TT13 Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  It sounded like bravado, Helen thought. Linda was getting very good at it. ‘Probably sensible,’ she said.

  Linda took a sip of coffee, then grimaced and leaned across to tip what was left into a ceramic pot, the plant long dead. ‘I hate the bits of soggy biscuit at the bottom,’ she said.

  They heard a small cheer from the crowd at the front of the house. The kind of thing usually reserved for a copper losing his helmet, or someone managing to get a picture taken beyond the cordon. Such moments had become part and parcel of a fun, family day out at the Bates place and the noise had become commonplace now, unremarkable.

  ‘Stupid thing is that, despite everything, I still think he’s innocent.’ Linda shrugged and sat back on the garden chair. ‘I know when he’s lying, I’ve always known.’

  Helen nodded. It was all a question of which lies you could live with and which ones ate you up.

  ‘You telling me you don’t know when Tom’s telling you porkies?’

  ‘I think so,’ Helen said. ‘Not really been together long enough.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, I want him to suffer for what he’s done to me. I wouldn’t be losing too much sleep if some big bastard knocked him about a bit in the shower, but he still doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison. Not when he didn’t do anything.’

  Helen looked away. She had spoken to Thorne who had told her exactly how the conversation had gone with Cornish. All manner of cats had come tumbling out of bags and it was time to let Linda know about them. Though she might not have been as thrilled now to hear it, Linda deserved to know that she’d been right all along about her husband being innocent. But there was something else Helen needed to come clean about first.

  ‘I wasn’t telling the truth yesterday,’ Helen said. Her voice sounded weak, so she cleared her throat. ‘When I told you I didn’t know who the girl was.’

  ‘I’m not with you,’ Linda said.

  ‘Her name’s Aurora Harley.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  Thorne felt oddly disappointed that it had taken so long for the call to come. Could it be that taking him down a peg or two had become so routine that it was no longer a priority? He’d have put money on the hammer falling within half an hour of his leaving Nuneaton station, but as it turned out he had been back in Polesford over an hour before Brigstocke rang.

  It was probably just down to a glitch in the chain of command. It would have taken three or four conversations before any complaint had even got to Russell Brigstocke. There must have been a hold-up, Thorne decided, that was all, an unanswered call or an email diverted to a spam folder. Perhaps Cornish’s chief superintendent had been busy getting his hat altered.

  Something important, had to have been.

  Walking through the market square, Thorne had stared at Brigstocke’s name pulsing on the screen and imagined his boss getting increasingly irritated. He had let the mobile ring a few times before he’d dropped the call. He knew there would have been some impressively creative swearing.

  He hoped the inevitable call back would not come in the next few minutes, as he was planning on using the phone.

  He sat in Cupz, at a table near the counter. Tea and a toasted sandwich, same as last time, the local paper he had glanced at first thing that morning laid out in front of him. The front page was dominated by the continuing search for Poppy Johnston, though the tone of the reporting had subtly changed. As far as finding Poppy alive went, there was talk of ‘hope fading’ and the ‘desperate efforts’ of those still looking. Though it was never made explicit, it was clear that those writing the stories believed, as the police themselves did, that they were looking for a body.

  Inside, there were more Stephen Bates stories: a suggestion that the suicide attempt had been an effort to escape attacks in prison; a ‘reliable source’ inside HMP Hewell describing Bates’ outrageous demands for fillet steak and the latest games console; an interview with a woman he’d worked with ten years earlier who said he was ‘moody’ and ‘secretive’ and that he’d always taken a ‘strange interest’ in her fifteen-year-old daughter. The important adjectives were emboldened and there was a picture of the woman looking suitably horrified, pressing an old photo of her young daughter to her bosom.

  It was a highly professional exercise in barrel-scraping.

  Thorne looked across at the woman working behind the counter – Donna, was that her name? – and they exchanged a smile. He turned away and took another bite of his sandwich, then he reached for his phone.

  He stabbed at the numbers, then waited.

