The Bone Field

by Simon Kernick

  Tina offered me a drink but I declined and took a seat while she poured herself water from a cooler in the corner.

  ‘Do you mind if I record the conversation?’ I asked her, putting a tape recorder on the desk.

  ‘Only if you don’t mind me smoking,’ she said, taking a seat on the other side of the desk.

  I did. I can’t stand the smell of smoke, even though years back I’d been a smoker. ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘It’s your office.’

  She lit a cigarette and blew a line of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘I called the SIO as soon as I saw Henry Forbes’s name on the news today.’

  ‘I understand he hired you to find a woman called Charlotte Curtis.’

  ‘That’s right. He called me last week and tried to hire me over the phone but I insisted he come in for an appointment. I always insist on seeing prospective clients face to face so I can decide whether I want to work for them or not. Mr Forbes was reluctant to come in, he said he was very busy. In fact he made all sorts of excuses, but eventually, when it became clear that I wasn’t going to make an exception, he agreed to come here.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘He called me last Monday, the eleventh, and he finally came in on Thursday morning, the fourteenth.’

  ‘So why did he say he was looking for Charlotte Curtis?’

  ‘He said that she was a former girlfriend of his, that they’d been together back in the early nineties, but she’d emigrated to France and he wanted to get back in touch with her. He said he had something he needed to tell her, that it was very important and confidential. I told him I wouldn’t give him Ms Curtis’s contact details unless she gave me permission to, and he said that was fine, but he asked me to give her a message so she’d know what it was about.’

  ‘And what was the message?’

  ‘“It’s urgent. And it’s about Kitty.” That’s what he said. I wrote it down in here.’ She tapped a notebook on the desk. ‘At the time I didn’t know anything about Mr Forbes’s background so I didn’t see any real significance in it, but obviously that’s all changed now that I know about him being Kitty Sinn’s boyfriend when she went missing.’

  This really piqued my interest. Forbes wanted to talk to Charlotte Curtis about Kitty. ‘And he didn’t tell you anything else?’

  She blew more smoke up at the ceiling. ‘No. But he did want me to make contact with her urgently. He even paid me two thousand in cash up front and gave me a number I could reach him on, although he made me promise I wouldn’t divulge it to anyone. Here’s the number.’ She passed me a post-it note and I slipped it into the notebook. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘it was all very cloak and dagger, and I remember thinking that either he had a screw loose or he was under a huge amount of stress. In the light of recent events, it sounds like it was the latter.’

  ‘And have you found Charlotte Curtis?’

  ‘Yes. I finally located her yesterday. She’d changed her last name to Hollande, like the president, so it took longer than I’d hoped. I sent an email yesterday afternoon explaining who I was and giving her Forbes’s message. I haven’t heard back.’

  ‘Have you got a number for her?’

  ‘I’ve just managed to get hold of her mobile number. I called a landline registered in her name this morning but there was no answer.’

  ‘And where’s she living?’

  ‘A village called Roquecor in the south-west of France, between Bordeaux and Toulouse. She’s been there since 1998. Before that she lived in Brighton for eleven years, which is apparently where she met and had a relationship with Mr Forbes. She’s a widow now, teaching in the local primary school out there.’ Tina looked at me closely. ‘Given what happened to Forbes, is she in any danger?’

  ‘I don’t think so but I’m going to need to speak to her. Can I take the numbers and the email?’

  She wrote down the details and handed them to me. ‘How’s the investigation going? Have you got any suspects yet?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s early days.’ I debated telling her that Kitty’s remains had been discovered the day that Henry called her, but I held back. ‘Was there anything in Ms Curtis’s background, or your conversations with Mr Forbes, that stood out as a reason why he might have wanted to talk to her so urgently?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t look into Ms Curtis’s background too deeply, but she seems like an ordinary woman to me. She’s got no police record here or in France. I assume that at one point she was friends with Kitty Sinn otherwise Henry wouldn’t have left the message he did, but that’s all I know. Do you think Henry killed Kitty? It must have crossed your mind. It was always a mystery what happened to her.’

