TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  Robert Burnham told Thorne that it was a working farm again, had been for as long as he had been warden and that the house was now occupied by a young family, who were the island’s only full-time residents. The couple had happily swapped high-pressure careers in London for long days tending hay and silage fields and watching over the island’s population of sheep and cattle. ‘They wanted a change of lifestyle,’ he said. ‘Thought it would be a good place to bring up their daughter.’

  ‘Did they check that with her?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Shame,’ Nicklin said. They were gathered at the main gateway to Tides House. A cat wandered across the yard in front of them and he tried to lure it with kissing noises. ‘Would have been nice to go in and have a look around the place. See if it’s changed much.’

  ‘Not sure the family would be very keen.’ Thorne stared at the farmhouse. It had been painted a different colour and there had been a couple of small additions built, but he still recognised it from the background of the photograph he had in his pocket. ‘You banging on the door in your handcuffs, telling them you used to live here.’

  Nicklin turned and looked out across the low-lying western section of the island; the large number of small fields that sloped gently away towards the sea. He pointed. ‘The two of us ran down there,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to be much help until we get near the edge and I’m looking back this way. I think I’ll be able to remember what I could see looking back at the house, if that makes sense. That’s the best way for me to work out exactly where I was.’ He looked at Thorne as if he were simply trying to explain where he might have dropped a wallet or a set of keys. ‘Where I did the digging.’

  Thorne opened the gate and the team trooped into the pasture.

  There were low drystone walls running between the fields as well as more ancient dividing lines; stone-faced earth walls that ran across raised verges. It was hard to see what these boundaries were for any more, now that none of the land was privately owned and the sheep that darted in front of them as they walked seemed happy enough scrambling over the walls from one field to the next.

  ‘Are sheep stupid or clever?’ Karim asked. ‘I can’t work it out.’

  The grass was lush and had been kept short by grazing. The weather had clearly not been as good in recent days as it was now, with the ground heavy underfoot and muddy water rising up around Thorne’s walking boots as he went. It was only the second or third time he had ever worn the boots, though he’d actually bought them a couple of years before. Against his better judgement, he had allowed his former girlfriend, Louise, to talk him into a weekend’s hill-walking. Country pubs and sex in a four-poster bed had sounded like a nice idea, but in the end there had been only blisters and an almighty row that had lasted most of the weekend.

  After they had walked for ten minutes, Nicklin stopped and looked back towards the farmhouse. ‘Yeah, we’re definitely in the vicinity,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ Thorne shoved his hands into the pockets of his waterproof jacket. The temperature had dropped again and the wind was gusting, noisy against the nylon.

  ‘I think there could have been trees between me and the house, but they might have gone now. A landscape can change a hell of a lot in twenty-five years, can’t it? Plus, it was dark, of course.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re getting your excuses ready,’ Thorne said.

  Nicklin shook his head. Said, ‘Not at all.’

  A few hundred yards further on, Nicklin stopped again. He looked around then began pacing slowly, counting out his steps. Fletcher seemed happy enough to let him walk on unaccompanied, waiting next to Jenks who was standing with Batchelor at the back of the group.

  Nicklin turned around on the spot. ‘We’re close,’ he said. He nodded towards the place where the fields fell suddenly away to the sea. ‘That’s where I went over,’ he said. ‘Went into the water near one of the big caves down there.’ He proudly described his escape twenty-five years before, the meticulous planning and the partner who had been waiting; who, as it turned out, had been made to wait somewhat longer than had been planned.

  ‘That was Simon’s fault,’ Nicklin said.

  ‘Selfish of him,’ Thorne said.

  They were twenty feet or thereabouts from the edge, though the drop was nothing like as steep as it was from the cliffs on the mountainous side of the island. It would not have been an altogether easy descent, but it would probably have taken no more than fifteen minutes to clamber down to an uninviting shoreline festooned with enormous, weed-covered rocks. No decent-sized boat could have reached the shore safely, certainly not at night, but that had not been Nicklin’s plan all those years ago.

