TT13 Time of Death (43 page)

Being
led
here.

Saying he was sorry … still sweating while he tucked his shirt back in
…

Like Thorne wasn’t fired up enough already …

After a few minutes, Helen stopped and waited for Thorne to catch up. She pointed to a clearing a hundred yards or so away. Thorne could see nothing at first, only the absence of trees, then as they stepped slowly closer, he could make out the stumps of brick columns, like uneven teeth. The footprint of a small building.

‘Why the hell didn’t they search here?’ Helen whispered.

‘It was probably under a foot of water,’ Thorne said. ‘Anyway, from what you’ve told me, you’d never know there was anything here. Anything underneath, I mean.’

‘
I
knew,’ Helen said. ‘I should have thought, I should have said something.’

Thorne took hold of her wrist as they drew closer. ‘Listen. You’ve got nothing to blame yourself for, not a thing. If Poppy Johnston’s dead, only one of us is responsible, and it’s not you.’

In silence they covered the last few feet and stepped across the ragged stone perimeter on to what was left of the concrete floor. There was virtually no water gathered now, though a few puddles in uneven parts of the floor and scattered lumps of sodden timber made it clear that there had been up until very recently. Thorne turned on his phone, switched on the flashlight app and looked around.

He saw the trapdoor straight away. The metal hasp was pulled back and a large padlock had been tossed to one side. Several
sheets of corrugated iron and heavy beams that had presumably been used to disguise its existence were lying nearby.

He raised the phone and passed the light across Helen’s face.

She nodded and took a step closer, her chest rising and falling fast beneath her jacket.

Thorne felt the first spatter of rain on his face as he crouched down. Dry-mouthed, he licked at a drop, but it could not wash away the taste of metal in his mouth.

He opened the trapdoor quickly and got to his feet, shone the light from his phone into the blackness. Helen moved across to join him and both of them peered down, their hands over noses and mouths to block the sickening stench that rose from below. There were only steps, cobwebs, water dripping from the edges of the hatch.

Then the voice of Trevor Hare from somewhere in the dark.

‘That’ll be Tom, I presume. Got your mate with you, I’m guessing.’ A figure stepped across to the bottom of the steps and Thorne was immediately dazzled by a torch rather more powerful than his own. ‘Oh, no, I’m wrong, you’ve brought your better half.’

A scream filled the pause. ‘I’m here. I’m
down here
.’

Hare said, ‘Why don’t the pair of you come down and join the party?’

As soon as they had begun to descend, Hare told them to close the hatch behind them, then used the torch to guide Thorne and Helen down the steps. Once they were down, he made very sure that they got a good look at the knife and its proximity to the face of the girl who was kneeling next to him, her wrist shackled to something and her back against a wall. He ordered Helen to stay where she was at the bottom of the steps and waved Thorne away from her and into the far corner.

‘Right then,’ he said.

It was hard to say how big the room was by the light of a moving torch, but Thorne guessed it was no more than twelve feet square. As the light flashed across the scarred brick walls and bare stone underfoot, he glimpsed rusted pipework and what remained of an electric motor mounted on high girders that appeared to have been sheared off. Perished rubber drive-belts lay tangled in pools of water, like dead snakes on the pitted floor. Thorne did not need to have seen it to know exactly where the sweet, meaty stink was coming from.

Hare shone the torch at Helen. She raised her hands to shield
her eyes from the glare. He said, ‘So, I’ve got to ask. How the hell did you know about this place?’

‘Lucky guess,’ Thorne said.

Hare ignored him, kept the light on Helen. ‘I know you didn’t follow me.’

Helen said nothing. She sensed that Trevor Hare knew the answer already and even if it was only a suspicion, she was certainly not going to give him the satisfaction of confirming it.

‘Been here before, maybe?’

‘Listen.’ Thorne took a step and Hare immediately swung the torch around.

‘Steady.’ He moved the knife towards Poppy, who began to whimper and tug at the chain.

Thorne raised his hands. ‘OK, just … look, I don’t really think you’ve got a great many options here, Trevor.’

‘
I’ve
not got options?’

‘We don’t want anything to happen to Poppy and I don’t think you want to go to prison.’

