The Bones Beneath (18 page)

It was what Duggan had said to him about a ‘few knocking about’. The superintendent had been talking about police officers who might still be on the force, but Thorne realised there were others who might be able to help and to do so a damn sight quicker.

Others who had been there.

He rang the bell, stepped back and looked up at a house that was a long way removed from what he had been expecting. It was a modern two-up-two down, red brick with UPVC windows. A simple rectangle of grass at the front. A satellite dish.

When Huw Morgan opened the door, he looked confused to see Thorne standing there.

‘Have you got five minutes?’ Thorne asked.

Walking past the living room, Thorne could see Morgan’s father watching TV. Some American drama, cops or lawyers, where everyone was a bit too good-looking to be taken seriously. The old man turned to look and Thorne nodded a hello. ‘We’ve just eaten,’ Morgan said, leading Thorne into the kitchen. ‘But I think there might be some left.’ He turned and shouted back down the hall. ‘Dad, we got any of that stew left?’

‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘I had chips.’

‘What about a beer then?’

‘Beer would be great.’

Morgan produced three cans of supermarket lager from the fridge and they carried them to the living room. Huw handed a can to his father and said, ‘Turn that down, we’ve got the police here.’

Bernard sighed and reached for the remote.

‘So, is this police business or are you just going a bit bonkers in Abersoch?’ Huw sat down, nodded Thorne towards the sofa. ‘Can’t say I blame you, there’s not a lot going on. Mind you, it’s a teeming bloody metropolis compared with what’s going on here.’

‘Bit of both,’ Thorne said.

‘What?’ Bernard said.

‘It’s a bit of police business. Just a chat, really.’ Thorne took a swig of his lager, which was surprisingly good. ‘I got your address from your cousin,’ he said. ‘He was in the bar at the Black Horse.’

‘Arsehole,’ Huw said.

Bernard shook his head and glanced at Thorne. ‘Long story…’

Thorne looked around. The inside of the house was as modern as the exterior. A big-screen TV, leather sofa and armchairs. There were black and white photos in frames on the wall; sea views and boats in the harbour, an island that Thorne guessed was Bardsey.

Huw saw Thorne looking. Said, ‘What?’

‘I was expecting you might live somewhere a bit more traditional.’

‘What, a fisherman’s cottage kind of thing?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Peat fires and ancient slates and a weathervane shaped like a whale?’

Bernard laughed.

‘Listen, mate,’ Huw said. ‘After a long day out there with the lobster pots or whatever, I want to come home to central heating and Sky. Dad had somewhere a bit more traditional, didn’t you? One of the old cottages up on the front.’ Bernard nodded, drank. ‘When my mum died a couple of years back though, we thought it was a good idea for Dad to sell up and move in with me. His place was on its last legs and I was on my own anyway…’

Thorne waited in case there was more coming. It became clear that there wasn’t and he was left watching Huw take a long drink and wondering if there had ever been a wife and kids, if the youngest Morgan had always been on his own.

When Huw finally put his can down, he said, ‘So, this chat then…?’

‘It was actually your father I wanted to speak to,’ Thorne said. He turned to Bernard. ‘I was just wondering if I could ask you about something that happened a long time ago. See what you remember.’

‘You might be in luck,’ Huw said. ‘He tends to have a good memory for things that happened years back, even if he can’t remember what bloody day it is sometimes.’

‘Cheeky beggar,’ Bernard said.

Thorne said, ‘Twenty-five years ago. Back when the young offenders were staying on the island.’ He reached into his pocket and produced the photograph of Tides House that he was still carrying around. He stood up, stepped across and laid it down on the small table next to Bernard’s chair.

The old man reached for his glasses and picked up the photograph. ‘That what they were?’ he said. ‘Young offenders?’ He stared at the picture, shaking his head. ‘You wouldn’t have thought it, the way they swanned around, lying about and taking drugs on the beach. You’d have thought they were on holiday.’

‘It was a different approach,’ Thorne said.

‘Well, it didn’t work, did it? That’s why they shut it down.’

