TT13 Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

‘Not everybody would have done.’

  ‘Up to them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘I love Steve and he says he loves me.’

  Thorne caught Helen’s pained expression. He guessed she was thinking about Linda. ‘I’m just saying, knowing this place. It might not end up being very easy.’

  ‘I know what they’re like.’ The girl looked around. ‘It was hard enough just coming over and talking to you two. I could have done with some vodka in that Coke, I tell you.’

  ‘Well, we’re on your side.’ Thorne looked at Helen. ‘Right?’

  Helen was already pushing her chair back, getting to her feet. ‘Excuse me …’

  They watched Helen walk quickly away towards the toilets. ‘She your girlfriend?’ the girl asked.

  Thorne nodded.

  ‘Well you know then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What it’s like when you care about someone.’ She picked up her compact again, checked her make-up. ‘Being brave doesn’t come into it.’

  Helen dropped hard on to her knees in front of the toilet bowl and grabbed the edge of the seat with only a few seconds to spare. She retched once, twice, then heaved up the food that the chef had been so proud of, the taste not much better coming up than it had been going down. She carried on retching, her stomach in spasm until there was nothing left. She spat and wiped away the gloopy brown strings then climbed, a little unsteadily to her feet.

  She flushed, then stepped out of the cubicle and across to the dirty sink. She threw cold water on to her face and ran wet fingers through her hair.

  She didn’t look quite as bad as she felt.

  When she came back into the bar a few minutes later, she could see that Thorne and the girl were no longer at the table. She found them on the pavement in front of the pub.

  ‘I need to go and see Linda,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  Thorne nodded.

  The girl was looking at her feet.

  Helen walked across and wrapped her arms around the girl. Even with a thick jacket, there was nothing of her. She said, ‘Don’t be scared.’ She pulled the girl closer and held on. ‘There’s no need to be scared.’

  FIFTY-SIX

  ‘She’s lying,’ Linda said. ‘Course she is. Polesford’s full of little bitches like that.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And you’d know, would you?’

  ‘I talked to her,’ Helen said. ‘She’s just trying to help Steve.’

  ‘Oh, is she?’

  ‘So are we … Tom and me. We think we can get proof that he didn’t do it and this girl’s statement alongside that—’

  ‘Fuck her statement and fuck her help.’

  They were standing in the kitchen and Linda did not seem too concerned about their conversation being overheard. She had been in bed when Helen arrived and the officer watching TV in the next room had looked as though he was ready to turn in himself when he’d let Helen in.

  ‘I know this can’t be easy to hear,’ Helen said.

  ‘That what makes you such a good copper, is it? Your sensitivity.’ Linda tightened the cord of her dressing gown and stared until Helen looked away. ‘Whose side are you on, anyway?’

  ‘I told you, yours and Steve’s.’

  ‘And how do you think things are going to be between me and Steve after this?’

  ‘Isn’t proving he’s innocent more important?’

  ‘Right this minute, no it isn’t,’ Linda said. ‘Right this minute, I couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Shall I make some tea?’

  Linda looked at her, barked out a laugh. ‘You are joking, right?’ She pushed past Helen to the fridge, took out a half-empty wine bottle then reached up to the cupboard and grabbed a glass. She poured, drank. She said, ‘Can you prove Steve didn’t do it, or can’t you?’

  ‘Tom thinks he can.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s all about when that girl was killed. The insects on the body—’

  Linda raised a hand to shut Helen up. She clearly had no need of further detail when there was a more basic reason for asking. ‘So why does anyone need to know anything about this girl?’

  ‘It can’t hurt to establish an alibi,’ Helen said.

  ‘Can’t hurt you.’

  At that moment, Helen understood that this pain was something Linda was familiar with. That it was not the first time she had reached for a bottle late at night; eaten up by rage and self-pity and railing against one of those ‘little bitches’ Polesford was apparently so full of.

  It was almost certainly the first time she had shared it.

