Kitson nodded. ‘So, when you haven’t got a body and there’s a brief who knows what he’s doing, you’re really up against it.’ She looked at Thorne. ‘We’re up against it.’
‘Nothing else you could have done,’ Holland said.
Thorne blinked slowly and imagined Adam Chambers celebrating, pissing it up the wall in some West End bar where there were far fewer police officers knocking around. He pictured the jubilant friends and family and supposed that, in a way, it was a let-off for them, too. There would be no need to lie to work colleagues or rewrite their personal histories. They would not have to duck difficult questions when journalists came knocking every year on Andrea Keane’s birthday, insisting that they must know something about what happened to her. Now they could happily let their own doubts about Adam Chambers’ innocence – and Thorne knew they had them – shrivel, until they seemed like something only dreamed or imagined.
‘We’ve just got to crack on,’ Kitson said.
‘Life’s too short, right?’ Thorne necked a third of his pint, swallowed back a belch. ‘But a lot shorter for some than it is for others.’ He thought about two eighteen-year-old girls. The memory of one sullied by injustice. A chance, perhaps, to find the other. And to make himself feel a damn sight better, to salve a conscience scarred by his failure to find the first.
The horse that Jesmond thought he should get back on.
They were joined by Sam Karim, who brought another round to the table just as Russell Brigstocke stood up and made a short speech. The DCI thanked everyone for their hard work, told the team they were the best he had ever worked with, and said that one day, if something new turned up, they might get another crack at it. There were cheers and some half-hearted applause, then the pub drank a toast to Andrea Keane.
‘God bless,’ Thorne said. It was the kind of thing a copper with a drink inside him came out with at such a moment. Even one without a religious bone in his body.
The Oak was hardly the sort of establishment to get done for after-hours drinking, but there was no more than fifteen minutes’ official drinking time left when Thorne spotted someone he knew walking out of the Gents’. Gary Brand had been a DS on the original Alan Langford inquiry; had sat in on a couple of the Paul Monahan interviews, if Thorne’s memory served him correctly. He had stayed in the Homicide Command for another eighteen months or so afterwards, until a vacancy for an inspector had come up elsewhere, and was now working south of the river, as far as Thorne could remember.
Thorne thought it might be an idea to run a few things past someone who had been part of the team ten years earlier. Moving through the crowd, he felt the drink starting to take hold. He took a few deep breaths. There was no way he was driving home, but that didn’t matter a great deal. He had spent the afternoon on the phone, making the necessary arrangements, and he would not be needing the car much, if at all, the following day.
Brand looked pleased to see him and immediately reached for his wallet. They made for the bar. Thorne took a half, though he knew it was already a little late for caution.
‘Hardly your local any more this, is it, Gary?’
Brand was a slim six-footer and a few years younger than Thorne. His light hair was cut close to the scalp and he wore the kind of thin, soft-leather jacket that Thorne thought looked better on a woman. ‘Well, obviously I know quite a few of the lads on the Chambers inquiry, and I’ve been following the case.’ He was originally from the West Midlands and it was still clear enough in the flattened vowels and the downward intonation at the end of each sentence. As a result, he often sounded despondent, even if he were in the best of moods. He shrugged. ‘Couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be tonight.’ He raised his glass, touched it to Thorne’s. ‘What an absolute shocker.’
‘We’ve had a few of those.’
‘Right enough.’
‘Talking of which . . .’
Thorne told Brand about the visit from Anna Carpenter and the photographs. About a case that had come back to life as miraculously as Alan Langford himself appeared to have done.
‘He was always a slippery sod,’ Brand said. ‘The type that enjoyed making the likes of you and me look stupid.’
‘The type to snatch his own daughter?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘And what about the photos?’
Brand told Thorne that he had no idea why they might have been sent to Donna. ‘So, what are you going to do?’
‘See if I can get anything out of Paul Monahan.’
‘Good luck,’ Brand said. ‘I don’t remember that animal being particularly talkative.’
