Patterson looked like he’d swallowed something very sour. ‘Yeah, well, balls to the lot of them.’
‘The landlord said you’d had a go at him. Told him you’d be keeping an eye on his menu or something.’
‘Said the same in all the pubs round here. Kept an eye on that Indian place too. Someone pinches some fish, you try the fish and chip shop first, don’t you? Stands to bloody reason, I would have thought.’
When Thorne and Hendricks stood up to leave, Patterson went digging in a few of the boxes until he found the photograph he was looking for. He handed it to Thorne. Half a dozen light brown piglets.
He pointed. ‘That’s the one that was stolen.’
Thorne looked at the picture out of politeness, then dropped one of his cards on to the table. He made the same speech he’d made a hundred times before. If you think of anything that might help, don’t hesitate, blah blah blah.
‘I don’t get it,’ Hendricks said. ‘You’re obviously fond of them, so doesn’t that make it harder when it comes to having them slaughtered?’
The farmer looked at Hendricks as though he was an idiot. ‘They’re money, is all. I’m fond of money too. You take one of my animals, you might just as well be mugging me in the street and taking my wallet.’
Driving back down the track, the dog still barking, Hendricks said, ‘I’m sure I’m right, about the piglet.’ He looked at the photograph of the pigs that Thorne had placed on the dashboard. ‘But something still doesn’t make sense.’
Thorne slowed, rattled across an animal grid.
‘Why did he go to all the trouble?’
‘To implicate Bates,’ Thorne said.
‘Yeah, but however old the body had looked, there’s no reason Bates couldn’t have done it. Everyone would presume Bates was responsible, so why make it look older than it was?’
Thorne had asked himself this question already. The answer was hardly comforting.
‘You’d have a point, if he was only planning on doing it once.’
Hendricks understood. ‘This was like a dry run.’
‘Now, everyone believes Bates is the killer, which is exactly what the real killer wants. But he can’t get away with killing a second time, not with Bates in custody. Not unless the body fits in with that timescale.’
Thorne stopped at the end of the track, checked traffic, then pulled out fast on to the road. The photograph of Patterson’s pigs slid along the dashboard.
‘You reckon he’s got more bugs lined up then?’
Thorne nodded. ‘And I think Poppy Johnston’s still alive.’
FIFTY-TWO
She’s stopped screaming, because now she knows there’s little point and because she has no voice left. Her throat is raw and it hurts to swallow, to slurp at the inch or two of water on the floor all around her. By the end, the sound of her screams bouncing off the walls in the dark had been making her head thump, but for a while at least she thought it might have been worth it. She knows that if the rats can get in, then somewhere there must be a way out. A missing brick, a hole in the floor somewhere. She had thought that perhaps her voice might carry through the ratlines and up and out into the open air, but now she imagines her cries buried somewhere above her in the soft earth or lost in a tangle of tree roots. Perhaps if someone walking around up there were to dig down, one of her screams would come bubbling up and whoosh out like gas or something. Like those hot springs or whatever they are that she’s seen on TV documentaries, places in Iceland and America she used to talk about going to one day.
She thinks about the one exotic place she’s visited; a school trip to France the year before.
She thinks about the boy she had been going to meet that night, who was a bit of an idiot, if she was being honest. And another boy, two years above her, who seemed nice. She’d heard from various other girls that he liked her and she’d seen him looking.
She thinks about the girl at her school who had a kid at fourteen. She’d thought the girl was a silly slag, same as everyone else, that she’d chucked her life away, but now she’s eaten up with envy and there’s a pain where she’s never felt one before.
Mental, some of the things she thinks about …
Could I eat a rat?
I hope the police are using a nice photo.
Will my wrist get skinny enough to slip out of this shackle before I die of starvation?
And her mum and dad in bits, because they were bad enough when the dog died. And her horrible, lovely brother, and his boat. And the smell in the kitchen when she came home, and music and getting into bed and laughing and watching rubbish on the telly and her mates and all of it, and how stupid she is, and how sorry.
How stupid.
Have a drink now, if you like …
More than anything, she wishes that she had drunk a lot more of whatever he had put in that bottle. She imagines discovering that for some reason he has left loads of the stuff down here with her, gallons of cheap, warm vodka spiked with enough drugs to knock out an elephant.
So she could down it all, bottle after bottle, until she became part of the blackness.
So she could choose.
PART THREE
STILL, LIKE YOU’RE DEAD
FIFTY-THREE
From the edge of the bed, Charli watched her brother looking at himself in the mirror. He gently touched a finger to the almost perfect half-moon, purple beneath his right eye, traced it slowly down to the swollen bottom lip, dabbed at it. There was a hint of a smile as he squared his shoulders.
‘I still don’t know why you went,’ Charli said.
Danny continued to study himself. ‘Told you, I needed to get some books.’
‘I know what you said.’
‘So. Be quiet then.’
‘Since when do you give a shit about schoolwork?’
‘Nothing else to do, is there?’
