TT12 The Bones Beneath

by Mark Billingham

  Simon promised that he wouldn’t tell, then turned towards the door. Walking past the fireplace he noticed a collection of small china animals, like the ones you got in fancy Christmas crackers or something, and he slowed down so he could get a good look. There were loads of them, lined up like they were all friends or in a zoo or whatever. A tortoise and a cat and an owl, all sorts of others. He wondered where they’d come from, if they were already here when Ruth and the others arrived.

  He thought that his mum would like them.

  Stuart was sitting outside and Simon realised that he was waiting to go in, that he was the next one on the list. That made sense, because they were next to one another alphabetically.

  Milner and Nicklin.

  Simon had been happy when he’d found that out. Maybe it was the reason they were put in the same room. He decided it was another sign that they were meant to be mates.

  ‘What’s all that about then?’ Stuart nodded towards Ruth’s door.

  ‘It’s just like a chat,’ Simon said. ‘There’s a couple of screws in there, but it’s mostly just her. She’s got all your notes and all that. Wants to know what you think of the island. Who your friends are.’

  ‘So, what did you say?’

  Simon shrugged. He held out the biscuit he’d taken right at the end. ‘I took this for you,’ he said. ‘I know you like chocolate.’

  Stuart studied it for a few seconds, like he was trying to work something out. He said, ‘Thanks,’ and took it.

  The biscuit had already started to melt and Simon suddenly began thinking about holding his hand out. Letting Stuart lick the chocolate from his palm and fingers. He felt the blood flooding his cheeks, so he quickly lowered his head and did it himself.

  Stuart stood up and knocked on the door. He was still eating the biscuit, pushing in the crumbs from the corner of his mouth. He said, ‘See you afterwards, yeah?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Fletcher and Jenks had deposited Nicklin and Batchelor, still cuffed, on hard chairs beneath the window. Fletcher went to make himself and his colleague more tea, while Jenks explored the hall. He opened cupboards, took out grubby plastic toys and mildewed textbooks. He lifted the dust sheet and played a few horrendous-sounding chords on the out-of-tune piano.

  Fletcher brought the tea across. Said, ‘I don’t know if this is strong enough.’

  Jenks took it, grunted. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘I could do with a few more of those sandwiches, to be honest.’ Fletcher scratched at his goatee. ‘That greedy CSI bastard took all the decent ones.’

  ‘Probably fancies himself because of that TV show.’

  ‘Right, but he’s basically just a dogsbody.’

  On the other side of the hall, Nicklin tuned out the officers’ conversation and turned towards Batchelor. ‘You didn’t eat much, Jeff.’ He spoke softly, barely above a murmur. ‘When that nice old woman brought lunch down.’

  ‘I wasn’t hungry.’

  ‘Did you eat breakfast?’

  ‘I didn’t feel too good this morning.’

  ‘What about last night? Or were you too busy crying like a girl?’

  Batchelor looked at him for the first time. His expression suggested that, once again, tears were not very far away. ‘How can you act like this is… normal?’

  ‘You need to keep your strength up, Jeff. All this charging about in the fresh air. You’re not used to it.’

  ‘I want to speak to my wife,’ Batchelor said. ‘I want to talk to Sonia.’

  Nicklin sat back. ‘Well, of course you do, and I’ve told you it’s going to happen, but I don’t think it’s very likely right this minute, do you?’ He nodded towards Fletcher and Jenks. ‘I mean even if one of those idiots decided to lend you his phone, you heard what they were saying about signals. It’s going to be tricky getting to the top of that lighthouse with those handcuffs on.’

  ‘What about the satellite phone? I could use that.’

  Nicklin glanced across to make sure that Fletcher and Jenks were still too engrossed in their own conversation to have been listening. ‘You need to shut up about this now, Jeff. You need to stop whining.’ He closed his eyes and thought for a few seconds. He listened to the low moan of the wind outside, the bleating of sheep like the horns of toy cars, and the distant scream of gulls. All these sounds were reassuringly familiar to him and the pictures that came into his head prompted a nice broad smile.

