The Bone Field

by Simon Kernick

  ‘I saw Henry naked on a number of occasions and he didn’t have the tattoo then.’

  That revelation caught me out, but I didn’t show it.

  ‘You were lovers?’

  Kettleborough nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose we were, although it was more of a physical affair. I liked Henry. I’m not sure whether he felt the same way about me, or whether he thought it might help him do better in his PhD, but we did sleep together on a handful of occasions and obviously, under the circumstances, this is something I wouldn’t want to become public.’

  ‘I’ve got to say, you guys certainly live the life.’

  He shrugged, and the twinkle reappeared in his eye. ‘Why do a job you don’t enjoy? You enjoy yours, don’t you?’

  ‘Enjoy’s probably the wrong word. I think of it more as a vocation.’

  He started to say something about the meaning of justice, and I got the feeling he was keen for a philosophical discussion. I wasn’t.

  ‘Henry left before he completed his PhD, didn’t he?’ I asked, cutting him off.

  ‘Yes. He transferred to Brighton Polytechnic, as it was then, to complete it. I have to admit, I was disappointed. Not for personal reasons. Our physical relationship, if you can call it that, had already finished by then. I simply felt he was making the wrong move.’

  ‘Why did he leave?’

  ‘Thomas Mann said: it is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Are you familiar with that quote, DS Mason?’

  ‘Believe it or not, no.’

  Kettleborough sighed. ‘Well, that’s what happened to Henry. He fell in love and, to my mind, he lost all reason. At the time, while he worked on his PhD, he was lecturing at Goldsmiths, and the woman he fell in love with was one of his students. They tried to keep their relationship secret but of course it became public knowledge. Henry changed. At one time I would have described him as a relatively harmless narcissist, unable to give himself to others. But he went from that to a lovesick fool in very little time. He became obsessed with this student. They once had a loud argument in the faculty building that ended with Henry on his knees begging for forgiveness. After that I had to intervene. I told him that either he ended the relationship or he kept it discreet, otherwise he’d be removed from his position in the college. He apologized and said that he would end it. I don’t know if he did or not, or whether she did, but there were no more public arguments and it wasn’t long afterwards that Henry requested a transfer to another establishment. I tried to persuade him to stay. He was a good lecturer, and I enjoyed mentoring him. I even suggested we could get the girl to transfer but he told me his decision was nothing to do with her, even though it was obvious it was. Anyway, I wanted him to go to Sheffield where I had a colleague who could mentor him, but he insisted on Brighton, which I thought was something of a backward step. When he came to see me the day he left to say goodbye, he’d lost weight and he looked pale and drawn. I asked him if he was all right. He said he was, we shook hands, and he left. I never saw him again.’

  ‘Can you remember the name of the student he fell in love with?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘I remember it, and I remember her, although I never taught her. Her name was Lola, and she was the kind of young woman your parents warned you about. Very pretty, very demure, but also, I suspect, very manipulative.’ He frowned. ‘Now what was her last name? Lola … It was so long ago now.’

  ‘Was it Lola Sheridan?’

  He thought about it a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, I think it was. Has she come up in your investigation?’

  I kept my face blank. I had to be careful here. ‘Not directly, no. Should she?’

  He shook his head. ‘Oh no, of course not. I haven’t seen her either, not since she left Goldsmiths, and that was many years ago.’

  I didn’t need to ask any more questions. I had what I needed: a link between Henry Forbes and Kitty Sinn’s cousin, Lola Sheridan. A woman who may or may not have had a motive for killing Kitty.

  It wasn’t much, but I was pleased. It was another piece in the puzzle.

  When I was back on the street, I checked my phone. I like to keep it on silent during interviews so it doesn’t interrupt my train of thought, and during the short time I’d been in with Dr Kettleborough I’d received a voicemail from Olaf. But there was still no word from Tina. It had now been seven hours since we’d spoken, and I’d left four messages. I’d also called Charlotte Curtis’s home and mobile numbers but again with no response. If I hadn’t heard back from either of them by ten p.m. I was going to involve the French police.

