Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne parked on a side street and walked back.

  When he knocked on the lighted window, the woman behind the counter pointed to the CLOSED sign. He shook his head and banged again, gestured towards the figure at the table. Aurora Harley turned to look at him and said something to the owner. Though she looked far from happy about it, the woman walked across and let Thorne in.

  ‘Any trouble, I’m calling the police,’ she said.

  Thorne sat down, but Aurora Harley did not look at him. He stared at her hands, the bracelets around the thin wrists, the chipped nail polish. He thought about reaching across to take one, but decided against it. He nodded towards the woman who had reluctantly let him in. ‘She doesn’t look like someone you’d want to mess with,’ he said.

  ‘Friend of my mum’s.’ She finally looked up at him. Her eyes were red, blotted liner snaking down one cheek. She hunched her shoulders still further, her chin disappearing inside the silver jacket Thorne had recognised from across the road. ‘Probably the only one they’ve got left.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Thorne said.

  She shrugged. ‘It’s not like you didn’t warn me what it might be like.’

  ‘I should never have suggested it.’

  She looked up again, attempted a smile. ‘Well, I got a bit of dosh, like you said. I mean, probably won’t be enough so we can all move or anything.’

  ‘It won’t come to that,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘There’ll be another story, a bigger story. There always is.’

  The smile had been clinging on, but now it slipped completely and the tears came again. She said, ‘They put dog shit through my mum and dad’s letterbox this morning.’

  Thorne became aware that they were being watched by the woman behind the counter. He looked across, gave a small nod that he hoped would suggest empathy and understanding but got only a look of contempt in return. Even if she didn’t know it had been Thorne’s suggestion that had led to all this, the woman had clearly decided he was responsible.

  We threw her to the wolves.

  Thorne fished a serviette from the chrome dispenser and passed it across. Aurora pressed it to her face, then added it to the small collection of used ones scattered around her half-drunk milkshake. She summoned a smile again and shook her head. ‘All I did was tell the truth. How can people hate you so much for telling the truth?’

  ‘They don’t hate you,’ Thorne said. ‘They just need a target, that’s all. A scapegoat makes them feel better about their own shit lives. They need a witch to burn.’

  ‘Bloody hell, I hope it doesn’t come to that.’ The girl laughed, and Thorne laughed with her. He glanced across again. The woman at the counter was still scowling. She finally looked away from him to switch on another lamp near the till, the daylight all but gone.

  ‘It will get better,’ he said. ‘You just need to keep your head down.’

  ‘What about Steve?’ she asked. ‘Are they going to let him go?’

  ‘I hope so. I mean they should, but . . . ’

  ‘What’s so unfair is that nobody seems to care that I’m upset too. I’m grieving about Jess as much as anyone.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew her,’ Thorne said.

  ‘She was one of my best mates.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ Thorne did not know why he was surprised. Why it had never occurred to him that, being the same age, the girls might have known one another.

  ‘We went through primary school together, got chucked out of girl guides at the same time.’ Finally the smile looked settled. ‘We got our tattoos done together, the same design and everything. A dolphin . . . ’

  Thorne could not recall any mention of a tattoo in the post-mortem report he had seen on Jessica Toms. Then again, there had been precious little skin left. ‘Where did you have them done?’

  ‘A place in Tamworth.’

  ‘No, I meant where.’

  Aurora giggled, reddening, and leaned towards the straw in her milkshake. ‘Well, nowhere I can show you, put it that way.’

  She slurped at her shake, and Thorne blinked . . .

  . . . and it was as quick and simple as remembering where he had left his keys.

  He knew who had killed Jessica Toms.

  ‘You all right?’

  He must have said something to Aurora Harley after that. Goodbye or take care or whatever.

  I need to go . . . .

  But thinking back later on, those moments remained missing, and Thorne could remember nothing but the sound of his feet against the pavement and the rattle in his chest as he ran.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  If there had been a piano playing when Thorne rushed into the bar of the Magpie’s Nest, it would certainly have stopped. That’s how it felt as the small group of regulars in there turned to look at him, for those few long seconds before they went back to their drinks and conversations.

  Some old Roxy Music song on the jukebox.

  Trevor Hare grinned at him from behind the bar. He said, ‘Someone looks like they need a drink? Pint, is it?’

  Thorne stared, still trying to decide the best way to play it. There was one more thing he wanted to check. He said, ‘Pint would be great,’ then turned and wandered across to the back wall.

  He walked up to a table, and, ignoring the complaints of the couple sitting there, leaned right across it to get a good look at one particular stuffed fish. The carp, caught at Pretty Pigs Pool. He checked the date on the plaque; the same one he had seen several times in a file at Nuneaton police station.

  When he turned round again, Trevor Hare had gone.

  Thorne rushed to the bar, just as Hare’s wife appeared behind it, wiping her hands. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your husband.’ Thorne moved quickly to the hatch in the bar and lifted the flap. Hare’s wife moved to block his way.

