From the Dead

'I saw a photograph,' Thorne said.

'Come on, you know it's him.' She leaned forward in her chair. 'You know Alan's still alive.'

Thorne took a slurp of tea. Deciding he might just as well stay until he had finished it, he went over some of the same ground he had covered with Anna Carpenter. Donna had received the photograph two months earlier in a plain brown envelope addressed to her at HMP Holloway. There had been no accompanying note. Two more pictures had followed, both delivered in the same way. Then, a fortnight ago, after her release, a fourth had arrived at the flat.

Donna showed Thorne the three other photos. They were all from the same batch, dated three months earlier, each shot showing the man in more or less the same pose, holding up his glass of beer or drinking from it. The same triumphant grin. The same sea and sky, the same black mountain and distant boat.

'No helpful postmark, I suppose?' Thorne asked.

'All posted in London,' Donna said.

'You keep the envelopes?'

'I didn't think. Sorry.'

Thorne stared down at the photographs laid out on the table, listened to the rustle and click of the lighter, the faint hiss as Donna lit another cigarette.

'Why didn't you come to us straight away?' Thorne asked.

'Because I knew you'd be like this. Suspicious. I knew you'd think I was full of shit.'

'But you didn't mind when Anna came to see me?'

'She's a nice girl,' Donna said. 'But to be honest, I don't think she does much more than fetch and carry. I'd rather you lot weren't involved, no point me pretending otherwise, but if it's the only way I'm going to find out…'

'Find out why the photos are being sent?'

Donna nodded. Her eyes were closed and smoke drifted from the corner of her mouth.

'And who's sending them?'

'Where he is,' she said. 'I want to know where that bastard is.'

Thorne fought the temptation to make some crack about knowing exactly where Donna's ex-husband was, about there not being an awful lot left of him, seeing as how he had essentially been cremated twice. He watched as Donna reached for another stack of photographs from a small sideboard, flicked through them, then passed a couple across.

These were much older. Donna and Alan Langford dressed up to the nines on an evening out. Black tie for him, cocktail dress for her, and best smiles for the camera.

'Looks fancy,' Thorne said.

'Some charity bash or other.' Donna spat the words out as if she now saw what a sham her life had been back then. The contented wife. The gangster masquerading as philanthropist. She pointed from one image of her ex-husband to the other; from a photograph taken a dozen years earlier to one dated a few months ago. 'You can see it's him, can't you?'

Thorne looked. He could not deny the resemblance.

'Alan had a scar,' Donna said. 'He got knifed in the belly when he was a teenager, some ruck in the local pub.' She pointed again at the photo of the older man and Thorne saw the mark: a pale line just above the crinkled waistband of the swimming shorts, clear against the sagging, brown gut. 'I reckon he's had a bit of work 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?'