  ‘I should let you get some sleep,’ Helen said.

  ‘Sleep? You think?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Helen was struggling for words that did not sound pat or pathetic. The truth was that she wanted to be out of the house, out of the firing line. Every snap and sneer was adding weight to the guilt and the shame.

  Her throat burned and she could still taste the sick in her mouth.

  The copper next door was watching football. A roar went up, a goal or a bad tackle.

  ‘I feel so stupid,’ Linda said.

  Helen said nothing. For trusting him? For choosing to believe that he wouldn’t do this again?

  ‘What am I supposed to tell the kids?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How can I tell Charli that we know her stepdad’s innocent because he was with a girl younger than she is?’ The wine had gone and now the fight was quickly going out of Linda too. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the worktop.

  ‘What can I do?’ Helen asked.

  Linda said, ‘Tell me what she’s like.’ She folded her arms and smiled grimly, as though relishing Helen’s discomfort. ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘She wears too much make-up.’

  Linda rolled her eyes. ‘Short? Tall? Has she got nice firm tits?’

  ‘How is this going to help?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Know your enemy,’ Linda said. ‘We learned that a long time ago, right, Hel?’ She plucked casually at a loose thread on her dressing gown, pulled it out. ‘So, what’s her name?’

  There was another roar from the adjacent room. The copper shouted something at the television.

  Helen said, ‘I don’t know.’

  It appeared that even the most committed of gawpers needed to sleep sometimes. Outside, there was only a group of kids smoking and drinking cans of cider under a streetlamp. They didn’t give Helen a second look. A pair of uniformed officers were talking at the end of the drive.

  ‘How did that go?’ Thorne asked as they drove away.

  ‘How do you think?’

  Helen could only hope that the conversation would begin and end there. As of now, she had no wish to talk about how painful it had been in that house, for Linda and for her. She did not want to discuss the things that had been said or why others had remained unsaid.

  The reasons for the lies.

  ‘Can’t have been easy.’

  ‘No,’ Helen said.

  It was only a five-minute drive back to Paula’s at this time of night. They drove in silence through the town centre, deserted save for a few people carrying kebabs who had presumably been drinking somewhere after hours or simply didn’t know any better.

  The streetlighting stopped as the road narrowed just past the final parade of shops, and within a few seconds of Thorne flicking on his main beam they drove past three teenagers walking back towards the centre of town. They held up their hands against the dazzle. Gestures were made.

  ‘Cheeky bastards.’

  ‘Turn round,’ Helen said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Reverse then.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Those boys …’

  Thorne understood and did as he was told. Mercifully the road was straight with no traffic to be seen and, within thirty seconds, Thorne had slammed on the brakes and Helen was getting out of the car.

  The bo
y with the dirty blond hair grinned when he saw Helen walking towards him, but the smile disappeared when he saw Thorne; the look on his face. The Asian kid and his mate took a step back, moved behind the blond boy, the biggest of the three.

  ‘Good move,’ Thorne said. ‘Not such ballsy little gangstas now, are you?’

  ‘What d’you want?’ The blond kid shrugged, put his shoulders back.

  ‘I don’t want to piss about.’ Thorne stepped close to him. ‘Now, I could just do you with assaulting a police officer, but I’m guessing you don’t really want a criminal record, not if you want that special job in KFC, right?’

  ‘It’s her word against ours,’ the boy said.

  ‘And I don’t fancy all the paperwork, if I’m honest.’

  The boy looked at him, squared up. The others had stepped even further back into the shadows.

  ‘So, say sorry nicely, I’ll just give you a slap and we can forget all about it. Fair enough?’

  ‘Let me,’ Helen said.

  The boy raised his hands to protect his face as Helen pushed in front of Thorne and came at him, but it wasn’t his face she was aiming at.

  Her knee came up hard and she stepped smartly back to give the boy room to go down.

