TT13 Time of Death (8 page)

‘They’re making a statement in five minutes. Thought you’d want to come down for it.’

‘Is there much point?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘What do you think the chances are they’ll say, “Sorry, we cocked this one up and we’ve arrested the wrong man”?’ Mercifully for Helen, Linda did not let the silence that followed become too awkward. ‘No chance, right?’

‘They’ll probably spend ten minutes saying precisely sod all,’ Helen said. ‘Enquiries are ongoing, grateful for the co-operation of the public, blah blah blah. Basically, they’ve got to give the press something.’

‘The press have got
us
,’ Linda said. She pointed at the window, at those she knew were gathered outside the house. ‘We’re the fresh meat.’

‘I know it feels like that.’ Helen was not sure if by ‘us’, Linda was including her husband or not. ‘It’s not for ever, trust me.’

Linda looked at her, and Helen could see how much the woman wanted to believe it, but ultimately could not. ‘Christ, I’m tired. I’d happily knock myself out, try and sleep through all of it.’

Helen glanced at the bedside table but could see no sign of the tablets Carson had mentioned.

‘I can’t though, can I? I need to keep everything together for them two.’ She nodded at the wall. ‘God only knows what it’s like for them.’

‘Not easy.’

‘What they’re thinking.’

‘They’ll be worried about you, course they will.’

‘They’ll be worried about their dad,’ Linda said quickly. ‘That’s how they both think of him and they’ll be wanting to know when he’s coming home.’

It was obvious that Charli and Danny were able to hear that their mother was awake, because the music began again. A low drone, then something that hissed like an amplified aerosol; a few angry squirts before the drums kicked in.

‘All that teenage stuff,’ Linda said. ‘Tantrums and drugs and the rest of it. I can deal with that, but
this
shit …’

Helen laughed again and so did Linda, and, just for a moment or two, Helen saw the teenage girl she had known twenty years before: badgering her to pass the cider bottle; nodding out to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. ‘Thank God I’ve got a while before all that starts.’

‘It’ll come quicker than you think.’

‘Don’t.’

Linda swung her legs off the bed. She rubbed some warmth
into her thighs, then leaned down to pick her jeans up. Helen bent to help her, got to them first and passed them over.

‘You do cases like this, right?’ Linda looked at her. ‘Murders and rapes, I mean. Serious stuff.’

‘I have done,’ Helen said.

‘They get it wrong, don’t they? Sometimes, they just make a mistake and I mean we probably don’t get to hear about most of them because nobody likes to look bad, do they? It happens though, right? Somebody just gets something wrong. Not their fault, they just get some duff information, whatever. All I’m saying, they make mistakes, don’t they?’

Helen was not surprised at straws such as this being so desperately clutched at. Even with what little she had heard about the case against Stephen Bates, it was all they could realistically be.

She took a breath. ‘Linda—’

Linda stood up quickly and stepped into her jeans. The volume of the music had gone up a notch and, without saying anything, she snatched up her sweatshirt and marched out of the room. Helen heard her open the door to the bedroom her kids were in and ask them to turn the music down. She didn’t shout. She said ‘please’.

A few seconds later, Linda appeared in the doorway shaking her head. She cranked up a smile that faltered a little at first, then set itself. The effort necessary to keep it in place, to hold the tears or the scream at bay, was obvious enough.

‘Yes, we make mistakes,’ Helen said. It was a simple truth. It did not change her belief that this time they had almost certainly got it right. ‘We make lots of mistakes.’

Everyone had gathered in the small car park that served the health centre and library as well as the Memorial Hall. It was also, according to a handwritten sign, the venue for a car-boot sale the following weekend. There were perhaps a dozen print journalists and half that number again working with cameras from the BBC, ITN, Sky and Channel Five. The day was dimming quickly and several technicians wielded hand-held lamps, ready to go.

Thorne stood behind the media line; just another interested observer, alongside those locals who had braved the cold weather instead of simply watching it at home on one of the rolling news channels.

‘Bloody daft, all this. All these people …’

Thorne had found himself standing next to the same old man with the terrier who had spoken to Helen outside the Bates house. ‘So, why are you here?’ he asked.

