Thorne opened the door and climbed in, turned on the ignition and waited for the cold air. He ran through conversations from two months before. Let the pieces fall into place.
'Sir? Tom…?'
'We use him to get Langford,' Thorne said. He was thinking aloud, but he knew it was the best chance they had. The only chance. 'We can use him, but we need to get him here, all right?'
'How do we do that?'
'Piece of piss,' Thorne said.
Suddenly he knew exactly what needed to be done. And he knew just the man to do it.
FORTY-THREE
'For Christ's sake, drink your beer,' Langford said. 'And relax, will you?'
A clink of glasses, or bottles maybe, and the sound of something ticking fast in the background.
'I don't know how you can be so calm. We're in trouble here.'
'I don't agree.'
'How can you-?'
'Getting worked up doesn't do anybody any good.'
'They're really turning the screws on Grover.'
'Everything can be sorted. As long as you've been careful.'
'Course I have.'
'So, no problem then.'
'Thorne's not going to give this one up, I'm telling you.'
'He'll have to, eventually. Chasing lost causes always pisses the brass off in the end. Well, you know that.'
'You should never have done the girl.'
Just that ticking for ten seconds or more then the scrape of a chair against the tiles.
'You're sweating like a pig, mate,' Langford said, laughing. 'Take your shirt off, have a dip in the pool.'
'I'm fine.'
A throat cleared loudly…
'If he takes his shirt off, we're in big trouble,' Samarez said.
Thorne shrugged. 'Not as much trouble as he'll be in.'
They were sitting in the back of a van with blacked-out windows and the name of a plumbing company on the side. It was parked in a small turning a hundred yards or so from the gates, but with a clear view of them. The conversation at the villa was coming through loud and clear, with the voice of the man wearing the wire only a little more distinct than Langford's. He'd been told to get as close as he could.
'It's a decent enough microphone, though,' Thorne had told him as the wire was being fitted. 'So, no need to sit on his lap…'
Now, up at the villa, Langford was telling his visitor how warm the pool was. 'Like a bath,' he said.
The other man said he wasn't much for swimming.
'We have not discussed what we should do if this does not… work out,' Samarez said.
'Damn, I knew we'd forgotten something,' Thorne said. He pretended to think about it for a few seconds, to give a toss. 'I suggest we just sit here and listen to him getting battered.'
'Well, for a while, perhaps.' Samarez was wearing the headphones, while Thorne was sitting close to a small speaker on the table next to the receiving equipment.
Next to him, Andy Boyle shifted his folding chair nearer to the speaker. 'He's pushing it too hard, if you ask me.'
'Maybe,' Thorne said.
They listened for another minute.
'How do we know the tosser's not writing notes?' Boyle asked. ''Say nothing' or whatever.'
Thorne shook his head. 'He's deep in the shit and this is his only chance of keeping his head above it.'
'Hope you're right,' Boyle said.*
Thorne had met the Yorkshireman at the airport two days before. Boyle had shaken his hand, said it was a damn sight warmer than Wakefield.
'Thanks for doing this, Andy,' Thorne had said.
Boyle had glanced at the man he had brought with him. 'An absolute fucking pleasure, mate.' Still holding on to Thorne's hand, Boyle had leaned in close to Thorne and said, 'Really sorry about the lass.'
'I know…'
Then, as if embarrassed to show too much of a soft side without so much as a single drink inside him, Boyle had stepped away and pointed an accusing finger. 'Oh, and you never sent my pants back by the way. ..'
Thorne had not spoken to Boyle's fellow passenger – the one in plastic cuffs – until a couple of hours later when Thorne had felt good and ready. Only once he, Boyle and Samarez had had a chance to put their heads together and Gary Brand had been given an hour or so to stew in a Guardia Civil safe house.
'Not quite as clever as your boss, then,' Thorne had said. 'Very careless all this phone business, but I'm guessing you were stitched up by somebody else.'
Brand was sweating in a grey suit. They had deliberately not given him the opportunity to change out of it. They wanted him hot and bothered. He said nothing for a few seconds, then sat back and folded his arms. 'Cook was a twat,' he said. 'A greedy twat. Like he wasn't getting paid well enough anyway.'
'He took the phone in.'
Brand nodded. 'He was supposed to give Grover a clean handset every week and get rid of the old one, but he thought he'd make a few extra quid by selling them to other prisoners. So…'
'Can't get the staff,' Thorne said.
He had put it all together over the week or so it had taken to arrange for Brand's transfer to Spain. The nuts and bolts of Brand's deception. The extent of his own stupidity.
'Mind you, Langford's probably not the easiest employer to work for, right?'
'He was not my employer,' Brand said.
Thorne smiled, sour. 'Well, not in the sense of holiday pay and a P45, maybe, but in all the ways that mattered, he owned you.'
It was now clear that Brand had been in Langford's pocket throughout the original investigation and probably for a good while before, that once the new inquiry had begun, he had cleverly wormed his way back into Thorne's confidence. Brand had turned up in the Oak the night of the Chambers verdict and 'bumped into' Thorne, maintaining his trust from that point on through a series of conversations – many instigated by Thorne himself – and by feeding Thorne useless names to check out. He had convincingly portrayed an officer – a friend – with as much interest in putting Alan Langford away as Thorne, while he was busy making the arrangements for Monahan and Cook to be killed.
And Anna Carpenter.
'Let's talk about Detective Constable Chris Talbot, shall we?'
'This isn't a formal interview.'
'Just a chat.'
'So, nothing is admissible in court.'
'Plenty of time for that,' Thorne said. 'So, was it your idea to use Talbot?' He watched Brand thinking.
Brand already knew that he could not escape serious corruption charges, but he was treading carefully, reluctant to say anything that might lead to him also being charged as an accessory to murder.
'We know you knew him.'
'So, I knew him. And…?'
'And I'm guessing that he was getting too close to your pal Alan. Or maybe he found out that you were.'
'I played rugby with a lot of people, all right?'
