From the Dead (2010)

by Mark Billingham

  He let his head fall back, felt the first spatters of drizzle on his face, but it was not unpleasant.

  'We should probably go,' Anna said.

  'Right.'

  'I should let you get back to . . . Sorry, I still don't know her name.'

  Like so many other things . . .

  'Louise,' Thorne said.

  Walking back, they talked easily, taking their time as the streets narrowed and grew quieter. They argued about football when it emerged that Anna was a closet Match of the Day viewer. Like far too many Londoners, she was a Manchester United supporter, but Thorne tried not to take it too hard.

  'Could be worse,' he told her. 'Could have been Chelsea.'

  Their pace slowed even further when they reached Louise's road, walking back towards the flat at a fraction of the speed they had left it.

  'Sorry for being such a nightmare,' she said.

  'I'll get over it,' Thorne said.

  Halfway along the street, a pizza-delivery scooter beetled past, its engine whining like a swarm of angry wasps.

  'Bloody hairdryer on wheels.' Thorne spoke without thinking. It was something his father used to say.

  Anna laughed. 'Pizza sounds good, though. My stomach thinks my throat's been cut.'

  The rain was coming down far heavier now, and they were no more than half a minute from Louise's flat. Thorne thought about asking her inside and cooking her something. 'Do you want me to call you a cab?' he asked.

  'It's fine. I can jump on the tube.'

  Thorne watched the scooter reach the end of the road, turn around and start moving back the way it had come. He reached out instinctively towards Anna. 'You sure?' He kept one eye on the scooter. He had presumed that the driver could not find the right address, but there was no attempt to look for house numbers.

  'Honestly, it's not a problem.'

  Thorne felt a tingle build and spread at the nape of his neck. 'Let's get inside.'

  The scooter slowed, wobbling a little as it edged towards the pavement; as Thorne moved his hand to the small of Anna's back and pushed.

  'What?' she said.

  The man on the scooter, his face obscured by a blacked-out visor, was now steering with one hand, and without needing to see what was in the hand that was hidden by the fuel tank, Thorne urged Anna forward. 'Move!'

  The rider raised the gun and Anna shouted, took hold of Thorne's arm and told him to watch out. Thorne half shoved, half dragged her the last few feet until they were level with the low railings that ran along the front of the building, Louise's door was still ten feet below them as the first shot was fired.

  Just a pop, no louder than the scooter backfiring.

  Anna said, 'Christ,' then spoke Thorne's name as the scooter accelerated, a few more seconds of wasp-whine, until it was all but level with them. There was no time to move those last few feet to where the steps wound down from the pavement and, in the end, Thorne could do nothing but push himself against her; pressing her back against the railings, feeling the tremble take hold in his arms and legs, and the rain running down his neck.

  He heard his own name screamed again as he turned to see the gun come up a second time.

  PART THREE

  COAST OF LEAD

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  A few minutes before beginning its descent into Malaga, the plane hit a patch of clear-air turbulence and dropped suddenly. Thorne sat back hard and opened his eyes, aware from the look on the face of the woman next to him that his gasp had been audible. He felt embarrassed, knowing - because he'd read it somewhere - that such fraction-of-a-second drops were actually of no more than a few feet and were insignificant in the scheme of things.

  He mouthed a 'sorry' and smiled at the woman. She nodded and went back to her magazine.

  Thorne closed his eyes again and waited for it to get a little less bumpy. Although he knew well enough that the sick feeling, the wet and peppery knot in his stomach, had nothing to do with turbulence. He had not been asleep, but the images and snatches of remembered conversation might easily have been fragments of a nightmare.

  Eight weeks since the shooting.

  Before the man on the scooter could fire again, Thorne and Anna had gone crashing together over the metal railings and down hard on to the steps. He felt a searing pain in his shoulder, guessing as he struggled to move that his collarbone had gone and dimly aware of the engine noise, the high-pitched drone as the scooter accelerated away. Aware of Anna moaning beside him, the cold, wet step against his face, Louise opening the door and screaming when she saw the blood.

  Eight weeks . . .

  Two since the funeral.

  Thorne had felt stared at; observed, at the very least. Inside the church, in the grounds outside, and most of all afterwards, at the Carpenters' house in Wimbledon. It was probably all in his head and certainly nobody had said anything. None of those with every right to do a damn sight more than stare at the copper who had spent two weeks with his arm in a sling while the girl beaming out at them from the order of service had bled to death in the back of an ambulance.

  I don't back away from a row. Always been my problem.

  One person who did stare was Frank Anderson, recognising Thorne as the man who had stood in his office with a cock-and-bull story about a skirt-chasing girlfriend. But even Anderson resisted the temptation to say anything, while Thorne, in turn, fought the urge to say a few of the things he had been bottling up. All the same, he imagined it, standing in the church and staring at the dandruff speckling Frank Anderson's collar. He imagined taking a handful of the man's hair, ramming his face down into the pew and demanding an explanation for the way he had treated Anna. For the things he had made her do.

