Mark Billingham: From the Dead

Her father did not often lose his temper, and seeing him looking so lost, so genuinely confused, when Anna had announced that she had thrown in her job at the bank had been hugely upsetting. She felt ashamed just thinking about it; prickling with sweat and as close to tears as he had been when she'd told him.

'What are we supposed to think, your mum and me?'

Her mother had risen slowly from her seat as soon as Anna had begun saying her piece, but had made no response. She had just stared, red-faced and breathing noisily, as though she were trying her very best not to march across the carpet and slap her daughter.

'I'm really sorry you're upset,' Anna had said. Standing in her parents' overheated front room, she had heard her mother's voice in her own. The tone that had been reserved for those occasions when Anna or her sister had done something more than usually idiotic. 'But I think I'm old enough and ugly enough to make my own decisions, don't you?'

Her father had opened and closed his mouth. Her mother had just sat down again.

My own seriously stupid decisions…

Detective Inspector Tom Thorne knew nothing about Anna's history or her questionable lifestyle decisions, but clearly he thought she had been stupid to take on Donna Langford as a client. Thinking through their conversation on her journey back south of the river, she had decided he'd been pleasant enough, if a little condescending. No, more than pleasant, but he had made his scepticism and his distaste perfectly obvious, so she had not been holding out much hope.

A text message had been waiting for her when she came out of Victoria Tube Station: ' Like I thought. Not much we can do with this. Good luck with Donna. '

She was halfway through a reply, trying to word a jokey comment about Thorne's broken photocopier, when she changed her mind and erased what she had typed.

Luck was hardly likely to help her, Anna decided. She could not imagine where it might come from and how it would turn things around. It would not prevent her having to make the phone call she was dreading; giving back the money she'd been paid in advance and admitting to her client – her only client – that she had run out of ideas.

Downstairs, housemate and housemate's stupid boyfriend had put on some music. Anna turned up the volume on the TV. She flopped back down on the bed, muttered a barrage of swear-words and slapped her palms repeatedly into the softness of the duvet.

I've got more important things to worry about, Thorne had said. Well, she hadn't. She needed the money and she needed something to get her blood pumping a little faster. Whatever Tom Thorne thought about her, Donna Langford had nowhere to turn and she was even more desperate than Anna had guessed when she'd first laid eyes on her.

There was something about Thorne, too; something that told her she could not quite write him off. She had seen it in his face when she'd challenged him, when she'd told him she thought he might be interested. When she had shamelessly done her very best to sound disappointed.

She sat up and reached for the remote. Smiling now, thinking about her poor put-upon father. He was a man who could always be relied upon for a decent homily, whether one was needed or not.

If you want something doing, gift horses and the price of politeness. Always wear clean underwear in case you're in an accident, that sort of thing.

You make your own luck…

'He's got a point,' Louise Porter said.

'Yeah, right.' Thorne had told her about Russell Brigstocke's joke: the kidnaps and the country music.

Louise held out her wine glass and Thorne topped it up. 'It's a wonder I don't throw you out.'

'It's my flat.'

'I'm fully expecting the Pope to make me a saint.'

'I think that only happens once you're dead.'

'See? Everything Russell said is true and you're a smartarse.'

They had spent more evenings together recently, at Thorne's place or occasionally at Louise's in Pimlico, than was usually the case. Louise's team on the Kidnap Unit was less busy than it had been in a long time and Thorne had not caught a murder that necessitated too much overtime. Certainly nothing as all-consuming as the Andrea Keane inquiry.

He had picked up a takeaway en route from Hendon, ignoring the Bengal Lancer – his usual port of call – and opting instead to try a new Greek place a little further south on the Kentish Town Road. The food had been fine, but looking down at what was left of his chicken souvlaki, Thorne wished he had not been so adventurous.

It wasn't like him, after all.

They drank their wine and a silence grew between them, while Louise flicked through the Evening Standard and Thorne watched the ten o'clock news. It was comfortable enough, as it should have been, more than two years into their relationship. But since Louise had lost a baby the year before, Thorne had found it hard to take anything for granted.

An equilibrium had returned, but it felt precarious.

Often, it seemed to Thorne, they moved too cautiously around one another, circling their loss like wild animals. Curious, but wary. She got angry if she felt that he was treating her differently, and he would overcompensate, storming around the flat and taking out his bad day, his foul mood, his grief on her.

It was difficult.

The mildest of disagreements, a furious row, a fuck…

Sometimes it felt wrong to Thorne how easily one could lead to the next, and that any of them was really about a hundred different things. He had tried to explain it to Phil Hendricks – his closest friend and a good one to Louise, too – one night in front of Sky Sports.

'I bet the row lasts longer,' Hendricks had said.

'I just can't bear the thought of her in pain,' Thorne had said, at which point Hendricks had stopped joking.

'Tom?'

Thorne looked over and saw that Louise was watching him over the top of her paper.

'There's no point worrying about it,' she said. She laid down the paper and reached for the cat, curled up next to her on the sofa. 'There's nothing you can do, unless you fancy trying to nobble a couple of jurors.'

Thorne sighed, nodded. He knew she was right, but it wasn't helping. 'A couple of them are no older than Andrea was,' he said.

'So?'

'So, you worry they can't make a… mature decision.'

'"Mature" meaning "guilty".'

'That they won't see what Chambers is really like.'

'You want to raise the legal age for jury service? To what – twenty-one? Forty?'

'I'm just saying.'

'You don't think an eighteen-year-old knows exactly what the likes of Adam Chambers is capable of?' She jabbed a finger at her Standard. 'Kids half that age are doing worse things every day of the week. Knifing each other for an iPhone.'

Thorne shook his head.

'Come on, you've dealt with enough of them.'

'Not the same,' Thorne said. 'You're right… but most of the time there's a reason at least. I'm not justifying it, course I'm not, but it's not the same as what Chambers did to Andrea Keane.'

'You don't know what he did.'

'They don't enjoy it.'

Louise picked up her paper again, read for a minute, then asked Thorne if he'd remembered to put the leftover souvlaki in tin-foil. He was on his way to the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

Louise asked the question with a look. Thorne shrugged a 'no idea' and moved towards the door.

'Look, I know I should have called, so I'm sorry if it's a bit late…'

Thorne's flat was on the ground floor, but the entrance to the building was half a dozen steps up from the street. He peered down at his visitor from the edge of the half-open door, his expression making it abundantly clear that he was cold and less than delighted to see her.

'How did you get my address?'

She smiled. 'I'm a detective.'