TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  ‘So, have they gone for good then?’ He waits. ‘Is it just you now?’ He finishes what’s left of his sandwich, then nudges the tray closer to the edge of the bed, until it finally falls, clattering to the floor.

  The man in the chair looks up, startled for a second, then annoyed.

  ‘Come on, at least the other two talked to me. What harm is there in talking, for God’s sake?’

  The man in the chair thinks about it, then carefully closes his paper and leans down to lay it on the floor. He sits back and laces thick fingers together across his belly. He says, ‘All right then.’

  ‘I’ll need antibiotics.’

  ‘Oh, is that right?’

  ‘As well as painkillers. I’m grateful for the painkillers, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll need antibiotics to stop it getting infected.’

  The man in the chair shakes his head. ‘That’s not going to happen.’ The voice is light and girlish, there’s a slight lisp. There is no accent to speak of.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because that’s not one of the things I’m here to do, is it? Going out to the chemist’s or anything like that.’ He nods towards the door. ‘I’ve got plenty of food out there and painkillers when you need them, that’s about it.’ He reaches into the pocket of a denim jacket that is hanging on the back of the chair, pulls out the Taser. ‘And this, obviously, to make everything a bit easier.’

  ‘What, anything else above your pay grade, is it?’

  The man in the chair shrugs, puts the Taser back. He reaches lazily down towards the newspaper.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  The man sighs, sits up again. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re feeding me, right?’ He sits as far forward as he can manage, his arm at full stretch behind him. ‘You’re giving me painkillers, which suggests that you’ve got some interest in my well-being. That whatever’s going on here, whatever the hell this is all about, you want to keep me alive and well. I mean obviously I’m not counting what that mad bitch did to me with her scalpel. That’s obviously important for some reason, but beyond that, now it’s been done, you’re here to look after me, right? It’s not five-star luxury or anything and these handcuffs hurt like a bastard, but basically you’re here to look after me. Yeah? I’m right, aren’t I?’

  The man in the chair says nothing.

  ‘So, letting this thing get infected is really stupid. You got any idea how serious that could be? How dangerous? Just takes a few hours for infection to set in and then all this has gone tits up, your whole plan, whatever. You need to think about that.’

  He looks for a reaction, but the man just seems bored. He watches as the man bends again to pick up his paper, folds it and drags himself grunting to his feet.

  ‘No, wait.’

  The man turns and walks slowly towards the door.

  ‘For fuck’s sake…’

  As the door closes with no more than a quiet snick, he is already lashing out with his foot to send the tray flying, the plate careering across the dirty carpet into the skirting board on the far side of the room. He yanks fruitlessly at the plastic cuffs, which only cut deeper into his wrist, then falls back with a roar of frustration. He has forgotten for a moment what has been done to him, until the instant he makes contact with the bare mattress and the pain is scalding, stabbing, exploding across his back.

  Then there is nothing to do but scream.

  SEVENTEEN

  Thorne was up, showered and getting dressed before seven. He did not need to open the curtains to know that the weather was bad. He had to turn up the TV to hear it above the noise of the rain chucking itself against the windows. He stuffed his dirty clothes down into his overnight bag then checked his phone. There was a text from Phil Hendricks.

  plenty 2 tell u 2!

  In addition to a slew of junk emails there was one from Yvonne Kitson. She told him she had read through the most recent of the letters given her by Annie Nicklin. There was no important information relating specifically to the trip Thorne was on, to Tides House or the murder of Simon Milner. There were one or two things she thought Thorne would be interested in reading, however, and she had sent him a number of extracts.

  Thorne downloaded the attachment and finished packing his things.

  Before leaving the room, he sat on the bed and watched a local news bulletin. He wanted to make sure that the hotel manager had been the only person anyone from the police station had been mouthing off to. The last thing he needed to see this morning was the local newscaster cheerily announcing that a notorious serial murderer was visiting the area. He was relieved that a stolen skip-lorry in Pwllheli and some offensive graffiti at a bus stop on the Caernarfon road was as sensational as it got.