  ‘Can I trust you, Miss Boyd?’

  ‘Tina, please. And yes, you can.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Thames Valley police have been digging up remains at a school in Buckinghamshire. They’ve found two skeletons so far, and one of them’s just been ID’d as belonging to Kitty Sinn.’

  Tina looked as surprised as anyone who’d heard that news. ‘Well, that makes the case a lot more interesting. Every conspiracy theorist in a thousand miles is going to have a field day with that. Any idea how Kitty got there from Thailand?’

  I shook my head emphatically. ‘Right now, absolutely none. But I’m hoping Charlotte Curtis might be able to throw some light on things.’ I looked at my watch. Twenty past eight in France. ‘Let me try her mobile number now,’ I said, punching it into my phone, curiously reluctant to leave this little office with its view over a car park.

  The phone rang about half a dozen times before it was picked up at the other end. ‘Bonjour?’ The word was delivered with a degree of uncertainty as if she wasn’t sure whether it was a bon jour or not.

  ‘Mrs Hollande?’

  ‘Yes.’ Again, uncertain.

  ‘This is Detective Sergeant Ray Mason of the Metropolitan Police in the UK, I wonder if I might speak to you about a Mr Henry Forbes.’

  There was a pause. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Last week he hired a private detective to find you. Apparently he wanted to give you a message.’

  ‘To be honest, I hardly knew him. We had a very short relationship a long, long time ago. More than twenty years. I can’t think why he’d want to get hold of me.’

  ‘He wanted to talk to you about Katherine Sinn.’

  ‘The girl who went missing all those years ago? She was a friend of mine back at poly, but again that was a long, long time back. I’m sorry, I can’t help you any more than that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Mr Forbes told the private detective that it was very urgent. Do you have any idea what it could have been about?’

  ‘Absolutely none. I’m sorry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go out.’

  ‘Henry Forbes is dead, Mrs Hollande. He was murdered last night along with his family lawyer.’

  ‘Oh my goodness, I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I could be of more help, I really do.’

  She ended the call before I could say anything else, leaving me staring at the phone.

  ‘So she didn’t want to talk?’ said Tina.

  ‘No,’ I said, putting the phone away. ‘She really didn’t. And do you know what? She didn’t even ask how Forbes died. She couldn’t wait to get me off the phone.’

  ‘You think she might be hiding something?’

  I looked at her. ‘Yeah, I do. And she also sounded scared. I’m going to need to talk to her, but we’ve got no jurisdiction in France, so I’m going to have to go through the authorities there.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Tina. ‘Why don’t I go out there and see her? Henry Forbes paid me two thousand in cash for the job and I’ve probably spent a tenth of that looking for her. He’s not going to be asking for his money back now, and I haven’t got a lot else on at the moment.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘It’s a long way to go.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’ll be an adventure. Don’t you ever just feel like jumping
on a plane and heading off into the wild blue yonder?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, picturing Ealing nick incident room and its occupants. ‘All the time.’

  ‘There you go then. It’ll also be a good way of me helping on a case without stepping on anyone’s toes. I miss proper detective work. You don’t get a lot of it in my line, unfortunately. As soon as I’ve spoken to Charlotte, I’ll get back to you.’

  To be honest, it sounded like a good idea, and saved me a lot of trouble. Plus, it would also give me the opportunity to stay in touch with Tina, which I have to admit was quite a pleasant thought.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, without dwelling too much on Tina’s well-deserved reputation for always seeming to find trouble. ‘Why not?’

  Fifteen

  Charlotte shook with fear as she came off the phone and for a few seconds she had to hold on to the dining-room table for support.