  The Asian kid said, ‘Fuck …’

  The boy dropped to his knees and then rolled on to his side on the grass verge, moaning and cursing, cradling his balls. Thorne walked back to the car as Helen moved to put one foot on either side of the writhing figure on the ground, leaned over and spat.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Thorne was about to set off for Warwick, to collect Phil Hendricks, when he got a call from Aurora Harley.

  ‘Can I see you?’ she asked. ‘I went to the police, like you said, and they were horrible. I don’t know what to do.’

  Helen was spending the morning at Paula’s. She said she would wait until Linda got back from visiting Steve. She said she would go and see her then, presuming Linda wanted her to and was up to it. She didn’t say any more about what had happened the night before; the late-night visit to tell Linda about Aurora, the incident with the boys at the side of the road.

  Thorne had never seen Helen as angry, had been shocked by the violence. Her eyes, flat as she had meted it out. There was no doubt that the kid had deserved everything he had got, but Thorne could not help but suspect he was paying for something he had nothing to do with.

  It had been coming since Helen had first set foot back in Polesford.

  They met outside the abbey. The girl was wearing the same thick jacket she’d had on the night before and it was certainly cold enough for it. Thankfully, the rain had kept away again. The local newspaper Thorne had flicked through before he’d left Paula’s said that the floodwater had subsided still further, but that those areas affected by it were not out of the woods yet.

  ‘So, what happened?’

  They walked through the archway into the graveyard. There was a couple at the noticeboard, a man walking slowly along one of the narrow paths, studying the gravestones.

  ‘I went to the control unit place like you told me to and a copper took all my details, then they sent a car for me crack of dawn this morning, drove me to Nuneaton.’ She shook her head. ‘Waste of time. Should have had a lie-in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They didn’t believe me, that’s why.’

  ‘They said that?’

  ‘Didn’t have to. Bloke looked at me like I was five years old or something. I was only in there fifteen minutes.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  She shrugged. ‘Some dick with one of those stupid electronic cigarettes. Thanked me for coming in, nodded a lot and asked a few questions, then told me they’d be in touch. Made it pretty obvious that nothing I’d told him made a blind bit of difference.’

  They had reached the part of the graveyard that Thorne and Helen had visited a few days earlier. Thorne looked along the line of headstones, identified Sandra Weeks’ grave. The flowers Helen had laid were nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What kind of questions did he ask?’

  ‘Stuff about the pub,’ she said. ‘That night I met Steve. Wanted to know which football match was on the TV or something.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘I don’t know the first thing about football and it wasn’t like we were there for very long anyway. It was where we’d arranged to meet, that’s all. We had one drink then got in the car and left because we had better things to do.’

  ‘Right.’

  She looked at him, a trace of a smile. She had clearly made an effort for her early-morning visit to the police station and was wearing almost as much make-up as she had the previous evening. ‘We had sex in Steve’s car.’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ Thorne said.

  They stopped at the entrance to the abbey and looked up. The gargoyles leered, stuck their tongues out. There was almost no wind and the flag was limp above the turrets.

  ‘You want to go in?’

  ‘If you like.’

  She nodded. ‘Freezing my tits off.’

  If anything it was colder inside, and certainly quieter. Their footsteps were unnaturally loud against the stone and instinctively their voices dropped to a whisper. The man Thorne had seen outside was at the far end, where steps led up to the high altar, bending to read an inscription on the font.

  ‘You believe in any of this?’ Aurora asked.

  Thorne shook his head.

  ‘Me neither. Stupid. Just something to make people feel better when things turn to shit. What d’you call it? A crutch.’

  ‘For some people, I suppose.’

  ‘Nice though.’ She walked forward, staring up at the windows, motes of dust dancing in the streams of coloured light. ‘Peaceful.’

  ‘You never been in here before?’

  ‘You been to the Tower of London? Buckingham Palace?’

  ‘Not since I was a kid.’

