TT13 Time of Death Read Online Free Page B

his pace. He said nothing, kept his eyes forward. He doubted that he would stay anonymous for very long. Some eagle-eyed journo on a crime desk would almost certainly recognise him eventually. He had made the papers often enough himself, had been plastered all over them just a few months before.
    When a prisoner he had been escorting had escaped. When four people had died. When Thorne had almost lost his closest friend.
    He walked back to the centre of town and saw that most of the market traders had all but given up and were packing their things away for the day. It was starting to rain again. Walking along the high street, he could see that Helen had been right to say how little the place had in common with the middle-England market town they had left that morning. There seemed to be a proliferation of nail bars and hairdressers. There was an internet café and a small games arcade and Thorne counted four fast food outlets within fifty yards of each other. Not an antiques shop to be seen.
    He stopped at a newsagent for a local paper and carried it across the street to a café called Cupz. He ordered coffee and a sausage sandwich and began to read. The first four pages of the newspaper were dominated by the latest on the missing girl and carried the now widely circulated picture of Stephen and Linda Bates on their wedding day. The headline was typically crass and undeniably powerful:
    LOVE, HONOUR AND ABDUCT
?
    Several pages were devoted to the flooding in villages on lower ground to the north. There were pictures of the swollen River Anker, of dirty water lapping at front doors, of a family going to the shops in a small dinghy. The misery was only set to worsen, one story said, with more bad weather forecast and resources stretched to breaking point.
    Thorne glanced out through the window, watched people hurrying to find shelter, the rain dancing off multicoloured umbrellas.
    A young girl brought his food to the table. She nodded down at the newspaper in front of him. ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it?’
    ‘Which?’ Thorne asked. ‘The missing girls or the flooding?’
    The waitress looked a little uncertain. ‘Well, both,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’m obviously not trying to compare them. God knows what those families must be going through.’ She reddened slightly. ‘The families of those poor girls, I mean.’
    Thorne took a sip of coffee which was not as hot as he, or anyone else would have liked. ‘Did you know them?’
    ‘I’d seen them both in here a few times,’ she said. ‘After school, groups of friends, you know?’
    Thorne turned back to the front page of the newspaper and pointed at the picture from the Bates’ wedding. ‘What about him?’
    The waitress pulled a face and shook her head. ‘Thank God.’
    ‘He hasn’t been charged with anything,’ Thorne said.
    ‘He will be.’
    Thorne took a bite of his sandwich and waited.
    ‘Well, there were witnesses, weren’t there? A couple of Poppy’s mates saw her get into his car.’
    Poppy Johnston. The most recent girl to have gone missing. Her name was still mentioned rather more often in the newspaper reports than the girl who had vanished three weeks earlier. Just ‘Poppy’ though now, even to those who had not known her personally.
    ‘Doesn’t prove he abducted her though.’ Thorne looked at the girl, but she had clearly made up her mind.
    ‘I meant to ask, do you want ketchup?’
    ‘Brown sauce,’ Thorne said.
    When he had finished his lunch, Thorne walked back through the market square and followed the signs that led to the single-storey Memorial Hall just behind it. The building, adjacent to a small community library and health centre, had been commandeered and was now functioning as the Police Control Unit. Signs were prominently displayed near the entrance showing thephone number for the incident room and there were uniformed officers talking to members of the public just outside. It was from the PCU that the search teams would be