Cornish shook his head, as though this was one piece of foolishness he simply could not allow to stand. ‘Poppy Johnston is dead, we all know that.’
‘So, why haven’t you found her?’ Thorne did not bother waiting for an answer. ‘Same reason you didn’t find Jessica, not until the man who killed her wanted you to. Because she isn’t there to find. Not yet.’
‘And when she is, you’re telling me she’ll be crawling with these bugs that actually came from somewhere else.’
‘We might be able to prevent that,’ Thorne said. ‘If you’d stop being a smartarse and listen to what we’re telling you.’
Cornish took a drag, hissed out coffee-flavoured smoke and thought about it. ‘Where did all these incriminating insects come from?’
Thorne looked at Hendricks. Do you want to tell him, or shall I?
Hendricks told him.
‘Christ, I think I’ve heard it all now.’
‘So, easy enough to prove, see? Just a question of extracting some nice porky DNA from one of those bugs.’
‘Right, and who’s doing that for you?’
‘I’ve got one or two contacts,’ Hendricks said. He and Thorne had talked about this on the way there. If Cornish went for it, they would happily hand everything over, make the job Liam Southworth was doing every bit as official as he wanted. If not, they weren’t going to volunteer anything, let Cornish think Hendricks had a fully equipped mobile DNA unit parked in a lay-by somewhere.
Cornish tucked his e-cigarette into his top pocket and swung his legs to the floor. ‘Let’s go mad for a minute, shall we, and assume all that stuff happened . . . the dead pig and the bugs being planted on Jessica Toms’ body. I still don’t see why it couldn’t have been Bates that did it?’
‘What?’ Thorne had been unprepared for this.
‘Why not?’
‘Give me one good reason why he’d do any of that.’
‘I don’t need one,’ Cornish said. ‘We’re talking about someone who abducts young girls, does whatever horrible things he does, then murders them and dumps their bodies. These are not ordinary people, Tom, you know that as well as I do.’ He let that hang for a few seconds while he got to his feet. ‘They don’t do things for “good” reasons.’
‘Even you must know how lame that sounds,’ Thorne said. ‘How convenient.’
Cornish shook his head. ‘They’re twisted, simple as that, and the day I start to understand why they do anything is the day I start looking for another job.’
Now Thorne stood up too, and walked across to put himself between Cornish and the door.
‘Don’t be a knob.’ Cornish sighed, fastened his jacket and looked from Thorne to Hendricks. ‘First you show up, then your tattooed mate . . . honestly, it’s like the bloody circus has come to town. Clowns and freaks. Round here, we’re just ordinary coppers doing a decent job and whatever you think, that means trying to prove someone’s innocent every bit as much as trying to prove they’re guilty. Like it or not, this time we got the job done.’ He stared at Thorne, waiting for him to move.
Hendricks walked quickly across and dropped a hand on to Thorne’s shoulder, all smiles. ‘Now, I’ve got thick skin,’ he said. ‘Thick, freaky skin, so I don’t take offence easily. But my mate here . . . well, why don’t I just move him out of your way, before he kicks your teeth in with those big clown shoes of his?’
Thorne stepped aside and watched Cornish move quickly past him towards the door. ‘You didn’t do the job properly,’ he said.
Hendricks asked Thorne to drive him back to Polesford. He was going to collect his stuff from Paula’s, pick up his car, then drive straight back to Liam Southworth’s place in Warwick.
‘He gave me a key,’ Hendricks told him, beaming. ‘I mean, it’s probably best if I’m on the spot when his mate in the lab comes through for us. Plus, he’s got a massive flat-screen TV . . . ’
In slow traffic on the M42, Thorne said, ‘Do you think we rattled him?’
‘Cornish? Oh, yeah, I reckon so.’ Hendricks looked across, saw Thorne’s expression. ‘You wanted him to give us the bum’s rush, didn’t you?’
‘We’ve made a better job of it than he has so far, haven’t we?’
‘Not bad for a clown and a freak,’ Hendricks said.
