TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

Kitson said she believed her, because she thought she ought to.

  Watching the woman light another cigarette, trying not to stare at what might have been the smallest of tremors in her fingers, Kitson told her what she had come to talk about. She explained about the prisoner escort operation that was currently taking place and why she had needed to wait until it was happening before having this and several other conversations. ‘Trying to minimise the risk of word getting out,’ she said.

  ‘So what do you want from me?’

  ‘Why’s he doing it?’

  Claire turned and stared, shook her head. ‘Seriously? Why the hell do you think I’d know?’

  ‘We thought you might have an idea, that’s all,’ Kitson said. ‘Because he writes to you. The prison told us about the letters he writes, so we wondered if he’d said something.’

  ‘I don’t see the letters,’ Claire said. ‘I’ve got an arrangement with the witness protection team and they’re intercepted. Destroyed.’ She opened the side of her mouth, allowed a wisp of smoke to escape. ‘Well, they say they destroy them. Maybe they’re reading them for a laugh. Maybe they’re making a few extra quid putting them on eBay. I don’t give a toss, tell you the truth. I don’t care about anything he might have to say.’

  ‘What do you think’s in them?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t care.’

  ‘You’re not even curious?’

  ‘Not remotely.’ She turned to look at Kitson again. ‘I only went to see him once. Five or six years ago. Some journalist was writing a book and I knew they were going to come looking. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen and I knew he was the only one who could make it stop, that he’d have some… leverage or whatever. That was the only time.’ She swallowed, took a deep drag. ‘The only time.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Kitson asked.

  ‘He tried to tell me that he still loved me.’ Claire leaned slowly forward and pulled her feet beneath the bench. She looked disgusted. ‘That he missed me. Oh yes, and just before I left he told me how much better the sex with me had been right after he’d killed someone. How thinking about what he’d done, all those lovely details, made him harder when we’d been doing it, and how he was telling me all this now because he thought I’d like to know, because he thought it would turn me on. Because it was turning him on, right there in the visitors’ room.’ She dropped her cigarette, still only half smoked, and stood up. ‘So, no. Not curious.’ She turned and watched Kitson get to her feet. She said, ‘Sorry you wasted your time.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Kitson said. ‘I think I’ve got a day of it. Fact is, I’m really just doing a favour… several favours for the copper who’s been lumbered with taking your former husband back there to look for this body. Same copper that caught him, matter of fact.’

  ‘Thorne,’ Claire said.

  Kitson was surprised for a moment, until she realised that obviously this woman would have known who Tom Thorne was. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  ‘I only met him properly once. It was another officer who questioned me after the arrest, but then he came in afterwards, asked if I was all right.’ She began to walk back towards the road. ‘Then I saw him at the trial, of course.’

  Kitson followed. ‘Can’t have been easy,’ she said. ‘Sitting through that.’

  ‘Easier for me than for some.’

  Kitson knew what she meant. Someone had mentioned that they’d needed to lay on extra seating in the courtroom. Enough to make room for the families of all the victims.

  ‘For ages I didn’t know what to think about him,’ Claire said. ‘About Thorne, I mean. It was strange, because he saved me in a way, I suppose, but at the same time he ruined my life. Does that sound weird?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if I should love him or hate him.’

  ‘A lot of people feel like that,’ Kitson said.

  SIX

  The cars turned on to the M5 just before eleven o’clock, a short and less than picturesque stretch that took them through the Black Country. They passed West Bromwich and Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton, before the motorway curved around to the west and became the M54. Twenty-five miles further on, the Midlands would give way to Shropshire, three lanes would become one, and things would inevitably slow up again. It was the main reason that the journey was likely to take so long, that it had required such a degree of thought and planning. Of the two hundred or so miles the convoy needed to travel, less than fifty were on motorways.

  Conversation up to this point had been a little stilted. The prisoners had been busy taking in the views, spectacular or otherwise, while Thorne was wary of getting into anything too drawn out with Holland for fear of missing something important being said behind him. Thus far, those with easily the most to say for themselves had been the two prison officers. Thorne guessed that Jenks and Fletcher were good friends. The conversation between the pair seemed relaxed and uninhibited, more so perhaps than it might have been back in prison, where the surroundings made it unwise to give away too much in the way of personal information.

