TT13 Time of Death (17 page)

‘Labradoodle,’ the man said.

Thorne wondered if this might be the dog responsible for discovering the body, then remembered that the SOCO had described the man as being old. This dog’s owner was mid-forties, if that. Though he was neither old nor decrepit, as far as Thorne could tell, he was carrying a walking stick. Thorne could only presume it was an affectation of some sort. ‘Labrador and poodle, right?’

The dog was still pulling hard. ‘I’d normally let him off,’ the man said. ‘Give him a run. They’ve told us not to though, because of what’s happening over there.’ He nodded back towards the area of the woods Thorne had come from.

‘Probably be gone by tomorrow,’ Thorne said.

‘One of those girls, is it?’

‘I think so,’ Thorne said.

The man looked away, stared off in another direction for a few
moments. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it.’ He pulled at his dog. ‘I’ve got a daughter the same age, near enough.’

‘Right.’

‘Sounds like they’ve got the bloke though, so I suppose that’s something.’

The dog began barking again, and Thorne and the man turned to see another dog-walker – a young woman with a sausage dog – approaching. She stopped when she reached them and the two owners exchanged nods and watched their pets greet one another. The usual canine pleasantries.

I sniff your arse, you sniff mine.

Clearly acquainted with one another, the man and the woman began to talk. About the weather looking better which was a blessing, you know, considering the flooding. About having to keep their animals on leads which was a real shame, but understandable obviously, given the terrible circumstances. The woman glanced at Thorne once or twice, but didn’t speak directly to him. Perhaps she was wondering where his dog was.

When the woman was walking away, Thorne said, ‘You walk your dog here a lot?’

‘Every day usually,’ the man said.

‘Quite a few other dogs around as well by the look of it.’

‘Yeah, like I said, it’s a good place to let them run.’

Thorne nodded, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘I’d better let you get on.’ He nodded towards the labradoodle. ‘Looks like he’s bored with me now.’

‘You a copper?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘You look like one,’ the man said.

Charli said, ‘That woman gives me the fucking creeps.’

Danny was lying on the bed, headphones plugged in, staring into space. He shook his head, irritated, then yanked one earbud out. ‘What?’

‘Her,’ Charli said. ‘That copper. The new one.’

Danny shrugged. ‘She’s a fed, what do you expect? They’re all wankers.’

‘Yeah, well you would say that.’

Danny pulled a face.

‘Public enemy number one.’ She pulled a face back. ‘Gangsta boy.’

Danny gave her the finger, plugged his earbud back in.

A few months before, a police officer had arrived at the door to talk to their mother. Danny and a few of his friends had been making nuisances of themselves, there had been a complaint. There was some talk about strong drink and weed being smoked. It was a warning, that was all; the copper was local and their mother knew him. She promised to have a serious word and that was the end of it. There had been several extremely serious
words, a clout or two and Danny had lost his computer for a fortnight which had really been hitting him where it hurt. Later on, Charli had asked her brother about the weed and he had said that one of his mates had been smoking it. He’d been lying, obviously. She always knew when he was lying and she suspected he’d been helping himself to some of her weed, so she just made sure he knew she was on to him and moved her stash somewhere else.

She’d stopped worrying about the police finding it when they searched the house. Even if they had, they surely had bigger things to worry about and they were hardly going to come after her for a twenty bag of weed, were they? She wondered if she could have a quiet word with that copper, Weeks. If she really was a mate of her mum’s, she might be able to pull some strings, whatever.

Could we have chips? Can you put in a good word for Steve? And maybe you could try and get my stash back …

She dropped on to the bed thinking how much she would love to skin up right then and there and get out of it for a while. She wouldn’t even mind sharing some with Danny.

She stared at her brother until he sighed heavily and turned his music off again. He yanked out his earbuds.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You got that face on.’

‘What face?’

‘Like when you’re about to ask if you can squeeze one of my spots or do something stupid to my hair.’

‘You seen how many there are outside?’ Charli asked.

‘Bunch of twats.’

‘Seen how many though.’

‘Yeah, so what.’