  He was the last one down to breakfast.

  Karim was already tucking enthusiastically into an enormous fry-up and Wendy Markham was eating poached eggs. Holland appeared to be sticking to coffee and toast and was looking warily out of the window. The sun was almost fully up and now, beyond an empty car park and a sliver of beach, the sea was – unfortunately – all too visible. It lashed relentlessly against the shingle, wind-whipped, the colour of strong tea.

  Thorne took the empty seat next to Markham, who shifted slightly to make more room and smiled at him. ‘Sleep well?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ Thorne said. ‘You?’

  A nod, another smile.

  ‘I wonder if they’ve got any seasickness pills here?’ Holland said. ‘Maybe I should ask…’

  Thorne waved until he caught the attention of the teenage girl who had served them the night before. He asked for builders’ tea and a bacon sandwich. The girl solemnly informed him that the sandwich wasn’t actually on the menu, picking one up to prove it, but as they definitely had both bacon and bread she’d see what they could rustle up. He told her he was very grateful.

  Karim looked up from his plate and cheered and Thorne turned to see Fletcher and Jenks sloping in. They dumped their overnight bags near the door and dropped on to chairs at an adjoining table. Their grunted greetings and less-than-chirpy demeanours suggested they might have had a somewhat later night than was advisable. Thorne suggested they should get some coffee and, as if on cue, the manager appeared, instructing the waitress to bring a pot of coffee across for the two extra guests. Pritchard hung around, ostensibly to make sure that everyone was enjoying their breakfast, though it quickly became clear that he was keen to quiz Fletcher and Jenks on the night they had spent at the rival hotel.

  ‘OK for you, was it?’ he asked. ‘Over there?’

  Fletcher managed a ‘yeah’.

  ‘Decent rooms? I mean, I know they’re a bit pricier than here, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it?’ Uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Some people think a coat of paint and a satellite dish means they can rip people off and I don’t think that’s on. What about the dinner, then? Up to scratch?’

  Jenks told him that they’d spent most of the evening in a nearby pub and called in at the Chinese on the way back. Pritchard nodded and cast a knowing look towards Thorne and the others. Said, ‘Feeling all right, are you?’

  While the manager carried on interrogating the largely monosyllabic prison officers, Karim and Markham began talking about boats and Holland wandered towards Reception in search of seasickness pills.

  Thorne turned away from the table and took out his phone.

  He read through the extracts from Nicklin’s letters that Yvonne Kitson had thought would be of interest. Scrolling through the text, it was a jolt the first time he came across his own name; seeing the casual way in which he and some of those close to him had been talked about. As though Nicklin was one of their number. Before he had finished reading, though, the shock, the anger had graduated into something else entirely. Having Nicklin’s thoughts laid out before him like this – in a manner over which Nicklin himself could have no control, about which he had no knowledge – gave Thorne a welcome sense of something that was hard to na
me, but felt like empowerment.

  Made him feel, for once, as though he had the edge.

  The feeling stayed with him through breakfast and for the time it took the team to check out, load up the vehicles and drive down to the police station. It was still there somewhere, even when he was tearing a well-deserved strip off the custody sergeant and his two PCs; telling them he hoped that their ‘fat, flapping mouths’ had not jeopardised the security of his entire operation. Thorne could only assume that when he had finished shouting, once the shame-faced officers had scuttled away to collect Nicklin and Batchelor from the cells, his good mood had started to show through again. As the prisoners emerged, as Jenks and Fletcher moved to reapply the heavy-duty cuffs, Thorne tried to give nothing away, but his disposition was clearly obvious to one person at least.

  Nicklin took one look at him and said, ‘Someone’s happy about something.’

  They drove along the coast for fifteen minutes, passing quickly through the seemingly deserted village of Aberdaron, where – according to the owner of the Black Horse – their boatman lived. A mile or so beyond it, they began to climb steeply and then, following the set of printed instructions provided by the sergeant at Abersoch police station, they turned sharply off the narrow road on to an even narrower dirt track.