  ‘You can’t—’

  Thorne pushed her aside and ran through into the storeroom. There were boxes of glasses and bar snacks piled floor to ceiling, barrels, bottles and cleaning equipment. He tore through into a narrow hallway, then quickly up a carpeted stairway that he presumed led to the living area above the pub. It only took a matter of seconds to ascertain that all the rooms were empty.

  He took the stairs back down three at a time and burst out through the back door into a delivery area. Breathless, helpless, he stood and looked up and down the unlit alleyway. It was deserted. He could hear Trevor Hare’s wife shouting somewhere behind him, and above that, the noise of a car accelerating away from somewhere nearby.

  He reached for his phone.

  Ignoring the stares of the customers, the swearing from the landlord’s wife, Thorne ran back through the bar and out of the front door. He was already dialling by the time he reached the pavement.

  ‘Where are you?’ Helen asked. ‘I thought you were coming—’

  ‘It’s Trevor Hare,’ Thorne said. He was watching every car that passed, leaning down to stare at each driver. ‘The landlord of the Magpie’s Nest. He’s the killer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s gone, that’s the important thing.’ Thorne was still breathing heavily, struggling to get it all out quickly. ‘He knows I’ve sussed him and so he’s gone. He took a car . . . ’

  ‘OK, calm down. We’ll find out the reg and they’ll get him.’

  ‘That’s no good.’ Thorne was shouting. ‘Look, I’ve got nothing, not really, it’s all circumstantial. I know it’s him, and I can explain why, but right now there’s nothing that’s going to put him away. There’s only one person who can do that . . . she’s the only real evidence.’ A motorbike roared past. Thorne waited for the noise to die down. ‘He’s gone for Poppy.’

  Helen said nothing for a few second
s, then Thorne heard her breath catch.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He knew Peter Harley,’ she said.

  ‘Hare?’

  ‘Remember him talking to Aurora in the pub? He was asking after her grandfather, telling her to say hello to him.’

  Thorne remembered. Hare smiling, pouring the girl a drink.

  ‘Maybe they were more than friends,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe they . . . compared notes.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘The place Harley took us,’ Helen said. Another sharp intake of breath. ‘Jesus, Hare actually mentioned it, the first night we were here.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s a disused pumping station.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper and Thorne strained to listen. ‘Rubble, more or less. But there’s a room underneath, what’s left of the underground workings.’

  ‘How far, Helen?’

  ‘It’s on the edge of the woods, just beyond that fishing pool we went to.’

  ‘Pretty Pigs Pool?’

  ‘Yes . . . ’

  Thorne knew that Helen was right. He began running towards his car. ‘I think I can find it.’

  ‘No, I know the quickest way,’ Helen said. ‘Wait there and I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘He’s got a good start on us.’

  Thorne heard Helen talking to someone, but could not make out what was being said over the sound of his own ragged breaths.

  ‘We can take Jason’s four-by-four,’ she said.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  She’s not Poppy any more.

  Poppy has never felt any of these things; the pain, the howling hunger, the strange and simple desire to be gone for ever. Never screamed until she thought her guts would burst or kicked out at things that were trying to feed on her. Poppy Johnston has never felt as if she were floating above her own body, never imagined damp to be silk or darkness to be sunshine, and never laughed because she believed she was going to die.

  Now, she’s somebody else.

  She’s not sure who or what she’s become, but then again she’s finding it hard enough to remember who the girl called Poppy was. The one they were presumably still looking for. That girl was like someone she’d seen in a film or read about. A friend of a friend.

  Stupid name, anyway . . .

  Her nan had never liked it, had always given her mum a hard time. It’s a flower, for God’s sake, her nan would say and whenever her mum pointed out that plenty of girl’s names were the same as flowers, I mean Rose and Daisy for a start, her nan would sit there huffing and puffing for a while, saying the name ‘Poppy’ over and over like she was sucking a lemon or something. Then she’d say, ‘It’s a bloody dog’s name.’

  No, not a dog, she thinks now, because dogs are way smarter than she is, than she’d been.

  Poppy. Poppy. POPPEE . . .

  She says the name over and over again, like her nan had done, until it begins to sound every bit as stupid as her nan thought it was. Saying it and saying it to remind herself that this is who she used to be. Now, it’s just a name to be scratched on to a stone in the abbey or scribbled on a card, left with some flowers. The name of a girl who was probably dippy and forgot where she’d left things and lost expensive phones. Who thought life was pretty great and that bad things didn’t happen to people who didn’t deserve them.

  That girl’s shadowy now, faded.

  She shuffles through the water until she is pressed hard against the metal pipe, and lets her head fall back against the brick. It’s a dull thud that she can feel down through her shoulders and each day she has begun to do it harder and faster; daring herself, wondering how long it will be before she feels something crack.

  She can’t really remember the girl she was and is only just beginning to understand the one that she’s become. She doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but she has come to realise that – were it ever to happen – her parents would not be getting back the same child they had lost.

  She lets her head fall back again and again, enjoying it.

  She doesn’t know who she is, or where she is, or how long she’s been there.

