TT12 The Bones Beneath Read online

  When Thorne, Holland, Karim and Markham wandered down from their rooms and into the lounge, Elwyn Pritchard was installed behind the bar. If anybody had been playing a piano, chances are they would have stopped as Thorne and the others walked in. While the fruit machine tweeted and buzzed in the corner, they exchanged nods with a gaggle of flinty-looking drinkers who were clearly regular customers and gave the impression of having been in the bar a good while already.

  Thorne took his wallet out and ordered the drinks.

  ‘I’m guessing you’re starving,’ Pritchard said.

  ‘I could eat a horse,’ Karim said. ‘But I’m trying to give up beef.’

  It took Pritchard a few seconds to get the joke, then he laughed as though it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard; two explosive belly-laughs followed by a series of staccato hisses. When he’d recovered – though still grinning like an idiot and shaking his head – he said, ‘Now, I’ve taken the liberty of assuming that you won’t want to risk food poisoning at either of the iffy takeaways in town.’

  ‘Won’t we?’ Thorne asked. He had clocked a Chinese place on the way into the village and had been thinking about hot and sour soup and Singapore noodles ever since.

  ‘A lot of local cats go missing,’ Pritchard said. ‘You take my meaning.’

  ‘Right.’ Thorne glanced at Holland, who shrugged.

  ‘I’m only messing with you, boys. Actually it’s the seagulls you want to worry about. They catch them on the roof, pass it off as chicken.’ As Pritchard set three pints and a gin and tonic down on the bar, he explained that he’d decided to think ahead and that he’d used his initiative. ‘I opened the kitchen for you, special,’ he said.

  Thorne took a mouthful of Guinness. Said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought: Sod it.’ Pritchard nodded, wiping the bar. ‘I’ll splash out and bring the kitchen staff in for the night, because they’ve had a bloody long drive and they’ll be wanting something decent inside of them when they get here.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘Sounds like you’ve got a big day lined up tomorrow.’

  Thorne put his glass back on the bar; leaned against it. ‘How do you know what we’re doing tomorrow, Elwyn?’

  Pritchard looked a little thrown. ‘Well… I know a couple of the lads at the station pretty well and one of them said something about a trip out to the island, that’s all.’ He pointed to one of the regulars, a skinny man with a shaved head. ‘Plus, Eddie over there… his cousin’s the boatman who’s taking you across in the morning, so, you know… there you are.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘The lads at the station didn’t happen to say anything about who we might be taking to the island?’

  Pritchard shook his head, stared down at the bar as he wiped at it a little harder. ‘No, I don’t know nothing about that. One of the lads just mentioned something about going to the island, that was all.’

  Thorne looked at Holland, got another shrug.

  He stared along the bar at Eddie, who stared right back, mouth full of crisps.

  Pritchard turned and took a sip from a pint of his own. He fiddled with one of the optics for half a minute, then turned back and flipped the damp bar-towel across his shoulder. ‘Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll send one of the girls over to take your order?’

  As they moved slowly away from the bar into the dining area, Holland began talking to Markham, something about a TV show they had both watched. Karim leaned close to Thorne and nodded.

  He said, ‘I think we should risk the chinky…’

  They sat at a table within sight of the bar, set somewhat snugly for four. It was one of several that had been laid, though there seemed little chance of anyone else having booked for dinner or popping in on a whim. Thorne wondered if they had actually just been left that way since August or whatever. The tablecloths dusted and the cutlery and glasses given a quick wipe every couple of weeks.

  They studied their menus. Gammon and egg, gammon, egg and pineapple, fish and chips…

  ‘Fish should be all right, shouldn’t it?’ Holland asked.

  Markham shook her head. ‘It’ll all be frozen out of season, doesn’t matter how close the sea is.’ In fact, the sea was no more than a couple of hundred feet away from them, beyond a high wall and a line of dilapidated beach huts. Save for the light of a far-distant boat, it was pitch black outside the floor-to-ceiling dining-room windows, but they could hear the roar and shush of the water as it churned against the shore.

