Time of Death Read online

  ‘Have you ever met a copper like that?’

  ‘I’m sorry about last night . . . ’

  The absence of a smile told Thorne that she was not talking about the Valentine’s Day shag that never was. ‘No need,’ he said. ‘I was a bit worried, that’s all.’

  ‘I think I’m just finding it hard, not being with Alfie.’ She reached for Thorne’s hand. He put his book down. ‘This’ll be the longest I’ve ever been away from him. Well, apart from . . . ’

  The armed siege.

  Three days during which Helen had lived with the constant terror that she might never see her child again.

  ‘I know,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s understandable.’ He was not convinced that this was the only reason why Helen had not been herself ever since they’d crossed the river into Polesford, but it was the only reason she seemed ready to give. ‘Still, you heard what your dad said about making the most of it.’

  She picked up her magazine again. ‘Not exactly the right circumstances though, are they?’

  ‘We don’t need to stay,’ Thorne said. ‘We can drive back to the Cotswolds if you want.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘I need to be here.’

  Thorne said, ‘Well, it’s your call,’ and was surprised to find himself feeling relieved, and not just because of his aversion to the snootier parts of the English countryside. As far as the police operation in Polesford went, he was just an observer, of course he was, and he was under no pressure because he had no responsibility.

  No part of this was down to him.

  He was still excited though, knowing that a major investigation was taking place just five minutes up the road. That there was a suspect being held, officers putting a case together and, most importantly, victims still to be found. It had been the first thing he’d thought about when he’d opened his eyes.

  I’m on holiday.

  He wasn’t exactly hard to find.

  I don’t believe they’ve got enough . . .

  That buzz had not gone away overnight.

  As soon as they heard somebody heading downstairs, Thorne and Helen got up. Helen showered, dressed and went down. Thorne did the same and followed her fifteen minutes later.

  It was not quite the ‘full works’ Thorne had joked about, but he was more than happy with a bacon sandwich on white, thick-sliced bread. He and Helen ate at a small table in the kitchen, while Paula stood at the cooker in her dressing gown, making another sandwich to take up to Sweeney who was clearly sleeping off the previous night’s ‘decompression’.

  ‘Sorry about the pair of us putting you on the spot last night,’ Paula said. ‘Those questions about Linda.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ Helen said.

  ‘Something like this happens, you can’t help yourself, can you?’

  ‘I’m sure I’d be exactly the same.’

  ‘You like being a copper then?’ Paula stepped back as the pan spat oil at her. ‘I mean, you must do, right?’

  ‘Most of the time, yeah.’

  ‘Must be tough though. Some of the stuff that happens.’

  ‘No tougher than being a nurse.’

  Paula began buttering bread. ‘Yeah, well you come back feeling pretty great some days, I’m not saying you don’t. Others though . . . well, you know what they’re like.’

  Thorne remembered what Paula had said the night before, about getting home from hospital, and guessed it wasn’t just the smell she felt the need to wash away.

  ‘It’s good of you to come back. I mean you’ve obviously got your own life in London, family and all that.’ Paula turned and looked at Helen, pointed with the knife. ‘Linda’s lucky to have a friend like that.’

  ‘She’s got plenty of friends here, hasn’t she?’ Helen asked.

  ‘She must do, but people tend to stay away when something like this happens, don’t they? They think it’s going to be awkward, that they won’t know what to say.’ She turned back to the cooker. ‘Maybe some of them are wondering if Linda knows something about what happened. People always think that, don’t they?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Thorne asked.

  They waited, watched Paula cock her head.

  ‘I’d be lying if I told you I hadn’t ever considered it. I know that probably means I’m a horrible, suspicious person.’

  Helen looked straight at Thorne. ‘Like you said, it’s what a lot of people think.’

  ‘All I’m saying, she’s bloody lucky to have you around. It’s times like these you find out who your real friends are.’

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ Helen said.

  Paula turned round again. ‘No, I mean it.’

  Just for a moment or two, there was something in the woman’s face – a sudden tightness, and something flat about the eyes – that Thorne thought he recognised. That he’d seen back before he’d joined the Murder Squad, on a few occasions he’d worked rape or domestic abuse cases. Her job was hard enough, but he had begun to suspect that she spent most of the time when she wasn’t working as an unpaid skivvy for her boyfriend. If he was right, he wondered just how controlling Jason Sweeney could be. How many friends Paula Hitchman was allowed to have.

  Paula’s mobile began to ring out in the hall, so she took the frying pan off the heat and went out to answer it.

  ‘You going to see Linda today?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘I said I would.’

  ‘She was right.’ Thorne nodded out towards the hall, where Paula was talking on the phone. ‘About Linda being lucky that you’re here.’

  ‘I’m not a real friend,’ Helen said.

  Out in the hall, they could hear Paula say, ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Thorne asked.

  Helen shook her head. ‘If I was, I wouldn’t have waited for something like this to happen, would I? A real friend would have come back a long time ago.’ She turned to stare out of the window, across a brown field that swept down towards scattered farm buildings, lines of sodden stubble.

