TT13 Time of Death

by Mark Billingham

  Danny was wrong, Charli could sense it, but he had a point. She remembered a conversation with her mum about what it was like when she was the same age as Charli. It had been the same night that policeman had come round about Danny. After her mum had screamed at him, when she’d calmed down a bit, she and Charli sat in the front room and her mum had a bottle open. She poured a glass for Charli and started to talk.

  ‘I can’t really blame him,’ her mum had said. ‘Not a lot for kids to do round here, is there? Just drink and get into trouble. I wasn’t a whole lot better, if I’m honest.’

  She’d sounded serious, but suddenly there had been a smile. Charli had sat there and drunk her wine and listened. Enjoying it.

  ‘We’d buy the cheapest booze we could get our hands on. Four bottles you could get for what one of these cost. Maybe a bit of dope too, if there was any around.’ She had looked at Charli then. ‘Yeah, I know … but it’s different when it’s your own kids. You’ll know what I’m talking about one day.’ Charli had watched her drain the glass, reach for a refill. ‘It was just about getting out of the house really, getting off your face on whatever was handy.’

  Sitting on the bed now, Charli wondered if Helen Weeks had been part of that same group. That copper and her mum. Necking cheap wine in the bus shelter, same as the kids did today. Talking bollocks …

  ‘All we talked about back then was getting away,’ her mum had said. ‘Going somewhere less boring. I knew even then that this place had a way of pulling you in if you weren’t careful. Sucking the life out of you. It was all talk, obviously. I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I? I’d love to say it was because I never had the chance, but it was more like not being brave enough, really. Taking the easy option.’ She had laid down her glass and reached across for Charli’s hand. ‘You need to be braver than I was, all right? You and your brother. Promise me that, all right, chick?’

  Now, Charli sat and listened to herself breathing; to the hubbub rising up from the street below. She leaned across and pushed gently at Danny’s leg. ‘That time when the copper came round, said you’d been smoking weed. You had been, right?’

  Danny hesitated, gave himself a few seconds’ thinking time, same as he always did when there was a lie coming. ‘No. I told you, it wasn’t mine.’

  ‘No, because it was mine.’

  ‘My mate brought it, I swear.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Dan.’ She put a hand on his leg. ‘You and me need to be honest with each other from now on, all right? It’s important. You tell me the truth and I swear I’ll do the same. No bullshit any more, OK? Not now.’

  They both looked up at the sound of the door to the next room opening. A few seconds later there was a gentle knock, and their mother walked in.

  ‘I need to tell you what’s happened with Steve.’

  As soon as she saw the look on her mum’s face, Charli was off the bed and being pulled into her mum’s arms as Linda’s voice began to crack.

  ‘It’s going to be all right, I promise. It’s all going to get sorted out …’

  Charli turned her head against her mum’s shoulder to look at her brother. She watched him swallow; saw the muscles working in his jaw and the tears blooming at the corners of his eyes.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the main bar of the Magpie’s Nest, Thorne was nursing the half he’d been eking out for the last twenty minutes, looking at the stuffed fish that had been caught at Pretty Pigs Pool. It was – so the small plaque told him – a twelve-pound carp; plump and greenish-brown, the whiskered mouth open, which made it look a little surprised. Thorne supposed it had been.

  ‘Not another bloody fisherman …’

  Thorne turned to see the landlord’s wife smiling at him from behind the bar. He could not remember if Trevor Hare had told him her name. If so, Thorne had forgotten it. ‘No, just looking.’

  ‘Tell your wife she can count her blessings,’ the woman said. ‘Bane of my life, being a widow to that. I wouldn’t mind if he ever caught anything we could cook. If he didn’t come home stinking of fish.’

  ‘I’m not married,’ Thorne said.

  ‘And you won’t be, not if you ever take up bloody fishing.’

  Hare emerged, grinning, from the room behind the bar. ‘I can hear you, you know …’

  His wife shook her head. Said, ‘Put a sock in it and make yourself useful.’

  The pub was getting busier. It had been almost empty when Thorne – unable to think of a better way to pass the time – had wandered in half an hour before, but had been filling up slowly as the regulars arrived to occupy their usual tables or seats at the bar.

  When Thorne had finished his drink he slotted into a gap at the bar and ordered another half. He guessed that it might be a few hours yet before Helen was ready to be picked up.

