From the Dead

TWENTY-ONE

Boyle and Thorne drove down a busy main road crowded with shops, most still open even though it had gone six-thirty, and restaurants just beginning to serve dinner. The customers and the signs made it clear that the community was predominantly Asian.

Sitting at a set of lights, Thorne lowered the window and thought about the curry he could have been having.

Soon they entered a quieter neighbourhood and pulled up outside Boyle's modest terrace. 'City's had a lot to deal with the last few years,' Boyle said. 'Some of the lads that did the London bombings were from round here, so the anti-terror thing kicked off big time. Been a load of press about honour killings an' all, special initiatives, all that.' He opened the door. 'Personally, I don't give a monkey's why you're killing someone. You're an arsehole and I'm going to nick you, simple as that.'

Thorne followed Boyle up the narrow path, thinking that as a working philosophy went, it was as decent as any.

'Last train's about ten, I think,' Boyle said. 'I've got a timetable inside somewhere.' He leaned against the front door until it opened. 'I may not be in a fit state to drive you to the station by then, but there's plenty of taxis.'

'That's fine.'

'Sorry about the mess…'

The stew was as good as Boyle had promised, and Thorne made sure he said as much. The lamb was lean and nicely spiced, and there were dried fruits – apricots and sliced mango – which Thorne had not seen in a stew before but which went very nicely with the puy lentils. They ate in the kitchen and then carried cans of lager through to the living room. It was a decent size, but cluttered: a mass of papers on a low table, a pile of clothes that might have been clean or dirty on a chair. An enormous plasma TV dominated one corner, with DVDs stacked underneath and scattered on the floor in front. Thorne saw boxed sets of Only Fools and Horses and The Fast Show, and there was plenty of cricket in evidence: England's Six of the Best, The Greatest Ashes Ever, Boycott on Batting.

Andy Boyle could not be more of a Yorkshireman if he tried, Thorne thought.

'I tell you what cheers me right up,' Boyle said. 'The thought of Jeremy Grover sitting there shitting himself when he hears what's happened to Howard Cook.'

'Presuming he doesn't know already?'

'Yeah, somebody always knows somebody, don't they? Jungle drums.'

Plenty of those about, Thorne thought.

'Might make the little shitehawk a bit more talkative.'

'Or do the exact opposite,' Thorne said.

Boyle shrugged and agreed that was the more likely outcome, that warning Grover might well have been one of the main reasons Cook was killed in the first place. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'I feel sorry for the wife, course I do. But it's hard not to think that Cook got what was coming to him.'

'I think that's a bit harsh.'

'Maybe, but he knew the risks. You take dirty money from that sort of pondlife, all bets are off.' Boyle shook his head. 'Cook was bent and that's the one thing I can never get past with people. Whatever else, you keep a straight bat, right?'

This was clearly something of a hobby-horse, so Thorne just nodded and said, 'Right.'

'Same as on the Job. I don't care whether it's a few quid here and there or if you're swiping kilos of coke left, right and centre, a bent copper's a bent copper and I don't want to know.' He gave a sly smile. 'I can tell which ones are bent, an' all.'

'You reckon?' He thought of Anna Carpenter and her in-built lie-detector. Now, here was someone else who thought he had a nose for dishonesty.

'Oh yes, mate.' Boyle pointed. 'I had you figured out within the first five minutes.'

'Go on…'

Boyle paused for comic effect. 'You're a wanker, but you're a straight wanker.'

Thorne laughed, held up his can when Boyle raised his.

They sat in silence for half a minute. It had just reached the point where Thorne was about to ask if they should turn on the TV.

'She was weird, though, wasn't she?' Boyle said. 'Cook's missus.'

'I've seen people react in stranger ways than that,' Thorne said.

'Oh yeah, me too.' Boyle took a long swig of beer and relaxed into his chair, clearly relishing the opportunity to swap war stories. Or perhaps just to talk. 'A mate of mine got slapped in the face once, when he had to break the news. This woman went mental and just smacked him good and proper, like it was his fault.'

'Everyone reacts differently,' Thorne said.

'Yeah, right, for sure.'

Thorne had seen sudden death affect people in more ways than he could count. He had known people laugh their way through the bad news, as though Thorne and whichever officer he had been with at the time were playing some elaborate practical joke. It took time to sink in with most people, but none he could remember were quite as calm as Pat Cook. Her denial was almost childlike, a game of pretend.

'It knocks you for six, even when you know it's coming,' Boyle said.

Thorne nodded, sensing where Boyle was going.

'Like with my Anne. I mean, for those last couple of months we were talking about it all the time… planning for it, because Annie didn't like loose ends, you know? But then, at the very end, it was still… bad.' He took another drink. 'You think you're prepared for it but you're not, that's all I'm saying. It's still like the world stops.'

'It must have been rough,' Thorne said.

'I can't tell you, mate.'

'How old was…?'

