TT13 Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne fully intended to.

  The high street branched off in two directions. Following one, he came to another parade of shops much like those he had seen already. He walked past a bookmaker’s and a curry house, a pub called the Star with blacked-out windows, and, sandwiched between vacant premises, a milkshake bar that appeared to knock out tacky, reproduction Americana on the side. Cadillac-shaped mirrors; Stars and Stripes bunting; neon bar signs. Thorne stared in through the door and saw that, save for a young woman sitting behind the counter painting her nails, the place was empty. He wondered how either of the lines on sale kept the place in business.

  A little further on, he stopped in front of a party shop called Celebrations. The unlit window display was festooned with heart-shaped balloons, cards, bows and teddy bears. Thorne could only suppose that the place was closed as a mark of respect; that even on what would otherwise be one of their busiest days of the year, the owners had realised that people in the town would have little to celebrate.

  Gestures were important, Thorne thought. When there was nothing else you could do.

  He doubled back and turned on to the other branch of the high street. It was immediately obvious that this was the older part of town, or at least, the part that had yet to be developed. He passed a tall and imposing building, looked up at the inscription on the ornate brickwork and saw that it had once been a school. The huge windows were boarded up and there had been some half-hearted work with a spray-can on the ground-floor boards. He wasn’t altogether certain that gang-style graffiti had reached Polesford yet, but if it had, TRACY IS A SLAG was a piss-poor attempt at tagging.

  On the other side of the street was a line of even older buildings; the walls uneven and criss-crossed with black or brown timbers. Elizabethan, was it? Jacobean? Thorne was not even sure which one of those came first, but he didn’t need a history degree to see that, with one exception, they were empty and had fallen into serious disrepair. The property on the end had been converted into a pub and, judging by the sign on the pavement outside, the Magpie’s Nest had a great deal to offer its customers.

  Quiz Night with GREAT prizes. Karaoke. LIVE Premiership football and an EXTENSIVE menu.

  A glance inside was enough to confirm that these were the things that the punters of Polesford wanted. The place was certainly doing a lot better than its rival just up the road. Thorne wondered about nipping in for a quick half, but decided to wait.

  A minute further on, a grand archway that was clearly even older than the buildings he had just been looking at led to the abbey that Helen had mentioned. Thorne looked up at the gargoyles above the abbey entrance, higher still to the flag of St George, snapping in the wind above the turrets. A noticeboard told him that parts of the building were from the thirteenth century, that the gatehouse itself was four hundred years older still. There were pictures of the famous stained glass windows in the baptistry, of tapestries, carved screens and memorial tablets. A notice explained that a full guide to the abbey’s historic interior and the ‘sensory garden’ adjacent to it could be found in the visitors’ centre.

  Thorne did not bother going inside.

  A long, straight track, no more than three feet wide and with spiked railings on either side, led Thorne to the river and he stopped on the bridge across which he and Helen had driven only a few hours before. He remembered Helen’s silence as they had approached the place, the atmosphere in the car. She seemed determined, yet apprehensive. Like someone who knows they need to get rid of the pain, but still dreads the hospital visit. No, it wasn’t quite that, Thorne thought. The truth was, he could only guess at what had been going on in Helen’s head, because he was still not familiar enough with her moods.

  He could almost hear Hendricks laughing. Yeah, plus you’re an insensitive bastard at the best of times …

  It was probably just down to coming home, going back to your roots, whatever. There would always be mixed feelings, Thorne supposed. Only supposed, because he had never left home as Helen had done, never moved away from London. There had been many occasions when he’d wondered if he should have done.