  Where shivs and sharpened toothbrushes were not the only weapons.

  Both men were in their mid-to-late thirties; Jenks clean-shaven and with a dirty-blond mullet, in contrast to Fletcher’s closely cropped scalp and neatly trimmed goatee. Both were well built, useful-looking, though Fletcher, the senior of the two, was shorter and wider, with a physique that did not so much suggest steroids as scream them. He had a flat Brummie accent, while the softer-spoken Jenks was pure Estuary; Kent, Thorne guessed, or north Essex.

  Both were good talkers.

  So far, Thorne had learned about Mrs Fletcher’s minor operation the previous month and the problems Jenks was having with his car. He had discovered that Fletcher was an Aston Villa fan and that Jenks had bought tickets to see a well-known comedian just before Christmas. Now everyone in the car was finding out where each of them was planning to take their family on holiday the following year. The Jenkses were heading to Orlando – ‘for the kids, obviously’ – while Fletcher had settled on Barcelona, because he fancied visiting the Nou Camp stadium and his wife had some ‘stupid thing about old churches’.

  Thorne switched his attention to the radio, when a message came through from the back-up car. In the relatively short time they had been on the road, Karim had already radioed in once to report that there were no problems with the vehicle and that all was well with him and his ‘co-pilot’. Now, Holland picked up the radio and listened, rolling his eyes at Thorne, while Karim checked in a second time to report that, essentially, there was nothing to report.

  Holland put the radio back. ‘He really needs to get out of the office a bit more.’

  Thorne smiled, wondering how Wendy Markham was coping.

  Nicklin leaned forward and said, ‘So, who is that behind us?’

  Thorne saw no reason not to tell him.

  ‘They’ll be the ones getting busy with the bones then?’

  ‘Busy making sure the bones end up where they’re supposed to,’ Thorne said. ‘We’ll be meeting a forensic archaeologist up there.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Thorne looked at Nicklin in the mirror. ‘This is all providing we’ve got some bones to begin with.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of bones where we’re going.’

  Thorne had done the reading. ‘That’s just a myth.’

  ‘Got to be some truth to it,’ Nicklin said. ‘There’s human odds and sods turn up there all the time. Various bits and pieces knocking around on the beach or on the side of the mountain. Some poor old woman with a spade, trying to dig up her carrots or whatever… oh look, it’s somebody’s foot!’ He barked out a laugh and sat back. ‘Anyway, I really wouldn’t worry about having a wasted trip, because I can promise you I left some there.’ He turned to the window. ‘Not that they were bones when I left…’

  The conversation had gone as far as Thorne cared for it to go. He turned to Holland. ‘You thought abo
ut holidays yet, Dave?’

  ‘Not anywhere specific,’ Holland said.

  ‘Somewhere hot?’

  ‘Oh yeah, and it’ll have to be somewhere with a kids’ club for the Pushy Princess. Or at least plenty of other kids around she can play with.’

  Nicklin leaned forward again. ‘How old’s your daughter, sergeant?’

  Holland turned around to look at him, but said nothing. This conversation had ended too.

  They drove for another forty minutes in silence, maintaining steady progress in heavy motorway traffic. Drizzle had begun to spatter the windscreen. Just after they had passed a sign for the Telford turn-off, Nicklin turned to Fletcher.

  ‘I reckon we’re about due to stop for a bit. There’s services in three miles.’

  Fletcher leaned towards Thorne. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘We should push on,’ Thorne said.

  ‘We’re entitled to a comfort break,’ Nicklin said. ‘We’ve also got a right to a minimum of one hour’s exercise every day, isn’t that so, Mr Fletcher?’

  Fletcher caught Thorne’s eye in the rear-view and nodded.

  ‘One hour,’ Nicklin said. ‘And I’m only talking about stopping for ten minutes for a quick piss and a fag. Chance to stretch our legs.’

