The Dying Hours (6 page)

A hundred yards or so from his front door – walking as quickly as he was able in an effort to prevent his dinner going cold – Alan Herbert decided that when a trip to the fish and chip shop was the highlight of your day, things could definitely be better.

Sundays were always, well…
Sundays
, but even so.

The day had not panned out quite the way it was supposed to. He hadn’t planned on dozing away most of his afternoon for a kick-off. Waking up with a crick in his neck and drool on the front of his sweater, surprised to see that it was already dark outside. He had never intended to spend the majority of his waking hours slumped in front of the television, eking out the Sunday paper and using what little energy he could summon up to heave himself out of his chair every hour or so to go and put the kettle on again.

Drowning in bloody Tetley’s.

By rights, he should have been seeing them off about now. ‘Take care’ and ‘See you soon’ and the kids waving out of the Hyundai’s back window. He should be sorting out the leftovers from their lunch; a chicken sandwich for supper, maybe.

His son had called bright and early to let him know they wouldn’t be able to make it after all. His youngest coming down with something, so he said. Really sorry, he said, because they were all looking forward
so
much to visiting. One of the kids was always coming down with something. Almost as often as his daughter-in-law had to change her plans for the weekend at the last minute because of work, or there was a problem with the car.

Always something.

There were lights on in many of the front windows as he passed. Curtains were drawn or blinds were down. He walked on, wondering how many of the people behind them had spent their Sunday unconscious, drooling, drinking tea.

Killing time.

It might help of course if he didn’t get up so ridiculously early. There would be fewer hours to get through. He’d always thought it was stupid, the way old people did that, when the fact was that most of them had bugger all to do. All the same, there he was, dragging himself out of bed before seven most days; wide awake and dressing in the dark so as to be good and ready for a day doing nothing.

A collar and tie, for pity’s sake.

Down to a life wearing one sort of uniform or another, he supposed, but still…

‘You should see someone,’ his son had said to him on the phone a few months before.

‘Doctor, you mean?’

‘Well… or some of your old mates. Get out and about a bit more.’

‘I can’t be arsed.’

Some days I can’t bring myself to turn the lights on and those trips to the kitchen feel like an assault course
…

He had been to see the doctor.

‘It’s not unusual to be depressed,’ the GP had told him. ‘Given your age and circumstances.’

‘Depressed? Both my knees are buggered and I can’t hear for shit. I’m bloody
livid
!’

Easier to make a joke of it, same as always.

The hinges screamed when he pushed open his front gate and he remembered that there was oil in the garage, somewhere. It had been a long while since he’d ventured inside. He hurried up the path, stopping only to kick aside a fast-food container that some passing drunk had thrown into the garden. The smell of his haddock and chips increased his hunger, the bag warm under his arm. He’d taken the vinegar out of the cupboard before he’d left, buttered some bread.

He had just turned the key in the lock when he heard the voice behind him.

‘Hello, stranger.’

He turned, saw an old man walking up the path towards him. A cap and a long, dark coat. The face was familiar, as much as he could make out in the half-light, but Herbert couldn’t place it.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Do I…⁠?’

‘Yeah, been a while, mate. Definitely been a while.’ The man was walking faster, only a few feet away.

‘Christ,’ Herbert said, dropping his dinner as the name came to him, just a second too late.

Andrew Cooper stood on the doorstep of his parents’ house and studied his visitors for a few seconds before inviting them in. He was short and stocky, a rugby player’s build, with a full head of almost entirely grey hair and blue eyes that were watery behind his glasses. He might well have resembled his father, but based on what Thorne had seen of John Cooper, it was impossible to tell.

The son looked exhausted.

‘Thanks for letting us come round,’ Thorne said. ‘I know it’s a bit late.’

‘Glad of the break,’ Cooper said. ‘I’ve spent all day putting stuff into boxes and bin-bags.’ He nodded at nothing in particular. ‘Paula’s back at the hotel. She couldn’t face this, so…’

‘It’s understandable.’

‘I got the short straw,’ Cooper said.

Thorne and Hendricks followed him into the living room. The furniture had been pushed back against the wall and the centre of the room was now taken up by those boxes and bin-bags Cooper had mentioned. Thorne saw him staring at Hendricks and made the introductions.

