From The Dead by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page A

scar,’ Donna said. ‘He got knifed in the belly when he was a teenager, some ruck in the local pub.’ She pointed again at the photo of the older man and Thorne saw the mark: a pale line just above the crinkled waistband of the swimming shorts, clear against the sagging, brown gut. ‘I reckon he’s had a bit of work done – something around the eyes is different and he’s dyed his hair – but it’s definitely him.’

    ‘All right, for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s him . . .’

    ‘Christ Almighty!’ She sighed, dropped back in her chair. ‘Your eyesight going as well, is it?’

    ‘Look,
if
it’s him, it’s a fair bet he’s not spending his time playing bowls and doing the gardening, right?’

    She nodded. ‘He’ll be into something dodgy.’

    ‘So, I’ll put in a word with SOCA and see what they want to do with it, OK? I can’t really do any more than that.’

    ‘If it’s him, don’t you want to know
how
?’ She knocked the worm of ash from her cigarette. ‘How he can still be alive, swanning around in the 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.

    ‘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.’

    ‘Me and Kate are fine as we are.’

    ‘I’m pleased for you. But even so, you’ve got good reason to be ever so slightly pissed off with him.’

    ‘Life’s too short.’

    ‘For some more than others,’ Thorne said.

    ‘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.’

    ‘So why, then?’

    ‘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?

    ‘I’m listening,’ Thorne said.

    ‘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.

    ‘When did you last see her?’ Thorne asked.

    ‘The day I was arrested.’

    ‘What? I don’t understand.’

    ‘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