‘All makes sense so far.’

‘So, strikes me the easiest thing is if you just walk out of here.’

Helen gasped as something scuttled past her nearby. She kicked out at the darkness.

‘You get used to them,’ Hare said. He reached out to lay a hand on Poppy’s head. ‘Didn’t do you any harm, did they, Pops?’

‘Come on,’ Thorne said. ‘Just leave her alone and get out of here.’

‘Right, and how long before I’m picked up, d’you reckon? A day? An hour?’

‘You get a chance,’ Helen said. ‘There isn’t a good way for this to end otherwise, not for you.’

‘I think there’s an option you haven’t considered,’ Hare said. ‘We’ll stick with the idea of me going and obviously that means you two staying here.’

‘Fair enough,’ Thorne said.

‘But I’m afraid I’ll have to take Poppy with me.’ He leaned down to snake an arm around Poppy, who immediately began to scream again and pull at the chain. ‘I’ve got some more of that vodka you like in the car,’ he said. ‘You get that down your neck and when you wake up, we’ll be miles and miles away.’

Poppy pulled harder. She said, ‘I’m not
fucking
going anywhere with you.’

Hare stood up and shook his head. ‘It’s a game we play. I’m somehow forcing her and she doesn’t like it.’

‘That’s not going to happen,’ Thorne said. ‘You know we can’t let you go anywhere with her.’

‘Well, of course, and I can imagine that back when I was doing what you two do, and kidding myself I was making a difference, I would have said exactly the same thing. Problem is, problem for
you
, I mean, is I’m the one that’s got the girl and got the knife. So really, I’m the one that decides who goes and who stays down here to have fun with Roland Rat and all his mates.’ Hare brought the torch slowly up towards his face, to make sure they could both see the smile, the steel in it. ‘How’s that sound?’

‘Sounds like hot air to me,’ Helen said.

Hare swung the torch to her. ‘Like what?’

‘Empty threats.’

‘You saw the other girl’s body, did you?’

‘You love Poppy, I can see that. Anyone can. I don’t believe for one second that you’d hurt her.’

‘Well, yes of course I love her, though I’ve had precious little chance to show it, what with one thing and another.’

‘I know.’ Helen was keen to keep Hare’s focus on her. With the light in her eyes she could no longer see anything of Thorne, but she was hoping he was taking the chance to move a little closer to Hare and the girl.

‘Of course I love her and I want to spend some time with her,
I mean what else do you think this has been about, but I need to take care of myself, don’t I?’ He sniffed. ‘If it came down to it, I’d carve her up as easy as I did that pig.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘Up to you,’ Hare said. ‘Take a gamble. You’ll be the one who has to live with it. Something else to keep you awake at night.’

Helen did not need torchlight to tell her that Hare was grinning.

‘So, here’s what’s happening.’ Hare moved the torch beam slowly back and forth between Helen and Thorne. When the light fell on Thorne, Helen could see that he was looking at her. It was never there long enough for her to ascertain his intentions, any message he might be trying to send. ‘You pair need to keep very still while I get this chain unlocked.’ Poppy began to squeal again and this time Hare leaned down quickly and laid the blade of the knife against her cheek. ‘Shush. You really need to keep it down, Pops. Giving me a headache …’

‘
Please
,’ Helen said. ‘Just leave her alone and leave. Lock us all in here and by the time anybody finds us you’ll be long gone.’

‘Well, you’ve got part of that right.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Let’s start by getting shot of your phones. Just take them out slowly and chuck them on the floor nice and hard.’

Helen went first, then Hare moved the beam across to Thorne and watched him do the same. Helen winced at the crack as his phone smashed on the stone floor.

‘Very good,’ Hare said. ‘Now, you just need to keep still while I get this done, and we’ll be out of your way.’

From opposite corners, Thorne and Helen watched as Hare stepped across to where a jacket was hanging on the wall. Using the torch to monitor them every step of the way, he reached first into one pocket and then another, until he found what he was looking for. He held the small key up to the light so they could both see it, then leaned down slowly.

