TT13 Time of Death Read Free Page A

corduroy trousers, and a few more branches of Chicken Cottage.’
    ‘So, not all bad then.’
    Thorne indicated, took the car past a van that was hogging the middle lane. He gave the driver a good hard stare as he pulled alongside.
    ‘I thought it was exciting when I was fifteen,’ Helen said. ‘Polesford was where we used to go on a Friday or Saturday night.’
    ‘Bit of clubbing?’
    She shook her head. ‘As much snakebite as we could afford, a bit of dope in the bus shelter.’
    ‘Never had you pegged as a wild child.’
    Helen smiled for the first time since they’d set off. ‘Just a crafty Woodbine in your day, was it? Or were cigarettes still rationed?’
    Thorne returned the smile.
    The fact that he was closer to fifty than Helen was to forty was something they joked about now and again. He would pretend to be outraged that she could not remember the Sex Pistols. She would ask him what it had been like to see Bill Haley and the Comets. Based on a few things Helen had said, Thorne guessed that the sort of comments her sister and several of her friends made about the age gap were rather more cutting.
    ‘It used to be nice,’ Helen said. ‘There’s
still
some nice bits. There’s an abbey.’
    Thorne adopted his best countryside accent. ‘Ah … too many incomers, was it? City folks coming in and ruining the place?’
    ‘It’s not in
Cornwall
,’ Helen said.
    ‘Only rural accent I can do.’
    ‘Well, promise me you won’t do it again.’ She turned towards the window. ‘It’s Warwickshire, for God’s sake. It’s more like the accent on
The Archers
, if anything.’
    ‘Oh, God help us,’ Thorne said.
    An hour later they turned off the motorway and within ten minutes were driving slowly along the main street in Dorbrook,two miles south of Polesford. The village in which Helen had spent her childhood. Thorne could see what she had meant earlier. There was rather more stone cladding on display than thatch and Thorne doubted that, come the summer, there would be too many roses growing over the doorways.
    They turned off the main street, slowed as they drove past a terrace of cottages that looked to be from the twenties or thirties. Cars were parked within a few feet of most front doors, their wheels on the pavement to allow heavy vehicles to get past. There was a convenience store opposite, a Chinese takeaway, a small area of asphalt adjacent, with a swing-set and roundabout.
    Helen pointed, said, ‘There.’ Thorne slowed still further. ‘That was our house.’ She pushed the button and her window slid halfway down. ‘Front door was red when we lived there. There wasn’t double-glazing.’
    Thorne stopped the car, checked to see there was nothing behind him. ‘You want to get out and have a look?’
    ‘It’s pissing down.’
    ‘There’s an umbrella in the back,’ Thorne said. ‘Go on, knock on the door, see who’s living there.’
    Helen shook her head. She was still staring. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
    ‘Only take five minutes.’
    ‘Who the hell wants a stranger banging on their door?’ She put the window back up. ‘Poking around.’
    ‘I just thought you’d be interested.’
    ‘I want to go and see Linda,’ Helen said, a little sharply. She turned and looked at Thorne, blinked slowly and found a half-smile. ‘What’s the point, anyway?’
    The rain was easing as they drove the few miles further on, along snaking lanes with high hedges or skeletal trees pressing in on either side. It had more or less stopped completely by the timethey reached the river, drove across the bridge into Polesford and Thorne saw the sign for the Market Square.
    It might have been a Saturday, but Thorne guessed that the place was still somewhat busier than it would usually have been. Not that too many of the residents appeared to be there in search of second-hand paperbacks or knock-off perfume or whatever else was on offer. Though a handful of traders had braved the bad weather in the hope of