TWENTY-ONE

The news confirmed what Paula’s friend had told her, but there was not a great deal in the way of detail. That did not stop both reporter and studio anchor passing on what little they did know as if it had come to them etched on stone tablets. There had been a major development in the investigation into the disappearance of Poppy Johnston and Jessica Toms; a break in the case. The words slid by on a rolling caption every thirty seconds. The body – believed to be that of a teenage girl – had been discovered in nearby woodland.

Believed to be . . .

Thorne knew that could mean one of two things. Either the body had been found out in the open and been clearly seen, or else a grave site had been located and the media were jumping to what was probably a reasonable conclusion.

Sweeney had appeared shortly after they had begun watching. He skulked into the living room, looking every bit as rough as he clearly felt, and complaining about the non-appearance of his bacon sandwich. Seeing what they were all watching, he quickly settled down next to Paula and leaned towards the screen.

‘No great surprise though, is it?’ He sat with his knees apart, a ratty towelling dressing gown just about protecting his modesty, presuming that he had any.

‘Think about those two sets of parents,’ Paula said. ‘Each of them praying that it’s not their daughter. That it’s the other one.’ She turned to Helen. ‘God, can you imagine that?’

‘Yes, I think I can,’ Helen said.

‘It’ll be the first one,’ Sweeney said. He reached beneath his dressing gown to scratch. ‘Jessica.’

Paula nodded. ‘Yeah, course.’

‘Why?’ Thorne asked.

‘Because she’s been missing the longest.’

‘Doesn’t necessarily follow.’

‘Has to be.’

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t find a more recent victim first,’ Thorne said. ‘Sometimes it’s a sign that a killer’s getting careless, or it might be because they’re trying to muddy the waters. Sometimes, it’s just how it happens.’

Sweeney looked like he was thinking about it, that he might concede that the homicide detective sitting on his sofa knew a little more about such things than he did. ‘Yeah, I suppose you can’t assume anything. Makes an ass out of you and me, right?’

‘What?’

‘Ass-u-me.’ Sweeney helpfully broke the word up into three parts.

‘Ass’ was not the word Thorne had in mind, but he nodded politely. On the screen, a shot from a helicopter showed a clearing in the woods. Figures in bodysuits milling around a white forensic tent, stark against the surrounding trees.

Sweeney said, ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait for the ID, I suppose,’ and when he started talking about something he’d seen on an episode of CSI Thorne stopped listening.

Now, half an hour later, Paula was upstairs in the shower and Thorne and Helen stood in the kitchen. That view across the fields was marred slightly by the figure of Jason Sweeney, the wind blowing the flaps of his dressing gown around, as he stood smoking in the back garden.

‘He’s not what you’d call a catch, is he?’ Thorne said.

Helen looked at him. ‘They’ve been together a few years, I think, so Paula must think he is.’ Thorne had never been very good at disguising the way he felt about someone, at keeping those feelings from showing in his face. She read his expression, said, ‘There’s plenty of people reckon I can do a lot better than you.’

‘Your sister, you mean?’

‘One of many.’

‘Since when did you listen to her?’

Helen leaned against him. ‘I’d be a damn sight more worried if she liked you.’

‘Does that mean I can stop trying to be nice to her?’ Thorne asked.

Outside, Sweeney was trying to light another cigarette, shielding it from the wind with his dressing gown. When he had succeeded, he took his phone from the pocket and began tapping away at it.

‘So, you want me to drop you at Linda’s?’

‘I want to stop off somewhere on the way.’

‘Right . . . ’

Helen stepped away and let out a long breath. Her lips stayed together when she smiled. ‘I want to go and see my mum.’

The wind tore at the cellophane around the small bouquet as Helen laid it at the foot of the grave. Petrol station flowers; the best she could get hold of on a Sunday morning. She stepped back and reached for Thorne’s hand.

He studied the weathered headstone, the dates beneath Sandra Weeks’ name. Helen saved him the few seconds of maths.