  Do you know how much she hated it, you spineless little twat? How it made her feel? Have you got the slightest idea?

  Instead, Thorne stood and sang 'How Great Thou Art' and listened to a moving eulogy from an elder sister he had known nothing about. He spoke to her afterwards at the house, learned she was a successful lawyer. Thorne asked himself if, in taking the job she had hated at the bank, Anna had been trying to compete with her, or be different from her, every bit as much as she had been trying to please her mother. He silently rebuked himself. What right did he have to pass any sort of judgement, to jump to any conclusions about what had been going on in Anna's head?

  Walking slowly out of the church, he had seen Donna up ahead of him. Outside, while people talked quietly and lit cigarettes, the two of them exchanged nods, but she seemed in a hurry to get away and Thorne was grateful to avoid the conversation. The clumsy dance around guilt and blame.

  At the Carpenters' house, he downed a glass of beer and helped himself to another. After all, he was not there in any official capacity, so he could put away a drink or two. Surely he had every reason to put away more than a few and make an arse of himself.

  It was a bright day, and out in the garden Thorne spoke to Anna's friends, Rob and Angie. They were sitting on a low wall, balancing plates of cold ham and salad on their laps.

  'She mentioned both of you,' Thorne said. 'Said what a good laugh you always had.'

  Rob nodded and pushed his coleslaw around.

  'She mentioned you, too,' Angie said.

  There was not too much more to say after that. Had someone older died, someone whose death had not been totally unexpected, one of them might have said, 'It was a nice service, wasn't it?' or told a funny story. But it was simply too hard for any of that, for the pleasant lies, and instead, they focused all their energy on keeping themselves together.

  Thorne had watched the mother and father all day. The man's hand on the woman's arm almost every time Thorne caught sight of them: stepping out of the shiny Daimler; moving into the church; drifting between the groups of friends and relatives in their kitchen and sitting room, glassy-eyed, as though they could not quite believe they were able to put one foot in front of the other.

  To stay upright and engaged. To speak without howling.

&nb
sp; There had been a cursory greeting at the church, but back at the house, hovering between the buffet table and the sitting-room door, Thorne finally got a chance to speak to them properly. With Thorne in hospital, other officers had dealt with Robert and Sylvia Carpenter in the days following the shooting. So, although he felt sure they knew exactly who he was, this was his first opportunity to introduce himself.

  'You're the one who was there,' Sylvia said. 'The one who broke his collarbone.'

  Thorne swallowed. Said that he was.

  The one who failed to protect my daughter.

  The one they were after.

  The one who should be in that box.

  'How is it now?' Sylvia asked. She reached a hand out towards him. 'They can be a pig to set. A cousin of mine had all sorts of trouble.'

  Thorne stared. If she were intending to be snide or sarcastic, it was not there in her voice or her eyes. On the contrary, her face was set in an expression of almost manic concern.

  'Clavicle.' She said the word slowly, emphasising each syllable. Her hand was still stretched out, the fingers fluttering a few inches from Thorne's chest. 'That's the proper name for it.'

  'Sylvia . . .' Robert Carpenter gently laid a hand on his wife's arm. She turned her head slowly to look at him, then abruptly moved away, staring intently at the platters of cheese and cold meat as she walked the length of the buffet table.

  The two men watched her go, then Robert Carpenter turned back to Thorne. He looked down at his shoes for a few seconds then raised his eyes. 'It's hit her very hard,' he said.

  'Of course,' Thorne said.

  'I mean, obviously, it's hit all of us.'

  Thorne could say nothing, aware of the inadequacy of the platitudes he might have been expected to trot out. Indeed, had trotted out in countless similar situations. Looking at Anna's father then, it struck him that, in recent years, the influence of American TV shows had crept into the language of condolence every bit as much as it had been felt elsewhere.

  I'm sorry for your loss.

  That final word set Thorne's teeth on edge. Surely it implied the possibility that, some day, whoever had been lost might be found. Keys were lost and mobile phones. Dogs and wallets and telephone numbers. Those wrenched from their families by violent death were gone - plain, simple and terrible, but they were anything but lost.

  Thorne and the rest of those under Robert Carpenter's roof had gathered together to mourn Anna's absence.

  'Did she tell you she was not her mother's favourite?' Robert asked suddenly.

  'No,' Thorne said.

  'She always thought that. The stupid thing is that she was.' He shook his head and lowered his voice still further. 'She really was . . .'

  Thorne wondered what else Anna might have told him, given time.

  'There's no news, I suppose?'

  'I'm sorry?' Thorne said.

