TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  As things stood, he could not be certain they would be the last.

  ‘They’ll keep working on him,’ Thorne said. ‘Dawson.’

  ‘He came into the bedroom again,’ Hendricks said. ‘Not long before he left. Waving a kitchen knife around and talking shit about what he was capable of doing with it and I really thought he was going to do something bad. Something worse, you know?’

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Helen said.

  ‘When you get that scared, you realise that you’d do anything, say anything.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with being scared,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks looked from Thorne to Helen and back, tried to drink from a can that was already empty.

  ‘You should come with me,’ Thorne said, changing tack.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Back to Bardsey.’

  Two weeks from now, for the funeral of Huw Morgan. It was, Thorne had decided, the least he could do for Bernard, who had lost his only son in such terrible circumstances. That was worth putting up with the five hour drive, another night in the Black Horse, dosing himself up on seasickness pills for the crossing.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just a thought.’

  ‘What, like some sort of therapy?’ Hendricks smiled, but he didn’t look very amused. ‘Taking me to where it all happened, so I can deal with the trauma a bit better?’

  ‘Never occurred to me,’ Thorne said.

  In truth, it hadn’t, at least not as far as Hendricks was concerned. Thorne had wondered though if he might do himself some good, going back to the island while things were still fresh, raw.

  Laying a few ghosts to rest, sooner, rather than later.

  ‘I just thought you might like it, that’s all. Birds and seals… stars, all that.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Hendricks said. ‘Hospital appointments, you know.’

  Helen got up to fetch Hendricks another beer and Thorne said that he would have another one, if she was going. While she was gone, they talked about the latest round of treatment on Hendricks’ back. Skin grafts were notoriously tricky and the process would be a laborious one, but Thorne knew it was going to take his friend far longer to recover emotionally.

  He also knew that the same went for him.

  Sitting there at the table, picking at a piece of leftover bread, Thorne was suddenly struck by a memory of hearing Nicklin snoring, that final night on Bardsey. The irritating wheeze, just before Fletcher and Jenks had turned up and announced they were taking Batchelor outside. Having set everything up, knowing what had already been done and what was about to happen, Nicklin had actually slept.

  When Helen came back with three more cans of beer, Thorne said, ‘Shall we go and get this done then?’

  They carried their drinks out into the small back garden, where Thorne emptied the contents of a plastic bag into a metal rubbish bin. Helen handed him the grimy bottle of lighter fluid that had been gathering dust behind the barbecue since an abortive attempt to use it the previous summer.

  Thorne looked at Hendricks. ‘You want to do the honours?’

  ‘No, you go ahead, mate.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Thorne laid a hand on Hendricks’ arm, caught Helen’s eye. He was careful to stay well away from the shoulders, the bulge of bandage between them all too obvious beneath his friend’s shirt. His apology was implicit in the gesture, likewise its acceptance in the nod from Hendricks.

  Things had not gone quite as smoothly between them in those first few days. There had been a good deal of anger, of accusation. If the blame was somewhat irrational, Thorne could certainly understand where the anger was coming from.

  He had told Holland and everyone else the story that Nicklin had suggested. He had said that his primary concern that night had been to save Phil Hendricks’ life, that the danger to it was obvious to him and that the decisions taken had been made with that foremost in his mind.

  He had not told them that he was sent to fetch that package from the abbey after he had learned that Alan Jenks was still alive. That he had looked down at that piece of skin and taken a decision while Jenks was bleeding to death in the garden below.

  He had not told them that he had made a choice.

  Again…

  Thorne had looked up at Stuart Nicklin that night and demanded to be punched a second time, not because it would make his story any more convincing, but because he wanted it.

  Because he deserved it.

  ‘Can we hurry this up?’ Hendricks asked. ‘I’m freezing my tits off out here and I don’t want to lose them an’ all.’

  It had been a week or more before Thorne had seen Phil smile, or heard that irritating, whiny laugh. Without knowing what might still be medically possible so long after the fact, Thorne had held on to the piece of Hendricks’ skin. Once it became clear that nothing useful could be done with it, he had given it back to Hendricks, who had promptly announced that he would be taking it to the tattoo parlour to get the design replicated, as soon as there was new skin to work on.

