TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  Sonia nodded.

  ‘How did you feel about that?’

  She grunted. ‘Well, obviously I wasn’t thrilled. My husband’s a good man, despite what happened. He’s a man with faith.’ She held Kitson’s eyes for a few moments, as though keen for what she had said to sink in. ‘I’m not a believer, none of the rest of the family are, but he is. He’s not a nutcase about it, nothing like that… doesn’t force it on anybody else, but he’s kind and compassionate and he’s got a conscience. He’s everything Stuart Nicklin isn’t. So, I felt sick, if you want to know the truth. But the fact remains that Nicklin… helped Jeff in there.’ She leaned forward to pick up a mug of tea, which was probably no more than lukewarm by now. ‘Jeff was finding it really hard. A few weeks after he first went in, he had some sort of… breakdown. They had him on suicide watch for a couple of days. He was in a real state, to be honest…’

  Kitson had read the file. She knew that Batchelor had handed himself in to the police immediately after the attack on Nathan Wilson. He had pleaded guilty to murder and continually refused to allow any consideration of diminished responsibility. He had accepted his punishment. There was no doubt that prison would have come as a shock to a man like Jeffrey Batchelor, but now his wife was hinting that something serious had happened, over and above the necessary adjustment.

  ‘Was he attacked?’ Kitson asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Maybe he was threatened.’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ Sonia said. She clicked her fingers. ‘But suddenly everything had changed and when I went to see him he wasn’t the same person he had been the week before. There was just a blackness. There was this… despair I couldn’t shake him out of.’

  ‘But Nicklin could?’

  Sonia shook her head. ‘Trust me, I know how ridiculous it sounds. I spoke to one of the chaplains in there a bit later, someone Jeff had been talking to a lot ever since he’d been inside. He couldn’t explain it either, but he’d certainly noticed the difference. Jeff and Nicklin started spending time together and things changed. Next time I went in, he was calmer. More like his old self. He was talking about the future, courses he wanted to do in prison, that sort of thing.’ She took a mouthful of tea, pulled a face. ‘I’ve no idea how he did it, let alone why, but somehow Nicklin managed to talk my husband round. Thank God he did…’

  Kitson looked across at the photographs again. ‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question though, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why. Why would Nicklin want to take Jeff under his wing like that.’

  Sonia put her mug down. She sat back and folded her arms. ‘Listen, I’ve got no bloody idea what’s in this for Nicklin,’ she said. ‘But I think I know what Jeff gets out of it. I think Nicklin makes him realise that what he did wasn’t so terrible.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, yes it was terrible, course it was and nothing’s going to bring Nathan back or make his parents feel any better. I just mean… compared to what Nicklin did. Someone like Nicklin helps Jeff remember that he’s just a good man who snapped, that’s all. An ordinary man, who’s nothing like the Nicklins of this world.’ She looked away for a few seconds, grimacing as though she were about to cry out or spit. When she turned her eyes back to Kitson, she said, ‘Maybe you’ve got this the wrong way round and it was all Jeff’s idea to go.’

  ‘You really think so?’ Kitson asked.

  ‘I think my husband needs Stuart Nicklin there to remind him who he is.’

  TEN

  They cut north for a while, the single-lane B-road running almost parallel with the Welsh border, just a mile or so away across the fields. Though they were still in England, the small towns and villages they passed through had decidedly Celtic-sounding names: Gronwen, Gobowen, Morda. ‘You sure we haven’t taken a detour into Middle Earth?’ Holland said, clocking a road sign.

  Jenks, who looked like he was no stranger to the world of fantasy fiction, laughed from the back seat. Said, ‘I’ll keep a lookout for Orcs.’

  Once across the border, Thorne turned west and they made good progress through the Dee Valley, the Holyhead road almost precisely following the path of the river as it wound through Llangollen. To the left, the landscape was soon densely wooded with conifers, while hills rose steeply away on the other side of them, mist shrouding the higher peaks. Holland pointed out the ruins of an abbey, said that Sophie had mentioned it.