  Thorne watched him now, sniffing the air like an animal, and imagined the seventeen-year-old climbing down to the sea, having just buried Simon Milner; wading into the freezing water towards the boat that was waiting in the dark, the light from an accomplice’s torch.

  ‘Here,’ Nicklin said.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘This feels right.’

  Thorne looked across at Bethan Howell. ‘On you go…’

  With fingers firmly crossed that the job would be finished before darkness fell, they had left the portable generator back at the school and carried the rest of the equipment down between them. Now, the various cases were laid down and opened up. Thorne saw straight away that the forensic team had brought along rather more than he had first imagined: hand trowels, buckets, sieves, tape measures, positioning rods, digital cameras and video recorders. A canvas bag held all the personal protection gear – scene of crime suits, nitrile gloves, elbow and knee pads, duct tape for sealing cuffs – while a smaller aluminium case that Howell had been carrying contained the ground-penetrating radar and computer equipment.

  While the gear that was needed for the search phase was assembled, Howell led Thorne to one side. She kept her eyes on Nicklin, who was watching the preparations with considerable interest. ‘How do you want to do this?’ she asked.

  Thorne looked at Nicklin too. ‘As soon as you’ve identified an area where you think it’s worth digging, I’m taking our friend back up to base. I don’t want him here for that.’

  Howell nodded, getting it. ‘It’s the bit he’s going to enjoy.’

  ‘Watching us digging in the wrong place.’

  ‘You think he’s going to dick us about?’

  ‘Every chance,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m not pandering to him any more than we have to. If it turns out to be what we’re looking for, then we don’t need him any more anyway and I’m getting him off this island first chance I get. I want him back in a cell as soon as possible.’

  ‘All makes sense,’ Howell said. She looked at Batchelor. ‘Why’s the other one here? Is he connected to the victim we’re looking for?’

  ‘Nothing to do with any of it,’ Thorne said. ‘Just Nicklin pulling our strings again.’

  Howell and Barber went to work with plastic rods and twine, dividing up an area roughly twenty-five feet in either direction from the spot Nicklin had indicated, laying out a grid. Once that had been done, Barber began putting the GPR kit together; assembling long metal handles, firing up a laptop.

  Howell laid a large geological map of the island on the grass and weighed down the corners with stones. This was the flattest, most exposed part of the island and the wind was really starting to bite. ‘We’ll do what we can,’ she said. ‘But this isn’t going to be quick.’ She clocked Thorne’s reaction, pulled a face of her own. ‘Listen, we’re doing it on the hurry-up as it is. If I had the time to do things properly I’d want to test core soil samples, but we don’t have the equipment here and sending it back to the mainland is going to take forty-eight hours minimum.’

  ‘I was hoping we could just pick a place to look,’ Thorne said. ‘Then dig until we find a body. I know that might sound like a bit of a simplistic approach…’

  ‘Simplistic is the only approach we’ve got,’ Howell said. ‘So far, this is all about
what we can’t do.’

  ‘What can’t we do?’

  ‘We can’t use dogs and there’s no point using penetrometers.’ Thorne’s attempt at a confident nod of understanding was clearly less than convincing, but Howell seemed happy enough to reel off a paragraph or two of Forensic Archaeology for Idiots. ‘OK, we need to identify the areas where soil has been disturbed, right?’

  Thorne nodded again, with it so far.

  ‘We could normally do that by measuring penetration resistance, because obviously soil is weakened when it’s already been dug up for a grave. All a waste of time when you’re talking about farmland.’

  Thorne looked at her.

  ‘How many times do you think this field’s been ploughed in the last twenty-five years?’

  ‘Right, yeah.’