‘Doctor Hendricks is helping me out,’ Thorne said.

‘I’m a pathologist,’ Hendricks said, at a loss for anything else to say.

Cooper said, ‘You’re not the one who…⁠?’

‘No,’ Thorne said.

‘No,’ Hendricks repeated, shaking his head. ‘I’m just a consultant.’

The three of them stood a little awkwardly and looked around the room. Thorne and Hendricks were both still chewing the gum they had stopped off to buy on the drive down. It wasn’t lost on Thorne that he was doing exactly the opposite of what he’d done the night before, when he’d
wanted
the beer on his breath.

Thorne nodded towards the upright piano against the far wall. ‘Which one of them played?’

‘They both did a bit,’ Cooper said. He perched on the arm of an old leather sofa. There were patches of sweat under the arms and at the neck of his baggy grey T-shirt. ‘Still did. The old songs, you know?’

Thorne nodded, remembering something he’d been thinking about in the room upstairs a few nights earlier.

Spoon, croon, honeymoon
.

‘So what, like Cole Porter or whatever?’

Cooper laughed. ‘More like Gene Vincent or Eddie Cochran,’ he said. ‘Dad was a Teddy boy.’

‘Oh, right,’ Thorne said. It was easy to forget that those who seemed so old – even to him – had once been every bit as rebellious in their day as those who came after them. That bondage trousers and Mohicans were no more shocking than drainpipes and DAs. He tried to picture the old man in all the gear, dressed to the nines in velvet drape coat and winkle-pickers, but the picture would not come.

The yellowing teeth, the sliver of greyish tongue
…

Cooper stood up. ‘You said something about the bedroom?’

They followed him upstairs, waited behind him as he hesitated on the threshold for just a second or two, then stepped inside. There were more bags and boxes. The dressing table and the window ledge, on which Thorne remembered seeing arrangements of family photos, were bare. The bed had been stripped.

‘You haven’t thrown anything away, have you?’ Thorne asked.

Cooper turned to look at him. ‘No.’

‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean…’

‘Just haven’t had the chance yet,’ Cooper said. ‘That’s all. There’ll certainly be a few trips to the charity shop once I’m finished, mind you. I mean obviously there’s loads of stuff that means a lot, but Paula and I both agreed that there’s no point hanging on to clothes or what have you. The knick-knacks, you know?’

Thorne nodded, thinking about his father. Thinking that there had been no need to choose what to wrap carefully in brown paper and what to bag up for Oxfam. That there had been nothing much of anything left after the fire.

‘All the stuff’s still in here,’ Cooper said. ‘So, help yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ Thorne said. ‘Shouldn’t take long.’

‘I’m still not exactly clear what it’s all about, mind you.’

Thorne exchanged a look with Hendricks. ‘Well, there’s still the possibility of an inquest and, if that happens, I want to be sure my memory of exactly what was in this room that night is as clear as possible.’ Cooper considered this for a few seconds and shrugged. ‘Just belt and braces, really,’ Thorne said. In fact, now that the suicide had been signed off on and the cause of death established beyond doubt, an inquest was extremely unlikely, but Thorne’s explanation had obviously sounded reasonable enough. It would have been just his luck had Andrew Cooper turned out to be a lawyer or a coroner’s officer.

Thorne felt uncomfortable lying, but it was certainly an easier reason to give for his presence than the real one, and not just because of the distress that might have caused.

‘So what if we
do
find it?’ Hendricks had asked him in the car. ‘What the hell use d’you think it’s going to be anyway?’

‘Not a clue,’ Thorne had said.

Hendricks had groaned, but Thorne had not intended the pun.

Despite Cooper’s invitation to help themselves, he remained in the doorway as Thorne and Hendricks began to search.

It only took a few minutes.

They began with the bin-bags, as they seemed more likely to be destined for the charity shop than the boxes and Thorne guessed that what he was after would not be among the items of sentimental value. It was easy enough to assess the contents of each black bag quickly and it was Hendricks who found what they had come looking for in only the third bag he had rummaged through.

He said, ‘Here you go,’ and handed it to Thorne.

‘What?’ Cooper said, from the doorway.

The book of crossword puzzles. The tatty paperback that Thorne had seen lying on the floor on Margaret Cooper’s side of the bed. On the floor below the bedside table on which book and glasses had been so neatly arranged.