  She knew she hadn’t done a very good acting job with the detective. She’d come across as flustered and possibly with something to hide, but that was only because of how scared she was. She knew that the man who’d killed Kado would do exactly the same to her if she didn’t do exactly as she was told. She’d looked in his eyes and had seen an evil there that she’d never encountered before.

  And now she was trapped. Being watched the whole time in her own home. She couldn’t even go out for more than a few hours without incurring punishment. It was as if overnight she’d been turned from a reasonably happy, healthy woman with a good job and the possibility of a rosy future into someone’s slave. She didn’t even have any means of getting help. If she went to the police and they didn’t take her fears seriously – which was entirely possible: she was a widow living alone after all and her story was outlandish to say the least – she’d be killed. It was as simple as that. This man wasn’t local. No one knew where to find him. He could just fade into the background and then reappear when it suited him.

  Like a ghost.

  For a long time after the man had left today, she hadn’t been able to move. Finally, she’d got up and run to the bedroom where she’d sobbed her eyes out. Sobbed for Kado; sobbed for Jacques; sobbed for her dead parents, and for the girl who’d been her best friend, Kitty Sinn. Charlotte considered herself a tough woman but lying on her bed earlier, she’d felt totally alone. After about an hour she’d dragged herself back up and forced herself to bury Kado, a task that hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought it would be. She’d dug a hole at the foot of the garden, with a view over the valley he’d loved so much. Finally, wrapping him in his blanket, she’d placed him gently inside, said a small prayer, and covered him with earth.

  Standing at the lounge window now, watching the sun set over the wooded hills beyond the valley, Charlotte thought of Kitty Sinn, a woman she’d last seen nearly half a lifetime ago. They’d been great friends at poly, and had had a lot of fun together. Parties; nightclubs; live bands; drink; sex; the occasional spliff.

  Although they’d been on the same course, they’d bonded in the first year through the poly hockey club, and had become part of a big gang of about a dozen students, an equal mix of male and female, who hung out together. In the third year she, Kitty and two of the other girls had shared a house, and Charlotte remembered that Kitty had been there for her when her dad died suddenly only weeks before their final exams began. Charlotte could still recall hearing the news, the tearful call from her mum telling her to come back home, that dad had had an accident, then her mum dissolving into floods of tears as she’d told Charlotte he was dead – that word, so utterly final and cold – ending in a keening wail down the phone. As Charlotte had put down the phone, her hands shaking, Kitty had taken her in her arms and held her close, letting Charlotte cry into her shoulder until she could cry no more.

  That was Kitty. She was loyal and she was kind. Then one day, barely three months later, she’d left for Thailand and had never been seen again.

  But was there anything about their friendship that stood out as being relevant to what was happening right now? A secret she might have divulged to Charlotte?

  Something stirred in the back of her mind. A memory. As vague and ethereal as to be almost a dream. It lingered there a moment, just out of reach.

  Charlotte sighed. ‘Best just to leave the past in the past,’ she said to herself and turned away from the window as the sun finally disappeared behind the trees and the shadows lengthened.

  Sixteen

  When I got back to my car and pulled out my phone I saw I had a message from Jerry Chesterman, Thames Valley’s SIO at Medmenham College, telling me that he’d spoken to the headmaster and that the only person with access to the keys to the school gates were the caretaker and the headmaster. He added that the headmaster at the time of the girls’ disappearances had had no criminal record, and had died of cancer in 1998, so he wasn’t going to be answering either of our questions.

  It was gone 7.30 and I was hungry. All I’d eaten today was a sandwich I’d picked up from a petrol station en route to the school, so as soon as I’d finished with Tina I drove back to Fulham, picking up takeaway sushi at a place I know on the New King’s Road.

  On the way, I called Olaf. He wasn’t answering so I left a message telling him how the meeting had gone with Tina, and adding that she’d volunteered to fly down to France to have an unofficial chat with Charlotte Curtis. I wasn’t sure how Olaf would feel about a private detective doing our interviews for us – or the French police for that matter – but right now I didn’t much care, and it seemed as good an idea as any of the alternatives.

