From The Dead (23 page)

Now the phone lay tucked inside the pillow case beneath his head; the same phone, ironically enough, that Howard Cook had given to him.

That was when Grover had found out Cook was iffy. That, when it came down to it, they were on the same team. It had come as a major surprise. If he’d been asked to guess, Grover would have marked down plenty of others, that fat sod Harris included, as a bent screw long before he would have picked out Howard Cook. He supposed it was the same as with the cons themselves. Often those who looked like full-on nutters wouldn’t say boo to a goose, while the ones who sat good as gold in the library all day, would tear your head off if you took the piss out of the book they were reading.

Still, it had been a shocker definitely, finding out a jobsworth like Cook was on the take.

He remembered how it had been in that cell, the evening he’d done Monahan. Cook standing there in the doorway, clearing his throat like he was struggling to breathe and holding out his hand. ‘Give it to me,’ he’d said and Grover had handed over the sharpened toothbrush; wiped the blood off against his trousers first so Cook wouldn’t get it on his uniform. For a second they’d just stared at each other and Grover could still remember how utterly terrified the screw had looked. His face was the colour of porridge, and at first he couldn’t even get the toothbrush put away properly. Couldn’t find his pocket because his hand was shaking so much.

From what Grover was hearing now, it seemed that Cook had been right to be afraid.

‘The twat is dead, with tyre-tracks on his head,

Howard Coo-ook, Howard Coo-ook . . .’

The song rolled along the landing like a football chant. Aggression and exuberance in equal measure.

When he felt the vibration beneath his cheek, Grover started, then reached quickly to retrieve the phone. He slid off his bunk and stood flat against the wall to the side of the door.

Took a deep breath.

‘What’s the panic?’

‘Tell me about Cook,’ Grover hissed.

‘Bloody hell, that was quick. They haven’t finished scraping him up yet.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Would you like me to explain, Jeremy? Words of one syllable, that kind of thing.’

‘There’s no way he would have said anything.’

‘He was being given a hard time by that West Yorkshire DI, and, you know, better safe . . .’

Grover said, ‘Hold on,’ and pressed his ear to the cell door. Still plenty of noise and no way that he’d be heard talking over it. ‘So, I’m supposed to be scared, am I?’

‘Are you?’

‘Tell me about the money I’m supposed to get. For doing Monahan.’

‘We’ll need to leave it a while longer, until the pressure’s off, but there’s no need to worry. It’ll be sent where you wanted it to go.’

Grover thought about his son, and the woman who had given birth to him. He couldn’t be sure that the silly cow wouldn’t blow most of the cash on powder and booze when she finally got it, but it should certainly make life easier for them.

‘By the way, it seems like a nice school. The one your son goes to. He’s a pretty decent footballer too. You should be proud.’

Grover refused to rise to it, understanding well enough what was really being said, but he suddenly found it that bit harder to breathe. A belt pulled tighter across his chest. ‘So, what . . . ?’

‘Just keep your head down.’

‘I always do.’

‘We’ll try to make things as pleasant as we can for you in there. Long as you know it
can
go the other way easy enough.’

‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

‘I hope so. I remember having much this conversation with Paul Monahan a long time ago . . .’

Grover said, ‘Listen, you can relax, OK?’ then realised he was talking to himself. He put the phone back in its hiding place and lay down again.

Outside, they were still singing about Howard Cook, inventive variations now on a popular theme, until a voice rose above the cacophony, shouting about the withdrawal of privileges and suggesting they shut up.

Fucking Harris.

Thorne felt like death warmed up. He tried to focus, but his brain was fuzzy and sluggish, and Russell Brigstocke had definitely delivered livelier briefings. Something was needed to ginger proceedings up a little, Thorne decided.

‘So, let’s move on to the incident in Kirkthorpe,’ Brigstocke said.

Maybe he could saw one of the DCs in half, Thorne thought . . .

Having set the alarm on his phone, he had woken at a little after 5 a.m. feeling as though he had barely slept at all. Downstairs, Boyle had been asleep where Thorne had left him, but managed to surface just long enough for Thorne to ask if he could borrow some clean socks and underpants.

