TT13 Time of Death (7 page)

‘You come back here a lot then?’ Carson asked.

Helen shook her head. ‘First time in a while.’

‘No family left?’

‘Not here.’

They all looked up automatically at a creaking from above them; the noise of someone turning over in bed.

‘Must be weird,’ Gallagher said. ‘Seeing Linda again after so long.’

‘I suppose,’ Helen said. ‘Circumstances don’t exactly help.’

‘What was she like at school?’

‘I don’t know … we were all a bit wild, I suppose. Growing up in a place like this, there’s not a fat lot to do except drink as much as possible and chase lads. I seem to remember she did plenty of that.’

‘And you didn’t?’ Carson asked.

‘More than Linda did, probably.’ Helen wrapped fingers around her mug, remembering. ‘Listening to grunge in somebody’s bedroom. Sneaking into some pub or other, dressed like a tramp with a bottle of cider in my pocket.’

Gallagher looked at Carson. ‘What’s grunge?’

Carson was younger than Helen, but even she looked askance at Gallagher’s question. ‘Bloody hell, maybe you should be upstairs with Charli, chilling to a bit of trance or whatever the hell that was.’ She rolled her eyes at Helen, said, ‘So, what’s your mate doing? Thorne.’

It sounded an innocent enough question and Helen decided it was probably best not to let Carson know that Thorne was more than just a mate. ‘No idea,’ she said. Helen was not sure where Thorne was, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t sightseeing.

There was another noise from upstairs. If Linda was asleep, it did not sound as if it was remotely peaceful.

‘How long should we let her sleep for?’ Gallagher asked.

The question was aimed at Carson, but Helen took it upon herself to answer. ‘Long as possible,’ she said.

‘There’s a statement at five o’clock. She’ll want to be up for that.’

‘I’ll wake her just before then,’ Helen said.

Carson leaned back against one of the worktops. ‘Nothing earth-shattering, I don’t suppose. Not heard anything that makes me think her old man’s copping to anything.’

‘You’re presuming there’s something to cop to.’

‘Well, we haven’t had forensics back yet, but I wouldn’t bet against it.’ She looked at Helen, saw something she didn’t appear to like. ‘You weren’t here when we nicked him.’

‘Go on then.’

‘You get a sense, don’t you? Somebody’s innocent, they react like they are.’

Helen pretended to consider the theory for a moment or two. ‘I’ve nicked people who’ve been abusing kids for donkey’s years. Aggressive, predatory paedophiles. Then you turn up on their doorsteps and it’s like you’re arresting Mother Teresa.’

Carson wasn’t having it. ‘Bates didn’t exactly look shocked, that’s all I’m saying.’ She glanced at the ceiling. ‘Neither did
she
, come to that.’

‘Well, we know he had the girl in his car, and he must know he’d been seen, so maybe he was expecting the knock.’

‘Looked like more than that to me,’ Carson said.

Helen carried her mug across to the sink and rinsed it out. She let the water run longer than was necessary and stared out through the back window. The heavy rain had petered out into drizzle. The beds were bare, but neatly enough laid out; the lawn overgrown and muddy in patches, but more or less squared away. The weather wasn’t doing the garden any favours, but whoever had lived here, though they had clearly been unable to keep up their mortgage payments, had taken care of it.

‘Do they ever cop to it?’ Gallagher asked. ‘Straight away, I mean, before there’s a lot of evidence.’

‘God, yeah,’ Carson said. She was clearly someone who enjoyed bestowing the benefit of her experience on others. ‘Some of them are proud as punch. Can’t wait to spill their guts.’

Gallagher nodded slowly. ‘Oh yeah, I suppose. The ones who enjoy it.’

‘You worked on anything like this before?’ Helen asked the PC.

Carson stared at her. ‘You want to see her CV?’

‘Only asking,’ Helen said.

‘Look, you might have rank on both of us, but as far as I understand it you’re only here as a friend of Linda’s, right?’

Helen nodded.

‘Right. It’s just that I’m not quite sure why you’re suddenly quizzing officers about their job experience.’ Carson smiled, quick and thin, her point made. ‘That’s all.’

