TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  Nicklin lowered himself carefully on to the bare, blue mattress.

  ‘There’s no way you’re going to win,’ Thorne said. ‘You need to know that. You’re wasting your time, because now I’m in your head.’ He tapped a finger hard against the side of his head, shook it slowly. ‘You’re not in mine.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  After Fletcher and Jenks had made their preference clear, Thorne dropped them off at the same place they’d stayed the previous night; a pub with rooms above it, that looked as good as deserted. He told them he’d pick them up in the morning and that he hoped to know where they’d be going when he did. The two prison officers implied that a return trip to Bardsey would be all right by them, that like Andy Barber they were looking forward to collecting the overtime. In no doubt that they were also looking forward to a night on the beer, Thorne left them and drove on to the Black Horse, with Holland following in the support car.

  Elwyn Pritchard was predictably thrilled to see even two of the previous night’s guests returning. Even so, he still went through the charade of checking the reservations book to make sure he had rooms available. It was made fairly clear that this time the kitchen would not be opened specially and, once he had handed over the room keys on their reassuringly oversized fobs, he was happy enough to let Thorne and Holland carry their own bags.

  As they trudged upstairs, they hastily made dinner arrangements.

  ‘Chinese?’

  ‘Not sure there’s anything else.’

  ‘See you back downstairs in ten minutes…’

  It was the sort of all-purpose place that served pizza as well as prawn balls. It may have been Pritchard’s warnings about the ratio of seagull to MSG in the food, or the fact that nobody working there looked like they’d be able to find China on a map, but either way, they both decided to settle for chips and walked back towards the hotel eating their dinners out of Styrofoam containers.

  ‘So, what do you reckon, Dave?’

  Holland stabbed at a chip with a wooden fork. ‘Should have got some curry sauce.’

  ‘About Nicklin.’

  Holland popped the chip into his mouth and ate slowly, but the muscles continued to tense in his jaw for several seconds after he’d swallowed. ‘He was right about one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some of us haven’t forgotten what happened in that playground.’

  ‘None of us have,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Sarah, I mean.’

  ‘I know…’

  ‘She died because of him and he never answered for it. Not the way he should have done, anyway.’ Holland slowed his pace a little and glanced at Thorne. ‘You knew about me and her, right?’

  ‘Yeah, I knew.’ Thorne sensed there was guilt lurking just behind the anger. He sensed too that Holland wanted to get stuff off his chest and he was not altogether sure he wanted to hear it. ‘Listen, you don’t need to explain anything to me.’

  ‘Nothing to explain,’ Holland said. ‘I was stupid, McEvoy was stupid and who the hell knows how much more stupid the pair of us would have got if she hadn’t been killed? But she died, so maybe that… got me off the hook.’ He poked at his dinner, lips pulled back across his teeth. ‘I mean, look at me now, happy family man and all that. Happy as fucking Larry. So, maybe Nicklin did me a favour, you know?’

  Thorne looked at him. ‘You’re talking shit, Dave. You do know that, don’t you? People mess up.’

  ‘I know that I can still remember what Sarah smelled like, and I think about it sometimes, when I’m in bed with Sophie. When I look at Nicklin, I feel like he knows that, like it gives him a thrill or something, and I want to rip his head off.’

  They said nothing for a minute or more, walking a little quicker once they were past the terrace that backed on to the beach and provided a barrier between the street and the sea. The temperature was dropping quickly and the wind had started to pick up.

  ‘So, what do you reckon to this latest bombshell then?’ Thorne asked. ‘This other body.’

  Holland shrugged. ‘Haven’t got a clue, if I’m honest. You?’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘I can’t read him and the problem is I don’t know if that should be telling me anything or not. Sometimes terrible poker players are just as hard to play against as good ones. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing, so there’s no way you can.’ He shovelled some more chips into his mouth; they were soggy and tasteless, but he was hungry. ‘Maybe he’s just making it all up as he goes along.’

  ‘It’s all possible though, isn’t it? What he’s telling us.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s possible.’

  ‘Killing that kid just because he feels like it, then killing the old woman whose shovel he nicked. It would all sound bloody ridiculous if it was anyone else. Him though…’

  ‘I know,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Someone like him doesn’t need a reason to do these things, so you never know if he’s really got a reason for doing anything.’

  Thorne grunted, chewed.

  ‘That stuff he said to Howell before, about getting off on the bodies. Was that real, or was he just trying to wind her up?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Thorne said.

  They dumped the remains of their dinners into a bin outside the Black Horse and wandered inside. As far as Thorne could tell, the same people were drinking at the bar as had been propping it up the night before. They did appear to have softened somewhat towards the newcomers though, the hostility of the previous evening having now been replaced by complete indifference.

  Holland stepped towards the bar. ‘Pint?’

  Thorne hesitated, shaking his head. He was thinking about something Duggan had said back at the station.

  ‘Later, maybe…’

  While Holland ordered himself a drink and fell into conversation with Pritchard, Thorne walked across and spoke briefly to a man at the bar. When he had been given the information he was looking for, he left the hotel, climbed into one of the Galaxys and drove the dozen or so miles to Aberdaron.

