From the Dead (2010)

by Mark Billingham

  'So, you got your Boy Scout first-aid badge, did you?' Thorne asked.

  'Come again?'

  'Or maybe you just saw it on Casualty. Either way, very heroic - trying to save your friend's life.'

  'You don't think about it, you know? You just do whatever you can.'

  'You didn't think about alerting a prison officer? I mean, they're probably trained for it, right?'

  'Like I said--'

  'Oh, I forgot,' Thorne said. 'One came along pretty quickly anyway, didn't he?'

  'Bit of luck,' Holland said.

  'So, here's our problem,' Thorne said. 'And I'm sure it's the same problem Detective Inspector Boyle has.' He turned. 'Right, Detective Inspector Boyle?'

  Boyle nodded.

  'Thing is, the man who attacked your mate Paul, who killed him, as it turns out, seems to have vanished into thin air. Disappeared inside a high-security prison without so much as a spot of blood on his clothes and taken the murder weapon with him.' Thorne held up his hands. 'Any thoughts? I mean, you can see why we're a bit confused here, can't you?'

  Grover sat back, stretched his long legs underneath the table. 'If you think I'm going to do your job for you, you're more than confused, mate. You're completely mental.'

  'You sure?' Holland said. 'You don't know anything that might help us?'

  Grover shook his head. 'Wouldn't matter if I did, would it? You know how it works in here. Paul was my mate, and if I find out who carved him up, they'll have me to answer to. But you still don't grass.'

  'That's a real shame,' Thorne said. 'Because as soon as we clear this up, we can crack on with getting your good citizen medal organised.'

  Grover seemed to find that genuinely funny, but told Thorne to go and fuck himself anyway.

  'It also means we can't really do anything but jump to conclusions,' Holland said. 'I mean, we'd rather not, but when you've not got anything else . . .'

  'What "conclusions"?' Wide-eyed and mock-innocent.

  Boyle pushed himself away from the wall suddenly, clearly irritated by the back and forth. 'Like it was you, you poxy little wankstain. You strolled into Monahan's cell and shanked him.'

  'Why would I want to do that?'

  'Because someone paid you to,' Thorne said. 'You were contacted and told to get Paul Monahan out of the way. Now, if you could tell us who contacted you and how, it might make a difference when this comes to trial.'

  'You think this is going that far?'

  'I wouldn't bet against it.'

  Grover let his head fall back and stared up at the ceiling, as though he were considering what Thorne had said. As though the accusations were perfectly fair and justified. When he looked at Thorne again, though, it was clear how little he cared if they were justified or not.

  'I'll tell you what your problem is,' he said. 'This non-existent murder weapon.' He was full of himself now, leaning forward and pointing at Thorne. 'I mean, what am I supposed to have done with it? Did I stab Paul and then walk out of the cell covered in claret, nip off somewhere to get rid of the blade and then calmly stroll back in there again? Is that really what you think happened?'

  'No,' Thorne said. 'I don't think that's what happened.'

  'Well, until you can prove it happened any other way, you can kiss my arse.'

  Thorne said nothing as Grover calmly stood and walked to the door. He knocked, then turned and smiled at Thorne and the others, waited until a guard arrived to take him back to his cell.

  'That go like you wanted?' Boyle asked. He walked around the table until he stood in Thorne's eye-line. 'Happy with it?'

  Thorne ignored him and turned to lift his leather jacket from the back of the chair.

  'Cocky bastard knows we've got nothing,' Holland said.

  Thorne stood up. 'Not yet.'

  It was dry and cold, and Thorne stared out of the taxi window as the streets narrowed and the greys of office blocks and multi-storeys gave way to those of rutted fields and spindly trees, with the black ribbon of the River Calder twisting alongside. 'Whatever we turn up on Monahan money-wise is probably academic,' he said. 'Considering he won't be around to spend it. So, we need to look at Grover as well. Find what he's getting paid for doing Monahan and where it's going.'

  'And where it's coming from, with a bit of luck,' Holland said.

  'I don't think there's too much doubt about that.'

  'Definitely Langford, you reckon?'

  'Got to be.'

  'But how's he organising all this?' Holland asked. 'We're presuming he's still out of the country, right?'

  Thorne turned away from the window, stared over the driver's shoulder at the road unwinding in front of the car. 'Monahan was killed within hours of me talking to him,' he said. 'So, wherever the hell Langford is, he's tuned in to a seriously good set of jungle drums.'

  Before they had left the prison, Boyle had told Thorne that he and his team would start getting stuck into Jeremy Grover and his family, see if there were any funds knocking about that could not be accounted for. Thorne told him that there might be a fair bit more to do, depending on how his and Holland's next appointment went. Boyle said the overtime would come in handy.

  Follow the money, that's what Louise had said.

  She hadn't said anything else the night before, at least not about Thorne's day out with Anna Carpenter. She had gone to bed early, leaving Thorne and Hendricks talking nonsense in front of the television. It was the way Thorne had been hoping the evening would turn out.

  You're not going to get it on a plate.

  She'd said that too, just before things had turned a little awkward, and, much as it pained him, Thorne knew she was right. There were too many hard-arses like Monahan and Grover and not enough luck. On a plate would have been nice, but he was happy to do things the hard way if it meant getting the right result in the end.

  The taxi slowed as it drove into Kirkthorpe, a village four miles west of the city.

  'Reckon you could live out here?' Holland asked.

  Thorne looked out of the window again and shook his head. 'A bit too Last of the Summer Wine for my liking,' he said.

  Holland laughed.

  'Not nearly dirty and noisy enough.'

  'Oh, I don't know,' Holland said. 'I can just see you coming down one of those hills in an old bathtub on wheels.'

  Thorne looked at him. 'Sophie still trying to get you out of London, is she?'

  'We're still . . . talking about it.'

  As ever, Thorne could see that Holland was uncomfortable discussing his girlfriend. They both knew that she was not Thorne's greatest fan, and that she wanted to get Holland and their daughter Chloe away from more than just the city.

  'As long as it's just talk,' Thorne said.

  The driver found the address Thorne had given him quickly enough and pulled over. Holland paid the fare and hurried after Thorne to the door of a modern terraced house. Thorne rang the bell and stepped back, thinking: One of these buggers has got to give us something.

  Howard Cook was older than they had been expecting. Thorne guessed that the man who eventually answered the door, bald and blinking, was only a few years away from retirement.

  A nice, cosy one.

  Thorne and Holland showed the prison officer their warrant cards.

  'I hope we're not disturbing you,' Holland said.

  'This'll be about what happened last night, I suppose.'

  Thorne said that it was.

  'You'd best come in then,' Cook said. 'I've not long boiled the kettle.'

  Thorne stayed where he was. 'I'll keep this quick if it's all the same to you, Howard. I just want to know where the knife is.'

  'Sorry?'

  The sounds of a TV show were coming from inside the house. A lot of shouting, gunshots.

  'Knife, sharpened toothbrush . . . whatever Grover used. I just want to know where you put it once he'd passed it to you.'

  Cook was shocked, or else did an amazing job of looking it. Thorne guessed it was more at the mann
er in which he had been confronted than the accusation itself.

  'How dare you?' Cook said. 'How bloody dare you?'

  'I know you've been through a trauma,' Holland said. 'So you might want to think about calming down.'

  '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 wor
th 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.