‘I’m just making conversation,’ Helen said.

Gallagher shrugged, the freckles disappearing as she reddened slightly. ‘I’m usually with the victims,’ she said. ‘Family that have lost someone or whatever. It’s different being with the suspect’s family, isn’t it? I mean, you’re not dealing with grief.’

Helen remembered the look on Linda’s face when she had said that her husband was innocent. Helen did not know if it was true and she suspected that Linda didn’t either. She could still feel those fingers digging in, nails bitten down to the quick.

Helen looked at Carson, then at Gallagher. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You are.’

Thorne was not sightseeing exactly, but he wanted to see what the police had to say at the daily press statement and, with half an hour to kill before then, he decided to take another look around the centre of town. There were streets he hadn’t got to yet. He wanted to get the feel of the place and see if he could locate any of those nice bits Helen had mentioned.

‘Make the most of your free time,’ Cornish had said.

Thorne fully intended to.

The high street branched off in two directions. Following one, he came to another parade of shops much like those he had seen already. He walked past a bookmaker’s and a curry house, a pub called the Star with blacked-out windows, and, sandwiched between vacant premises, a milkshake bar that appeared to knock out tacky, reproduction Americana on the side. Cadillac-shaped mirrors; Stars and Stripes bunting; neon bar signs. Thorne stared in through the door and saw that, save for a young woman sitting behind the counter painting her nails, the place was empty. He wondered how either of the lines on sale kept the place in business.

A little further on, he stopped in front of a party shop called Celebrations. The unlit window display was festooned with heart-shaped balloons, cards, bows and teddy bears. Thorne could only suppose that the place was closed as a mark of respect; that even on what would otherwise be one of their busiest days of the year, the owners had realised that people in the town would have little to celebrate.

Gestures were important, Thorne thought. When there was nothing else you could do.

He doubled back and turned on to the other branch of the high street. It was immediately obvious that this was the older part of town, or at least, the part that had yet to be developed. He passed a tall and imposing building, looked up at the inscription on the ornate brickwork and saw that it had once been a school. The huge windows were boarded up and there had been some half-hearted work with a spray-can on the ground-floor boards. He wasn’t altogether certain that gang-style graffiti had reached Polesford yet, but if it had,
TRACY IS A SLAG
was a piss-poor attempt at tagging.

On the other side of the street was a line of even older buildings; the walls uneven and criss-crossed with black or brown timbers. Elizabethan, was it? Jacobean? Thorne was not even sure which one of those came first, but he didn’t need a history degree to see that, with one exception, they were empty and had fallen into serious disrepair. The property on the end had been converted into a pub and, judging by the sign on the pavement outside, the Magpie’s Nest had a great deal to offer its customers.

Quiz Night with GREAT prizes. Karaoke. LIVE Premiership football and an EXTENSIVE menu
.

A glance inside was enough to confirm that these were the things that the punters of Polesford wanted. The place was certainly doing a lot better than its rival just up the road. Thorne wondered about nipping in for a quick half, but decided to wait.

A minute further on, a grand archway that was clearly even older than the buildings he had just been looking at led to the abbey that Helen had mentioned. Thorne looked up at the gargoyles above the abbey entrance, higher still to the flag of St George, snapping in the wind above the turrets. A noticeboard told him that parts of the building were from the thirteenth century, that the gatehouse itself was four hundred years older still. There were pictures of the famous stained glass windows in the baptistry, of tapestries, carved screens and memorial tablets. A notice explained that a full guide to the abbey’s historic interior and the ‘sensory garden’ adjacent to it could be found in the visitors’ centre.

Thorne did not bother going inside.

A long, straight track, no more than three feet wide and with spiked railings on either side, led Thorne to the river and he stopped on the bridge across which he and Helen had driven only a few hours before. He remembered Helen’s silence as they had approached the place, the atmosphere in the car. She seemed determined, yet apprehensive. Like someone who knows they need to get rid of the pain, but still dreads the hospital visit. No, it wasn’t quite that, Thorne thought. The truth was, he could only guess at what had been going on in Helen’s head, because he was still not familiar enough with her moods.

