TT13 Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  ‘I swore that I’d never let him get near her, but I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t be with her all day, every day. There might have been times, you know? I knew he was looking at her and once, when he caught me, he said that I’d better keep loving him or he’d have to try somebody else and I knew he was talking about my sister. “Loving” him. That’s how he described it. Like loving means bleeding. Lying still like you’re dead and throwing your guts up afterwards.

  ‘Jenny never said anything, but she was so cold with me after I left and I’ve always wondered. The way she judges me sometimes. I’ve always thought that I must have let her down … that she thinks maybe I didn’t do enough to protect her.

  ‘Same with Linda. I think it’s why I wanted to come back when I found out she was in trouble.’ She shook her head. ‘I know that’s why. I needed to be here for her now, because I’d left so suddenly back then. I never even told her I was going … and we were supposed to be a team. He’d already stopped by then, because we were too old for him, I suppose, but talking about what he did made it so much easier for both of us afterwards and once I’d left she had nobody. She had to cope with it all on her own. Bumping into him in the pub or in the street, him looking at her, making sure her own daughter stayed well away from him. I can’t imagine what that must have been like. Jesus … Steve screwing around, everything that’s going on … it isn’t the only reason she puts a bottle away before lunchtime every day.’

  Thorne inched towards her. He reached across until his hand found hers, but she did not return its pressure.

  Lying still, like you’re dead.

  He swallowed and mentally worded a question, but there was no need to ask it.

  ‘He’s not here any more … there’s no way I would have come back if he’d still been here. My dad still mentions him sometimes though. They stayed in touch after Mum died and Dad moved down south and I lived in dread of him coming to visit or something. Dad rang me up a year or so back, told me how sad it was that his old mate had gone downhill so fast, that he’d had to go into care. A residential home, somewhere the other side of Tamworth, I think. Sometimes I’d imagine going to visit him in there … just so I could see him shrunk and helpless, so then maybe that would be the memory I’d have of him and not the one I’ve had every day for twenty-five years. Saying he was sorry … still sweating while he tucked his shirt back in. I’d go to that place, so I could enjoy watching him sit there, weak as a baby and stinking of shit and not able to do anything.’

  Now, Thorne felt his hand being squeezed hard.

  ‘Just so I could watch him.’

  She turned her head to look at Thorne. ‘His name was Peter Harley, and that girl we met in the pub is his granddaughter. That girl with a thing for older men.’

  Thorne remembered Helen disappearing soon after Aurora Harley had introduced herself. The way she had been afterwards. Her face grey, ashen, but something smouldering as she clutched at a skinny girl’s silver jacket.

  There’s no need to be scared …

  His thoughts reeled like drunks, lurched and tumbled over one another; scraps and screams and images he would never be able to unsee. Plenty of pictures, but only one word able to find its way into his mouth.

  Just Helen’s name.

  From downstairs, the shriek of a guitar and a bass like a punch to the heart, and, in their bed, only the ragged gulp and moan and the catch in the chest as Helen began to cry again.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  He hears things.

  It’s that kind of place, after all, one of the things he likes best about being here. In a big city, people never get to know what anyone else is up to, not really, never get to care; minding their own business and suspicious about anyone who might be interested in theirs. They casually raise their newspaper or turn their music up while someone is getting attacked in the same train carriage. They slink away, mortified, when others start to argue or laugh too loudly.

  They don’t want to get involved.

  Admittedly, the business that gets talked about here is not always earth-shattering. Who’s shagging who, who’s fallen out, who got pissed and punched someone. Still, it helps you feel part of something. He also knows that what he’s hearing is rarely the unvarnished truth. That’s the nature of rumours when you get down to it. Things get exaggerated, the facts get twisted the more a story is repeated. A stupid row can become an impending divorce within the space of three conversations and a harmless bit of flirting in the pub yesterday is likely to become full-on sex in a toilet cubicle by the same time tomorrow.

  He likes to hear it, all the same, to feel like he’s monitoring the heartbeat of the town. He doesn’t like what he’s been hearing about that policeman, though.

  Thorne.

  Even allowing for the exaggeration, it’s clear that the copper from London has been making a far better job of things than the coppers who are being paid for it. They all did exactly what he’d wanted them to do, went for all that lovely evidence like ferrets down a rathole, thank you very much. How the hell did Thorne and his skinhead boyfriend see something that the rest of those idiots couldn’t?

  Good luck, bad luck. Whichever shade of it you were on the receiving end of, he’d always known that luck was something you could never guard against. He’d had his fair share of the good sort, after all.

  Having someone like Bates around had been the biggest slice of it he could ever ask for.

