From the Dead tt-9

by Mark Billingham

  The man seemed unconcerned and keen to get on with it.

  Frank handed over a folder filled with laminated testimonials – many of which he had written himself – and told the man a little about the business as he flicked through it. Only then did he introduce Anna, as his associate. The man looked at Anna for the first time and nodded a hello.

  Anna smiled and said, 'Nice to meet you.'

  'I gather that you specialise in matrimonial work,' the man said, turning his attention back to Frank.

  'It's one of several areas-'

  'A friend of mine used you and said you were very good.'

  'Oh… who was that?' Frank asked. 'It's always nice to hear about another satisfied customer.'

  'I'd rather not say.'

  'I understand,' Frank said. 'And you can be sure that discretion is very much part of the service we provide.'

  'Honey traps, right?'

  'Some people call it that,' Frank said. 'We prefer to think of it-'

  'Yes or no?'

  'Yes,' Frank said. 'Definitely.' He glanced across at Anna, who tried not to look too disgusted at the excitement in his face. The job he had mentioned to her on Friday had failed to materialise. Another in a long list of clients who had gone elsewhere after learning that other agencies provided a more efficient service. 'We can definitely do that.'

  'As long as we're clear. So, how much does it cost?'

  'It all depends on the circumstances and so on…' Frank was beginning to look a little flustered. 'But there's something I'm not clear about.'

  The man looked at Frank, waited.

  Frank cleared his throat. 'We're talking about your wife?'

  'Girlfriend.'

  'Fine, girlfriend. But that still leaves us with the same problem.'

  'Which is?'

  Frank tried to mask his discomfort with laughter, but it looked and sounded forced. 'Well, normally it's the women who come to agencies like ours, you see, wanting to make sure their husbands aren't playing away from home. We don't actually have any male operatives. I mean, there's me, obviously, but I don't really… I'm hardly likely to trap anybody, so…'

  'It's not a problem,' the man said.

  'I don't follow.'

  The man nodded towards Anna. 'I presume it's your associate over there who normally does this kind of work.'

  Frank told him it was, and that Anna's record in such matters was impeccable.

  The man turned to look at Anna again, but she reddened and looked away. 'Well, we should be fine, then.' He raised an eyebrow at Frank. ' She 's just my girlfriend's type.'

  Frank's mouth fell open a little, and his cheeks flushed the same colour as one of the roses he favoured. 'Right, got it. So… she. ..'

  'Swings both ways,' the man said. 'Either that or I've turned her into a lesbian, I'm not quite sure. I was hoping you might help me find out.'

  'Well, I won't lie to you, it's a new one on me, but I don't see any reason for us not to take it on.' He reached for a pen and paper to start taking down the necessary details, but the man stopped him.

  'I'll need a word with her alone first,' he said. 'With… Anna, was it?'

  'I'm not sure-'

  'A few details are a bit… embarrassing, you know?'

  'Right.'

  'It would be easier if it was just the two of us.'

  'It's fine, Frank,' Anna said. 'I'll take him across the road.'

  The man thanked her and promised it would not take very long.

  Frank was quickly on his feet, seemingly relieved to have an awkward conversation taken off his hands. He told the man that they could talk about costs, run through the different procedures for this kind of operation and so on later. There was no hurry, he said, though that did not stop him barking at Anna to get a move on as she paused at the door to dig around in her shoulder-bag for lip-salve.

  The man looked daggers at Frank.

  'Well, it's all chargeable time,' Frank said. 'No point in wasting your money, is there?'

  Anna led F.A. Investigations' newest client down the stairs, not stopping to release the laughter she had been struggling to contain until they were safely out on the street with the door closed behind them.

  'What the hell was that?'

  'What?'

  'You're off your head, you know that?'

  'I suppose I could just have showed him my warrant card,' Thorne said. 'Told him I needed to talk to you.'

  Anna laughed again. 'Frank's face…'

  'But then he would've wanted to know what was going on at some point, and I'm guessing you've still not told him about the case.'