‘She was forty-nine,’ Helen said. ‘Only twelve years older than I am now.’

There wasn’t too much to say and Thorne could not think of anything anyway. He knew that it had been breast cancer, but had not known quite how young Helen’s mother had been when she died. He squeezed Helen’s hand.

‘It was six years after I left.’

‘So, you were . . . what?’

‘Twenty-four,’ Helen said. ‘A year after I joined the Met.’

‘Were you . . . had you been expecting it?’

‘Kind of. She’d been diagnosed in my last year at college.’

‘Must have been horrible.’

‘At least I had an excuse for doing so badly.’ There was a laugh in her voice. An attempt at one. ‘I mean, I probably would have messed up my exams anyway, but I used to tell myself that was why. What I told other people too.’

‘It’s understandable,’ Thorne said.

Helen nodded slowly. She bent to straighten the flowers and re-scatter grit that had been blown on to the path. ‘She’d actually been in remission for a couple of years, but once it came back it was quick, you know?’

‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Thorne shuffled his feet and felt a familiar tightening in his gut. That same clench of uselessness and embarrassment he had felt many dozens of times; trotting out platitudes for those who had lost loved ones. The parents of a teenage boy knifed to death for the latest Samsung; a woman whose husband had been shot trying to fight off a carjacker; a man whose wife had been on the wrong tube train on 7/7.

I’m sorry for your loss . . .

‘Less than six months, once they’d told her the cancer was back,’ Helen said.

‘Right.’ Thorne hadn’t quite said, ‘That’s a mercy,’ but it was close enough.

‘Jenny was still living here then. I think that’s the reason she’s the way she is with me sometimes. Still pissed off that I wasn’t here when Mum died, pissed off that I’d got away. One of the reasons, at least.’

Thorne stared at the inscription, afraid to turn his head and see the pain he knew would be etched across Helen’s face.

Pain and perhaps guilt.

‘So, when did she get away?’

‘A year or so later, somewhere round there. Straight from being here with Dad, working in pubs or whatever, to a life of wedded bliss with Tedious Tim.’

Thorne laughed. Each conversation with Jenny’s husband about car maintenance or Formula One was etched in his memory.

‘Dad stayed for a few years after that, then bought the place in Sydenham.’ She took her hand from Thorne’s and tightened her scarf. It was cold enough already and the wind was getting stronger. ‘I can’t remember if he’d met Andrea by then.’ She put her hand in her pocket. ‘I’m not even sure I know where he met her.’

Robert Weeks’ second marriage had only lasted eighteen months and neither Helen nor her sister knew exactly what had gone wrong. ‘I think Dad just wanted her to be Mum,’ Helen had said once. ‘And she got fed up trying to be.’

They both looked up at the crunch of footsteps on gravel and watched an elderly couple walking slowly past. The man wore a brown anorak and hat and was carrying a large arrangement of flowers. Thorne smiled at the woman who was half a step behind. She smiled back and, for no reason that he could identify, Thorne knew that they were visiting their child’s grave.

‘Come on then,’ Helen said.

‘Sure?’

‘I’m freezing.’

She turned and began walking away and Thorne followed happily. A cemetery would never be a pleasant place to visit, however charming or historic the setting. How could it be if you were stricken with grief or guilt or overwhelmed by bad memories? Not even if you were simply tongue-tied and certainly not when it only served to remind you how long it had been since you had visited your father’s grave. Since you had laid down so much as a tatty bunch of daffs from Tesco.

As they walked back beneath the ancient archway towards the main road, Helen’s phone rang. It was a brief and terse conversation. Thorne saw Helen’s expression darken, heard her say, ‘right’, ‘when?’ and ‘fine’.

‘What?’ he asked, as soon as she had hung up.

‘That was Carson. I gave her my number.’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Looks like I won’t be seeing Linda until later on.’

‘She OK?’

‘I doubt it,’ Helen said. She started walking again. ‘Carson’s driving her to the station at Nuneaton. They want to question her.’