  Galling though it was, Thorne remembered what Colquhoun had said and knew it meant granting the prisoners the same basic privileges that they would have back at Long Lartin. Thinking ahead, he did not want any trial based on what they might find to be jeopardised by a failure to follow the correct and lawful procedure now. As things stood, Nicklin seemed happy enough to co-operate, but it would be just like him to become awkward down the line, and complain that his human rights had been denied.

  ‘Yeah, fair enough,’ Thorne said.

  Five minutes later, the two cars were pulling up and parking next to one another outside the Telford services. Leaving Markham on her own, Karim walked across to Thorne’s vehicle and waited. It had already been decided that they would work on a ratio of three to one and that each prisoner would be taken inside one at a time. There was no good reason they should not kick things off with the headline act. So, while Holland waited with Batchelor and Jenks in the car, Thorne, Fletcher and Karim walked Nicklin into the services.

  ‘Do you prefer Jeff or Jeffrey?’ Holland asked. He waited, then turned back to face front. ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Batchelor said. ‘Either.’

  They were the first words Batchelor had spoken since they’d left Long Lartin.

  Holland turned back to him, nodded. ‘So, enjoying yourself then?’

  Batchelor shrugged. ‘Better than sitting in a cell, I suppose.’

  Holland studied the man in the handcuffs. He was tall and skinny, long-limbed. His light-brown hair was thin and wispy, and behind delicate glasses with thin metal frames his eyes closed tightly when he blinked, as though he was surprised each time it happened.

  Delicate. He looked delicate. He looked, Holland decided, like a history lecturer at a sixth-form college, which is exactly what he was.

  What he had been.

  ‘So, why are you here, Jeff?’ Holland asked. ‘Or, why do you think you’re here?’ He gave it a few seconds. He glanced at Jenks, but the prison officer was sitting with his head back and his eyes closed, appearing to be thoroughly uninterested. ‘I mean, I presume it wasn’t your idea.’

  ‘Nicklin doesn’t think he’s well liked,’ Batchelor said.

  Holland laughed. ‘Oh, you reckon?’

  ‘Liked now, I mean. By police officers. I gather an officer died when he was arrested.’

  ‘Her name was Sarah McEvoy,’ Holland said. ‘She was a good officer.’

  The truth was that Sarah McEvoy had been a very troubled young woman, with a serious drug dependency that had made her anything but a good officer. It was the reason she had been in that playground to begin with. The weapon Stuart Nicklin had used against her.

  And she and Dave Holland had been lovers.

  ‘So, what then? He just wants someone along as a witness, does he?’

  Batchelor blinked, eyes shut tight. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And you were the lucky winner. Or did you get the short straw?’

  ‘Like I said, better than sitting in a cell.’

  They said nothing for a while. The rain grew a little heavier outside, noisy suddenly against the glass. Holland wondered if Jenks might actually be asleep.

  ‘Listen,’ Holland said. ‘I’ve got a daughter, you probably heard me say that. Not as old as yours was. Not as old as… Jodi was.’ Batchelor was staring back at him now, unblinking. ‘I just wanted to say that I understand what you did. I don’t condone it, not for a second, course I don’t. But I understand why you did it.’

  SEVEN

  There had been some debate about when and where to remove the handcuffs and in the end they had decided to do so in the car. To allow Nicklin to walk in and out of the service station without them. The intention was still to avoid unwanted scrutiny wherever possible and though this was one of Nicklin’s ‘conditions’, it suited Thorne well enough. He did not want media attention any more than Nicklin did.

  Blurry pictures and speculation. Manufactured outrage.

  All of them were probably worrying unduly. Chances were that leaving the cuffs on as Nicklin walked in would not have caused any major problems. Thorne could not see too many people open-mouthed and scrabbling for their phones to alert the red-tops. There might be some rubbernecking, why wouldn’t there be, but nobody would guess what, or more importantly who, they were seeing. Watching him, as he was shepherded towards the Gents, Thorne doubted that even those who had followed the case closely, back when he was on every front page in the country, would recognise Stuart Nicklin now.