  ‘It’s me … yeah, I went in to see him this morning.’ He listened for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, right, it’s like we thought. The case against Bates is falling apart bit by bit.’ He said nothing for a while. He held the handset between his chin and shoulder to take a mouthful of tea. He nodded, hummed assent. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep you up to speed, but right now the CPS are having kittens because what looked like evidence has turned out to be useless. I know … well, they’re already talking about being sued for wrongful arrest.’ He laughed. ‘Yeah … I’ll let you know as soon as I hear any more. Call me later if you want to.’

  When he’d put the phone away, he looked across at the woman behind the counter again. He asked for more tea and she told him it was coming right up. The colour in her face told him she’d heard every word he’d said, which was exactly what he wanted.

  Thorne had not been speaking to anyone.

  He went back to the paper. The other big story was still the flooding, specifically the clean-up operation, which had begun in areas where the floodwater had subsided sufficiently. There were reports of dead livestock and other animals being taken away, their bodies revealed as the water level had fallen. On the letters page there was a good deal of ghoulish speculation as to whether Poppy Johnston’s body might soon be discovered in the same way.

  The woman brought Thorne’s tea across. She glanced down at the paper and said, ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’

  Thorne nodded and turned the page.

  Nothing had shaken his conviction that Poppy Johnston was still alive. The business with the phone was no more than a punt, mischief as much as anything else, but Thorne hoped that a few loose tongues might go some way towards bringing a killer to the surface.

  When Charli heard the door slam downstairs, she went to the window and pulled the curtain back. She watched Helen Weeks walk quickly down the path, cameras flashing all the way as she fell in between two uniformed officers.

  ‘It’s her,’ she said. ‘Mum’s friend.’

  ‘About bloody time.’ Danny was lying on the bed, playing Donkey Kong on an old Nintendo Gameboy that Gallagher had given him. ‘Just trying to buy me off,’ he’d said to Charli. ‘So I don’t sue her fat arse for getting punched or whatever.’

  Charli heard Helen’s name being shouted by reporters as she was escorted to a waiting BMW.

  ‘Why the hell are they still so interested in her, anyway?’ She watched as the car drove off. ‘That’s her boyfriend in there,’ she said, pointing. ‘The other copper, the one who was on the front of the paper.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her boyfriend’s a copper as well.’

  Danny sucked his teeth and threw the Gameboy to the end of the bed. ‘That thing is so shit. It’s like, steam-powered or something.’

  ‘Better than nothing,’ Charli said.

  Danny turned and punched the pillow behind him until he was comfortable. He touched the bruise beneath his eye, which had blackened still further. ‘Better off together, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Feds. Who the hell else is going to stand them? Can’t smell anything when you both stink.’

  Charli walked across and dropped on to the bed.

  They sat in silence for a while, then Danny said, ‘I was thinking … I bet Steve’s already the top G in that prison.’ He nodded, smiled. ‘He’ll be bossing the place already, for sure.’

  ‘You think?’

  He sat up. ‘I
know, man.’

  Danny was suddenly brighter than Charli had seen him in a few days, chattier. Part of her wanted to tell him to shut up, that he was talking like a little pretend gangsta twat again, but it was nice to see him excited about something. She said, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah … I know how it works in them places. You have to bust a few heads to begin with, just to show everyone who’s the baddest, but then you’re number one and nobody can touch you. You’re living like a G, anything you want. Literally.’

  ‘That’s just in films.’

  ‘For real,’ Danny said. ‘You wait until he gets out. I bet he’ll have the best stories.’

  There was a soft knock on the door and their mother walked in. Charli shifted along to make room for her to sit down.

  ‘All right, Mum?’

  ‘Just tired.’

  ‘Not seen you since you got back,’ Charli said. ‘You haven’t told us what it was like when you went to see Steve.’

  ‘Did you give him my letter?’ Danny asked.

  Linda nodded. ‘He was pleased.’

  ‘I was just saying how he was going to be all right in there, how he was going to end up bossing the place and everything. I bet he had people running around doing whatever he wanted, didn’t he?’

  Linda said, ‘Do us a favour love. Go down to the kitchen and get me a glass of wine.’

  Danny looked horrified, pushed at Charli with his foot. ‘Why can’t she go and get it?’