  ‘What was that look before?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘What look?’

  ‘When she was talking about wondering how much Linda knows? You gave me a look.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Like, was I wondering the same thing.’

  ‘Come on,’ Helen said. ‘I know very well it crossed your mind.’

  ‘And it didn’t cross yours?’

  Paula came back in, phone in hand. She pointed at what was left of Thorne’s and Helen’s sandwiches. ‘Come on, bring them through. I think we might want to put the telly on.’

  ‘What?’ Helen asked. Thorne was already standing up.

  Paula waved her phone. ‘That was a woman I know from step class, who runs a coffee shop on the high street. Cupz? Anyway, the place was full of coppers first thing this morning and she overheard them talking.’ She shook her head. ‘Trust me, if she knows something, she’ll have told everyone by now.’

  ‘Told them what?’

  ‘She reckons they’ve found a body.’

  PART TWO

  More Coppers Than Poets

  TWENTY

  Poppy is delighted when the car stops.

  That’s one more drink she can buy with the money she’s going to save on the bus fare. Callum has a part-time job and she knows he’ll be happy enough putting his hand in his pocket, but she can’t let him pay for everything. She knows there are plenty of girls willing to do that, sit there all night downing free rum and cokes, but there are lads who take that the wrong way. Who think it means they’re owed something at the end of the night.

  It’s cold too, and it looks like there’s rain coming, so getting a lift is a double bonus.

  ‘Where you off to, Pops?’ he asks.

  ‘Tamworth,’ she says. ‘The All Bar One near the station?’

 
; He thinks about it for a few seconds, like he’s trying to get his bearings, then tells her he can probably take her all the way, that he’s got to meet someone to talk about some business thing.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he says as he leans across to open the door for her.

  It’s warm in his car, and he tells her she can change the station on the radio, find something she likes. He’s been listening to some rubbish with endless guitar solos, so she starts searching through the stations.

  ‘You look nice,’ he tells her. ‘I like your boots.’

  ‘They’re new,’ she says. She looks down at her shiny red DMs, wiggles her feet around. ‘Birthday present.’

  ‘You on a date?’

  She laughs, tells him that nobody says ‘date’ any more, that he sounds like he’s a hundred years old or something. He doesn’t seem to mind her taking the piss, says he feels that old sometimes, that he’s used to teenagers reminding him that he’s out of touch. ‘What’s the right word then?’ he asks.

  The road crosses the M42 and she looks down at the traffic, the necklace of red lights in one direction, white in the other. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, laughing. ‘I’m just meeting a friend, that’s all.’

  ‘Probably have a few drinks though,’ he says.

  ‘Probably have more than a few,’ she says.

  She finally finds something decent on the radio and he laughs when he glances across, sees her nodding her head in time.

  ‘I don’t get this stuff,’ he tells her.

  ‘You’re not supposed to, are you?’ she says.

  ‘I know, I’m too old.’ Keeping one eye on the road, he stretches an arm into the back and drags a plastic bag across. ‘Here you go,’ he says. ‘Take this with you, put it in your bag or something.’

  She reaches in and takes half a bottle of vodka from the bag. It looks like it’s been opened already, but it’s more or less full. ‘Serious?’ she asks.

  ‘Prices they charge in these bars,’ he says. ‘Bloody extortionate, it is.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Just buy some cranberry juice or whatever, then you can mix it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. She leans down to get her handbag from the footwell.

  ‘Have a drink now if you like,’ he says. ‘There’s plenty.’

  The road narrows on the outskirts of Glascote and begins to twist where the streetlights get further apart. He flicks the headlights to full beam.

  ‘You want some?’ She holds the bottle towards him.

  ‘I’m driving,’ he says. ‘Besides, I can’t turn up to my meeting pissed.’

  She takes the top off the bottle and has a swig. It tastes a bit funny, warm because it’s probably been sitting in the back of the car for a while, but she enjoys the burn at the back of her throat. She takes another, then screws the top back on.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone.’

  ‘I’ll have some more in a minute,’ she says.

  A car comes up fast behind them. It flashes its lights and overtakes. He switches off the full beam until it has disappeared around a corner. There are a few houses just beyond the trees on her side of the car, windows lit, but suddenly they’re gone.

  ‘How long until we’re there?’ she asks.

  ‘Ten minutes?’

  She looks at the time on her phone. ‘Great, thanks.’

  ‘I’m sure your boyfriend won’t mind if you’re a bit late,’ he says. ‘Treat ’em mean and all that . . . ’

  Poppy closes her eyes, just for a second or two, enjoying the music. The bottle is wedged between her legs and she thinks she can hear the vodka inside, sloshing around in time to the drumbeat, like the sea on a shingle beach.

  She feels herself lean to the left as the car turns suddenly and she opens her eyes.

  ‘This isn’t the right way,’ she says. She knows it’s not, she’s taken the bus loads of times and it never turns off, not until it gets into the town centre, the one-way system.

