Knocked it on the head and gone down the pub, he thought. Can’t say as I blame him. Maybe they needed to pay someone to come in and do the bloody tax return for them. Sort all the paperwork out, come to that.
He was already loosening his belt as he nudged the bathroom door open and saw what was in the bath; moving closer until he saw the face below the water.
He cried out and buckled, tried to say his son’s name.
His hands were fists, tight around his belt and, try as he might, he could not unclench them. Not when the two figures moved up quickly behind him and lifted him from the floor. Not when they took his head and held it tight, their fingers clawing at his ears, in his hair.
Not when they pushed it down towards the freezing water, then under, until he was close enough to kiss his boy’s face.
FORTY-FOUR
The woman who answered the door at Tides House was a good deal skinnier and far less apple-cheeked than the stereotypical farmer’s wife Thorne had imagined. The smile was more nervous than welcoming as she stood aside and asked him to come in.
‘Robert told us you’d probably be coming over,’ she said.
‘On the scrounge, I’m afraid,’ Thorne said.
‘It’s fine.’ She closed the door and stuck out a small hand. ‘I’m Caroline Black. Come on through…’
Thorne followed her down a long corridor before they turned sharply left and ducked under a low lintel into a large kitchen. A tall man with hair tied back into a ponytail turned from a sink of washing-up. He was wearing baggy cargo shorts and a zip-up fleece.
‘This is my husband, Patrick,’ Caroline said.
Patrick Black held up hands swathed in yellow rubber gloves and waved them to explain his inability to greet Thorne any more formally. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Have a seat. There’s coffee in the pot, if you’d like some.’
Thorne thanked him and walked across to a crowded pine table. There were several piles of paper, children’s toys, the signs of a recently eaten meal – condiments, tablemats – that Caroline immediately proceeded to clear. When she’d finished, Thorne sat down and looked around. The warm and cluttered farmhouse kitchen came much closer to fulfilling his expectations than the farmer or his wife. The soothing tones of Radio 4 from a wind-up radio. The old-fashioned metal coffee pot sitting on top of a well-used range. Genuinely distressed flagstones and a scarred Welsh dresser. A child’s plastic tricycle next to a partially dismantled engine on a tarpaulin in one corner.
As Caroline poured him a coffee, Thorne was surprised to see a black and white collie eyeing him from a basket near the door. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘A dog.’
Caroline looked at the dog and then back at Thorne.
‘I thought they weren’t allowed on the island.’
‘Holly’s a working dog,’ she said.
‘It’s just that we weren’t allowed to bring a dog.’
‘Like I said, she’s a working dog.’
Thorne could see there was little point in taking the conversation any further in that particular direction, so he just nodded.
‘We thought you’d be gone by now,’ Caroline said.
‘So did we.’
‘Yes, well, you’re not the first to be stranded thanks to the weather and you won’t be the last.’ She poured herself a coffee, added milk from a carton on the table. ‘There were some holidaymakers here last year who had to wait a fortnight to get off.’
‘Oh, God,’ Thorne said.
‘Don’t worry.’ She carried the pot back to the stove. ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad.’
‘Let’s hope not.’
She smiled, quick and thin, standing at the end of the table drinking her coffee and watching Thorne drink his. She was wearing loose-fitting jeans and a woollen waistcoat, the T-shirt underneath a perfect match for her bright-red Crocs. ‘So, what exactly is it that you’re doing anyway? In the field, I mean. It’s the second time you’ve started digging in the same place.’
Patrick turned from the sink, said, ‘You can’t ask him that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m afraid I can’t really go into any detail.’
‘Told you,’ Patrick said.
Caroline shrugged and pouted for a few seconds, her chin resting on the rim of her coffee cup. ‘It’s not like we can’t guess what’s going on.’ She walked across to the window and nodded out. ‘We’ve got a pretty good view from here.’
Thorne stood up and walked across to join her. It had already begun to get dark, but there was a clear line of sight across to the lights in the distant field. To the illuminated tent, inside which Bethan Howell and her team were still hard at work.
