‘Thanks,’ Nicklin said. They stopped just outside the main doors, sheltered from the drizzle. Nearby, a man sat looking miserable at a small concession stand selling AA membership. Nicklin looked at Thorne to check he had permission, then, having been given the nod, he removed a tin of pre-rolled cigarettes from the pocket of his anorak. ‘Nice to see you’re not going to be an arsehole about all this.’
‘What about you?’ Thorne said.
A few minutes later, while Nicklin was being cuffed and belted back into the car, Thorne called Yvonne Kitson.
‘She never gets his letters,’ Kitson told him. ‘She’s got no more idea than anyone else what all this is about.’
‘Thanks, Yvonne.’
‘It was worth a try.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m on my way to see Sonia Batchelor now. Then I’ll grab some food and cut back down to visit the mother…’
Once the call had ended, Holland got out of the car and walked across to join him.
‘Anything from Batchelor?’ Thorne asked.
‘Same story we’ve heard already,’ Holland said. ‘The stuff about what happened to McEvoy. Nicklin being worried he’s going to “fall down some stairs” or whatever.’
‘It’s all rubbish.’ Thorne checked to see he had not missed any messages then put his phone away. ‘We know that.’
‘Maybe Batchelor doesn’t know why he’s here any more than we do. Maybe he’s just doing what he’s told.’
‘We’ll see if Yvonne can find out something,’ Thorne said.
‘Mind you,’ Holland said. ‘That look on his face, when he asked me about Chloe. How old she was.’ They both turned towards the car. Nicklin was watching them through the side window, contentedly clutching the chocolate bar that Fletcher had unwrapped for him. ‘Right now, I could happily throw the fucker down a flight of stairs myself.’
EIGHT
‘Have you worked with Thorne before?’ Karim asked.
‘Only the once,’ Markham said. ‘For about half an hour, but I wasn’t even a CSM then.’
‘Well, you must have impressed him.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yeah.’ Karim nodded, knowing. ‘Hand-picked we were, all of us. We’re the bloody A-Team!’
It was an hour or so since they’d left the services. They’d skirted Shrewsbury, crossed the river Severn and now they were no more than a few miles from the Welsh border. Wendy Markham stared out of her window at the north Shropshire countryside, bleak and beautiful. The occasional small village, gone before she could take in any more than a pub sign or the steeple of a church: Knockin, Morton, Osbaston.
She’d done a fair amount of staring since they’d set off, in an effort to avoid too many meandering conversations with Samir Karim. He seemed a decent enough bloke, keen to talk about his wife and kids at any opportunity, but he wasn’t nearly as entertaining as he thought he was. She wondered why on earth Thorne had hand-picked him. An exhibits officer needed to be thoughtful and meticulous, well organised. Glancing at him now, humming to himself and tapping fat fingers on the steering wheel, she found it hard to believe that Karim could organise himself out of bed in the morning.
Come to think of it, why had Thorne picked her? She’d only been promoted to CSM a few weeks earlier.
Six months or so before that, Markham had been a SOCO at a crime scene in Hackney, the location of what turned out to be the murder by administered overdose of a young man named Peter Allen. In a desperate hurry for information, Thorne had shamelessly played Markham off against another forensic officer; a wager as to which of them could get much-needed results back to him the quickest. He had promised her a case of Merlot and dinner if she won. She had very much enjoyed the wine, but the promised meal had failed to materialise.
She’d done a spot of checking up later on and it had been a forgivable oversight, all things considered. Bearing in mind that shortly after their paths had crossed professionally Thorne had been struggling with the debacle of a siege gone very wrong, dealing with his demotion to uniform.
It was understandable that dinner had slipped his mind.
Yes, she was damn sure she had impressed him. He’d remembered her, hadn’t he? She couldn’t help wondering though, if it was just about the work. Of course, she hoped Thorne’s choice had been based on her qualifications for the job, on an unbiased assessment of her considerable ability. That said, an instinct told her there was something else going on and she would not have been wholly outraged to discover that some small degree of physical attraction had been a contributory factor. Or, to put it in terms that didn’t sound like she was in court giving bloody evidence:
Wouldn’t hurt if he fancied her a bit, would it?
