Read From The Dead for Free Online Page B

Newington a few minutes further south, but Donna Langford was living in one of the few areas in London where you could still buy a place for less than six figures and the pound shops outnumbered the Starbucks.

    As comedowns went, it was steeper than most.

    Donna introduced the blonde woman as Kate and asked Thorne if he wanted tea. While Kate went to the kitchen to fetch the drinks, Donna led Thorne into a smoky living room. As Thorne took it in – a small leather sofa and matching armchair, a plasma TV that all but filled the wall above the gas fire – Donna sat down and reached for the pack of cigarettes lying on a low, glass-topped table.

    ‘Housing association,’ she said. ‘Kate found it.’

    Thorne nodded. He could still hear the working-class Essex upbringing in her voice. If anything, it was stronger now than it had been before, the result of ten years inside trying to pretend she was tougher than she was. He thought about the last time he had visited this woman at her home – a surprisingly tasteful mock-Tudor pile in the Hertfordshire countryside. ‘You couldn’t even fit your old kitchen inside this place,’ he said. He remembered the echo and the gleaming, dust-free surfaces. ‘Never seen so much marble in my life.’

    Donna blew out a plume of smoke and tossed the disposable lighter on to the table. ‘I probably cooked in that kitchen three times,’ she said. ‘Never knew where anything was.’

    ‘What happened to the house?’

    ‘Gone. Same as everything else.’

    ‘Right, yeah.’ Thorne sat down on the sofa. He remembered that Donna had been the main beneficiary of her husband’s will, that for a while this had been considered her motive for wanting him killed. As it had transpired, there was far less to inherit than anyone had thought – the majority of Alan Langford’s assets turning out to have been paper – with the little that was tangible seized by the Serious Organised Crime Agency before Donna had even been sentenced. ‘So, not a lot to come out to?’

    ‘I had plenty,’ Donna said. She shrugged, reached for a large glass ashtray and pulled it towards her. ‘My priorities had changed.’

    Kate shouted from the kitchen, asking if Thorne wanted sugar. He shouted back, letting her know that he did not.

    ‘Actually,’ Donna said, ‘you’ve put on a bit of weight.’

    ‘Yeah, well.’ Thorne smiled, unamused. ‘We’ve all changed.’

    She too was heavier than she had been ten years before, puffy-faced and jowly, while her hair, which Thorne also recalled that she had been inordinately proud of, was grey and far from perfectly coiffured. She was still prison-pale and, on top of the smoking habit, she had acquired a wariness that Thorne had seen in many with a few years inside under their belt. She shifted focus every few seconds, the circles beneath her eyes as blue-black as bruises.

    She might have been the mother of the woman Thorne had last seen a decade earlier.

    ‘Her Majesty does pretty good makeovers,’ Donna said, seeing what Thorne was thinking. She nodded towards Kate, who was coming through the door with three mugs and a packet of biscuits. ‘Not
that
bloody drastic, though.’

    Thorne looked from Donna to Kate. ‘Sorry.’

    Donna leaned over, smirking, to stub out her cigarette. ‘You thought she was me, didn’t you?’

    Thorne looked again and saw that Donna’s companion was at least ten years younger than he had originally taken her for, ten years younger than Donna herself. He also noticed the delicate swirls of blue that snaked up from below the neck of her T-shirt. He could just make out a ‘D’ and an ‘O’ and guessed what the rest of the tattoo spelled out. Now he could see that there was no physical similarity whatsoever between the two women. What had seemed familiar to him was merely something they shared in their expressions: a suspicion, a challenge, an invitation to judge.

    He had simply recognised an ex-con.

    Kate smiled