What was wrong with the picture?
 

‘Why was it on the floor?’ Thorne had asked as they were driving down.

‘I don’t know,’ Hendricks had said. ‘Because she dropped it?’

‘When though? It’s not like you inject insulin and then bang, you’re spark out a second later and the book you’re reading falls from your hand, anything like that. And more to the point, I don’t think you spend a few minutes knocking off a crossword just before you and your old man top yourselves, do you? You do something like that because it’s the same thing you do every night before you go to sleep. That’s her routine, right? Same as taking her teeth out in the bathroom. That’s what she does on a normal night.’

‘It might have been lying there from the night before.’

‘No way.’ Thorne had shaken his head, adamant. ‘Everything else on her side of the bed was neat. Methodical. Just that book on the floor, because maybe she
meant
to drop it…’

On his knees, Thorne opened the book and flicked through the pages, past dozens of completed crosswords. He stopped at the first one that was incomplete; the one he believed Margaret Cooper had been busy with on the night she and her husband had died.

The words were easy enough to spot.

The blue biro pressed heavily against the paper, the letters that little bit thicker than the others in the grid.

In seven squares towards the bottom.

HELP US
 

There’s actually a rhythm to it, like what do you call it, like a woodpecker or something. A rat-tat-tat.

The noise that the gun barrel makes against the old man’s teeth.

He was trembling enough before – probably had that shaky thing in his hands same as lots of old people have – so it’s hardly surprising that it’s going like billy-o, now he’s got the barrel rattling around in there.

Herbert pulls the gun from his mouth. He fights for breath. He’s dribbling and gasping like they might not even need the bloody gun and he says, ‘Please…’

He’s sitting in a chair, probably the same one he sits in to watch TV which is currently tuned to one of those cable channels that show endless repeats. An episode of
The Sweeney
, which is quite funny, all things considered. The TV is turned up nice and loud.

‘Come on now. We’ve been through this.’

‘I can’t,’ Herbert splutters.

There are
two
guns, of course: the one he pressed into the old man’s shaky hand and the one he’s currently pointing at the old man’s head. Months before, putting all this together, he’d realised he’d need an extra incentive for this one. Something that would stop Herbert simply turning the gun round and pointing it at him. A threat over and above the big one.

‘Do you want me to show you again?’

‘No,’ Herbert says.

‘One more look? Might help you feel a bit braver.’

‘No!’ The old man shakes his head and it’s hard to tell if it’s tears or sweat that’s spattering the collar of his shirt.

‘Right. Lovely. So, shut up and get on with it.’ He steps back, the gun still pointed, just far enough away to avoid the mess, though he’s fairly sure which way that will all be going. He waves a finger. ‘You need to angle it up a bit as well.’

Herbert puts the gun back into his mouth. Pushing it past lips that don’t want to open, teeth that refuse to stop chattering. He gags and withdraws the barrel an inch or two.

‘Probably tastes a bit… oily, doesn’t it?’

Fear was all he’d seen last thing from the others. Piss-yourself terror, but this one’s a game old bird, had to give him that much. Naked bloody hatred in this one’s eyes for those few seconds before they close and his finger jerks against the trigger.

Done and dusted.

Not quite so much noise as he was expecting, no more than a banger going off, but he was right about the mess. He puts his gun back in the bag and steps forward to have a good look.

There’s stuff stuck to the wall, like bits of mince and eggshell and it gives it a… texture. Same as, what was it called? Flock wallpaper.

Like an Indian restaurant.

‘OK?’

Helen looked up to see DC Gill Bellinger leaning against her desk, papers in hand; just passing. Helen nodded and smiled, but Bellinger did not seem in any hurry to go anywhere. Keen for a little more than a smile and a nod.

‘Yeah, fine,’ Helen said.

If not quite on a daily basis, Helen certainly heard it every few days. She heard it at the coffee machine, in the cafeteria, during stilted and unnecessary ‘catch-ups’ with her DCI. She heard it from good friends and distant colleagues, auxiliary staff she barely knew. The same question or some variation on it.

‘How’s tricks, Helen?’

‘So, what’s up?’

‘Good day?’

Wherever, whenever, whoever; she knew very well what they meant.

