Mark Billingham - From the Dead

'We'd never catch any of these buggers if they weren't occasionally predictable,' Thorne said.

Brand laughed. 'True enough, mate.'

'Look, it's a possibility, that's all, but she said he used to know a few people who were holed up over there. I wondered if you might be able to come up with some names.'

'Bloody hell, we're going back a bit…'

'I know, and it's probably a waste of time…'

'Let me make a couple of calls, see if I can dig out some old files.'

'Anything you can find.'

'I can't promise anything.'

'My shout next time you're in the Oak,' Thorne said.

Brand said he would get back to him by the close of play.

Once he'd hung up, Thorne wandered along the corridor and into Russell Brigstocke's office. The DCI had a selection of coins laid out in front of him on the desk. He was moving them from hand to hand and growing increasingly annoyed at his own less-than-impressive legerdemain. Thorne sat down and watched, thinking that Alan Langford's sleight of hand had been all but faultless. He had slipped away, leaving a mysterious body in his place. And, if Donna's suspicions were correct, he had returned ten years later to make his daughter disappear.

'Revenge,' Thorne said. 'That's what Donna reckons it's all about.'

'You buying it?' Brigstocke asked.

'If that's what it is, it's certainly worked,' Thorne said. 'She's in pieces.'

'Did you take Anna Carpenter with you this morning?' There was a slight smile on Brigstocke's face as he casually asked the question, but Thorne convinced himself it was because he'd just palmed one of the coins particularly well.

'I thought it was a good idea,' Thorne said. 'She's pretty close with Donna. Puts her at her ease, you know?'

'Makes sense.'

'Good.'

'I'm glad all that's working out.' Brigstocke opened his hand to show Thorne it was empty. 'Jesmond will be happy at any rate.'

'I wouldn't sleep well otherwise,' Thorne said.

While Brigstocke continued to practise, Thorne told him about the call to Brand, and the possibility of Langford having followed an old friend or two to Spain.

Brigstocke agreed that it sounded somewhat obvious, but suggested it was certainly worth chasing up. 'I'll put the SOCA boys on stand-by,' he said. 'It would be nice if we had something a bit more definite before you meet them, mind you.'

Thorne said he'd do his best.

'Any word from Bethell?'

'I've left two more messages today,' Thorne said.

Brigstocke admitted he was having no more luck with the FSS lab than Thorne was having with his own image-analysis 'expert'. 'I'll chase them up too,' he said. 'Tell them we need something by tomorrow. ' He thought for a second, then spun round in his chair to study the chart of shifts on the wall behind him. 'Are you on tomorrow?'

Saturday.

The first since a long-forgotten and seemingly resolved case had come back with a brutal vengeance. Since a corpse had been revealed as a killer. Since one murder had become two, separated by ten years, but each orchestrated by the same man.

'Presuming you've managed to conjure up the overtime,' Thorne said.

'Makes you want to ring in,' Yvonne Kitson said. 'Put some of these idiots straight.'

'Would it make any difference?'

'Who cares?' She slammed shut a drawer in her desk. 'I tell you this, though, they'd need a state-of-the-art bleeping machine if I ever got on there.'

'There's a delay,' Thorne said. 'Thirty seconds or something, so the swearing doesn't get broadcast.'

Kitson thought about it. Said, 'Wankers.'

In their office, Thorne and Kitson had the radio tuned to 5 Live and were listening intently to a phone-in discussion about the legal system and the presumption of innocence.

The guest in the studio was Adam Chambers.

It seemed to Thorne that the show's host was fawning all over Chambers as though he were some hot-shot actor or pop star. Chuckling at every quip and grunting in sympathy each time her guest complained about how he had been treated by the police or pleaded for the tolerance and understanding that, as an innocent man, he believed was his by right.

'It's another example of trial by media,' one caller said. 'And the police just go along with it.'

'Adam?' the host simpered.

'That's spot on,' Chambers said. 'The police know very well that people are reading these stories, taking in all these rumours and allegations, and the truth goes out the window. Even if the truth does come out, which, thank God, it did in my case, you still have to deal with being… marked out and stigmatised. Tarnished by it, you know?'

'No smoke without fire, right?'

Thorne winced; the phrase, as it always did, setting his teeth on edge.

'Absolutely, Gabby,' said Chambers.

'I think I might be sick,' Kitson said.

Thorne felt pulled in two very different directions. He despised the 'no smoke without fire' brigade, the knee-jerk smugness of their tabloid-friendly mantra. He knew better than most that some people were convicted of crimes they had not committed. And he did his best to accept that, in principle at least, those who were innocent in the eyes of the law should be able to walk free, unburdened by any association of guilt.

But then there was Adam Chambers.

In his case it was not so much fire as a raging inferno.

When Sam Karim came in and said that Andy Boyle was on the line from Wakefield, Thorne told him to put the call through and turned off the radio.

'Bloody good job,' Kitson said. 'I was about to lose my lunch.'

Thorne would listen to the rest of the programme on his computer when he got home. Get worked up all over again. He felt sure that Andrea Keane would not even warrant a mention.

Boyle was in a marginally better mood than the last time Thorne had spoken to him, but it could not have been described as cheerful. Thorne doubted the Yorkshireman ever did cheerful.

'Thought you might like a progress report.'

'That's good of you,' Thorne said. 'So?'

'There isn't any,' Boyle said, his mood lightening further as he delivered the bad news. 'We've had another crack at Grover and we've had that bent screw in a couple of times an' all, but neither one's about to roll over.'

'What about trying to find the money?' Thorne asked.

'Well, you know what the sodding banks are like. Hardly falling over themselves to give us any records on the hurry-up. But I'm betting the payments were made in cash and never deposited, so we're probably wasting our time.'

Thorne had already come to the same conclusion about any money paid to Paul Monahan, but a detailed investigation into his finances had been put on the back burner since his death. There was not much point in pressurising a witness who was no longer around to give evidence.

'Even if we do find the cash,' Boyle said, 'there's no way of tracing where it's come from. Cook might have bought a new car more often than most, taken the odd flash holiday or whatever, but without a paper trail, there's bugger all linking either him or Grover to Langford.'

'They still have some explaining to do, though.'

'Best we can hope for,' Boyle said. 'I mean, they might not even have been paid yet for the Monahan job, and any money they pocketed before will probably be long gone. You just keep the cash under your bed and spend it as you see fit, right?'

'I wouldn't know,' Thorne said.

'These days you can pay for most things with readies, right? People are too grateful to bother asking questions.'

Thorne said he supposed so.

'I'm betting that whoever's handing the dosh over is going to wait until it's safe. They'd know damn well we'll be looking at Grover and Cook, so they'll bide their time and meanwhile that pair of arseholes can just bluff it out.'

'Grover's not exactly got a lot to lose by keeping his mouth shut, has he?'