  Five years ago, when Thorne had last been into Long Lartin to see him, the change had been drastic enough. Now, Nicklin looked even less like the man whose face, in one endlessly reproduced photograph, had once been so familiar. The expression of contentment that had come to be seen as defiance, eyes wide but most often described as ‘blazing’. A simple holiday snap, contextualised below a thousand prurient headlines and a name that was still a convenient byword for evil.

  A ‘monster’, who was finally beginning to look genuinely monstrous.

  Five years ago, Thorne had been shocked at Nicklin’s appearance, flabby and jaundiced. Now, it looked as though he had gained a lot more weight, lost even more colour, so that in places his skin appeared more blue than white; almost translucent. His eyes had sunk further into his face. His nose and the corners of his mouth were dotted with whiteheads and his teeth – many of them false, thanks to Thorne – were discoloured in places and had begun to look too big for his mouth. He was wearing a black beanie hat, but Thorne knew that beneath it, his head was bald and pitted. Thorne remembered a series of irregular, purplish lesions, like wine stains on the scalp.

  As they approached the entrance to the toilets, Nicklin stopped, and turned. ‘It’s only a slash, lads,’ he announced. ‘So I won’t be keeping you too long. You should be thankful it wasn’t the chicken curry for dinner last night.’

  Nicklin’s physical appearance was easily explained of course. Poor diet, far too many cigarettes, a lack of exercise; a life spent without fresh air. Thorne could not shake the idea though that these changes were in some strange way deliberate. He had radically altered his appearance before when it had suited him and now it felt somehow as though he were revelling in his ability to do so again. Displaying his refusal to be the man or the monster that anyone expected.

  Fletcher and Karim waited outside with Nicklin, while Thorne gave the toilets the once-over. He ignored the looks from those going about their business as he checked unlocked cubicles and banged on the doors of those that were occupied. Once the facilities were empty, Fletcher brought Nicklin in. Karim waited outside, flashing his warrant card to prevent anyone else entering.

  Thorne and Fletcher stood a
nd watched Nicklin at the urinal.

  ‘First piss in a while where I’m not worrying about getting shanked,’ he said.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Fletcher said. He rolled his head round on his thick neck. ‘Since when did you have to worry about anything like that?’

  ‘Fair point, I suppose, boss.’

  ‘It’s everyone else does the worrying.’

  Thorne knew what Fletcher was talking about. With his reputation as the prison’s ‘top nutter’ and an unmatched capacity for instilling fear, Nicklin pretty much ran things in Long Lartin. These days there would be plenty to do the messy work for him, should it become necessary. Thorne guessed though that he was still capable of dishing it out himself, should the fancy take him. He remembered a prisoner in Belmarsh to whom Nicklin had taken a dislike while still on remand; a man left brain dead after a sharpened spoon had been calmly but forcefully inserted into his ear.

  ‘I was just making a general point,’ Nicklin said. He shook himself off and turned from the urinal, looking at Thorne while he zipped himself up. ‘It feels nice, that’s all I’m saying. Certainly doesn’t smell quite as bad.’ He walked towards the sink, taking in the surroundings as though it were the swankiest of hotel rooms. He chuckled and said, ‘I don’t suppose either of you feels like lending me a couple of quid for the condom machine?’

  He washed and rinsed his hands twice. He took his time at the automatic dryer.

  On the way out, Nicklin slowed and cast a longing glance towards the shop. ‘Chocolate would be nice.’

  ‘Would it?’ Thorne said.

  Nicklin smiled. He and Thorne both knew that chocolate was his weakness. DNA found on a discarded chocolate wrapper had been used in evidence at his trial. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You telling me you haven’t got a sweetie budget?’

  Thorne looked to Fletcher. The shrug suggested that the officer had no opinion either way or that perhaps Nicklin was not alone in fancying a Mars bar. As it happened, Thorne was suddenly more than a little peckish himself. He gave Karim five pounds and sent him into WH Smith to grab a selection of chocolate bars, while he and Fletcher led Nicklin out.