  ‘You wait until we get where we’re going,’ Nicklin said. ‘There’s remains way older than that.’

  ‘Nice to know,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Shame there won’t be time to enjoy the sights.’

  ‘We find the remains of that boy, I’m happy.’

  ‘You should try and come back,’ Nicklin said. ‘Bring your other half.’

  Driving through the small town of Corwen, they passed a statue of a warrior on horseback brandishing a sword, a couple posing for photographs in front. Jenks wanted to know who the soldier was, but no answer was forthcoming. A mile or so down the road, Batchelor said, ‘It’s Owen Glendower. The statue.’

  ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ Jenks asked.

  ‘Last proper Prince of Wales,’ Batchelor said. ‘Last one who was actually Welsh, anyway. He led a rebellion against the English at the start of the fifteenth century. Very much the father of Welsh nationalism.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘One of those groups in the seventies and eighties who tried to burn the English out, weren’t they called the Sons of Glendower or something?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Batchelor said. ‘A bit like the Free Wales Army.’

  ‘Maybe there should be a statue of him setting fire to a holiday cottage instead,’ Holland said.

  Nicklin laughed. ‘He loves his ancient history, Jeffrey does. Can’t get enough of it, still keeping his hand in. Always got his nose buried in some book, haven’t you, Jeff?’

  ‘I wish I knew a bit more, if I’m honest,’ Thorne said. He slowed for a set of temporary traffic lights, waited for the oncoming traffic. To his right, the hillside looked almost black, dotted with drifting, white clumps of grazing sheep. ‘All we got taught at school were dates, basically. Battle of Hastings, Wars of the Roses, whatever. I can still remember the dates, but I couldn’t tell you who was fighting or what they were fighting about.’

  ‘I can recommend a couple of books if you want,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘Wish I had time to read them,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Not so fond of recent history though, are you, Jeff?’ Nicklin turned in his seat to look at his fellow prisoner. ‘A few too many dead teenagers for his liking, isn’t that right?’

  Batchelor blinked at him.

  Fletcher laid a hand on Nicklin’s shoulder and gently eased him round again. ‘I think that’s enough now, Stuart.’

  ‘Just making conversation, Mr Fletcher,’ Nicklin said.

  The lights changed and Thorne pulled away. Checking the rear-view as he put his foot down, Thorne could see how very pleased with himself Nicklin looked. As though he had just been congratulated for a remark that was hugely funny or clever as opposed to being pulled up for saying something nakedly malicious. It was clear to Thorne that the casual cruelty had not been about trying to make Batchelor feel bad. That had simply been the inevitable result.

  It had all been a question of where the interest was.

  Nicklin had been completely unable to tolerate someone else being the centre of attention, even if it was someone to whom he was supposedly close, even for just those few minutes of trivial conversation.

  It had become necessary to adjust the focus.

  Thorne remembered something he had been told many years earlier by a senior officer, when he had first joined a Murder Squad. There were, so he learned, two basic types when it came to murderers. There were those who would run from the scene of their crime as fast and as far as possible, and those who would hang around and offer to help the police with their enquiries.

&n
bsp; There was little doubt as to which type Stuart Nicklin was.

  Thorne was happy that Nicklin had been caught, happier still that he had been the one to catch him. Sometimes though, he regretted the part he had played in giving so much attention to a man who could bear almost anything except being ignored. In many ways, that man was still the child who had been expelled from school. The boy who had rescued Martin Palmer from the bullies, only to dominate and control him in unimaginable and perverse ways. Someone who had discovered, at an absurdly early age, how good it felt to hurt people and how much fun it was to make others do it for you.

  Suddenly, Nicklin leaned forward, sighing heavily. He spoke in a theatrically whiny voice. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

  ‘God, you sound like one of my kids,’ Fletcher said.

