THIRTY

Collecting Helen from the house that Linda Bates and her kids were staying in was far from straightforward, but Thorne had known it would be. There was no rear exit from the house; not unless you fancied scrabbling over a garden fence and clambering across waste ground. Helen had told him on the phone that she was happy to leave on her own and meet him somewhere nearby, but Thorne had insisted on picking her up. They had already braved the crowd outside the house once, he told her. They had already been photographed together several times.

The genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

The crowd was bigger now of course, angrier. The photographers and journalists that much more determined.

Is Linda going to stand by him?

How are the kids holding up?

You think she knew?

They moved towards the car as quickly as they were able, saying nothing. They kept their eyes on the tarmac. Thorne’s hand drifted automatically towards Helen’s, but he held back. There seemed little point giving the pack anything else to feast on.

Neither of them spoke until they were on the road to Paula Hitchman’s house. Until there was nobody left to be seen when Thorne checked his rear-view mirror.

‘How much longer are we staying?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A few days? Longer?’

Helen looked at him. ‘I can’t go back just yet. Linda’s in a really bad way.’

‘Right.’

‘I told her I’d stay for a while.’

‘What about Alfie?’

‘I called my dad,’ Helen said. ‘Told him we were staying on a bit longer in the Cotswolds. He’s fine about looking after Alfie. He’s enjoying himself.’

‘Really?’

‘What he said.’

‘I bet the poor old bugger’s knackered.’

‘Exercise’ll do him good.’

He saw Helen smile; the expression that settled afterwards. He knew she hated being away from her son, how much she missed him. Thorne was missing the boy badly enough himself.

‘So, is that OK?’

‘What?’

‘Staying here.’

‘Whatever you think,’ Thorne said.

‘A pain for you though.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll cope.’ Thorne thought about telling her what he’d seen in the woods, his disquiet about what the PC had told him. He decided to keep his concerns to himself for the time being, at least until after the conversation he planned to have the following morning. ‘I’ll find something to keep me busy.’

They were driving along a stretch of road without lighting, so Thorne flicked the headlights to main beam. ‘Bloody hell, when it gets dark round here it really gets dark.’ He glanced at Helen and did not need telling what she was thinking.

Things were seriously dark.

Thorne had made his feelings about the countryside plain often enough. A nice enough place to visit – briefly – but you wouldn’t want to live there. Now though, he was rethinking his attitude, at least towards those things people were capable of doing to one another in largely rural areas like this. Not the kind of place you would want to be a copper, that’s what he had always thought. Not if you didn’t want to spend your life dealing with underage drinking and pulling over tractors with out-of-date tax discs.

Here, now, it sounded like a cheap stand-up routine.

What had that chef said to him? Something about murder being easy enough to contemplate.

Just as easy for people living here and every bit as hard to cope with for the friends and relatives of the victims. Harder, probably, if you weren’t in a big city; when you didn’t live with the expectation of it. The grim acceptance that it was part and parcel of daily life, like overpriced housing and urban foxes.

Turning a corner, the headlights swept across the body of a badger; twisted and dusty-grey, hard against the kerb.

‘You know why so many badgers die on the roads?’ Thorne asked.

‘Because they don’t know the Green Cross Code?’

‘Because they always go the same way. It’s hard-wired in them or whatever. They’re following ancient tracks and it doesn’t matter if those tracks happen to cross the M42. They just can’t go a different way.’

‘Creatures of habit.’

‘It’s what kills them.’

Helen nodded. ‘You’re a badger,’ she said.

Thorne glanced across and laughed and his hand moved to his hair. ‘Any more grey I’ll certainly look like a badger.’

‘Might not have been run over anyway,’ Helen said. ‘Farmers round here shoot them, then leave them in the road. Or lampers.’

Thorne looked at her.

‘Twats who go out at night with these huge lamps mounted up on their four-by-fours, across the fields, you know? Shoot anything they find. Rabbits, badgers, deer sometimes. Pissed-up farmers’ boys . . . local lads, trying to impress the girls. Idiots . . . ’

‘Didn’t impress you then?’

‘I went once, when I was about fourteen.’ She shuddered theatrically at the memory. ‘Linda used to go out lamping though. I remember we had a big row about it. I told her they were all wankers and she told me to mind my own business.’ She turned away and looked out into the blackness. ‘This place is full of wankers.’

‘Is that why you hate it?’

She turned quickly to stare at him. ‘What?’

‘Look, I just thought . . . ’

‘That’s stupid.’

‘With the way you’ve been acting—’

‘And how’s that, exactly?’

Thorne came close to telling her how moody and irritable he thought she’d been ever since they’d got here. Instead he just took his hands off the wheel for a few seconds. Held them up. Surrendered.

‘I don’t hate it,’ Helen said.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, Thorne thinking about the case that was building against Stephen Bates and the one piece of evidence that was the most important.

The body of Jessica Toms.

Remembering what he had said to Jason Sweeney about killers muddying the waters.