Mark Billingham - From the Dead

'I imagine he wouldn't have been too thrilled,' Thorne said.

'The way I chose to do it, by paying someone to do it for me, felt like the safest bet.' She smiled, genuine enjoyment in it. 'Alan wasn't the only one who was concerned about details. Eventualities.'

Thorne glanced across and caught another look from Anna. There was enjoyment in her smile, too.

Maybe you don't know this woman as well as you thought you did.

'Monahan's dead,' Thorne said. 'You should probably know that.'

Donna blinked three or four times, her face suddenly pale. She stared at Thorne for a few seconds, then looked to Anna. 'When?'

'Day before yesterday,' Anna said. 'He was stabbed in his cell.'

Donna took another moment, then shrugged. 'Well, I'm not going to pretend I give a monkey's.'

'I wouldn't expect you to,' Thorne said.

They watched as a man came towards them walking a Jack Russell. He stopped a few feet away and waited, staring blithely into the distance while the dog curled out a good-sized turd in the middle of the path. Then he carried on walking.

As he passed the bench, Anna said, 'You should pick that up.'

The man turned, yanked his dog closer and told her to go fuck herself.

Thorne stood up and stepped across. 'That's not very polite.'

The man sighed and tried to walk past, but Thorne moved sideways and pushed the flat of his hand into his chest. The dog was jumping and scrabbling at Thorne's knees as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his warrant card.

'Shit,' the man said.

'Now.' Thorne held his ID inches from the man's face. 'Pick it up.'

'I haven't got a bag.'

'Use your hands.'

' What? '

'It's all right.' Anna stood up and took a crumpled wad of tissues from her pocket. She leaned across and handed them over. The man dragged his dog back along the path, picked up its waste, then walked quickly away in the opposite direction.

Anna watched until he was out of sight. Muttered, 'Arsehole.'

Thorne was still breathing heavily a few minutes later when the three of them began walking back towards Donna's flat. Donna nodded over her shoulder towards Anna, who was a step or two behind them. 'Looks like I picked the right girl for the job, doesn't it?' she said.

At the end of her path, Donna reached into her pocket and produced a brown envelope. 'The latest photo. London postmark, same as before.'

Thorne took out the photo, not caring about how it was handled. The other photographs had gone to the FSS lab the day before, and he reckoned if there were any fingerprints to be had, they were as likely to be found on those as they were on this one. He would send over the envelope, though. It would not be the first time DNA had been extracted from the back of a stamp.

The photo was from the same set as the others. Sun, sea, the usual.

'Why do you think he's doing this?' Thorne asked.

'Revenge,' Donna said. 'It's not complicated. What I said before, about not wanting Alan to survive and know that I'd tried to kill him? Well, that's what's happened, except that it's taken him ten years to do something about it.' She wrapped her anorak tight around her chest. 'To take Ellie.'

'So, why now?' Anna asked.

'It's the perfect time,' Thorne said. He remembered a case from a year or two earlier. A man whose girlfriend and child had been murdered just before his release from prison. It was as cold and brutal an act of revenge as Thorne had ever encountered, and it had gone on to cost many more lives.

Donna nodded. 'Couldn't be better, could it? He takes her just before I'm due to come out, when all I'm thinking about is being with her again.'

'You think he planned that, too?' Anna asked.

'Oh yeah.'

'Ten years ago?'

'You don't know him,' Donna said. Her voice dropped away as the anger took hold. 'First he… takes her. Then he sends these photographs to rub it in. To make sure I suffer as much as possible.' She had taken out another cigarette and was struggling with a disposable lighter. 'He's showing me how great his life is, now that I've got nothing.'

Anna stepped in and steadied Donna's hand so she could light her cigarette.

'Now that he's taken away the only good thing I ever had.'

'We'll find her,' Anna said.

'I'm dead if you don't, simple as that.' Donna sucked hard at the cigarette, her cheeks sinking with each draw. 'Dead in all the ways that matter, anyway. You lose a child, the best bit of you dies, that's all there is to it.'

Anna stepped back. She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and looked at the pavement.

'Any idea at all where he might be?' Thorne asked. 'I know you must have thought about it…'

'Spain's a bit obvious, but he did know a few people down there. Ex-business colleagues of one sort or another.'

'Remember any names?'

'You'd be better off asking some of your lot,' she said. 'The organised crime mob, or whatever they're called now. We had so many of that bunch knocking on the door over the years that Alan was on first-name terms with most of them.'

If Langford was in Spain, it would certainly make sense to speak to the people Donna was talking about. These days that meant SOCA, so Thorne made a mental note to ask Brigstocke how he'd got on with them. Then he would chase up Dennis Bethell, see if his friendly neighbourhood pornographer had made any progress with the photographs.

'We'll be in touch,' Thorne said.

Donna took care to give Anna a hug before turning and walking up the path. Thorne did not even warrant a goodbye. Standing at the car door, he could see Kate looking down from an upstairs window, though whether she was watching him or Donna, he could not be sure.

Thorne started the engine, cranked up the bluegrass CD. Then he turned and saw the look on Anna's face.

'What?' He turned off the engine. 'Anna?'

There were no tears, but it looked as though they might be on the cards. 'It's just all that stuff about her daughter,' Anna said. 'It upsets me.' She shook her head, said, 'Stupid,' and glanced at him. 'I'm sure you have to get… hardened or whatever to that kind of thing, what with some of the stuff you see. I mean, it's just stories in the newspapers for the rest of us, you know? Dead kids…'

'You don't get hardened,' Thorne said.

'Sorry, I'll be OK in a minute.'

'Take your time.'

'Have you got kids?'

'No,' Thorne said. He started the engine again, told her he would run her back to Victoria.

'That's miles out of your way.' She rooted in her bag, pulled out a small pack of tissues. 'Haven't you got to get back to Hendon?'

'It's really not a problem.'

'I'll be fine,' she said. 'Just drop me at a tube.'

The argument picked up where it had left off; Kate on her way down the stairs as Donna came through the front door.

'How did that go?'

Donna ignored the question, threw her coat across the banister and walked past her girlfriend into the kitchen. Kate followed, asked the same question.

'Why would you care?'

'Come on, Don…'

'You've already made your opinion perfectly clear.'

Kate sat at the small table. 'Look, I was just warning you about getting your hopes up.'

'My hopes?'

'I don't want you to be miserable.'

'You're making me miserable, because you're not supporting me.'

'You're wrong,' Kate said.

'I don't need people being negative.' Donna slapped her hand against a cupboard door. 'I've had years of that. I need you to back me up.'

'I've always backed you up. I'm just saying go steady, that's all. You're pinning everything on that copper and that soppy girl and if you're not careful-'

'What?'

'You just might be in for a shock, that's all.'

'You think she's dead, don't you?'

'I never said that.'