  As I walked back to the car, I called Olaf.

  ‘Ray, where are you?’ he demanded. ‘You’re like the fucking incredible disappearing man. We’ve got the name of the shooter with the sleeve tattoo. Anton Walters. One of the super-recognizers ID’d him. We’ve got an address for him too and we’re picking him up tonight, so get back here. We need you on this.’

  ‘When you say tonight, we’re talking about tomorrow early morning, right?’

  ‘No. We’re talking tonight. In a couple of hours. The commander wants an arrest as soon as possible so we can have charges in place by the time the breakfast news starts.’

  And that was the thing about collars these days. Everything had to be carefully choreographed for the media, even if it meant taking bigger risks. As every police officer the world over knows, the best time to raid a criminal’s home is between four and six in the morning when he’s likely to be at home, fast asleep, and not in the mood for resistance.

  But, shit, what did I know? I got in the car and told Olaf I was on my way back to the station.

  It was time to meet the man who’d tried to kill me forty-eight hours earlier.

  Thirty-three

  Ramon never knew what to say with women. Apart from a few fumbles with girls from the ends when he’d been growing up, and a couple of visits to whores since his release, he’d had virtually no experience of being in close contact with them. It didn’t help that he was big and lumbering, with a rubbery-looking face and a lazy eye. Women scared him. They were like some alien species he couldn’t understand, but who still gave him a tingling feeling whenever he spotted a pretty one.

  They’d been driving for more than an hour now, Ramon and the girl with the brown eyes, and during that time they hadn’t spoken. When he’d turned up at the brothel, he’d been surprised that she was the one Jonas had wanted him to collect, and he couldn’t work out whether he was pleased about it or not. The girl had given him the same smile she’d given him the previous night when he’d helped her out of the dinghy, but the dirty-looking pimp who’d answered the door to him was watching, so Ramon had just nodded back and said nothing as he’d helped her into the back of the car.

  All the way through the journey he’d wanted to talk. To ask the girl her name. To ask her if she was OK, because he could see that she looked nervous in the back, now that she’d been separated from her friends. Her plight reminded Ramon of his first day in prison, when the cell door had shut behind him for the first time and he’d realized he was truly alone in the world. That night he’d cried silently into his pillow. He wondered if the girl had cried too.

  But Jonas had given him orders not to speak to her, so Ramon had turned the radio up and kept his eyes on the traffic-choked streets until the city finally gave way to suburbs, where the houses were big and well kept, where the people with real money lived.

  Ramon knew he wasn’t the brightest of sparks but one thing he did have going for him was his ability to survive so, as he sat there in silence, he figured out a plan. He’d join Jonas’s crew, save up every penny he could until he had twenty grand, then he’d get himself a fake passport and split for good, and fuck them all. In the meantime, all he had to do was keep his head down and stay alive.

  It was only when he glanced in the rear-view mirror that he saw that the girl had shifted over to the middle seat and that there were tears running down her face as she stared out
of the window and into an unfamiliar night. She looked so young then, young and vulnerable, and Ramon felt something he’d been trying to avoid all day. Emotion. He could feel it overwhelming him. He suddenly wanted to protect this girl, just like he should have protected Keesha all those years ago, and he had to take a couple of deep breaths, like they’d taught him to do in the anger management classes in jail, and force the emotion back down.

  But it didn’t work. He kept looking at her in the mirror.

  The girl saw him watching, and gave him a look that made him wince. A tear ran down each of her cheeks and he saw that those beautiful big brown eyes were red round the edges.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked in heavily accented English.

  Ramon didn’t have a clue. When he and Junior had been out drinking one night, Junior had slurred something about the girls the outfit smuggled in sometimes being sold off to other people, then disappearing altogether. ‘Never to be seen again’ were Junior’s words.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, turning down the radio. ‘I’m just the driver.’ He tried to think of something to add and finally came up with: ‘I bet it’ll be somewhere nice though. Nicer than that place you were in.’