Charli went back to work with tweezers, plucking at the small hairs on her shins. There was music coming from outside. Some idiot with a radio. The crowd was not as large as it had been, but looking out earlier she’d recognised faces and it was clear that some people were coming back day after day. She wondered if they were now on some kind of tourist map. See the historic abbey then come and gawp at the house where the monster’s family was staying. Some people had been sitting on folding chairs in hats and coats, drinking tea and eating sandwiches and when she’d been online she’d seen the selfies people had posted that they’d taken outside the house. Thumbs up, grinning like morons. There were stupid jokes and some people had made comments about the ‘Bates motel’, which she didn’t understand.
‘I think you were showing off,’ she said.
Danny turned round. ‘What you talking about?’
‘Going to the school.’
‘You’re mental.’
‘Like you’re enjoying being famous or something.’
‘Yeah, because I really wanted to get punched.’
Charli switched legs, carried on plucking. ‘You were smiling, before. Looking at yourself.’
Danny turned back to the mirror. ‘Just thinking about what I’m going to do to that dick when I’m back at school.’
‘I told you,’ Charli said. ‘We won’t be going back to school.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Wherever we go, I’ll be coming back to sort him out. I know exactly who he is and I know where he lives. See how hard he is without his mates around.’
Charli laughed. ‘You had two coppers with you.’
‘They were nowhere near me.’ Danny glared at her in the mirror. ‘He came up from behind when I wasn’t looking, didn’t he? Anyway, you weren’t even there, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Charli knew who the kid was, too. Whatever the reason for her brother going up to the school, the boy who had attacked him was now the one doing all the showing-off. She had seen the pictures he had posted on Instagram. Posing like a victorious boxer, mates holding his arms aloft. A comment left underneath:
not the first time danny bates has been given a good fisting!
Charli leaned across to put the tweezers down on the bedside table. She brushed the tiny hairs from the duvet. It was probably just one of the lame gay jokes kids like Danny made without thinking. But all the same she wondered if it might actually be what they thought; if they believed that because Steve had done what everyone said he’d done, then he must have been doing the same things at home.
To Danny and to her.
She knew that Danny had seen the picture too, had gone looking for it as soon as he was back in the house. He hadn’t mentioned it.
For a few minutes they said nothing, listened to the voices from the bedroom next door. Charli flicked through a magazine and Danny sat at the foot of the bed, staring at the door.
‘She’s supposed to be an old friend of Mum’s, but she wasn’t even at the wedding, was she? When Mum married Steve, I mean.’
‘So?’
‘So, how come they’re spending all this time together, having these secret conversations like they’re BFFs?’
Charli glanced up from her magazine. ‘Ask Mum.’
Danny swept a hand back and forth across the grimy carpet, sending dust and tiny fragments of grit jumping. ‘Come on, do you trust her?’
‘Haven’t really thought about it.’
‘End of the day, she’s a fed like the rest of them.’
‘You didn’t hear what she said to that bitch Carson and the others.’ Charli laid the magazine down. ‘When her and Mum got back from the hospital and found out about what happened at the school. Gave them all a proper bollocking.’
Danny shrugged, unconvinced. ‘I think she knows something about Mum,’ he said. ‘From when they were at school.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Like she’s got something on her. Has to be some reason she’s here all the time. Spending the night. Why else would Mum be so matey with her all of a sudden?’
Charli said, ‘Maybe you’ve got it the wrong way round.’
Danny turned, brushing the dust from his hands.
‘Maybe Mum’s got something on her.’
Linda looked genuinely happy for the first time in days. She had been clutching the piece of paper as though it were a winning lottery ticket, since snatching it from the manila envelope a few hours before. She unfolded it again, nodded and smiled, then held it out so that Helen could see.
‘Come on, this proves it, surely.’
Helen pretended to look. She had been shown the piece of paper several times already and had known what it was straight away. The visiting order from Hewell prison had arrived at the Bates family home that morning and been delivered to the house shortly afterwards – along with a final reminder from an electricity company and several pieces of junk mail – by a police officer who had not looked entirely pleased at having to play postman.
‘He filled this in a couple of days ago, right?’ Linda pointed at the date on the form. ‘So why would he do that and then try to kill himself? Really try, I mean.’ She folded the visiting order again, held it against her chest. ‘It was obviously just a cry for help or whatever they call it. You don’t make plans, organise something like this and then try and top yourself. Stands to reason.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Helen said.
Linda looked at her, pressed her palm against the paper a little harder.
‘I’m just saying that when people commit suicide … when they try to … they’re usually not thinking very clearly. Things like that don’t cross their mind.’
Linda nodded, her smile soured. ‘Well, thanks for that. Stupid, really, thinking you might be on my side.’
‘I’m not saying you’re wrong.’ Helen stifled a yawn. ‘But I’ve had to deal with suicides where they’d got holidays booked, train tickets in their pockets, all sorts. When you’re that down … you know? Those things don’t matter.’
‘Yeah, well I’m not going to let you piss on my chips, however much you might want to.’
‘Why would I want to?’
‘Steve just needs help, that’s all.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Helen said. She stretched out a hand to touch Linda’s arm. ‘Sorry … I wasn’t trying to be negative.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘And I am on your side,’ Helen said. ‘I’m just tired.’
