Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  ‘I write a bit too.’

  ‘A chef who writes poetry?’

  ‘Other way round, really.’

  ‘Must be a reality TV show in there somewhere.’

  Shelley flashed a quick smile. ‘Just doing this to earn some cash,’ he said. ‘Getting the money together to go back to uni.’ He took a final drag on his roll-up. ‘Didn’t really suit me first time round.’ He flicked what was left of the cigarette into the bushes. ‘Actually, I didn’t suit them.’

  ‘I didn’t go at all,’ Thorne said. Something he regretted now and again and was often made to feel bad about by senior officers a lot younger than he was. Fast-tracked with impressive-sounding degrees. ‘So . . . ’

  ‘University of life.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with it.’ The young man smiled again; like he was saying something amusing that nobody else was quite bright enough to get.

  ‘You got a place in town, then?’

  The chef shook his head and pointed towards a pair of single-storey outhouses at the rear of the play area. In the spill from the garden lights, they were black against the charcoal sky. Thorne could see rubbish bins lined up in front of them, a pair of bicycles. ‘Lord and Lady Magpie generously provide accommodation for some of their staff. Means they can pay us a bit less.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s basically a shed with a sink, but it does the job.’ He reached for his book again, patted it gently. ‘As long as I’ve got these, I’ll be fine. You know what they say. Books do furnish a room.’

  Thorne thought that furniture furnished a room, but said nothing.

  Shelley sat back and took out a tin from the pocket of his apron. He removed tobacco and papers and set about rolling himself another cigarette. ‘So, what’s your game then?’ There was a trace of a mockney accent as he asked the question.

  ‘I’m a copper,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Ah.’ The chef nodded, knowingly. ‘Well, there’s a lot more coppers than poets round here at the moment, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I’m not working,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m just here with a friend.’

  Shelley seemed to find that funny. ‘Bit of a busman’s holiday.’

  ‘Not my idea, I promise you.’

  Shelley licked the edge of a rolling paper. ‘So, just an interested party, then?’

  A couple came out on to the patio, noise leaking from the bar until the door closed behind them. They carried drinks across to one of the other tables and sat down. They held hands and began talking quietly.

  Shelley watched them. ‘Young love,’ he said. ‘Sweet.’

  Thorne was starting to get a little cold.

  ‘So, what do you think about evil?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Thorne had heard well enough, but was taken aback by the grinding gear-change. The casual manner of the question.

  ‘Just wondering if you believed in it? What’s going on here for a start. You believe the man responsible is evil?’

  It took Thorne a good few seconds. ‘Well, I think you can describe what he’s done as evil . . . but I think the people that do this stuff are just greedy or twisted or sick in the head. Not sure “evil” is the right word. Not sure it does us any favours. If it helps, I don’t really believe people are naturally good either.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Shelley said.

  ‘Is it?’

  The chef popped the completed roll-up in the tin and put it back in his apron pocket. ‘I was thinking I might write about what’s happening, you know? Missing girls and bodies in the woods. I think somebody should write about it.’

  Thorne stared at him.

  ‘Poets have always written about good and evil, life and death. It’s what we do. I mean, it’s basic, isn’t it? Primal.’

  Thorne nodded, thinking about Pam Ayres not looking after her teeth.

  ‘Walter Raleigh said, “All men are evil and will declare themselves to be so when occasion is offered.”’

  ‘The potato bloke.’

  ‘He was also a poet.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Shelley smiled, like he hadn’t expected him to. ‘He’s saying it’s in all of us, somewhere.’ He held out his arms, waiting for the profundity to sink in. “Murder is an act quite easy to be contemplated.”’

  ‘Who said that?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Emerson.’

  ‘What did Lake and Palmer think about it?’ Thorne waited, enjoying the fact that it was the chef’s turn to look confused.

  ‘Right then.’ Shelley got to his feet and stretched. ‘Better go and clean up, I suppose. Chief cook and bottle-washer.’ He nodded back towards the pub. ‘They certainly like to get their money’s worth.’

  Thorne followed Shelley back inside. As they stepped into the hallway outside the toilets, the young girl who had served Thorne earlier came out of the Ladies. She smiled at him, then blushed slightly when she saw Shelley. The chef arched an eyebrow at Thorne, then carried on towards the kitchen, clutching his precious poetry book.

  Thorne walked back into the main bar. It was a little less busy than it had been, those who had stopped in for a quick one after work having left to eat at home. There was still no word from Helen, so Thorne decided there was probably time for another drink. He took a ten-pound note from his wallet and waved to attract the attention of the young girl who was back serving again.

  Just an interested party, then?

  And getting more so all the time.

  The girl behind the bar nodded, to let Thorne know he’d be next.

  He waited, asking himself why he had felt the need to explain his lack of involvement in the case; if it had sounded as feeble to the poetry-reading chef as it had coming out of Thorne’s mouth. Why he had talked to that PC and why the man’s accusations about questioning the evidence against Stephen Bates had hit home as they had.