  Looking over the edge of the bridge, the green-brown water was spattered with drizzle, the odd plastic bag or bottle trapped in its currents moving quickly beneath him. The banks seemed solid enough, but not very far away, the Anker had joined with rising groundwater in low-lying areas and water every bit as uninviting as this was now sloshing about in people’s living rooms. Thorne had seen a little of how the people of Polesford were handling a man-made tragedy, but he wondered how they would cope with the worst that nature could throw at them. He had a sense that, for all the talk of a town united in shock or outrage, it was not a place that took a great deal of pride in itself. He thought about those historic buildings, now derelict or ringing with the sounds of karaoke on a Friday night. He guessed that anyone trying to galvanise the locals for a ‘Polesford in Bloom’ bid would have their work cut out.

  A community coming together in the wake of a terrible crime was a story that always played well. But Thorne had been rather more struck by those who seemed only to be thinking about themselves.

  He looked at his watch.

  He still had ten minutes before the press statement was scheduled.

  Thorne walked across the bridge, away from the town centre, until he came to St Mary’s. The school that both Poppy Johnston and Jessica Toms attended. It was very different from the building on the other side of the bridge, its honey-coloured brickwork now decorated with chipboard and sixth-form graffiti.

  Grey breezeblock and glass. A desolate playground, dotted with puddles.

  The gates were padlocked, and adorned with small bunches of flowers and soggy cards; a collection of sodden cuddly toys fastened to the metalwork or wedged between the railings. Thorne had expected no less. The shrine was always the first thing to appear these days, the most obvious manifestation of that ‘community united in grief’.

  Easy, knee-jerk …

  He looked at the water running down the cellophane, dripping from the ears of a smiling, stuffed rabbit. Thorne tried to suppress his cynicism, if only for a while, and remind himself how important these gestures could be to people. The simple fact that for most, they were sincere and heartfelt.

  There were more flowers, piled together at the bottom of the gates, most – other than those freshly laid – wilted or flattened. Petrol station arrangements.

  Thorne crouched down to read some of the messages.

  ELEVEN

  The curtains in the bedroom were drawn, but they were thin and badly fitted, and what was left of the day was bleeding through the fabric or creeping around the edges. Helen nudged one back and peeked to see what was happening outside. Almost immediately, a camera flashed and she quickly drew her head back. The fading light and poor weather had driven all but the most determined of the locals away and now, thankfully, the journalists were outnumbered by police officers, the more experienced among them having left to secure prime positions for the forthcoming press statement.

  Helen saw a woman pointing up at the window, so she let the curtain fall back and stepped away. She walked across to the bed and bent to lay a hand on Linda’s arm.

  ‘Linda.’ She waited a few seconds, then said it again, rubbing gently at skin that felt rough and cold. If Linda had pulled the duvet up to cover herself, it had fallen from her as she’d moved in her sleep. She was wearing a grey T-shirt and knickers. The rest of her clothes – shoes, jeans, sweatshirt – lay in a heap by the side of the bed. A black bra strap was visible, twisted across her pale shoulder.

  Linda turned over slowly. Her eyes flickered for a few seconds then opened suddenly and she shifted away towards the wall. She closed her eyes again and groaned.

  ‘Sorry. Forgot where I was for a minute.’ Her voice was quiet and cracked.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Helen said.

  ‘What was happening.’

  Helen put a hand on her arm again. ‘You want me to get yo
u some water or something?’

  ‘Jesus.’ Linda leaned to turn on a lamp next to the bed. She raised herself up and looked around the room. A plain white wardrobe and matching chest of drawers. Linda’s suitcases and several bin-bags stuffed full of clothes lay next to the door. ‘And I thought we lived in a shithole.’

  Helen laughed and when she stopped she became aware of voices in the next room. Charli and Danny. The conversation was just audible, a word or two, so Helen spoke quickly, suddenly worried that it might not be something she or Linda would want to hear.

  ‘They’re making a statement in five minutes. Thought you’d want to come down for it.’

  ‘Is there much point?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘What do you think the chances are they’ll say, “Sorry, we cocked this one up and we’ve arrested the wrong man”?’ Mercifully for Helen, Linda did not let the silence that followed become too awkward. ‘No chance, right?’

