TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Are we going to have those little cards with our names on?’ Nicklin was watching Thorne from the living room. ‘That’s always a nice touch.’

  Thorne ignored him.

  Nicklin lifted his wrists. ‘How about handcuffs as napkin rings?’

  ‘How about you keeping your mouth shut?’

  ‘Seriously, I reckon prison-chic could be the next big thing in designer tableware.’

  Thorne went back to ignoring him.

  Twenty minutes later, Jenks laid down a large saucepan of rice and another of tomatoes and beans, and the people around the table began helping themselves. There was a plastic bowl of grated cheese and some Tabasco sauce Jenks had managed to find at the back of a cupboard. There was bottled water and defrosted wholemeal bread, which Nicklin and Batchelor were quick to take pieces of, as they were both using it as a substitute for cutlery.

  Nicklin pushed food against the bread with his fingers, then brought it quickly to his mouth. He chewed, shaking his head. ‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ he said, mouth still half-full. ‘We do have a basic right to eat like human beings.’ He looked from Thorne to Fletcher and back again. ‘They let us have cutlery in prison, you know.’

  ‘Plastic cutlery,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘There’s a lot more officers around in prison,’ Thorne said. ‘With weapons.’ He slowly and deliberately used his fork to gather another mouthful for himself. ‘I can’t take the risk, can I?’

  ‘Not even a spoon?’ Nicklin wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Come on, how much damage can anyone do with a spoon?’ He reached for more bread and carried on eating, clearly enjoying the reaction from those who were only too well aware of exactly what damage he had done in Belmarsh a decade earlier.

  ‘What about you, Jeff?’ Holland turned to Batchelor. ‘You think we’re denying your basic human rights?’

  Batchelor shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Because you’re more than welcome to make an official complaint when we get back.’ Holland glanced across at Fletcher, sensing a receptive audience. ‘There’s probably a form to fill in where you can describe how traumatised you were by the lack of proper condiments.’

  Fletcher laughed and Holland looked pleased with himself.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Batchelor said. He used a chunk of bread to push some of his food from one side of the plate to another.

  ‘Actually, Al, this isn’t too bad after all,’ Fletcher said.

  ‘See?’ Jenks said.

  ‘I mean, you’re not Jamie Oliver or anything, but it’s tasty enough.’ He reached for another spoonful of rice, then put half back in the saucepan when Thorne reminded him there were four more people yet to be fed. ‘Don’t get me wrong, be even better with some meatballs or a leg of chicken in it, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.’

  ‘Suffocation, I reckon,’ Nicklin said.

  Thorne looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘The most effective way to kill someone if all you had to do it with was bread.’ Nicklin nodded, thinking it through. ‘You fill their mouth with it, block their nose off…’

  ‘What the hell are you on about?’ Fletcher asked.

  ‘If you want to get rid of someone badly enough, you use what’s knocking around, don’t you?’

  ‘All right,’ Fletcher said. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ Nicklin pushed some more food into his mouth and licked his fingers. ‘And seeing as I’m not being allowed any cutlery, I’d be forced to improvise.’

  Fletcher pointed, said, ‘I think you need to shut the hell up, right now.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Mr Fletcher.’ Nicklin widened his eyes, as though taken aback. ‘Keep your hair on. I wasn’t being serious, was I?’

  Thorne looked across at the prison officer, who was suddenly looking seriously rattled. It was exactly as Thorne had explained it to Nicklin a minute or so before. Normally, someone like Fletcher would have a great many more of his colleagues around him and, even then, a professional distance was always observed. There would never be this degree of… intimacy with a prisoner, and certainly not one like Stuart Nicklin. Yes, there was a relationship of sorts, a civility that was maintained wherever possible for the good of both sides. He would do what needed doing but, at the end of the day, it was Fletcher’s job to bang the likes of Nicklin up every night and walk away.

  They were not supposed to be breaking bread at the same table.

