Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  ‘What’s happening outside?’ Linda asked.

  ‘Usual.’ Carson stepped into the room, straightened her jacket. ‘There’s probably a dozen uniforms out there now, trying to keep it all under control.’

  ‘Stupid,’ Linda said.

  ‘Yeah, well that’s the thing,’ Carson said. ‘A lot of those officers would be a damn sight more use to everyone looking for Poppy Johnston.’

  ‘Hey,’ Helen said. Carson had been staring at Linda. ‘It’s not her fault.’

  ‘I never said it was.’

  ‘That’s how it sounded.’

  ‘I’m just saying . . . if it gets any worse we might need to think about moving you.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Linda said. ‘I’m not under arrest, so you can’t make me.’ She turned to Helen. ‘They can’t, right?’

  ‘It would be for your own safety,’ Carson said. ‘You and the kids.’

  ‘Why are we not safe?’ Linda looked towards the window. ‘You’re not thinking of inviting any of them in, are you?’

  Helen was pleased to see Carson at a loss for a comeback. Suddenly a memory rose up from nowhere of an argument Helen had witnessed between Linda and one of their teachers at school.

  They would both have been twelve, thirteen maybe. They had been given the results of a comprehension test in English; a passage about a gypsy camp. One of the questions had been about the gypsies cooking hedgehogs and the question was about why they baked the animals in clay. Linda had demanded to know why her answer had been marked wrong. ‘They bake them in clay so the spines get pulled out,’ she had insisted. The teacher had shaken his head and handed Linda’s exercise book back to her. ‘But it doesn’t say that anywhere in the passage, does it?’ Linda had said that she knew that was the reason, that it didn’t matter if it said so in the passage or not. The teacher would not listen and told her he was docking her another mark for arguing. Walking back to her desk, Linda had tossed her exercise book out of the window.

  That was when Helen had decided that Linda was clever and liked a fight; that she would be fun to hang around with.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he look at me?’ Linda asked when Carson had left. ‘Steve.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes you do. Or you think you do.’

  ‘I’ve seen people in the dock do all sorts of strange things.’

  ‘Guilty conscience, right?’

  ‘Linda—’

  ‘It’s OK, really.’ Linda smiled. ‘Why should you think anything different from the rest of them? If I was at home watching all this on the telly, reading about it in the papers every day, I’m sure I’d think exactly the same thing.’ She leaned forward for the bottle and poured what was left into her glass. ‘Funny how your attitude changes when you’re on the other side of it. The way you judge people, I mean, all that “no smoke without fire” shit. Well, you know now, right?’

  Helen looked at her.

  Linda reached behind the cushion to the side of her and took out a folded-up copy of a tabloid. She unfolded it and smoothed it out on her lap, stared down at the front page; the picture of Thorne and Helen. ‘They were reading this in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Carson and the rest.’

  ‘I bet they were,’ Helen said.

  ‘It says all sorts of things in here about your boyfriend.’

  ‘I read it.’

  ‘Stuff he’s been accused of in the past.’

  ‘Look which paper you’re reading,’ Helen said.

  ‘Says he might have been responsible for a man’s death, on some island.’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘Well, you’re bound to say that, aren’t you?’

  ‘Listen, I know him, all right?’ Helen kept her tone good and even. ‘Whatever it says in that rag, I don’t believe Tom did anything wrong.’

  Linda nodded. She folded up the paper and slid it back behind the cushion. She said, ‘Well, now you know how I feel.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Police Control Unit was even busier than the last time Thorne had been there. A press conference was scheduled for six o’clock and with the parents of Poppy Johnston due to make a direct television appeal for the first time, there was a good deal of activity. While camera positions were being chosen, seats laid out and a small stage prepared, very different arrangements were being made at the other end of the Memorial Hall.

  With not much more than an hour’s light left, the last search team of the day had been assembled and would shortly be sent out to look for Poppy Johnston. Twenty or more locals were being briefed, along with twice that many uniformed officers. While maps were consulted and instructions given, Thorne noticed that several officers had dogs with them. He still found it impossible to believe that no similarly equipped search team had scoured those woods many days before Jessica Toms’ body was eventually discovered. Despite Hendricks’ misgivings, Thorne knew what cadaver dogs were capable of; how unlikely they would be to miss a stinking corpse less than two feet below ground.

  ‘You coming with us then, detective?’ Thorne turned to see the PC he had spoken to in the pub the night before; the one he had been so rude to on his first day. The officer was wearing walking boots and wet-weather gear together with an expression that suggested he was rather pleased with himself. ‘Fancy getting your hands dirty?’

  ‘I’d be happy to,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘But I need to be at the press conference.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.’

  Thorne studied him. ‘You got something to say to me?’

  ‘Just thinking you might want to hear what Poppy Johnston’s mum and dad have got to say.’

  ‘Because . . . ?’

  ‘Because it might make you rethink some of that sympathy for the bastard that took their daughter.’

