From the Dead

'Was there one?' Anna asked. 'A boyfriend?'

Maggie shook her head. 'Nobody we knew about. Nobody special, at any rate.'

'The police did keep in touch fairly regularly,' Julian said. 'At the beginning anyway. But only to tell us there was nothing to tell us, if you see what I mean.' His jaw tightened and he breathed out noisily through his nose. 'Some family liaison officer or other would sit where you are now, scoffing our bloody biscuits and bleating on about counselling, but singularly failing to tell us what anybody was actually doing to find our daughter.' He looked at his feet, one of which was tapping angrily against the carpet. Maggie leaned across and took his hand.

'Tell us about the day Ellie went missing,' Thorne said.

Maggie glanced at her husband. He nodded. You tell it.

'She'd been out celebrating her A-level results. She'd done really well. She and some of her friends went to one of the pubs in the centre of town.' Maggie shrugged. 'That's it. Just a bunch of teenagers having a drink and letting their hair down. All her friends told us she was fine when she left to get the bus. She never came home

…'

Thorne thanked her and said he understood how difficult it must be, going over it all again. She told him it had become second nature; one or other of them had told the story a thousand times by now.

'What were the results?' Anna asked. 'You said she did well.'

Maggie looked slightly taken aback before her face broke into a beam. It was clear that nobody had ever bothered to ask. 'Two Bs and a C,' she said. 'Bs in English and History, C in French.'

Thorne knew that the Munros were exaggerating somewhat in claiming that the police had done nothing, but he understood why. If he were the parent of a missing child, he would want every police officer in the country on the lookout twenty-four hours a day. The truth was that those in charge of the inquiry had done as much as possible before running hard into a brick wall. Ellie Langford had quickly become just one of several thousand missing teenagers.

Thorne had spoken to one officer from the case who suspected drug use of some sort. Said most of his team expected Ellie to be on the streets somewhere, London most likely. Sitting here and talking to the girl's foster parents, Thorne doubted that, but he knew he was no expert. He did know that no images of her had shown up on CCTV footage and that her mobile phone had not been used since the night of her disappearance. He also knew that if she had left the country, she had done so illegally.

'She didn't take her passport,' Thorne said.

Maggie shook her head. 'No. We told the police that. Her passport was still here, and all her clothes. She hadn't been planning on going anywhere.'

The implication was obvious. She had been taken. Of course, the Munros had no way of knowing that Alan Langford was still alive, so they could not have suspected that Ellie had been taken by her own father. Their fear was far worse, far harder to wake up with every morning.

That their daughter had been abducted by a stranger.

'She's dead.' Maggie addressed the words to Anna. Simply and without emphasis. 'Isn't she?'

'Why do you say that?'

'Because if she was alive, she would have got in touch to let us know she was OK. She would have wanted to talk to us, to talk to Sam.'

'We've got no reason to believe she's come to any harm,' Thorne said. He knew that the Surrey Police had checked at the time and that they were still routinely checking all unidentified bodies as well as calling A amp;E departments as part of a regular monthly review.

'Nobody ever said as much, but I think those people who believed she'd run away weren't particularly surprised.' Julian sat back, calmer now. 'As though it was only to be expected that she'd have some kind of breakdown sooner or later. After what happened with her parents, I mean.'

The surprise must have registered on Thorne's face.

'We knew who they were.' The man fought to keep the distaste from his expression, but it was clear in his voice. 'We knew all along who Ellie's father was, and why her mother went to prison.'

Thorne shrugged. 'I just didn't think they would have told you everything. All the details, I mean.'

'Well, they told us a little of it at the time and we pieced together the rest once it all broke in the media. I think they wanted us to know the basic facts in case Ellie had been… affected, you know? They were worried she might show signs of it in her behaviour, of being traumatised. '

'Did she?' Anna asked.

Maggie shook her head. 'You would never have known,' she said. 'She was the calmest little girl. Never lost her temper, never had a tantrum. Even when she hit thirteen, fourteen, and all her friends were going through that awful hormonal stage.'

'Boyfriends and bitching,' Julian said.

'She just seemed to be removed from it somehow. Like she was above it all.'

'She never talked about her mother coming out of prison?' Thorne asked. 'What might happen then?'

The Munros shook their heads.

'You do know she's been released, don't you?'

The look on both their faces made it clear that they did not. Social Services might have decided that they had no need to know. Or they might just have screwed up and neglected to call them. Either way, it was an awkward moment. Looking at them, Thorne suddenly felt under pressure; as if he were being invited to declare where his loyalties lay.

'How long?' Maggie asked.

'Just over a month,' Thorne said.

He looked through a glass door that led to a small conservatory and the garden beyond. There was an almost full-sized football goal in one corner and a huge trampoline in the other. Thorne thought this must have been a good place to grow up, and not too much of a comedown from the place Ellie Langford had lived in before. Not as much as the one her mother had faced at any rate. Then, just before he turned back to Julian and Maggie Munro, he found himself thinking about another missing girl. About the very different house in which Andrea Keane had been raised.

Four siblings scrabbling for attention and a garden barely big enough to bounce a ball in.

'Have you still got Ellie's computer?' Thorne asked.

Maggie nodded. 'We've got everything.'

'Is it OK if we send an officer round to pick it up?'

'They already looked at it,' Julian said. 'The week after Ellie disappeared. '

'I know, but we're making progress with that stuff all the time, so it might be worth a try. I can barely manage an email, but you can get all sorts of information off a hard disk now, so…'

'It's no problem,' Maggie said. 'Just let us know.'

Thorne gave Anna a small nod, and reached down for his briefcase. 'Well, if you think of anything else…' He stood up, shaking his head. 'Why do coppers always say that?'

'You've read the statement we made at the time?' Julian asked.

'Yes,' Thorne lied. He had asked for it to be faxed across. With luck, it would be waiting for him back at the office, along with statements from the friends who had been with Ellie in the pub the night she vanished.

'Well, you know as much as anyone, then.' Julian walked slowly to the door, with Anna, Thorne and Maggie a few steps behind. 'The pub, her friends, the woman. All of it.'

'Which woman?' Thorne asked. 'I don't recall…'

'I saw her talking to a woman,' Julian said. 'An older woman. This was a couple of weeks before she went missing. I thought it must have been one of her teachers, but then I could see… Well, she didn't look like a teacher.' He leaned against the door jamb. 'I saw them twice, actually: once at the end of the road when I was coming back from the office, then a few days later in one of the cafes in town. They were sitting at a table in the window and I thought they were arguing.'

'About what?' Anna asked.

'I've no idea.'

Anna leaned forward, excited. 'But there was definitely some sort of argument?'