The old man looked at him as though the question were ridiculous. ‘Got to walk the dog.’

Thorne turned side on to the old man and took out his phone.

‘Bit ghoulish though, wouldn’t you say?’

With no way of knowing that he was a police officer, Thorne had to presume that the old man had him marked down as one of the ghouls. He heard him hawk spit up into his mouth.

‘Won’t hear anything we don’t already know, I don’t suppose. They won’t be answering any questions.’

The expert opinion, casually rendered, suggested that it was not the first such event the old man had attended in the past few weeks. Clearly, his dog needed a lot of walking. ‘So, what is it you think you know?’ Thorne asked him. The dog was sniffing at his shin.

‘He took those girls, didn’t he? Bates.’ He spat the name out, pulling the dog back towards him. ‘They’re still looking for them, because he won’t tell anyone where they are. That sort never do though, do they?’ He pointed, his hand shaking slightly, towards the cameras ahead of him. ‘They want all this carry-on, don’t they? They want to be famous.’

Thorne said nothing, though he could not deny that he’d come across a few of that sort. One man, especially. He held his breath as the roar of waves crashing against rocks rose suddenly above the low chatter of those around him. The scream of seabirds and the feel of something obscene between his fingers.

‘We get a few visitors here.’ The old man appeared not to care that the conversation had become a monologue. ‘To see the abbey and what have you … they’ll be coming because of all this, now. Guided tours, I shouldn’t wonder, to see where it happened. Not that some of the shopkeepers will be complaining. The restaurants.’

Thorne moved away. Dialling Helen’s number, he walked back out on to the pavement.

‘It’s me,’ he said, when Helen answered. ‘Everything OK?’

Helen said that everything was fine.

Thorne told her where he was, stepped back as a white van
rounded the corner quickly and tore through a large puddle in the road.

‘Yeah, we’re about to watch it,’ Helen said.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Yeah …’

Thorne understood that Helen could not speak freely, so he didn’t push it. He asked when she wanted him to come and pick her up.

‘About half an hour?’ She sounded tired, ready to call it a day.

The lamps were coming on behind him, so Thorne walked back into the car park. ‘I’ll see you in a bit,’ he said.

Flanked by several officers and civilian staff, the Assistant Chief Constable for Warwickshire walked briskly out through the doors to the Memorial Hall. He was around the same age as Cornish; younger than Thorne. He was tall and skinny, an imposing and authoritative figure in his best dress uniform, though the cap was perhaps a little large for his head. As he took a notebook from his pocket, a smartly dressed young woman stepped ahead of him.

‘Assistant Chief Constable Harris will now make a short statement, after which I’m afraid there will not be time to take any questions.’ There were immediate grumblings, but the media liaison officer simply raised a well-practised hand. ‘In an investigation of this nature, I’m sure you will appreciate that time is of the essence. So, thanks for your understanding.’

She smiled and stepped back, nodded to the ACC.

Harris glanced down at his notebook, then addressed the gathering without needing to look at it again.

‘We are continuing to question a forty-three-year-old local man, in connection with the abduction of Poppy Johnston and the disappearance of Jessica Toms. As far as that investigation goes, all possible efforts are being made to ascertain their whereabouts and we remain hopeful of a positive outcome. Further
information will be made available as and when it becomes appropriate to do so, but until then I can assure you that we are doing everything we can. We are giving this case the highest priority. Once again, I’m grateful to the residents of Polesford for their continued support and their co-operation in this matter. Thank you …’

Short and sweet. The media liaison officer looked pleased.

The instant the ACC stepped back, the questions that he would not have time to answer began to be asked; shouted.

‘Can you confirm that the man you’ve arrested is Stephen Bates?’

‘Do you think the girls are still alive?’

‘What’s Bates saying to you …?’

They were still shouting as the ACC and his entourage disappeared back inside the Memorial Hall, and they were still filming. Footage of the police refusing to answer questions was always nice to have.

Thorne watched the crowd begin to disperse as soon as the doors had closed. The lamps were switched off. Journalists and cameramen climbed into vans or headed away quickly in search of the nearest pub.

