Time of Death

by Mark Billingham Narrated by Mark Billingham

Overview

The astonishing thirteenth Tom Thorne novel is a story of kidnapping, the tabloid press, and a frightening case of mistaken identity.



Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen's home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect's wife as an old school-friend and returns home for the first time in twenty-five years to lend her support.



As his partner faces up to the past she has tried desperately to forget the media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have got the wrong man. There is still an extremely clever killer on the loose and a missing girl who Thorne believes might still be alive.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

04/13/2015
At the outset of Billingham’s slow-burning 13th Tom Thorne novel (after 2014’s The Bones Beneath), the detective inspector’s girlfriend, Det. Sgt. Helen Weeks, persuades him to abandon their original holiday plans and head instead to Polesford, the small Warwickshire village where she grew up, after she recognizes a childhood friend, Linda Bates, on the news as the wife of a man accused of abducting two teenage girls. Even though she hasn’t seen Linda for decades, Helen feels a strange pull to help her old friend, and Thorne always relishes a new case. It’s been three weeks since Jessica Toms disappeared and two days since Poppy Johnston vanished—both appear to have accepted rides from Linda’s husband. Despite the husband’s claims of innocence, evidence mounts against him, including traces of DNA that place Jessica in his car. Thorne takes a backseat role as he assists Helen in what becomes a deeply personal investigation that builds to a surprising and satisfying climax. Agent: Sarah Lutyens, Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency (U.K.). (June)

From the Publisher

Praise for Time of Death:

Longlisted for the 2016 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel Of The Year
A Telegraph Best Crime Fiction Book of the Year
One of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 Great Summer Thrillers”
One of the Guardian’s “Best Recent Crime Novels”

“Some ingenious forensic footwork. What is most impressive about the novel, however, is the astute observation of the beleaguered Bates family, who turn in on themselves as the inhabitants of the town turn on them.”—Guardian (UK)

“Clever and inventive.”—Financial Times

“The writing displays the virtues that have made Mark Billingham a bestseller: wit, careful plotting, attention to detail (some of it gruesome) and great characterization—not just Thorne and Helen but subsidiary figures such as the e-cigarette-puffing local police chief . . . An entertaining read. This won’t disappoint Billingham’s legions of fans.”—Telegraph (UK)

“Billingham conjures many moods in this suspenseful thriller . . . This is a multilayered, expertly crafted look at the many moving parts of an investigation and the terror unleashed by a crafty killer.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Builds to a surprising and satisfying climax.”—Publishers Weekly

“DI Tom Thorne and his lover, DS Helen Weeks, return to Helen's hated hometown in Warwickshire to confront some ugly accusations and some even uglier secrets. . . . What lingers in the memory is the group portrait of the Polesford locals brutally closing ranks against a man they're certain deserves to die.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Billingham has seemed to be incapable of writing any way but wonderfully since Sleepyhead, his first Tom Thorne novel . . . Billingham is always spot on, but Time of Death is pitch-perfect, evenly balanced between plot and character. You won’t be able to read it without wondering why all books can’t be this good.”—Bookreporter

Praise for Mark Billingham:

“Morse, Rebus, and now Thorne. The next superstar detective is already with us—don’t miss him.”—Lee Child

“Billingham is one of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today.”—Gillian Flynn

“Billingham is a world-class crime writer and Tom Thorne is a wonderful creation. Rush to read these books.”—Karin Slaughter

“With each of his books, Mark Billingham gets better and better. These are stories and characters you don’t want to leave.”—Michael Connelly

“Mark Billingham is one of my favorite new writers.”—Harlan Coben

"Billingham is one of the best crime novelists working today."—Laura Lippman

“Mark Billingham has brought a rare and welcome blend of humanity, dimension, and excitement to the genre.”—George Pelecanos

“Billingham leaps to the upper echelons of crime fiction in one bound.”—John Harvey

