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.
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
Not so much ‘shit-hot’, Thorne decided, as ‘lukewarm’.
Within a few minutes of meeting DI Peter – ‘call me Pete’ – Fraser, Thorne was convinced that the agent assigned by Silcox and Mullenger as his guide and liaison for the Spanish leg of the inquiry was probably not one of SOCA’s finest.
‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ Fraser said as they walked towards the airport car park. He grinned and lowered his head, peered at Thorne over wraparound sunglasses. ‘From what I’ve heard, you should slot in quite nicely.’
He was not much taller than Thorne, but looked a good deal fitter. His hair had the kind of blond streaks that Louise called ‘bird-shit highlights’, while the three-quarter-length shorts, beaded necklace and salmon-pink shirt made him look more like a small-time drug dealer than a big-time secret squirrel. Perhaps that was the idea, Thorne thought. He pictured his own, more conservative collection of shorts and polo shirts, bought a few days earlier with his warm-weather allowance of M&S vouchers. He guessed that anyone with an eye for such things would mark him out for what he was straight away.
He decided that he didn’t much care.
‘Good flight?’ Fraser asked.
‘It was easyJet,’ Thorne said.
They sat in Fraser’s Punto for a few minutes, waiting for the air conditioning to kick in before heading away. Listening to the agent’s easy chatter, Thorne wondered if, first impressions aside, he should perhaps give the man the benefit of the doubt. Hadn’t he taken an instant dislike to Andy Boyle? Hadn’t he thought that Anna Carpenter was a pain in the neck when he had first been lumbered with her?
Perhaps Fraser would surprise him, too.
The SOCA man watched as Thorne held sticky palms towards the air vents. ‘This is chilly, mate,’ he said. ‘You want to try being here in August. I promise you, you’d be sweating like a rapist.’
Perhaps not . . .
The road from the airport was clogged with traffic, squeezing between building works every quarter-mile or so that narrowed the lanes. The carriageways were separated by a seemingly endless line of palm trees and, for the first twenty minutes, snaking slowly through the built-up outskirts of Malaga, drab-looking apartment blocks and retail strips crowded in from both sides. Furniture stores, DIY warehouses and restaurants, with as many English signs as Spanish.
Fraser took a call and, in a London accent that was sounding increasingly affected, told whoever he was talking to that Thorne was in the car with him. He said his passenger was clearly feeling the heat and laughed at the response. He hummed his agreement to a few things and promised to call back later. After hanging up, he turned the radio on and found an English station; some Radio Essex reject proudly announcing a programme of back-to-back eighties classics.
Spandau Ballet gave way to Kajagoogoo.
‘We should probably give you a day or two to get settled.’
‘I don’t need a day or two,’ Thorne said.
Fraser shrugged. ‘You might want to feel your way into things is all I’m saying. There’s not much on today, anyway.’
‘You got more stuff for me to read?’
‘Oh yeah, we’ll go through everything tonight over dinner. But you know, softly-softly-catchee-monkey, all that.’
‘Way past that with Alan Langford,’ Thorne said.
Fraser looked at him, placed a finger to his lips. ‘If he’s who we think he is, you start saying that name too loudly and we might just as well be wearing pointed hats.’
Thorne nodded. As Brigstocke had guessed might be the case, SOCA suspected that Alan Langford was a man they had been observing for some time, and information about him had been faxed through piecemeal in the weeks since the shooting. Details of the new life Langford had made for himself in Spain. Some of his nice new friends and not so nice business associates.
His new name.
The traffic had eased and, despite the high-rise sprawl of Torremolinos in the distance, their clear view of the coast – arcing south-west towards Gibraltar – was spectacular. The sea was shining to the left of them, crashing against the beaches in waves far bigger than Thorne had expected.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Fraser asked.
‘Looks nice,’ Thorne said.
Five minutes later, Fraser drifted across to the right-hand lane and Thorne clocked the sign for the turn-off.
Benalmádena.
‘Where the photographs were taken,’ Thorne said.