  Holland stared into the blackness. ‘Reminds me,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t kidding about those seasickness tablets…’

  A waitress who could not have been much older than fifteen came across and took their order. Fish and chips for Holland and Thorne, leek and potato soup for Markham and a casserole made with local sausage, which Karim decided to gamble on. They took the opportunity to get a fresh round of drinks in.

  At the bar, the conversation in Welsh grew suddenly animated. Karim leaned towards the others. ‘Listen to that,’ he said. ‘Only language in the world where it sounds like you’ve got something stuck in your throat.’ He made a noise like a cat trying to get rid of a fur ball.

  Holland laughed. ‘Don’t know whether I should be listening or trying to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre.’

  Thorne noticed Eddie and a couple of the other lads at the bar turning to stare across at them. ‘I think you might want to keep it down,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Karim sat up straight to look.

  Markham spoke quietly to Karim, as if she were speaking to a child. ‘You can’t speak Welsh, but you need to remember they can speak English.’

  Holland looked across and raised a glass to Eddie, who sniffed and turned slowly back to his friends. ‘At least they know we’re coppers,’ he said, grinning. ‘It might be the only thing that stops us getting beaten up.’

  ‘Or it might be exactly why we do get beaten up,’ Thorne said.

  The food arrived quickly and only Karim seemed unhappy with it, his gamble having clearly failed to pay off. It didn’t stop him tucking in though.

  ‘So you think it’s a problem?’ Holland asked. ‘The boys at the station shooting their mouths off?’

  Thorne shrugged, mouth full. He swallowed, said, ‘I’d be a bit more worried, but this place is so bloody isolated. It’s not like anyone who fancies it can just nip over and have a look at what we’re doing.’ He speared a chip, angrily. ‘Don’t get me wrong though, I’ll still be having serious words in the morning when we pick Nicklin up. Gobby sods…’

  The child waitress came over and asked if everything was OK. They all made rather more enthusiastic noises than the food merited.

  ‘He’s not what I expected,’ Markham said. ‘Nicklin.’ She looked at Thorne. Her brown hair was freshly washed and perfectly blow-dried and she had clearly taken the opportunity to reapply dark red lipstick, and mascara which highlighted eyes that were green enough to begin with. ‘I mean, I knew who he was, obviously, did some reading.’

  ‘He’s changed a lot in ten years,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I don’t mean physically.’

  ‘So what were you expecting?’

  ‘I’m not sure, just someone a bit less… childlike. Or maybe I mean childish. In the station, when we dropped him off, that stuff about being strip-searched? It was like he was showing off.’

  ‘He likes an audience,’ Holland said.

  ‘So why all this business about making sure the press are kept away?’

  ‘He’s not stupid,’ Thorne said. ‘He knows the press are going to get hold of it eventually. It’s more about enjoying the fact that he can get us to do what he wants. Yeah, he likes an audience, but not as much as he likes making people jump through hoops for him.’

  Karim jabbed a dripping fork in Thorne’s direction. ‘Making you jump through hoops, you mean. That’s basically what he wants. At the end of the day, you’re the only audience he’s really bothered about.’
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  Thorne put down his knife and fork, picked up his glass. He’d had enough to eat anyway.

  ‘Got a bit of a thing, has he?’ Markham asked. She leaned towards him, curling strands of hair around her jaw with the backs of her fingers.

  Thorne remembered the look on Nicklin’s face back in that darkening playground, triumphant somehow despite the blood and broken teeth. He remembered the look on his face earlier that day, when he’d turned from the urinal to tuck his cock away. His eyes, whenever Thorne had caught them in the rear-view, as though Nicklin had been staring at it, waiting.

  Thorne drained his glass. ‘Yeah. A thing.’

  When the waitress came to clear the table, nobody sounded interested in coffee, but Karim and Holland both seemed keen on at least one more drink before bed. Thorne pushed his chair back, announced that he was heading up. Wendy Markham finished what was left of her drink and said that she was ready to do the same.