  I ate the sushi standing up in the kitchen at home with a cold beer to wash it down, and the map and aerial photographs of Medmenham College laid out in front of me. I was sure Kitty and Dana had been murdered at the school and reckoned it was more likely than not that it had happened in the ruined folly. It was far enough away from any nearby building not to attract attention, and the occult sign on the wall similar to the tattoo on Forbes’s arm made it seem an even more likely location.

  Of course, I could have been completely wrong, but in my experience it’s always best to come up with a hypothesis that fits the available evidence, and run with it until something better comes along.

  The problem was, I didn’t have a shred of evidence to back up my theory. I needed some help, and I had an idea where I might be able to get it.

  I figured there was at least a very good chance the college caretaker Bill Morris had information relevant to the murders of Dana and Kitty because, in the end, I couldn’t see how the killers could have gained access to the grounds without him knowing about it. It was possible he’d also been involved in the killings, but I didn’t think so. Kitty’s murder had been elaborately planned by, to quote Henry Forbes, very powerful people. I didn’t think they included Bill Morris. I reckoned it was more likely he’d turned a blind eye to the killers in return for something – probably money.

  Of course, there was also a very good chance that he was entirely innocent, but the way I looked at it, any man who looks at child porn and knocks his wife about isn’t entirely innocent of anything.

  I deliberately hadn’t taken Morris’s address from DCI Chesterman because I didn’t want anything linking him to me. For the same reason, I didn’t look it up on the PNC. Instead, I logged on to the electoral roll, looked up the names William Morris and Hambleden, and quickly found what I was looking for.

  I took a quick shower, changed into jeans and a dark jacket, and gathered together the things I was going to need.

  Then I was out of the door and into the night.

  Seventeen

  Believe it or not, what destroyed my marriage was an item on the local news.

  A thirty-seven-year-old Surrey man had just been convicted of dangerous driving after causing an accident during a fit of road rage. He’d rammed a female driver with his 4×4 after she’d apparently upset him. The woman’s car had mounted the pavement, narrowly missing a number of pedestrians including children,
and the woman herself had received minor injuries. The driver, described on the news as a nightclub promoter, was given a twelve-month suspended prison sentence and banned from driving for seven years. The footage showed him leaving the court in dark glasses, looking very angry as he pushed a photographer out of the way, before disappearing in a car driven by someone else.

  It wasn’t this that got me. I’m used to the arrogance of some people, and their lack of humility. It was the fact that, according to the report, this man, Kevin Wallcott, had a previous conviction from eight years earlier when, in another fit of road rage, he’d been chasing the occupants of a car and overtaking them on a blind bend when he hit a car coming the other way as it tried to avoid him. Because of the speed he was driving and the fact that he was in a Range Rover, Wallcott was unhurt. The driver of the other car was seriously injured. Worse still, his six-year-old daughter, who was in the back seat, was paralysed for life as the Range Rover slammed into the car’s side.

  Paralysed.

  For life.

  They showed a photo of the little girl on the TV screen and I remember a crescendo of rage building in me. Jo was sitting on the sofa next to me. She was upset by the report too, but it wasn’t affecting her anything like as much as it was me. She asked me if I was OK, and I said I was fine.

  But I wasn’t. I wasn’t fine at all.

  Two days later I looked up Kevin Wallcott’s home address on the PNC. I found out that he was divorced and lived alone, and that he had two further convictions not mentioned in the news report, both for assault.

  I took to driving past his house in daylight and at night. I don’t know why exactly, but I became completely obsessed. One time I watched him come out of his front door and take a taxi to a local gym. In the flesh he was even bigger than he looked on TV, and it was clear he worked out. He held his head high too, as if he hadn’t done a thing wrong. I thought of the little girl he’d paralysed for life, and I remember literally shaking with rage behind the steering wheel as I watched him, wanting to tear him into little pieces with my bare hands.