‘I’ll stick them in a jiffy bag tomorrow,’ Thorne had said.

Boyle had grunted and mumbled, ‘Thanks for stopping.’ Still not properly awake.

With both taxi and train miraculously on time, Thorne had – as Boyle had promised – made it back to Becke House by half-past eight. There had just been time to grab tea and a bacon sandwich from the canteen. To think about the best way to deal with the text message he had received from Anna Carpenter as the train had pulled into King’s Cross.

what the hell did you say to donna??

Now, he sat towards the back of the incident room, behind two dozen or so others gathered on chairs around a pair of desks that had been pushed together. Another ten officers had been drafted on to the team the day before, following the hit and run in West Yorkshire. Overnight, the operation had become ‘more significant’. It was a convenient and sensitive euphemism.

It simply meant that more people were dying.

‘The car that was used to run down and kill Howard Cook on Sunday evening was found late last night, having been set alight in a field between Wakefield and Castleford.’ Brigstocke looked to the back of the room, caught Thorne’s eye.

A burning car. Wasn’t that where all this had started?

‘As you can imagine, there wasn’t a great deal left of it,’ Brigstocke went on. ‘Just enough to confirm that it was the vehicle involved. It had been stolen from a car park in Wakefield on Sunday morning. A forensic team up there is looking at it, but I don’t think we should be holding our breath on that score.’

From one of the chairs near the front, Yvonne Kitson said, ‘If whoever was in that car thought there was anything we might be able to use, they wouldn’t have made it so easy to find.’

‘Right,’ Brigstocke said.

Behind him, the case was mapped out on a whiteboard: a series of names and images linked by thick black lines drawn in marker pen. On the left-hand side was a photograph of Howard Cook that had been provided by his wife. Above that was a shot of Paul Monahan and at the very top, a picture from the original post-mortem report of the very first victim. The blackened remains that had been removed from Alan Langford’s Jaguar in Epping Forest more than ten years earlier.

A face, barely recognisable as such. The rest no better than body-shaped.

In the middle of the board was one of the many shots on file – all of which were at least a decade out of date – of Alan Langford himself. There were arrows from this photo to the pictures of the victims, and towards copies of the more recent photographs that had been sent to his ex-wife. Donna Langford’s own photo and one of her daughter were on the right-hand side of the whiteboard.

Now and again as he spoke, Brigstocke stepped across and pointed to the appropriate picture on the case-map. It was a simple aidememoire for some of the less creative thinkers on the team.
This
murder victim.
That
missing girl.
This
dodgy-looking bastard who we’d like to speak to in connection with the death of
this
man.

‘We’re still no nearer to finding out who this poor sod was.’ Brigstocke pointed to the topmost photograph. ‘So, we’re concentrating on tying Langford to the murders of Howard Cook and Paul Monahan.’

Thorne was struck, as he had been many times before, by how positive Brigstocke managed to sound, how good he was at maintaining a team’s morale. Even when, as in this instance, ‘concentrating on’ could easily have been replaced by ‘getting nowhere with’.

‘As to his whereabouts,’ Brigstocke continued, ‘we’ve had some luck in tracking him down to the southern coast of Spain.’

Samir Karim raised his hand. Brigstocke asked what he wanted.

‘Just volunteering, Guv.’ Karim turned towards those sitting behind him. ‘You know, if you’re looking for people to go over there and bring him back.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind, Sam.’

‘I could do with topping up this tan.’

There was a smattering of laughter, other voices chipping in and more hands raised.

Brigstocke smiled, said, ‘Yeah, all right,’ and waited for the group to settle. ‘I’ve got information sheets for everyone and I’ll be briefing DI Thorne in more detail later. There’s every possibility, of course, that this is also where the missing daughter is located . . .’

Thorne looked at the picture of Ellie Langford, one of those that Donna had shown him. She looked more than a little surly, as though smiling were physically painful.

‘. . . though we will obviously keep checking with all the usual agencies in case a body turns up.’

