SIXTY-ONE

Thorne felt oddly disappointed that it had taken so long for the call to come. Could it be that taking him down a peg or two had become so routine that it was no longer a priority? He’d have put money on the hammer falling within half an hour of his leaving Nuneaton station, but as it turned out he had been back in Polesford over an hour before Brigstocke rang.

It was probably just down to a glitch in the chain of command. It would have taken three or four conversations before any complaint had even got to Russell Brigstocke. There must have been a hold-up, Thorne decided, that was all, an unanswered call or an email diverted to a spam folder. Perhaps Cornish’s chief superintendent had been busy getting his hat altered.

Something important, had to have been.

Walking through the market square, Thorne had stared at Brigstocke’s name pulsing on the screen and imagined his boss getting increasingly irritated. He had let the mobile ring a few times before he’d dropped the call. He knew there would have been some impressively creative swearing.

He hoped the inevitable call back would not come in the next few minutes, as he was planning on using the phone.

He sat in Cupz, at a table near the counter. Tea and a toasted sandwich, same as last time, the local paper he had glanced at first thing that morning laid out in front of him. The front page was dominated by the continuing search for Poppy Johnston, though the tone of the reporting had subtly changed. As far as finding Poppy alive went, there was talk of ‘hope fading’ and the ‘desperate efforts’ of those still looking. Though it was never made explicit, it was clear that those writing the stories believed, as the police themselves did, that they were looking for a body.

Inside, there were more Stephen Bates stories: a suggestion that the suicide attempt had been an effort to escape attacks in prison; a ‘reliable source’ inside HMP Hewell describing Bates’ outrageous demands for fillet steak and the latest games console; an interview with a woman he’d worked with ten years earlier who said he was ‘moody’ and ‘secretive’ and that he’d always taken a ‘strange interest’ in her fifteen-year-old daughter. The important adjectives were emboldened and there was a picture of the woman looking suitably horrified, pressing an old photo of her young daughter to her bosom.

It was a highly professional exercise in barrel-scraping.

Thorne looked across at the woman working behind the counter – Donna, was that her name? – and they exchanged a smile. He turned away and took another bite of his sandwich, then he reached for his phone.

He stabbed at the numbers, then waited.

‘It’s me . . . yeah, I went in to see him this morning.’ He listened for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, right, it’s like we thought. The case against Bates is falling apart bit by bit.’ He said nothing for a while. He held the handset between his chin and shoulder to take a mouthful of tea. He nodded, hummed assent. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep you up to speed, but right now the CPS are having kittens because what looked like evidence has turned out to be useless. I know . . . well, they’re already talking about being sued for wrongful arrest.’ He laughed. ‘Yeah . . . I’ll let you know as soon as I hear any more. Call me later if you want to.’

When he’d put the phone away, he looked across at the woman behind the counter again. He asked for more tea and she told him it was coming right up. The colour in her face told him she’d heard every word he’d said, which was exactly what he wanted.

Thorne had not been speaking to anyone.

He went back to the paper. The other big story was still the flooding, specifically the clean-up operation, which had begun in areas where the floodwater had subsided sufficiently. There were reports of dead livestock and other animals being taken away, their bodies revealed as the water level had fallen. On the letters page there was a good deal of ghoulish speculation as to whether Poppy Johnston’s body might soon be discovered in the same way.

The woman brought Thorne’s tea across. She glanced down at the paper and said, ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’

Thorne nodded and turned the page.

Nothing had shaken his conviction that Poppy Johnston was still alive. The business with the phone was no more than a punt, mischief as much as anything else, but Thorne hoped that a few loose tongues might go some way towards bringing a killer to the surface.

When Charli heard the door slam downstairs, she went to the window and pulled the curtain back. She watched Helen Weeks walk quickly down the path, cameras flashing all the way as she fell in between two uniformed officers.

‘It’s her,’ she said. ‘Mum’s friend.’

‘About bloody time.’ Danny was lying on the bed, playing Donkey Kong on an old Nintendo Gameboy that Gallagher had given him. ‘Just trying to buy me off,’ he’d said to Charli. ‘So I don’t sue her fat arse for getting punched or whatever.’

Charli heard Helen’s name being shouted by reporters as she was escorted to a waiting BMW.

‘Why the hell are they still so interested in her, anyway?’ She watched as the car drove off. ‘That’s her boyfriend in there,’ she said, pointing. ‘The other copper, the one who was on the front of the paper.’

‘What?’

‘Her boyfriend’s a copper as well.’

Danny sucked his teeth and threw the Gameboy to the end of the bed. ‘That thing is so shit. It’s like, steam-powered or something.’

‘Better than nothing,’ Charli said.

Danny turned and punched the pillow behind him until he was comfortable. He touched the bruise beneath his eye, which had blackened still further. ‘Better off together, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Feds. Who the hell else is going to stand them? Can’t smell anything when you both stink.’

Charli walked across and dropped on to the bed.

They sat in silence for a while, then Danny said, ‘I was thinking . . . I bet Steve’s already the top G in that prison.’ He nodded, smiled. ‘He’ll be bossing the place already, for sure.’

‘You think?’

He sat up. ‘I know, man.’

Danny was suddenly brighter than Charli had seen him in a few days, chattier. Part of her wanted to tell him to shut up, that he was talking like a little pretend gangsta twat again, but it was nice to see him excited about something. She said, ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah . . . I know how it works in them places. You have to bust a few heads to begin with, just to show everyone who’s the baddest, but then you’re number one and nobody can touch you. You’re living like a G, anything you want. Literally.’

‘That’s just in films.’

‘For real,’ Danny said. ‘You wait until he gets out. I bet he’ll have the best stories.’

There was a soft knock on the door and their mother walked in. Charli shifted along to make room for her to sit down.

‘All right, Mum?’

‘Just tired.’

‘Not seen you since you got back,’ Charli said. ‘You haven’t told us what it was like when you went to see Steve.’

‘Did you give him my letter?’ Danny asked.

Linda nodded. ‘He was pleased.’

‘I was just saying how he was going to be all right in there, how he was going to end up bossing the place and everything. I bet he had people running around doing whatever he wanted, didn’t he?’

Linda said, ‘Do us a favour love. Go down to the kitchen and get me a glass of wine.’

Danny looked horrified, pushed at Charli with his foot. ‘Why can’t she go and get it?’

‘Mum asked you,’ Charli said.

‘Please, love.’

‘Can I have one?’

‘You can have a Coke or something, and there’s crisps in the cupboard.’

Grumbling, Danny swung his legs off the bed, and sloped to the door. He said, ‘Taking the piss,’ before he slammed it behind him.

Linda turned to Charli immediately. ‘There’s something I need to ask you before your brother comes back.’

‘What? Has something happened—?’

‘Just let me say it, OK?’

Charli nodded, waited. The wine her mother had sent Danny to get was obviously not going to be her first.

‘Did Steve ever . . . touch you?’

‘What?’

‘Please, baby, you’ve got no idea how hard this is. You know what I’m talking about.’ Linda took a deep breath and said it again quickly. ‘Did he touch you?’

Charli stared at her mother.