  He’d known what they were up to for a few days already. There had been some chatter about insects being important and then talk about the visit to Bob Patterson’s farm, so it was pretty obvious that they’d put a lot of it together. But thank God, he was also hearing how nobody else was very interested, telling Thorne and his mate they should mind their own business, which was pretty ironic, all things considered.

  He’d told himself there was no need to panic just yet. He had to carry on as normal, that was all, sit tight and keep his ears open.

  Now though, there were whispers that the case against Bates wasn’t quite as solid as anyone had thought. Now, so he’d heard more than once, people who actually mattered were starting to sit up and ask questions.

  Cornish and his boss, the CPS, for heaven’s sake …

  The plan had always been to let things die down a bit. To bide his time until there were a few less coppers knocking about, then go back to see Poppy and celebrate in style. He’d thought things would ease off a little once Bates had been arrested, that they might at least scale down the search and give him a chance to have some fun. The flooding hadn’t made things any easier.

  He hadn’t thought things would get quite as stupid as they did, and it wasn’t like the police could be seen to ease off now, was it? Not with film crews everywhere you looked and half the country’s reporters still hanging around to watch. Hard as it was, he’d resigned himself to the terrible fact that by the time the coast was well and truly clear, there might not be a great deal of his lovely Poppy left to enjoy.

  The very idea that she might not be there for him when all this was over enraged him. Just considering the unfairness of it for more than a few seconds left him feeling scalded, almost breathless. He’d put so much effort into it, so much thought.

  Any more talk about arresting the wrong man though, he might have to take a risk by going back to make sure.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Thorne’s phone rang just after six thirty am and he scrabbled for it, a reflex. Were he not on holiday, a call this early would almost certainly mean that he’d caught a murder.

  It was not a number he recognised.

  ‘Woke you, did I?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Thorne shifted to the edge of the bed and dropped his voice, hoping that Helen had not been woken up too. Neither of them had got a lot of sleep. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Bob Patterson.’

  It took Thorne a few seconds to place the name.

  ‘It’s very early.’

  ‘For you, maybe. I’ve been up since
five.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘So anyway … I’ve been thinking about whoever stole my piglet.’

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said. Helen turned towards him, groaning softly. He reached out to touch her shoulder. Her skin felt cold, so he pulled the sheet up.

  ‘Reckoned you might be interested,’ Patterson said. ‘That’s all. You said, if I thought of anything that might help.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Helen asked.

  Thorne shook his head and sat up. ‘I’m listening, Mr Patterson.’

  ‘I’ve not got time to tell you now, have I?’ The farmer sounded exasperated. ‘I’ve still got animals to feed. I’ll be having my breakfast in an hour or so though …’

  While the farmer gave him instructions, Thorne watched the first thin fingers of light from outside reaching through the gap in the floral curtains. When the call had finished, he tossed his phone on to the bed and sat there as, unbidden, a conversation with his father came into his mind.

  It was more than just the memory of those old springs and speakers on Bob Patterson’s kitchen table. It had been an attempt to understand why his father had felt the need to get up at stupid o’clock every morning, the time getting progressively earlier in inverse proportion to the number of things the old man actually needed to do.

  ‘I can get up when I want, can’t I?’ Jim Thorne had begun to sound irritated, the fuse getting shorter as the Alzheimer’s took hold. ‘Free country last time I checked.’

  ‘I’m only thinking of you,’ Thorne had said. ‘You got up every day to go to work and now, when you’ve got the chance …’

  ‘Why would I want to stay in bed? Festering.’ The old man had been walking quickly from room to room, checking each one out but refusing to say what he was looking for. Now, he stopped and looked at Thorne, an increasingly rare moment of clarity. He said, ‘You get to my age you have to grab hold of every second by the throat. Sleeping it all away would be like giving up.’

  ‘I know that, but most of the time you end up falling asleep again anyway, sitting in front of the telly.’

  ‘It’s a question of making an effort.’

  Paula was working an early shift so Thorne guessed that the central heating had already kicked in, but it had not quite taken the chill off the room yet. He slipped quickly back beneath the covers.

  ‘What did he want?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Something about the pig he had stolen. Says he wants to meet me.’

  ‘Right.’ Helen’s eyes were still closed and she spoke softly, as if she were not quite ready to wake up, to engage.

  ‘Are you going to Linda’s?’

  ‘Don’t know yet.’

  Thorne could hear Paula moving around downstairs. The chink of crockery and the scrape of a chair, a radio being switched on. He tried to place the song, but couldn’t. ‘So, is that all right?’

  Now, Helen opened her eyes. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just … if you wanted to talk some more.’

  ‘I think I’ve probably said everything.’

  Thorne nodded. Helen’s words had been mumbled, deadened by the pillow, but still there had seemed an odd emphasis to them. Was there a suggestion there was more she was waiting for him to say? Had he not said enough the night before?

  Had he not said the right things?

