From the Dead by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page B

sunshine, when he burned to death ten years ago in Epping Forest? If it’s him, don’t you want to know whose body was in that car?’
    Hypothetical as he still believed – just believed – the question was, it had been rattling around in Thorne’s head ever since Anna Carpenter’s visit to Becke House. Somebody had been handcuffed to the wheel of that car, even if it had not been Alan Langford. Somebody’s flesh had spat and melted on to the leather seats.
    â€˜Granted,’ Thorne said, ‘there are reasons why we might want to find Alan Langford if we thought he was the man in these pictures. But why do you want to find him? I’m guessing you’re not looking to kiss and make up, see if he’s got room on his yacht for you and your girlfriend.’
    â€˜Me and Kate are fine as we are.’
    â€˜I’m pleased for you. But even so, you’ve got good reason to be ever so slightly pissed off with him.’
    â€˜Life’s too short.’
    â€˜For some more than others,’ Thorne said.
    â€˜I was angrier with him when I thought he was dead than I am now,’ Donna said. ‘I could have happily killed him a dozen times over. It’s not about that any more.’
    â€˜So why, then?’
    â€˜I want to find him,’ Donna said, ‘because I think he’s got my daughter.’
    Thorne had completely forgotten that there had been a child. A memory stirred and came quickly into focus: a young girl standing at the fridge in that cavernous kitchen, pouring herself something to drink, asking her mother who Thorne was and what he wanted.
    He struggled to remember the name. Emma? Ellen?
    â€˜I’m listening,’ Thorne said.
    â€˜Ellie was only seven when I went inside, and there was no one to take her. Nobody who wanted her at any rate. Nobody who Social Services considered fit for it.’ She leaned forward, mashed her cigarette butt into the ashtray, and told Thorne that with no grandparents to step in, her daughter had eventually been taken into long-term foster care. ‘My younger sister would have taken her if she’d had to, but we never got on that well. Besides which, her old man wasn’t keen. The only other option was Alan’s brother, but he had even more form than Alan, which didn’t make him an ideal candidate either. So . . .’
    Thorne felt a niggle of guilt that he had not known any of this, nor taken the trouble to find out. But it was the way things worked. Though not always successful, he tried not to think too much about those he put away or the people they left behind. His concerns were generally reserved for the dead and their relatives. But in this case, of course, he had not cared a great deal about the victim, either.
    â€˜When did you last see her?’ Thorne asked.
    â€˜The day I was arrested.’
    â€˜What? I don’t understand.’
    â€˜Obviously she was way too young to visit,’ Donna said. ‘I was told she’d gone into care, that she was doing OK and that Social Services would consider allowing visits when she turned sixteen. Meanwhile, I got photos.’ She reached for yet more pictures and passed them across to Thorne. ‘Three or four times a year. Occasionally they let her put a note or a drawing in with them.’
    Thorne saw the girl he remembered from Donna’s kitchen growing up over the course of a dozen or so finger-smeared photographs. A gawky-looking child cradling a puppy. A girl with long, blonde hair posing with her friends in netball kit. A sullen teenager, the hair now cut short and dyed black, the practised and perfected expression somewhere between boredom and resentment.
    â€˜When she was sixteen,’ Donna said, ‘Social Services wrote and told me that, considering the severity of my offence, they had decided it would not be in my daughter’s best interests to visit until she was eighteen. Then, last August . . .’