  She knows only that, whatever is coming, she’s ready for the end.

  She freezes when she hears something metal rattling above her, and, when the hatch opens, and torchlight dances across the water that’s running down the stone steps, Poppy doesn’t know whether she’s screaming in terror or relief.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  ‘Hare knew about Jessica’s tattoo,’ Thorne said. ‘He mentioned it one night when I was in the pub . . . the big “mein host” act, telling me what a lovely girl she was. The tattoo wasn’t in a place he could possibly have known about unless . . . ’ He stopped and reached out to steady himself against the dash as the Land Rover accelerated into a tight corner. In the absence of blues and twos, Helen was improvising; hazards flashing, lights on full beam and the horn blaring any time she approached a bend.

  ‘He could have heard about it from almost anyone,’ Helen said. ‘The girl’s tattoo.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, you know what this place is like for gossip.’ She glanced at him. ‘Look, I know you’re right, OK? I’m just making the points any decent defence counsel’s going to make.’

  Thorne nodded, happy enough to reel off the other reasons he was convinced that Trevor Hare was the man they were looking for. ‘He’s an ex-copper, so he knows all about DNA and how to hide it. He knows about bugs and time of death, he knows the conclusions that Cornish and his team are going to jump to. He was as good as involved in this case from the kick-off, getting info from all the coppers in the pub, feeding them stuff when it suited him. He went to them at the very beginning to admit that those girls’ DNA would be all over his car.’

  ‘Hiding in plain sight,’ Helen said.

  They drew close behind a car whose driver seemed unimpressed with the flashing lights behind him. Cursing, Helen leaned on the horn then swerved to accelerate past.

  ‘More than that,’ Thorne said. ‘Like he was flaunting it. The alibi he’d given himself for the day Jessica Toms was taken, sitting up there on the wall of his pub. Easy enough to get any old fish stuffed and mounted and any date you fancy inscribed on it. Easy enough for him to get that fag-end as well. Steve Bates smoking in the pub garden, Hare empties the ashtray out at the end of the night, piece of cake. Oh, and let’s not forget that Patterson’s dog knew him well, so not a problem for Hare to go to the farm and steal that piglet.’

  ‘He knew Bates,’ Helen said. ‘That’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Yeah, he knew exactly who to set up. Innocent or not, Bates has certainly got the right . . . tastes.’

  They were driving north, roaring through the same small villages they had passed five days earlier, and finally on to narrow unlit roads; darkness beyond the treeline and a layer of dirty pink on the horizon. This time there was no diversion to add unwelcome time to the journey. ‘Another ten minutes,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe less . . . then depending on how far off-road we can take the car, maybe another five on foot.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Thorne said. He was shifting in his seat, growing increasingly agitated. ‘We don’t want him to hear us coming anyway.’

  There was still water on the road, the Land Rover’s wheels spraying the hedges and dry-stone walls. A lone dog-walker with a torch waved and shouted as the car sped in her direction, turning at the last moment to try to avoid the deluge.

  ‘Shit,’ Thorne said. ‘Torch.’

  ‘There might be one in the boot.’

  ‘This is half-arsed.’ Thorne shook his head. ‘I’m half-arsed. I’m half-arsed and I’m an idiot.’ Helen jumped a little next to him as he slammed his hand on the dash. ‘Doesn’t matter that I know it’s Hare, because there’s no more evidence on him than there is on Bates, and he knows
that. Less, if anything. So of course he has to kill the girl.’ He slammed his hand down again. ‘Idiot . . . ’

  ‘You said that, Tom.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t I try and take him the right way? Why didn’t I call for back-up and wait? Go in there mob-handed, job done.’

  ‘We’re not far away—’

  ‘Why didn’t I at least just march in there and pull him straight over the bar?’ Helen slowed, then braked hard and reversed quickly until the Land Rover’s headlamps lit up a decent-sized gap in the wall. ‘Because the sad truth is I wanted to . . . enjoy it.’

  Helen pointed and talked fast. ‘The road swings all the way around, right? It’s another five miles or so, but if we go across country I reckon we can take a few minutes off. It’s what the car’s for.’

  She had put the car into gear before Thorne had finished nodding.

  Hare closed the hatch quickly behind him, shushing her as he came carefully down the steps. They were steep and running with the water that had come pouring in while the hatch was open. He kept the torch pointed at his feet until he was safely down.

  Then he turned it on the girl.

  Still screaming, Poppy pressed herself back against the wall as he got closer.

  He said, ‘Yes, I should have thought about the tape coming off, shouldn’t I? Got wet, did it?’ He nodded in answer to his own question. ‘Now, I bet it’s been a lot nicer not having that stuck over your mouth, hasn’t it?’ He winced at the screaming, waited until she paused to take a breath. ‘I can easily put it back on, so it’s up to you. You stop making that terrible noise and we can leave things as they are. Or I have to put the tape over your mouth again and I really don’t want to do that.’

  He waited, cocked his head one way and then the other; will you, won’t you? He smiled when it became clear that she was not going to scream any more.