From the Dead tt-9

by Mark Billingham

  Strangest of all, though, in spite of everything that had happened – was still happening – he continued to think fondly of Donna.

  He could clearly remember the moment when everything had fallen apart. That helpful voice at the end of a phone: 'I think you should know what your old lady's up to, Alan. Who she's met up with.' At the time, fired up and raging, he had thought about dishing out the same kind of treatment to Donna that Monahan eventually received a couple of days ago, but that would only have aroused suspicion. It might have scuppered all his plans and caused some copper to start looking at things a bit harder.

  He remembered the coverage in the papers after they'd found the car in the woods. The copper in charge: Thorne. He'd looked the type that might have enjoyed a bit of digging.

  So, he'd let the anger go and, in the end, as far as Donna was concerned, he'd almost come to admire what the silly cow had done. To understand it, anyway. All that time dressing up and tagging along after him, playing the dutiful wife like a good girl, she had been learning…

  Candela finally appeared looking suitably stunning, and they sat pressed up against each other while she told him about her day. She worked for one of the smartest independent estate agents in the region and was very excited about a Russian businessman who seemed keen on one of her luxury villas in the next town.

  'Him and his friends have three viewings,' she said, holding up her fingers.

  Three guesses what kind of business he was in.

  When the champagne was finished, Candela went to dance and he moved to the edge of the floor to watch her. He enjoyed seeing the young men trying to get close and the older ones – all those saddos who thought they could still cut it – with their tongues hanging out. He would never dream of dancing himself, that had never been his game, but he wasn't worried about the competition. Even if some bloke didn't know who she was with and tried to make a move, she wouldn't give him the time of day.

  She knew where her bread was buttered. Besides which, he reckoned he still looked pretty good for his age. He'd had a little work done – some orthodontics and a dye job, just enough to help with the new ID – but it was mostly about keeping fit. Not eating like an animal, the way some of them did. Full English breakfast like it was going out of fashion and lager with everything.

  Candela closed her eyes, shook her hips and ran her hands through her long hair for him. She was gorgeous, no question, but at that age Donna had been every bit as spectacular, in her own way.

  And Ellie looked a lot like her mother. Same temper on her, too, which didn't make things as easy as they might be.

  Looking around, he saw a few faces he'd been wanting to get close to for a while and decided that he might do a little business before the evening was over. It was the ideal place. A few drinks, a handshake and the deal was done, which was how he preferred it. The money and the merchandise would be moved by others later, and there would be no need for him to get his hands dirty.

  That had been the secret these last ten years.

  It was becoming increasingly difficult, though, what with everything that needed doing back in the UK.

  Candela waved and he waved back, but his thoughts were far away. Suddenly darker and more troubling than he was comfortable with.

  If he wanted to stay free, it would get harder to stay clean.

  SEVENTEEN

  Traffic was moving on the M25, which was about the best you could expect even on a Saturday. Thorne's passenger was keen to chat – about her flatmate, her flatmate's thick boyfriend, people she'd known when she worked at the bank who had been high-fliers and lost everything when the economy had gone belly up – but he was happy to let her do most of the talking.

  To watch the road and think about other things.

  He had been unable to shake the image of the woman crying in the blue Peugeot; wondering who she was and what had happened to make her world so unbearable, for those few minutes at least. It had been on his mind since waking, and he and Louise had barely spoken during a snatched breakfast.

  'Will you be late?'

  'See how it pans out.'

  'Fine. I've got a lot on myself, so…'

  The truth was that aside from the lovemaking two nights before – slight and unexpected – there had not been a great deal of closeness between them in recent days. Weeks, even. There were fewer calls made or texts sent and seemingly no real desire to connect. There was less interest.

  As Louise had said, though, they were both busy…

  He had called Russell Brigstocke on his way to pick up Anna, to tell him he would not be coming into the office. To let him know about the visit he would be making instead.