  Karim looked at his watch. ‘It’s not even ten.’

  ‘Listen, I’m not your dad,’ Thorne said. ‘But I will be seriously pissed off if either of you isn’t up to it in the morning, all right?’ He pointed at Holland, nodded at Karim. ‘He’s a nutcase, but you should know better, Dave.’

  ‘Just a quick half, honest,’ Holland said.

  Karim nodded, solemn. ‘Maybe a couple of brandies.’

  Thorne and Markham said, ‘Goodnight’ to Pritchard and his friends as they left the bar, then walked in silence past Reception and up the two flights of stairs to the floor where all four of them were staying.

  Markham’s room was along the corridor to the left, while Thorne’s was half a dozen paces in the other direction. They stood together on the landing and exchanged a look. Just an awkward moment or two of politeness before separating, a second or two too long.

  ‘Right then…’

  ‘Fancy a nightcap in my room?’ Markham asked.

  Thorne swayed, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. He could feel the colour flooding his face and saw that the same was happening to Markham’s. She was about to say something else when he managed to stammer, ‘I’m really knackered, Wendy. It was a ridiculously early start this morning. Well, for both of us…’

  ‘I know,’ she said, nodding. ‘Stupid idea.’

  ‘Stupid time, that’s all,’ he said.

  They both looked elsewhere for as long as it took to let a breath out, then turned towards their rooms at the same time. They separated quickly, the floorboards groaning beneath the cheap carpet as they walked, as they fished for the oversized wooden fobs in their jacket pockets.

  Casually, desperately.

  Thorne pushed his key towards the lock, fumbled it and tried again.

  He took care to keep his eye firmly fixed on the door that was no more than a few inches in front of his face, well aware that, fifteen feet to his left, Wendy Markham was doing exactly the same.

  FOURTEEN

  The writing was tiny and precise, but the way it was laid out, the words crushed against one another, meant that it took Kitson two or three attempts before she was able to read through any of the letters quickly.

  It was impossible to tell if Nicklin had written them quickly. Had it all come out in a rush or had he taken his time? Were his descriptions and diatribes spontaneous or had he thought carefully through every phrase, perfected each image? She could not understand a need for haste, not from someone with so much time on his hands, but sometimes there was an unmistakable energy to the words. A strange urgency about them. Or was that simply down to the layout, the way the words had been crammed on to every page?

  She sorted out the batches of rubber-band-wrapped envelopes before she started, laying them along the back seat of the car. She turned around to retrieve a fresh batch when she was ready and tossed the ones she had finished with back into the box, which was nestling in the footwell.

  MUM,

  Woken by a loud scream earlier on and found out that someone had been attacked stabbed on the wing. Try not to worry too much because I know how much you DO! These things happen – he was all right in the end anyway – everyone in a bit of a flap that’s all. ACTUALLY noise is the hardest thing to get used to in here – not having any silence I mean. Outside you get used to having those times when you can just sit and think and it’s hard when there is always a bloody racket – bangs and shouts and screams and crying or whatever. You just have to learn to tune it OUT until it’s just something in the background then you can concentrate a bit better. While I was doing just that earlier on I had a strange interesting thought. I was wondering if you keep the things that were written about me from the newspapers – you know my press cuttings HA HA HA – not that you would want to show them off to your friends NECESSARILY but just wondered. It’s not every mum whose son gets his name in the papers is it and certainly not in letters that BIG!

  Kitson had done as Thorne had suggested and read the most recent letters first. The whole thing felt weird enough anyway, but it was never stranger than when she was beyond the point where Annie had stopped. When she was opening envelopes. Now she was the only reader, looking at words that she was the first to see, other than Nicklin himself of course. She lifted each off-white, rectangular envelope and opened it fast, the tearing of the paper masking the sound of her breath catching every time.

