From the Dead (2010)

by Mark Billingham

  'Busy schedule?'

  Voices were raised right outside the door. He told the man to hang on, closed his hand around the phone, waited a minute. 'Sorry about that.'

  'Where are you?'

  'Don't worry, it's safe.'

  'No point taking stupid risks . . .'

  'Listen, there were coppers here today.'

  'I know.'

  'Visits Area still stinks of bacon.'

  'Why do you think I sent the text?'

  'So, what do you want me to do?'

  The man paused, like he was taking a sip of something. 'I want you to start earning your money.'

  Without feeling the need to check with Thorne, Louise had invited Phil Hendricks over. He arrived just as she was dishing up the pasta, a whiff of carbolic still lingering around him and cans of beer clanking in a plastic bag.

  Thorne could see straight away that his friend was keen to kick back a little. 'Tough day at the office, dear?'

  'I could do with a drink,' Hendricks said. 'Been cutting up a teenager all afternoon.' He took a can from the bag and opened it. 'I mean, obviously he'd already been cut up by several other teenagers.' He dropped his long black coat on to the sofa and sat down at the small dining table.

  As Home Office-registered forensic pathologists went, Phil Hendricks was unusual, to say the least. Thorne had certainly not met any others with shaved heads, multiple body piercings and more tattoos than the average heavy metal guitarist. He had never met one as skilled either, or as empathetic to the victims he dissected. The jokes - delivered with immaculate timing in a flat, Mancunian accent - were often tasteless, but Thorne knew what was going on behind them.

  He had seen his friend's pain up close and often.

  'That smells fantastic, Lou.'

  It had been a while since Hendricks had treated himself to a new piercing, something he usually did to mark the acquisition of a new boyfriend, but he was keen to show off his latest tattoo: a scattering of small red stars on his right shoulder.

  'Looks like designer acne,' Thorne said.

  Hendricks was chewing, so just stuck up a finger.

  'Didn't fancy the "Sodomy" tat then?' Louise asked.

  A few months earlier, a City-based chaplain had made headlines by saying that gay men should be 'marked' with government health warnings, like cigarette packets. His suggestion that they have 'Sodomy Can Seriously Damage Your Health' tattooed across their buttocks had caused predictable outrage and eventually forced the priest into hiding. 'I'm going to hunt the God-bothering little gobshite down,' Hendricks had said at the time. 'Damage his health.'

  Now, he shook his head and grinned. 'Decided against it in the end,' he said. 'Mainly because I couldn't fit all those words across my perfectly tight little arse.'

  Louise laughed and said that she would have had no trouble. In a decent-sized font. In capital letters.

  Thorne talked about his trip to Wakefield, about Monahan's refusal to admit that the body in the Jag had not been Alan Langford's. About the need to prove that Monahan was being paid to keep quiet.

  'If he's not going to cough, I don't see what else you can do.' Louise poured herself and Thorne more wine. 'You're only likely to get anywhere by following the money.'

  'That won't get us very far though, will it?'

  'Sorry, but you're not going to get it on a plate, darling.'

  Ten years earlier, Hendricks had carried out the post-mortem on the body that had been found in Epping Forest. What had been left of it. 'You could always exhume the remains,' he said. 'There might be the odd blackened molar knocking around in the ashes. But even dental won't help unless you've got some idea who the victim was.'

  'Which we haven't.'

  'So, you're pretty much stuffed, mate. As long shots go, it's right up there with Tottenham getting a top-four finish.'

  'Shouldn't you be heading home?' Thorne said.

  They finished eating, opened another bottle and a couple more cans. Thorne put on a new CD of stripped-down Willie Nelson recordings and Hendricks told him that it sounded as though someone was slowly feeding a cat through a mangle. Thorne pointed out that, as usual, Hendricks had now slagged off both his football team and his taste in music, and asked to be reminded exactly why Hendricks considered himself to be a friend. Hendricks said it was less about being a 'friend' and more to do with being the only person Thorne did not actually sleep with who was willing to put up with him.

  Louise started gathering the plates, scraping at the leftovers. 'Who did you go up to Wakefield with today?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Boys' day out with Dave Holland, was it?'

  Thorne looked for something other than simple curiosity in her face and felt blood move inexplicably to his own. He hesitated, began rubbing at a mark his glass had left on the table. 'Actually, I took that private detective with me,' he said. 'The one who popped round here the other night. Had to take her, in the end.'

  'The girl?'

  Thorne shrugged, pulled a face that he hoped would say, 'Ridiculous, I know,' and explained: 'Jesmond thinks we need to keep her on side, make sure she doesn't go blabbing to the papers about the fact that we screwed up with the Langford case.' He knew he was talking too fast, sounded as though he were lying. 'Pain in the arse, as it turned out, just like I told Jesmond it would be, but there we are. I got well and truly lumbered. What can I tell you?'

  'You don't have to tell me anything,' Louise said, laughing. 'I just asked a simple question.'

