorne said, 'there are reasons why we might want to find Alan Langford if we thought he was the man in these pictures. But why do you want to find him? I'm guessing you're not looking to kiss and make up, see if he's got room on his yacht for you and your girlfriend.'
'Me and Kate are fine as we are.'
'I'm pleased for you. But even so, you've got good reason to be ever so slightly pissed off with him.'
'Life's too short.'
'For some more than others,' Thorne said.
'I was angrier with him when I thought he was dead than I am now,' Donna said. 'I could have happily killed him a dozen times over. It's not about that any more.'
'So why, then?'
'I want to find him,' Donna said, 'because I think he's got my daughter.'
Thorne had completely forgotten that there had been a child. A memory stirred and came quickly into focus: a young girl standing at the fridge in that cavernous kitchen, pouring herself something to drink, asking her mother who Thorne was and what he wanted.
He struggled to remember the name. Emma? Ellen?
'I'm listening,' Thorne said.
'Ellie was only seven when I went inside, and there was no one to take her. Nobody who wanted her at any rate. Nobody who Social Services considered fit for it.' She leaned forward, mashed her cigarette butt into the ashtray, and told Thorne that with no grandparents to step in, her daughter had eventually been taken into long-term foster care. 'My younger sister would have taken her if she'd had to, but we never got on that well. Besides which, her old man wasn't keen. The only other option was Alan's brother, but he had even more form than Alan, which didn't make him an ideal candidate either. So . . .'
Thorne felt a niggle of guilt that he had not known any of this, nor taken the trouble to find out. But it was the way things worked. Though not always successful, he tried not to think too much about those he put away or the people they left behind. His concerns were generally reserved for the dead and their relatives. But in this case, of course, he had not cared a great deal about the victim, either.
'When did you last see her?' Thorne asked.
'The day I was arrested.'
'What? I don't understand.'
'Obviously she was way too young to visit,' Donna said. 'I was told she'd gone into care, that she was doing OK and that Social Services would consider allowing visits when she turned sixteen. Meanwhile, I got photos.' She reached for yet more pictures and passed them across to Thorne. 'Three or four times a year. Occasionally they let her put a note or a drawing in with them.'
Thorne saw the girl he remembered from Donna's kitchen growing up over the course of a dozen or so finger-smeared photographs. A gawky-looking child cradling a puppy. A girl with long, blonde hair posing with her friends in netball kit. A sullen teenager, the hair now cut short and dyed black, the practised and perfected expression somewhere between boredom and resentment.
'When she was sixteen,' Donna said, 'Social Services wrote and told me that, considering the severity of my offence, they had decided it would not be in my daughter's best interests to visit until she was eighteen. Then, last August . . .' She stopped and took a deep breath, swallowed hard. When she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper. 'I got a letter telling me that she'd gone missing.'
'What happened?'
'She vanished, simple as that. According to her foster parents, she went out one night and never came home. They were upset, obviously, but since she was eighteen the police weren't interested and that was that.' She p
icked up the cigarette packet, then dropped it back on to the table. The whisper had darkened. 'Social Services said they thought I'd like to know. Thought I'd like to know. Can you believe that?'
'If she went missing last August,' Thorne said, 'that was only a few months before you received the first photograph.'
'She didn't go missing. She was taken.'
'Don't you think the two things might be connected?'
If Donna heard the question, she showed no sign of it. She just stared at Thorne, her breathing heavy and her eyes filling as she reached for her cigarettes yet again, turned the packet over and over in her hands. 'I need her back,' she said. 'I was taken from her. Now she's been taken from me.' She looked at Thorne. 'Can you find her?'
Thorne could not hold the look. He dropped his eyes to the tabletop, to the changing face of Ellie Langford.
'Can you?'
An eighteen-year-old girl, gone. Missing.
Another one.
The phone buzzed in Thorne's jacket pocket and he stood up quickly. He saw that it was DS Dave Holland calling, told Donna he needed to take it, and stepped into the corridor.
'It's Chambers,' Holland said. 'It's not good news.'
'Oh, Jesus.'
'Bastard's on TV right now.'
Thorne walked back into the living room and asked Donna if she would mind turning on her television.
It was actually the bastard's solicitor doing all the talking, posing on the steps outside the Old Bailey and issuing a statement on his client's behalf because 'Mr Chambers' was 'too overcome to speak'. Family and friends were thanked, as were those who continued to believe in his client and to have faith in a just outcome. Chambers himself stood a few feet behind and to the right. He kept his head down, nodding in agreement, looking up only once to wave at the rank of photographers who were shouting his name.
He smiled shyly. He'd already taken off his tie.
Kate had appeared in the doorway behind Thorne. 'He definitely did it,' she said, nodding towards the TV. 'I said that right from the start, didn't I, Don? He killed that poor girl and hid her somewhere. Look at him, you can see it.'
'You can't see anything,' Donna said. 'You can never tell.' She shook her head. 'Not everything's what it seems, is it? I mean, I thought Alan was dead.'
'Thanks for the tea,' Thorne said.
SIX
Unexpectedly running into his chief superintendent could provoke a wide range of emotions in Tom Thorne. Revulsion, horror and fury were among the most common. But seeing him with his feet under Russell Brigstocke's desk, today of all days, caused Thorne to feel nothing but a wash of bog-standard bemusement.
Thorne was spotted hovering in the doorway, beckoned into the office and instructed to close the door.
