TWENTY-SIX

It took no more than a single, short conversation with the woman at the café to find out where the woods were. A fifteen-minute walk away, that was all. Had they known where to look, he and Helen would have seen them from the car as they had driven out of town a few hours before.

Thorne was still getting used to the speed at which word got around in this place.

News spread quickly enough through a station, Thorne was well aware of that, quicker still within a squad. News, rumour, gossip; serious, malicious or simply because there was nothing else to do.

There were not too many days like that, but coppers got bored easily.

Chief Superintendent so-and-so has got the Rubberheelers on his case.

Sergeant Whatsherface is on the sauce again.

Detective Inspector You-Know-Who is having problems in the bedroom . . .

Thorne knew how it went, had been on the receiving end of it himself often enough. He had come to recognise the look on faces, a moment before they turned away; the subtle change in the atmosphere when he walked into an incident room. Months now since the events on Bardsey Island and the jungle drums were still being beaten. A rumour that Thorne had let a prison officer die rather than risk the life of a friend. Waking from dreams of blackened bones and a stream of blood running over clifftops, he had thought about simply announcing that the rumours were true and that he would make the same choice again, if he had to. In the end he had decided to say nothing, well aware that those with a mind to bad-mouth him would quickly find some other reason to do so and happier that this story, at least, was one about which he was not ashamed. Truth or tittle-tattle, gospel or garbage; he had learned to live with it.

This place though.

Jesus . . .

Thorne guessed that there would always have been something to talk about. Who someone was sleeping with or who had money troubles. Usual stuff. Gossip was currency in a town like this one, and suddenly everybody had struck gold. When it came to a station or a squad room, it was usually the same couple of people at the centre of everything. The ones getting those drums out. It was Thorne’s bad luck that the gobby DS who could always be relied upon to have the latest gen had been with him on Bardsey Island.

He wondered who the movers and shakers were in Polesford when it came to spreading the word.

The woman who ran the café – had Paula said she was a friend? – was certainly a contender. Hare, the landlord of the Magpie’s Nest, clearly liked to talk, and with a bar full of coppers he was getting his info from very reliable sources. It was interesting to speculate, but Thorne knew that it was easy enough to find out. He would just need to see who the media were talking to. Who those reporters were thrusting microphones or cash at.

He walked towards the woods thinking about the subtle difference between the smell of the truth and the stink of a lie. The people who were trusted to sniff them both out.

Thinking about wolves, and people waving fresh meat around.

If finding the woods had been straightforward, locating the spot where the body had been discovered was even less taxing. Though there was still an hour or so of good daylight left, the arc lamps had already been switched on around the crime scene. From the edge of the woods, Thorne could see a semi-circle of them burning, the light milky against trunks and bare branches a hundred yards into the trees; the glow of activity.

Halfway there, Thorne stopped at a line of crime-scene tape. It snaked away on either side of him, tied to trunks and saplings; circling the grave site. He waited as a uniformed officer trudged across, showed his warrant card and ducked beneath the tape.

That moment again . . .

Wherever, whenever, hillside or housing estate. Just that movement, that simple act of lifting then ducking down and under, the tape brushing his shoulder, his iffy knee cracking; enough to get the blood ticking a little quicker.

Like you always enjoy it,

Most of the time . . .

Though the body was long gone, there were still four or five scene of crime officers hard at work. Those ubiquitous plastic bodysuits, the familiar rustle as they moved. Watching them from Paula Hitchman’s front room, shot from the news helicopter, they had looked like aliens wandering in the woods. Some Spielberg movie. Gathering samples or waiting for a ship to collect them.

A white forensic tent covered the area six feet or so around the grave. Thorne watched one SOCO walk in, another walk out. Plastic trays and evidence bags were piling up on a table in the centre of the clearing, though most seemed to contain only soil. The gravecut.

Thorne walked across to where a SOCO was working with a sieve; singing quietly to himself, poking at clumps of sticky black earth with a nitrile-gloved finger. He looked up for a second at Thorne, went back to poking.

‘Anything interesting?’ Thorne asked.

The SOCO looked up again. He barely glanced at the warrant card Thorne was once again brandishing. ‘Interesting stuff’s already gone to the lab,’ he said. The man wore glasses and had a dark moustache. There wasn’t too much else to be seen under the blue plastic hood. Might just as well have been an alien, albeit one with a Geordie accent. ‘We’re just tidying up, really. Belt and braces, you know how it goes.’

‘What stuff?’

The SOCO laid down his sieve, scratched at his chest through the plastic suit. ‘There was a fag-end they were all getting very excited about.’ He nodded back towards the tent. ‘In with the body.’

‘You find that?’

‘Somebody else.’

‘Who found the body?’

‘Old man out with his dog. Usual story.’

If he found it at all odd that a detective working the case would not know the answer to such basic questions, the SOCO showed no sign of it. Often the scene of crime team would be brought in from well outside the area. They might have no direct connection with the murder squad assigned to the investigation, would not necessarily even know their names.

‘Dog had done most of the digging for us,’ the SOCO said. ‘It wasn’t very deep.’

‘What kind of state was she in?’ Thorne asked.

The SOCO stared for a few seconds, then laughed. ‘Sorry, I thought you were talking about the dog there for a minute. Not actually sure if it was a boy or a girl.’

‘The body,’ Thorne said.

‘She’d certainly been here for a while.’ The man stuck out his bottom lip and blew air up on to his face. The weather had improved considerably since the morning and though it was not what anyone would call balmy, Thorne knew how hot it could get inside those bodysuits. ‘Well, dead for a while, at any rate.’

‘Any clothing?’

The SOCO shook his head. ‘Not much of anything, like I said.’

‘Weeks, then?’

‘God, yeah . . . she’d burst, pretty much. Plenty of creepy-crawlies in there helping themselves.’

‘Right.’

‘Burned as well, by the look of it. Seriously stinky.’

Thorne looked towards the tent and sniffed, convinced for a second or two that there was a trace of the smell lingering. Not barbecue weather, so probably no more than simple association. Like fighting the urge to scratch when somebody talked about head lice.

He knew what burned flesh smelled like.

‘So, there goes your killer’s DNA.’

‘Probably why he did it,’ Thorne said.

‘Must be a pain in the arse for you guys.’

‘What?’

‘Trying to catch the smart ones.’

‘Sometimes they think they’re smarter than they are.’

The SOCO smiled and picked up his sieve again. ‘Unfortunately, the same goes for some coppers too.’

‘Plenty of coppers,’ Thorne said.

The SOCO nodded, looking at Thorne as though trying to decide if he was one of them. Thorne thanked the man for his time and left him to his soil and his singing; trying and failing to place the song as he walked away. By the time he reached the crime scene tape on the far side, he was desperate for a piss. He ducked beneath the tape and walked deeper into the woods, in search of somewhere suitable.

Five minutes later, job done, Thorne emerged from behind a clump of bushes into the path of a man walking a large black dog. The dog immediately began barking and pulling at his leash; straining towards the bush behind which Thorne had just ‘marked his territory’.

The man stared at Thorne, pulling the dog back.

‘Nice dog,’ Thorne said. The dog did not look particularly nice, but it was socially a little more acceptable than explaining what he had been doing in the bushes. The man kept staring and Thorne wondered if he should show his warrant card. ‘What kind is it?’

‘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.