‘I mean, it’s not an episode of Time Team, is it?’ She leaned a little closer to the window; peeling grey paint on the frame and glass that had several air bubbles captured within it. ‘It’s just a question of who you’re looking for down there and who the two men in the handcuffs are.’ She looked at Thorne. ‘We saw them the other day standing at the front gate. One of them, anyway. Just staring at the house.’
Patrick had moved on to the drying-up. ‘She was hiding behind the net curtains,’ he said, laughing. ‘Watching him watching us.’
‘Believe it or not, he stayed here once,’ Thorne said. ‘In this house.’
Caroline looked confused. ‘Really?’
‘A long time ago.’
Patrick turned from the sink. ‘Back when this was a home for wayward kids or whatever they called it.’
‘Right.’ Thorne sat down again, picked up his coffee. For a moment he thought about showing them the photograph in his pocket, then decided against it.
Here’s your gorgeous farmhouse the way it used to look. Just ignore the teenage serial killer and his mates…
Caroline turned from the window, her curiosity piqued still further. ‘So, why’s he back here?’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Patrick said. He looked at Thorne and shook his head. ‘He can’t tell you.’
Footsteps sounded suddenly on the stairs, then in the corridor outside before a girl, five or six years old, came running in. She froze as soon as she saw Thorne, stared at him for a few seconds, then moved quickly to her mother, staying close to the wall. ‘When are you going to come and read?’ she asked. ‘You promised.’
‘I’ll be in soon.’ Caroline ran her fingers through the girl’s hair. ‘I’ve just got something to do first, so why don’t you go and get your pyjamas on and then I’ll be up.’
Patrick said, ‘Go on, chicken,’ and the girl turned and trudged reluctantly back to the door.
‘Can I take Holly?’ she asked.
Her mother said that she could, so the girl called the dog across and the two of them trotted out of the kitchen. Caroline watched them go, then turned to Thorne. ‘I think we’ve got a right to know what’s happening,’ she said. ‘Who we’re dealing with here.’
‘Trust me,’ Thorne said. ‘If we thought there was anything you needed to know, we would have told you.’
‘So, why don’t you tell us when our daughter can go back out to play again?’
Thorne hoped he did a better job of keeping the edge from his voice than she had. ‘There’s never been any need to keep her inside the house,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘With dangerous criminals walking about? I mean, I can only presume they are dangerous. The handcuffs, the number of people with them.’
‘We don’t just let them wander around,’ Thorne said. ‘They’re being guarded constantly. There’s no risk to anyone. None at all.’
Caroline did not look convinced. She walked across and dropped her mug into the hot water.
‘Having said that, obviously nobody would have wanted your little girl walking down to… you know.’ Thorne nodded to the window, the fields beyond it. ‘So you were probably right to keep her indoors.’ He finished his coffee. ‘We’ll be gone tomorrow, that’s a guarantee.’
�
��But in the meantime, you need feeding.’
‘I’m really grateful for your help,’ Thorne said. ‘Anything you can spare.’
She walked across to a small door, which Thorne had not noticed until now. She opened it and flicked on a switch. Thorne saw stairs heading down, bare floorboards, a naked light bulb. ‘This food? Is it for you and the other officers, or is it for everyone?’ She glanced at her husband then looked back to Thorne. ‘For the men in handcuffs?’
Patrick dried his hands on the tea-towel and draped it across the handle of the range. ‘Come on, Caz, what do you think?’
‘We’re not allowed to starve them, I’m afraid,’ Thorne said. ‘Maybe they can just have leftovers.’
Caroline nodded, showing no appreciation at all of Thorne’s attempt at levity, then stooped quickly and disappeared down the stairs.
Patrick picked up a wine bottle and two glasses and joined Thorne at the table. He offered one of the glasses to Thorne.
‘I’d better not,’ Thorne said.
‘It’s good,’ Patrick said. He poured one for himself. ‘Home-made, but it does the trick. If you’re lucky, Caroline might bring you a bottle or two up from the cellar with the rest of the stuff.’
