TT13 Time of Death (28 page)

Linda got stuck in, talking more as she did so than at any time since Helen had arrived. Her spirits had visibly lifted the moment
they’d left the house. She had cheered as they’d driven away, clearly relishing the subterfuge, laughing at the thought of Gallagher under that blanket and jabbering excitedly as though she and Helen were Thelma and Louise off on an adventure. Now, the first glass of wine safely put away, she continued talking about her relationship with Wayne Smart. She had known it was a mistake from the beginning, she told Helen, except for the kids who were the only decent thing to come out of it. She had made the best of a bad job once Danny and Charli had come along.

Helen nodded. ‘What people do.’

‘Stupid people,’ Linda said.

‘You’re not stupid.’

‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s arse.’ Linda smiled as she said it. ‘And that’s what it was. What
he
was.’

‘Still is, by the look of it,’ Helen said. She thought about her father again, how upset he would be about the story Smart had given to the newspaper.

‘That’s what was so great about Steve,’ Linda said. ‘He was everything Wayne wasn’t. He was great with the kids and he seemed to actually care about me, you know? Basically, he gave a toss and there haven’t been too many people I could say that about over the years.’

‘Counts for a lot,’ Helen said.

‘I’d always picked the wrong bloke until Steve came along.’ She looked at Helen. ‘Yeah, I’m well aware how that sounds under the circumstances.’

‘It sounds fine.’

‘Course it bloody doesn’t,’ Linda said. ‘Sounds completely mental, but I still don’t believe he’s done the things they say he’s done, so how can I not stand by him?’ She laughed, poured more wine. ‘God, I sound like that old song, don’t I?’

She began to hum the tune to the Tammy Wynette classic. A
song Helen knew that Thorne liked. Helen looked around. There was a man working behind the bar, but he was not exactly being mobbed by customers. A couple sat at a table in the window and two men were drinking in the opposite corner. A woman sat at the bar, tapping busily at her phone.

‘Would you stand by him if you thought he was guilty?’ Helen asked.

Linda took a drink, thought about it. ‘Yeah, I think I probably would. Better or worse, isn’t it? I always thought women who did that were pathetic, but I’m just being honest.’

‘Fair enough,’ Helen said.

Linda sat back and grinned. ‘You and me had a row about a boy once, remember? Because we both fancied him.’

‘The one who went lamping?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I didn’t fancy him.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Linda said.

‘All right, maybe I did, a bit.’ Helen smiled. ‘Just not enough to want to go out shooting at things.’

‘I think you just had higher standards than I did,’ Linda said.

‘They’ve dropped a lot over the years.’ Helen tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t manage it.

When Linda had finished laughing, she said, ‘Sorry you’ve been dragged into all this.’

‘Dragged myself into it, didn’t I?’

‘Still.’

‘I got spat at in the pub last night.’

Linda seemed genuinely appalled. ‘Who by?’

‘Gang of teenage gobshites by the toilets.’ Helen looked at her drink. ‘No big deal, really.’

‘Couldn’t you have arrested them?’

Helen had survived a three-day armed siege and faced down an assailant with a knife on more than one occasion. Last night
though, in that piss-stinking hallway, she had been confronted with no more than naked animosity, and she had frozen. Like most other coppers, she was well-used to the hatred that a uniform or a warrant card could breed, but this had been something purely personal, and it had shaken her. ‘It wasn’t worth it,’ she said.

The woman at the bar ordered another drink, then got up and walked towards the toilets. She smiled at Helen as she passed the table and Helen smiled back.

‘You’d do the same, right?’ Linda asked. ‘You’d stand by Tom, right?’

‘What, if he did something, you mean?’

‘Well, not something like this … but let’s say he did something bad, turned out to be bent or whatever.’

The idea of Thorne being corrupt, at least in the way Linda was talking about, was not one Helen could ever entertain. But she knew there were things he had done which most people would find difficult to understand or condone. ‘Yes,’ she said, eventually. ‘I’d stand by him.’

Linda looked pleased. She leaned closer. ‘So, what’s going on with you and him, anyway?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he’s a bit older, isn’t he?’

‘He’s not exactly a pensioner, you know.’

‘Sorry. I was just saying.’

