Free From The Dead by Mark Billingham Page B

ahead and enjoy yourself too.’

    Monahan stood up quickly and Thorne moved with him, ready to step in if need be. For a moment, it looked as though Monahan might snap, but then he sucked his teeth and grinned, as though it had been no more than a cosy chinwag, before turning and walking to the door.

    A guard appeared and Monahan told him that he was done.

    ‘Have fun in class,’ Thorne said.

EIGHT

    They caught the two-thirty train back to London. As soon as they were settled in a relatively quiet carriage, Thorne gave Anna a ten-pound note and sent her to the buffet car for hot drinks and sandwiches. Once she had gone, he phoned Brigstocke.

    ‘Well, I don’t think we were telling Monahan anything he didn’t know,’ Thorne said.

    ‘Other than the fact that
we
know.’

    ‘Right.’

    ‘That shake him?’

    ‘I think so. We’ll need to come back at some point, have another crack at him, but in the meantime we can gather a bit of ammunition. We need to look at his family. Get their bank statements, check out new cars they shouldn’t be able to afford, where they’ve been going on their holidays, usual stuff.’

    ‘I don’t think it’ll be as simple as that,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Probably all done in cash, nothing that can be traced.’

    ‘You never know,’ Thorne said. ‘Give some people more than they’re used to and there’s always some idiot who can’t resist flashing it around. The main thing is that word gets back to Monahan. As long as he knows we’re looking, putting on the pressure, he won’t be quite so cocky next time we come to visit.’

    ‘Course, he might not know much,’ Brigstocke said. ‘If Langford organised that side of it, he might have decided that the less people who knew the better.’

    ‘Monahan knows something that’s worth paying for. He could have made some sort of deal ten years ago, told us the truth and got himself a shorter sentence, but he swallowed it. Langford obviously promised him a decent whack in exchange for keeping his mouth shut, and I don’t think he would have done that unless Monahan knew something . . . dangerous.’

    ‘Like who was really in that Jag.’

    ‘I reckon.’

    Brigstocke told Thorne that he’d set up a meeting with somebody from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, because trying to build a case against Alan Langford was likely to involve them at some point. They had departments that could uncover any financial irregularities or examine in forensic detail the business dealings that Langford – or whatever he was calling himself these days – had been engaged in since his ‘death’. SOCA had money and manpower, but was not always easy to deal with and moved notoriously slowly.

    ‘Be a damn sight simpler for everyone if we could just nail him for murder,’ Brigstocke said.

    ‘I’m doing my best,’ Thorne said.

    ‘And there’s the small matter of finding him . . .’ Again, Brigstocke explained that SOCA would have far greater resources available than any homicide team when it came to tracing overseas felons, but that they
did
need to know which country they should start looking in.

    In the absence of the high-tech photographic facility Anna Carpenter had been talking about, Thorne had sent copies of the Langford photographs to a man he hoped would be able to help. Dennis Bethell was an informant of many years’ standing. He was also something of a genius when it came to cameras and film development, albeit one who chose to use his talent in the production of hardcore pornography.

    ‘I’ve told Dennis we’re in a hurry,’ Thorne said.

    ‘How were things with your new partner?’ Brigstocke asked.

    ‘We need to have words.’

    ‘That good, eh?’

    When Thorne spotted Anna on her way back from the buffet car, he told Brigstocke that they were about to go into a tunnel, that he’d give him the details next time he saw him. Brigstocke told him not to bother coming back to the office, so Thorne agreed