‘What?’ Karim said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Just wondered what you were smiling about, that’s all.’
Unlike Sam Karim, Tom Thorne hadn’t talked about his domestic set-up at all…
‘Nothing,’ Markham said. ‘Just remembering something.’
‘Looks like it was something nice!’
‘So, how much longer d’you think?’
Karim glanced at the clock on the dash. ‘A couple of hours, maybe.’ He nodded, smacked his palms against the wheel. ‘Going to be an interesting one this, I reckon. Oh yes, I can feel it in my water.’
Markham doubted that Karim could piss in a straight line, never mind predict the future with it, but she could not disagree with him. Even allowing for the brief time she had been a qualified crime scene manager, she knew that this operation was out of the ordinary. The place they were going for a start. It was certainly a long way to travel without knowing if there would be any crime scene to manage at the end of it. On top of which, she would normally have been free to select her own CSIs, rather than having them foisted on her at the other end.
It wasn’t a major problem. She would show Thorne that she could work with whatever, whoever was thrown at her. If she could handle four hours in the car with Sam Karim…
‘So, your wife’s OK with you being away for a few days?’ she asked.
Karim laughed. ‘Are you kidding? She can’t wait to get rid of me. She’ll have her feet up by now, dirty great box of Black Magic on the go.’ He laughed again.
Markham laughed right along with him, then said, ‘What about Thorne’s wife?’
In the rear-view, Thorne could see that Nicklin was asleep, his head lolling to one side, jaw slack. Aside from issues of self-preservation or personal pleasure, Thorne knew that there was not too much that would keep a man like Nicklin awake at night. All the same, it was disconcerting to see just how easily he drifted away. How untroubled he appeared by the stuff inside his own head.
Thorne adjusted the mirror slightly and saw that Jeffrey Batchelor was very much awake. The side of his head was pressed against the window, eyes wide and fixed forward.
He was the one who looked troubled.
A murderer, yes, but not one like Stuart Nicklin. Not a man whose crime itself would obviously have drawn Nicklin to him. Not someone Thorne could easily imagine Nicklin being attracted to sexually either, even if – as Phil Hendricks never tired of telling him – he was hardly an expert.
So, what was he doing here?
Perhaps Holland had been right and even Batchelor himself did not fully understand why he was in that car with the rest of them. It made a degree of sense. Over the years, Nicklin had not only proved himself extremely adept at persuading people to do what he wanted, but also at keeping the reasons for it to himself, until he was good and ready.
What had he threatened Batchelor with? What had he promised?
Thorne could only hope that, in an effort to get explanations, Yvonne Kitson would be luckier with Batchelor’s wife than she had been with Nicklin’s ex.
He glanced across at Holland and felt the warm, familiar blush of guilt.
Holland and Kitson…
Just two months before, in uniformed banishment south of the river,
Thorne had asked for their help in investigating a series of suicides he believed to be connected. They had gone out on a limb for him, worked under the radar on his behalf, placed their own careers in jeopardy. Thorne felt that blush heat up a little more. He knew there was little point in not being honest with himself. He had put their careers in jeopardy and for all he knew they still were.
Nicklin’s insistence about who should escort him in the search for Simon Milner’s body had seemingly allowed Thorne to wriggle off the latest hook he had hung himself on. Picking Holland and Kitson to be part of his team had granted them a reprieve too, but Thorne had a horrible suspicion that it might only be temporary. Any disciplinary investigation that had been put on hold might well swing right back into action once the bones had been found and Nicklin was returned to prison. Worst of all, as far as Thorne was aware, Holland and Kitson had no idea about any of this. They presumably believed that, like Thorne, they had got away with it.
It was not mentioned, save for the very occasional loaded comment.
A fortnight before, Thorne had asked Kitson if she could take care of some interviews while he and Holland were on the road with Nicklin.