There had been enough of them standing out there in the
morning and once Charli had checked her Facebook page it became pretty obvious why. There was all sorts of stuff about the police finding a body; which girl it was and what had been done to her. It was all over the TV apparently. She could understand why maybe the coppers downstairs had decided not to invite her and her brother down to have a look at the news, but it was a bit silly when stuff was on the internet long before you found out about it on the radio or TV. Her and Danny probably knew what had happened before the coppers in their living room did.

‘Now, I mean. There’s loads more turned up.’

She had been checking every few minutes for the last hour or so. Ever since they’d heard the noise from the room next door. Something going on between her mum and Weeks. A conversation, then raised voices and her mum screaming. Charli didn’t know what all the shouting had been about, but something kept taking her to the window, telling her that whatever had been going on in the house was the reason why the crowd outside was getting bigger.

‘It’s like what happens with a car crash on the motorway,’ Danny said. ‘That’s all. What do you call it?’

‘Rubbernecking,’ Charli said.

‘Yeah, when people slow down to look because there’s police cars or fire engines.’ He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean there’s actually anything to see, does it? Doesn’t always mean anyone’s been killed or whatever.’ He nodded. ‘Same if a couple of people stop in the middle of the street and start looking up at something or pointing. You know, even when there’s nothing to see. People always stop to look, just in case they’re missing something.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘Let’s face it, there’s nothing else to do round here, is there?’

Danny was wrong, Charli could sense it, but he had a point. She remembered a conversation with her mum about what it
was like when she was the same age as Charli. It had been the same night that policeman had come round about Danny. After her mum had screamed at him, when she’d calmed down a bit, she and Charli sat in the front room and her mum had a bottle open. She poured a glass for Charli and started to talk.

‘I can’t really blame him,’ her mum had said. ‘Not a lot for kids to do round here, is there? Just drink and get into trouble. I wasn’t a whole lot better, if I’m honest.’

She’d sounded serious, but suddenly there had been a smile. Charli had sat there and drunk her wine and listened. Enjoying it.

‘We’d buy the cheapest booze we could get our hands on. Four bottles you could get for what one of these cost. Maybe a bit of dope too, if there was any around.’ She had looked at Charli then. ‘Yeah, I know … but it’s different when it’s your own kids. You’ll know what I’m talking about one day.’ Charli had watched her drain the glass, reach for a refill. ‘It was just about getting out of the house really, getting off your face on whatever was handy.’

Sitting on the bed now, Charli wondered if Helen Weeks had been part of that same group. That copper and her mum. Necking cheap wine in the bus shelter, same as the kids did today. Talking bollocks …

‘All we talked about back then was getting away,’ her mum had said. ‘Going somewhere less boring. I knew even then that this place had a way of pulling you in if you weren’t careful. Sucking the life out of you. It was all talk, obviously. I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I? I’d love to say it was because I never had the chance, but it was more like not being brave enough, really. Taking the easy option.’ She had laid down her glass and reached across for Charli’s hand. ‘You need to be braver than I was, all right? You and your brother. Promise me that, all right, chick?’

Now, Charli sat and listened to herself breathing; to the hubbub rising up from the street below. She leaned across and
pushed gently at Danny’s leg. ‘That time when the copper came round, said you’d been smoking weed. You had been, right?’

Danny hesitated, gave himself a few seconds’ thinking time, same as he always did when there was a lie coming. ‘No. I told you, it wasn’t mine.’

‘No, because it was mine.’

‘My mate brought it, I swear.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Dan.’ She put a hand on his leg. ‘You and me need to be honest with each other from now on, all right? It’s important. You tell me the truth and I swear I’ll do the same. No bullshit any more, OK? Not now.’

They both looked up at the sound of the door to the next room opening. A few seconds later there was a gentle knock, and their mother walked in.

‘I need to tell you what’s happened with Steve.’

As soon as she saw the look on her mum’s face, Charli was off the bed and being pulled into her mum’s arms as Linda’s voice began to crack.