  'Not much worth coming in for anyway,' Brigstocke had said. 'Like I thought, as far as this boat business goes, getting any joy out of Madrid on a Saturday morning is like pulling teeth. I mean, it might have helped if I'd been able to find a bloody translator.'

  Thorne had told him he would check in again later, and had listened to Brigstocke rant for another minute or two.

  'Do you know how many Albanian speakers there are on the Home Office books? Or Turkish? Or Urdu? Dozens, mate. But could I find one who spoke Spanish? I would've done it myself, but beyond knowing the names of a few Barcelona players and being able to ask for a beer, I'm a bit stuffed…'

  Seeing the exit they needed coming up, Thorne swiped at the indicator stalk and swung the BMW into the middle lane.

  'So, it looks like walking away from the bank might not have been such a stupid move after all,' Anna said. 'I mean, at least I 've got a job.'

  'Right,' Thorne said.

  'Some of those flash bastards I used to work with are living on benefits now.' She grinned, looking out at the fields that stretched away from the motorway. 'Cheers me right up sometimes.'

  Thorne indicated again and drifted into the inside lane. Anna said something else, but he was still thinking about the woman in the blue Peugeot as he pulled on to the slip road and began to slow for the roundabout.

  Twenty miles south-west of central London, in the well-heeled heart of the Surrey countryside, Cobham is the archetypal commuter town. Its exclusive private estates are home to a number of Chelsea footballers whose training ground is nearby, but Maggie and Julian Munro were rather more typical inhabitants. He worked at an architectural practice in Clerkenwell and she taught at the local independent secondary school. They lived in a detached house opposite Cobham Mill and drove his and hers Volvos. They had a nine-year-old son who played rugby for the county, they kept a flat-coated retriever, and for ten years, until she had suddenly gone missing six months before, they had been foster parents to Ellie Langford.

  Maggie Munro showed Thorne and Anna into a large sitting room. She offered them tea, but Thorne said they did not want to take up too much of their time.

  The dog was barking in another part of the house.

  'I was probably somewhat… manic when you called,' Maggie said. The fixed smile and the way her hands moved in her lap told Thorne that she was still far from calm. 'Only, as soon as you said who you were, I thought maybe you'd found her.'

  'I'm sorry for the misunderstanding,' Thorne said.

  Julian Munro came in and Thorne and Anna stood to shake his hand before everyone sat down again. It was all rather formal, despite the invitation that Thorne and Anna should make themselves at home and the Munros' Saturday casuals: jeans and rugby shirt for him; powder-blue tracksuit for her.

  'I must admit, I thought you'd be older,' Thorne said. He had been genuinely shocked to find that the Munros were in their late thirties, having got it into his head that fostering was only ever done by fifty-something women whose own kids had flown the nest.

  'We'd been trying for a baby for a while,' Julian said, 'but for one reason or another it hadn't worked out. So then we thought of adoption, but the process was incredibly long and drawn out.'

  His wife had been nodding along and now she took up the story. 'We thought we'd try fostering just to see
if bringing up someone else's child was something we were cut out to do. And we got Ellie.' She smiled. 'As it happened, a few months later, I fell pregnant.'

  It was Thorne's turn to smile. 'Falling' pregnant only ever seemed to be something the middle classes said. 'Fell' rather than 'got'. Despite this, he thought he had heard the trace of a northern accent from both of them and for no very good reason had quickly formed an impression of a couple who had not been given anything on a plate. Who had worked hard for everything they had.

  'Ellie was thrilled to be getting a little brother,' Maggie said. 'And when Samuel came along, we were a family.'

  'He's training,' Julian said, explaining their son's absence. 'Every Saturday morning.'

  Anna hunched her shoulders and shivered theatrically. They had been talking about snow on the radio as she and Thorne had driven up. 'Poor little lad'll be freezing,' she said.

  Julian shook his head. 'He's pretty tough.'

