TT13 Time of Death (23 page)

‘Yeah …’ Helen remembered several conversations about the events in Polesford. Each time her father had insisted that ‘nothing like that’ would have happened back when he was living there. She wondered if rose-tinted spectacles got handed out to people on the same day they qualified for a free bus pass.

‘Nasty business.’

‘Can I talk to Alfie?’

‘He’s asleep, love.’

‘Oh.’

‘I thought I’d worn him out in the park, but he was still full of beans when we got back. Hang on, let me turn the telly down a bit …’

There was a clatter as the phone was laid down. Helen moved to the window, looked out through a gap in the curtains at the crowd outside. A man was shouting something at one of the officers.

‘Right then. Maybe you can call back later, before he goes to bed.’

‘Yeah, I will,’ Helen said. ‘Thanks again for having him.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I feel bad though.’

‘I’m just a bit thrown by this business of you being in Polesford, that’s all. Polesford of all places, and not telling me.’

‘I know,’ Helen said. She flopped down on the sofa. ‘I went to see Mum.’ She listened to her father breathing. ‘Tom came with me. It was nice.’

‘That’s good.’

Helen felt a rush of guilt at changing the subject, the way she’d changed it. ‘We took some flowers.’

‘See, I’d never have known that, would I? You not telling me you were there.’

‘I would have said eventually.’

‘I must be going senile, because I still don’t understand.’

The shouting outside was getting louder.

‘Everything that’s going on here,’ Helen said. ‘I just didn’t want you to worry.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Why?’

‘What you do. I worry every day, love.’

There was a loud banging on the front door and Helen heard footsteps moving quickly down the hall from the kitchen. Her father asked what the noise was and she told him that she would need to call him back.

She hung up, relieved.

Helen saw Linda coming a little nervously down the stairs and got to the front door just as Carson was opening it to an equally nervous-looking PC. Behind him, Helen could see two of his colleagues at the end of the front garden, fighting to restrain a well-built man who was shouting about his rights and knowing them.

‘What?’ Carson snapped.

‘This bloke,’ the officer said. He pointed, just as one of the struggling PCs took a firmer hold of the man and asked him if he was trying to get nicked. ‘He reckons he’s Linda Bates’ ex-husband.’

There seemed little reason for the handwritten name cards that had been placed in front of Michael and Annette Johnston. It was not hard to work out who they were. Though they were as smartly dressed as the two police officers and the press liaison officer with whom they shared the platform, they were the only ones staring down at the table. The two whose hands were joined. They were the ones that everyone else in the room was looking at, as Assistant Chief Constable Harris spoke words almost certainly written for him by the woman standing at the side of the platform.

‘As most of you will know already, Stephen Bates, the man we believe to be responsible for the murder of Jessica Toms, is now on remand awaiting trial. While I commend Detective Inspector Cornish and his team for their excellent work on this tragic case, we must not lose sight of the fact that there is an inquiry still ongoing that continues to demand our full attention …’

Thorne was sitting towards the back of the hall. He had been at plenty of these things before and seen similar speeches made countless times. The words may have been different on each occasion, but the rhythms were much the same. The same pauses,
the moments when the officer looked up, towards the cameras. Thorne remained convinced that Cornish and his team had done a job that was anything but excellent, but he couldn’t fault Harris’ performance. Serious, sincere; nothing inappropriately upbeat, despite having cleared up a murder so quickly. Thorne still thought the man’s hat was a little too big for him.

‘Our sympathies are with Jessica’s family of course, but all our efforts must now be concentrated on finding Poppy Johnston, who remains missing.’ Harris looked along the table. Poppy Johnston’s father glanced up briefly. ‘So … Poppy’s parents, Michael and Annette, are going to make a short statement, after which I will be happy to take a few questions.’ The ACC cleared his throat, straightened his papers.

Tim Cornish leaned towards Poppy Johnston’s mother and whispered something. She nodded and Cornish laid a hand on her arm.