Kirkus Reviews

2015-03-21
DI Tom Thorne and his lover, DS Helen Weeks, return to Helen's hated hometown in Warwickshire to confront some ugly accusations and some even uglier secrets. Now that he's finally found the time to take Helen away from London to the Cotswolds for Valentine's weekend, Thorne (The Bones Beneath, 2014, etc.) is distraught to see a broadcast on the telly that has Helen packing her bags again when they've only just arrived. But Helen is determined to leave with or without him for Polesford, a place she has little reason to love, once she recognizes her classmate Linda Jackson as the wife of Stephen Bates, who's accused of kidnapping two 15-year-old girls. DI Tim Cornish listens patiently as Thorne notes the circumstantial nature of the evidence against Steve, but he's confident that they've got the right man banged up. So is the rest of the town, which quickly turns on Linda for standing by her man and Helen for poking her nose into their business. When searchers find the corpse of Jessica Toms, the forensic discoveries seem to tighten the noose around Steve's neck even further. But Thorne grows more and more skeptical, and as the evidence against Steve continues to pile up, he enlists his old friend, pathologist Phil Hendricks, to poke holes in the case against Steve so that he can identify the killer, who's devised an unusually devious way to fudge the forensics, before he can kill his second victim, Poppy Johnston, whose fate Billingham follows one heartbeat at a time. Despite hints to the contrary, the crime and the investigation are routine, and the killer is a cipher. What lingers in the memory is the group portrait of the Polesford locals brutally closing ranks against a man they're certain deserves to die.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171735043
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	06/02/2015
Series:	Tom Thorne Series , #13
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

'So, a big Sunday roast?' Thorne had asked. 'That kind of thing?'

'And a cream tea on the Saturday with a bit of luck.'

'No mooching around in antiques shops.'

'No mooching.'

They stopped, holding their breath as they listened to Alfie coughing in the next room. Thankfully, he stayed asleep.

Thorne adjusted his pillow. Sniffed. 'A decent pub with a toasty fire.'

'I bloody well hope so.'

'And definitely no walking?'

'Only as far as the pub.'

Thorne had grunted cautiously and pulled Helen closer to him, thinking about it. 'Just the weekend though, right ...?'

Now, on their first night away, a month after those tentative and delicate bedtime negotiations, walking back to their hotel after dinner in a more than decent pub, Tom Thorne decided that he'd got off reasonably lightly. It had taken a good deal of organisation, not to mention the calling in of several favours from sympathetic colleagues, to co-ordinate the holidays they were both due and he knew that Helen had been angling to spend at least a week of it holed up in the Cotswolds.

'It was nice food, wasn't it?' Helen asked.

'Yeah, it was all right.'

She shook her head. 'You miserable old git.'

Thorne could see the sly smile, but had no way of knowing that Helen Weeks too thought she'd had a result. Thorne was not the most adventurous of souls. He was still uncomfortable spending time south of the Thames, so she knew that, given the choice, he would rather stick needles in his eyes than spend precious free time in the countryside. Just hearing the theme tune to The Archers was normally enough to give him the heebie-jeebies.

'Home-made chutney and bloody am-dram,' he'd said once. 'I couldn't care less.'

All things considered, she had decided that a weekend – a long Valentine's Day weekend – was a fair return for the time spent trying to persuade him that it would be good to get out of the city for a few days. A few days on their own, before they'd head off somewhere good and hot for a week; a nice resort with a toddlers' club, where they could really kick back and do sweet FA until they were due back on the Job. The 'no walking' agreement had been a sacrifice she was prepared to make and the somewhat contentious 'mooching' issue had been worth giving ground on. That said, she had her walking boots stashed in the boot of the car and there was a nice-looking antiques shop on the main road. Helen took a gloved hand out of her pocket and put her arm through Thorne's. She felt quietly confident that the four-poster bed that was waiting for them back at the hotel might lead to the reopening of discussions.

'I'll accept the miserable,' Thorne said. 'But less of the old.'

They turned on to the cobbled side street that led to their hotel. Halfway along, a middle-aged woman passed by with a spaniel that appeared to be feeling the cold every bit as much as Thorne and Helen were. Thorne smiled at the woman and she immediately looked away.

'See that?' Thorne shook his head. 'I thought they were supposed to be friendlier in the countryside. I've met serial killers who were friendlier than that. Sour-faced old bag.'

'You probably scared her,' Helen said. 'You've got a scary face.'

'What?'

'If someone doesn't know you, that's all I'm saying.'

'Great,' Thorne said. 'So, that's miserable, old and scary.'

Helen was grinning as Thorne stepped ahead of her and shouldered the front door of the hotel open. 'Those are your good qualities.'

Inside, Thorne smiled at the teenage girl behind the reception desk, but did not get a great deal more in return than he'd got from the old woman with the dog. He shrugged and nodded towards the small lounge bar. 'Quick one before bed?'

'I think we should head up,' Helen said. 'Maybe have a quick one in bed.'

'Oh ... '

'Or a slow one.'

Thorne's hand moved instinctively to his gut. He was suddenly regretting the decision to eat dessert. 'You might need to give me twenty minutes.'

'Lightweight.'

'Fifteen, then. But you'll have to do all the work.'

Helen walked towards the stairs and, as Thorne turned to follow her, he caught the eye of the girl behind the desk. He guessed that she had overheard, as she had suddenly managed to find a smile from somewhere.