Thorne nodded. All the information had been there in the notes he was given before leaving London. The funding for the Tides House project had been hastily withdrawn following a violent knife attack on one of the boys and the escape – or so everyone had thought – of two others. The doors had closed within a few months and those in senior positions – most notably a woman named Ruth Livesey – had been pilloried in the press before being pressured into taking early retirement from the young offenders prison system.

Bernard held the picture out and Thorne moved to take it back. He doubted that Bernard had recognised any faces. If Thorne himself had not been told who was who, he would certainly have struggled to pick out Stuart Nicklin, though looking closely he could see that the eyes were the same; the challenge in the stare. He had been told that the tall, skinny boy standing next to Nicklin was Simon Milner. A shock of dirty-blond hair, an open-necked shirt. Thumbs held aloft…

Milner was the only boy smiling.

Thorne put the photograph away. Said, ‘Anyway… around that time, do you remember anyone going missing?’

‘You don’t mean those boys who escaped?’

‘A woman,’ Thorne said. ‘An elderly woman. I think she might have been a poet, or something.’

‘Yeah, there’s always plenty of those,’ Huw said.

‘Rings a bell.’ Bernard was nodding. ‘There was definitely some talk of a woman drowning.’

‘Drowning?’

‘Well, that’s what everyone thought, that she’d killed herself. Let’s face it, you can’t really go missing on Bardsey. There’s only one way off the island if you’re still breathing and that’s on the boat, so you’re either there or you’re dead, aren’t you?’

‘And this was definitely twenty-five years ago?’

‘Well, I can’t say for certain.’ He nodded at Huw, thinking. ‘He was only a lad, I know that much, so it was definitely around the time they closed the children’s home down. Or a bit afterwards, maybe. I think she might have died earlier than that though.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Thorne asked.

‘Well, she wouldn’t have been missed straight away, would she?’

‘He’s got a point,’ Huw said. ‘A lot of the people who stay on the island just want to be left alone, see. Some of them go out there for months at a time, especially the arty types and it’s not like they’re phoning home every day, is it? Sending postcards.’

‘If she went missing,’ Bernard said, ‘it might not have been noticed for quite a while. Especially as there was such a bloody hoo-hah about what was going on with Tides House. All the comings and goings when that place closed.’ He downed what was left of his beer, nodded. ‘I seem to remember taking another woman across afterwards,’ he said. ‘More than once, if I remember rightly. I think it might have been her sister. She wanted to see the last place she’d been staying. The place where she’d died. She might have had flowers… it was a long time ago. Like I said, there was some talk about her drowning herself.’ He leaned towards Thorne. ‘I think she might have been the type, you know?’

‘What, because she was a poet?’ Huw said.

‘Well, a lot of them do, don’t they?’ Bernard looked very serious. ‘Poets, writers, what have you. Too bloody sensitive by half.’ He waved his empty can at his son.

Huw laughed, standing and gathering the empties. ‘Another one?’

Thorne thought about it, but not for very long.

When Huw returned with fresh beers, he dropped into the armchair. ‘This is Mr Nicklin again then, is it?’

Thorne saw little point in evasion. ‘It’s what he’s telling us. We’ve got to decide if we’re taking him back to prison first thing in the morning or going back to the island to start looking for this woman.’

‘He couldn’t have known about her,’ Bernard said.

Thorne looked at him, opened his beer.

‘Well, Tides House was closed by the time anyone knew anything had happened to that woman, wasn’t it? And
he’d
gone before that anyway, so he wouldn’t even have known she’d ever gone missing, would he? Not unless he was responsible for it.’ The old man popped the tab on his can and shrugged as though what he was saying should have been perfectly obvious.

Thorne took a swig. ‘You should have been a detective, Bernard.’

‘Looks like we’ll be seeing you tomorrow then,’ Huw said.

‘Yeah…’

‘Actually, the weather’s looking a bit iffy tomorrow.’

‘Great.’

‘Morning should be OK though.’

Thorne tried to picture the blister pack of sickness tablets. He guessed he would have enough left to get him to the island and back.

