Read Online From the Dead by Mark Billingham - Free Book Online Page B

a case that had come back to life as miraculously as Alan Langford himself appeared to have done.
    â€˜He was always a slippery sod,’ Brand said. ‘The type that enjoyed making the likes of you and me look stupid.’
    â€˜The type to snatch his own daughter?’
    â€˜I don’t see why not.’
    â€˜And what about the photos?’
    Brand told Thorne that he had no idea why they might have been sent to Donna. ‘So, what are you going to do?’
    â€˜See if I can get anything out of Paul Monahan.’
    â€˜Good luck,’ Brand said. ‘I don’t remember that animal being particularly talkative.’
    â€˜Maybe he’s mellowed in prison,’ Thorne said. It was banter, no more than that. Thorne had checked Monahan’s record that afternoon and discovered that he had hardly been a model prisoner. His sentence had been increased twice since his original conviction.
    â€˜Yeah, course he has.’
    â€˜He might be one of those types that takes degrees and spends his spare time making quilts for Oxfam.’
    â€˜My money’s on the gym and homemade tattoos,’ Brand said. ‘But let me know how you get on . . .’
    They exchanged mobile numbers and Thorne went back to his table. Holland asked if he wanted another, but faced with a straight choice between heading home now or fighting for a taxi later with half of Homicide Command, Thorne decided to make a move. He said as few goodbyes as he could get away with and headed out to the car park, grateful for the cold against his face and the fresh air.
    He called home on his way to Colindale Tube Station and heard his own voice on the machine. He guessed that Louise had gone to bed or back to her own flat, but he left a message anyway.
    Then he called Anna Carpenter.
    He was suddenly aware, as he heard the call connect, that it was probably way too late to be ringing, that he should have called on his way to the Oak, or just sent a text. Then again, a part of him was hoping that she would not answer, or if she didn’t, that she might not get the message he was about to leave.
    When Anna’s voicemail cut in, Thorne spoke a little more slowly than he might otherwise have, careful not to slur. ‘This is Tom Thorne. Just calling to say, if you’re still up for this, meet me at eight o’clock tomorrow morning outside the WHSmith at King’s Cross Station. Bring your passport. And you might want to wear something that’s a bit more . . . severe or whatever.’

SEVEN
    Though there had been a prison on the same site since 1595, the majority of the current building dated from two hundred and fifty years later, with a brooding neo-Gothic gatehouse and wings arranged in the typical midnineteenth-century radial system. Like most Victorian prisons, HMP Wakefield had certainly not been designed to be beautiful, but approaching it, as he had done several times before, it seemed to Thorne as though every blackened brick and each barred window had been infused by those that had built it with something poisonous. Something subtle and dark that might leach from the building’s brutal fabric into those inside and slowly kill off hope; harden them. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Was it the people within its walls that made the place so ugly?
    Whether it was a Victorian monstrosity like Pentonville or Strangeways, or a pale, concrete, US-style penitentiary like Belmarsh, Thorne was never wholly comfortable stepping inside a prison.
    He could see that Anna Carpenter felt the same way.
    He watched her cheerfully handing over her passport at the first of three checkpoints they would have to pass through before being admitted into the main body of the prison.
    â€˜Trust me to get the wrong end of the bloody stick,’ she said, nodding towards Thorne. ‘There I was thinking that when he asked me to bring my passport, he was going to whisk me off on some glamorous, last-minute