‘Right, now this’ll be a bit easier if you … here you go.’ He gently manoeuvred Poppy from her knees on to her backside. She was crying steadily and put up no resistance, struggling to catch her breath between sobs. ‘Soon have this thing off you, love.’

Thorne watched and waited for the right moment. He knew instinctively that Helen would be thinking the same as he was. If they allowed Hare to take Poppy out of here, then she was dead anyway.

They both knew what Hare had done to Jessica Toms the moment he was done with ‘loving’ her.

His back against the wall, Hare struggled to get the key into the shackle around Poppy’s wrist. He said, ‘Bloody thing,’ and tutted as though he was struggling to thread a needle, then when he tried, somewhat clumsily, to move the knife to the same hand that was holding the torch, Poppy lashed out.

There was a dull crack as her boot connected hard with Hare’s lower leg and then a crash as both torch and knife fell to the floor.

Thorne and Helen both moved quickly, but so did Hare.

‘He’s over here,’ Poppy shouted. ‘He’s
here
…’

Helen made for where she thought the knife might have fallen and as she scrabbled for it in the water, she was aware that Thorne and Hare were already struggling. She could hear blows being landed, breath being punched out. It was long seconds before her fingers finally closed around the handle of the knife and she stood and moved back to the bottom of the steps at the same time as she heard bodies go crashing into the far corner.

There were a few moments of silence.

‘Where is he?’ Poppy shrieked.

‘Tom?’ Helen heard moaning and then saw a figure rising from the far corner. She moved back, felt the bottom step hard against her heel. ‘Tom, that you?’

Thorne’s voice came from somewhere closer to the floor; pained, winded. ‘Don’t let him leave …’

She heard a grunt of anger that she knew had not come from Thorne, a second before the figure ran at her.

She tightened her grip on the knife, held on tight even as she felt the push, before the blade slipped easily into flesh.

Hare – and Helen prayed that it
was
him – sighed as he stepped away and off the knife, and, in that moment when Helen froze, realising what she had done, he was charging at her again, pushing her aside and clambering up the steps.

Thorne shouted Helen’s name.

She spun round and watched Hare crash out through the hatch. ‘Tom?’

A second later there was torchlight dancing across the steps and turning to see where it was coming from, Helen saw Poppy climbing unsteadily to her feet. The girl’s hands were trembling so much that she could barely hold the torch steady.

Helen lifted the knife, looked at the blood.

Then Thorne was moving slowly towards her, panting and holding his side.

‘He ran on to it,’ she said.

Thorne nodded and knelt, reached to pick up the two halves of Helen’s handset, the battery. He wiped everything down on his shirt, snapped it all back into place and tried to switch it on. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

As Helen watched Thorne climbing the steps and heading out into the darkness after Trevor Hare, she heard Poppy’s voice behind her.

‘I’ll tell them it was me … tell them
I
did it.’

Helen turned and walked across, arms outstretched.

‘I wish it had been me,’ Poppy said.

Helen kept on smiling as she walked towards reception, used her pass to go through the security door and took the stairs to the second floor. She returned each nod of recognition, said ‘fine’ and ‘thanks’ every time she was stopped and asked how she was doing. She did her best not to react to the looks of surprise and the whispered conversations that began almost as soon as she had walked past.

It was like being back in Polesford.

Three weeks since she had left her hometown for what she guessed would be the final time; four since she had last been in this place.

It felt like a lot longer.

She spotted her DCI moving between desks in the incident room. She hung back until she had caught his eye and watched him try to hide his irritation when he saw her. He nodded towards his office and she followed, another ‘fine’, another ‘thanks’ or two along the way.

DCI Adam Bonner sat back and sighed. He leaned forward
again and straightened some papers. ‘You’re not supposed to be here, Helen.’

‘I know that.’

‘So, why make it more difficult than it has to be?’

‘I’m not trying to make it difficult.’

‘It’s just routine, you know that. It’ll all get sorted in a couple more weeks and you can get back to work. But until then …’

Helen had been suspended on full pay, pending a full investigation into the events leading up to the death of Trevor Hare. The evidence of Poppy Johnston looked more than likely to clear Helen completely, but until the Professional Standards Directorate had finished looking into it all, there was still a … shadow.