  She carried the plates out to the kitchen and began to load the dishwasher. Thorne looked over and saw Hendricks mouthing a 'What?' He waved the question away and stood up to change the CD.

  Louise shouted from the kitchen: 'Do you want coffee, Phil?'

  'No, I'm fine,' Hendricks said. 'I'll be up all night, and not in a good way.'

  Thorne looked along the rack of albums, trying to decide whether Louise's laugh had been forced or genuine. He could not be sure either way, but was fairly confident that the subject would resurface once Hendricks had left.

  Louise appeared in the doorway. 'You sure?'

  'I think I should probably be heading off.'

  'I've got decaf.'

  'Why don't you just stay the night?' Thorne asked.

  Monahan's stomach had been plaguing him since late morning. He had been in and out of the toilets half a dozen times since the session with Thorne and his bitch of a sidekick, and whatever the hell was in the meat pie he'd had for dinner had made things a damn sight worse. He lay on his bunk, listening to his guts grumble and the voices echoing on the landing outside the cell door.

  Animal noises.

  When he was not in the Segregation Unit, this was his favourite part of the day. The hour he liked best. On his own, reading or smoking, while the other inmates got through association their own way, playing table tennis, working out or whatever. A bubble of peace, with the rest of the prison moving around him. He enjoyed the stillness - such as it was, with six hundred other blokes sharing the oxygen - but knew there was company just a few feet away, if ever he wanted it. He far preferred being alone in a crowd to those stinking, scratchy hours of genuine isolation, even though he'd always brought them on himself.

  It was like he'd said to Thorne, though. Sometimes he just couldn't help himself.

  Be nice to get out that bit sooner and see him.

  He thought about what Thorne had said, the request for help that was really an offer. However tempting it might be, he knew it was short-term thinking. Dangerous thinking. The money being set aside every month for his release was a threat as well as a promise; he had always understood that. It put a price on his silence, but never let him forget what shooting his mouth off would cost him.

  His life and his son's life, no question about that.

  Living is what counts, right?

  He thought about the man who promised and threatened so much, and above the sound of the acid bubbling in his gut, he heard the hiss and crackle of a fire. The whump
of an explosion and the distant drumming of a woodpecker.

  'Paul?'

  There was a knock on the open cell door and Monahan sat up. Jeremy Grover was a con he got on with better than most. He did his time quietly enough and was fairly bright, as armed robbers went.

  'Jez.'

  'Thought you were coming to play cards.'

  'Sorry, mate, my belly's a nightmare.'

  'I'll have some tea then, if you're getting a brew on.'

  Monahan swung his feet to the floor and walked over to where the kettle stood on a small table in the corner. He asked who was winning all the money, reached for a mug and promised to take all the lads to the cleaners as soon as he stopped shitting through the eye of a needle. Then he turned to say something else and stepped into a punch that pushed the breath from his lungs in an instant. Grover's breath hot and sour on his face.

  'Jez . . . ?'

  Only it wasn't a punch, course it wasn't, and there was already blood pooling on the floor as he slipped down to his knees and then dropped on to his side. It was hard to raise his head and he was scared to look at what was leaking into his hands. He saw Grover lean back against the door and then step forward as an officer pushed his way into the cell. He watched them speak while his guts slipped, warm between his fingers, but he could hear nothing, not really, until the officer had gone again and an alarm began to sound from a long way away.

  PART TWO

  HONEY-SWEET AND HELL-DARK

  NINE

  The man on the prison security desk had as little to say to Dave Holland as he had done to Thorne's more garrulous female colleague twenty-four hours earlier. There was no question of Anna Carpenter accompanying Thorne this time, not considering the reason he was returning to Wakefield.

  Brigstocke had called just after 6 a.m., in no mood for going round the houses. 'Whoever was paying Paul Monahan to keep quiet can cancel the direct debit,' he said.

  The Crime Scene Investigators from the West Yorkshire force had already been and gone, but the murder scene was still sealed off with blue tape that stretched from the cell door to the edge of the landing. Thorne and Holland were escorted on to the wing by a prison officer and met outside the cell by a grim-looking welcoming committee. Sonia Murray, an attractive black woman in her early thirties, was the prison's police liaison officer. She made herself known, then introduced Andy Boyle, the local DI, whose team had been on call when the incident had occurred.

  Boyle seemed less than thrilled to meet his colleagues from down south. 'If we have to work together on this,' he said, 'I suppose we have to.' The Yorkshireman was clearly no shrinking violet, but he still had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the shouts and jeers that echoed along the landing. The entire wing had been confined to their cells for more than fifteen hours, since the body had been found, and the prisoners were not shy about making their feelings known. 'It's not ideal though, is it?'

  'We'll try not to step on anyone's toes,' Holland said.

  Thorne forced a smile, but was beyond caring if it was convincing. 'And if we do, we'll make sure we're wearing slippers.'