  ‘Traffic can get bad at the big roundabout,’ he says. ‘There’s temporary lights.’ He’s turned on to a narrow lane and she can’t see anything but bushes on either side; darkness beyond and mud and stones creeping beneath the headlights. ‘This is a good short cut, trust me.’

  He looks at her and smiles and tells her not to worry. He tells her to help herself to another drink if she wants.

  He says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you there.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The news confirmed what Paula’s friend had told her, but there was not a great deal in the way of detail. That did not stop both reporter and studio anchor passing on what little they did know as if it had come to them etched on stone tablets. There had been a major development in the investigation into the disappearance of Poppy Johnston and Jessica Toms; a break in the case. The words slid by on a rolling caption every thirty seconds. The body – believed to be that of a teenage girl – had been discovered in nearby woodland.

  Believed to be . . .

  Thorne knew that could mean one of two things. Either the body had been found out in the open and been clearly seen, or else a grave site had been located and the media were jumping to what was probably a reasonable conclusion.

  Sweeney had appeared shortly after they had begun watching. He skulked into the living room, looking every bit as rough as he clearly felt, and complaining about the non-appearance of his bacon sandwich. Seeing what they were all watching, he quickly settled down next to Paula and leaned towards the screen.

  ‘No great surprise though, is it?’ He sat with his knees apart, a ratty towelling dressing gown just about protecting his modesty, presuming that he had any.

  ‘Think about those two sets of parents,’ Paula said. ‘Each of them praying that it’s not their daughter. That it’s the other one.’ She turned to Helen. ‘God, can you imagine that?’

  ‘Yes, I think I can,’ Helen said.

  ‘It’ll be the first one,’ Sweeney said. He reached beneath his dressing gown to scratch. ‘Jessica.’

  Paula nodded. ‘Yeah, course.’

  ‘Why?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Because she’s been missing the longest.’

  ‘Doesn’t necessarily follow.’

  ‘Has to be.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t find a more recent victim first,’ Thorne said. ‘Sometimes it’s a sign that a killer’s getting careless, or it might be because they’re trying to muddy the waters. Sometimes, it’s just how it happens.’

  Sweeney looked like he was thinking about it, that he might concede that the homicide detective sitting on his sofa knew a little more about such things than he did. ‘Yeah, I suppose you can’t assume anything. Makes an ass out of you and me, right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ass-u-me.’ Sweeney helpfully broke the word up into three parts.

  ‘Ass’ was not the word Thorne had in mind, but he nodded politely. On the screen, a shot from a helicopter showed a clearing in the woods. Figures in bodysuits milling around a white forensic tent, stark against the surrounding trees.

  Sweeney said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait for the ID, I suppose,’ and when he started talking about something he’d seen on an episode of CSI Thorne stopped listening.

  Now, half an hour later, Paula was upstairs in the shower and Thorne and Helen stood in the kitchen. That view across the fields was marred slightly by the figure of Jason Sweeney, the wind blowing the flaps of his dressing gown around, as he stood smoking in the back garden.

  ‘He’s not what you’d call a catch, is he?’ Thorne said.

  Helen looked at him. ‘They’ve been together a few years, I think, so Paula must think he is.’ Thorne had never been very good at disguising the way he felt about someone, at keeping those feelings from showing in his face. She
read his expression, said, ‘There’s plenty of people reckon I can do a lot better than you.’

  ‘Your sister, you mean?’

  ‘One of many.’

  ‘Since when did you listen to her?’

  Helen leaned against him. ‘I’d be a damn sight more worried if she liked you.’

  ‘Does that mean I can stop trying to be nice to her?’ Thorne asked.

  Outside, Sweeney was trying to light another cigarette, shielding it from the wind with his dressing gown. When he had succeeded, he took his phone from the pocket and began tapping away at it.

  ‘So, you want me to drop you at Linda’s?’

  ‘I want to stop off somewhere on the way.’

  ‘Right . . . ’

  Helen stepped away and let out a long breath. Her lips stayed together when she smiled. ‘I want to go and see my mum.’

  The wind tore at the cellophane around the small bouquet as Helen laid it at the foot of the grave. Petrol station flowers; the best she could get hold of on a Sunday morning. She stepped back and reached for Thorne’s hand.

  He studied the weathered headstone, the dates beneath Sandra Weeks’ name. Helen saved him the few seconds of maths.

  ‘She was forty-nine,’ Helen said. ‘Only twelve years older than I am now.’

  There wasn’t too much to say and Thorne could not think of anything anyway. He knew that it had been breast cancer, but had not known quite how young Helen’s mother had been when she died. He squeezed Helen’s hand.

  ‘It was six years after I left.’

  ‘So, you were . . . what?’

  ‘Twenty-four,’ Helen said. ‘A year after I joined the Met.’

  ‘Were you . . . had you been expecting it?’

  ‘Kind of. She’d been diagnosed in my last year at college.’

  ‘Must have been horrible.’

  ‘At least I had an excuse for doing so badly.’ There was a laugh in her voice. An attempt at one. ‘I mean, I probably would have messed up my exams anyway, but I used to tell myself that was why. What I told other people too.’