  Hendricks had stared down at his own ruined flesh and shaken his head. Said, ‘Jesus, I always knew that being your friend was a pain in the arse, but this is ridiculous…’

  Thorne stepped forward and squirted the fluid across the mound of paper in the dustbin, scattered sheets and torn envelopes, watching the crazed handwriting blur and bleed as it was soaked. A few words catching his eye as he squeezed the bottle dry.

  the MAD professor

  the things MARTIN and I did

  DEFECTIVE inspector TOM THORNE

  Helen handed him a large box of safety matches. It took several attempts before he got one to stay lit, but the papers caught quickly enough. They stood back, eyes narrowed against the smoke. Hendricks said ‘good riddance,’ and the three of them raised their bottles and watched the letters burn, scraps curling and rising slowly up through the sparks like charred butterflies.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, I am enormously grateful for the efforts of everyone at Little, Brown, particularly my wonderful editor David Shelley and his team. I am hugely lucky in continuing to work with Robert Manser, Tamsin Kitson, Emma Williams, Jo Wickham, Sean Garrehy and Thalia Proctor. Long may my luck hold. At Grove Atlantic in the US, Morgan Entrekin, Peter Blackstock and Deb Seager have provided much-appreciated shots of faith and enthusiasm in the books, for which I am hugely thankful.

  I am deeply indebted to Colin and Ernest Evans for their immeasurable patience, advice and input, and for getting me there. There would be no book without them. I hope you’re happy with how I portrayed your island…

  Diolch o’r galon.

  For help with the forensic anthropology in the book, thanks are due (along with many, many drinks) to Professor Sue Black, Director of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee and Professor Lorna Dawson, Principal Soil Scientist in the Environmental and Biochemical Sciences Group at the James Hutton Institute. Their generosity and expertise is matched only by a seemingly limitless capacity for answering stupid questions.

  www.hutton.ac.uk

  www.millionforamorgue.com

  Louise Butler was helpful on matters of prison procedure (thanks, Lou), the words of Wendy Lee and Tony Fuller were wise as always and I could wish for no more sympathetic and eagle-eyed copy editor than Deborah Adams. Sarah Luytens rocks, and remains the agent that every author dreams about having. I am thankful every day that she’s mine.

  And thank you Claire, above all. For taking me to Bardsey Island and for thinking that it might be an interesting place to take Tom Thorne.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli) lies just two miles beyond the tip of the Lleyn peninsula. It is 1.5 miles long and just over half a mile wide. The mountain, Mynydd Enlli, rises to 167 metres. Whether the remains of King Arthur or of those twenty thousand saints are buried there or not, it is every bit as unique and magical a place as Tom Thorne comes to realise by the end of The Bone
s Beneath. Though I may have taken the occasional liberty with geography in service of the story, I have tried my utmost to capture the stark beauty and atmosphere of the island and can only hope that the curiosity of some readers has been piqued by the facts about its history, mythology and scientific significance that are scattered throughout the novel.

  For anyone interested in visiting Bardsey Island, there is no better place to start than here: www.bardsey.org/english/bardsey/welcome.asp. This site gives details of the trust that administers the island as well as information about its arts, archaeology and natural history. It also provides prospective visitors with everything they need in terms of how to book day trips or longer visits, with pictures of all the available accommodation. I can assure anyone thinking of visiting that the journey is exhilarating, the hotels on the mainland are fantastic and that the cottages available for rent are not as spooky as the one Tom Thorne is forced to spend the night in.

  www.bardsey.org/english/staying/staying_bardsey.htm

  Bardsey is a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Further details can be found here:

  www.bardsey.org/english/the_island/natural_history.htm

  Those specifically interested in the island’s birds can get detailed day-by-day reports from the Bird and Field Observatory, with wonderful pictures and up-to-date information about more than 175 species, here: https://bbfo.blogspot.co.uk.

  The last King of Bardsey, Love Pritchard, died in 1926, and was buried close to the beach in Aberdaron cemetery. Find out all about him, the kings who ruled before him, and what became of the legendary crown of Bardsey here: www.bardsey.org/english/the_island/king.htm

  Bardsey Lighthouse was built in 1821, stands a little over thirty metres high and, unlike almost all other Trinity lighthouses, is square. The top of it is also the only place on the island I was able to get so much as a glimmer of a phone signal, and I dislike heights as much as Tom Thorne.

  www.trinityhouse.co.uk/lighthouses/lighthouse_list/bardsey.html

  Bardsey’s religious significance, its history as a place of pilgrimage and the story of those twenty thousand saints are detailed here: www.bardsey.org/english/the_island/pilgrims.htm

  A remote and all-but-deserted island, cut off from the mainland with no mobile phone signal is, of course, a wonderful place to set a crime novel. In reality, however, I cannot remember spending time anywhere as peaceful as Ynys Enlli. Though not a religious person myself, I can fully understand its status as a place of pilgrimage and can see why it is so beloved of artists, writers and natural historians. If even one reader who has enjoyed The Bones Beneath is tempted to visit Bardsey Island – to hear the Manx shearwater at night, to watch the sun set behind those spectacular abbey ruins, to escape the stress of modern city living for a few days or simply to search for the place where Stuart Nicklin buried those bodies – then I shall be a very happy author.

  Mark Billingham, London, 2013