The old man and his dog walked past him. ‘Told you,’ the old man said. ‘Bloody waste of time.’

Thorne turned and moved off in the other direction and found himself walking alongside one of the reporters who had been firing questions at him earlier, when he had left the house in which Linda and her family were holed up. The man had a recorder slung over his shoulder. He detached the microphone as he walked, wound the lead around it and shoved it into a rucksack.

He nodded to Thorne. ‘What did you make of that?’

Thorne could not be certain that he had been recognised. The reporter did not seem to be paying a great deal of attention to
him, professional or otherwise, and to all intents and purposes he was simply making conversation.

Thorne had nothing to say, one way or the other.

‘Like the man said, you’ve got to stay hopeful, right?’ The reporter heaved his rucksack on to his shoulder. ‘That’s the line most of tomorrow’s papers are going to be taking, anyway. That’s the big headline.’ He raised a hand as if to write it in the air. ‘
Keep hoping
…’

Thorne jogged across the road and away in the other direction.

Walking towards the supermarket, where he’d left the car, he was thinking about those flowers propped against the gates of St Mary’s school, some of the messages he’d seen.

Words that had faded, or run in the rain.

PRAYING FOR YOU
.

ALL OUR THOUGHTS WHEREVER YOU ARE
.

OUR LITTLE ANGELS
.

The implication was clear enough, and sobering.

Hope was all well and good.

Helen said, ‘We didn’t exactly have a lot of choice.’

Thorne grimaced. ‘I’m starting to miss that hotel. Will we have our own bathroom?’

‘You’re welcome to sleep in the bloody car.’

With help from her sister, Helen had arranged to stay with a woman called Paula Hitchman, who lived on the outskirts of town, close to where housing gave way to farm and field. Paula had gone to the same school as Helen and Linda, but was two years younger, and though Helen vaguely remembered her, it was Jenny that she had been friends with. On the phone that morning, an enthusiastic Paula had said that she and her boyfriend would be working late, but that Helen and Thorne were welcome to get there whenever they fancied and make themselves at home. She told Helen that she would leave a key for them.

‘Good of her,’ Helen said. ‘Considering it was Jenny she was mates with.’

‘Your sister had friends?’ Thorne asked.

‘She was nicer when she was a kid.’

‘I should hope so.’

‘We were close, believe it or not.’

‘So what happened?’

‘You get older, don’t you?’ Helen looked at her feet. ‘You grow apart.’

They had decided to get something to eat first. Helen didn’t much like the look of the Punjab Palace, so with little other choice they had parked near the abbey and were walking back towards the Magpie’s Nest to check out the ‘extensive’ menu it seemed so proud of.

‘Still sounds like it might be a bit awkward, though,’ Thorne said. ‘If you don’t really know this woman.’

‘It’ll be fine.’ Helen stopped at the entrance to the abbey, stared through the archway.

‘You want to go in?’ Thorne asked.

It was almost six o’clock and bar a distant light near the visitors’ centre, the building and surrounding grounds were in darkness. Helen shook her head and carried on towards the pub.

‘Does she know you’re a copper? Paula?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Helen said. ‘Probably.’ She stopped outside the pub and looked at the same chalkboard Thorne had seen earlier. ‘Why?’

‘Maybe she thinks she’s going to get all the gossip.’

‘Maybe she’s just being nice.’

Thorne pushed the door open, let Helen go past, then followed her into the pub. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said.

The fabric of the building might well have been centuries old, but the interior had been gutted and the refit was far from sympathetic. A bar clad in polished pine and bog-standard pub furniture; the small dining room and snug brightly lit. One whitewashed wall was home to an arrangement of stuffed fish with
engraved plaques beneath, the collection sandwiched between a hand-drawn sign advertising various pub events and a poster listing televised Premiership fixtures.

Thorne and Helen weaved their way through the crowd of drinkers to the dining area and sat at one of the four melamine-topped tables. The room smelled faintly of bleach and a Simply Red track was drifting from a speaker high up on the opposite wall.

‘You sure about that Indian?’ Thorne whispered.