  Thorne had to admit, it was a very good impression of a bratty teenager. It hadn’t struck him so forcibly before that Nicklin was such a skilled mimic. It made sense, he supposed, when you had spent so much of your life pretending to be someone you were not.

  Nicklin was clearly enjoying Fletcher’s reaction. ‘Are we? Are we nearly there?’

  Thorne looked at the sat nav. There was less than sixty miles to go, but according to the timings on the screen, they were still an hour and a half away. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Only difference is I can’t threaten you with taking your PlayStation away,’ Fletcher said. ‘Or no more trips to McDonald’s.’

  Nicklin turned to the prison officer and now his face was completely expressionless; eyes flat and unblinking. ‘Not very much anyone can threaten me with, Mr Fletcher…’

  All but the last few miles of their journey took them across Snowdonia National Park: eight hundred square miles of mountains, forest and agricultural land, the majority of which remained privately owned. They drove west towards the coast for a while, the road twisting just beneath Blaenau Ffestiniog, the ‘hole’ in the middle of the park where the heritage railway and the once thriving slate mines drew thousands of tourists every year. As they skirted the edge of the huge, manmade reservoir at Trawsfynydd, Holland pointed out a pair of hulking concrete towers, stark against the mountains on the far side.

  ‘Looks like a Bond villain’s hideout,’ he said.

  This time it was Nicklin who enthusiastically seized the chance to provide the required information. These were, he told them, the twin reactors of a now decommissioned nuclear power station; a place to which he and the other boys from Tides House had been brought on an educational visit a quarter of a century earlier.

  ‘They took us up to that steam railway at Ffestiniog too. Chuff, chuff, pennies on the line, all that. Then someone had the bright idea of teaching us all about nice, clean nuclear power.’ He stared across the water. ‘It was a bloody disaster though. There were a lot of dead fish in there and apparently animals had been dying all over the place… bit of a scandal at the time. I swear that when we left they waved Geiger counters all over us.’

  Fletcher said, ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘We were all fine,’ Nicklin said. ‘Assuming the Geiger counters were working properly. Mind you, this stuff can take years to affect you, can’t it? Maybe, if I’d ever had kids, they’d have been born with two heads or webbed feet or whatever.’

  Thorne was thinking that Nicklin’s absence from the gene pool was no great loss. Glancing across and catching Holland’s eye, he could see that he was thinking much the same thing.

  ‘I remember that Simon was with us that day,’ Nicklin said. ‘You know, Simon, who we’re going to be looking for?’

  ‘Simon, the kid you murdered,’ Thorne said.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Nicklin said, cheerfully. ‘I remember that he was getting really wound up. Scared to death, he was. Silly bugger spent every day for weeks afterwards banging on about how he was going to get cancer.’

  ‘I bet you had nothing at all to do with winding him up,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Oh, I had everything to do with it.’ Nicklin sat back in his seat. The power station was lost to view behind tall trees. ‘You’ve no idea how boring it was on that island, Tom. Well, you’ll see when we get there. I needed a hobby…’

  The last stretch took them through Porthmadog, slowing beside the miniature railway running along the Cobb, then out into open country again, the darkening fields flooded on their right and above a streak of blue sky narrowing to grey and then a dusty pink at the horizon. A few miles further on, the vista became almost absurdly melodramatic as the sea came suddenly into view.

  ‘Needs music,’ Holland muttered. ‘Like a film…’

  Twenty minutes later, driving into the village of Abersoch, the sat nav announced that their destination was ahead.

  Thorne outlined the itinerary for the remainder of the day. By now everyone understood that they would not be travelling to the island until the following morning. It was already after two thirty and would be starting to get dark in an hour or so. ‘We need to make a start bright and early,’ Thorne said. ‘Give ourselves a full day. Though I’m hoping it won’t take that long.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Nicklin said.