  The two cars slowed to something below walking pace as they bumped heavily across deep ruts and potholes. The track twisted sharply down, with the overhanging branches of bare, black trees scraping against the car on one side and a steep drop to a water-filled ditch on the other. In places the Galaxy’s wheels were no more than inches from the edge and though the rain had eased considerably, the wipers still had work to do. Thorne leaned close to the windscreen, hands tight around the wheel, and Holland braced himself against the dash.

  ‘You sure that sergeant wasn’t taking the piss?’ he asked. ‘You did upset him, remember?’

  After a long few minutes, the track began to get wider and flatter and the sea appeared in front of them suddenly as they rounded a sharp corner; brown between grey outcrops of rock. Several vehicles were parked in a line along one side of the track, while directly ahead at the edge of a concrete slipway, their transportation was being prepared for departure. Thorne parked up carefully, sat there for a moment or two and studied it. He had been expecting something that conformed to his idea of what a ferry was, but the only vessel he could see looked a lot more like a bog-standard fishing boat. Thirty or forty feet long at a push, bright yellow where it wasn’t dirty or rusting, and sitting on a trailer.

  ‘Is that it?’ Jenks asked. ‘Bloody hell…’

  Thorne watched a man climb down from the boat and trudge through the mud to a stockpile of large plastic canisters. He picked one up, carried it back to the boat and heaved it part way up the ladder from where it was collected by a second man waiting on the deck. Thorne guessed that the liquid slopping about inside was oil.

  ‘Don’t be disappointed if there isn’t a cocktail lounge,’ Thorne said.

  As he climbed out of the Galaxy, Thorne saw two people emerge from a mud-spattered Land Rover that had probably been white to begin with. He nodded across, guessing who they were. They came over and the woman who had led the way introduced herself.

  Professor Bethan Howell was a forensic archaeologist based at Bangor University, who had been assigned to the team by North Wales police. She was a little below average height and perhaps a few pounds above the average weight for it. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and a baggy, black cap and, in an accent rather more mellifluous than some he had heard the night before, she told Thorne that the job sounded interesting, that she was keen to get to work. She introduced the crime scene investigator she had brought with her, a pasty-faced individual named Andrew Barber. He shook Thorne’s hand and stared out at the water. His expression suggested he had been offered the choice between this job or washing a corpse and now believed that he’d made the wrong decision. Knowing that Howell and Barber ought to get acquainted with the CSM and the exhibits officer, Thorne waved Markham and Karim across from the second Galaxy, then went to make himself known to the boatman.

  He shouted up to the man on the deck, who in turn pointed to the man who was still busy ferrying the plastic containers across the sludge.

  Thorne walked over and introduced himself.

  Huw Morgan was somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties; moon-faced and unshaven, with close-cropped dark hair. He wore dirty grey overalls and heavy work boots and, once he’d shaken Thorne’s hand, he pointed with a thick, grubby finger to the man on the deck of the boat. ‘That’s my father, Bernard,’ he said. ‘He’s the crew.’ When he saw that Thorne was looking at a third man, who was hauling himself up into the seat of a small tractor, he said, ‘That’s Owen,’ as if no further explanation were necessary.

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said.

  Morgan continued loading the containers, while the tractor was driven across and positioned at the front of the trailer and Howell and the others unloaded their equipment from the back of the Land Rover: a small diesel-powered generator on wheels, several large canvas bags, two metal boxes the size of large suitcases and a pair of common-or-garden spades. Helping Howell carry one of the boxes across to the boat, Thorne expressed surprise that she hadn’t brought rather more equipment. He’d certainly been on more straightforward jobs than this one where twice or three times as much gear had needed humping around.