Kitson had smiled, the picture of innocence. Said, ‘This one on the books then, is it?’
‘Sophie used to come up here as a kid,’ Holland said, now. ‘To Wales, I mean.’
Thorne turned to look at him. ‘Really?’
Holland nodded. ‘Yeah. Youth hostelling trips and all that, with her school. Llangollen, the Brecon Beacons.’
Sophie. Holland’s long-term girlfriend, his daughter’s mother. A woman who was not exactly Tom Thorne’s biggest fan.
‘She thinks we should come here with Chloe…’
Holland turned round. He relaxed a little when he saw that Nicklin was asleep, but still kept his voice low. ‘You know, a few days where the world isn’t on some screen or other.’
‘Sounds like a good idea,’ Thorne said. He knew exactly what Holland meant. Alfie was a good deal younger than Chloe, but already the TV or Helen’s laptop or even the screen on a mobile phone seemed to exert an almost hypnotic influence over him.
A mile or two further on, Thorne said, ‘Just a tip, Dave.’ He nodded at the rear-view. ‘Don’t let him wind you up, OK? It’s exactly what he wants. He’s always looking for cracks…’
Nicklin was not asleep.
It wasn’t as though he was pretending to be. He wasn’t smacking his lips or letting out fake snores, nothing like that. He had just closed his eyes against the sunshine strobing through the trees, that was all. He’d let his face relax. He wasn’t expecting to hear anything eye-opening or top secret.
He’d started doing it in his cell. It was probably just basic meditation, which was ironic, considering that was the kind of thing they’d encouraged the kids to do all those years ago at Tides House. He didn’t think about it in those terms. It was just a question of relaxing, of lying there on his bunk and listening. He’d discovered that just by doing that, he could somehow get in sync with the rhythm of the prison. Tap into it, use it…
So, not eavesdropping, but he’d enjoyed what Thorne had said anyway.
It was spot on too, no question about it. Not that he was surprised. Thorne knew him almost as well as he knew Thorne.
There were cracks already and plenty more to come. Hairlines now, but they would soon be good and ready to gape. Cracks he was very much looking forward to opening up, when the time was right.
With a word, with a look, with a finger.
NINE
Kitson glanced up at the well-weathered FOR SALE sign and, when she looked back towards the front door, she saw that it was open and that Sonia Batchelor was waving from the step. She had begun talking before Kitson had reached the front door, and continued as she showed her through to a neatly arranged sitting room.
‘We need to downsize,’ Sonia said. ‘Rachel and me. Well, I mean, obviously we do. For seven years, at least.’
Kitson nodded.
Rachel: the younger daughter. Seven years: the minimum term.
The woman sat down on an artfully distressed leather armchair and waved Kitson towards a matching sofa. She was forty-three, if Kitson remembered correctly; skinny, with grey roots showing through a dye-job and long, thin fingers that moved almost constantly against the arm of her chair. She had worked full-time for the local council up until just over a year before, something in social services. The job had been the most insignificant of her losses.
‘Only silly offers so far,’ Sonia said. ‘Just because people know we’re desperate to sell, I suppose. They know the address from the news or whatever, so they’re trying to grab a bargain.’ She looked around the room, nodded. ‘I’m not going to let anyone take advantage of us though.’
The house was a four-bedroom semi, a mile or so from the centre of Northampton. A nice, quiet road. Neighbourhood Watch and carefully trimmed front hedges. Just over a year before there had been a family of four living here, but now there were only two. Sonia Batchelor had lived here with her college lecturer husband and two children. Today, there was only one child and Sonia Batchelor was the wife of a convicted murderer.
‘I’d offer you tea,’ she said. ‘Truth is though I’ve been jumpy as hell ever since you called and I’m desperate to know what this is about.’
‘Sorry,’ Kitson said. ‘I did tell you Jeff was all right.’
‘Yes, you said that —’
‘That it wasn’t really Jeff I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Right, but whatever it is, it obviously involves him, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So…?’