  ‘It was horrible there,’ said the girl. ‘They beat us and made us take our clothes off. Then they locked us in dirty rooms and didn’t give us food or drink.’

  ‘You’re all right now,’ said Ramon, even though he doubted she was.

  ‘I hope so,’ said the girl, her voice small in the car. ‘I’m scared.’

  Ramon felt another punch of emotion. ‘Don’t worry. You’re going to be OK.’

  ‘You seem like a good man.’

  He wasn’t. Had never been. And that was why no one had ever said that to him before now.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, staring back at the road and telling himself that this girl wasn’t his problem. He just had to get her to the address on the slip of paper Jonas had given him, and that was it.

  The car fell silent again, but it wasn’t a silence that felt right. Ramon wanted to talk. He couldn’t help it. He was curious about the girl. He felt for her.

  But he held back.

  She didn’t. ‘I’m hungry.’

  They were driving down a nice-looking high street and he could see a McDonald’s with a drive-thru coming up on his left. Ramon knew he shouldn’t stop. He’d already disobeyed orders by talking to her. Anything else was just too risky. For all he knew one of Jonas’s crew was following him, checking that he was doing what he was told.

  ‘There’s a McDonald’s,’ the girl said excitedly. ‘Please, can we stop?’

  Ramon looked at her in the mirror, caught the look in her big brown eyes, and knew he was going to do what she wanted. It was that simple.

  ‘Do you promise you won’t tell anyone? If you do, I get in a lot of trouble.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she said firmly. ‘I promise.’

  Ramon was hungry himself. He hadn’t eaten a thing since the Pot Noodle at lunchtime, and he was a big guy. He turned in, stopped at the drive-thru window and ordered two Big Macs, large fries and Coke for himself, and a Big Mac, fries and Coke for her. There was a car park round the side of the restaurant and he stopped there while they both ate.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said back.

  ‘My name is Nicole.’

  Ramon swallowed. It was a beautiful name.

  ‘What’s yours?’ she asked.

  A warning bell somewhere in his brain told him to end this conversation right now, but warning bells had been sounding all Ramon’s life and he’d always done a good job of ignoring them.

  ‘I’m Ramon,’ he said, drinking from his Coke.

  ‘That’s a nice name.’

  He turned round in his seat, looked at her. ‘Thanks. Where are you from?’

  ‘Serbia.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Ramon, whose geography wasn’t too good.

  ‘In eastern Europe, near Greece.’

  ‘Sounds nice. Is it warm?’

  ‘In summer.’

  They fell silent, and Ramon finished his Coke. It was time to go.

  ‘The people who brought me here said I was going to have a job as a waitress in London,’ said Nicole, her face growing sad again. ‘I wanted to send money back to my mama at home, to help her pay for my little sister’s school.’

  ‘How old’s your sister?’ asked Ramon.

  ‘Only eight. Her name’s Tatia.’ Nicole smiled. ‘She’s beautiful. I have a picture of her on my phone but they took the phone away from me.’

  ‘How old are you, Nicole?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  Ramon had been in prison at sixteen. Alone in the world. Just like Nicole was.

  ‘Am I going to have a proper job?’ asked Nicole. ‘Because last night the girls said we were going to have to … to do things for money. Bad things.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re going to be doing, but it won’t be what those girls are saying.’ But even as he spoke the words Ramon could hear the lie in his voice. And he knew that Nicole could hear it too.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like that before. Not with anyone.’ She stared at him, a desperation in her expression that was ripping his heart apart. ‘I just want to go home. Could you help me?’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, crumpling up the McDonald’s bag and chucking it out of the window. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  They drove for another half an hour in silence and he could hear her crying softly in the back.

