TT13 Time of Death (30 page)

‘What’s going on?’ Helen asked.

Carson looked at Linda, who was standing in the doorway, seemingly afraid to cross the threshold. ‘I didn’t want to call you, while you had other things to worry about. I’m glad your husband’s OK, by the way.’

‘Call me about what?’

Charli shouted from upstairs again and Helen noticed that Gallagher was staring down at her nice shiny shoes.

‘Danny was attacked.’ Carson swallowed and carried on quickly. ‘He’s fine, honestly. It was nothing.’

‘Attacked
where
?’ Helen asked.

Carson turned and stared hard at Gallagher. ‘Ask
her
.’ She nodded towards the two PCs standing in the corner. ‘Ask those idiots.’

Finally, Gallagher looked up, the colour flooding her cheeks. ‘Poor kid was begging us to let him go up to the school. Said he wanted to pick up some books, kept saying how bored he was.’

‘And you let him?’

‘No, course I didn’t … I mean, not on his own, but eventually I said we’d take him up there, if he was really that desperate to go. Myself and a couple of other officers.’ She glanced towards the two PCs, statue-still with expressions like stunned fish. Both had clearly been on the receiving end of a major bollocking before Helen and Linda had got back.

‘What about that lot out there?’ Helen pointed towards the front of the house.

‘I told him that,’ Gallagher said. ‘He said it didn’t matter because him and his sister had been in the newspaper already.
Said he didn’t care about them, he just wanted to go to the school for a few minutes to get his books.’

Linda was shaking her head. She murmured, ‘This can’t be happening.’

‘I wasn’t here,’ Carson said. ‘I want to make that clear. No way in hell would I have let this happen.’

Helen looked at the DC; an officer clearly well practised at making sure the buck got passed good and early. ‘So, what happened?’

It took a few seconds before one of the PCs spoke up. ‘We told the school we were coming,’ he said. ‘We made the call, then took him down there in one of the squad cars.’ He looked to his left; his colleague’s turn.

‘Yeah … so, we were both with him the whole time, there was no way we were going to leave him on his own. Then right at the end as we were walking back to the car … I don’t know … maybe I looked away for a few seconds and this little twat came from nowhere, just started throwing punches.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s not too bad, honestly. Just a split lip.’ He rubbed a finger against his cheekbone. ‘A bit of a bump.’

‘Danny didn’t seem that bothered about it, to be honest.’

The second PC nodded his agreement. ‘We arrested him, obviously. The lad concerned.’

Helen looked at them. ‘Congratulations.’

‘What the hell have we done?’ Linda spoke up suddenly, and everyone turned to look at her, visibly shocked at the agony in her voice. ‘What the hell have me or my kids done?’ She looked at Gallagher and Carson, at the two PCs. ‘Anyone?

From upstairs, Charli called for her mother again and almost immediately, Danny shouted at his sister, told her to shut up.

‘I’m going up to see him,’ Linda said, walking out into the hallway.

Helen turned and pointed at Carson. She said, ‘You were the
senior officer, so this comes back to you.’ Then she walked out after Linda.

By the time Helen got to the foot of the stairs, Linda was already halfway up. She stopped and looked back. She might have felt fifteen years old a few hours before, but now she looked three times that, more. Her face was washed out and empty. She reached to steady herself against the banister.

She said, ‘I can’t do this any more,’ then turned and carried on up.

Helen sat down on the bottom step. She took out her phone and texted Thorne. Told him she would be staying the night.

Thorne was relieved that Paula had decided on an early night. He was tired and not really in the mood for another late-night chinwag with Paula and her over-enthusiastic other half. She told Thorne and Hendricks that Jason would probably be out working until three or four o’clock and she had an early shift at the hospital, but they were more than welcome to stay up if they wanted, help themselves to drinks and some supper if they were hungry.

Thorne thanked her and said they might have a quick beer, if she was sure, perhaps a sandwich or whatever, if they could be bothered.

Hendricks had begun cooking sausages before Paula had taken her make-up off upstairs.

‘Rough on Linda Bates,’ Hendricks said.

‘Yeah.’ Thorne was sitting at the kitchen table, sending Helen a text.

‘She’s certainly had one hell of a bad day.’

Thorne pressed
send
and laid his phone down. ‘I still don’t
quite get what’s happening with her and Helen though.’ He picked up the phone again to check the message had gone. ‘Why she’s so keen to help her. It’s like she feels obliged.’