‘It’s about your husband’s relationship with Stuart Nicklin.’
Sonia narrowed her eyes. ‘Relationship?’
‘You do know who Stuart Nicklin is?’ Kitson asked.
Sonia nodded quickly. ‘Yes, well, I bet there wasn’t any problem selling his house, was there? I mean, there’s always sickos and ghouls willing to splash out on properties with those kind of associations, aren’t there? Way over the asking price sometimes, if the body count’s high enough. Mind you, the council knock them down more often than not, don’t they? Or is that only if the killings actually happened at the house? You know, the “house of horror” kind of thing. Like Nilsen or whoever. Actually, I always get the Nilsens mixed up, Donald and Dennis. I know the surnames are spelled differently and that one was the Black Panther and the other one killed young men and cut them up and only got caught because his drains started to smell.’ She blinked slowly, let out a sigh. Said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Sonia, shut up.’ She looked at Kitson. ‘Sorry, I can’t stop talking…’
‘Why don’t I go and make us some tea?’ Kitson said.
Sonia showed Kitson where the kitchen was, then stepped into the back garden and smoked, signalling through the window to let Kitson know where the teabags were, that she didn’t take sugar.
Back in the sitting room a few minutes later, she said ‘sorry’ again. The cigarette seemed to have calmed her down. Kitson gave her another minute, drank her tea and looked around. There were family pictures in polished frames arranged on top of a large pine trunk beneath the window.
The usual.
Mum and dad and two smiling kids. Assorted combinations of the four. In the park with a dog, pulling stupid faces at the dinner table, on a boat somewhere.
Jeffrey Batchelor and his elder daughter, Jodi.
Sonia saw Kitson looking and said, ‘Sometimes… even now, it’s like it didn’t really happen. Like it was just a bad dream. If the phone goes in the evening, I’ll think it’s her ringing from the station. I’ll still be expecting Jeff to go and collect her, stomping out into the hall and moaning about being nothing but a bloody taxi service.’ She almost laughed. ‘You got kids?’
Kitson nodded. ‘Oh yeah, I know exactly what that’s like.’
They both looked at the photograph for a few seconds more. Jodi’s hair was a little
darker than in the only picture Kitson had seen previously. The one in the file.
Just a bad dream.
The November before last, Jodi Batchelor, aged seventeen, had hanged herself in her bedroom after being dumped by her boyfriend via text message. Her father had found her body. The following day, Jeffrey Batchelor had confronted his daughter’s boyfriend – nineteen year-old Nathan Wilson – at a bus stop near his house and, following a heated exchange, had attacked him in front of several onlookers. In what those witnesses had described as a ‘frenzied assault’, Batchelor had kicked and punched Wilson, giving him no opportunity to defend himself. He had repeatedly smashed the boy’s head against a kerbstone, and, according to the witnesses, had continued to do so long after the boy was dead.
‘Stuart Nicklin is currently under police escort,’ Kitson said. ‘He’s being taken to a location in Wales, where he claims to have buried a body twenty-five years ago. And he’s taken Jeff with him.’
Sonia stared for a few seconds. ‘I don’t understand. I only saw Jeff last week. He would have said.’
‘He wouldn’t have known it was happening,’ Kitson said. ‘Not exactly when, anyway. That’s not allowed for security reasons.’
‘Still, he would have said something, surely.’
‘He would have been told not to.’
‘By Nicklin?’
‘Possibly,’ Kitson said. ‘But certainly by the prison authorities.’
Sonia sat back, shaking her head as though trying to make sense of what she had been told. ‘So, what is it that you want?’
‘We want to know what you think about their relationship. Nicklin and your husband.’
‘What are you implying?’
‘I’m not implying anything.’ Kitson leaned forward. ‘Listen, Sonia, we have no bloody idea why your husband is currently keeping Stuart Nicklin company, but we do know that Mr Nicklin does nothing without a very good reason. So, right now we’re scrabbling around trying to find anything that might help us. You knew that the two of them had become close?’
TT12 The Bones Beneath Page 5