From the Dead

'Hang on…'

Thorne leaned forward, enjoying it. '"Any non-essential procedures involving payment to external bodies or individual specialists must be carefully considered and if at all possible…" Blah blah blah, bullshit like that. With respect. Sir.'

Jesmond's smile was long gone, although Thorne noticed one creeping across Brigstocke's chops. 'We need to cover ourselves.'

'How?' Thorne asked.

'Take the case,' Jesmond said. 'Treat it as though you've just caught the Epping Forest Barbecue all over again. We desperately need to ID the body, and as there's now every reason to believe that Alan Langford had something to do with the murder, we need to find him. What do you think the ex-Mrs Langford wants out of all this?'

Thorne told them about his conversation with Donna Langford, about the daughter that had gone missing and Donna's belief that her ex-husband was responsible.

'Well, that clearly needs to be another element of the inquiry,' Jesmond said. 'We need to keep her happy.'

'Do we?'

'She may not have a leg to stand on legally, but she might decide to make a few quid by selling her story. If she went to the press or wrote a book, we could be made to look like idiots.'

Thorne bit his tongue.

'Let's give her what she wants,' Brigstocke said. 'After all, it's what we want too, near enough.'

Thorne had no real objection, at least not when it came to searching for Ellie Langford. Her mother's concern was genuine. And it was not the first time Thorne had looked at photographs of a missing girl and found it hard to catch his breath for a few seconds. 'OK, whatever,' he said.

Jesmond nodded and grunted enthusiastically. 'But let's try to keep it all as low key as we can, all right? Make this a priority, but we don't want any bulls in china shops.'

Thorne did not need telling which particular bull his superior officer was talking about. 'What about Anna Carpenter?' he asked. Jesmond glanced down at his papers. Clearly the homework had not been that thorough. 'The private detective.'

'Right.' Jesmond thought for a few seconds. 'She could embarrass us too, if she felt like talking to the papers.' He looked over to Brigstocke, received a nod of agreement. 'What does she want?'

'This case,' Thorne said. 'Well, any case, I'm guessing, but she's keen to do something.'

'OK, let her get involved,' Jesmond said. He saw Thorne open his mouth to object. 'Or let her think she's involved. Tell her she can shadow you?'

'You're joking, right?'

'As long as she knows when to keep her mouth shut, it shouldn't be a problem. Fair enough? Russell?'

'I can't see it doing any harm,' Brigstocke said.

Thorne shook his head. 'Yeah, well, you're not the poor sod who'll be stuck with her.'

Jesmond stood up, said that he needed to crack on. To get into the incident room and do whatever he could to build morale, bearing in mind what had happened. On his way out of the door, he told Brigstocke and Thorne that he was pleased they were all singing from the same hymn sheet.

'What a racket that's going to be,' Thorne said.

The Royal Oak was unlikely to attract anyone for whom great service or a friendly atmosphere was important, but it was five minutes' walk from both the Peel Centre and Colindale Station. As such, and with an ex-DI's name above the front door, it was always going to be a pub where the Met's finest, and its decidedly less fine, were in the majority. Tonight, though, any punter without a warrant card would have been well advised to open a few cans at home instead.

It was wall-to-wall Job.

The clientele could equally well have been bikers, football fans or braying, pissed-up City boys. Friends, colleagues or strangers, it hardly mattered. Something in their shared experience, in the unspoken bonds between these men and women, caused feelings to run high and wild as bewilderment turned to anger and sorrows were drowned many times over in white wine, Stella and Jameson's. Had it not been for the stronger smell coming from the toilets, the whiff of testosterone might have been overpowering, drifting above the pockets of aggression and self-pity as Thorne pushed his way to the bar. Walking back to the table with another Guinness for himself and lager-tops for Dave Holland and Yvonne Kitson, he was accosted several times by those keen to give vent to one emotion or another; to pass comment on the only topic of conversation in the room.

'Bad luck, mate…'

'Don't worry, he'll get what's coming to him.'

'Wankers!'

Thorne handed Holland and Kitson their drinks and sat down, wondering exactly who that last half-cut philosopher had been talking about. The members of the jury? Adam Chambers and his legal team? Thorne and his? Himself and every other copper in the pub for not making a better job of the case?

Whichever it was, Thorne wasn't arguing.

'Cheers,' Holland said.

Thorne nodded and drank.

'They're like arseholes,' Kitson said.

'What are?'

'Opinions.'

Holland swallowed. 'Every bugger's got one.'

Thorne looked from one to the other. 'So, what's yours?'

Thorne had spent a good deal of the morning with Russell Brigstocke, speculating as to what might have happened in that jury room, but he had yet to sit and talk things through with anyone else whose opinion he valued. He had tried to get hold of Louise, but she had been in and out of meetings all day and able to do no more than leave a message saying how sorry she was.

Kitson was a damn sight less cautious than she had once been when it came to speaking her mind; and Holland, though not quite the wide-eyed innocent he used to be, could still usually be counted upon to say what he thought.

'It's hard enough getting a conviction at the best of times,' Holland said. 'You've got the judge instructing the jury, banging on about reasonable doubt and the weight of evidence, all that.'

Kitson nodded. 'So, when you haven't got a body and there's a brief who knows what he's doing, you're really up against it.' She looked at Thorne. ' We're up against it.'

'Nothing else you could have done,' Holland said.

Thorne blinked slowly and imagined Adam Chambers celebrating, pissing it up the wall in some West End bar where there were far fewer police officers knocking around. He pictured the jubilant friends and family and supposed that, in a way, it was a let-off for them, too. There would be no need to lie to work colleagues or rewrite their personal histories. They would not have to duck difficult questions when journalists came knocking every year on Andrea Keane's birthday, insisting that they must know something about what happened to her. Now they could happily let their own doubts about Adam Chambers' innocence – and Thorne knew they had them – shrivel, until they seemed like something only dreamed or imagined.

'We've just got to crack on,' Kitson said.

'Life's too short, right?' Thorne necked a third of his pint, swallowed back a belch. 'But a lot shorter for some than it is for others.' He thought about two eighteen-year-old girls. The memory of one sullied by injustice. A chance, perhaps, to find the other. And to make himself feel a damn sight better, to salve a conscience scarred by his failure to find the first.

The horse that Jesmond thought he should get back on.

They were joined by Sam Karim, who brought another round to the table just as Russell Brigstocke stood up and made a short speech. The DCI thanked everyone for their hard work, told the team they were the best he had ever worked with, and said that one day, if something new turned up, they might get another crack at it. There were cheers and some half-hearted applause, then the pub drank a toast to Andrea Keane.

'God bless,' Thorne said. It was the kind of thing a copper with a drink inside him came out with at such a moment. Even one without a religious bone in his body.