‘Maybe he’s mellowed in prison,’ Thorne said. It was banter, no more than that. Thorne had checked Monahan’s record that afternoon and discovered that he had hardly been a model prisoner. His sentence had been increased twice since his original conviction.
‘Yeah, course he has.’
‘He might be one of those types that takes degrees and spends his spare time making quilts for Oxfam.’
‘My money’s on the gym and homemade tattoos,’ Brand said. ‘But let me know how you get on . . .’
They exchanged mobile numbers and Thorne went back to his table. Holland asked if he wanted another, but faced with a straight choice between heading home now or fighting for a taxi later with half of Homicide Command, Thorne decided to make a move. He said as few goodbyes as he could get away with and headed out to the car park, grateful for the cold against his face and the fresh air.
He called home on his way to Colindale Tube Station and heard his own voice on the machine. He guessed that Louise had gone to bed or back to her own flat, but he left a message anyway.
Then he called Anna Carpenter.
He was suddenly aware, as he heard the call connect, that it was probably way too late to be ringing, that he should have called on his way to the Oak, or just sent a text. Then again, a part of him was hoping that she would not answer, or if she didn’t, that she might not get the message he was about to leave.
When Anna’s voicemail cut in, Thorne spoke a little more slowly than he might otherwise have, careful not to slur. ‘This is Tom Thorne. Just calling to say, if you’re still up for this, meet me at eight o’clock tomorrow morning outside the WHSmith at King’s Cross Station. Bring your passport. And you might want to wear something that’s a bit more . . . severe or whatever.’
SEVEN
Though there had been a prison on the same site since 1595, the majority of the current building dated from two hundred and fifty years later, with a brooding neo-Gothic gatehouse and wings arranged in the typical midnineteenth-century radial system. Like most Victorian prisons, HMP Wakefield had certainly not been designed to be beautiful, but approaching it, as he had done several times before, it seemed to Thorne as though every blackened brick and each barred window had been infused by those that had built it with something poisonous. Something subtle and dark that might leach from the building’s brutal fabric into those inside and slowly kill off hope; harden them. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Was it the people within its walls that made the place so ugly?
Whether it was a Victorian monstrosity like Pentonville or Strangeways, or a pale, concrete, US-style penitentiary like Belmarsh, Thorne was never wholly comfortable stepping inside a prison.
He could see that Anna Carpenter felt the same way.
He watched her cheerfully handing over her passport at the first of three checkpoints they would have to pass through before being admitted into the main body of the prison.
‘Trust me to get the wrong end of the bloody stick,’ she said, nodding towards Thorne. ‘There I was thinking that when he asked me to bring my passport, he was going to whisk me off on some glamorous, last-minute holiday.’
The man-monkey checking her details did not so much as glance up from the paperwork. Anna turned to Thorne, rolled her eyes. She was rattled, he could see that, and overdoing the nonchalance.
‘Nice to chat,’
she said, when her passport was handed back.
She was right to be apprehensive, though. Thorne knew that better than most. The outfit she was wearing – a suitably understated dark skirt and jacket – would lead any prisoner to assume she was a copper. She would feel studied and hated, just as much as Thorne always did. But, as a woman, she would also feel things that were a damn sight more unpleasant.
‘He was a cheery so-and-so,’ she said, as they moved on.
Rattled as she might have been, Anna seemed in a better mood now than she had been two and a half hours earlier at King’s Cross, marching up to where Thorne stood slurping from a takeaway coffee at one minute before eight o’clock.
‘A bit of notice would have been nice.’
‘You’re very punctual,’ Thorne said. ‘I like that.’
‘And I don’t like being told what to wear.’
‘You should consider yourself lucky. I was dead set against you coming at all.’
‘So why am I here?’
‘Because I do what I’m told.’
‘Why don’t I believe that?’
Thorne blew on his coffee, began walking towards the platform.
‘Coming where, anyway?’ she asked, following. ‘Do I get to find out where I’m going, or is that classified information? I’m guessing it’s not Hogwarts.’
Thorne told her.
‘Bloody hell.’
‘“Bloody hell” is right,’ Thorne said. ‘Now, here are the rules . . .’