'She was forty-two.' His fingers busied themselves on the arm of the chair, picking at a loose thread, a speck of dirt, or nothing at all. 'No bloody age, is it?'

'You seem to be doing OK, though, Andy,' Thorne said. 'I'm sure she'd be proud of you.'

'She'd be bloody amazed, mate.'

'I mean it.'

Boyle drained the can and crushed it. 'You get on with it, don't you? Nothing else you can do.'

Thorne wondered how it would be for Pat Cook in the coming weeks and months. For some, it was helpful to focus all their energy into a simple hatred for whomever they deemed responsible. For others, it was easier to blame themselves.

I should never have let him go out

I should have picked her up.

If only, if only, if only…

He wondered, too, which way Andrea Keane's family would go, now the justice system had decreed that Adam Chambers should be free to walk around, to breathe fresh air and talk to anyone he liked about the young woman they had lost. At least the law had given them a target; perhaps, for some of them, that would help.

'Do you want another?' Boyle asked, brandishing the distorted can.

'I've not finished this one.'

'You don't mind if I do?'

'It's your house,' Thorne said. He watched Boyle head towards the kitchen, still thinking about Andrea Keane's parents. Hoping that what had happened in that courtroom did not slowly destroy what little was left of them.

It was probably a vain hope, he knew that.

A single murder cost many lives.

Having flown in the face of all her instincts and been extra nice to Frank, she had still not been allowed to leave the office a minute before five-thirty, so Anna had hit the rush hour full on. It had taken almost an hour and a half to drive the eight miles from Victoria to her parents' place in Wimbledon. Plenty of time to ask herself why she was bothering.

And to build up her courage.

Even so, having pulled up outside the house, she needed another five minutes before she felt ready to go inside. She sat in the car and stared at what had once been her home: a four-bedroom house with a decent garden and views over the common, no more than a ten-minute walk from the All England Club.

'That'll all be yours one day,' her friend Rob had said.

'I think I've been written out of the will,' Anna had said.

Neither of them had really been joking.

Now, her father turned from the fridge and carried the milk across to where Anna was sitting at the kitchen table.

'Must be some weird, primal thing,' Anna said. 'Every time I come back here I get this urge to eat cereal.'

Her father smiled. 'I always make sure I've got some in.'

'Thanks.'

'I only ever have a slice of toast, and your mum…'

'Right, I know. If she was having Rice Krispies, it wouldn't be milk she'd be pouring over them.' Anna glanced up and saw the look on her father's face. 'Stupid joke. Sorry…'

She started eating.

'She'll be glad you've come, you know.'

'What?'

'I told her you were coming over and she will ask me all about it later, when you've gone.'

'When she's sober.'

'She'll ask me what we talked about.'

'If I said anything about her, you mean.'

Her father searched for the words but gave up and turned away. He picked up a cloth that was draped over the sink and began wiping the work surfaces. Anna watched him, thinking: This nonsense is making him older. It's ridiculous…

Robert Carpenter was still a year or two the right side of sixty, and until recently had worked full time at one of the city's largest accounting firms. But he had been going into the office less and less since his wife had begun drinking heavily again, and Anna knew that his firm's tolerance would last only so long. She felt guilty about it every day, although she knew very well that it was not her fault.

'She does talk about you, you know.'

Anna dropped her spoon and sat back hard in her chair. She saw that her father was startled, but she was too irritated with him to care a great deal. 'You've really got to stop doing that.'

'Doing what?'

'Talking about her in those ridiculous hushed tones, like she's the mad woman in the attic or something.'

'I didn't realise I was.'

'She hasn't lost her marbles… yet. She's just a stupid, stubborn old cow.'

'Don't get all worked up-'

'A stubborn, pissed old cow.'

'Please stop shouting.'

'I don't care if she hears me. She's probably listening anyway, if she's still conscious, that is.'

Her father turned back to his cleaning, but gave up after half a minute or so. He tossed the cloth into the sink and sat down opposite Anna.

'Sorry,' she said.

'It's fine.' He was wearing a smart shirt tucked into jeans, as though, Anna thought, he could not quite allow himself to relax. Or afford to.

'How's she doing?'

'A little better, I think. We had a couple of days up in the Lakes last week. A nice hotel. She really seemed to enjoy it.'

'Did she stay sober?'

A half-smile. 'More or less.'

'Is she taking all her tablets?'

'I think so, but I can't watch her all the time, you know?'

'I know.' Anna leaned across and patted her father's arm. 'And you can't blame yourself if she pours half a bottle of vodka down her neck while you're busy trying to make a living. To have a life.'

He watched her eat for a while. She had almost finished. 'You mustn't blame yourself, either… for any of this. It's not your fault.'

Anna tried to answer too quickly, dribbled milk down her chin. They both laughed and she had another go. 'It feels like it sometimes.'

'You were an excuse, that's all,' he said. 'The excuse she was waiting for. It's what addicts do.'

Anna looked at him.