As a man who normally kept well away on days such as this one, blithely wafting the stink of failure in the direction of others, Trevor Jesmond was the last person Thorne expected to see. Had the Chambers result gone the other way, of course, it would have been a different story. Jesmond would have been the first one cracking open the supermarket Cava and saying his finely honed piece to all and sundry.
Failure, though, did not touch the likes of Trevor Jesmond. Not in any sense.
Thorne walked towards the desk, nodding to Brigstocke, who was seated near the window, as he went. Even before he had sat down, Jesmond was shaking his head, then raising his arms in theatrical disbelief and giving it his best, matey 'What can you do?' expression.
'No sense to it, Tom,' he said. 'No sense at all. Just chalk it up.'
Chalk it up? You pathetic, pussy-arsed tosser.
'Right,' Thorne said.
'You did everything you could. You did a fantastic job.'
So, it's my fault? thought Thorne. 'Thanks,' he said.
'Just put it behind you. Get back on the horse.'
Why are you here?
'Now, obviously, I came in to gee the team up a bit in the wake of this Chambers fiasco, but seeing as I'm here . . .'
Here we go . . .
Jesmond leaned forward, leafing through the papers in front of him on the desk. He nodded towards Brigstocke, and Thorne noticed that the bald patch was that little bit bigger than last time; that even though there was less hair, the production of dandruff only seemed to have increased.
'I've been talking to Russell about this Alan Langford thing.'
Thorne glanced at Brigstocke, whose barely perceptible shrug told Thorne everything he needed to know. DCI was a tricky rank; caught in an uncomfortable limbo between the lads and the brass. 'Like a cock in a zip,' Brigstocke had told Thorne once. 'Up or down, it's a world of pain.'
'What thing are we talking about?' Thorne asked.
'No need to be arsey, Tom,' Brigstocke said. 'You're not the only one around here in a bad mood.'
Jesmond waved away the DCI's concerns. He had not stopped smiling. 'The same thing that took you to Donna Langford's this morning.'
Thorne watched Jesmond's smile widen as he enjoyed his moment or two of triumph; watched him shake his head as though it meant nothing.
'I checked the log,' Jesmond said. 'No big mystery. I saw the address you'd signed out to for the morning was the same as the one I've got in front of me.' He picked up a sheaf of papers. 'I started doing my homework yesterday, putting a small dossier together as soon as Russell had filled me in on this photo business.' He straightened the papers, laid them down again. 'So, what do we think, Tom? Is Alan Langford still alive and kicking?'
'I reckon so,' Thorne said. 'Either that or he's got a double.' It was strange how saying it made Thorne realise that he'd known who the man was from the first moment he'd clapped eyes on the photo. That without quite understanding why, it had been easier to pretend otherwise. But having acknowledged the simple and seemingly harmless fact of it, he still felt as though denial might have been the safer option. As though he were no more than a step or two away from a terrible drop.
'Well, I don't think there's any reason to panic,' Jesmond said. 'Russell?'
Brigstocke was cleaning his glasses. 'No reason at all. There's no way a miscarriage-of-justice suit would stick. I mean, regardless of whether the man she wanted dead was the man who actually died, Donna Langford did conspire to kill her husband. She's certainly not denying that, so there's no worries on that score.'
'What about Monahan?'
'Same thing,' Brigstocke said. 'We know he killed somebody, so I can't see an appeal with any legs coming from that direction either.'
'Looks like we can all sleep easy in our beds, then,' Thorne said.
Jesmond missed the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. 'I'm not sure that's quite true, Inspector. In the light of these developments, we have to look at the Langford inquiry again and it seems obvious to me that, in retrospect, we might have done one or two things differently.'
So, this one's down to me as well, is it? Thorne thought. He cleared his throat. 'Such as?'
'Well, DNA and dental checks are the obvious ones.'
'She identified him, for Christ's sake!' Thorne saw Brigstocke raise a hand in warning. He raised his own to make it clear that he was perfectly in control, that he was unlikely to throw himself across the desk and start throttling the chief superintendent just yet. 'The body was the same height as Alan Langford and wore Alan Langford's jewellery. And Alan Langford's wife formally identified it.'
'Even so--'
'And if all that wasn't enough, she knew it was him handcuffed to the wheel of that Jag because she had paid somebody to do it. Bearing that little lot in mind, sir, aside from the formality of the post-mortem, there seemed no reason to trouble the boys in the white coats.'
'However it might have seemed, a belt-and-braces approach is always advisable. And it would certainly have paid off in this instance.'
Thorne could not suppress a grin, remembering something. 'On top of which, I seem to recall a memo from yourself which was widely circulated at the time, implementing a Command-wide cost-cutting scheme.'
/> 'Hang on . . .'
Thorne leaned forward, enjoying it. '"Any non-essential procedures involving payment to external bodies or individual specialists must be carefully considered and if at all possible . . ." Blah blah blah, bullshit like that. With respect. Sir.'
Jesmond's smile was long gone, although Thorne noticed one creeping across Brigstocke's chops. 'We need to cover ourselves.'
'How?' Thorne asked.
'Take the case,' Jesmond said. 'Treat it as though you've just caught the Epping Forest Barbecue all over again. We desperately need to ID the body, and as there's now every reason to believe that Alan Langford had something to do with the murder, we need to find him. What do you think the ex-Mrs Langford wants out of all this?'
From the Dead (2010) Page 5