  ‘Mum asked you,’ Charli said.

  ‘Please, love.’

  ‘Can I have one?’

  ‘You can have a Coke or something, and there’s crisps in the cupboard.’

  Grumbling, Danny swung his legs off the bed, and sloped to the door. He said, ‘Taking the piss,’ before he slammed it behind him.

  Linda turned to Charli immediately. ‘There’s something I need to ask you before your brother comes back.’

  ‘What? Has something happened—?’

  ‘Just let me say it, OK?’

  Charli nodded, waited. The wine her mother had sent Danny to get was obviously not going to be her first.

  ‘Did Steve ever … touch you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please, baby, you’ve got no idea how hard this is. You know what I’m talking about.’ Linda took a deep breath and said it again quickly. ‘Did he touch you?’

  Charli stared at her mother.

  SIXTY-TWO

  It’s like being high.

  She’s moved beyond the pain now, beyond the fear. The agony has become numbness and she no longer feels as though her arms and legs belong to her, will do what she wants them to do. The terror has given way to a strange kind of excitement; an exhilaration that feels familiar. Her and her friends out in the fields with cider and cigarettes, screaming their heads off then laughing like lunatics.

  It’s not being chilled out, nothing like that, not like she gets on weed when she can afford it. It’s more like that time she was persuaded to try MDMA at a party. The only time she’s ever done it.

  Everything intensified; louder, brighter, lovelier.

  She laughs, remembering how that night was and where she is now.

  It’s funny, she thinks, how the darkness stops being dark after a while, becomes just a different kind of light. It shifts; blooms and withers. It has moods. Maybe it changes when her moods change. Thickens, gets gritty, comes closer.

  Sounds bizarre, but she doesn’t even know if she’s thinking straight.

  She does know that it’s a very different kind of dark when she shuts her eyes. Black velvet behind the lids, with a blanket of speckles, like stars that glow and dart and three bright spots which are always fixed. Close together.

  Her mother, her father, her brother.

  Any time she wants them, there they are.

  The smell, which at any other time would have her chucking up her chips, has become one she is used to, something she breathes in easily now, something she tastes, and the rustlings and scratchings are nearly drowned out by the low drone, which is sometimes in her head and sometimes coming from deep in her throat.

  She remembers the night she took that little blue tablet, the warnings from her mates. Enjoy it while you can, because afterwards it’s not so great.

  Didn’t stop her, of course.

  Now, she drifts high above the pain and the fear. The knowledge that there is a man who did this and who might come back to finish what he started. The thought that when he does, she will probably be dead, if she isn’t already. She smiles, and her dry lips crack, but she doesn’t feel it.

  Being dead would certainly explain a lot.

  Poppy closes her eyes and seeks out those three bright pinpricks.

  Waiting for the comedown.

  SIXTY-THREE

  It was oddly disconcerting, as though Thorne and Helen were invisible. Sitting there, drinking in Paula’s front room; heavy metal providing the unlikely background music while Paula and her boyfriend discussed the Bates case as if they were alone.

  ‘I’m not saying I don’t think he did it, but maybe the police should be looking at alternatives. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Sounds like they’ve got enough evidence.’ Jason Sweeney nodded his head to the music for a few seconds. ‘You don’t charge someone unless you think you can put them away.’

  ‘Something still not right though.’ Paula cast the latest in a series of hopeful glances at Thorne and Helen. Thorne wondered if she’d heard something already, if her friend Donna had been on the phone. ‘I mean, obviously we don’t know because we’re not close to it.’ Another glance, desperate for Thorne or Helen to chip in.

  ‘Closer than most.’ Sweeney pointed his beer can at Thorne and Helen. ‘Not everyone in town’s got coppers as houseguests, have they?’

  ‘Horse’s mouth.’ Paula narrowed her eyes at Thorne. ‘Not that the horse is saying a lot.’

  ‘What are we listening to?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Slayer.’ Sweeney closed his eyes and nodded some more. ‘It’s a compilation I put together. Helps clear my head a bit at the end of the day. Blow some of the shit out.’