  'What case?' Anna said, the laugh trailing away.

  'Right. That's what we need to talk about.'

  For ten seconds or more, she clearly found it hard to sound as angry as she felt, so she watched the traffic and let it build. 'I don't have a case any more, do I?'

  'No.'

  'Not since you told Donna to sack me.'

  'Let's go and get a drink,' Thorne said.

  They walked across the road and into Frank's favourite bar. Thorne bought a Diet Coke for himself and a glass of wine for Anna, and they chose a table by the window. It was still a little early for those wanting a quick one on the way home, or several slow ones after a hard day, so the place was relatively quiet. The muted, hesitant exchanges between the two people by the window did little to change anything.

  'What am I supposed to tell Frank?' Anna asked. 'When I go back to the office without his new client.'

  'Anything you like,' Thorne said.

  'That's helpful.'

  'Tell him I was just wasting your time. That I was some kind of freak or whatever.'

  ' Control freak.'

  'Listen-'

  She leaned towards him. 'Why the hell does everybody think they have the right to run my life?'

  'I don't think that.'

  'That I'm somehow incapable of deciding what's best for me.' Anna was drinking quickly, half her large glass of red gone in two gulps. 'First it's my stupid bloody mother. Now it's you.'

  'This isn't about what's best for you,' Thorne said. 'It's about what's best for my case. I've got a job to do and, to be honest, you're really not helping.'

  She blinked slowly, took another drink.

  'I'm sorry, but the fact is… you're a liability.' Guessing correctly that Anna would react badly if she thought she were being patronised, Thorne had decided on a harder approach, but he had not banked on seeing her face fall quite so far.

  How bad it would make him feel.

  'Oh, cheers,' she said.

  'You said yourself, you're still learning the ropes.'

  'And…?'

  'And part of that is knowing when to step back and admit that you're out of your depth.'

  'What did you say to Donna?'

  'I didn't say anything.'

  'You're a bloody liar.' She emptied her glass and, without a word to Thorne, got up, walked to the bar and bought herself another. Thorne watched, beginning to wish that he had done this over the phone.

  Anna started talking before she was back in her chair. 'Donna said that, because the police were now so heavily involved in trying to find her ex-husband, she didn't need my services any more, or some shit like that. But I knew damn well that you put her up to it.'

  'I asked her to do me a favour.'

  'Because I'm a "liability".'

  'Because it's dangerous… Jesus!' Thorne took a breath and lowered his voice. 'You're not stupid, Anna. You know very well what we're dealing with.'

  'I told you I wasn't scared after Monahan was killed.'

  'Right, and I told you that you should be. And I told you to back off, because I knew that was never going to be the end of it.'

  Anna grasped the implication straight away. 'Who else?'

  Thorne told her about Howard Cook, taking care to mention the bloodstains on the road outside his house and the brain-matter found baked into the shattered windscreen of the burned-out car. He di
d his level best to describe how devastated the man's widow was.

  'That's horrible,' Anna said, finally. 'But it doesn't really make any difference.'

  'What?'

  'This man you're after is only killing anyone who can hurt him, witnesses or whatever. He-'

  'Don't try to make him sound reasonable.' Thorne's voice was quiet, but there was steel in it. 'He's anything but reasonable.'

  'He's a businessman, right?'

  'He has people killed, Anna.'

  'But there's no reason why he would ever-'

  'You can't presume to know what the likes of Alan Langford are willing to do,' Thorne said. 'Basic rule. You never presume.'

  Anna laughed, but it was aggressive, like a slap. 'You presume all the bloody time!' She smacked down her glass, splashing wine across the tabletop. 'You presume that I'm scared and out of my depth and that I'll screw things up. You presume to take work away from me, then sit there like some… authority, when you're clearly as much of a fuck-up as anyone.' She stood up, shaking her head, then bent to dab at the spillage with a napkin while scrabbling for her bag and jacket with the other hand. 'And worst of all, stupidest of all, you presume that I like you enough to let you get away with it.'