‘Great,’ Thorne said. ‘I’ll have some later then.’
‘Iechyd da, as they say in these parts.’ Patrick held out his glass and Thorne touched his empty coffee cup to it. The farmer glanced towards the cellar. ‘She’s been a bit jumpy ever since you lot arrived,’ he said. ‘It’s all about Freya, you know?’ He was English, like his wife. He had a high, light voice, a trace of a Northern accent. ‘I mean, it’s one of the reasons we took this place on, because we thought it would be different from life back there. No need to worry about… certain things. A good place for her to grow up, you know?’
‘And is it?’
‘Oh yeah. It’s great for me and Caz too, don’t get me wrong. The spiritual side of it. Oh yeah, we get a lot out of that.’ He nodded, swirled the wine around in his glass. ‘It’s bloody hard work mind you, but honestly, we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’ He downed his wine and poured himself another. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had much chance to look around.’
‘A bit,’ Thorne said. ‘I went over to the lighthouse. Saw the seals.’ Saying it, Thorne realised that he’d actually covered a good deal of the island in the last two days, even if most of the time had been spent in the distinctly un-spiritual pursuit of long-dead murder victims. ‘Yeah, seen a fair bit.’
‘You wait,’ Patrick said. ‘Now you’re spending the night, you’ll get a look at the most incredible sky you’ve ever seen. Well, you will if this bloody rain eases off. We’ve got special “dark sky” status, did you know that?’ Thorne said that he didn’t. ‘Because there’s no light pollution. Well, no pollution of any sort, come to that.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s a one-off, this place.’
Thorne said nothing. He wondered how much longer Caroline was going to be in the cellar. He could hear her moving around beneath them.
Patrick must have caught Thorne glancing at the cellar door. He said, ‘We keep all the dried goods down there. Rice, pasta, what have you. Loads and loads of tinned stuff. Fuel for the generator.’ He held up the bottle. ‘Plenty of this too, like I said. I tell you what, if there’s ever a nuclear attack or the world gets overrun by zombies, we’re quids in.’
‘How often do you get back to the mainland?’
‘I haven’t been back for six months,’ Patrick said. ‘Caroline goes over every couple of weeks, does a bit of shopping or whatever if she’s feeling a bit low. Buys herself some clothes. A treat, you know? Obviously, once Freya’s going to school she’ll be going across every day.’
‘You think you’ll still be here then?’
‘God, I hope so.’ Patrick leaned across the table. ‘Not sure I’d be able to cope in a city now.’ He drank half a glass, thought for a few moments. ‘Whoever you are, whatever problems you might have had before, somewhere like this forces you to make peace with yourself. Do you know what I mean?’
Thorne hadn’t got a clue, but nodded anyway.
‘Not that it worked for your friend in the handcuffs. The one who was here when he was a boy, I mean. I suppose some people are just more attuned to that side of things than others.’ Patrick nodded, seemingly pleased with his own insight. ‘The spiritual side.’
‘He’s definitely not one of them,’ Thorne said.
‘Come on then, how dangerous is he?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, it’s pretty clear he’s not a fraudster, anything like that.’ Patrick tapped a fingernail against his glass. ‘What do they call them, white-collar criminals? I mean, like Caz said, you’re not down there digging for gold coins, are you?’
Thorne wasn’t sure why the farmer was asking, when he had already seen similar enquiries from his wife go unanswered. Perhaps he thought that, man to man, with a bottle of wine on the table, he might be more successful than she had been. Or that information which Thorne might consider too frightening for her ears might be suitable for his. Whatever, his reasons for wanting to know seemed anything but voyeuristic. There was none of the excitement Thorne had heard in the voices of those lads in the Black Horse; that desire for a cheap thrill that Nicklin had accused Burnham of harbouring.
All Thorne saw and heard was sadness. Resignation…
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’
Patrick raised his hands. ‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.’