  ‘No, because if I was being serious,’ Nicklin said, ‘I’d just use this…’ He held up a fork and, for a second, everyone at the table froze.

  Fletcher shouted and pushed his chair back hard, jumping to his feet at the same moment that Thorne did; that Nicklin dropped the fork on to the table and raised his hands.

  ‘You took your eye off it, didn’t you, Mr Fletcher?’

  Fletcher snatched the fork back, breathing heavily, relief quickly giving way to rage and the look on his face suggesting that he would like nothing more than to drive the fork straight into Nicklin’s face. Nicklin stared right back at him and then turned his eyes to Thorne. They were wide and bright, as though he were happily feeding off the tension that was suddenly fizzing around the table.

  ‘Let’s get the cuffs back on,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Calm down,’ Nicklin said. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything, obviously.’

  ‘Now.’

  Nicklin meekly held his arms out. ‘I was just making a point.’

  Thorne turned to Batchelor. ‘You finished?’ Batchelor nodded, but Thorne could see that his food had barely been touched. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Not hungry,’ Batchelor said.

  Fletcher and Jenks were fastening the handcuffs back on to their prisoners’ wrists when the front door opened and Howell and Markham trooped in. As she stripped off her dirty plastic bodysuit, the archaeologist explained that Eileen Bennett’s body had now joined Simon Milner’s in the chapel and that Barber was still doing his penance by bringing the last of the equipment up. She tossed suit and gloves into the corner then, while Markham disposed of hers, she dropped into the seat that Thorne had vacated.

  ‘Something smells good,’ she said.

  ‘Dig in,’ Thorne said.

  Jenks brought some clean plates to the table and Howell reached for a serving spoon. ‘Oh and Sergeant Karim wanted me to tell you that his “stomach thinks his throat’s been cut” and to ask when it’s his turn to “get some effing dinner”.’

  Markham sat down, asking where the wine was as she reached for the water. Then, once the room was a little less crowded, Fletcher and Jenks eased Nicklin and Batchelor out of the way towards the living room.

  Thorne picked up the two bulky plastic torches that he’d dug out of the cottage’s supply cupboard as soon as they’d arrived. He checked that they were working then waved Holland across. He said, ‘Come on, Dave. You can relieve Sam for an hour and I’ll try and work out where we’re all sleeping.’

  As Thorne and Holland walked towards the front door, Thorne heard Nicklin shout, ‘It’s really very nice, but Mr Fletcher thinks it needs meatballs or a leg of chicken, don’t you, Mr Fletcher?’

  Thorne didn’t hear Fletcher answer.

  FORTY-SIX

  Even with torches, the journey of a hundred yards or so to the chapel took Thorne and Holland almost ten minutes to navigate safely. The track was rutted and growing muddier with the rain, the slightly raised grass verge on one side disappeared for long stretches without warning and the edge sloped steeply away towards the fields.

  It was more than just the desire to avoid a broken ankle that slowed them down. Despite the drizzle, there was remarkably little cloud and, without saying anything, they stopped several times, switched their torches off and stared skywards.

  ‘Never seen so many stars,’ Holland said.

  ‘No light pollution,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s got dark sky status. That’s why loads of astro
nomers come.’ He nodded. ‘Well, you can see, can’t you?’

  ‘How come you know all that?’

  ‘I know stuff,’ Thorne said. ‘Don’t sound so bloody surprised.’

  ‘Can you name any of them?’ Holland asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Any of the stars. The constellations.’

  Thorne stared for a minute, then pointed. ‘That’s the one that looks like a saucepan.’ He had a memory of his father pointing it out. He had probably been shown more, but that was the only one he could ever remember, or identify. The one he always looked for.

  ‘The Plough,’ Holland said. ‘Because it looks like an old-fashioned plough, see? It’s also called the Big Dipper.’

  ‘Looks like a saucepan,’ Thorne said.