He could almost hear Hendricks laughing.
Yeah, plus you’re an insensitive bastard at the best of times
…

It was probably just down to coming home, going back to your roots, whatever. There would always be mixed feelings, Thorne supposed. Only supposed, because he had never left home as Helen had done, never moved away from London. There had been many occasions when he’d wondered if he should have done.

Looking over the edge of the bridge, the green-brown water was spattered with drizzle, the odd plastic bag or bottle trapped
in its currents moving quickly beneath him. The banks seemed solid enough, but not very far away, the Anker had joined with rising groundwater in low-lying areas and water every bit as uninviting as this was now sloshing about in people’s living rooms. Thorne had seen a little of how the people of Polesford were handling a man-made tragedy, but he wondered how they would cope with the worst that nature could throw at them. He had a sense that, for all the talk of a town united in shock or outrage, it was not a place that took a great deal of pride in itself. He thought about those historic buildings, now derelict or ringing with the sounds of karaoke on a Friday night. He guessed that anyone trying to galvanise the locals for a ‘Polesford in Bloom’ bid would have their work cut out.

A community coming together in the wake of a terrible crime was a story that always played well. But Thorne had been rather more struck by those who seemed only to be thinking about themselves.

He looked at his watch.

He still had ten minutes before the press statement was scheduled.

Thorne walked across the bridge, away from the town centre, until he came to St Mary’s. The school that both Poppy Johnston and Jessica Toms attended. It was very different from the building on the other side of the bridge, its honey-coloured brickwork now decorated with chipboard and sixth-form graffiti.

Grey breezeblock and glass. A desolate playground, dotted with puddles.

The gates were padlocked, and adorned with small bunches of flowers and soggy cards; a collection of sodden cuddly toys fastened to the metalwork or wedged between the railings. Thorne had expected no less. The shrine was always the first thing to appear these days, the most obvious manifestation of that ‘community united in grief’.

Easy, knee-jerk …

He looked at the water running down the cellophane, dripping from the ears of a smiling, stuffed rabbit. Thorne tried to suppress his cynicism, if only for a while, and remind himself how important these gestures could be to people. The simple fact that for most, they were sincere and heartfelt.

There were more flowers, piled together at the bottom of the gates, most – other than those freshly laid – wilted or flattened. Petrol station arrangements.

Thorne crouched down to read some of the messages.

The curtains in the bedroom were drawn, but they were thin and badly fitted, and what was left of the day was bleeding through the fabric or creeping around the edges. Helen nudged one back and peeked to see what was happening outside. Almost immediately, a camera flashed and she quickly drew her head back. The fading light and poor weather had driven all but the most determined of the locals away and now, thankfully, the journalists were outnumbered by police officers, the more experienced among them having left to secure prime positions for the forthcoming press statement.

Helen saw a woman pointing up at the window, so she let the curtain fall back and stepped away. She walked across to the bed and bent to lay a hand on Linda’s arm.

‘Linda.’ She waited a few seconds, then said it again, rubbing gently at skin that felt rough and cold. If Linda had pulled the duvet up to cover herself, it had fallen from her as she’d moved in her sleep. She was wearing a grey T-shirt and knickers. The rest of her clothes – shoes, jeans, sweatshirt – lay in a heap by the
side of the bed. A black bra strap was visible, twisted across her pale shoulder.

Linda turned over slowly. Her eyes flickered for a few seconds then opened suddenly and she shifted away towards the wall. She closed her eyes again and groaned.

‘Sorry. Forgot where I was for a minute.’ Her voice was quiet and cracked.

‘Don’t worry,’ Helen said.

‘What was happening.’

Helen put a hand on her arm again. ‘You want me to get you some water or something?’

‘Jesus.’ Linda leaned to turn on a lamp next to the bed. She raised herself up and looked around the room. A plain white wardrobe and matching chest of drawers. Linda’s suitcases and several bin-bags stuffed full of clothes lay next to the door. ‘And I thought
we
lived in a shithole.’

Helen laughed and when she stopped she became aware of voices in the next room. Charli and Danny. The conversation was just audible, a word or two, so Helen spoke quickly, suddenly worried that it might not be something she or Linda would want to hear.