‘A freak with thick skin, remember.’ Thorne glanced at his friend and smiled. He knew better than anyone how thin that elaborately decorated skin really was. ‘How badly did you want to punch him?’
‘I wanted to shove that stupid pretend fag up his arse.’ Hendricks turned to look out of the window for a few seconds, then put his head back. ‘That stuff about people who were not “ordinary” and you knowing that as well as he did. That was about Bardsey, wasn’t it?’
‘He brought it up first time I met him,’ Thorne said. ‘Wanted me to know he’d done his homework.’
Hendricks nodded. Said, ‘That thing’s going up his arse sideways.’
Thorne grinned, but he had no way of knowing what DI Tim Cornish would do with the information they’d given him, how long he would wait before trying to take over or shut them down. Thorne could only hope they got what they needed in the time they had left.
Hendricks began to sing quietly, murdering ‘Send In The Clowns’ as they inched forward and waited for the traffic to clear.
SIXTY
‘The kids wrote letters to take in to him,’ Linda said. ‘Spent ages on them.’
‘What did you do with them?’
‘They’re in a drawer in the bedroom.’
They were sitting in the small back garden in overcoats. Linda had made coffee, though Helen had smelled the wine on her breath when she’d arrived. Charli and Danny were upstairs, while the coppers on the afternoon shift mooched about or watched TV in the living room. Carson was in the kitchen, trying not to make it obvious that she was keeping an eye on them through the window. She had not been at the house for a couple of days and Helen had begun to wonder if something had happened in the wake of the incident at Danny’s school. She was friendlier than she had been before, presumably because she was worried that if there were to be any complaint about what had happened to Danny, it was likely to come from Helen.
‘I’m not going to say that him lying was the worst part of it.’ Linda pulled a biscuit from the packet on the table and dunked it. ‘I mean, obviously him screwing around was way worse, but denying it didn’t help. Like he could be unfaithful and play me for a mug.’
‘What about once he’d admitted it?’
‘I didn’t really give him chance to say anything.’ She tried to look pleased with herself. ‘Just told him what I thought of him.’
‘Which is?’ Helen looked at her.
‘That he’s ruined my life and ruined the kids’ lives and I can’t forgive him for that.’ She saw Helen’s reaction. ‘What?’
‘It’s happened before though, hasn’t it?’
Linda picked up her mug and cradled it. ‘Yeah, he’s got drunk, been stupid a few times.’
‘And you stayed together.’
‘Not the same,’ Linda said.
‘So why is this time any different?’
‘She’s sixteen.’ Linda shook her head, as though her reasoning were obvious. ‘Jesus, how do you think that makes me feel?’
‘Like shit,’ Helen said.
‘Like I’m no good for anything. Like in a few years when the kids have both buggered off, and I haven’t got them and I haven’t got a bloke, there’ll be no point to me at all.’ She stared at the fence. ‘Sixteen, for God’s sake. Yeah, he wants something younger . . . firmer, it’s not like I don’t understand that, but when she’s still at school you start to wonder about things you really don’t want to be thinking about, you know?’
Helen nodded.
‘I hate him for that as much as for doing it in the first place. For those . .
. thoughts.’
Helen nodded again, and smiled to suggest that what she was about to say was not altogether serious. ‘So, you won’t be in any rush to take him back this time, then.’
Linda seemed confused. ‘Not really an issue, is it? He’s going to prison.’
‘Right,’ Helen said. ‘But I mean, if he wasn’t.’
‘I don’t need to think about it, do I?’
Helen glanced back towards the kitchen and saw Sophie Carson turn casually away, as though she’d been checking on the weather. She looked back to Linda. ‘Are you going to tell the kids?’
‘About him and that little slag?’ She shook her head. ‘What’s the point in upsetting them? He goes down and they’re probably never going to see him again, are they? I mean, yeah, they might ask about going to visit, but I’ll just tell them he doesn’t want them to come.’
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.’
Time of Death Page 29