Are you all right?
 

And she knew what they were really asking.

Are you sure you didn’t come back to work a little too soon? Should you not have had a few more of those counselling sessions?
 

She did her best to answer the questions as casually as they had been asked, but it wasn’t easy, because she had begun to grow tired of the concern. Now, even the lamest of jokes or most gentle of enquiries could cause her to snap at someone. This was stupid, because it would only confirm what some of them thought they already knew. She was on edge at best, unstable at worst, and this was anything but ideal when it came to working with abused children.

So she told herself she was being paranoid and tried to curb her temper.

‘Fine,’ she said again.

Bellinger laid down her paperwork on Helen’s desk. She leaned closer and lowered her voice. ‘So, how’s things with Tom?’

Gill Bellinger was the member of the team Helen trusted most, a solid drinking partner when one was needed and a good friend who had done all she could to take care of Helen’s family during the siege three months before. She was also the only person Helen had told about Thorne; a slip, during one of those much-needed drinking sessions. She and Thorne had decided it might not be a sensible idea to go public about their relationship just yet, both well aware that the circumstances in which they had got together – that first tender moment, an honour guard of armed police and Thorne awash with another man’s blood – were likely to set too many tongues wagging.

‘All good,’ Helen said.

‘He coping, then?’

Helen looked at her friend. Thought: What, coping better than I am, you mean? Coping with
me
? Then she saw Bellinger’s expression change and understood that she had been talking about Thorne’s reassignment to uniform. She told herself to calm down.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Better than we would, I bet,’ Bellinger said, laughing. ‘God, can you imagine?’ She straightened her nicely cut grey jacket and gave a mock shudder. ‘Back into those bloody black skirts and old lady tights. Or even worse, the
trousers
!’

Helen nodded towards her computer. ‘Sorry, Gill, I’m up to my eyeballs.’

‘No probs.’ Bellinger gathered up her files and stepped away. ‘We’ll catch up later…’

Helen raised a hand and smiled again and wondered how best to avoid her friend for the rest of the day.

‘Lunchtime, maybe,’ Bellinger said.

Helen went back to the document on her screen. A statement from the neighbour of a two-year-old discovered at home alone with multiple fractures. A woman who claimed to have been ‘worried about that poor child’ for months, but not quite worried enough to have picked up the phone and let anyone know.

Thorne was coping pretty well, Helen decided. Certainly a damn sight better than she would be in the same circumstances, Gill Bellinger had been right about that much. Some days were a little more difficult than others, of course. There were… silences. There were times when it was best for them to avoid one another and when she couldn’t wait for him to bugger off back to Kentish Town and sulk on his own. Tom Thorne was nobody’s ray of sunshine 24/7, but she’d heard enough about him to know that he was a moody bugger long before he’d been bumped off the Murder Squad. It didn’t bother her too much, because she knew it was something they had in common. Any copper who didn’t know what a black mood felt like wasn’t doing their job properly. It was just a question of how you chose to handle it, that was all. The people, the things you turned to.

The music, now that
was
an issue, the dead dogs and the lost loves, but it was a minor irritation, all things considered.

Helen tried to focus. The neighbour of the injured child who demanded to know why it had taken this long for the police to do anything. ‘We could all hear the poor little beggar crying,’ she’d said.

Things had certainly been tense between the two of them over the last few days, since that Friday night shift. Thorne had got a bee in his bonnet about those suicides, about being so firmly put in his place and it was clear that he had been expecting a little more support from her. They had not spoken since the afternoon before, when he’d driven off to meet up with Phil Hendricks. She looked at her watch. He was probably still sleeping off a hangover; the last day’s rest before he was back at work.

A little more support…

Helen glanced across and saw that Gill Bellinger was watching her from the other side of the office. She turned back to her screen and reminded herself that were it not for the bee in Thorne’s bonnet three months before, she might not be sitting where she was.

He would still be doing a job he loved.

She would call him at lunchtime, she decided. See what he was up to. She could see if her sister would take Alfie for a few hours, then offer to drive up to Kentish Town and they could have dinner in that Indian place he was always banging on about.

A young DC stopped at her desk on his way back from the Gents. She looked up at him and smiled.

‘Everything all right, Helen?’ he asked.