‘I couldn’t do what you do,’ Bernard said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, you’re always dealing with people at their very worst, aren’t you? At their lowest. Bastards like that bloke you’ve got with you now, the one we’ve been talking about. Even when you’re dealing with normal people… a lot of the time you’re seeing them when they’re in bits. When their lives have been destroyed.

‘Let’s face it, a lot of the time
you’re
the one who has to tell them that their lives have been destroyed, then watch them fall apart in front of you.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘No… I couldn’t do that. I’ll stick to the fishing and what have you, thank you very much.’ He looked across at Thorne and raised his can in a small salute. ‘Fair play to you though, mind. I mean, some poor bugger’s got to do it, haven’t they?’

Thorne said, ‘True.’ Thinking that only a couple of hours ago he’d all but forgotten what his job was.

Thinking that you could never forget for long.

‘Listen to him,’ Huw said. ‘The bloke who thinks poets are too bloody sensitive.’

Bernard said, ‘You’re not too big to get a slap, you know.’

‘Oh, here we go.’

‘What?’

‘He’ll be wanting to arm-wrestle in a minute…’

Thorne smiled, happy enough to sit and drink with these two for a while and enjoy their bickering.

An hour later, walking from the Morgans’ house to the car, Thorne was well aware that the three cans of beer he’d put away, weak as they’d been, were probably enough to have put him over the limit.

He pressed the remote on the fob and the indicators flashed.

There was probably only one patrol car within a fifty-mile radius but Sod’s Law said that he’d run into it between here and the Black Horse, make some Welsh plod’s week.

Make bloody headlines, probably.

He got into the car.

He could always phone Holland, see how much he’d had to drink. He could go back to the Morgans’, ask for the number of a local taxi and come back to pick the Galaxy up in the morning. He could try thumbing a lift, flashing his warrant card and claiming it was an emergency.

He started the car and reached for a packet of mints in the door. Then he took out his phone and called Robert Burnham. He apologised for calling so late, and asked the warden if he would mind taking the satellite phone down to the dig and telling the exhibits officer to give him a call.

He was halfway back to the Black Horse when Karim rang back.

The forensic team were still hard at it, Karim told him. Looking forward to a well-earned drink and a good night’s sleep while
some
people would be bedding down next to a body in some spooky chapel. Thorne told him about Nicklin’s bombshell and asked him to let Howell and the others know that they would be doing it all again tomorrow.

‘You might be spending two nights in that spooky chapel,’ he said.

‘You’re kidding right?’

‘Some poor bugger’s got to do it, haven’t they?’ Thorne said.

Holland was still drinking when Thorne got back to the hotel. Proving definitively what an effective social lubricant alcohol could be, he was deep in conversation with a couple of the formerly surly locals at a table near the bar. Seeing Thorne in the doorway, they beckoned him across and demanded to know what he was drinking. Thorne told them that he was tired, that he had a stupidly early start in the morning, but they would not listen, pushing a chair towards him and insisting that he join them for a nightcap.

Holland went to get a round in and Thorne joined him at the bar. ‘We’ve
all
got an early start,’ he said. He told Holland they were going back to Bardsey and filled him in on the conversation with Bernard Morgan.

‘Nicklin was telling the truth then,’ Holland said.

Thorne was slowly and systematically tearing a beer mat into small pieces, laying them one on top of the other. He said, ‘Best way to make a lie convincing is to chuck a bit of truth in.’

‘So, what’s he lying about?’

‘No idea,’ Thorne said. He tore the final fragment of the beer mat into two and added the pieces to the pile. ‘I’m too bloody tired to think straight.’

Pritchard set the drinks down. He scribbled down the charges on a scrap of paper with Holland’s room number on it, then swept the pieces of the beer mat off the bar into his hand. Holland picked up two of the glasses, drank the top from one of them.

‘One more won’t hurt…’

They carried the drinks across to the table and the two local lads immediately began urging Holland to carry on with his story. Holland looked a little embarrassed, more so as they pressed him.

‘Come on, how many more did he kill, like?’

‘Was he the worst one you ever had?’

‘What happened when you got him into the interview room…?’