  'Your colleagues have all been very good, keeping us informed and what have you. But I haven't heard anything for over a week, so . . .'

  'We're doing everything we can.'

  'Of course, I do understand that.'

  Thorne had been at home for a fortnight following the shooting - compulsory leave in the wake of an incident involving a firearm, if not strictly merited by the severity of his injury. There would be counselling sessions too, a little further down the line, the thought of which filled Thorne with horror. Reminded him of a few other things that you could lose.

  Your diary.

  Your way, en route to the counsellor's office.

  The will to live.

  During those two weeks away from the office, Thorne had stayed in touch with the investigation: talking to Brigstocke, Holland and Kitson half a dozen times a day; phoning Gary Brand to see if any of his contacts had heard any whispers. Keeping on top of things. So, he was acutely aware of the lack of witnesses, the deafening silence in response to numerous appeals, the absence of any forensic evidence on the abandoned scooter. He was intimately acquainted with each brick wall and dead end in the search for the shooter.

  'She told me about the case she was working on,' Robert said. 'This man everyone thought was dead.'

  'Right.'

  'She was excited about it. I told her how much I enjoyed seeing her like that.' He paused and the smile slid from his face. 'He did this, I suppose?'

  Tried to kill you and killed my daughter instead.

  Should have organised something a little more efficient than a gun fired at night from a moving scooter.

  'We think so,' Thorne said. 'Or at least paid to have it done.'

  Anna's father was studying his feet again, glancing up every few seconds towards others in the room. 'Well, I'd better . . .'

  'Thank you,' Thorne said.

  He was not sure what he was thanking the man for. For his hospitality? For not pushing him against the wall and screaming into his face with grief and fury?

  For Anna?

  Thorne spent another half an hour or so wandering between kitchen, sitting room and garden. He caught Rob and Angie looking at him and did his best to smile. He looked at the collection of family photographs on a dresser: Anna and her sister on holiday somewhere warm; the family at Anna's graduation; Anna and her mother, their postures and expressions almost identical. Reaching across the buffet table for more food he did not really want, he felt the ache in his collarbone. He felt it spread into his shoulder, and he felt again the weight of her as they lay together at the bottom of the stone steps.

  Her breath bubbling and shallow against his chest and her blood leaking through his fingers.

  He spoke to Robert Carpenter one more time that day, as goodbyes were being said at the front door. Anna's father was thanking people as they left, braced for the final litany of condolence, taking hands in his own. Thorne searched for the right words. He said he was glad he had come, mumbled something about how good the food had been, then found himself blurting out, 'She told me you liked bluegrass.'

  Robert Carpenter smiled and nodded, then handed Thorne a handkerchief.

  'The captain has turned on the seatbelt signs, so . . .'

  Thorne stuffed his newspaper into the pocket and pressed his knees hard into the back of the seat in front to remind the selfish bastard in the row ahead of him to raise his seat into the upright position. The woman next to him said something, having clearly decided that with no more than a few minutes left before landing, it was safe enough to strike up a conversation.

  'Sorry?'

  'Holiday?'

  'Not really,' Thorne said.

  The woman nodded and said, 'Looks like you could do with one.'

  Thorne closed his eyes again and did not open them until the plane's wheels screamed against the runway.

  Standing at the luggage carousel, he felt the pulse in his collarbone again and pictured a bare-chested man raising up a beer glass. Smiling and squinting against the sun. Would that smile be summoned quite as easily now, Thorne wondered, after everything the man had done to keep his place in the sun?

  Probably . . .

  From the moment Thorne had returned to duty, he had badgered Brigstocke, had even gone cap in hand to Jesmond, begging for the go ahead to travel to Spain. Initially, there had been reluctance, with little more in the way of real evidence than there had been on the night Anna was killed. Three dead now. Four, including the unidentified body from ten years before. But still nothing to tie the man they all knew was responsible to any of the killings.

  Eventually, Thorne had been given the nod; out of sympathy, as much as anything, he suspected. But it didn't matter. He would take whatever was on offer if it meant a chance to get up close and personal with Alan Langford. He would do whatever he could. He would find Langford and wait, rely on others back in London to furnish him with whatever was needed to bring the fucker back in chains.

  'I hate to sound like the captain in Starsky and Hutch,' Brigstocke had said. 'But I can only give you a couple of weeks.'

  Holland had driven Thorne to
Luton Airport. 'We'll be busting a gut,' he had said. 'You know that.'

  Pulling up outside the terminal, Thorne had said, 'Find out who was in that Jag, Dave. He's the key to all this.'

  Thorne's suitcase came out early. He was happy to take it as a good omen.

  He grabbed the case and wheeled it out quickly through the automatic doors, reached into his carry-on bag for sunglasses, and stepped into the late-April Spanish sunshine.

  Full of hate.

  TWENTY-NINE