  ‘They’ll probably spend ten minutes saying precisely sod all,’ Helen said. ‘Enquiries are ongoing, grateful for the co-operation of the public, blah blah blah. Basically, they’ve got to give the press something.’

  ‘The press have got us,’ Linda said. She pointed at the window, at those she knew were gathered outside the house. ‘We’re the fresh meat.’

  ‘I know it feels like that.’ Helen was not sure if by ‘us’, Linda was including her husband or not. ‘It’s not for ever, trust me.’

  Linda looked at her, and Helen could see how much the woman wanted to believe it, but ultimately could not. ‘Christ, I’m tired. I’d happily knock myself out, try and sleep through all of it.’

  Helen glanced at the bedside table but could see no sign of the tablets Carson had mentioned.

  ‘I can’t though, can I? I need to keep everything together for them two.’ She nodded at the wall. ‘God only knows what it’s like for them.’

  ‘Not easy.’

  ‘What they’re thinking.’

  ‘They’ll be worried about you, course they will.’

  ‘They’ll be worried about their dad,’ Linda said quickly. ‘That’s how they both think of him and they’ll be wanting to know when he’s coming home.’

  It was obvious that Charli and Danny were able to hear that their mother was awake, because the music began again. A low drone, then something that hissed like an amplified aerosol; a few angry squirts before the drums kicked in.

  ‘All that teenage stuff,’ Linda said. ‘Tantrums and drugs and the rest of it. I can deal with that, but this shit …’

  Helen laughed again and so did Linda, and, just for a moment or two, Helen saw the teenage girl she had known twenty years before: badgering her to pass the cider bottle; nodding out to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. ‘Thank God I’ve got a while before all that starts.’

  ‘It’ll come quicker than you think.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Linda swung her legs off the bed. She rubbed some warmth into her thighs, then leaned down to pick her jeans up. Helen bent to help her, got to them first and passed them over.

  ‘You do cases like this, right?’ Linda looked at her. ‘Murders and rapes, I mean. Serious stuff.’

  ‘I have done,’ Helen said.

  ‘They get it wrong, don’t they? Sometimes, they just make a mistake and I mean we probably don’t get to hear about most of them because nobody likes to look bad, do they? It happens though, right? Somebody just gets something wrong. Not their fault, they just get some duff information, whatever. All I’m saying, they make mistakes, don’t they?’

  Helen was not surprised at straws such as this being so desperately clutched at. Even with what little she had heard about the case against Stephen Bates, it was all they could realistically be.

  She took a breath. ‘Linda—’

  Linda stood up quickly and stepped into her jeans. The volume of the music had gone up a notch and, without saying anything, she snatched up her sweatshirt and marched out of the room. Helen heard her open the door to the bedroom her kids were in and ask them to turn the music down. She didn’t shout. She said ‘please’.

  A few seconds later, Linda appeared in the doorway shaking her head. She cranked up a smile that faltered a little at first, then set itself. The effort necessary to keep it in place, to hold the tears or the scream at bay, was obvious enough.

  ‘Yes, we make mistakes,’ Helen said. It was a simple truth. It did not change her belief that this time they had almost certainly got it right. ‘We make lots of mistakes.’

  TWELVE

  Everyone had gathered in the small car park that served the health centre and library as well as the Memorial Hall. It was also, according to a handwritten sign, the venue for a car-boot sale the following weekend. There were perhaps a dozen print journalists and half that number again working with cameras from the BBC, ITN, Sky and Channel Five. The day was dimming quickly and several technicians wielded hand-held lamps, ready to go.

  Thorne stood behind the media line; just another interested observer, alongside those locals who had braved the cold weather instead of simply watching it at home on one of the rolling news channels.

  ‘Bloody daft, all this. All these people …’

  Thorne had found himself standing next to the same old man with the terrier who had spoken to Helen outside the Bates house. ‘So, why are you here?’ he asked.

  The old man looked at him as though the question were ridiculous. ‘Got to walk the dog.’