  Paul Monahan's body was in the city mortuary, awaiting post-mortem. He had died on the way to hospital the previous evening, having been discovered on the floor of his cell with serious stab wounds. The prisoner who had been found inside the cell with Monahan had been taken to the local station, but he remained uncharged and had been returned to the prison that morning in anticipation of Thorne and Holland's arrival.

  'So, here's the story,' Murray said. She emphasised the last word, making it clear to Thorne that they were now leaving the known facts behind and venturing into an area where all they had were possibilities, interpretation and bullshit. It was dangerous territory, and interesting. It was the part Thorne had always liked the most. 'A prison officer named Howard Cook entered Monahan's cell just after nine-thirty last night.' Murray was reading from a small notebook. 'He discovered a prisoner named Jeremy Grover covered in blood and bent over Monahan's body. Grover told Officer Cook that he had discovered the body a minute or so earlier, had been unable to find a pulse and was trying to perform CPR.'

  'Good of him,' Holland said.

  'Oh yeah, he's a regular good Samaritan is our Jez.'

  'Except when he's waving sawn-off shotguns around in building societies,' said Boyle.

  Murray returned to her notebook. 'Cook left the cell to sound the alarm, an ambulance was called and a Code Black was declared. Within twenty minutes, the wing was shut down and the police were informed.'

  'We were here just after ten,' Boyle said. 'Monahan had already pegged it in the ambulance.'

  Thorne nudged the cell door open and stepped inside. Everything except the bunk and the metal chair had been removed. The blood had run towards one wall, down the slope of an uneven floor. Dried, it looked almost black against the dark orange linoleum. 'Where's Officer Cook?' he asked.

  Murray moved to the door. 'He was sent home and given a day's trauma leave,' she said. 'Standard practice after a Code Black incident.'

  Thorne turned and walked back on to the landing.

  Holland caught his eye and nodded towards the CCTV camera mounted high on the opposite wall. 'Should give us a bird's-eye view,' he said.

  Thorne looked at Boyle. 'I presume you've checked the footage to see if anyone else went in there before Jez Grover?'

  Boyle shrugged, satisfied that he knew something Thorne did not.

  'The camera was not in operation,' Murray said. 'That wasn't established until the early hours of this morning.'

  'Meaning it was broken or had been switched off?'

  'No idea.'

  'That's handy,' Holland said.

  Thorne nodded, thinking. 'Murder weapon?'

  Boyle shook his head. 'Turned the place upside down,' he said. 'Gave Grover a full body search an' all, just to be on the safe side, but no sign of it. Sharpened toothbrush, something like that, be easy enough to hide it where the sun don't shine.'

  Holland winced. 'I don't suppose there were any other prisoners walking about covered in blood?'

  'Not that we could find.'

  'We'd best have a word with Mr Grover then,' Thorne said.

  Murray said she would arrange to have Jeremy Grover taken down to the Visits Area. 'All visits have been cancelled,' she said. 'So you can pick a room out over there.'

  Thorne said that would be fine and he and Holland followed Murray down the landing. Those inside many of the cells they passed made it very clear what they thought of her. If she was upset by the vileness of the language or the suggestions, she did not show it.

  As they walked down the stairs, Boyle caught up with Thorne. 'We've already had a pop at Grover,' he said. 'But if you think you can do any better . . .'

  'Looks like I'd best get my slippers on,' Thorne said.

  'Cheeky bastard.'

  Thorne kept walking and did not stop smiling, but he made sure Boyle got a good look at his eyes and said, 'Why don't you piss off home and walk your whippet?'

  It was the same room in which Thorne and Anna Carpenter had interviewed the man who had since become a murder victim. When Jeremy Grover was escorted in by a prison officer, he looked no more happy to be there than Paul Monahan had been.

  'For Christ's sake, I've been through this already.'

  Was no more happy . . .

  Grover was taller and skinnier than the average armed robber, but his eyes were dead enough. There were flecks of ginger in the neatly trimmed goatee and a little grey in the curly brown hair. He was the same age as Thorne or thereabouts, but he looked lithe and wiry in regulation jeans and striped shirt. Thorne marked him down straight away as the sort who worked out not because he wanted to display himself, but because he enjoyed being fit. The sort who felt the need to stay keen and ready.

  He looked past Thorne and Holland, who were seated at the table, towards Andy Boyle, who was leaning against the wall behind them. 'Any chance of getting my trainers back?'


  Boyle said nothing, looking as though he could not bear to expend any more energy than was necessary to chew his gum.

  'That's a "no" then, is it?'

  Grover's bloodstained clothes had been taken and sent to the Forensic Science Service laboratory for testing. Nobody was expecting anything other than confirmation that the blood and scraps of stomach tissue belonged to Paul Monahan. Grover could not deny that he had been covered in it.

  'Those look all right,' Holland said. He nodded towards the shiny white training shoes with which Grover had been issued. Grover glanced down at them then looked back at Holland as though he were something stuck to the bottom of one.