  ‘So, your mate Phil gone then?’ Paula sipped her wine casually.

  ‘Yeah, he’s out of your hair.’

  ‘Working on the case somewhere else, is he?’

  Thorne could not help but admire the woman’s determination, her attempt to come at things from a different angle.

  ‘He found a cosier bed,’ Thorne said.

  Paula shook her head, smiling. She knew they were playing a game and was quickly learning that it was one she was not going to win. She growled in mock frustration. ‘Well, because somebody needs to learn to keep their voice down, we know it’s all to do with bugs. Creepy-crawlies or what have you.’

  Sweeney drained his beer. ‘Insects on a body.’ He belched softly. ‘A very accurate way to determine the time of death if there’s significant decomposition.’

  Paula rolled her eyes. ‘Bloody hell, listen to him.’ She looked at Thorne. ‘It is something to do with that though, isn’t it? Whatever you’re secretly working on, your line of inquiry, whatever.’

  Thorne cocked his head as though considering how much to reveal, teasing. ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Why not? You said yourself you were only here on holiday, that you weren’t really involved.’

  She was trying hard not to show it, but Thorne could see that the woman was growing irritated at her failure to elicit any information. It was as though she felt entitled to something because she had provided him and Helen with a bed for a few nights. Or perhaps it was because Helen had not let her play hopscotch twenty-five years earlier. ‘We don’t want rumours spreading,’ he said. ‘There’s still a girl missing.’

  Paula nodded, but she looked disappointed.

  ‘I suppose it’s like that thing doctors have to swear to,’ Sweeney said. ‘It applies whether they’re working on something or not.’

  ‘Hippocratic oa
th,’ Paula said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s bollocks for a start.’ Paula dug an elbow into her boyfriend’s ribs. ‘This one went to a doctor once with piles, next day all his mates in the pub were pissing themselves and asking if he wanted a cushion.’

  ‘I need to go to bed,’ Helen said.

  Thorne turned to look at her. She had been quick enough to accept the offer of a drink when she and Thorne had got back, but had sat in silence ever since.

  ‘I’ll come up with you,’ he said. When Helen made no objection, he laid the can, still half full, down on the coffee table. ‘Thanks …’

  Paula nodded towards the stereo and nudged Sweeney again. She said, ‘We’ll turn it down a bit.’

  Thorne came out of the bathroom and walked into the bedroom to find Helen crying. She was not making much noise, but the effort involved in staying relatively quiet as she wept contorted her face between the strangled sobs.

  He asked what the matter was, whispered it. He wasn’t even sure that she’d heard him come in, that she knew he was there.

  After a minute or so, he thought that she did, but perhaps she hadn’t heard him speak. The music was still loud enough downstairs.

  He had no idea what to do.

  She would not look at him.

  He lay down next to her and waited. He watched her chest heaving, stared at the heels of her hands when she pressed them to her eyes. It was several minutes before her breathing returned to something like normal and she was ready to say anything.

  ‘I was abused.’ She looked at him for a second or two then went back to staring at the far wall. ‘Here, when I was twelve. Thirteen, too. It went on for a couple of years, I suppose …’

  She folded her arms across her chest, lay still for a minute or so.

  ‘He was a friend of my dad’s, someone he’d worked with for a while. He said that if I told anyone then he’d go to my dad and say I’d been asking him to do it, that I was just a little slut, and he convinced me that my dad would believe him and not me. He said it was all my fault, that I’d made him do it, and it took a long time before I started to believe that it wasn’t. That I hadn’t encouraged him in some way. It wasn’t just me. It’s what he said to Linda as well … how he stopped her from saying anything.’ She glanced at Thorne. ‘We talked about it … not at first, but after it had been going on for a while. From then on we tried to look after each other, to stay together whenever we could, to avoid the situations where he could get us on our own. There was a place he took us to, where it first happened, I mean, but afterwards there were times he would come to the house … he’d just turn up and pretend to be surprised when my dad wasn’t in. When it was just me and Jenny. He’d help himself to a beer, sit down next to me and talk like he was just waiting for Dad to get home. Sometimes he’d be touching me when Jenny was in the same room …