  ‘There you go then. You never appreciate what’s on your own doorstep.’ She walked further on past the rows of wooden pews, stopped to look at a Norman tomb; a knight carved in stone, arms folded across the sword on his chest. She waited for Thorne to join her. Said, ‘So what do I do now?’

  ‘You could try talking to a different copper.’

  She shook her head. ‘Been there, done that. I want people to know. The whole town’s talking about Steve like he’s some kind of monster, like a paedo or something. I want them to know it’s not true.’

  Thorne waited, let the man who had been at the front of the abbey walk past them, back towards the entrance. ‘There’s plenty of reporters around. I’m sure they’d be interested in your story. Probably pay a fair bit, too.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A lot, I should think.’

  The girl appeared to like the sound of that.

  ‘You got a job?’

  She looked at him like he was stupid. ‘I’m doing A/S levels, aren’t I? English, French and drama.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Thorne asked. ‘After.’

  ‘Get out as fast as possible,’ she said. ‘Maybe Birmingham or somewhere.’

  ‘What about a job?’

  ‘I’d rather work in Burger King there than have a decent job here.’ She smiled. ‘Steve said he’d come with me.’

  ‘What about university?’

  She pushed her hands into her pockets. ‘Steve said it’s a waste of time. We want to get a place together, start enjoying ourselves.’

  Thorne said nothing. He’d never clapped eyes on Stephen Bates, but guessed he was the sort to say anything that might get someone like Aurora Harley into bed. That cocky chef was another one, the sort who couldn’t keep it in his pants. Making fools out of young girls with his bullshit and his books.

  He watched her running a hand across the effigy, fingers tracing the smooth edges of the sandstone. She didn’t seem the sort to be impressed by the likes of Shelley or Steve Bates without good reason. Perhaps she was just a bad judge of
character. Maybe she was just smart in all the ways except the one that really mattered.

  ‘So, you reckon I should talk to one of those journalists, then?’

  ‘Up to you,’ Thorne said. ‘They can twist things though.’

  A shrug. ‘No more so than anyone else round here.’ She took cigarettes from her pocket and they began walking back towards the door. ‘Was all that stuff about you twisted? In the paper?’

  ‘Some of it,’ Thorne said.

  She was flicking her lighter on and off as they walked. ‘You seem all right to me.’

  Thorne thought: Terrible judge of character.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  It wasn’t like too many people arrived at these places full of the joys of spring, Linda thought, but the whole process seemed designed to make a bad mood a damn sight worse. The queuing to get through that first reception area for a start; dumped on a chair and stared at, nobody in any real hurry to help, however polite you were being. Not a lot of people skills, the officers, especially the women. By the time you’d filled in the umpteenth form and had your picture taken you’d already lost the will to live, and that was before the metal detectors and these unsmiling arseholes going through your stuff and taking everything off you. Like your mobile might explode at any minute and your fags were laced with heroin or something.

  Wasn’t it getting out that was supposed to be impossible?

  Linda understood why it was necessary, she wasn’t stupid, but something about the way it was all done made her feel grimy and unwelcome. Like the very act of coming to see a prisoner made you one notch above a scumbag yourself. She tried telling herself that she needed to toughen up and get used to it. It was the way she’d been made to feel ever since that first knock on the door and maybe she’d been naïve thinking it wouldn’t be the same coming here.

  They knew who she was, didn’t they?

  The visiting area was smaller than she’d expected. A rubberised floor and four or five tables and chairs. Maybe there was somewhere else for the general prison population, those who weren’t on remand, the ones who weren’t vulnerable. A vending machine stood in one corner, a prison officer sitting alongside with a magazine. There were more officers around than prisoners, only two when Linda sat down to wait. A man in his early twenties opposite a woman who was probably his mother and one who was much older, maybe seventy. Linda knew that there were all sorts in a vulnerable prisoners’ unit, not just sex offenders. Ex-coppers, lawyers, whatever, but looking at the two already sitting there, it was impossible not to wonder.