  He leaned across. ‘This is a chance to blossom, Jeff,’ he said.

  Batchelor’s head dropped, then sank lower still as a sigh pushed the breath from him.

  Nicklin lifted hands that were cuffed tightly, one above the other, and gently touched them to Batchelor’s. ‘You need to embrace this opportunity,’ he said.

  From the track, Thorne could just make out the team at work in the field far below him. The shiny white overalls of Howell and Barber, the bright red waterproof jacket Wendy Markham was wearing.

  He keyed his radio and asked Holland what was happening.

  ‘Just digging,’ Holland said. ‘Obviously, they have to go through the soil that’s being removed, in case there’s evidence.’ Thorne could hear Howell shouting something, Holland responding. ‘She says it’s the backfill from the original gravecut.’ Howell said something else, her words muffled by the wind. ‘As soon as we find anything, I’ll let you know…’

  Thorne looked up to see Robert Burnham wandering along the track from the direction of the observatory, which was a couple of cottages along from the school. He stopped next to Thorne. He lifted his stick, gestured towards the fields.

  ‘Been busy?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘Nothing yet.’ As much to stop the conversation drifting into awkward areas as anything else, Thorne said, ‘So, tell me about this king.’

  Burnham looked blankly at him.

  ‘Earlier on, remember? In the school hall, we were talking…’

  ‘Oh yes, the man in the handcuffs.’

  ‘Yeah, him.’

  ‘He obviously knows a fair bit about us.’

  ‘He was here a long time ago,’ Thorne said.

  The warden stared, then nodded, pleased with himself when the penny dropped. ‘Ah… the home for young offenders. I remember Bernard Morgan telling me about that when I first came here. Bit of a disaster, by all accounts.’

  ‘So, this king…?’

  ‘Oh well… long before my time, but yes, we used to have our own king. Went back to the nineteenth century, I think, when the island was privately owned. There was a decent-sized population then… well, over a hundred anyway and a local man would be crowned King of Bardsey. There was a crown made of tin, a ceremonial snuff box, it was all very serious.’ He thought for a few moments. ‘Apparently, when World War One broke out, the last king offered himself and the men of the island to the war effort, but the government of the day turned him down because he was into his seventies by then. So, he thought: Stuff ’em, and declared the island to be a neutral power. Some say he actually threw in his lot with the Kaiser.’ Burnham laughed. ‘There’s loads of stories. Hard to separate the myths from the facts when it comes to this place.’ He turned to Thorne. ‘What we were talking about before. The prison for young offenders that wasn’t really a prison. That’s almost become a myth around here.’

  Thorne shrugged. ‘Definitely not a myth.’

  ‘Such an odd idea,’ Burnham said. ‘Don’t you think? I mean, where do you stand on that kind of thing?’

  ‘I just catch them,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Of course… which is exactly why your opinion should count, because you’re someone who actually does the job. You spend your working life taking these people off the streets… people who have done some pretty awful things, I imagine. So, do you think we should try and rehabilitate wherever possible? Send them off for a bit of a holiday? Or should we just lock them up and throw away the key?’

  Thorne stared out across the lattice of
green. He could still see the white overalls, the red waterproof jacket. A still figure in a black beanie hat.

  ‘Some of them,’ he said.

  The radio came to life in Thorne’s hand and Holland’s voice was tinny through the hiss and crackle.

  ‘We’ve found something. You should probably get down here…’

  ‘Perhaps later then.’ Burnham had clearly overheard. ‘We could carry on chatting, if you’re going to be around for a while.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like we will be.’ Thorne had already pushed through the gate and turned to close it behind him.

  Burnham raised his stick in a kind of salute and turned away as Thorne broke into a gentle jog, letting the slope of the field do most of the work. For the first time since he’d boarded the Benlli III, he could feel the good mood returning. It would be great to get away and have Nicklin banged up again by dinner time. He could certainly think of a great many better ways to have spent the last forty-eight hours, but the thought of Simon Milner’s mother finally being able to lay her son to rest would more than make up for it.

  Those moments with Nicklin that would linger a while yet; eyes meeting in a rear-view mirror.

  He was no more than a minute away from the group when his radio crackled again. He stopped and snatched it from his pocket, fought to regain his breath. ‘I’m nearly there.’

  ‘I know,’ Holland said. ‘I can see you.’

  Thorne looked across and saw Holland waving. ‘What?’

  ‘You need to go back and get Nicklin. We’ll have to start again.’

  ‘I thought you’d found something.’ Thorne could hear laughter in the background. Karim, Barber maybe.

  ‘Yeah, we did.’

  ‘What’s going on, Dave?’

  ‘Well, unless this kid we’re trying to find had cloven hooves, this is looking very much like a dead sheep.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Tides House

  ‘You were picked to come here,’ Stuart said. ‘Same as I was.’ He explained that each of the boys staying at Tides House had been specially chosen. They did not want anyone with a history of violence, he said, so everyone was there because of their involvement in fairly petty crimes, even if some of them were repeat offenders. ‘They’re trying to get to us before we do anything violent. That’s the whole point of it.’ He smiled. ‘Basically, it’s so we can “blossom” before we knife anyone.’

  Simon laughed, same as he always did when Stuart did that quote thing with his fingers.

  He told Simon that, because of their remote location, the project had been unable to consider anyone whose family would otherwise regularly visit them in a traditional YOI. So, nobody with their own children. Nobody with parents who gave a shit.

  Simon just nodded.

  ‘It’s a very careful selection process, Si. We’re all more or less harmless and we’re all more or less alone. We’re naughty boys, but we’re not irredeemable.’

  They were sitting on a low wall and eating the packed lunches that were provided on days when they were working outside. Simon had been tending the small area of the vegetable garden he’d planted, while Stuart had been working with the beehives in one of the fields behind the farmhouse. Simon was thrilled that there were shoots coming through. Runner beans, peas and carrots. Spinach because it was his favourite and a few sunflowers just because his mum had always liked them.

  He showed Stuart where they were sprouting; baby fingers of green through the black earth.

  ‘Great,’ Stuart said.

  ‘So, what do you think about all this?’ Simon asked.

  ‘All what?’

  Simon took a bite of his sandwich, squinted against the sun as he looked out across the fields. ‘You know, that stuff Ruth says about this place being spiritual, making us feel differently about things.’

  ‘I don’t even know what spiritual means,’ Stuart said.

  ‘Oh, no, me neither.’

  ‘Just a word.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. But… you know.’

  ‘I suppose we should be grateful they’re not shoving God down our throats. That’s something.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s something,’ Simon said. There were crosses on the walls in most of the rooms, but thankfully, five weeks since they’d arrived and there had been no mention yet of the Baby Jesus. ‘I mean, I don’t really understand the meditation business, but I can see what she means about contemplation, or whatever it is. She was right about this being somewhere where we can think about what we’ve done. What we want to do when we’ve finished our sentences.’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ Stuart asked.

  Simon shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Stay out of trouble long enough to get my mum cleaned up.’

  Stuart poured what was left in the bottom of a bag of crisps into his mouth. ‘She’ll clean herself up if she cares about you.’

  ‘It’s hard though. She needs help.’

  ‘What did you do? To end up here, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve got this thing about fast cars,’ Simon said. ‘I just drive them for a bit and then leave them. I don’t set fire to them, anything like that. I just like driving them.’ He looked at Stuart. ‘What about you?’ He felt nervous asking. It was something you would never have done in Feltham or Huntercombe. It was a big no-no, but things felt different here, and besides, Stuart and him were good mates now.

  Best mates.

  ‘Nothing really.’ Stuart crushed the crisp packet into his fist. ‘Minor assault, bit of nicking. I’m not very good at doing what I’m supposed to and I’ve got a big mouth. I can’t help winding people up.’

  Simon nodded. It looked like that was as much as he was going to get and he certainly didn’t want to push it.

  ‘It’s good though, I reckon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Having loads of space,’ Simon said. He put his head back. ‘Just look at all that bloody sky. Never seen so many stars at night.’

  ‘You know most of them are dead, right?’

  Simon shook his head.

  ‘The light takes so long to reach us, we’re seeing stars that aren’t actually there any more. It’s like seeing ghosts.’

  ‘Where did you learn all that?’ Simon asked. ‘I can’t get my head round stuff like that.’

  ‘Just remember it from school.’

  They sat in silence for a while, finished cartons of juice and lobbed apple cores on to the compost pile.

  ‘Makes you feel… cleaner somehow, this place,’ Simon said. ‘Sort of like when you’re a kid… a little kid, I mean. When you just feel hopeful about everything. You know, waking up every morning and being excited. It’s nice to feel like that again, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘I’m always excited when I wake up,’ Stuart said. ‘You have to make life interesting for yourself, because it isn’t going to happen on its own.’

  ‘What are you two bummers talking about?’

  They turned to see an older boy named Hunter standing above them. He nodded towards the vegetable patch, hands thrust into the pockets of the blue overalls that Tides House ‘guests’ wore outdoors. ‘Growing flowers for each other in your little garden, is it? Roses are red, violets are blue…’

  ‘Piss off,’ Stuart said.

  Hunter looked taken aback. Maybe because Stuart had said it so casually, so quietly. Then he laughed, showing brown and broken teeth. ‘The only reason I’m not going to mess you up right this minute is that we’ve all got a sweet thing going here and I don’t want to spoil it. You talk to me like that though, you need to know there are going to be consequences.’

  The boy stared at them both for a few seconds, then turned and marched towards the vegetable garden. After checking that none of the staff was watching, he stepped over the border of coloured stones into the bed and stomped happily back and forth across the neat rows of shoots and seedlings. The green, baby fingers. He looked back at Simon and Stuart while he went about his business, grinning as he ground his heels into the s
oil.

  Simon stood up, hot suddenly and light-headed.

  ‘Don’t.’ Stuart reached up and tugged at Simon’s arm. ‘Turn round and look at me.’

  Simon did what Stuart had told him and stood listening to Hunter laughing behind them, staring out over the green to where that great big sky touched the water. The tears came and he made no effort to wipe them away.

  ‘Don’t let him see you cry,’ Stuart said. ‘Don’t ever let them see you cry.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Conscious of the day getting away from them, with only an hour or so left before the light would begin to fade, Thorne decided to go to the lighthouse in search of Huw Morgan. He wanted to talk about the arrangements for returning to the mainland.

  He wanted to see if he could buy a little more time.

  It was a fifteen-minute walk, flat or downhill for the most part and pleasant enough. The mountain rising at his back and the sea roiling but relatively calm away to his left. Less of a breeze than there had been out in the fields. The tide was on its way out and the last few minutes of his journey took him past a growing expanse of flat, black rocks, most piled high with weed that shifted gently as the water retreated. A few hundred yards away, walking in the opposite direction, was a man with a bobble hat and rucksack, binoculars around his neck. The man, who Thorne assumed to be the birdwatcher Morgan had mentioned bringing across, raised a hand and Thorne waved back.

  Approaching the lighthouse, its red and white stripes many feet thick now that he was close to it, Thorne was surprised to see that it was actually square. There was a small cottage off to one side and metal racks piled high with diesel containers. The quad bike was parked outside. He walked in through an open door. He could hear music playing somewhere above him, a radio maybe, so he called up.

  It took five seconds for Huw Morgan to answer, his voice echoing slightly.

  ‘Come on up, if you want.’