  They were now in the kind of open countryside Ramon had never known actually existed before the last few weeks. The satnav was telling him to turn right on to a wooded road up ahead. It also told him that he was only 1.4 kilometres from his final destination. He wondered who the hell lived out here, in the middle of a wood with no one around.

  Once more, Junior’s words came back to him like an irritating voice in his head: ‘Sometimes they get sold off to other people, and then they just disappear. You know. Never to be seen again.’

  The road behind him was clear as he made the turn on to a worn-out track that looked like it was about to get swallowed by the wall of high trees on either side.

  Nicole made a small moaning sound. ‘Please. Why are you taking me here? You’re not going to kill me, are you?’

  ‘Course I’m not,’ he said, shocked that she’d think that. He turned round in his seat. ‘I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. I’m not that kind of man.’

  But she’d buried her face in her hands and was sobbing.

  Ramon made a decision. He pulled over to the side of the track, knowing he had to be quick.

  ‘Look, I know you’re scared, but you should be all right. If you’ve got any problems, you can call me. Have you got a pen?’

  She nodded shakily and reached into her little suitcase of possessions, pulling out a pen and notepad.

  He took it off her, wrote down the number of the phone Dan the Pig had given to him, since he knew that one off by heart and it couldn’t be traced back to him by Jonas or anyone else, then ripped out the page and handed it back to her. ‘Keep this safe, OK? And make sure no one finds it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She stared at the number for a few seconds and put it in the pocket of her jacket. Then, with a small smile, she reached forward and touched Ramon’s face. ‘Thank you so much. You are a good man.’

  Ramon wanted to weep. No one had touched him like that before. No, that wasn’t true. Keesha had. Sweet little Keesha. She used to touch his face and look up at him like that. But, Jesus, that was a long time ago now.

  And now he was delivering this girl, someone who actually seemed to appreciate him, to an unknown place in the middle of some woods where whatever was going to happen to her was going to be bad.

  Almost without realizing what he was doing, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the miniature tracking device Dan the Pig had given him. It was a piece of black plastic
smaller than a postage stamp and not much thicker. He placed it in the palm of his hand and showed it to Nicole.

  ‘Take this,’ he told her. ‘It’s a tracker. Keep it somewhere on you where no one can find it, and if you get scared, you turn on this little switch here and that means I can find you, wherever you are.’ It didn’t. It meant that Dan the Pig would know where she was. But at least it was something.

  ‘Where am I supposed to put it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Anywhere. In your mouth if you have to. Just keep it safe.’

  She stared at it for a few seconds, looking confused. ‘I still don’t—’

  ‘Just do it, Nicole. We’re wasting time here.’

  Carefully she picked up the tracker and, as he watched, she slipped it into her mouth and pushed it up into her cheek.

  With a sigh, Ramon pulled back on to the track and drove through the woods, hurrying now, not wanting to arouse any suspicion. If Jonas ever found out what he’d done, Ramon would die horribly, he knew that, but it was too late to change anything now. He just had to keep calm and hope for the best.

  The wood grew darker. It looked totally empty. Ramon had never been in a place like this before. It was like being inside a game of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombie version, where the zombies suddenly appeared, staggering out of the darkness and wailing for blood. The noise and safety of the city suddenly seemed far away.

  And then, just as the satnav told him he’d reached his destination, a big white house appeared behind a wall of high bushes on his right. There was a driveway up ahead and Ramon turned into it, stopping outside the front door. Inside, lights were on but there was no car around.

  ‘Don’t speak to me any more,’ he hissed to Nicole. ‘Not even to say goodbye. OK? Not a word.’

  Nicole nodded.

  He told her to stay put, then got out of the car and looked around. The air smelled different round here. Fresh, like it had on the beach last night. As he walked over to the front door, his feet crunching on the gravel, it opened a few inches and the face of an older woman with jet-black hair and eyes like stone appeared in the gap. She fixed Ramon with a stare that stopped him dead.