  ‘It’s actually called Ursa Major,’ Holland said. ‘I used to have a poster of all of them on my wall. Weird, the crap you remember.’

  ‘That means a big bear, right?’

  Holland nodded.

  ‘Looks bugger all like a bear.’

  ‘I think it’s only a part of the bear.’

  ‘Only if the bear’s carrying a saucepan,’ Thorne said.

  They stared for a little while longer, the beam from the lighthouse playing across them every thirty seconds or so, each of them turning slowly on the spot to try and take it all in.

  ‘Amazing,’ Holland said.

  Thorne could not argue. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Before Karim goes ape-shit. I’ve seen him lose it if the queue’s too long at the kebab house.’

  Samir Karim was certainly delighted to see them and was eager to get out of there and on his way to the Chapel House. He could not leave quickly enough, especially once Thorne had told him that spicy chicken stew and mashed potatoes were on the menu; that beer had been opened and that Howell and the rest were already getting well stuck into the little of it they had been left.

  Once Karim had gone, Holland said, ‘You’re evil, you know that?’

  Thorne looked down at the pair of body bags lying side by side at the base of the altar. The slump in them where there was nothing but air, the light from dozens of candles flickering across the black plastic.

  ‘It’s all relative,’ he said.

  Having left Holland at the chapel, Thorne walked the hundred yards further on up towards the cottage suggested by the warden; the one he had recommended as providing the most suitable accommodation for the six now forced into spending the night on the island.

  ‘Hendy,’ Burnham had said. ‘The Old House. Oldest on the island. You’ll be fine there, I reckon.’

  Now, walking from the track towards the front door, Thorne stopped and turned. Something between a scream and a song was drifting from the direction of the lighthouse. He muttered, ‘Hell was that?’ though there was nobody there to hear him and it took a long few seconds before he realised it was the call of the grey seals. He walked on towards the cottage, playing his torch-beam across the peeling red of the front door, thinking that he could not imagine a sound more designed to terrify someone on a pitch-black night in the middle of nowhere.

  The front door was open.

  The interior of the cottage was cold, smelled damp, and its layout was predictably archaic: front and rear parlours, a walk-in pantry; a small ‘back’ kitchen off the main one. Thorne explored the ground floor by torchlight, then retraced his steps, stopping every few minutes to light one of the small gas lamps that were dotted around on window-ledges and sideboards. As more of the place was revealed, it became clearer than ever that visitors did not come to the island for its luxurious accommodation. He had no idea when the cottage had been built, but the seventies-style décor and heavy furnishings – most even shabbier than those he had seen back at the Chapel House – did little to increase its appeal.

  Thorne stood in the half-light at the bottom of the stairs. He looked back at the doormat with its worn and faded CROESO and reminded himself that none of this was important.

  Yes, he could have done without the chill and the shadows, and the sudden scurryings that told him Burnham had been spot on about those sheltering mice, but it was a place to spend the night, no more than that. He and everyone else would have to make the best of it.

  He walked upstairs to check out the bedrooms.

  Once he had lit a few more lamps and familiarised himself with the layout of the first floor, Thorne was able to hazard a guess as to why Burnham had thought the Old House would be ideal. There were four bedrooms: a double, a single and two with twin single beds. For reasons of safety and security, Thorne had already decided that certain people would be required to share rooms. It was unlikely to be a popular decision, but at least there was the necessary number of bunks.

  Make do and mend was one thing, but nobody would have been happy about sharing beds.

  Thorne laid a gas lamp down on the chest of drawers in one of the twin bedrooms at the back of the house and walked across to the window. He peered out into the darkness. The sky was only a fraction lighter than the charcoal blanket of fields, the stars scattered across it all the way down to the sea. He wondered if Robert Burnham had sat and drawn up a chart, if he had worked out the permutations of the bedrooms, cottage by cottage, before choosing the most suitable. Thorne made a mental note to thank him, for that and for his help in getting the food out of the Blacks…

  Thorne froze at the sight of a torch beam darting below him in the cottage garden.

