TT13 Time of Death Read Online Free

long-standing residents, when it had been built twenty or thirty years earlier. A bulb-shaped collection of identical properties, most already old before their time. Ugly garages and red-tiled roofs that bristled with satellite dishes.
    As well as the predictably large gathering of reporters, there were a good few members of the public huddled close together on the pavement opposite number six. Mums, dads, young kids perched on shoulders. Thorne could hear the muttering increase in volume as he marched up to the cordon and showed the uniformed officer his warrant card. Camera shutters began to click behind them as Helen produced her ID and the pair of them ducked beneath the tape and walked towards the front door.
    It was open by the time they reached it.
    The female detective was in her late twenties. Tall and skinny; ash-blonde hair pulled back hard, dark trousers and jacket. Thorne guessed that she was a family liaison officer, that there would probably be more inside, uniform and CID.
    She looked at Thorne and Helen, faces and warrant cards, then waved them inside.
    As soon as the front door was shut, she turned and introducedherself as DC Sophie Carson. Her manner was not especially collegiate and if she had taken in the details on the warrant cards, she did not seem overly concerned that she was talking to two officers of senior rank. She waited for Thorne and Helen to say something and, after a few seconds of awkward silence, she stepped away from the door.
    ‘Should I know about this?’
    ‘Nothing to know about,’ Thorne said, thinking that if the woman
was
a family liaison officer, she might want to ratchet up the warmth a notch or three. He introduced himself quickly and when Helen had done the same he said, ‘Detective Sergeant Weeks is an old friend of Linda’s.’
    ‘Right,’ Carson said. She nodded, but looked uncertain and as she moved towards them, her hand drifted automatically to the Airwave radio clipped to her belt.
    The hallway was narrow and Thorne and Helen had to press themselves against the stairs to allow the DC to get past. She knocked on a door and pushed it open. After a cursory glance into the room, she leaned in and mumbled a few words that neither Thorne nor Helen could make out, then nodded again to indicate that they could enter. She followed them inside and closed the door behind her.
    A woman wearing jeans and a baggy sweatshirt sat leaning forward on a battered black-leather sofa, a teenage girl close to her. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, sat on hard chairs on the other side of the room. The remains of tea things were scattered on a low table between them: mugs, a carton of milk, an open packet of biscuits. It looked as if they had been watching television, though the sound was turned down.
    Thorne and Helen stood side by side, waited. The room was overheated and stuffy and the curtains were drawn. Thorne could hear voices from somewhere above him; a radio or another television.
    Carson nodded towards Helen. ‘Says she’s an old friend of yours.’
    The woman on the sofa stared at Helen for a few seconds, then stood up slowly, her face creasing as confusion gave way to recognition.
    ‘Helen?’
    ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ Carson said. She waved the uniforms out and one by one they stood up and trooped past her into the hallway. Thorne kept one eye on Carson as she followed them. He watched her key the radio and could hear that she was already reporting events to Operational HQ as the door hissed across the thick carpet and finally snicked shut.
    A few seconds before Linda Bates rushed, sobbing, into Helen’s arms.

THREE
    She tries to sleep, but not because she is tired.
    Awake, it’s cold, despite the thick coat that he let her keep, and there is not so much as a pinhole of light. The tape is still tight around her mouth and having lost the battle to control her bladder, she is starting to feel sore. It had warmed her a little at first, but quickly became