  ‘I’ve got no sympathy for whoever took their daughter.’

  The search team began to head out. The PC stood his ground, while colleagues and members of the public pushed past him, funnelling through the main doors and out on to the street.

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ the PC said. ‘I mean, sympathy’s not what you expect, is it?’

  ‘Depends who it’s for.’

  ‘Not from someone on the job.’

  Thorne started to see where this was going.

  ‘I mean, you wouldn’t have sympathy, I don’t know . . . for someone who’d cost a prison officer his life. You know, just as an example. I’m damn sure I wouldn’t.’

  Thorne stared down at the officer’s walking boots, well-worn brown leather, red laces. He was very hot suddenly as he struggled to think of something to say. By the time he’d managed to string enough invective together, the PC was moving away; falling in with his colleagues and leaving the hall without a backward glance.

  Thorne muttered the words anyway.

  He walked slowly to the far end of the hall, weaving between the men and women who were putting out the chairs in nice, neat rows. He stood and watched as two officers at the back of the platform carefully erected the banner bearing the logo of the Warwickshire police: a bear and a ragged staff.

  You know, just as an example . . .

  Thorne had not been particularly surprised at the PC’s reaction. He had clocked the looks he was getting from the moment he set foot in the hall. He could easily imagine the laugh that Cornish and his cronies were enjoying at Nuneaton station.

  A major result and to top it all, just look at that know-it-all wanker from the Met splashed all over the front page. All those skeletons rattling out of his closet. Icing on the cake.

  When Thorne’s phone rang a few minutes later and he saw the caller’s name, he wondered simply what had taken him so long.

  He was not given the chance to ask the question.

  ‘Well
done!’ DCI Russell Brigstocke got straight to the point, as usual. ‘What’s next? You going to get your tits out on page three?’

  ‘Thought you read the grown-up papers,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Couldn’t bloody avoid it, could I?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘It’s up on the noticeboard, for Pete’s sake.’

  ‘Before you kick off, none of this is my doing, all right?’

  ‘It never is, is it?’

  ‘I’m just here keeping Helen company.’

  ‘I know exactly what you’re doing. I read it in the paper, remember.’

  ‘What could I do?’

  ‘You could avoid sodding journalists for a start.’

  ‘You want me to start punching photographers, like some arsey film star?’

  ‘I want you to be doing what you told me you’d be doing. Eating cream cakes or looking at castles or something.’

  ‘This wasn’t what I had in mind either.’

  ‘You should have known they’d go digging,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Snuffling for dirt like pigs looking for truffles. Where you’re concerned, the dirt isn’t very hard to find, is it?’

  ‘There’s nothing in there I can’t defend,’ Thorne said. ‘Nothing you can’t defend either.’ He stood aside as two officers carried a table past. ‘Right, Russell?’

  Brigstocke took a few seconds. Said, ‘Look, I’m not getting into that now.’ His voice was indistinct suddenly and Thorne guessed that he was eating. ‘I’ve been talking to Warwickshire.’

  ‘What, the whole county?’

  ‘Can you hear me laughing, Tom?’

  Thorne said nothing.

  ‘I suppose that wasn’t your fault either, marching in there like the big “I am” and pissing everybody off.’

  It gave Thorne some small degree of satisfaction to learn that his instincts about Tim ‘keep in touch’ Cornish had been right. The sort of copper he was. A flash suit and a winning smile; unwilling to call you a twat to your face then picking the phone up to bitch to his superiors the minute you’ve gone. ‘He said I could look at the file. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Why would you even ask?’

  ‘There’s not exactly a lot to do round here.’

  ‘You need to shut up now, and stop being a smartarse, OK?’

  Thorne listened.

  ‘I mean . . . for God’s sake, you’re telling me you’re just there to keep Helen company, so why are you sticking your nose in where it isn’t wanted—?’

  ‘What’s the harm?’

  ‘Where someone’s very likely to cut it off, and you know what, I don’t think I’d blame them.’

  ‘This Bates thing isn’t solid,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Oh, I know.’ There was more chewing. ‘Some crap about dogs and bodies, and to tell you the truth, I really don’t care.’

  ‘Not even if they’ve got the wrong man in custody.’

  ‘Not even then.’

  ‘So you don’t want me to tell you?’

  ‘I couldn’t give a toss if you think Jack the Ripper killed that girl,’ Brigstocke said, ‘and Shergar helped him bury the body. Not when I’m the mug getting it in the neck from the Chief Superintendent of Warwickshire Constabulary because I can’t control my officers.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘I’m serious, Tom.’ And Brigstocke’s voice, low suddenly and heavy with threat, left Thorne in little doubt that he meant it.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘This is the kind of thing people lose jobs over. Especially people like you.’ There was a pause. ‘Tom?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stay out of the local boys’ way, got it?’

  Thorne grunted a ‘yes’.

  ‘And if you can persuade Helen, I’d suggest the pair of you piss off back to the Cotswolds at the first opportunity.’