  THIRTY-TWO

  It was what Duggan had said to him about a ‘few knocking about’. The superintendent had been talking about police officers who might still be on the force, but Thorne realised there were others who might be able to help and to do so a damn sight quicker.

  Others who had been there.

  He rang the bell, stepped back and looked up at a house that was a long way removed from what he had been expecting. It was a modern two-up-two down, red brick with UPVC windows. A simple rectangle of grass at the front. A satellite dish.

  When Huw Morgan opened the door, he looked confused to see Thorne standing there.

  ‘Have you got five minutes?’ Thorne asked.

  Walking past the living room, Thorne could see Morgan’s father watching TV. Some American drama, cops or lawyers, where everyone was a bit too good-looking to be taken seriously. The old man turned to look and Thorne nodded a hello. ‘We’ve just eaten,’ Morgan said, leading Thorne into the kitchen. ‘But I think there might be some left.’ He turned and shouted back down the hall. ‘Dad, we got any of that stew left?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘I had chips.’

  ‘What about a beer then?’

  ‘Beer would be great.’

  Morgan produced three cans of supermarket lager from the fridge and they carried them to the living room. Huw handed a can to his father and said, ‘Turn that down, we’ve got the police here.’

  Bernard sighed and reached for the remote.

  ‘So, is this police business or are you just going a bit bonkers in Abersoch?’ Huw sat down, nodded Thorne towards the sofa. ‘Can’t say I blame you, there’s not a lot going on. Mind you, it’s a teeming bloody metropolis compared with what’s going on here.’

  ‘Bit of both,’ Thorne said.

  ‘What?’ Bernard said.

  ‘It’s a bit of police business. Just a chat, really.’ Thorne took a swig of his lager, which was surprisingly good. ‘I got your
address from your cousin,’ he said. ‘He was in the bar at the Black Horse.’

  ‘Arsehole,’ Huw said.

  Bernard shook his head and glanced at Thorne. ‘Long story…’

  Thorne looked around. The inside of the house was as modern as the exterior. A big-screen TV, leather sofa and armchairs. There were black and white photos in frames on the wall; sea views and boats in the harbour, an island that Thorne guessed was Bardsey.

  Huw saw Thorne looking. Said, ‘What?’

  ‘I was expecting you might live somewhere a bit more traditional.’

  ‘What, a fisherman’s cottage kind of thing?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Peat fires and ancient slates and a weathervane shaped like a whale?’

  Bernard laughed.

  ‘Listen, mate,’ Huw said. ‘After a long day out there with the lobster pots or whatever, I want to come home to central heating and Sky. Dad had somewhere a bit more traditional, didn’t you? One of the old cottages up on the front.’ Bernard nodded, drank. ‘When my mum died a couple of years back though, we thought it was a good idea for Dad to sell up and move in with me. His place was on its last legs and I was on my own anyway…’

  Thorne waited in case there was more coming. It became clear that there wasn’t and he was left watching Huw take a long drink and wondering if there had ever been a wife and kids, if the youngest Morgan had always been on his own.

  When Huw finally put his can down, he said, ‘So, this chat then…?’

  ‘It was actually your father I wanted to speak to,’ Thorne said. He turned to Bernard. ‘I was just wondering if I could ask you about something that happened a long time ago. See what you remember.’

  ‘You might be in luck,’ Huw said. ‘He tends to have a good memory for things that happened years back, even if he can’t remember what bloody day it is sometimes.’

  ‘Cheeky beggar,’ Bernard said.

  Thorne said, ‘Twenty-five years ago. Back when the young offenders were staying on the island.’ He reached into his pocket and produced the photograph of Tides House that he was still carrying around. He stood up, stepped across and laid it down on the small table next to Bernard’s chair.

  The old man reached for his glasses and picked up the photograph. ‘That what they were?’ he said. ‘Young offenders?’ He stared at the picture, shaking his head. ‘You wouldn’t have thought it, the way they swanned around, lying about and taking drugs on the beach. You’d have thought they were on holiday.’

  ‘It was a different approach,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Well, it didn’t work, did it? That’s why they shut it down.’

  Thorne nodded. All the information had been there in the notes he was given before leaving London. The funding for the Tides House project had been hastily withdrawn following a violent knife attack on one of the boys and the escape – or so everyone had thought – of two others. The doors had closed within a few months and those in senior positions – most notably a woman named Ruth Livesey – had been pilloried in the press before being pressured into taking early retirement from the young offenders prison system.

  Bernard held the picture out and Thorne moved to take it back. He doubted that Bernard had recognised any faces. If Thorne himself had not been told who was who, he would certainly have struggled to pick out Stuart Nicklin, though looking closely he could see that the eyes were the same; the challenge in the stare. He had been told that the tall, skinny boy standing next to Nicklin was Simon Milner. A shock of dirty-blond hair, an open-necked shirt. Thumbs held aloft…

  Milner was the only boy smiling.