  ‘There’s also no point using the naked eye to look for anomalies… patches of richer vegetation, whatever. A decomposing body can release nutrients which work like fertiliser basically, so you’re just keeping an eye out for grass that’s lusher, darker. Again, no good to us, because this is animal pasture.’ She nodded towards a muddy ewe that was eyeing them nervously. ‘Because sheep-shit will do much the same thing.’ She raised a hand to acknowledge the wave from Barber, who was letting her know that they were ready to go. ‘So, as things stand, the GPR is probably our only option…’

  It looked like a high-tech hand trolley; a metal box at the end of twin handles, fixed onto rubber wheels. Cables ran from the main GPR unit to a small laptop mounted at the end of the handle. Thorne looked at the picture on the small screen; a series of jagged lines against a grey background.

  Howell pointed to the image. ‘That’s the plough layer, see?’

  Thorne shrugged, seeing only squiggles.

  ‘So then there’s a smoother layer beneath that and we’re looking for evidence of disturbance that falls outside the expected parameters.’ She smiled at him. ‘Basically, we’re looking for something grave-shaped.’

  It was already eleven thirty by the time Howell began a systematic analysis of each quadrant using the GPR. It was painstaking and frustrating to watch, the process not made any more enjoyable for anybody by Nicklin’s running commentary.

  ‘Not exactly a spectacle this, is it?

  ‘If you find buried treasure, do we all get to share it?

  ‘Shame about the cadaver dogs.’ He spoke the word with considerable relish. ‘Can they actually still smell a body after all this time? Amazing creatures, dogs… even if they do spend most of their time licking other dogs’ arses.’

  He talked almost non-stop, his incessant jabber only highlighting the fact that Batchelor had been as good as mute since they’d boarded the boat almost four hours before. Each time a quadrant was ruled out and Howell and Barber moved into the adjacent section, Nicklin was quick to loudly express his disappointment.

  ‘I really thought this was the one.

  ‘I know it’s ages ago, but I was sure that was it.

  ‘I definitely remember looking back from somewhere round here, looking back at the lights in the farmhouse, just before I heaved him into the hole…’

  They broke for sandwiches after an hour, a tray brought down to them by Robert Burnham’s wife. A few minutes into the first quadrant after lunch, Howell beckoned Thorne across. He stepped carefully over the lines of twine and, as soon as he had reached her, Howell pointed to the screen. The zig-zags made no more sense than they had the first time he had looked, but Thorne could see that Howell was excited.

  ‘Worth digging, you reckon?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘This is exciting,’ Nicklin said. He looked at Thorne. ‘Are you excited, Tom? You don’t look very excited.’

  Thorne told Holland that he would be escorting the prisoners back up to the school and to stay in touch. Holland agreed to radio in every fifteen minutes and walked across to join Sam Karim and Wendy Markham, who had turned away from the wind, trying to stay warm. Markham had been carefully watching the forensic team at work, not least because – though it was far from riveting – focusing on the job had allowed her to short-circuit several unpromising conversations with Karim. Now, the exhibits officer shouted across at Thorne as he and the party from Long Lartin began trudging uphill towards the track.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Karim raised his arms. ‘I’m not a lot of use until they actually find something, am I?’

  Howell beat Thorne to it. ‘If you’re looking for something to do,’ she said, ‘you can grab a bloody shovel.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Tides House

  A week after arriving on the island, Simon was asked to go and talk to Ruth; given a fifteen-minute slot after breakfast and invited to ‘come along for a chat’. He knocked on the door of the communal sitting room and was called in. The furniture had been rearranged, to make it look a bit cosier, Simon thought. There was an armchair, to which Ruth pointed, another in which she was sitting and a small sofa off to one side, where the screw with the straggly beard sat next to the one with the fat face and the greasy hair.

  They didn’t look too thrilled to be sitting that close together.

  Ruth nodded towards the low table between them. There were tea things laid out on a tray, a plate of chocolate biscuits. She asked him if he wanted tea, but he said he was fine.

  She poured tea for herself and her colleagues.

