Mark Billingham - From the Dead

A few minutes before beginning its descent into Malaga, the plane hit a patch of clear-air turbulence and dropped suddenly. Thorne sat back hard and opened his eyes, aware from the look on the face of the woman next to him that his gasp had been audible. He felt embarrassed, knowing – because he'd read it somewhere – that such fraction-of-a-second drops were actually of no more than a few feet and were insignificant in the scheme of things.

He mouthed a 'sorry' and smiled at the woman. She nodded and went back to her magazine.

Thorne closed his eyes again and waited for it to get a little less bumpy. Although he knew well enough that the sick feeling, the wet and peppery knot in his stomach, had nothing to do with turbulence. He had not been asleep, but the images and snatches of remembered conversation might easily have been fragments of a nightmare.

Eight weeks since the shooting.

Before the man on the scooter could fire again, Thorne and Anna had gone crashing together over the metal railings and down hard on to the steps. He felt a searing pain in his shoulder, guessing as he struggled to move that his collarbone had gone and dimly aware of the engine noise, the high-pitched drone as the scooter accelerated away. Aware of Anna moaning beside him, the cold, wet step against his face, Louise opening the door and screaming when she saw the blood.

Eight weeks…

Two since the funeral.

Thorne had felt stared at; observed, at the very least. Inside the church, in the grounds outside, and most of all afterwards, at the Carpenters' house in Wimbledon. It was probably all in his head and certainly nobody had said anything. None of those with every right to do a damn sight more than stare at the copper who had spent two weeks with his arm in a sling while the girl beaming out at them from the order of service had bled to death in the back of an ambulance.

I don't back away from a row. Always been my problem.

One person who did stare was Frank Anderson, recognising Thorne as the man who had stood in his office with a cock-and-bull story about a skirt-chasing girlfriend. But even Anderson resisted the temptation to say anything, while Thorne, in turn, fought the urge to say a few of the things he had been bottling up. All the same, he imagined it, standing in the church and staring at the dandruff speckling Frank Anderson's collar. He imagined taking a handful of the man's hair, ramming his face down into the pew and demanding an explanation for the way he had treated Anna. For the things he had made her do.

Do you know how much she hated it, you spineless little twat? How it made her feel? Have you got the slightest idea?

Instead, Thorne stood and sang 'How Great Thou Art' and listened to a moving eulogy from an elder sister he had known nothing about. He spoke to her afterwards at the house, learned she was a successful lawyer. Thorne asked himself if, in taking the job she had hated at the bank, Anna had been trying to compete with her, or be different from her, every bit as much as she had been trying to please her mother. He silently rebuked himself. What right did he have to pass any sort of judgement, to jump to any conclusions about what had been going on in Anna's head?

Walking slowly out of the church, he had seen Donna up ahead of him. Outside, while people talked quietly and lit cigarettes, the two of them exchanged nods, but she seemed in a hurry to get away and Thorne was grateful to avoid the conversation. The clumsy dance around guilt and blame.

At the Carpenters' house, he downed a glass of beer and helped himself to another. After all, he was not there in any official capacity, so he could put away a drink or two. Surely he had every reason to put away more than a few and make an arse of himself.

It was a bright day, and out in the garden Thorne spoke to Anna's friends, Rob and Angie. They were sitting on a low wall, balancing plates of cold ham and salad on their laps.

'She mentioned both of you,' Thorne said. 'Said what a good laugh you always had.'

Rob nodded and pushed his coleslaw around.

'She mentioned you, too,' Angie said.

There was not too much more to say after that. Had someone older died, someone whose death had not been totally unexpected, one of them might have said, 'It was a nice service, wasn't it?' or told a funny story. But it was simply too hard for any of that, for the pleasant lies, and instead, they focused all their energy on keeping themselves together.

Thorne had watched the mother and father all day. The man's hand on the woman's arm almost every time Thorne caught sight of them: stepping out of the shiny Daimler; moving into the church; drifting between the groups of friends and relatives in their kitchen and sitting room, glassy-eyed, as though they could not quite believe they were able to put one foot in front of the other.

To stay upright and engaged. To speak without howling.

There had been a cursory greeting at the church, but back at the house, hovering between the buffet table and the sitting-room door, Thorne finally got a chance to speak to them properly. With Thorne in hospital, other officers had dealt with Robert and Sylvia Carpenter in the days following the shooting. So, although he felt sure they knew exactly who he was, this was his first opportunity to introduce himself.

'You're the one who was there,' Sylvia said. 'The one who broke his collarbone.'

Thorne swallowed. Said that he was.

The one who failed to protect my daughter.

The one they were after.

The one who should be in that box.

'How is it now?' Sylvia asked. She reached a hand out towards him. 'They can be a pig to set. A cousin of mine had all sorts of trouble.'

Thorne stared. If she were intending to be snide or sarcastic, it was not there in her voice or her eyes. On the contrary, her face was set in an expression of almost manic concern.

'Clavicle.' She said the word slowly, emphasising each syllable. Her hand was still stretched out, the fingers fluttering a few inches from Thorne's chest. 'That's the proper name for it.'

'Sylvia…' Robert Carpenter gently laid a hand on his wife's arm. She turned her head slowly to look at him, then abruptly moved away, staring intently at the platters of cheese and cold meat as she walked the length of the buffet table.

The two men watched her go, then Robert Carpenter turned back to Thorne. He looked down at his shoes for a few seconds then raised his eyes. 'It's hit her very hard,' he said.

'Of course,' Thorne said.

'I mean, obviously, it's hit all of us.'

Thorne could say nothing, aware of the inadequacy of the platitudes he might have been expected to trot out. Indeed, had trotted out in countless similar situations. Looking at Anna's father then, it struck him that, in recent years, the influence of American TV shows had crept into the language of condolence every bit as much as it had been felt elsewhere.

I'm sorry for your loss.

That final word set Thorne's teeth on edge. Surely it implied the possibility that, some day, whoever had been lost might be found. Keys were lost and mobile phones. Dogs and wallets and telephone numbers. Those wrenched from their families by violent death were gone – plain, simple and terrible, but they were anything but lost.

Thorne and the rest of those under Robert Carpenter's roof had gathered together to mourn Anna's absence.

'Did she tell you she was not her mother's favourite?' Robert asked suddenly.

'No,' Thorne said.

'She always thought that. The stupid thing is that she was.' He shook his head and lowered his voice still further. 'She really was. ..'

Thorne wondered what else Anna might have told him, given time.

'There's no news, I suppose?'

'I'm sorry?' Thorne said.

'Your colleagues have all been very good, keeping us informed and what have you. But I haven't heard anything for over a week, so…'