  ‘I’ll call you when I’ve spoken to the farmer.’

  Helen turned over slowly. She said, ‘I’m not ill, Tom.’

  ‘Tell you what he said about the pig, I mean.’

  Helen watched him struggle to get dressed in the semi-dark. Moving as quietly as he could, digging for clean socks and underwear in the suitcase he had still not bothered to unpack.

  She was happy for him to go, keen to spend some time alone.

  She had not meant to be sharp with him, but it felt as if the filters that modified her reactions were no longer working, as though they had been slowly eaten away from the moment she had set foot back in Polesford. It was obvious that he had been worried for a while, that her behaviour had seemed strange, but there had been no way to control it. It felt like the circuits in her brain had been rewired by a lunatic; the connections to her heart misfiring or burned out completely. She had been ready to kill that teenager for gobbing at her, that journalist for doing her job. She craved affection and support and yet she had no idea what to do with them when they were offered.

  There was no more than a crumb of comfort in knowing that she was not alone, that Linda Bates probably felt the same way.

  She had told Helen that she would call, but Helen was not expecting her to. She wondered if they would ever see one another again. Their conversation about Aurora Harley, about the things the girl’s grandfather had done, had been no more … cathartic than the one with Thorne.

  Tears, but a strange reluctance to touch, to make any kind of physical contact, and when it was over it felt as though they were all but unknown to each other again.

  So many times at work she had told strangers how much better they would feel once they had told this or that terrible story. It was important to share these things, she would blithely tell them, to get it off their chests so that they could move on.

  A weight off their shoulders.

  It had not felt like that telling Tom, did not feel like it now. He had held her for a long time afterwards, said all those things anyone with an ounce of empathy or compassion would say, but she had felt something hardening with each overly gentle touch and promise, every whispered assurance.

  The weight had moved somewhere else, that was all.

  Now, she lay still, knowing that he was dressed and ready to leave but that he was standing at the end of the bed, watching her. Eventually, she heard the door open, the slow drag back across the carpet and the soft snick as he closed it behind him with as little noise as possible. She pulled the bedclothes close around her neck and shoulders, hoped that she might be able to get back to sleep for a while.

  It wasn’t Tom she had needed to tell.

  Hendricks woke to the sound of self-satisfied babble on Radio 4 and the sight of Liam Southworth’s fingers crawling across his chest. They stopped to tease a nipple for a while, then began to move down. Hendricks turned his head and saw the grin he’d quickly come to recognise as meaning it was time to get naughty.

  That was how Liam described it. ‘Getting naughty’.

  ‘Sleep well?’

  Hendricks nodded. ‘Knackered.’

  Liam’s grin widened. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a lecture first thing?’

  ‘I set the alarm early.’

  ‘Come here.’ Hendricks reached across and drew Liam to him, stretched his arms wide across the pillows as Liam laid his head on his shoulder. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ Liam said.

  Hendricks meant it. He felt as relaxed as he had in a long time, having finally come to terms with his surprise at not feeling the urge to bolt once he’d got Liam Southworth into bed. He looked at Liam’s fingers, now moving through the sparse tufts of hair on his chest. Liam’s own chest was almost hairless, something else Hendricks liked. His last few boyfriends … partners, whatever … had been very much on the hirsute side – certainly far hairier than Liam was at any rate – and although he had found it sexy up to a point, there was no denying that a frenzied bout of tongue-thrashing was a lot more fun without the inevitable stubble-rash.

  Recently, the other stuff had been that bit less gentle too, and both he and the men involved would have certainly described what they’d been up to in bed – or more memorably in the toilets at several clubs – in rather more graphic terms than Liam. That had been fine with Hendricks at the time. It had been what he had wanted, needed. This though, the last couple of nights, had been something else altogether, something he hadn’t done for a long time. Yeah … this was all right.

  Nothing wrong with getting naughty.

  ‘Might be getting some news today from my pal
in the lab,’ Liam said.

  ‘That would be good.’ Hendricks was thinking that Thorne would be pleased and that Liam’s accent really was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard.

  ‘She’s done us quite a favour, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘And she’s still asking questions about who’s going to pay for it. I mean you know how much all this stuff costs, right? The extraction of the sample, the front-end analysis, the bio-chemical procedures.’

  ‘Can’t you just buy her a box of chocolates or something?’

  ‘I mean just the use of the electrophoresic laser, you know …’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Hendricks said. ‘You seriously need to work on your pillow talk.’

  ‘Just telling you.’

  ‘I’m kidding.’ Hendricks was surprised at feeling the need to qualify his remark, to be sure that Liam did not feel bad.

  ‘One thing though.’ Liam’s fingers stopped moving against Hendricks’ chest. ‘I got a call from Tim Cornish.’