TT13 Time of Death Read Free Page B

brisk business, they hardly looked to be beating away customers with sticks. Most were sat nattering and drinking from flasks, beneath striped plastic awnings that snapped and danced in the strong wind.
    Hard-faced, disappointed.
    Instead, the people milling around the fringes or gathered together between the stalls in threes and fours, seemed more intent on animated conversation. Thorne watched them as he drove slowly around the square. He saw men huddled, smoking in doorways. A trio of young women, each nudging a pushchair back and forth on the spot. He saw the nodding and shaking of heads, the pointing fingers, and, even from a distance, it felt as if the entire place was humming with the jibber-jabber, the feverish speculation.
    ‘Paula said we should try and park behind the supermarket.’ Helen pointed to a turning and Thorne followed her instructions. ‘We can walk from there.’
    Paula. The woman in whose house they would apparently be spending the night, though Thorne had still not found out very much about her, or about her relationship to Helen.
    ‘You were right,’ Helen had said that morning, packing quickly after a spate of calls. ‘Can’t even find a hotel room in Tamworth, never mind in town. But I think I’ve managed to sort something out …’
    Approaching the supermarket, they saw a patch of fenced-off waste ground next to the small petrol station opposite. A man in a dripping green cagoule, the hood tight around his face, stood atthe entrance. He nodded towards the sign that had been taped to a makeshift barrier. ALL DAY PARKING £7.50.
    ‘Jesus,’ Helen said. ‘Making money out of it.’
    They stared as they drove slowly past. Plenty had already coughed up.
    ‘He won’t be the only one,’ Thorne said.
    Driving into the legitimate car park behind the supermarket, they saw that half the available space had been coned off and was taken up by a large number of emergency vehicles. Vans, squad cars, an ambulance they knew would be there on permanent stand-by. Helen got out and shifted a cone or two, allowing Thorne to park up next to a pair of police motorbikes. While Helen was grabbing an overcoat and umbrella from the back seat, Thorne moved the cones back into position and laid a printed card on the dashboard.
    METROPOLITAN POLICE BUSINESS .
    They walked for a few minutes in silence, past a school and a small parade of shops. The streets were less busy, but there were still one or two people standing outside their houses, chatter spilling from the open doorway of a crowded pub.
    The house where Linda Bates – who used to be Linda Jackson – lived was in a terrace not unlike the one Thorne and Helen had stopped to look at in Dorbrook. There were a few photographers outside, but the majority of journalists were elsewhere, knowing very well that the family of Stephen Bates was no longer in residence.
    The circus had moved on.
    To all intents and purposes, the property now belonged to Warwickshire Police, and would continue to do so until the painstaking process of forensication was complete. Thorne and Helen walked by on the other side of the road, weaving between the handful of smartphone-wielding onlookers. Crime tape ran around the house, which was obscured from view at the front bya phalanx of police and forensic service vehicles. A uniformed officer stood at each corner of the muddy front garden, two more in the middle of the road to ensure that nobody unauthorised got too close. The coppers looked thoroughly bored, though Thorne noticed that at least one had the good grace to try to disguise the fact when a camera began flashing a few feet away.
    An old man with a wire-haired terrier said, ‘Aye aye, there’s PC Plod on the front of the
Daily Mail
.’
    Helen nodded, but she and Thorne both knew that when it came to the media, the big boys would be where the action was.
    The house Thorne and Helen were on their way to.
    It was the kind of estate that had probably caused outrage among more