Mark Billingham: From the Dead

And yet, despite the way things had panned out, Anna knew that her instincts had been right, that there had been nothing wrong with her ambition. How many people were stuck, too afraid to make a change, however much they yearned for it?

How many settled for jobs, partners, lives?

She had wanted something different, that was all. She had thought that in helping other people she would help herself. That, at the very least, it would stop her turning into one of those hard-faced City bitches who click-clacked past her all day long in their Jimmy Choos. And, yes, she had thought it might be a little more exciting than futures and sodding hedge funds.

Kidding herself.

Same as she had been when she picked up the leaflet about joining the army, or when she'd thought about a career in the police force for all of five minutes. A year and a half ago, several of her friends had described her radical career shift from banker to private detective as 'brave'. 'Braver than me,' Angie, a triage nurse, had said. Rob, a teacher in a rough north London school, had nodded his agreement. Anna had suspected they really meant 'stupid', but she had relished the compliment all the same.

A soldier, though? A copper? Certainly not brave enough for that. ..

Anna stood as the train pulled into Victoria and caught the eye of the woman who had been sitting opposite. She tried to summon a smile but had to look away, convinced suddenly and for no good reason that the woman had got the measure of her. Could see what she was.

She felt over-wound and light-headed as the escalator carried her up towards the street; desperate now to get back to the office and change. She wanted to get out of the stupid heels she was click-clacking around in and back into her trainers. She wanted the day to end and the dark to wrap itself around her. She wanted to drink and sleep. It wasn't until she got to the ticket barrier and fumbled for her Oyster card that she realised she had a torn page of the Metro crushed into her fist.

The office was wedged between a dry-cleaner's and a betting shop; a cracked brown door with dirty glass. As Anna was reaching into her handbag for the keys, a woman who had been hovering at the kerb walked towards her. Forty-odd, and something fierce in her eyes.

Anna backed off half a step. Got ready to say 'no'. The typical London response.

'Are you a detective?' the woman asked.

Anna just stared. No, not fierce, she thought. Desperate.

'I saw your ad, and I need a bit of help with something, so…'

There was no light visible through the glass, and Anna guessed that Frank's lunchtime drink had turned into several. He would have diverted any calls for F.A. Investigations to his mobile and would almost certainly not be back for the rest of the afternoon.

'Yes,' Anna said. 'I am.' She took out her keys and stepped towards the door. 'Come on up.'

Had they been sitting side by side or staring at each other across the table in an interview room, the crucial difference between the two men might not have been obvious. Not to the casual observer, at any rate. Had one not been standing in a dock and the other in the witness box, it would have been tough to tell cop from killer.

Both were wearing suits and looking unhappy about the fact. Both stood reasonably still and, for the most part, stared straight ahead. Both seemed collected enough and, although only one was talking, both gave the impression, if you searched their expressions for more than a few moments, that there was plenty going on behind the facade of unflappable calm.

Both looked dangerous.

The man on the witness stand was well into his forties: stocky and round-shouldered, with dark hair that was greying a little more on one side than the other. He spoke slowly. He took care to say no more than he needed to as he gave his evidence, choosing his words carefully, but without letting that care look like doubt or hesitation.

'And there was no question in your mind that you were dealing with a murder?'

'No question whatsoever.'

'You have told us that the defendant was "relaxed" when he was first interviewed. Did his demeanour change when you questioned him subsequent to his arrest?'

As Detective Inspector Tom Thorne described the five separate interviews he had conducted with the man on trial, he did his best to keep his eyes fixed on the prosecuting counsel. But he could not quite manage it. Two or three times, he glanced across at the dock to see Adam Chambers staring right back at him; the eyes flat, unblinking. Once, he looked up for a few seconds to the public gallery, where the family of the young woman Chambers had murdered was gathered. He saw the hope and the rage in the faces of Andrea Keane's parents. The hands that clutched at those of others, or lay trembling in laps, wrapped tight around wads of damp tissue.

Thorne saw a group of people united in their grief and anger, and for whom justice – should it be meted out to their satisfaction – would be real and raw. Justice, of a sort, for an eighteen-year-old girl who Thorne knew beyond any doubt to be dead.

Despite the fact that no body had ever been found.

'Inspector Thorne?'

His voice stayed calm as he finished his testimony, reiterating dates and times, names and places: those details he hoped would linger in the minds of the jurors; combining to do their job as effectively as those precious, damning strands of blonde hair, the lies exposed by a mobile-phone record, and the smiling face of a girl in a photograph, taken days before she was killed.

'Thank you, Inspector. You may stand down.'

Thorne slipped his notebook back into the pocket of his jacket and stepped from the witness box. He walked slowly towards the rear doors of the courtroom, a fingertip moving back and forth across the small, straight scar on his chin. Eyes moving too, as he drew closer, towards the figure in the dock.

Thinking:

I don't want to see you again…

Not in the flesh, obviously not that, because you'll be banged up, thank God, and growing old. Watching your back and feeling that great big brain of yours turn to mush and staying on the right side of men who'd be happy to carve you up for looking at them funny. Because of what you are. I don't want to see you at night, I mean. Hanging around where you're not wanted and messing with me. Your smug face and your croaky 'no comment' dancing into my dreams…

As he passed beneath the dock, Thorne turned his face towards Adam Chambers. He paused for a second or two. He found the man's eyes, and he held them.

Then he winked.

Thorne shared a ride back to Hendon with DS Samir Karim. As Exhibits Officer on the case, Karim was responsible for the evidence chain and for maintaining the integrity of its key pieces.

A hairbrush. A mobile phone. A glass with Andrea Keane's fingerprints.

It was a typical February day that had begun for Thorne by scraping frost from his windscreen with a CD case, but still he opened his window and leaned towards it as the car moved slowly out of central London in heavy traffic. Over the rush of cold air, he could hear Karim telling him how well he had done. That there was no more he could have done. That it was as good as in the bag.

Thorne hoped the sergeant was right. Certainly, without the most conclusive piece of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service had to be pretty confident of securing a conviction before they would go to trial. On top of which, Thorne and the rest of the team had done everything that was asked of them. They had worked as hard as Thorne could ever remember to prove the three things vital to securing a conviction in a 'no-body' murder case.

That Andrea Keane was dead.

That she had been murdered.

That she had been murdered by Adam Chambers.