They hung on Holland’s every word as he described what could have been almost any interview, deliberately making the whole thing sound a lot less interesting than he might have done had Thorne not been sitting there. As he doubtless had been doing before. One of the lads nudged Thorne and said, ‘You heard this one? Bloke who cut his victims’ tongues out and kept each one as a souvenir in a different matchbox.’

Thorne nodded.

‘In a bloody
matchbox
.’

‘I know…’

As far as war stories went, he’d heard them all, told them all. The bare bones or a heavily embellished version, depending on his audience and the reaction he was looking for.

Kudos, when he craved it, or maybe just a free drink. Sex, occasionally.

‘I’d bloody
love
your job,’ one of the lads said. ‘Sounds fantastic.’

Holland tried to demur, but the man would not listen.

‘I got no problem with the blood and the bodies, nothing like that, and I mean, how good is it to actually have a chance to hurt some of these bastards? I know you’re not supposed to, there’s laws and all that, but I bet you still have the chance to get a dig in every now and again, right?’ He went to take a drink, but lost interest in it before the glass reached his mouth, so fired up was he about the job of his dreams. ‘It’s got the lot, hasn’t it?’ He looked at his mate, who nodded, excitedly. ‘Blood and gore and all the sick stuff, if that’s what you want… the chance to solve crime and put people away or whatever, and I bet you’re beating the birds away with a shitty stick, aren’t you?’ He looked at Holland, who could do no more than shrug and stare into his beer.

It was a very different assessment of the job than the one Thorne had been given half an hour before by Bernard Morgan. While it was hard to take the opinions of two beered-up idiots seriously, Thorne could not help wishing that their ill-informed enthusiasm was in some way justified.

That the old man had been wrong.

‘You all right?’ Holland asked.

‘Just knackered, like I said.’ He pushed his chair away from the table and told Holland he’d see him in the morning. He had not taken more than a couple of sips of his beer and asked Holland’s drinking companions if they fancied helping him out with it. They had divided up what was left between them before Thorne was on his feet.

Tonight, there was no boo-hooing coming from the adjacent cell and, though Nicklin guessed that Batchelor was only pretending to be asleep, he was grateful for the peace and quiet nonetheless.

He had thinking to do.

It was not the reason for doing it, not the main one at any rate, but he’d really enjoyed the reaction he’d got on the boat, when he’d casually told Thorne about the second body. He’d enjoyed the way they’d been with him ever since too. Solicitous and wary, both at the same time.

It was like telling a joke, wasn’t it?

It was all about the timing, and he’d got it, bang on.

It had been so great afterwards, sitting in the car and watching Thorne on the phone to his boss, stomping about in the mud; shouting and screaming and waving his arms around like a madman. It was obvious that they hadn’t got the first idea whether he was telling the truth or not. Thorne had been studying his face ever since they’d got off the boat, staring at him, looking for some hint. Why was he so
suspicious
, for heaven’s sake?

He wasn’t much of a copper, not if he couldn’t recognise an honest-to-goodness confession when he heard one.

Nicklin guessed that, by now, the decision had been taken to go back the next day. They might not have found out who the woman was yet, but it hardly mattered. They might not have been able to confirm anything he’d told them, but the simple fact was that they couldn’t afford to take the risk, could they?

That looming spectre of bad press…

They knew very well that Nicklin would find a way to get to the papers and tell them the same thing he’d told Thorne on the boat. This was a red-top’s dream after all. A story that wrote itself:

He got up and took the two steps across to the far wall. He leaned the side of his face against the cold brick.

‘Jeff… what did Thorne talk to you about?’

There was no answer, but he didn’t feel any need to push it. He would ask again in the morning and besides, he knew that Batchelor would not have said anything he had not been given permission to say. He walked slowly back to his bunk and lay down. His feet were sore and he could feel himself starting to stiffen, his back and his thighs. It certainly knocked you for six, being out and about all day. Marching backwards and forwards across those fields.

He thought about Thorne barging into his cell after him and shouting the odds, all fired up and full of himself. The stuff about his mum’s letters, the things he knew, who was in whose head, all that.

Nicklin had felt like the straight man in a freakish double act.

God, it had been so hard to keep a straight face.