  The husband and wife were sitting a few feet apart on a large sofa, while Anna and Thorne sat in matching armchairs, facing them across a low table strewn with glossy magazines.

  Maggie leaned forward and cleared her throat, as if she were about to deliver a prepared speech. 'The fact is, we're very glad to see you,' she said. 'Nobody ever took Ellie's disappearance seriously, not really. She was eighteen, so legally she was responsible for herself, and they just kept telling us she must have run off with some boyfriend or other. Kept saying that she'd show up when she got bored or ran out of money. It was so frustrating.'

  'Was there one?' Anna asked. 'A boyfriend?'

  Maggie shook her head. 'Nobody we knew about. Nobody special, at any rate.'

  'The police did keep in touch fairly regularly,' Julian said. 'At the beginning anyway. But only to tell us there was nothing to tell us, if you see what I mean.' His jaw tightened and he breathed out noisily through his nose. 'Some family liaison officer or other would sit where you are now, scoffing our bloody biscuits and bleating on about counselling, but singularly failing to tell us what anybody was actually doing to find our daughter.' He looked at his feet, one of which was tapping angrily against the carpet. Maggie leaned across and took his hand.

  'Tell us about the day Ellie went missing,' Thorne said.

  Maggie glanced at her husband. He nodded. You tell it.

  'She'd been out celebrating her A-level results. She'd done really well. She and some of her friends went to one of the pubs in the centre of town.' Maggie shrugged. 'That's it. Just a bunch of teenagers having a drink and letting their hair down. All her friends told us she was fine when she left to get the bus. She never came home

  …'

  Thorne thanked her and said he understood how difficult it must be, going over it all again. She told him it had become second nature; one or other of them had told the story a thousand times by now.

  'What were the results?' Anna asked. 'You said she did well.'

  Maggie looked slightly taken aback before her face broke into a beam. It was clear that nobody had ever bothered to ask. 'Two Bs and a C,' she said. 'Bs in English and History, C in French.'

  Thorne knew that the Munros were exaggerating somewhat in claiming that the police had done nothing, but he understood why. If he were the parent of a missing child, he would want every police officer in the country on the lookout twenty-four hours a day. The truth was that those in charge of the inquiry had done as much as possible before running hard into a brick wall. Ellie Langford had quickly become just one of several thousand missing teenagers.

  Thorne had spoken to one officer from the case who suspected drug use of some sort. Said most of his team expected Ellie to be on the streets somewhere, London most likely. Sitting here and talking to the girl's foster parents, Thorne doubted that, but he knew he was no expert. He did know that no images of her had shown up on CCTV footage and that her mobile phone had not been used since the night of her disappearance. He also knew that if she had left the country, she had done so illegally.

  'She didn't take her passport,' Thorne said.

  Maggie shook her head. 'No. We told the police that. Her passport was still here, and all her clothes. She hadn't been planning on going anywhere.'

  The implication was obvious. She had been taken. Of course, the Munros had no way of knowing that Alan Langford was still alive, so they could not have suspected that Ellie had been taken by her own father. Their fear was far worse, far harder to wake up with every morning.

  That their daughter had been abducted by a stranger.

  'She's dead.' Maggie addressed the words to Anna. Simply and without emphasis. 'Isn't she?'

  'Why do you say that?'

  'Because if she was alive, she would have got in touch to let us know she was OK. She would have wanted to talk to us, to talk to Sam.'

  'We've got no reason to believe she's come to any harm,' Thorne said. He knew that the Surrey Police had checked at the time and that they were still routinely checking all unidentified bodies as well as calling A amp;E departments as part of a regular monthly review.

  'Nobody ever said as much, but I think those people who believed she'd run away weren't particularly surprised.' Julian sat back, calmer now. 'As though it was only to be expected that she'd have some kind of breakdown sooner or later. After what happened with her parents, I mean.'

  The surprise must have registered on Thorne's face.

