From the Dead Read Online Free PDF

wheel of a car in the middle of nowhere.
    He tried to separate the two murders, committed so many years apart. To tease out the tangle of pictures, real and imagined.
    He wanted to worry about the right thing . . .
    Brigstocke put the phone down and reached for a mug of coffee. He took a sip, grimaced.
    â€˜You know the jury’s out?’ Thorne asked.
    Brigstocke nodded. ‘No point thinking about it, mate,’ he said. ‘I heard it went really well this morning.’
    â€˜Sam tell you it was in the bag, did he?’
    â€˜I’m just saying we’ve done everything we could.’
    â€˜Everything except find her,’ Thorne said.
    He felt chilly suddenly, aware of how thin and flimsy his suit was, missing the heavy familiarity of his leather jacket. As it went, most coppers dressed the way he was at that moment. It was as if each one graduated to a plain-clothes unit and instantly acquired the fashion sense of a low-end estate agent, but Thorne had always resisted the pull of the off-the-peg M&S two-piece, the easy-iron shirt and shiny tie.
    â€˜It’s bloody cold in here,’ he said.
    Brigstocke nodded. ‘There’s air in the radiator and nobody’s got a key.’
    Thorne got up and walked across to the radiator, bent and put his hand to the metal, which was no better than lukewarm. He stood up, pressed his calves against it. Hearing a sound he had come to recognise and dread, he looked round and saw Brigstocke shuffling a pack of cards.
    â€˜I’ve got a new one for you.’
    â€˜Do you have to?’ Thorne asked.
    For reasons nobody could quite fathom, Brigstocke had developed a keen interest in magic over the previous few months. He attended classes at a club in Watford and had started performing close-up magic for beer money at assorted Met parties and conferences. He also insisted on trying out new tricks on anyone who could not escape quickly enough.
    â€˜Just think of a card,’ Brigstocke said, slipping into the patter. ‘Don’t tell me, though. I mean, what kind of a trick would that be?’
    The trick was pretty good, and Thorne did his best to sound encouraging, but he had never really seen the point of magic. He had no real interest unless the magician explained how a trick was done. Russell Brigstocke was a decent copper, but he was certainly not a wizard.
    â€˜Who was the girl in your office?’ Brigstocke asked, putting away the cards.
    Thorne told him about Anna Carpenter and the Curious Case of the Suntanned Corpse. Brigstocke had not worked on the Langford inquiry, but he remembered the investigation well enough.
    â€˜Coming back from the dead,’ he said. ‘Now that’s a decent trick.’
    â€˜It would be impressive.’
    â€˜Anything in it?’
    Thorne took the photograph from his pocket and passed it over. ‘God knows what Donna Langford’s up to,’ he said. ‘I just hope that detective agency’s screwing a decent wedge out of her.’
    â€˜Does it even look like him?’
    Thorne stood at Brigstocke’s shoulder and looked again. The dyed hair, the squint, the grin. That faint bell was ringing a little louder now, but surely that was just because Anna Carpenter had told him who it was supposed to be. ‘Looks like a lot of people,’ he said. ‘Looks like a bad actor playing a gangster on his holidays.’
    â€˜What did you tell her?’
    â€˜That she was wasting her time and we couldn’t afford to waste any of ours.’
    â€˜Absolutely right,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Not when we’ve got the latest Police Performance Assessment Framework to read and twelve-page reports on Standard Operating Procedure to complete by the end of the day.’
    Thorne laughed and felt it take the chill off.
    They talked about football for a few minutes, then families. Thorne asked after Brigstocke’s three kids. The DCI asked Thorne how on earth his