  Thorne looked up at the banner, now fully erected behind a long table; the logo a foot high against the white canvas. He pictured the bear in an expensive suit, puffing on an e-cigarette, turning to show its teeth before snapping.

  Thorne remembered reading somewhere that if you were attacked by a particular sort of bear, the best thing to do was run. There was another sort, however, where that was exactly the wrong thing to do; when the best strategy was to play dead.

  He could never remember which was which.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘I just don’t understand why you lied, that’s all.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why didn’t you want to tell me where you were?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ The truth was that Helen did not understand either. Not completely.

  She was alone in the living room. Linda had gone upstairs to spend some time with the kids and Carson and the rest of them were gossiping in the kitchen. She said ‘sorry’ again to fill the silence. She had known this conversation with her father was coming from the moment she had seen the front page of the newspaper.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have known you were there at all, but one of the neighbours came round with the paper.’

  Helen gritted her teeth. ‘Good of them.’

  ‘They thought I’d want to know, you know.’

  ‘I was going to call.’

  ‘I mean I’ve been following it on the news, obviously.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘We talked about it before you went, didn’t we? When the first girl went missing.’

  ‘Yeah . . . ’ Helen remembered several conversations about the events in Polesford. Each time her father had insisted that ‘nothing like that’ would have happened back when he was living there. She wondered if rose-tinted spectacles got handed out to people on the same day they qualified for a free bus pass.

  ‘Nasty business.’

  ‘Can I talk to Alfie?’

  ‘He’s asleep, love.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought I’d worn him out in the park, but he was still full of beans when we got back. Hang on, let me turn the telly down a bit . . . ’

  There was a clatter as the phone was laid down. Helen moved to the window, looked out through a gap in the curtains at the crowd outside. A man was shouting something at one of the officers.

  ‘Right then. Maybe you can call back later, before he goes to bed.’

  ‘Yeah, I will,’ Helen said. ‘Thanks again for having him.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘I feel bad though.’

  ‘I’m just a bit thrown by this business of you being in Polesford, that’s all. Polesford of all places, and not telling me.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said. She flopped down on the sofa. ‘I went to see Mum.’ She listened to her father breathing. ‘Tom came with me. It was nice.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Helen felt a rush of guilt at changing the subject, the way she’d changed it. ‘We took some flowers.’

  ‘See, I’d never have known that, would I? You not telling me you were there.’

  ‘I would have said eventually.’

  ‘I must be going senile, because I still don’t understand.’

  The shouting outside was getting louder.

  ‘Everything that’s going on here,’ Helen said. ‘I just didn’t want you to worry.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What you do. I worry every day, love.’

  There was a loud banging on the front door and Helen heard footsteps moving quickly down the hall from the kitchen. Her father asked what the noise was and she told him that she would need to call him back.

  She hung up, relieved.

  Helen saw Linda coming a little nervously down the stairs and got to the front door just as Carson was opening it to an equally nervous-looking PC. Behind him, Helen could see
two of his colleagues at the end of the front garden, fighting to restrain a well-built man who was shouting about his rights and knowing them.

  ‘What?’ Carson snapped.

  ‘This bloke,’ the officer said. He pointed, just as one of the struggling PCs took a firmer hold of the man and asked him if he was trying to get nicked. ‘He reckons he’s Linda Bates’ ex-husband.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  There seemed little reason for the handwritten name cards that had been placed in front of Michael and Annette Johnston. It was not hard to work out who they were. Though they were as smartly dressed as the two police officers and the press liaison officer with whom they shared the platform, they were the only ones staring down at the table. The two whose hands were joined. They were the ones that everyone else in the room was looking at, as Assistant Chief Constable Harris spoke words almost certainly written for him by the woman standing at the side of the platform.

  ‘As most of you will know already, Stephen Bates, the man we believe to be responsible for the murder of Jessica Toms, is now on remand awaiting trial. While I commend Detective Inspector Cornish and his team for their excellent work on this tragic case, we must not lose sight of the fact that there is an inquiry still ongoing that continues to demand our full attention . . . ’

  Thorne was sitting towards the back of the hall. He had been at plenty of these things before and seen similar speeches made countless times. The words may have been different on each occasion, but the rhythms were much the same. The same pauses, the moments when the officer looked up, towards the cameras. Thorne remained convinced that Cornish and his team had done a job that was anything but excellent, but he couldn’t fault Harris’ performance. Serious, sincere; nothing inappropriately upbeat, despite having cleared up a murder so quickly. Thorne still thought the man’s hat was a little too big for him.

  ‘Our sympathies are with Jessica’s family of course, but all our efforts must now be concentrated on finding Poppy Johnston, who remains missing.’ Harris looked along the table. Poppy Johnston’s father glanced up briefly. ‘So . . . Poppy’s parents, Michael and Annette, are going to make a short statement, after which I will be happy to take a few questions.’ The ACC cleared his throat, straightened his papers.