Thorne could not help but compare the image with the dozens he had seen of Andrea Keane over the previous eight months. He could not recall a single one in which Andrea had
not
been smiling. Age was all the two girls had in common, he decided, and some eighteen-yearolds had less to smile about than others.

After all, Andrea’s mother had not gone to prison for conspiring to kill her father.

‘We’ve also had a good result on the photos that were sent to Donna Langford,’ Brigstocke said, tapping the appropriate place on the whiteboard again. ‘The
FSS
have come up with some decent prints, and they’re definitely not Alan Langford’s. I don’t need to tell you that finding out who
did
send these photographs is hugely important.’

Another hand was raised. One of the new boys. Brigstocke nodded.

‘If we’re presuming that Langford, or whatever he calls himself now, is up to his eyeballs in drugs or what have you over there, shouldn’t we be looking at some of the other characters who are doing the same thing? Maybe one of
them
sent the pictures.’

A woman sitting next to him – another new face – nodded in agreement. ‘Right. It’s a clever way for one of his business rivals to try and get rid of him, isn’t it? Send the pictures, the police start looking—’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Thorne said. The woman turned to look at him. She was young, black, serious-looking. ‘First off, this “business rival” would need to know that it
was
Langford. And even if he did, look at the pictures.’ He waved a hand in the general direction of the whiteboard. ‘He’s smiling, holding up his glass, posing for the camera. He’s like a pig in shit. Whoever’s taking those photographs, Langford at least
thinks
they’re a friend.’

The woman smiled thinly at Thorne and turned back to the front. Brigstocke thanked her and the other officer for their input and began to wrap things up. But right at the death, the woman – whom Thorne had already decided was destined for great things – had one more suggestion.

‘I was thinking about tax evasion,’ she said.

Brigstocke looked at her. Waited.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Karim said. ‘It’s against the law, you know.’

‘Seriously. If nicking Langford for these murders is going to be as tricky as it sounds, then we might get him for something like that.’ She spoke loudly and quickly; nervous, Thorne decided, but hiding it well. ‘Whatever business he’s in now, I’m damn sure he’s not declaring his earnings.’

The friend next to her said, ‘It’s how they got Al Capone.’

‘Look, I want to get Alan Langford back here and put him away for
murder
,’ Brigstocke said. ‘For three murders, if at all possible. Having said that, if you want to liaise with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, that’s entirely up to you. If I have to, I’ll settle for him going down on whatever charge we can get.’

‘I’ll make a few calls,’ Thorne said. ‘See if he’s got any library books overdue.’

Fifteen minutes later, Thorne was in Brigstocke’s office. He read through the information sheet detailing how the location of the Langford photographs had been determined, while Brigstocke gave a blow-by-blow account for good measure.

‘Every boat in Spain has to be officially registered, and each owner – the
patron de yate
– has to obtain the necessary qualification to command his vessel. All this information is logged with the local
Commandancia de Marina Mercante
, and he feeds it back to the authorities who collect assorted taxes on pleasure craft. So—’

‘I
can
read,’ Thorne said.

‘All right.’

‘I’m impressed with the accent, though . . .’

Each stage of the process was laid out for him in black and white. Providing the appropriate government department in Madrid with the boat’s registration number had quickly yielded the name of its owner. Interpol, liaising with the Guardia Civil, had then tracked down the man in question in a matter of hours. Senor Miguel Matellanes had been able to confirm exactly where he was on the day in question; that he always moored his eighteen-foot sailing cruiser in the small harbour at Benalmadena Costa on a Sunday afternoon. Something about the best
pulpo a feira
on the south coast.

‘I’m just showing off,’ Brigstocke said, pleased with himself. ‘Been a long time since I did a decent bit of donkey-work.’

‘
Pulpo
what?’

Brigstocke pulled a face. ‘Some sort of octopus . . .’

Thorne shook his head. ‘But this only tells us where Langford was that day,’ he said. ‘He might live a hundred miles from there.’

‘It’s somewhere to start, though.’ Brigstocke was standing behind Thorne, looking over his shoulder, staring down at the information sheet. ‘It’s all been passed on to the relevant lot at
SOCA
. You’ve got a meeting with them at three o’clock.’