  The enveloping blackness meant there was no way of seeing to whom the torch belonged, to make out so much as a shape. Nonetheless, Thorne watched the milky beam skitter through the grass for a few moments, then along the base of the stone wall before it was turned upwards suddenly towards the building and passed across the window at which Thorne was standing.

  Instinctively, Thorne stepped back for a second. Then, for want of anything better to do, he moved back to the window and banged on the glass. The light vanished and it was impossible to say if the person had simply moved out of sight or if the torch had been switched off.

  Thorne turned and hurried for the stairs.

  He could not really explain why he felt the need to get down and out into the back garden as quickly as possible. After all, a darkness as profound as this one meant that anyone out and about would need to use a torch.

  It was hardly suspicious.

  He told himself that circumstances were making him unnecessarily jumpy, that it was probably just that birdwatcher out in search of the bird whose name he could never remember. The one that came back to its burrow at night, with the spooky call Nicklin had mentioned.

  But hadn’t Burnham said it was the wrong time of year?

  Maybe it was the warden himself, come to see how Thorne was settling in. Perhaps it was Caroline or Patrick Black.

  By the time Thorne had forced the stiff, heavy bolts on the kitchen door and burst through into the back garden, there was no sign of anyone.

  He stood still and listened.

  There was only the softest kiss of the wind through the long grass, the distant wail of a grey seal and the hiss of the drizzle against the corrugated iron roof of the outside toilet. Thorne shone his torch across the lean-to, the moss on the stone wall, the cracked wooden door.

  He pushed the door open with his foot and stepped inside. It smelled musty, that was all; probably a damn sight better than it did when there were holidaymakers in residence. A plastic seat had been fixed on to a simple wooden platform. There was a large metal jug and a row of damp and crinkled toilet rolls on one side.

  Thorne positioned his torch so that it shone in roughly the right direction and unzipped. He pissed quickly, his shoulders tense, and when he had finished, he picked up the jug to flush, but it was empty.

  He took out his radio as he walked back out into the garden.

  ‘Dave?’

  Holland took a few seconds to answer. ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

  ‘Have you been out of the chapel?’

  ‘No. What’s the matter?�
�

  ‘I thought I saw someone outside the cottage, that’s all.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘OK, not to worry…’

  Thorne turned at a noise from the other side of the cottage and ran around the side of the building. The grass was even more overgrown here and whipped around his calves as he emerged at the front in time to see a torch beam playing across the gate.

  He pointed his own torch and shouted, ‘Who’s that?’

  His voice was a little higher than normal.

  He watched as the stranger’s beam moved, then intensified, pooling beneath a chin and lighting up a pale face; the eyes in shadow and the inside of the mouth black when it opened.

  Wendy Markham said, ‘It’s me…’

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Earlier, from the window of the sitting room in Chapel House, Batchelor had watched the last of the day slip from view and it had felt like the darkness was being hammered into place; nailed down.

  As if the light had gone for good, out there and inside him.

  Now, he sat on a hard sofa next to Alan Jenks, listening to Fletcher and Nicklin talking on the other side of the room. They seemed to have been talking for hours already, an incessant jabbering. Every word, each bark of laughter, another nail…

  The others were still eating next door. The archaeologist and her team, their conversation bleeding through the stone wall. More laughter, more ordinariness, and Jenks next to him with his nose in some magazine or other, like this was just a waiting room or something.

  Like there was nothing terrible out there in the dark.

  I just wanted to say goodnight, best girl…

  The stupid thing is that I think you’d have quite liked this place. It’s certainly not like anywhere else I’ve ever been, or even heard of. There’s such a lot of history here and you know how much I love the fact that you inherited a passion for all that from me. Well, that’s what I tell myself, anyway. All the bad stuff you got from your mum, obviously. The inability to be anywhere on time or to file things or to keep your room tidy. Your strange affection for chaos.