  Thorne turned side on to the old man and took out his phone.

  ‘Bit ghoulish though, wouldn’t you say?’

  With no way of knowing that he was a police officer, Thorne had to presume that the old man had him marked down as one of the ghouls. He heard him hawk spit up into his mouth.

  ‘Won’t hear anything we don’t already know, I don’t suppose. They won’t be answering any questions.’

  The expert opinion, casually rendered, suggested that it was not the first such event the old man had attended in the past few weeks. Clearly, his dog needed a lot of walking. ‘So, what is it you think you know?’ Thorne asked him. The dog was sniffing at his shin.

  ‘He took those girls, didn’t he? Bates.’ He spat the name out, pulling the dog back towards him. ‘They’re still looking for them, because he won’t tell anyone where they are. That sort never do though, do they?’ He pointed, his hand shaking slightly, towards the cameras ahead of him. ‘They want all this carry-on, don’t they? They want to be famous.’

  Thorne said nothing, though he could not deny that he’d come across a few of that sort. One man, especially. He held his breath as the roar of waves crashing against rocks rose suddenly above the low chatter of those around him. The scream of seabirds and the feel of something obscene between his fingers.

  ‘We get a few visitors here.’ The old man appeared not to care that the conversation had become a monologue. ‘To see the abbey and what have you … they’ll be coming because of all this, now. Guided tours, I shouldn’t wonder, to see where it happened. Not that some of the shopkeepers will be complaining. The restaurants.’

  Thorne moved away. Dialling Helen’s number, he walked back out on to the pavement.

  ‘It’s me,’ he said, when Helen answered. ‘Everything OK?’

  Helen said that everything was fine.

  Thorne told her where he was, stepped back as a white van rounded the corner quickly and tore through a large puddle in the road.

  ‘Yeah, we’re about to watch it,’ Helen said.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  Thorne understood that Helen could not speak freely, so he didn’t push it. He asked when she wanted him to come and pick her up.

  ‘About half an hour?’ She sounded tired, ready to call it a day.

  The lamps were coming on behind him, so Thorne walked back into the car park. ‘I’ll see you in a bit,’ he said.

  Flanked by several officers and civilian staff, the Assis
tant Chief Constable for Warwickshire walked briskly out through the doors to the Memorial Hall. He was around the same age as Cornish; younger than Thorne. He was tall and skinny, an imposing and authoritative figure in his best dress uniform, though the cap was perhaps a little large for his head. As he took a notebook from his pocket, a smartly dressed young woman stepped ahead of him.

  ‘Assistant Chief Constable Harris will now make a short statement, after which I’m afraid there will not be time to take any questions.’ There were immediate grumblings, but the media liaison officer simply raised a well-practised hand. ‘In an investigation of this nature, I’m sure you will appreciate that time is of the essence. So, thanks for your understanding.’

  She smiled and stepped back, nodded to the ACC.

  Harris glanced down at his notebook, then addressed the gathering without needing to look at it again.

  ‘We are continuing to question a forty-three-year-old local man, in connection with the abduction of Poppy Johnston and the disappearance of Jessica Toms. As far as that investigation goes, all possible efforts are being made to ascertain their whereabouts and we remain hopeful of a positive outcome. Further information will be made available as and when it becomes appropriate to do so, but until then I can assure you that we are doing everything we can. We are giving this case the highest priority. Once again, I’m grateful to the residents of Polesford for their continued support and their co-operation in this matter. Thank you …’

  Short and sweet. The media liaison officer looked pleased.

  The instant the ACC stepped back, the questions that he would not have time to answer began to be asked; shouted.

  ‘Can you confirm that the man you’ve arrested is Stephen Bates?’

  ‘Do you think the girls are still alive?’

  ‘What’s Bates saying to you …?’

  They were still shouting as the ACC and his entourage disappeared back inside the Memorial Hall, and they were still filming. Footage of the police refusing to answer questions was always nice to have.