  Thorne watched her leave, pushing past a couple in the doorway, searching for a gap in the traffic then running across the road. Her hair was flying and her bag bounced against her hip as she went.

  Unpleasant as it had been, Thorne presumed he'd done what he came for.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Louise's basement flat in Pimlico was very different from Thorne's place in Kentish Town. Bigger and more modern, with clean lines and furniture that looked and felt less lived-in than Thorne's ten-year-old Ikea collection. It was also considerably less tidy than Thorne's, a fact that surprised nobody more than Thorne himself. He had become rather more house-proud since Louise had started staying with him, but the same could not be said of her. Thorne could never equate the ruthlessly efficient Kidnap Unit DI with the woman who kept a large cupboard entirely stuffed with plastic bags and whose bathroom – though it smelled nicer than his – looked like an explosion in a cosmetics factory.

  It seemed to Thorne that they always reacted differently to each other when they were staying in Pimlico, that the dynamic between them was subtly altered. He guessed that he was the same way when the situation was reversed, but recently Louise had seemed a lot more comfortable whenever they were staying at her place; more at home, in every sense.

  Or maybe he had simply never noticed it before.

  With both of them now so at ease in their own places, Thorne wondered if the idea of them getting somewhere together would – or should – ever be discussed again. They had talked about selling one flat and renting out the other, as Thorne still had money left from the sale of his father's house a couple of years before, then buying a place further north, in Hertfordshire maybe. But perhaps the moment for all that had gone.

  Louise cooked pasta, added a tin of tuna and some black olives to a Sainsbury's arrabiata sauce, and they ate at the small table in the kitchen.

  'I meant to say, Elvis was sick again this morning.'

  'Shit,' Thorne said.

  'You need to get her to the vet.'

  'Did you leave her plenty of food?'

  'A couple of bowls of the dry stuff,' Louise said. 'For tonight and tomorrow morning.'

  'She's probably just picked up a bug or something.'

  Thorne had inherited the cat from a murder victim many years before, a woman who had named the cat without realising she was a female. He had no real idea how old Elvis was, but she must have been pushing twelve or thirteen, and while she had never been a big cat, Thorne had noticed, picking her up a day or two before, that she was feeling skinnier than usual.

  'If nothing kicks off at work, I'll try to take her in at the weekend,' he said.

  They continued to eat. Louise told Thorne that she had put the rubbish out before she'd left his flat that morning and that he was almost out of milk. Thorne told Louise how good the meal was, and thought that this was what couples who had been together for a year or two talked about: bin collections and cat sick.

  Tried to convince himself that it could be a whole lot worse.

  When they had cleared away the plates, they took glasses of wine through to the living room. There was a Champions League match that Thorne fancied watching, but he said nothing as Louise exercised home advantage and put on a CD: some woman from the West Country who thought she was Dusty Springfield. Thorne made himself comfortable on the sofa, but when Louise came across and sat facing him on the matching footstool it was clear that she wanted to talk about more than taking out the rubbish.

  'Hypothetically,' she said, 'what would you think about me getting out of the Job?'

  Thorne sat back and puffed out his cheeks. Said, 'Bloody hell.'

  'I said "hypothetically".'

  'Where's this come from?'

  'I think we need to do something.'

  ' We? '

  'Change something, I mean.'

  'But you love the Job,' Thorne said. 'More than I do, anyway. You can probably make DCI this year.'

  'I think maybe the Job had something to do with losing the baby.'

  'You don't know that.'

  'I'm damn sure it didn't help. Come on, you know how stressful it is…'

  Thorne could hear something in her voice: anger, urgency. He just nodded and took a drink.

  'And it's probably got something to do with the fact that it hasn't happened again.'

  'Well, maybe if we actually had sex a bit more.'

  'Right, if the sodding Job didn't wear us both out quite so much, and if our shifts didn't mean that we're like ships in the night most of the bloody time.'