‘I think I know what I’m doing.’ It was something Helen had said to her sister more than once, with rather more edge than she was saying it now. ‘I bloody hope so, anyway.’

Linda touched her glass to Helen’s. ‘I think we’re both old enough and ugly enough.’

‘Let’s just go with old,’ Helen said.

‘Funny, but I don’t feel that old with you back here. Talking, whatever. Feels like we’re fifteen again.’

‘I think we’re both dressed a bit better.’

Linda smiled, emptied her glass. ‘Why did you come back?’

‘I told you on the first day.’

‘Really, though.’

‘I said. I thought you might need a friend.’

‘I did,’ Linda said. ‘I just never thought it would be you. You’ve been away for such a long time and it wasn’t like we kept in touch.’

‘I felt guilty for leaving.’ Helen felt the jitters in her belly. ‘I still feel guilty.’

‘Why?’

Now they were talking in whispers. ‘Why do you think?’

Linda’s hand drifted towards the bottle, but it was empty. ‘That was like a lifetime ago.’

‘I was a coward,’ Helen said.

‘That’s crap.’ Linda sounded angry, suddenly. ‘You took the chance and you got out, and if I’d had a chance I would have done exactly the same. I’d’ve been gone like a shot.’

‘I thought you’d hate me for it,’ Helen said. ‘Coming back here, I was scared to death. I thought you’d be the one to spit in my face—’ Helen stopped, aware that someone was standing at their table. She looked up to see the woman who had been at the bar.

‘Sorry to interrupt.’ The woman was in her early fifties. Her grey hair was cut stylishly short and a pair of bright red glasses dangled from a chain around her neck. ‘I just wanted to say that I know who you are and I understand what you’re going through. Honestly. So, if you ever want to talk …’ She leaned forward and laid a business card on the table.

Helen moved to snatch it and recognised the logo of another huge-selling tabloid. ‘She doesn’t want to talk. Not to you, anyway.’

‘That’s a shame.’

‘So you can put your cheque book away.’

‘Can’t she speak for herself?’

‘Are you still here?’

The woman raised a perfectly manicured hand, evidently an experienced doorstepper. ‘I just think she deserves a chance to tell her side of the story, that’s all.’

Helen stood up fast. ‘Are you deaf?’ She saw the shock on the journalist’s face, watched it become fear and enjoyed the rush. ‘No, I thought not. Now, piss off and crawl back under your rock, before I come round this table and stick those stupid glasses up your bony arse.’

Donna Howland would never have described herself as nosy, because it was one of those words that made you sound bad. ‘Curious’ was a better word, she reckoned.
Interested
. Some people just had the sort of jobs which gave you a chance to talk to people and to listen. Like hairdressers or taxi drivers. You made conversation, nothing wrong with that, was there?

All sorts of people came into Cupz, so she heard all sorts of things. You didn’t have to eavesdrop, because most of the time customers were happy to talk while you made their drinks or sandwiches and other times you couldn’t help but catch a snippet or two as you served at a nearby table or cleared the plates away.

She’d known this pair would be interesting as soon as they’d walked in.

She recognised the copper of course, and from what Paula had told her when she’d been in that morning, the other one had to be his mate, the one who was sleeping on her settee. Some kind of CSI type, worked on bodies. Couldn’t be two people in town who looked the same as him, could there?

Two teas, a chicken salad baguette and a toasted ham and cheese.

When the place was quiet, she liked to listen to music while she worked behind the counter. Cleaning up, restocking the fridge, whatever. A bit of Ed Sheeran, or maybe Rihanna if she fancied dancing. She didn’t want to disturb the customers, obviously, so she always wore headphones. She thought she probably looked like a right nutcase, nodding along,
singing
along now and again, when she forgot there was anyone around. It was easy enough to slip an earbud out though and maybe turn the music right down, if it looked like there might be something more interesting to listen to.

Donna tidied the shelves, then began to wipe the counter down, on the side nearest the table where the copper and his mate were sitting. Where the one with all the tattoos was making short work of his sandwich.

She reached into the front pocket of her apron and turned the volume down. She tucked away an errant strand of hair and plucked out an earbud. After catching a word or two, she turned the music off completely and kept on wiping, long after the counter was spotless.