  'We knew who they were.' The man fought to keep the distaste from his expression, but it was clear in his voice. 'We knew all along who Ellie's father was, and why her mother went to prison.'

  Thorne shrugged. 'I just didn't think they would have told you everything. All the details, I mean.'

  'Well, they told us a little of it at the time and we pieced together the rest once it all broke in the media. I think they wanted us to know the basic facts in case Ellie had been… affected, you know? They were worried she might show signs of it in her behaviour, of being traumatised. '

  'Did she?' Anna asked.

  Maggie shook her head. 'You would never have known,' she said. 'She was the calmest little girl. Never lost her temper, never had a tantrum. Even when she hit thirteen, fourteen, and all her friends were going through that awful hormonal stage.'

  'Boyfriends and bitching,' Julian said.

  'She just seemed to be removed from it somehow. Like she was above it all.'

  'She never talked about her mother coming out of prison?' Thorne asked. 'What might happen then?'

  The Munros shook their heads.

  'You do know she's been released, don't you?'

  The look on both their faces made it clear that they did not. Social Services might have decided that they had no need to know. Or they might just have screwed up and neglected to call them. Either way, it was an awkward moment. Looking at them, Thorne suddenly felt under pressure; as if he were being invited to declare where his loyalties lay.

  'How long?' Maggie asked.

  'Just over a month,' Thorne said.

  He looked through a glass door that led to a small conservatory and the garden beyond. There was an almost full-sized football goal in one corner and a huge trampoline in the other. Thorne thought this must have been a good place to grow up, and not too much of a comedown from the place Ellie Langford had lived in before. Not as much as the one her mother had faced at any rate. Then, just before he turned back to Julian and Maggie Munro, he found himself thinking about another missing girl. About the very different house in which Andrea Keane had been raised.

  Four siblings scrabbling for attention and a garden barely big enough to bounce a ball in.

  'Have you still got Ellie's computer?' Thorne asked.

  Maggie nodded. 'We've got everything.'

  'Is it OK if we send an officer round to pick it up?'

  'They already looked at it,' Julian said. 'The week after Ellie disappeared. '

  'I know, but we're making progress with that stuff all the time, so it might be worth a try. I can barely manage an email, b
ut you can get all sorts of information off a hard disk now, so…'

  'It's no problem,' Maggie said. 'Just let us know.'

  Thorne gave Anna a small nod, and reached down for his briefcase. 'Well, if you think of anything else…' He stood up, shaking his head. 'Why do coppers always say that?'

  'You've read the statement we made at the time?' Julian asked.

  'Yes,' Thorne lied. He had asked for it to be faxed across. With luck, it would be waiting for him back at the office, along with statements from the friends who had been with Ellie in the pub the night she vanished.

  'Well, you know as much as anyone, then.' Julian walked slowly to the door, with Anna, Thorne and Maggie a few steps behind. 'The pub, her friends, the woman. All of it.'

  'Which woman?' Thorne asked. 'I don't recall…'

  'I saw her talking to a woman,' Julian said. 'An older woman. This was a couple of weeks before she went missing. I thought it must have been one of her teachers, but then I could see… Well, she didn't look like a teacher.' He leaned against the door jamb. 'I saw them twice, actually: once at the end of the road when I was coming back from the office, then a few days later in one of the cafes in town. They were sitting at a table in the window and I thought they were arguing.'

  'About what?' Anna asked.

  'I've no idea.'

  Anna leaned forward, excited. 'But there was definitely some sort of argument?'

  'Look, I was driving past, so it wasn't like I watched them for a long time, but that's what it looked like.'

  'Did you talk to Ellie about it?' Anna asked.

  'She didn't really want to discuss it. At least, that's how it seemed when I thought about it later. Afterwards, I mean. She said something about it being of one of her friends' mums and that was the end of it. I didn't really think about it again until after Ellie had disappeared. You rack your brains for anything, you know?'

  'I know it's in the statement,' Thorne said, 'but can you give us a description?'*