  There was not too much Thorne could argue with. He sat back. The West Country Dusty was getting worked up, bleating about her lover being drunk and faithless.

  'It just seems a bit… radical,' Thorne said.

  'We need to do something, Tom. If we want this to go anywhere-'

  ' Go anywhere?'

  'Maybe we both need to get out of the Job.'

  ' What? '

  They had talked about it once before, their fantasy future. But that had been when there was a baby on the way.

  'Are you really going to sit there and tell me everything's fine?'

  'You're the one with all the opinions.'

  'That's part of the problem.'

  'Everyone has ups and downs, whatever, but you're talking like everything's fucked.'

  'I'm trying to be realistic.'

  'You're being ridiculous,' Thorne said. 'And melodramatic.'

  Louise shook her head and laughed, just once, exasperated. 'It's so typical.'

  'What is?' Thorne had been careful to say whatever was necessary, in whatever way was necessary, to keep Louise from losing her temper. Now, he was in danger of losing his own.

  She swallowed a mouthful of wine, still shaking her head. 'When it comes to work, you'll do whatever it takes to get the right result. You'll go the extra mile, take stupid risks. You'll push it. With other people, other people's lives and problems, you do what needs to be done without even thinking about it. But with your own life, our life, it's a different story.'

  'This isn't fair, Lou…'

  'With us, it's just about the path of least resistance, about doing as little as possible. It's like the Job's taken all the fight out of you or something, and when it comes to personal stuff, to this , you'd rather just bumble along and settle for a quiet life, no matter how bad it is.' She was sitting on the edge of the stool, her knees pressed against his shins. 'Well, I think you've got it arse about face. I reckon your priorities are wrong, and if you really give a toss about how things are going to work out between us, you need to think about what's more important. Decide what you want.' She emptied her glass, looked at him. 'Well?'

  Thorne stared at the carpet, wanting more than anything at that moment to turn off t
he music. To pull out the wannabe Dusty's tedious CD and smash it against the wall.

  The doorbell saved him the trouble.

  Louise swore and stood up, walked across to the CD player and turned it off. 'If that's the stupid cow from upstairs, she can piss off. There's no way that was loud enough to disturb her.' She looked at Thorne as though she were waiting for him to go and answer the door.

  ' I 'm not going,' he said. 'She's your bloody neighbour…'

  He switched off the film and faded up the lights with the same remote. He always got a buzz out of that. When the home cinema had been installed, he'd made sure it came with all the bells and whistles, and it had been worth every penny. He had all the big dishes, so he could watch Premiership football whenever he wanted, the BBC news, all that. But mostly he just watched films. He had quite a library now: war movies, Westerns and a full set of Laurel and Hardy; a decent porn collection that he and Candela dug into every now and again.

  Just to keep things interesting.

  He'd had it built down in the basement, so it was also the coolest room in the place. Most nights, when he wasn't out somewhere or entertaining, he ended up here, with the sound turned up good and loud, stretched out in shorts and a T-shirt until his eyes began to close. He would usually call it a night then, but sometimes he would nod off and wake up sweating at three or four in the morning, with the screen still bright and the speakers hissing. For a moment or two, he might not remember where he was.

  Which time, which country.

  Then, once he'd sorted himself out, he would pad slowly back through the villa to the kitchen, pick up a bottle of water from the fridge and go to bed. Happy enough, all things considered, at the way things had turned out.

  Until now…

  It was hassle he simply did not need, not to mention a lot of money he could have done without spending. The precautions he'd taken to make sure the situation could not seriously hurt him had not come cheap. The people he was using had to be paid decent money, on top of what he'd been shelling out every year anyway, just to keep his sources sweet.

  It wasn't all about the money, though. He'd earned the life he'd made for himself, and, bar a minor hiccup or two, until recently it had been relatively stress free. He wasn't getting any younger and he'd been counting on life staying the way it was until he went toes-up. Golf and boats and a spot of clubbing. Parties and shagging until he couldn't get it up any more and a bit of business every now and then, just for the mustard.