Michael Johnston unfolded a piece of paper. He took out a pair of glasses, looked down and read. ‘Stephen Bates has persistently refused to tell police where our daughter is.’ His voice cracked a little. Cornish pushed a glass of water towards him, but he didn’t take it. ‘So … today we’re appealing to anyone who might know anything that might help us find Poppy to please come forward. Anything at all. If anyone saw anything or has heard anything, please call the incident room, night or day. It doesn’t matter what it is, just call. You don’t have to give your name.’ He folded the piece of paper again. ‘We just want to find her.’ Now, he reached for the water.

‘Please,’ Annette Johnston said. She had no piece of paper to read from, and something about the way she spoke up suddenly made Thorne wonder if she had come intending to speak at all. ‘Somebody must know
something
.’ She leaned forward, found a camera. ‘If by any chance you’re watching this, Pops, we’re trying our best to bring you home.’ She tensed, and it was hard
to tell if she was squeezing her husband’s hand or he was squeezing hers. ‘We love you so much …’

Cornish said, ‘OK,’ and laid a hand on the woman’s arm again. Chairs scraped noisily against the floor as they stood, one by one, and Cornish helped the couple to the edge of the platform. From there, a uniformed officer walked them towards a small door in the corner of the hall; cameras flashing as though they were walking a red carpet.

Assistant Chief Constable Harris waited for Cornish to return to his seat, then nodded out towards the phalanx of journalists.

‘Do you believe that Poppy Johnston is still alive?’

Heads turned, all well aware that the Johnstons had not quite left the hall yet. Annette Johnston spun around and her mouth fell open. She scanned the room for the source of the question, but the man responsible had already lowered his hand. There was one more explosion of flashes before she turned away and was ushered through the door.

The following morning’s front page.

‘We are keeping an open mind,’ Harris said, eventually. ‘Our priority is to find her, but yes, until we learn otherwise, we remain hopeful.’

‘Even though Bates must have killed Jessica Toms almost immediately?’

Clearly the press knew as much about the state of the body as they did about everything else. Based on that, the journalist’s question was couched around the only explanation possible.

The very explanation that was troubling Thorne so much.

‘As I said, we remain hopeful.’

A hand was raised within a few feet of where Thorne was sitting, and when the eyes of those on the platform were cast in his direction, Thorne imagined getting to his feet to ask a question of his own.

If Stephen Bates is guilty of murdering Jessica Toms, are you not
concerned by the fact that her body was not discovered for
at least
two days? Despite having conducted extensive searches of an area that is usually crawling with dog-walkers?

Harris answered the question that had actually been asked. Something about how Bates had behaved in custody. It prompted others.

‘Poppy’s father said that Bates has refused to say anything about where Poppy is.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘But has he admitted taking her?’

‘I can’t comment on that.’

‘Has he admitted killing Jessica Toms?’

‘I’m afraid that, as of now, I can’t comment on matters that may directly affect the prosecution.’

There were several more questions along the same lines and all were met with much the same response. Then proceedings were wrapped up fairly quickly. The press liaison officer gave the nod and Harris made a closing statement.

As before, he thanked the people of Polesford for their continued support. He said how grateful he and everyone else was to the media for showing sensitivity. He urged the journalists present to focus on the hunt for Poppy and not to dwell on matters that were unimportant, or at best ‘peripheral to the case’. Thorne saw Cornish glance in his direction and could not help wondering if the comment had been aimed at him.

What else could Harris have been talking about?

He could imagine Helen telling him that he was being paranoid. There were plenty of other angles for the press to explore, after all, every bit as peripheral as the presence of a newsworthy Met officer. Thorne knew the kind of stories the papers would be shelling out cash for.

I sat next to Stephen Bates at school
.

Stephen Bates gave me a funny look at a bus stop once
.

There was definitely something about him I never liked
.

Those were the stories that angered Thorne the most. The neighbours or old schoolfriends crawling out of the woodwork, queuing up to pocket a fee and point out that they always knew there was something dodgy about Killer X or Rapist Y.

No, they didn’t. Simple as that.