  ‘Driving,’ he said, as Hare handed the glass across.

  ‘Want me to stick a bit of lemonade in?’

  They talked about cars for a few minutes, then football, when Hare let slip that he was a West Ham fan. The conversation ran its course and Thorne could sense that the landlord was keen to talk about more important things.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘Looks like I was wrong about Bates,’ Hare said. ‘Them having nothing on him, I mean.’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Helen had called Thorne while he was walking back from the woods, told him that Stephen Bates had been charged. ‘I’ll need to keep Linda company for a while, is that OK?’ Thorne had told her that he was happy to amuse himself and to call when she needed picking up.

  ‘Once they’d found Jessica, it was just a matter of time, I suppose,’ Hare said.

  As far as Thorne knew, the body had yet to be formally identified and the police had not made any official announcement. The word in town, however, was that it had been Jessica Toms’ body that had been discovered in the woods. Thorne had no reason to doubt it. He was learning that those spreading the word were remarkably well informed. ‘You said you knew her.’

  Hare nodded. ‘Smashing kid. Nice family. Not wild like some of them are. Well, you know … a few drinks, what have you, a stupid tattoo … but that’s like being a goody-two-shoes round here.’ He snatched an empty bottle from the bar, lobbed it into a large plastic bin. ‘He was probably just hoping they wouldn’t find her. Bates. Waiting it out, like.’

  ‘Par for the course.’ Thorne sipped at his beer.

  ‘Yeah. I suppose his brief will have told him to say bugger all.’

  ‘I can count on one hand the number of times a killer’s sat there and coughed to it.’

  ‘Hard to get a conviction without a body though.’

  ‘Not impossible,’ Thorne said.

  ‘He must know the game’s up now, surely.’ Hare turned to see his wife glaring at him. There were people waiting to be served. ‘Talking of which.’

  ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  Hare laughed, leaned close. ‘Trust me. You’re better off not married.’

  Thorne asked quickly if he could order some food and Hare handed him a menu before moving along to start serving other customers. Thorne ordered at the bar and drank slowly while he was waiting, one eye on the TV mounted high in the corner. The sound was turned down, but the captions and rolling headlines were every bit as good as subtitles. They were talking to the old man whose dog had discovered the body and Thorne recognised the pair from the press briefing he had attended outside the Memorial Hall the previous evening. A headline said that a forty-three-year-old Polesford man had been charged with murder. Over the umpteenth close-up of the dog, another said that a second victim was still missing.

  A man standing next to Thorne at the bar said, ‘Bastard deserves everything he’s going to get …’

  Thorne carried a plate of ham, egg and chips across to an unoccupied table and got stuck in. Looking up after a few minutes, he realised that the stocky young man in jeans and sweatshir
t at the next table was the red-faced PC he had met outside the Police Control Unit the day before. He was drinking with a friend and Thorne was not even sure that the PC had recognised him, but when the friend got up to go to the bar, Thorne left his unfinished meal and moved across.

  ‘I just wanted to say sorry for being a twat yesterday. Pulling rank.’

  The PC didn’t look at him, shrugged. He had clearly clocked Thorne immediately. ‘No worries,’ he said. ‘I’ve had worse.’

  ‘Be your turn one day.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  Thorne lifted his glass. The PC did the same. They drank.

  ‘Everyone must be pretty chuffed this morning,’ Thorne said.

  The PC looked at him for the first time. ‘I don’t know about that.’

  Thorne knew the PC was thinking about the parents of the dead girl. That Thorne was an even bigger twat than he’d thought he was. ‘Cornish and the Homicide boys, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

  ‘You know anything about this fag-end they found?’

  ‘No more than you.’

  Perhaps the young officer had been asking around, but the half-smile said he clearly knew now that Thorne had no official role in the investigation. Both off duty for the time being, they were simply two blokes talking in the pub, which suited Thorne fine. ‘I know bugger all,’ he said. ‘Just making conversation.’

  The PC took a few seconds, swilled around what little beer he had left in the bottom of his glass. ‘They’ve got plenty already,’ he said. ‘They found that stuff on his computer almost straight away.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘What do you think? Teenage girls.’