Fraser nodded, said, ‘Seems as good a place as any for some lunch. You hungry?’
Thorne had found it easy to resist the lure of easyJet’s in-flight catering service. But even if he had fancied something on the plane, he could not have justified using up a fortnight’s expenses on one cup of coffee and a sandwich.
‘Yeah, I could eat,’ he said.
They found a small restaurant in a parade of shops and bars just across from the beach, where people were sharing tapas around large upturned barrels. Fraser told Thorne that he’d do the honours and, having put away one small beer and asked for another, ordered food for both of them in fluent Spanish. Thorne let him get on with it. He was happy enough, for the time being at least, to let the SOCA agent play his games, as well as a little relieved at having been spared giving a demonstration of his own ignorance.
Waiting for the food, Thorne watched an old man a few feet away pulling a large octopus from a vat of boiling water. He snipped off pieces with large scissors, laid them on a wooden plate alongside slices of waxy-looking potatoes and, after a liberal sprinkling of salt and paprika, drizzled the dish with olive oil.
Pulpo a feira.
The reason why the boat in the picture had been in Benalmádena. The one clue that had helped them find Alan Langford. If they had found him . . .
Thorne nodded towards the old man. ‘Can we try some of that?’
‘We’ve got plenty coming, trust me.’ Fraser noticed Thorne watching him as he finished his second beer, said, ‘It’s not even a third of a pint.’ He winked. ‘It’s all about fitting in, right? Looking the part.’
Thorne shrugged and went back to his sparkling water.
‘Listen, don’t think this isn’t hard graft,’ Fraser said. ‘Trust me, mate, I’d rather be in Tottenham.’
‘Right.’
‘Straight up. It’s mental here, I’m telling you.’ He stabbed at the top of the barrel with a finger, counting off a predictable list of the criminal fra
ternities. ‘We’ve got the Albanians, the Russians, the Irish, the Brits . . . and the locals aren’t exactly Boy Scouts, either. Gun-running, vice like you wouldn’t believe and multi-million-pound property scams in every resort you can name. The armed robbers could teach the lads back home a thing or two, and I don’t need to tell you about the drugs.’
He didn’t, but he proceeded to anyway. Thorne was given more or less the same lesson he’d received from Silcox and Mullenger, but he sat and listened politely. He’d already decided that ‘innocent abroad’ might be a useful persona to hide behind.
Fraser pointed out to sea. ‘Ninety miles up the coast, Africa’s so close you can almost swim across. They usually drown, so who cares, but we’ve caught a few with lifejackets stuffed full of all sorts.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I swear.’
Thorne could easily believe it. He knew the lengths people would go to for drug money, and he couldn’t help wondering if some of those who risked their lives in such a way might be working for Alan Langford. He knew that those further down the chain recruited their mules and dealers from the streets of British cities: no-hopers in Nottingham or Sheffield peddling wraps of coke outside downmarket nightclubs who would jump at the chance of a free plane ticket and a few months in the sun. Who wouldn’t think it strange to be asked if they were strong swimmers.
The food came and they both got stuck in. Thin and crispy shrimp tortillas and fiery Padrón peppers. Deep-fried anchovies and huge clams eaten straight from the shell with lemon and salt.
A hundred yards away, on a corner, Thorne could see the sign for a Burger King. He sucked down another clam and nodded across. ‘Why the hell would anyone want to go there when you’ve got this?’
‘To be honest, you can get a bit sick of the local stuff,’ Fraser said. ‘Sometimes you just want a decent bit of stodge.’
‘Right, like a nice kebab back in Tottenham.’
Fraser took off his sunglasses and stared. He was clearly unsure if Thorne was taking the piss and, despite the smile that eventually appeared, Thorne could see that, whatever else Call-Me-Pete might be, he certainly wasn’t soft. As soon as the shades went back on, Thorne looked away, and Fraser followed his eye-line to where two women were standing topless at the edge of the beach.
From the Dead Page 23