  ‘No point,’ she said. ‘I’ve made doubly sure there’s everything we’re likely to need. There is a larger boat, apparently… the one they use to take livestock or heavy machinery backwards and forwards, but there’s no vehicles once we get over there, just the odd tractor or whatever. There’s no roads, as such.’ Grunting with the effort, she pushed the box up the metal ladder and Morgan Senior dragged it on to the deck. ‘So, we don’t really want to be taking anything we can’t move around easily.’

  ‘I had a very short conversation about using a helicopter,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Nobody willing to splash out?’

  ‘No chance. Anyway, there’s far too many of us.’

  Overhearing them, Morgan shouted from the cabin. ‘Going to be a bit of a squeeze as it is,’ he said. ‘I’m only supposed to carry twelve, tops, and I’ve got all you lot plus all that equipment.’ He glanced down towards the cars; the Galaxy in which Jenks and Fletcher were still sitting with the prisoners. ‘Plus whoever you’ve got in there.’ He saw a worried look pass between Howell and Barber. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Just won’t be very comfortable, that’s all. It’s a working boat, this.’ He pulled on a grubby-looking green hat. ‘She’s not built for pleasure…’

  Once everything had been loaded and as soon as everyone had changed into waterproofs and suitable footwear, Nicklin and Batchelor were brought out of the car. They remained cuffed as they were helped up the ladder. If Morgan was remotely interested in who was being brought aboard his boat, he made a great job of hiding it.

  Like he had said, it was a squeeze. The prisoners and prison officers took seats on the narrow metal bench that ran along the edge of the deck, the handcuffs making it dangerous for Nicklin or Batchelor to remain standing. Howell and Barber sat on top of their equipment in the centre of the deck while everyone else found room where they could, grabbing hold of a rope or pole as soon as Morgan told them they needed to.

  On Morgan’s signal, the tractor pushed boat and trailer slowly down into the water. Once the boat was safely afloat, the engines grumbled into life and the tractor reversed back up the slipway, taking the trailer with it. Morgan gave the driver a wave, turned the boat around and said, ‘Right then.’

  For ten minutes or so, the Benlli III motored steadily out to sea, moving parallel with the Lleyn peninsula. The rain had thankfully stopped, but it still felt bumpy enough to Thorne. He was careful to watch his footing on the slippery deck as he moved forward to the edge of the cabin from which Morgan was steering the boat. He had to raise his voice above the rh
ythmic grind and thrum of the engines.

  ‘Lucky with the weather,’ he said. ‘It was pissing down an hour ago.’

  ‘You’ve got no idea.’ Morgan spoke without turning around. ‘We’ve not been able to run regular trips for months now. In the summer we’ll sometimes do three full trips a day, showing tourists the wildlife, the old smuggling routes, what have you. This time of year, though, it’s a dead loss. It was clear for a couple of days last week, managed to take a birdwatcher across, but otherwise it’s been really bad.’ Now he turned, nodded at Thorne. ‘So yeah, bloody lucky.’

  ‘Changes fast, does it?’

  ‘You’ve got to keep an eye on it, put it that way. Like, I knew eventually it was going to clear up this morning, even if it didn’t look that way first thing. That’s most of the job, if I’m honest. No point taking a group across unless I know I can get them back again, is there? I mean, don’t get me wrong, sometimes there’s sod all I can do about it. We had one lot stuck out there for three weeks earlier in the year, but we try not to let that happen too often.’

  Thorne said, ‘Pleased to hear it.’ His hands were freezing where he was holding tight to the edge of the cabin door. He dug into his jacket pocket for gloves.

  ‘A good boatman won’t just know what the weather’s going to be like in twelve hours. He needs to know what’s going to be happening in twenty four hours or thirty-six.’ He nodded out across the waves. ‘Especially with this stretch of water. This can be a pig…’

  ‘Yeah.’ Thorne had read about just how treacherous the crossing could be. ‘So, what’s it going to be like later, then? The weather.’

  Morgan turned, grinning. ‘Changeable.’

  Thorne was stepping away when he heard Morgan say something else. He turned back. ‘Sorry?’