  Thorne put the photograph away. Said, ‘Anyway… around that time, do you remember anyone going missing?’

  ‘You don’t mean those boys who escaped?’

  ‘A woman,’ Thorne said. ‘An elderly woman. I think she might have been a poet, or something.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s always plenty of those,’ Huw said.

  ‘Rings a bell.’ Bernard was nodding. ‘There was definitely some talk of a woman drowning.’

  ‘Drowning?’

  ‘Well, that’s what everyone thought, that she’d killed herself. Let’s face it, you can’t really go missing on Bardsey. There’s only one way off the island if you’re still breathing and that’s on the boat, so you’re either there or you’re dead, aren’t you?’

  ‘And this was definitely twenty-five years ago?’

  ‘Well, I can’t say for certain.’ He nodded at Huw, thinking. ‘He was only a lad, I know that much, so it was definitely around the time they closed the children’s home down. Or a bit afterwards, maybe. I think she might have died earlier than that though.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t have been missed straight away, would she?’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Huw said. ‘A lot of the people who stay on the island just want to be left alone, see. Some of them go out there for months at a time, especially the arty types and it’s not like they’re phoning home every day, is it? Sending postcards.’

  ‘If she went missing,’ Bernard said, ‘it might not have been noticed for quite a while. Especially as there was such a bloody hoo-hah about what was going on with Tides House. All the comings and goings when that place closed.’ He downed what was left of his beer, nodded. ‘I seem to remember taking another woman across afterwards,’ he said. ‘More than once, if I remember rightly. I think it might have been her sister. She wanted to see the last place she’d been staying. The place where she’d died. She might have had flowers… it was a long time ago. Like I said, there was some talk about her drowning herself.’ He leaned towards Thorne. ‘I think she might have been the type, you know?’

  ‘What, because she was a poet?’ Huw said.

  ‘Well, a lot of them do, don’t they?’ Bernard looked very serious. ‘Poets, writers, what have you. Too bloody sensitive by half.’ He waved his empty can at his son.

  Huw laughed, standing and gathering the empties. ‘Another one?’

  Thorne thought about it, but not for very long.

  When Huw returned with fresh beers, he dropped into the armchair. ‘This is Mr Nicklin again then, is it?’

  Thorne saw little point in evasion. ‘It’s what he’s telling us. We’ve got to decide if we’re taking him back to prison first thing in the morning or going back to the island to start looking for this woman.’

  ‘He couldn’t have known about her,’ Bernard said.

  Thorne looked at him, opened his beer.

  ‘Well, Tides House was closed by the time anyone knew anything had happened to that woman, wasn’t it? And he’d gone before that anyway, so he wouldn’t even have known she’d ever gone missing, would he? Not unless he was responsible for it.’ The old man popped the tab on his can and shrugged as though what he was saying should have been perfectly obvious.

  Thorne took a swig. ‘You should have been a detective, Bernard.’

  ‘Looks like we’ll be seeing you tomorrow then,’ Huw said.

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘Actually, the weather’s looking a bit iffy tomorrow.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Morning should be OK though.’

  Thorne tried to picture the blister pack of sickness tablets. He guessed he would have enough left to get him to the island and back.

  ‘I couldn’t do what you do,’ Bernard said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, you’re always dealing with people at their very worst, aren’t you? At their lowest. Bastards like that bloke you’ve got with you now, the one we’ve been talking about. Even when you’re dealing with normal people… a lot of the time you’re seeing them when they’re in bits. When their lives have been destroyed.

  ‘Let’s face it, a lot of the time you’re the one who has to tell them that their lives have been destroyed, then watch them fall apart in front of you.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘No… I couldn’t do that. I’ll stick to
the fishing and what have you, thank you very much.’ He looked across at Thorne and raised his can in a small salute. ‘Fair play to you though, mind. I mean, some poor bugger’s got to do it, haven’t they?’

  Thorne said, ‘True.’ Thinking that only a couple of hours ago he’d all but forgotten what his job was.

  Thinking that you could never forget for long.

  ‘Listen to him,’ Huw said. ‘The bloke who thinks poets are too bloody sensitive.’

  Bernard said, ‘You’re not too big to get a slap, you know.’

  ‘Oh, here we go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’ll be wanting to arm-wrestle in a minute…’

  Thorne smiled, happy enough to sit and drink with these two for a while and enjoy their bickering.

  An hour later, walking from the Morgans’ house to the car, Thorne was well aware that the three cans of beer he’d put away, weak as they’d been, were probably enough to have put him over the limit.

  He pressed the remote on the fob and the indicators flashed.

  There was probably only one patrol car within a fifty-mile radius but Sod’s Law said that he’d run into it between here and the Black Horse, make some Welsh plod’s week.

  Make bloody headlines, probably.

  He got into the car.

  He could always phone Holland, see how much he’d had to drink. He could go back to the Morgans’, ask for the number of a local taxi and come back to pick the Galaxy up in the morning. He could try thumbing a lift, flashing his warrant card and claiming it was an emergency.