Thorne was in the bathroom when Helen called him. He was brushing his teeth, smiling at the orderly way in which Helen had laid out the contents of her washbag, replacing the range of complimentary toiletries that had already been secreted in her suitcase.

'Tom ... '

He walked back into the bedroom, still brushing. He spattered his Hank Williams T-shirt with toothpaste as he managed a muffled 'What?'

Helen was sitting on a padded trunk at the end of the bed. She nodded towards the TV. 'They've made an arrest.'

They had been following the story for the past three weeks, since the first girl had gone missing. It had all but slipped from the front pages, had no longer been the lead item on the TV news, until the previous day when a second girl had disappeared. This time the missing teenager had been seen getting into a car and suddenly the media were interested again.

Thorne walked quickly back into the bathroom, rinsed and spat. He rejoined Helen, sat next to her as she pointed the remote and turned the volume up.

'It was always on the cards,' Thorne said.

Helen would have been keenly monitoring such an investigation anyway, of course. As a police officer who worked on a child abuse investigation team. As someone all too aware of the suffering that missing persons cases wrought among those left waiting and hoping.

As a parent.

This one was different though.

On the screen, a young reporter in a smart coat and thick scarf talked directly to camera. She spoke, suitably grim-faced, yet evidently excited at breaking the news about this latest 'significant development'. Behind her, almost certainly gathered together by the film crew for effect, a small group of locals jostled for position in a market square that Helen Weeks knew well.

This was the town in which she had grown up.

The reporter continued, talking over the same video package that had run the night before: a ragged line of officers in high-vis jackets moving slowly across a dark field; a distraught-looking couple being comforted by relatives; a different but equally distressed couple being bundled through a scrum of journalists brandishing cameras and microphones. The reporter said that, according to sources close to the investigation, a local man in his thirties had been identified as the suspect currently in custody. She gave the man's name. She said it again, nice and slowly. 'Police,' she said, 'have refused to confirm or deny that Stephen Bates is the man they are holding.'

'Ouch,' Thorne said. 'Right now there's a senior investigating officer ripping some gobshite a new arsehole.'

'Leak could have come from anywhere,' Helen said.

'Not good though, is it?'

'Not a lot anyone can do, not there. Somebody knows somebody who saw him taken to the station, whatever.' Her eyes had not left the screen. 'It's not an easy place to keep secrets.'

Thorne was about to say something else, but Helen shushed him. A photograph filled the screen and the reporter proudly announced that this picture of the man now being questioned had been acquired exclusively from a source close to the family.

'Another "source",' Thorne said. 'Right.'

Helen shushed him again. She stood up slowly and stepped towards the screen.

It was a wedding photograph, a relatively recent one by the look of it, the happy couple posing outside a register office. The groom – a circle superimposed around his head – in a simple blue suit, grinning, a cigarette between his fingers. The bride in a dress that seemed a little over-the-top by comparison.

Thorne said, 'Looks like a charmer —'

'Shit!'

'What?'

'I know her.' Helen jabbed a finger towards the screen. 'I was at school with her. With the suspect's wife.'

Thorne stood up and moved next to her. 'Bloody hell.'

'Linda Jackson. Well, she was Jackson back then, anyway.'

'Are you sure?'

Helen nodded, stared at the screen. 'We were in the same class ...'

They watched for a few minutes more, but there was nothing beyond the same news regurgitated and once they had run out of horrified locals to interview and began running the same footage for a third time, Helen wandered into the bathroom.

Thorne turned the sound down on the TV and began to get undressed. He shouted, 'She looks seriously pleased with herself, that reporter. Obviously reckons she's got a promotion coming.'

Helen did not respond and, a few minutes later, as Thorne was climbing into bed, she came out of the bathroom. 'I want to go up there,' she said.

'You what?'

'I want to go home.'

Thorne sat on the edge of the bed. 'Why?'

'Think about what she's going through. She's got kids.' She waved a hand towards the television. 'They said.'

'Hang on, how long's it been since you've seen her?'

'So?'

'Near enough twenty years, right?'

'I know what that place is like, Tom.'

'Well, I can't stop you, I suppose, but I think it's stupid.'

They said nothing for a few long seconds. Helen opened the wardrobe and took out her suitcase.

'Hang on, you're not thinking of going tonight?'

'Dad's expecting us to be away all weekend,' Helen said. She opened a drawer, took out a handful of socks and underwear and carried them across to the case. 'So there's no problem looking after Alfie.'

'I know, but still.'

'We can be there in an hour and a half ... less.' She went back for more clothes. 'There's not going to be any traffic now.'