  In here if you know what 2+2 is and you can write your name you might as well be a PROFESSOR. Other prisoners will ask you to read letters from home or for help with legal stuff. Just because I was a teacher I get a lot of requests like that and it’s fine because I quite enjoy helping out if I can – time passing keeping busy etc etc. But I also get very DIFFERENT reactions because of what I did why I’m in here – something like respect or even fear which was strange to begin with but can be quite useful if I’m honest. Some people found out about what happened in BELMARSH with the infamous spoon and a reputation like that can do you favours – it can keep you safe in a place like this so that’s one more reason for you not to worry about me. OK? Turns out I’m the one to come to if you need a form filling in or a letter from your lawyer checking over BUT I’m also the scary one who you should avoid looking at when you’re queuing up for your dinner. I’m the MAD professor! Made me think though – did I ever scare YOU??

  The odd one had been opened and read by prison officers before it had been sent out. Kitson knew they did that. They would have checked all his incoming mail of course, but only dipped randomly into the letters that were going the other way. She had no idea who he might have been writing to other than Annie and his ex-wife. Did he correspond with his ‘fans’, of whom there were plenty? Did he reply to the marriage proposals from the crackpot bitches all desperate to snag themselves a killer as a husband? The desperate souls convinced that Mr Right would be someone with at least a couple of killings to his name.

  Did you watch that tv documentary/drama the other evening about the things MARTIN and I did? Thought it was very good actually – not too sensationalist or graphic and was hugely flattered by the portrayal. Very HANDSOME actor playing my part. Not sure who they would get to play me the way I look these days – probably someone from one of those agencies supplying freaks and UGLIES for horror films. Just out of interest what do I look like when you try to picture me? IF you try to picture me. How I was just before I came in here or as a little boy?

  She stopped after an hour for a cigarette, got out of the car and smoked it in the garage. She didn’t smoke as often as she once had, but kept a packet in the glove compartment for the difficult days or nights. She would sneak out now and again, when everybody else was asleep, and the pack would usually last her a month or so. Her other half knew but pretended he didn’t, and her eldest son had caught her once. He’d smelled it on her and gone ballistic. He’d called her a hypocrite when she’d tried to lecture him after he’d got drunk and thrown up on the landing outside his bedroom. It was hard to argue with.

  I think I settled in quite fast compared to some an
d it’s easy to forget how hard it can be for others – the panic and the sadness at missing your FAMILY. Making that ADJUSTMENT can be very difficult especially if you’re in here for life. Made a new friend I think. JEFF was/is a teacher like me so there’s a common bond straight away. He’s finding it very tough coping in here at the moment – plenty of dark thoughts – so we talk about things a lot. Good to have PROPER conversations and it’s nice being a shoulder to cry on – something I never really had but no point dwelling thinking about things that could not be helped, is there?

  More than once, a single dried strand of rolling tobacco had fallen out into her lap as she’d unfolded one of the letters. She brushed it quickly away, hoping it was not one that Nicklin himself had plucked, sticky from his lips.

  Looks like I’ll be seeing DEFECTIVE inspector TOM THORNE again quite soon – going on a trip together which I’m very much looking forward to. Will also be taking the friend I mentioned before which has got me thinking how important friendship is – especially in a place like this – having somebody you can count on I mean. THORNE is definitely someone who is very loyal to his friends. Yes he probably loves the new woman in his life and the child he’s been lumbered with but I think he understands that loyalty to friends is definitely the most important quality anyone can have – that friendship is not just SKIN DEEP. Let’s face it we’re stuck with family for good or ill – you must know that better than ANYONE. Luckily we get the chance to choose our FRIENDS though. As for our ENEMIES that’s a whole different question!!!

  After two and a half hours, Kitson had read as much as she was willing to for one night. She had got through all the letters from the previous few months and a good many of those from much earlier. A hundred or so altogether. She wondered how Thorne would feel about being talked about, and not just in the most recent letters. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she was the one Nicklin was thinking about like that and couldn’t. She put the cardboard box back into the boot of the car and tossed an old dog blanket across it.