That was why the people who did these things were able to get away with it for so long; precisely because they behaved every bit as normally as everyone else. You could appear just as kindly as the village vicar and be a sexual predator. You could look like a central casting serial killer and be as harmless as an infant.

Stephen Bates looked like … Stephen Bates. Not a killer, no, but probably not a choirboy either. Probably …

Thorne was suddenly struck by a possibility he had not considered.

What if Bates
had
been involved, but in league with somebody else? It would certainly explain the wealth of evidence against him. Perhaps he
had
taken the girls and his accomplice had disposed of the body. But that did not explain the cigarette butt with Bates’ DNA that had been found in the grave. Perhaps Bates’ partner was thinking on his feet and had been trying to stitch Bates up once he had been arrested.

Or Stephen Bates was being stitched up by someone else entirely.

Around him, the hall was emptying quickly, the majority of the audience needing to get their copy filed as fast as possible. Thorne stood and lifted his jacket from the back of his chair. Up on the platform, Tim Cornish was chatting to the press liaison officer; nodding and puffing away on his e-cig as the banner was being disassembled behind him.

Cornish turned and looked directly at Thorne. He smiled, showing plenty of teeth.

Thorne smiled back.

Play dead.

Once Carson and her colleagues had established that nobody was in any physical danger, they retreated to the kitchen, but Helen was certain that they could hear the shouting. She guessed that the crowd still gathered outside could hear it.

‘I want to see my kids. Where are they? I demand to see my fucking kids …’

Linda just sat there while her ex-husband ranted, as though she were well used to it. Looking on from just inside the door of the living room, Helen wondered if the man’s prodigious temper might be one of the reasons he and Linda had split up in the first place. Watching him stomp around though, she thought the man’s anger began to seem a little theatrical, as though he were playing the part of the furious father. Perhaps giving a performance that could be easily overheard was exactly the point.

‘You can’t stop me seeing my own kids.’

‘I know.’

‘You got that?’

‘Who’s stopping you?’ Linda said.

‘Yeah, well you’d better not try.’ Wayne Smart leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. He wore camouflage cargo pants and
trainers; a green army jacket. Helen had no reason to believe he was ex-army, looking rather more like someone who fancied himself as a soldier. Someone who’d been turned down, perhaps. He was big enough, but a little bloated, with blond highlights and earrings in both ears. Helen had smelled booze on him as he’d pushed past her in the hallway.

Something he and Linda had in common.

Smart reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out cigarettes.

‘Not in here,’ Linda said. ‘This isn’t our place.’

‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s.’ Smart lit his cigarette and sucked in fast. He jerked a thumb towards the kitchen. ‘Let one of your pet coppers come and arrest me if they want. There’s enough of them.’ He took another drag, then turned and stared at Helen. ‘Who’s this?’

‘I’m another one,’ Helen said.

‘Yeah, well why don’t you piss off and join your mates? Me and my ex-wife have got things to talk about.’

‘She’s a friend,’ Linda said.

‘She’s
what
?’

‘An old friend.’

Smart turned to look at Helen again.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Helen said.

Smart studied her for a few seconds, genuinely curious, then shrugged and marched across to the window. He pulled a curtain aside and looked out. Helen was aware of the movement as the crowd shifted to look, of cameras flashing.

‘Shut that,’ she said.

Smart did not move. ‘You can’t tell me what to do.’

‘Shut it, or I’ll nick you.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know, for having shit hair?’ Helen stepped further into the room. ‘Or I’m sure I can make breach of the peace stick.’

Smart let the curtain fall back and turned round. He flicked cigarette ash on to the carpet. The anger had reappeared in his face, or been turned on again. ‘Where are Charli and Danny?’

‘Upstairs,’ Linda said.

‘Good.’ He walked across and sat down in one of the armchairs. ‘Go and get them.’

‘Why now?’

‘You what?’

‘Why do you suddenly care so much now?’ Linda leaned forward. ‘How long since you’ve seen them, eighteen months? How long since you even bothered to call?’