From the Dead Read Free Page B

more he could have done. That it was as good as in the bag.
    Thorne hoped the sergeant was right. Certainly, without the most conclusive piece of evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service had to be pretty confident of securing a conviction before they would go to trial. On top of which, Thorne and the rest of the team had done everything that was asked of them. They had worked as hard as Thorne could ever remember to prove the three things vital to securing a conviction in a ‘no-body’ murder case.
    That Andrea Keane was dead.
    That she had been murdered.
    That she had been murdered by Adam Chambers.
    Andrea Keane had disappeared eight months earlier, after a judo lesson at a sports centre in Cricklewood. Adam Chambers, a man with a history of violent sexual assault, had been her instructor. When he was initially questioned, he denied that he had seen Andrea after the lesson had finished, though later, when forensic evidence was found in his flat, he admitted that she had been there several times in the past. While Thorne and his team began to build a case against him, Chambers maintained that he had not seen Andrea the night she went missing, claiming that he had gone straight round to his girlfriend’s after his lesson. It was an alibi that the girlfriend confirmed, up until the point when cell-site data proved that Chambers had phoned her that night from his own flat. Then the story changed. Andrea had come round after her judo lesson, Chambers had said, but had only stayed for one drink before he’d told her she needed to go. She had been a bit emotional, Chambers told them, ranting at him about his girlfriend.
    He had leaned across the table in an interview room at Colindale station, with a leer that Thorne would need a long time to forget.
    Said, ‘She had a thing for me. What do you want me to say?’
    From the moment he and his girlfriend had been charged and the lawyers had been appointed, Chambers changed his tactic. The ebullient swagger was replaced by a sullen refusal to cooperate; the wide-boy patter by two words.
    No comment.
    Thorne started a little as Karim leaned on the horn, cursing a cyclist who had jumped the lights ahead of him. Karim turned to look at Thorne. ‘Yeah, in the bag, mate,’ he said again. ‘I’m telling you.’
    â€˜So, what are the odds?’ Thorne asked.
    Karim shook his head.
    â€˜Come on, you’re not telling me you haven’t worked them out.’
    Karim was something of a gambler, and often ran a book on the result of a major case. It was officially frowned upon, but most of the senior officers turned a blind eye, had the occasional flutter themselves.
    â€˜No point,’ Karim said. ‘Odds against are way too long. Besides, who’s going to bother?’
    Thorne knew what his colleague meant. With a case like this one, with a defendant like Adam Chambers, nobody would want to bet, or be seen to bet, on an acquittal.
    Nobody would want to tempt fate.
    Karim slapped out a drum-roll on the steering wheel. ‘It’s solid, mate, this one. Solid .’
    As the investigation had gathered momentum and the circumstantial evidence had begun to mount up, Thorne had set about the task of proving that Andrea Keane was dead. Checks were run with every medical facility in the city. Unidentified bodies were re-examined and eliminated from the inquiry. Phone and financial records were analysed, CCTV footage was studied, and all travel companies supplied the documentation to prove that Andrea had not left the area voluntarily. While a massive search continued nationwide and all the major social networking sites were monitored round the clock, a criminal psychologist constructed a detailed and credible profile of a young woman with genuine ambition.
    Someone who had made plans for her future.
    Someone with no reason to run away or take her own life.
    The media had, of course, been utilised extensively, but as was often the case, had