  ‘Can I have some biscuits though?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ruth said. ‘Help yourself.’

  Simon did, then sat back and listened. Up close, her voice was even posher than he’d first thought, but it was a lot softer too, now that she was only talking to him and not to a room full of boys.

  ‘You’re going to be with us for the next three months,’ she said. ‘How do you feel about that?’

  Simon shrugged. He didn’t know what to say. Obviously, he wasn’t happy about doing time, but this place was much better than anywhere he’d been before and because he thought it was a lot to do with her, he found himself not wanting to hurt her feelings. ‘Good,’ he said, eventually.

  She was flicking through a sheaf of notes, which Simon guessed was details of everything he’d ever done. Everything he’d ever been caught doing, anyway. Now and again, she would scribble something in the margin and he tried to see what it was, but her writing was far too small for him to make it out.

  ‘It’s shocking,’ she said, ‘that you’ve been in and out of the system this often. You’re clearly not a danger to anyone, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just this obsession with cars we need to do something about.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Ruth.’

  ‘Yes, Ruth,’ he said. He felt himself blushing, shoved another chocolate biscuit into his mouth.

  The governor at the last place he’d been was a fat, bald northerner whose face went red all the time. He’d sat behind a huge desk and peered over the top of a folder at Simon, who had always felt about six years old or something. Sitting there next to some scowling screw, while the red-faced governor had sighed at him. Or made some lame joke about how nice it was to see Simon again, how his usual room was waiting.

  Ruth sat back and took her glasses off, then tossed the notes on to the table. ‘What do you think of the island?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘Never been anywhere like it before.’ The truth was he’d never really spent much time in the countryside, so he didn’t have anything to compare it to, but he did like it so far. He liked the fact that they spent so much time outside, for a start, and even when they were in the house they weren’t being shunted around. They could go where they liked, within reason, and as long as they didn’t trespass on private property or take liberties they weren’t being hassled or barked at. Food was a damn sight nicer too and he never worried that anyone was spitting in it.

  ‘Have you made any friends yet?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Simon
said. ‘Well, sort of a friend… yeah, I think. We’re in the same room, so…’

  Ruth picked up her notes again, turned the pages, nodded. ‘Stuart Nicklin,’ she said.

  Simon thought he saw the fat-faced screw roll his eyes. He certainly folded his arms and let his head drop back a bit.

  Ruth was still nodding. ‘It’s good to have friends,’ she said. ‘But we’re also keen to encourage self-reliance. You need to be making your own decisions, OK? This is not somewhere where someone is there to tell you what to do twenty-four hours a day like some other places you’ve been. We want you to decide what to paint, if you’re painting, what to cook when it’s your turn in the kitchen. We want you to decide what to grow in your allocated patch of garden.’

  ‘Can I grow some sunflowers?’ Simon asked.

  Ruth smiled, scribbled something down. ‘I don’t see why not. The way we look at it, if you can make these small decisions for yourself then hopefully you’ll start to get the bigger decisions right. The decision to stop stealing cars, for instance.’

  Simon nodded. He understood what she was saying. It made sense.

  ‘What would you like to happen when you go home, Simon?’

  ‘My mum’s poorly,’ he said. ‘So I want her to get better.’

  ‘Poorly?’ The fat-faced screw chuckled and shook his head.

  ‘I’m going to help her.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I’ve got it all worked out.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Ruth scribbled again. ‘Planning is something else we’re very keen to see you do. I tell you what, why don’t you write it all down and bring it to show me, next time. We’ll be meeting like this once a week and I’d really like to see what you’ve got in mind.’

  Simon told her that he would, and she seemed pleased, then the screw with the straggly beard stood up and Simon guessed it was time to leave. He hesitated, glancing at the table, and Ruth told him to take another biscuit if he wanted one. She said, ‘Don’t tell any of the other boys, though. That’s the last packet and we won’t be getting any more until the boat comes across again.’