'I got a couple of books on it. It's always better if they can make out that somebody's driven them to the drink or whatever it is. It's easier to hate somebody else rather than yourself.'

'You think she hates me?'

'No, course not, that came out wrong…'

Anna nodded and took the last couple of mouthfuls. 'She's not going to come down, is she?'

'I can go and ask again,' her father said. 'Try and persuade her.'

'She shouldn't need persuading, for God's sake, I'm her daughter.' She leaned back, the chair tipping on to two legs. 'And I'm happy, do you know that?'

'I know,' he said. 'And whatever's going on inside your mum's head, however bad all this gets, I'm pleased it's working out for you.'

'Well, I wouldn't go that far. I can barely pay my rent.'

'Do you need some-?'

'God, no, I just meant… I'm still learning the ropes, that's all. But this case I'm working on now is brilliant. The people are interesting, and fun. Back at the bank… Well, you know.'

She stopped, and they both pretended that they weren't listening to the heavy footsteps from the floor above, the door closing louder than it should have.

'Tell me about the case,' he said.

Anna nodded. 'You sure? I mean, it might only be interesting to me.'

'That's good enough,' he said. Then he leaned across the table to pour another helping of cereal into his daughter's bowl.

Andy Boyle was one of those drinkers who said less the more he had to drink. He still talked happily enough, but he tended to repeat himself, and the silences grew longer between his increasingly slurred and rambling pronouncements.

'You need to appreciate what you've got, is all I'm saying, because one minute everything in the garden's rosy, and the next you're buggered. You're bowling along, happy as Larry, you go to a doctor because you find a lump or whatever, and everything goes to hell. So, be bloody careful.'

'I will be.'

'All I'm saying…'

Thorne listened, made the appropriate noises, and glanced at his watch whenever Boyle looked away or closed his eyes for a few seconds. Finally, at around quarter-past nine, he asked where the train timetable was, and for the number of a local taxi company. Boyle directed him to a drawer in the hall table, then to a bowl in the kitchen. As Thorne squinted at the stupidly small font on the timetable, Boyle reached down to the side of his chair for another can, one of several he had brought back from his last trip to the fridge.

'You're kidding me.'

'What?'

'Do you know how long this last bloody train takes to get to London?' Thorne had looked twice, just to confirm that the 22.10 from Wakefield took nearly nine hours to reach St Pancras, with one change at Sheffield, then a four-and-a-half-hour wait for a connection at Derby.

'I know, it's ridiculous,' Boyle said.

'I could walk home in that time.'

'But have a look, mate… you can get one back at quarter to six in the morning, or even earlier if you can be arsed getting up. You'll be back at your desk by half eight. Problem solved.'

Thorne swore at the East Coast Mainline, Richard Branson and anyone else who seemed deserving of it for a minute or two. Then he picked up one of Boyle's cans and went into the hall to phone Louise.

'Sounds like he wanted you to stay the night all along,' Louise said, when Thorne had told her about the trains. 'Maybe he's going to murder you in your bed.'

'He might have even stranger plans…'

'Could have been Rohypnol in that stew.'

'How was your day?'

'Well, since you ask, it started with me stepping in cat sick and went downhill from there.'

'Oh, God.' Thorne had fed Elvis just before he'd left that morning, a good half-hour before Louise was due to get up. 'Sorry.'

'It's not your fault.'

'So, what happened at work?'

'Just dealing with this bitch of a DS who's been drafted in.' Now, the frustrations of her day were there in her voice. 'Spreading poison around, usual stuff.'

'What kind of poison?'

'It doesn't matter. Don't worry, I'll sort her out.'

Thorne grunted. He knew that she would. 'So…'

'Sounds like you've had a useful day, though.'

'I suppose so.' Thorne took another step away from the living-room door. 'Even if the last few hours have been closer to care in the community. '

'Your good deed for the year,' Louise said.

'I suppose I'll see you tomorrow night, then.'

'Actually, I was thinking I might go back to my place tomorrow. I've got a few things to do.'

'Oh, OK. I just thought it would be nice to…'

'You can come over to mine, you know.'

Suddenly the conversation felt stilted and odd; especially as they had made such simple arrangements a hundred times before.

'I'll do that, then,' Thorne said.

'Provided you make it through the night, of course…'

By the time Thorne went back into the living room, Boyle was asleep in his chair. Thorne shook him gently awake and suggested that he might want to get to bed, but Boyle insisted he was more than happy where he was. He scrabbled around blindly for the remote control and turned on the television. He opened his eyes wide and reached down towards his severely depleted lager stash.

'Right you are,' he said. 'So, where are we?'

Thorne called the taxi company and booked a cab for five-fifteen the following morning. He told the controller he knew it was stupidly early, and to make sure the car was on time. He picked up a few empties and carried them through to the kitchen, got a glass of water then said goodnight.

He could hear Andy Boyle quietly talking to himself as he walked upstairs in search of the spare bedroom.