done – something around the eyes is different and he's dyed his hair – but it's definitely him.'
'All right, for the sake of argument, let's say it's him…'
'Christ Almighty!' She sighed, dropped back in her chair. 'Your eyesight going as well, is it?'
'Look, if it's him, it's a fair bet he's not spending his time playing bowls and doing the gardening, right?'
She nodded. 'He'll be into something dodgy.'
'So, I'll put in a word with SOCA and see what they want to do with it, OK? I can't really do any more than that.'
'If it's him, don't you want to know how?' She knocked the worm of ash from her cigarette. 'How he can still be alive, swanning around in the sunshine, when he burned to death ten years ago in Epping Forest? If it's him, don't you want to know whose body was in that car?'
Hypothetical as he still believed – just believed – the question was, it had been rattling around in Thorne's head ever since Anna Carpenter's visit to Becke House. Somebody had been handcuffed to the wheel of that car, even if it had not been Alan Langford. Somebody's flesh had spat and melted on to the leather seats.
'Granted,' Thorne said, 'there are reasons why we might want to find Alan Langford if we thought he was the man in these pictures. But why do you want to find him? I'm guessing you're not looking to kiss and make up, see if he's got room on his yacht for you and your girlfriend.'
'Me and Kate are fine as we are.'
'I'm pleased for you. But even so, you've got good reason to be ever so slightly pissed off with him.'
'Life's too short.'
'For some more than others,' Thorne said.
'I was angrier with him when I thought he was dead than I am now,' Donna said. 'I could have happily killed him a dozen times over. It's not about that any more.'
'So why, then?'
'I want to find him,' Donna said, 'because I think he's got my daughter.'
Thorne had completely forgotten that there had been a child. A memory stirred and came quickly into focus: a young girl standing at the fridge in that cavernous kitchen, pouring herself something to drink, asking her mother who Thorne was and what he wanted.
He struggled to remember the name. Emma? Ellen?
'I'm listening,' Thorne said.
'Ellie was only seven when I went inside, and there was no one to take her. Nobody who wanted her at any rate. Nobody who Social Services considered fit for it.' She leaned forward, mashed her cigarette butt into the ashtray, and told Thorne that with no grandparents to step in, her daughter had eventually been taken into long- term foster care. 'My younger sister would have taken her if she'd had to, but we never got on that well. Besides which, her old man wasn't keen. The only other option was Alan's brother, but he had even more form than Alan, which didn't make him an ideal candidate either. So…'
Thorne felt a niggle of guilt that he had not known any of this, nor taken the trouble to find out. But it was the way things worked. Though not always successful, he tried not to think too much about those he put away or the people they left behind. His concerns were generally reserved for the dead and their relatives. But in this case, of course, he had not cared a great deal about the victim, either.
'When did you last see her?' Thorne asked.
'The day I was arrested.'
'What? I don't understand.'
'Obviously she was way too young to visit,' Donna said. 'I was told she'd gone into care, that she was doing OK and that Social Services would consider allowing visits when she turned sixteen. Meanwhile, I got photos.' She reached for yet more pictures and passed them across to Thorne. 'Three or four times a year. Occasionally they let her put a note or a drawing in with them.'
Thorne saw the girl he remembered from Donna's kitchen growing up over the course of a dozen or so finger-smeared photographs. A gawky-looking child cradling a puppy. A girl with long, blonde hair posing with her friends in netball kit. A sullen teenager, the hair now cut short and dyed black, the practised and perfected expression somewhere between boredom and resentment.
'When she was sixteen,' Donna said, 'Social Services wrote and told me that, considering the severity of my offence, they had decided it would not be in my daughter's best interests to visit until she was eighteen. Then, last August…' She stopped and took a deep breath, swallowed hard. When she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper. 'I got a letter telling me that she'd gone missing.'
'What happened?'
'She vanished, simple as that. According to her foster parents, she went out one night and never came home. They were upset, obviously, but since she was eighteen the police weren't interested and that was that.' She picked up the cigarette packet, then dropped it back on to the table. The whisper had darkened. 'Social Services said they thought I'd like to know. Thought I'd like to know. Can you believe that?'
'If she went missing last August,' Thorne said, 'that was only a few months before you received the first photograph.'
'She didn't go missing. She was taken.'
'Don't you think the two things might be connected?'
If Donna heard the question, she showed no sign of it. She just stared at Thorne, her breathing heavy and her eyes filling as she reached for her cigarettes yet again, turned the packet over and over in her hands. 'I need her back,' she said. 'I was taken from her. Now she's been taken from me.' She looked at Thorne. 'Can you find her?'
Thorne could not hold the look. He dropped his eyes to the tabletop, to the changing face of Ellie Langford.
'Can you?'
An eighteen-year-old girl, gone. Missing.
Another one.
The phone buzzed in Thorne's jacket pocket and he stood up quickly. He saw that it was DS Dave Holland calling, told Donna he needed to take it, and stepped into the corridor.
'It's Chambers,' Holland said. 'It's not good news.'
'Oh, Jesus.'
'Bastard's on TV right now.'
Thorne walked back into the living room and asked Donna if she would mind turning on her television.
It was actually the bastard's solicitor doing all the talking, posing on the steps outside the Old Bailey and issuing a statement on his client's behalf because 'Mr Chambers' was 'too overcome to speak'. Family and friends were thanked, as were those who continued to believe in his client and to have faith in a just outcome. Chambers himself stood a few feet behind and to the right. He kept his head down, nodding in agreement, looking up only once to wave at the rank of photographers who were shouting his name.
He smiled shyly. He'd already taken off his tie.
Kate had appeared in the doorway behind Thorne. 'He definitely did it,' she said, nodding towards the TV. 'I said that right from the start, didn't I, Don? He killed that poor girl and hid her somewhere. Look at him, you can see it.'
'You can't see anything,' Donna said. 'You can never tell.' She shook her head. 'Not everything's what it seems, is it? I mean, I thought Alan was dead.'
'Thanks for the tea,' Thorne said.
SIX
Unexpectedly running into his chief superintendent could provoke a wide range of emotions in Tom Thorne. Revulsion, horror and fury were among the most common. But seeing him with his feet under Russell Brigstocke's desk, today of all days, caused Thorne to feel nothing but a wash of bog-standard bemusement.
Thorne was spotted hovering in the doorway, beckoned into the office and instructed to close the door.