She and Linda had shared a bed the night before, top to tail as they had done countless times when they were teenagers. Helen had barely slept, had been up early to pull on the same clothes she had been wearing the previous day. She felt washed out and grubby, unable to focus on much beyond a hot bath and her own bed. A few hours alone with Alfie.
‘When are you going?’
Linda brightened again. ‘Tomorrow.’ She stood up and walked across to the full-length mirror on the side of the wardrobe. ‘Shit, I wish I could get my hair done. Not much chance of that though, is there?’
‘Not really.’
‘I can imagine the conversation in the hairdresser’s.’ Linda laughed. ‘“Going anywhere nice on your holidays? Your old man killed any young girls lately?”’
‘I could always try and do something.’
Linda leaned closer to the mirror, tugged at her hair. ‘The state of me.’
‘You look fine.’ The lying had been getting easier and easier since she’d come back.
‘You think I should take the kids?’
‘Up to you,’ Helen said.
‘They’d love to see him.’
‘Maybe next time?’
‘Yeah.’ Linda sucked in a deep breath. ‘God, I’m nervous already.’ She walked back across to the bed and sat down. ‘It feels like it’s been ages.’
‘He’ll be pleased to see you.’
Linda nodded. ‘It’ll be fantastic. You think I’ll be able to touch him? I mean, will there be one of those screens?’
‘I really don’t know,’ Helen said. ‘I shouldn’t think you’ll be able to get very touchy-feely though.’
‘I just want to see him. I just want to show him that someone believes he’s innocent.’ Linda looked at Helen. ‘You know?’
Helen was still not ready to tell her friend that someone else believed it too. Not quite. She was thinking about a conversation she’d had the day before at the hospital. A chance encounter; things that had been overheard and passed on. Chinese whispers could make the most mundane exchange sound bizarre, she was well aware of that, but this one did not sound quite so strange when you knew the people who had been doing the talking.
No more than a casual chat, for those two.
Helen needed to sit down and talk to Tom.
FIFTY-FOUR
‘Consulting with the police is never going to pay the mortgage,’ Hendricks explained. ‘It’s a pretty specialised area, after all, so he’s teaching most days.’
Dr Liam Southworth had agreed to meet Thorne and Hendricks between lectures, and on the forty-minute drive south to the Warwick University campus, they discussed the best way to make their approach. Hendricks thought he knew exactly how to play it, but Thorne was not convinced.
‘He’s a scientist,’ Thorne said. ‘We should make it all about the science.’
‘That’s one way.’
‘Tell him he’ll be helping an innocent man.’
Hendricks looked dubious. ‘At the end of the day, we’re asking him a favour. And we need this done quickly, don’t we? I reckon I know which buttons to push.’
Thorne pulled out and accelerated past a van doing sixty in the middle lane. ‘You were wrong about that bloke in the pub, remember? The first night.’
‘Twenty quid says I’m not wrong about the bug man.’
‘Fair enough …’
The science block was not easy to find, but they had arrived in good time and, after asking several students for directions, they finally knocked on Liam Southworth’s door a little after three o’clock.
He showed them into a small office with a v
iew across a narrow strip of lawn to several other modern blocks. Rain was beginning to streak the window. Thorne and Hendricks dragged two uncomfortable-looking chairs from against the wall as Southworth sat down behind a cluttered desk, tapped at his keyboard for a few seconds.
‘Won’t be a minute,’ he said.
‘No rush, Liam,’ Hendricks said.
One wall was lined with books and the other was taken up by framed certificates dotted among a collection of insects in glass cases. Beetles, moths, enough spiders to give an arachnophobe heart failure. Thorne stared at a black and yellow beetle the size of his hand and decided that if he were ever to come across one inside a body, it would definitely be the main suspect.
Southworth looked up, followed Thorne’s gaze. ‘It’s an elephant beetle.’ The Dublin accent was straight out of a Guinness commercial. ‘Mainly found in Central and South America.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Thorne said.
The entomologist looked at Hendricks. ‘Nice to see you again.’
Hendricks said, ‘You too.’ He casually slipped off his leather jacket to reveal a tight white T-shirt underneath and nodded towards Thorne. ‘This is Tom.’ He rubbed a hand along one tattooed forearm. ‘I told you about him.’
The man behind the desk eyed Thorne for a little longer than might have been expected. ‘Right. Hello.’
Thorne nodded.
‘Strong, silent type,’ Hendricks said.
Southworth reddened a little. He was on the short side and stocky, with collar-length fair hair and a babyish face. He reminded Thorne of that actor who had died of a heroin overdose, though Thorne could not remember the name. Southworth was wearing khaki trousers and a blue button-down shirt, but did not seem altogether comfortable; like someone who was trying a little too hard to look like an American college professor.
‘So, something interesting, you said.’ Southworth looked at Hendricks again. ‘When you called.’
‘It’s not something you’ll have heard before,’ Hendricks said. ‘Put it that way.’
TT13 Time of Death Page 25