Once they were through security, they moved towards the Visits Area. Even though the route kept them well clear of prison landings and association areas, the atmosphere worsened. Wakefield was a high-security lifers’ prison, and the air tasted a little different when so many of those breathing it had nothing to lose and no reason to give a shit. Anna was clearly still thrown simply by being there, maintaining an all but constant stream of frivolous comments as they walked.
‘You need to turn it down a bit,’ he said.
‘Turn it down?’
‘The volume. All of it. I know you’re nervous, but—’
‘I’m fine.’
‘And I certainly don’t want any chit-chat when we see Monahan. Fair enough?’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I talk too much, I know that. Always have. Overcompensating, I suppose.’
‘For what?’
‘All sorts.’
They rounded a corner and entered the waiting area. Two dozen people sat clutching torn-off, numbered tickets as though they were queuing at a supermarket deli counter. Thorne showed his authorisation to the officer at the desk, and he and Anna walked straight through to the Visits Area. The room was large, bright and airy, with several rows of clean tables and simple metal chairs. A prison officer sat near the doors at either end, while a third moved slowly up and down between the tables, leading a bored-looking sniffer-dog. The carpet smelled new and Thorne wondered if that made the dog’s job any harder. It can’t have helped, surely. How many visitors were able to waltz in with wraps of crack shoved up their arses for weeks after Allied Carpets had been in?
There was a supervised play area in one corner, and a few smaller rooms for private visits at the far end. As they moved past a refreshments counter towards one of these, Anna asked, ‘What about building a rapport?’
‘What?’
‘No chit-chat, like you said, but don’t we need to make him relaxed or whatever?’
‘We don’t need to do anything,’ Thorne said. ‘And trust me, you don’t want any kind of “rapport” with a man like Paul Monahan.’
He was waiting for them, looking agitated, if not exactly nervous. His face and hair were both greyer than Thorne remembered, and he had filled out a little beneath the blue and white striped shirt he wore with standard HMP-issue jeans and training shoes. He stabbed at his watch. ‘You’re late.’ The irritation was clear enough under the nasal Derry twang.
‘Somewhere else you’d like to be?’ Thorne asked. He took off his jacket, laid it across the back of a chair. Anna did the same.
‘Got a class.’
Thorne nodded. It looked like he, rather than Gary Brand, had been closer to the mark when it came to guessing at Monahan’s prison hobbies. That said, it might have been a class in cage fighting. Like most prisons, aside from a bewildering assortment of treatment programmes, Wakefield had an enormous range of activities and educational opportunities on offer. Thorne happened to know for example that those working in the engineering workshop spent their time making security gates, grilles and fencing. Even he had to admit that sounded like taking the piss. ‘I thought you might have a hot date.’
‘You were funny as cancer ten years ago,’ Monahan said. ‘You’ve not got any funnier.’
‘Nice to see you again, too.’
Monahan looked at Anna for the first time. ‘Who’s this?’
‘Detective Carpenter,’ Thorne said. Not a lie. Not exactly. He saw Monahan’s eyes wander across Anna’s body, lingering where they shouldn’t. ‘Let’s crack on, shall we? Seeing as you’re so busy.’
Monahan shrugged, leaned back.
‘You know your former employer’s out and about, don’t you?’ Thorne let it hang for a few seconds. ‘I’m talking about Donna Langford, obviously.’
Another shrug. Monahan might have known, or known and not cared.
‘Sorry, when I said “employer”, did you think I meant Alan Langford?’
The hesitation was brief, but it was enough. ‘Why would I think that?’
‘Well, you did some work for him too, once upon a time. Before Donna hired you, I mean.’
‘So?’
‘So, I’m just trying to avoid any confusion.’
‘You’re the one who’s confused, pal. How can he be out and about anywhere?’
‘Of course. He’s dead meat, isn’t he?’ Thorne shook his head in mock-annoyance at his own mock-idiocy. ‘Seriously overdone meat, now I think about it, but certainly dead. Stupid mistake on my part. Don’t know what I was thinking.’ He looked hard at Monahan, watched the eyes move back to Anna.