Hendricks turned the sausages, spoke over the sizzle. ‘They’re old mates, you said. No big mystery.’

‘They’re not though,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s the thing. Never heard Helen mention her name until all this. She’s never talked about anybody from here.’

‘Sometimes it’s easier to do things for people you’re not so close to. Helping total strangers. A bit less baggage.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I mean, it’s only her time she’s giving up, right? She isn’t giving this woman a kidney or anything.’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Hendricks turned to look at Thorne, his smile a little nervous. ‘It’s not like we’re talking Bardsey here, is it?’

They still hadn’t talked about it, not in any depth. What Thorne had done for Hendricks on that island, what had been taken from Hendricks because of him. Just jokes that weren’t really funny, or the odd remark, much like this one. Thorne was still not sure if he was happy for things to stay that way.

He said, ‘I suppose.’

‘Helen’s just being nice.’ Hendricks turned back to the hob. ‘She’s a nice person … who just happens to have awful taste in men.’ He laid the sausages onto thickly buttered white sliced bread and carried the plates across.

Thorne was ravenous, having left most of his lunch. He took a bite, then got up to hunt for brown sauce in Paula’s kitchen cupboards.

‘These sausages are bloody gorgeous,’ Hendricks said, mouth full.

‘Local delicacy.’ Thorne was opening and shutting doors. ‘This place is the pork sausage capital of the western world, by all
accounts.’ He found the sauce in the last cupboard. ‘Pig farms all over the place, apparently.’

He sat down, lifted a slice of bread and squirted on the sauce. When he glanced up, he saw that Hendricks had stopped eating; mid-mouthful, sandwich in hand.

‘What?’

‘He wouldn’t have needed to buy them.’ Hendricks swallowed fast. ‘Your killer wouldn’t have needed to buy the bugs.’ He dropped the sandwich on to his plate. ‘I mean you’re right, course you are, it’s not like you can pop down to Tesco’s and pick up a box of mixed beetles, is it? And yeah, there’s the internet,
maybe
, but there’s a far easier way.’

Thorne watched the smile growing on his friend’s face and felt something tickle at the nape of his neck. He had learned from experience to take notice when those two things happened one after the other. ‘So, tell me.’

‘You harvest them from another body.’

‘What?’

‘You let another corpse decompose naturally. You wait for the flies to come, to feed and lay their eggs, for the beetles to pitch up and feed on the maggots. You wait for all that stuff to happen and when you’ve got enough, you just transfer them from the old body to the new one.’ Hendricks shook his head, grinning. ‘
Course
that’s how he did it. It’s bloody genius.’

‘There’s another body?’

Hendricks leaned forward. ‘Doesn’t have to be human, though, does it?’

‘Listen, I don’t know what’s in those sausages—’

‘It’s the sausages I’m on about, you dozy cock.’ Hendricks pulled apart what was left of his sandwich, picked up a chunk of sausage and held it towards Thorne. ‘The skin of a pig is so similar to human skin that they use it to train people like me. Right? They use pigskin to train medics learning how to treat battlefield
trauma, to test new surgical techniques, all sorts. It’s a bit easier to come by now they’ve made grave-robbing illegal.’ He nodded at Thorne and popped the piece of sausage into his mouth. ‘You don’t have a human body, you use the next best thing.’

‘You telling me he used a dead pig to grow his bugs? That he killed a pig?’

‘Wouldn’t have to be a full-grown pig.’ Hendricks shrugged. ‘A piglet would do the trick. You can get a
lot
of bugs on a very small corpse.’

‘Shit!’ Thorne sat back hard. Hendricks looked at him. ‘There was a local farmer in the pub, banging on about having one of his piglets stolen.’

‘No need to thank me,’ Hendricks said. ‘I wouldn’t mind one of those beers you mentioned though.’

Thorne rose slowly from his chair, still processing the information.

‘And while you’re up, I don’t suppose you noticed any ketchup in those cupboards.’

‘You lot took your bloody time.’

‘Yes, well, I’m sure you understand. With everything that’s been going on.’

Bob Patterson looked like he didn’t understand at all. As though a missing piglet was every bit as important as a missing girl. The farmer leaned out through the small gap he’d left between door and frame to peer at the warrant card Thorne was holding up. ‘Well, at least they’ve sent a detective and not one of those useless articles in pointed hats.’