‘It’s understandable,’ Thorne said. ‘I’d want to know, if I was sitting where you are.’ He watched the man reach for the wine bottle and tried to imagine exactly that. He asked himself how he would cope if he were doing what Patrick Black did.
He doubted seriously that he would last a week.
The work was clearly strenuous and the hours ridiculous, but he told himself that he could handle that. The spartan nature of the domestic arrangements was unpleasant, but he thought that he would probably get used to them.
The problem would be his own company.
He looked across the table and wondered just how well the man sitting opposite got on with himself, day in, day out. Why, however attuned he was to all things spiritual, he was drinking a third glass of wine in less than ten minutes.
Thorne stood up when he saw Caroline Black emerge from the cellar with a couple of what looked like well-stocked plastic bags.
‘This is going to have to do,’ she said.
Thorne took one of the bags from her, very happy to hear bottles clinking inside. ‘This is great, thank you.’
‘Should be enough to get you through the night.’ She passed the second bag across. ‘And breakfast in the morning.’
‘It’s really kind of you.’
‘We help each other out on Bardsey,’ Patrick said. His voice was a touch deeper now, a little less precise.
Thorne said, ‘Right,’ and turned towards the kitchen door. ‘Listen, it was really nice to meet you.’
Caroline Black was standing at her husband’s shoulder. She said, ‘Just a shame about the circumstances, that’s all. I hope you understand when I say we’ll be glad to see the back of you.’
Somewhere upstairs, Thorne heard the dog bark, the little girl telling it to be quiet. A childish impression of the tone she had clearly heard her mother use.
‘I understand,’ he said.
Stopping at the door, he noticed an old tobacco tin on the dresser and wondered whether one or both of them smoked. He suddenly had a clear image of the two of them sitting outside on a warm evening, enjoying their front garden and sharing a fat joint as the sun began to sink. Waiting for the stars to begin peppering that vast, amazing sky and watching their daughter chase the dog across the fields.
‘His name’s Stuart Nicklin,’ he said.
Patrick Black clearly recognised the name. He said, ‘Ah…’
Thorne watched the farme
r reach for his wife’s hand. ‘And I’m truly sorry I brought him here.’
FORTY-FIVE
Sleeping arrangements had yet to be finalised, but it was decided that Chapel House would be the best location for everyone to eat dinner. Having been occupied by the forensic team the night before, the chill of winter vacancy had already been taken off the place. The plastic covers had been removed from the soft furnishings and wood brought in for the fire. A pair of Calor gas hotplates was up and running.
The emergency rations generously supplied by the Blacks turned out to be both limited and strictly vegetarian. It made the choice of recipe simple enough, but did not go down very well with certain members of the team.
Fletcher had stared, incredulous, as the ingredients were taken out of the bag. ‘It’s like bloody student food,’ he said. A sing-song, Brummie whine.
‘How would you know?’ Jenks nudged his colleague aside and picked up a tin.
‘For God’s sake… beans?’ Fletcher looked thoroughly disgusted. ‘It’s a farm, isn’t it? Don’t they keep chickens or whatever?’
‘Look, it’s quick and it’s easy and we can make plenty of it.’
Fletcher walked out of the small kitchen and sat down. ‘I tell you what, the only way I could stomach living here is if they flew a Nando’s takeaway in once a week…’
If the preparation of rice with tinned tomatoes and kidney beans was straightforward, the table plan was rather more convoluted. While Jenks performed cooking duties and Holland and Fletcher sat with Nicklin and Batchelor in the living room, Thorne tried to come up with the seating arrangement that would best suit the somewhat unconventional group that was gathered for the first dinner shift. With Karim maintaining the watch over the body in the chapel and Howell, Markham and Barber still working at the crime scene, the first sitting would involve only Thorne and Holland, along with the two prisoners and prison officers.
Having wrestled with several permutations, Thorne eventually settled on an arrangement which saw Nicklin and Batchelor seated at either end of the small dining table, with a cop and a prison officer separating them, one of each on either side.
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