‘It’s going to be all right, I promise. It’s all going to get sorted out …’

Charli turned her head against her mum’s shoulder to look at her brother. She watched him swallow; saw the muscles working in his jaw and the tears blooming at the corners of his eyes.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry.

In the main bar of the Magpie’s Nest, Thorne was nursing the half he’d been eking out for the last twenty minutes, looking at the stuffed fish that had been caught at Pretty Pigs Pool. It was – so the small plaque told him – a twelve-pound carp; plump and greenish-brown, the whiskered mouth open, which made it look a little surprised. Thorne supposed it had been.

‘Not another bloody fisherman …’

Thorne turned to see the landlord’s wife smiling at him from behind the bar. He could not remember if Trevor Hare had told him her name. If so, Thorne had forgotten it. ‘No, just looking.’

‘Tell your wife she can count her blessings,’ the woman said. ‘Bane of my life, being a widow to that. I wouldn’t mind if he ever caught anything we could cook. If he didn’t come home stinking of fish.’

‘I’m not married,’ Thorne said.

‘And you won’t be, not if you ever take up bloody fishing.’

Hare emerged, grinning, from the room behind the bar. ‘I can hear you, you know …’

His wife shook her head. Said, ‘Put a sock in it and make yourself useful.’

The pub was getting busier. It had been almost empty when Thorne – unable to think of a better way to pass the time – had wandered in half an hour before, but had been filling up slowly as the regulars arrived to occupy their usual tables or seats at the bar.

When Thorne had finished his drink he slotted into a gap at the bar and ordered another half. He guessed that it might be a few hours yet before Helen was ready to be picked up.

‘Driving,’ he said, as Hare handed the glass across.

‘Want me to stick a bit of lemonade in?’

They talked about cars for a few minutes, then football, when Hare let slip that he was a West Ham fan. The conversation ran its course and Thorne could sense that the landlord was keen to talk about more important things.

He didn’t have to wait long.

‘Looks like I was wrong about Bates,’ Hare said. ‘Them having nothing on him, I mean.’

‘Looks like it.’ Helen had called Thorne while he was walking back from the woods, told him that Stephen Bates had been charged. ‘I’ll need to keep Linda company for a while, is that OK?’ Thorne had told her that he was happy to amuse himself and to call when she needed picking up.

‘Once they’d found Jessica, it was just a matter of time, I suppose,’ Hare said.

As far as Thorne knew, the body had yet to be formally identified and the police had not made any official announcement. The word in town, however, was that it had been Jessica Toms’ body that had been discovered in the woods. Thorne had no reason to doubt it. He was learning that those spreading the word were remarkably well informed. ‘You said you knew her.’

Hare nodded. ‘Smashing kid. Nice family. Not wild like some
of them are. Well, you know … a few drinks, what have you, a stupid tattoo … but that’s like being a goody-two-shoes round here.’ He snatched an empty bottle from the bar, lobbed it into a large plastic bin. ‘He was probably just hoping they wouldn’t find her. Bates. Waiting it out, like.’

‘Par for the course.’ Thorne sipped at his beer.

‘Yeah. I suppose his brief will have told him to say bugger all.’

‘I can count on one hand the number of times a killer’s sat there and coughed to it.’

‘Hard to get a conviction without a body though.’

‘Not impossible,’ Thorne said.

‘He must know the game’s up now, surely.’ Hare turned to see his wife glaring at him. There were people waiting to be served. ‘Talking of which.’

‘No rest for the wicked.’

Hare laughed, leaned close. ‘Trust me. You’re better off
not
married.’

Thorne asked quickly if he could order some food and Hare handed him a menu before moving along to start serving other customers. Thorne ordered at the bar and drank slowly while he was waiting, one eye on the TV mounted high in the corner. The sound was turned down, but the captions and rolling headlines were every bit as good as subtitles. They were talking to the old man whose dog had discovered the body and Thorne recognised the pair from the press briefing he had attended outside the Memorial Hall the previous evening. A headline said that a forty-three-year-old Polesford man had been charged with murder. Over the umpteenth close-up of the dog, another said that a second victim was still missing.