  He was thinking about the woods.

  Those dog-walkers . . .

  TWENTY-NINE

  He still enjoyed the music he’d loved when he was fourteen or fifteen; had never really grown out of it. He supported the same football team he’d shouted for back then too, and liked the same food.

  Nothing strange about any of that, was there?

  He’d started fancying girls like Jessica and Poppy around the same time, earlier even, back when he was twelve or thirteen. The girls a year or two above him at school. Most of the time they knocked about with older lads, wouldn’t give him the time of day, but he would watch them gathered together; whispering in the playground or exchanging gossip in the dinner hall. He would watch and find that he wasn’t breathing quite so easily and imagine what it would be like to do it with them. At night, fumbling beneath the duvet in the dark, he would construct each detail of it nice and carefully; what they would say to him, when and where it would happen. The very best part, always, was imagining that they found it every bit as exciting as he did, as much of an adventure.

  Showing a younger boy like him the ropes.

  Wasn’t that absolutely normal? Wasn’t that what kids his age thought about? He knew it was, knew very well that most of the boys his age felt exactly the same way, because they told him. Hormones kicking in and going mental all over the place. Doing the same thing he was, thinking the same things every night.

  So, why should it be so normal to grow out of it? To stop thinking about girls that age when you got older. You fancied who you fancied, surely, and who the hell defined these things, anyway? He knew some men, older than he was, who liked to think about doing it with middle-aged women; who specifically looked for those sorts of women online. MILFs or what have you. GILFs, even. He remembered one bloke telling him about some granny-porn website he’d been looking at and saying it was more of a turn-on because it was a bit more realistic. It was far more exciting, he said, because it was more . . . achievable.
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br />   That was just stupid. That was not normal. Surely the whole point of a fantasy was that it was unachievable.

  Usually . . .

  When fantasy had not been enough, he had found ways to get closer to those girls, that was all. Different whens and hows. The Jessicas and the Poppys, the girls who would not give him the time of day.

  Old songs, favourite foods, the team you’d followed since you were a kid. None of that was a worry to anyone or a problem to sort out. Other things though were a little trickier to arrange.

  Tricky, but not impossible.

  THIRTY

  Collecting Helen from the house that Linda Bates and her kids were staying in was far from straightforward, but Thorne had known it would be. There was no rear exit from the house; not unless you fancied scrabbling over a garden fence and clambering across waste ground. Helen had told him on the phone that she was happy to leave on her own and meet him somewhere nearby, but Thorne had insisted on picking her up. They had already braved the crowd outside the house once, he told her. They had already been photographed together several times.

  The genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

  The crowd was bigger now of course, angrier. The photographers and journalists that much more determined.

  Is Linda going to stand by him?

  How are the kids holding up?

  You think she knew?

  They moved towards the car as quickly as they were able, saying nothing. They kept their eyes on the tarmac. Thorne’s hand drifted automatically towards Helen’s, but he held back. There seemed little point giving the pack anything else to feast on.

  Neither of them spoke until they were on the road to Paula Hitchman’s house. Until there was nobody left to be seen when Thorne checked his rear-view mirror.

  ‘How much longer are we staying?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘A few days? Longer?’

  Helen looked at him. ‘I can’t go back just yet. Linda’s in a really bad way.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I told her I’d stay for a while.’

  ‘What about Alfie?’

  ‘I called my dad,’ Helen said. ‘Told him we were staying on a bit longer in the Cotswolds. He’s fine about looking after Alfie. He’s enjoying himself.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What he said.’

  ‘I bet the poor old bugger’s knackered.’

  ‘Exercise’ll do him good.’

  He saw Helen smile; the expression that settled afterwards. He knew she hated being away from her son, how much she missed him. Thorne was missing the boy badly enough himself.

  ‘So, is that OK?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Staying here.’

  ‘Whatever you think,’ Thorne said.

  ‘A pain for you though.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll cope.’ Thorne thought about telling her what he’d seen in the woods, his disquiet about what the PC had told him. He decided to keep his concerns to himself for the time being, at least until after the conversation he planned to have the following morning. ‘I’ll find something to keep me busy.’

  They were driving along a stretch of road without lighting, so Thorne flicked the headlights to main beam. ‘Bloody hell, when it gets dark round here it really gets dark.’ He glanced at Helen and did not need telling what she was thinking.

  Things were seriously dark.

  Thorne had made his feelings about the countryside plain often enough. A nice enough place to visit – briefly – but you wouldn’t want to live there. Now though, he was rethinking his attitude, at least towards those things people were capable of doing to one another in largely rural areas like this. Not the kind of place you would want to be a copper, that’s what he had always thought. Not if you didn’t want to spend your life dealing with underage drinking and pulling over tractors with out-of-date tax discs.

  Here, now, it sounded like a cheap stand-up routine.