Less about lust this time. More an attempt to change the way the conversation was heading.
‘Isn’t it kind of annoying?’ Thorne asked. ‘Donna on the out while you’re still stuck in here, doing your GCSEs or whatever.’
‘Not thought about it,’ Monahan said.
‘I don’t think I believe you.’
‘Believe what you like.’
‘Not that you’ve done yourself a lot of favours, mind you. All that extra time getting whacked on to your sentence. Assaulting prison guards, trashing your cell . . .’
‘Why should you care?’
‘I couldn’t give a toss, but it’s not clever, is it?’
‘I get wound up.’
‘You must love that Seg Unit.’
Monahan’s head dropped a little, one hand pulling at the fingers of the other. ‘Can’t do anything about it.’
‘What have you got, another seven or eight years, minimum?’
A nod. His chin inching closer to his chest.
Thorne was about to speak again when Anna cut in. ‘Sounds like it could get a whole lot longer if you’re not careful,’ she said. If she was aware of the hard look Thorne gave her, she chose to ignore it. ‘You need to sort yourself out.’
Monahan raised his head, sniffed. After a few seconds he looked away from Anna, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. Cocksure again and waiting for them to get to whatever it was they had come such a long way to talk to him about.
‘There are ways to reduce your sentence,’ Thorne said. ‘Radical idea, I know.’
Monahan smiled thinly, with just a hint of prison teeth. ‘Getting to it now, are we? What you actually want.’
‘What? We can’t just pop in to see how you are?’
‘Like I said, funny as cancer.’
‘It’s really no big thing,’ Thorne said. ‘Just a little help with a murder we’re trying to solve. Not eve
n that, actually, because we know very well who the murderer is. It’s more a question of trying to identify the victim.’
‘Why should I know anything?’
‘Well, because it was you that handcuffed the poor bastard to the wheel of that Jag and set fire to it.’
Monahan stared for a few seconds, then began to shake his head and show a few more teeth. ‘You’re mental, you know that?’
‘Barking,’ Thorne said. ‘Completely off my trolley. But let’s see just how mad I am, shall we? I mean, let’s think for a minute about how this might have panned out. I’m guessing that Alan found out what his dearly beloved was up to. Overheard her on the phone or talking in her sleep, it doesn’t really matter. Then he comes to you before you get a chance to do what she’s paid you for and makes you a better offer.’
Monahan looked at Anna, nodded towards Thorne. ‘Who did you piss off to get stuck with him?’
‘So, you had to find someone to take his place,’ Thorne said. ‘Did you do that or did Alan find someone? Had to be someone roughly the same height and general appearance, I suppose. Not that it really mattered by the time you’d finished with him.’
Monahan was still looking at Anna. ‘Seriously, love, you want to put in for a transfer.’
‘Thanks, I’ll bear it in mind,’ she said. ‘Now tell us who you got to replace Alan Langford in that car.’
Thorne turned, ready with another hard stare of admonishment. Then he saw the look on Anna’s face, and Monahan’s reaction to her simple, straightforward question, and decided to save it for later.
Monahan composed himself. Took a deep breath. ‘Alan Langford is dead, OK? Jesus, why do you think I’m in here? His missus paid me to get rid of him and I did what I was good at back then. Fair enough?’
‘Well, it would be,’ Thorne said. ‘If I hadn’t just seen a photo of Mr Langford looking ever so well.’ Monahan swallowed and looked away. ‘He’s alive and kicking, Paul, and we all know it.’
‘So, no need for any more bullshit,’ Anna said.
Thorne nodded, sat back. ‘Yep, that’s another one on the out, getting himself a very nice suntan while you’re rotting in here, the colour of a manky spud. I mean, we’ve got to presume he’s been making it worth your while all these years, you saying nothing. Something nice to look forward to when you come out, I shouldn’t wonder. And he’s probably taking care of your nearest and dearest, right? Keeping up the mortgage payments, all that.’
From the Dead Page 6