Thorne said, ‘Right,’ and turned to look again at the farmer’s collie, racing back and forth along the fence of the nearest field. The dog had not stopped barking from the moment Thorne and Hendricks had pulled up.

‘She’s fine with people she knows,’ Patterson said. He shouted at the dog to be quiet, but the animal carried on barking. Patterson stepped back and opened the door. ‘Come on then …’

The farm was five or six miles south of Polesford, on high ground the other side of Dorbrook. Driving along the rutted track, having turned off a road that was only slightly kinder on
his tyres, Thorne had seen that the farm was a small-scale operation. He had no idea how much of the visible land belonged to Patterson, but there was only a modest farmhouse, a barn and a couple of small outbuildings. To the left of the track, he had been able to see the metal pig shelters dotted across the pasture; rusted arches, moated with mud.

‘I like pigs,’ Hendricks had said, staring at the pens, the animals lying down or snuffling in front of them.

‘I could see that last night,’ Thorne said. ‘The way you polished off those sausages.’

‘They’re a damn sight cleaner than people think, did you know that? If you say that someone’s living like a pig, that’s actually an insult to the pig.’ He wound down the window, made grunting noises.

‘Doesn’t smell that clean,’ Thorne said.

‘Cleverer than dogs, as well.’

‘I’ve never seen a pig fetch a stick.’

‘Only because they can’t be bothered,’ Hendricks said. ‘Chimps, dolphins, elephants, then pigs, they reckon. The cleverest animals.’

‘Then way down the list there’s a couple of the blokes you’ve been out with.’

‘Yep.’ Hendricks put the window up. ‘Fit as fuck and thick as mince,’ he said. ‘That’s how I like ’em …’

Now, Patterson showed Thorne and Hendricks into a kitchen that might have been spacious had not almost every inch of floor and work surface been taken up. There were piles of newspaper bundled up with twine, rows of bulging bin-bags, cardboard boxes stuffed with magazines and industrial-sized tin cans filled with nuts and bolts, old cutlery, elastic bands.

Thorne glanced at Hendricks, who raised his eyebrows. Both knew someone with hoarding tendencies when they saw them. Hendricks had once performed a PM on a middle-aged woman
who had died at home after years spent hoarding. It had taken police several hours to locate her body.

Patterson pointed them towards a table that was as much a workbench as anything else. It was covered in bits of wire, valves and circuit boards; the wooden casings of several old radios piled up at one end.

‘My dad used to do this,’ Thorne said. ‘Take things apart and put them back together again.’

‘It’s relaxing,’ Patterson said. ‘Something to do.’

Only half of what Thorne had said was true. His father had developed this habit shortly after his Alzheimer’s had begun to take hold. He would disassemble radios and TV sets with great enthusiasm, but they had tended to stay that way.

‘You could have tea, but there’s no milk.’ Patterson was standing on one of the few visible patches of red and white chequered lino. It was heavily stained and torn, where it had not come away from the floor completely.

‘No problem,’ Thorne said.

Hendricks leaned close to him. ‘He probably can’t find the fridge.’

Patterson joined them at the table. He pushed a few of the radio parts to one side.

‘Let’s talk about your piglet,’ Thorne said.

Patterson nodded. Said, ‘You want a description?’

‘I think I know what a piglet looks like,’ Thorne said. He was aware of Hendricks looking away, giggles approaching fast.

‘You know what a Tamworth looks like?’ Patterson waited. ‘Thought not.’ He folded his arms. ‘This isn’t a big operation, not like those intensive places everywhere. Thousands of animals, sows in crates.’

‘I think we passed one on the way here,’ Thorne said. Row upon row of low pig-sheds, fifty feet long. Metal towers, a vast concrete slaughterhouse with a crane alongside.

Patterson huffed. ‘I farm my pigs in pasture, which is better for them, better for the meat. Heritage breeds. Tamworth and Berkshire.’

‘Right,’ Thorne said. He had taken a notebook out, but the page remained blank.

‘Only got a dozen sows to farrow, so I can’t afford to be losing piglets right, left and centre.’

‘So … this was a Tamworth piglet, was it?’

The farmer nodded. ‘Light brown. Lovely little thing. I’ll find you a picture, if you like.’