  Bad as that was, the way the PC had said it, Thorne had been thinking it might be something a lot worse. ‘When you say teenage …’

  ‘Young girls.’

  ‘Thirteen, fourteen? Seventeen? What?’

  ‘I’ve not seen it, have I?’

  ‘A lot of blokes look at teenage porn.’

  ‘They don’t all abduct teenage girls though, do they?’

  ‘Some of the girls on these sites are pretending to be younger than they are. Dressing up as schoolgirls.’

  ‘I don’t think too many of them bother showing their passports or whatever though, do they?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Anyway, the men looking don’t care how old they are.’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘You seem to know a fair bit about it.’

  Thorne stiffened. He had felt guilty for pulling rank on the PC the day before. He wondered how guilty he would feel about smacking him in the face. ‘You said they found it straight away.’

  ‘What I heard.’

  ‘So he can’t have tried very hard to hide it, can he?’ Thorne knew that those really seeking to keep their predilections secret took rather more trouble. The most disturbing sites were usually hidden somewhere on the so-called Dark Web and images buried there could only be retrieved with the help of forensic computer specialists. ‘If they were really dodgy, it would have taken a lot longer.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ the PC said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why you’re rubbishing the evidence.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it is evidence.’

  ‘Like you’re defending him.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Thorne looked up as the PC’s mate arrived back at the table. He deposited two fresh pints and sat down. He nodded to Thorne and Thorne nodded back. The three of them sat in silence for half a minute until Thorne said something about needing to get back to his dinner and moved away.

  Fifteen minutes later, Thorne took his empty plate back to the bar and ordered another drink. The girl who served him was probably eighteen or so, but she might have been younger. She could certainly have looked younger if she chose to, just as easily as some fourteen-year-olds could look a lot older. Wasn’t that the most common explanation given for their actions by those who slept with underage girls?

  He wondered why he was so bothered about it. Why he was conjuring explanations. Excuses. Perhaps because a liking for teenage girls, however unacceptable, did not make you a murderer.

  Thorne paid a visit to the Gents and, on the way back, he stepped outside into the small pub garden and play area. There were lights switched on outside, a couple of tables with benches attached on the patio and a pair of outdoor heaters. On the small patch of grass was a see-saw and swing-set and a grubby-looking plastic playhouse shaped like a large shoe. Thorne tried to remember the nursery rhyme. The old woman who had so many children …

  A man with his back to Thorne sat smoking at one of the benches. He had long, curly hair tied back into a ponytail and he wore a black apron over a white T-shirt.

  ‘Ham, egg and chips was a triumph,’ Thorne said.

  The man looked round and raised a thumb. He was a little younger than Thorne was expecting, no more than mid-twenties, with a straggly beard and glasses. ‘That’s the idea,’ he said. ‘We like a happy customer.’ He was well spoken, with the kind of resonant voice you heard on the radio.

  Thorne stepped towards the table. ‘Had the steak and chips yesterday.’

  ‘My signature dish.’

  ‘That was pretty good too.’

  ‘Well, feel free to pass on your praise to the magpie-in-chief. He might feel inclined to give me a raise. Pigs will have to take to the air first of course, but one can but live in hope.’

  The sarcasm was relished and topped off with a wolfish, if slightly wonky grin. Thorne could not smell anything, but wondered if there might be something other than tobacco in the chef’s skinny roll-up. He sat down, happy enough to be out of the bar, to breathe in some of the cigarette smoke.

  ‘Tom Thorne.’

  ‘Shelley.’ The bracelets rattled on the man’s wrists as he shook Thorne’s hand. Silver, leather, beaded.

  ‘First name or second?’

  ‘People just call me Shelley.’ He picked up a book from the table in front of him and held it up. English romantic verse. ‘Not too many people reading poetry round here.’

  Thorne reached for the book. He turned it over and looked at the back. Blake, Coleridge, Byron. A picture of a horse. He thought that the man had sounded rather pleased with his nickname and could not help wondering if it was one he had actually given himself.

  ‘Not something I know a lot about,’ Thorne said. The only poet he had ever seen in the flesh was Pam Ayres. His mum and dad had loved her; that poem about looking after her teeth. They had gone to see her show at some arts centre when Thorne was at school. He decided against mentioning it now.

  ‘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 shrugge
d. ‘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.’