She’d definitely have a good story to tell Paula next time she came in.

‘So, I’m him, right?’

‘It would be a hell of a twist, but let’s go with it for now,’ Hendricks said.

‘I burn the body just enough to open the skin, expose the muscles, organs, whatever.’

‘That’s the part they love best.’ Hendricks bit into his baguette and chewed. ‘Innards are like a slap-up dinner at the Ivy to your average beetle. Or a KFC bucket, if you happen to prefer something a bit more downmarket.’

‘Do I need to keep the body warm?’

‘Well, it’s half-burned already, remember, but yeah, it would be a good idea to try and keep it warm for a while afterwards, while the invasion takes hold. They’ll feed and lay eggs quicker.’

‘The bin-bag would keep the heat in, right?’

‘Yeah, that would be perfect. You burn the body, transfer your colony across, then wrap it all up in a bag. Job done.’

‘Not forgetting to drop in the fag-end with Steve Bates’ DNA all over it.’

‘Wherever you’ve managed to get that from.’

‘I followed him, I watched him drop one in the gutter, whatever. I’m not too worried about explaining that.’

‘Fair enough.’

Thorne sipped his tea. ‘So, I just … pop them in, do I? All these insects.’

‘More or less,’ Hendricks said. ‘Pretty messy job though I would have thought, because you’ll need to dig well into what’s left, get the bugs in good and deep.’

‘I don’t get the impression he’s particularly squeamish,’ Thorne said.

‘You’d be surprised. It might be one thing doing … whatever it is he did to Jessica when she was alive, but some people can get very funny about dealing with bodies. Other way round for some of us, of course.’

‘So, where does he get them?’ Thorne asked. ‘All these flies and maggots. The different kinds of beetles.’

‘Ordinary clothes moths as well, sometimes. Particularly fond of decomposing hair. That’s usually only on bodies found in the home though.’

‘Where did they come from, Phil?’

‘Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’

‘I can run to lunch.’

Hendricks put away his last mouthful, picked at the scraps of salad left on his plate. ‘He’s got to have bought them from somewhere.’

‘What, he just nipped down the nearest pet shop?’

‘You can laugh, mate, but some places keep a good stock of bugs. For people that have exotic pets … chameleons or iguanas.’

‘Carrion beetles? Be serious.’

‘Somewhere on the internet, then.’

‘Really?’

‘Come on, you really think there’s anything you can’t get if you know where to look or who to ask?’

‘Still …’

‘He could easily be getting them through a third party, on the dark web, if he’s clever. Bitcoins, all that, and no questions asked. As good as untraceable.’

Thorne grunted. Since it had first been discovered a few years before, the Met had begun making inroads into the nefarious activities of the hidden, or dark web. The problem was that the better they got at uncovering the buying and selling of hard drugs, arms, hit men,
people
, the better those providing these services got at finding somewhere else to hide. If Hendricks was right and this was how the killer had sourced the insects he had needed to create a false time of death, Thorne might have rather more trouble proving it than he would have with an abandoned cigarette end.

‘You finished with that?’ Hendricks asked.

Thorne pushed his plate across. He had barely touched his sandwich, but still he was a lot less hungry than he had been when he sat down.

Driving back towards Polesford, Linda was even more geed up than she had been after escaping from the safe house, though the wine probably had more than a little to do with it. Helen slowed
at a makeshift road sign and was waved through a foot of water by a uniformed officer in a high-vis jacket.

‘Seriously, you were great back there.’ It was the third time Linda had congratulated her. ‘You really gave that hard-faced cow what for.’

‘I shouldn’t have lost my rag.’

‘Don’t be daft, it was fantastic.’

‘It’s what I said to you in court. You’re only giving them what they want.’

‘Who cares?’ Linda drummed her palms against her legs, stared out of the window. ‘I swear to God, I really thought you were going to deck her.’

Helen had thought so too.

She nodded her thanks to the officer and accelerated away.

She was not proud of losing control, but could not feel too much regret at telling the journalist exactly what she’d thought of her. The sick feeling in her stomach, which had begun as she and Linda had marched out of the pub, that continued to spread, was because of where the anger had sprung from so suddenly.