Thorne got off the bed and grabbed one of the two towelling dressing gowns that had been hanging inside the wardrobe. It was too small, but he pulled it on anyway. He placed himself strategically between Helen and her suitcase. 'You've got no family up there any more, right? Where do you think you're going to stay?' 'I'll sort something out.'

'The place is teeming with coppers and reporters. You wouldn't find anywhere tonight even if you went.' He waited, relieved that she seemed to be thinking it over. 'Why don't we do this tomorrow?' She nodded, reluctantly. 'I'm going though.'

'If that's what you want.'

Helen took another look at the TV. There still appeared to be nothing new to report. She walked back towards the bathroom, stopped at the door.

'You don't have to come with me, you know.'

'I know I don't, but what am I going to do here on my own?'

'You could go home,' Helen said. 'Hang out with Phil for a few days.'

'Let's talk about this in the morning,' Thorne said.

'You mean talk me out of it?'

'Well, I do think it's a stupid idea.'

'I don't care.' Helen was about to say something else when her mobile rang. She stabbed at the handset and answered in a way that Thorne had become used to; the voice tightening a little. Helen's sister, Jenny. Thorne was not her favourite person and the antipathy was entirely mutual. Much of the time, Helen could not bear her sister either, impatient at being patronised by a sibling two years younger than she was.

'Yes,' Helen said. 'I saw it. I know ...' She rolled her eyes at Thorne and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Thorne lay on the bed, nudged the volume on the TV back up. The reporter was talking to the studio again.

'It's hard to describe the atmosphere here tonight,' she said. 'There's certainly a lot of anger.'

Thorne could hear Helen talking in the bathroom, but could not make out what she was saying.

The reporter was winding up, the crowd behind her larger now than it had been minutes before, the wind whipping at the ends of her scarf. Her voice was measured, nicely dramatic. 'With two girls still missing and one of their own being questioned in connection with their abduction, the tension round here is palpable.' She threw a look over her shoulder. 'This is a community in shock.'

Thorne watched as the woman attempted to sign off, struggling to make herself heard above raised voices from nearby. Something about 'our girls' and 'justice being done'. Something about stringing the bastard up.

He reached behind him, punched up the pillow.

It was not the holiday he'd had in mind.

CHAPTER 2

They drove towards the M40, north through Oxfordshire on small roads crowded with mud-caked Chelsea Tractors, negotiating Saturday morning shoppers as they skirted Banbury. The bad weather had not let up since they'd set off. It was certainly looking like they would be on the road for rather more than the hour and a half it might have taken the night before.

'A week in the sun's sounding better than ever,' Thorne said. He turned from the curtain of rain draping itself across the bonnet of the BMW and glanced across at Helen in the passenger seat. 'What about Portugal? Or Tenerife, maybe?' Another look. 'Dave Holland's always banging on about Tenerife.'

Helen just nodded, her gaze fixed on the shops and houses, the rain-lashed walls and hedges that drifted past. Since checking out of the hotel, after a disappointing breakfast and a tetchy exchange with the hotel manager, she had said very little. She had spent half an hour on the phone before breakfast making arrangements, but since then had seemed preoccupied. As determined as ever to make the trip, but clearly apprehensive about what awaited them when they reached their destination.

On the radio, the news led with the latest from Polesford.

Police were still refusing to confirm the identity of the man they had taken into custody but were, they said, continuing to question him. A senior officer made a short statement. He said that further information would be released, but only when the time was right. Echoing the reporter from the previous night's television news, the correspondent talked at some length about the atmosphere in the town.

Anger, fear, profound shock.

Above all, she said, there was an overwhelming sense from the residents that theirs was not the sort of town where things like this happened.

Back in the studio, they began to talk about the latest unemployment figures and Thorne turned the sound down. 'So, come on then, which is it?' he asked. 'A small town or a large village? You always talk like it's a tiny place.'

After a few seconds, Helen turned to look at him as though she had failed to hear the question. Thorne shook his head to let her know it wasn't important. He switched from the radio to the iPod connection and cued up some Lucinda Williams. He nudged the wiper speed up, spoke as much to himself as to Helen.

Said, 'Yeah, bit of sun sounds good.'

Ten minutes later, making slow progress on the crowded motorway, Helen turned and said, 'It's actually a small market town. We lived in one of the villages just outside. There's a couple of them a mile or two in each direction.'

'Sounds nice,' Thorne said.

'It's not like where we were yesterday.'

'No antiques shops to mooch around in?'

She barked out a laugh. 'Hardly. It's like the Cotswolds, only without men in garish 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.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Time Of Death"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Mark Billingham Ltd.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos