The Bones Beneath (14 page)

‘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 soil.

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.’

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.’

‘It’s all right,’ Thorne shouted.

‘Hell of a view.’

‘Maybe another time.’ Thorne had never been great with heights, but the experience of six weeks before had turned a minor anxiety into a major phobia. Being made to stand on the edge of a tower-block roof, being told to jump. Being tempted to jump.

Taking a bullet had been the softer option in the end.

He waited five minutes for Morgan to appear. He looked around a small kitchen and storage room, listening to the sound of the boatman’s footsteps on a seemingly endless number of metal, then stone steps.

‘Seriously, it’s a great view.’ Morgan finally appeared and immediately flicked the kettle on. He reached into a wonky cupboard, took three mugs down. ‘You can’t see back to the mainland because of the mountain, but if it’s clear enough, looking the other way, you can see Dublin.’

‘I need to know when you’re heading back,’ Thorne said.

Morgan peered out of the window and up at the sky. ‘An hour, maybe a bit more.’

‘No chance of staying any longer than that?’

‘You’re pushing your luck after dark,’ Morgan said. ‘That crossing’s tricky enough as it is.’ He could see the frustration on Thorne’s face. ‘Why don’t you stay?’

‘Can’t do it,’ Thorne said.

‘Most of the cottages are empty.’

‘I need to get my prisoners back behind bars. That’s the deal.’

Morgan nodded. ‘Probably a damn sight cosier for them as well. Not exactly tempting, I can see that, staying here this time of year.’ He leaned down, took milk from a fridge and sniffed it. ‘Plenty of people the rest of the time though. All those cottages get rented out, believe it or not.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yeah, they’ll be full come May–June time.’

‘Takes all sorts.’ Thorne could appreciate how dramatic the landscape was, even if wide open spaces had never excited him in quite the way they clearly did a great many others. Still, with no running water or mains power, he remained unconvinced about the place as a holiday destination, except for those with masochistic tendencies.

‘Well, we get boatloads of twitchers for a start.’

‘Yeah, I saw one,’ Thorne said.

‘They come for the Manx shearwater colony mainly.’ Morgan looked at Thorne, smiled at the blank stare he got back. ‘Not your thing?’

Thorne shrugged. ‘I know what a magpie looks like, a robin. Beyond that, I haven’t really got a clue. A chicken…’

‘Then we get the amateur astronomers coming out, because there’s no light pollution, and loads of artists too. Writers, painters, what have you, coming over here on retreats. They like the quiet, I suppose.’

‘So, how many on the island right now?’

Morgan thought for a minute, counted on his fingers. ‘Well, there’s the family up at Tides House… there’s the warden and his wife. They’re not here all the time, like. I reckon he’s only come across because he knew you lot were coming… bit of a sticky-beak. There’s the young couple who help him run the observatory, do all the scientific data and that.’ He raised another finger. ‘There’s the birdwatcher in one of the small cottages… no shearwaters this time of year, but still plenty of birds if you’re mad keen. So, not that many. Put it this way, there’s more of you than there are of us.’

Morgan made the tea. He handed Thorne a mug and shouted up to tell his father that there was one waiting for him.

‘Down in a minute,’ his father shouted.

‘You gave us a bit of a laugh earlier on,’ Morgan said.

Thorne looked at him.

‘The sheep. We heard all about it. You’re using the maritime frequency, remember.’ He nodded towards a large radio receiver mounted on the wall. It looked almost steam-powered, housed in a wooden surround with twisted curly wires, but it clearly worked perfectly well.

Thorne could hear Bernard Morgan on his way down. ‘I don’t need to tell you I’d rather you didn’t talk to anyone about any of this.’

‘You don’t need to,’ Morgan said. ‘No.’

‘Only some people have already been shouting their mouths off.’

‘Some people haven’t got any lives,’ Morgan said.

‘Fair enough,’ Thorne said.

‘We know who your prisoner is, by the way. Well, who one of them is, at any rate.’

Thorne looked towards the radio.

Morgan shook his head. ‘My dad worked it out, after what he said to me on the boat.’

‘Right.’ Thorne remembered Nicklin speaking to Huw Morgan just before he got off the boat. Something about seeing him again.

Bernard Morgan appeared in the doorway. He picked up his tea from the table. ‘I can remember bringing those boys across all those years ago,’ he said. His voice was deeper than his son’s, hoarser, but the accent was the same, the intonations. ‘There was some incident later on, wasn’t there? Then two of the boys escaped. It was closed down fairly soon after that, if I remember right —’

Thorne’s radio crackled into life. Holland saying, ‘Guv…?’

Thorne said, ‘Yes,’ and began moving towards the doorway. He kept going, out towards the lighthouse entrance, even though he realised that the conversation was being simultaneously broadcast through the speaker of the ancient radio receiver.

Holland told him that Howell had seen something on the GPR screen and that they were digging again. Thorne told Holland to let him know if and when anything turned up. Was turned up.

When he walked back into the kitchen, Huw and Bernard Morgan were standing side by side, cradling their mugs of tea, watching him.

‘Only one boy escaped,’ Thorne said. ‘Only one boy ever got off the island.’

Huw Morgan nodded his understanding. ‘Sounds like you might have got lucky,’ he said. ‘If not now, maybe tomorrow, eh?’

Walking back, Thorne saw that the tide had drifted even further out, but that the masses of weeds that were plastered to the rocks still appeared to be moving. Looking again he saw that the movement was actually the rippling of blubber; that there were, in fact, hundreds of seals basking just below him on the rocks. There were a few lighter-coloured pups dotted among the groups of enormous adults, seven or eight feet long in a variety of blotchy greys, browns and speckled blacks. The creatures seemed largely unconcerned by his presence, even when he stepped down and climbed carefully across the rocks towards them. But they would only allow him to get within fifteen or twenty feet before lumbering away with surprising speed, barking and snarling, towards the water.

Thorne stood and watched them until Holland came through on the radio again.

‘We’ve got a body,’ he said.

‘You sure?’

‘There are bits of clothes.’

Thorne took a step back towards the verge, the sudden movement disturbing a huge bull seal, which dragged itself in the opposite direction, hissing at him.

‘Training shoes,’ Holland said.