  Jenks leaned forward to tap Fletcher on the arm. ‘Not that we’ll be complaining about the overtime, mind…’

  ‘So, what’s the plan for tonight?’ Nicklin asked the question casually, as if they were just a gang of mates on the town and it was a toss-up between a nightclub and a quiet dinner somewhere.

  ‘Not got one yet,’ Thorne said. ‘For now, we need to see what we can do about getting you and Mr Batchelor a nice uncomfortable bed for the night.’

  ELEVEN

  There was quite a welcoming committee.

  Over and above the staff who would be required to monitor the prisoners, there was a healthy number of North Wales police officers gathered when Thorne walked into the custody suite at Abersoch police station. It was not the warmest of welcomes. Thorne was greeted with terse nods and a cursory handshake or two from a custody sergeant, three PCs, the regional chief superintendent in best dress uniform and a plain-clothes inspector from local CID. The detective – a scruffy sod who was wearing half his breakfast on his jacket – feigned a lack of interest, but was clearly there for no other reason than to gawp at their infamous overnight guest.

  ‘You might have been better off going to Bangor,’ the custody sergeant said. ‘Caernarfon maybe.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Well, for a start we’re only up and running here three days a week, see.’

  ‘Cutbacks or crime rate?’

  ‘Those other stations wouldn’t have had to open up specially, like. That’s all I’m getting at.’

  Bangor was another hour’s drive away and Caernarfon almost as far. Doing his best to sound good-natured, Thorne explained that he wanted to base himself and his team as close as possible to where they would be leaving from the following morning. ‘So we can get an early start.’

  ‘Just saying —’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got it.’

  ‘They’d have been a bit more geared up for all this than we are.’

  Thorne said, ‘You’ve got cells, haven’t you?’

  Perhaps sensing that their visitor was running low on patience, the chief superintendent stepped forward and led Thorne to one side. He introduced himself as Robin Duggan. Tall and rail-thin, with wire-rimmed glasses and acne scars, he was somewhat less dour than the sergeant and his accent was certainly nowhere near as thick.

  ‘It’s both, by the way,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Cutbacks and crime rate. That’s why we’ve had four stations in the region close completely, had twice that many relocated and got a bunch more like this with limited opening times to the public.’ He balled his hand into a fist and held it up. ‘We’re definitely getting a bit squeezed. But… a town like this one, we’ll rarely get more than fifty or sixty reported crimes a month. That’s across the board. You probably get that many every five minutes in your neck of t
he woods.’

  ‘I enjoy the excitement,’ Thorne said.

  If, contained within Thorne’s simple statement, Duggan detected the slightest suggestion that his own job was less than exciting, he chose to ignore it. Instead the chief superintendent straightened his cuffs and ploughed on, seemingly keen to impress on Thorne that he was highly experienced when it came to cross-border and cross-boundary co-operation. That things at his end of this operation were under control. ‘I’ve been liaising with an opposite number at the Met,’ he said. ‘And I think we’re very much on the same page on this.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Thorne said. He wondered who the opposite number might be and if talking in senior management clichés was compulsory once there were a certain number of pips on your shoulder.

  ‘There is one slight glitch,’ Duggan said. ‘Which is that nobody’s awfully clear who’s paying for all this. The manpower, the facilities, what have you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about any of that.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’ Duggan smiled. ‘Your job’s just getting him to the island and back safe and sound, correct?’

  ‘Spot on,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Talking of which… I’m still in two minds, but I may head on over there with you in the morning.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ll confirm with you later on.’

  Thorne nodded and tried not to look too horrified. This was not an operation he had asked for, but now that it was his, the last thing he needed was a senior officer from another force looking over his shoulder. Least of all one for whom a sheep wandering on to the A499 was probably as exciting as the job got.

  ‘I mean obviously this has all been put together at your end,’ Duggan said. ‘And I know we’re talking about a crime that was committed a long time ago, but if evidence of a murder is found, that’s going to be our jurisdiction.’