  What had that chef said to him? Something about murder being easy enough to contemplate.

  Just as easy for people living here and every bit as hard to cope with for the friends and relatives of the victims. Harder, probably, if you weren’t in a big city; when you didn’t live with the expectation of it. The grim acceptance that it was part and parcel of daily life, like overpriced housing and urban foxes.

  Turning a corner, the headlights swept across the body of a badger; twisted and dusty-grey, hard against the kerb.

  ‘You know why so many badgers die on the roads?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Because they don’t know the Green Cross Code?’

  ‘Because they always go the same way. It’s hard-wired in them or whatever. They’re following ancient tracks and it doesn’t matter if those tracks happen to cross the M42. They just can’t go a different way.’

  ‘Creatures of habit.’

  ‘It’s what kills them.’

  Helen nodded. ‘You’re a badger,’ she said.

  Thorne glanced across and laughed and his hand moved to his hair. ‘Any more grey I’ll certainly look like a badger.’

  ‘Might not have been run over anyway,’ Helen said. ‘Farmers round here shoot them, then leave them in the road. Or lampers.’

  Thorne looked at her.

  ‘Twats who go out at night with these huge lamps mounted up on their four-by-fours, across the fields, you know? Shoot anything they find. Rabbits, badgers, deer sometimes. Pissed-up farmers’ boys . . . local lads, trying to impress the girls. Idiots . . . ’

  ‘Didn’t impress you then?’

  ‘I went once, when I was about fourteen.’ She shuddered theatrically at the memory. ‘Linda used to go out lamping though. I remember we had a big row about it. I told her they were all wankers and she told me to mind my own business.’ She turned away and looked out into the blackness. ‘This place is full of wankers.’

  ‘Is that why you hate it?’

  She turned quickly to stare at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Look, I just thought . . . ’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘With the way you’ve been acting—’

  ‘And how’s that, exactly?’

  Thorne came close to telling her how moody and irritable he thought she’d been ever since they’d got here. Instead he just took his hands off the wheel for a few seconds. Held them up. Surrendered.

  ‘I don’t hate it,’ Helen said.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, Thorne thinking about the case that was building against Stephen Bates and the one piece of evidence that was the most important.

  The body of Jessica Toms.

  Remembering what he had said to Jason Sweeney about killers muddying the waters.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘That’s an even nicer suit than you were wearing last time I was here.’

  Once again, DI Tim Cornish glanced down at his jacket. He ran a thumb and finger down his shiny tie. ‘I’m going to court this morning.’

  ‘It’s only the remand hearing.’

  Cornish pulled on his e-cigarette. ‘You should see what I’ve got lined up for the trial,’ he said.

  Thorne returned the DI’s smile. It was only the latest of many he had seen since he’d walked into Nuneaton station. Outside in the main incident room, the atmosphere was very different to the one he might have expected on a cold Monday morning. It felt like being at school on the last day before the holidays. ‘Nice way to start the week,’ he said.

  ‘You brought a cake?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, a card then, at least. Seeing as you’re here to congratulate us.’

  ‘I’ll put one in the post after you’ve got your conviction,’ Thorne said.

  ‘See as you do.’ Cornish was on his feet, busying himself. He was putting papers into a br
iefcase, taking others out. He checked his phone every minute or so.

  ‘I’ve just got one stupid question,’ Thorne said.

  Cornish glanced at his phone again. ‘They’re my favourite.’

  ‘I was just wondering when the last time was that the woods were searched. Where you found the body.’

  ‘You mean last time they were searched before we found the body, obviously.’

  ‘Right.’

  Cornish thought for a few moments, looked distracted. ‘Well, I’d need to check to be absolutely sure. Like I said before, the whole search procedure has been a nightmare because of the flooding.’

  ‘Those woods weren’t flooded though.’

  ‘No, course not. I just meant the organisational side of it.’ His phone pinged. He checked the text, put it back on his desk. ‘It would definitely have been a couple of days earlier, maybe even the day before.’

  ‘With cadaver dogs?’

  ‘That I couldn’t tell you. Like I said, I’d need to check.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was up there yesterday.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Just out for a stroll?’

  ‘Place is crawling with dog-walkers.’

  ‘Good job, or we might never have found her.’

  ‘Why wasn’t she found before though?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘There’s people out there with dogs every day,’ Thorne said. ‘Morning and night. So why did it take until yesterday for one of those dogs to find the body?’

  Cornish just looked at him. He drew on his e-cig, the tip glowing blue. He raised his arms.

  ‘Sorry,’ Thorne said. ‘I told you it was a stupid question . . . but it’s not like the grave site was in the middle of nowhere. If it hadn’t been cordoned off yesterday, there’d have been dogs all over the place, same as there normally is.’

  ‘I’m honestly not trying to sound funny,’ Cornish said, ‘but you’ll have to take that up with those dogs. One of them found her and that’s all we need.’