The Bones Beneath

Stuart leaned towards Simon and said, ‘What do you reckon, Si? Should we embrace it?’

Simon nodded. He liked being called ‘Si’.

‘Right, let’s embrace it, then.’

‘Yeah,’ Simon said.

‘We’ll give it a bloody big cuddle.’

‘Yeah…’

‘We’ll squeeze the bastard nice and tight, shall we, Si?’

‘Yeah!’

Simon looked over and saw that the bloke with the fat face and the greasy hair was watching them. Simon felt uncomfortable, but Stuart just lit his cigarette and returned the bloke’s stare until the bloke looked away.

Ruth asked if anyone had any questions.

A big lad with dreadlocks who was sitting at the front put his hand up and said, ‘Is it true that posh bitches make more noise in bed?’

There were actually a dozen of them by the time the boat had finished coming and going. A dozen boys and six members of staff. ‘They’re still screws, by the way, Si,’ Stuart had said. ‘Even if they’re not wearing uniforms. And they can call us “guests” all they like, but we all know that’s bollocks.’

The boys slept four to a room, with the staff divided between five more, two of which were in a converted outbuilding. Ruth had her own room in the main house, while the other female staff member and the screw with the straggly beard turned out to be a couple, so they shared one.

The screw with the straggly beard got a lot of stick from the boys once they found out about that. Stuff about his girlfriend and what she liked. The two of them must have known that would happen, but still.

Simon had no idea how it had been decided, but he was pleased when he and Stuart ended up in the same bedroom. Once in the room, they were allowed to decide which of the four beds to make up and, without Simon having to say anything, Stuart dumped his rucksack down on the bed next to his. Simon was pleased about that too.

The lights went out at ten o’clock.

That first night, one of the boys on the other side of the room just kept laughing and saying, ‘This is mental,’ over and over again. Then, once he’d quietened down, the other one kicked off; moaning and groaning and slapping his belly, pretending he was playing with himself. After a few minutes, Stuart told him to shut up and even though the other boy argued about it briefly, he did shut up in the end, which was surprising because he was a fair bit bigger than Stuart, and that was what usually decided these things.

‘You all right, Si?’ Stuart asked.

‘Yeah.’ Simon had been thinking about his mum.

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ He was wondering what she would make of this place, assuming she was ever straight long enough to have a proper conversation about it. He thought about what it would be like when she was, and he could tell her, and they could laugh about it. He was sure she’d find it fu

‘You rather be banged up somewhere?’

‘No, course not.’

‘Just going to take some getting used to.’

‘I suppose.’

‘It won’t be for everybody. Nothing ever is.’

‘Like she said though, it’s an opportunity, isn’t it?’

‘Definitely.’

‘I don’t want to mess it up, that’s all.’

‘You won’t mess it up,’ Stuart said. ‘I’ll make sure.’

They lay there in the dark for a few minutes and listened to what sounded like a thousand babies crying out on the rocks. The spooky call of that special bird Ruth had mentioned going back to its burrow. A fu

‘It’s all right to be scared, you know, Si.’ The bed creaked as Stuart turned on to his side. ‘Everyone gets scared.’

Crying babies, or else like a load of Punch and Judy shows somewhere in the distance; that weird thing the Punch and Judy man puts in his mouth to make his voice go fu

‘You don’t,’ Simon said.

TWENTY-ONE

It was still called Tides House.

Robert Burnham told Thorne that it was a working farm again, had been for as long as he had been warden and that the house was now occupied by a young family, who were the island’s only full-time residents. The couple had happily swapped high-pressure careers in London for long days tending hay and silage fields and watching over the island’s population of sheep and cattle. ‘They wanted a change of lifestyle,’ he said. ‘Thought it would be a good place to bring up their daughter.’

‘Did they check that with her?’ Holland asked.

‘Shame,’ Nicklin said. They were gathered at the main gateway to Tides House. A cat wandered across the yard in front of them and he tried to lure it with kissing noises. ‘Would have been nice to go in and have a look around the place. See if it’s changed much.’

‘Not sure the family would be very keen.’ Thorne stared at the farmhouse. It had been painted a different colour and there had been a couple of small additions built, but he still recognised it from the background of the photograph he had in his pocket. ‘You banging on the door in your handcuffs, telling them you used to live here.’

Nicklin turned and looked out across the low-lying western section of the island; the large number of small fields that sloped gently away towards the sea. He pointed. ‘The two of us ran down there,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to be much help until we get near the edge and I’m looking back this way. I think I’ll be able to remember what I could see looking back at the house, if that makes sense. That’s the best way for me to work out exactly where I was.’ He looked at Thorne as if he were simply trying to explain where he might have dropped a wallet or a set of keys. ‘Where I did the digging.’

Thorne opened the gate and the team trooped into the pasture.

There were low drystone walls ru

‘Are sheep stupid or clever?’ Karim asked. ‘I can’t work it out.’

The grass was lush and had been kept short by grazing. The weather had clearly not been as good in recent days as it was now, with the ground heavy underfoot and muddy water rising up around Thorne’s walking boots as he went. It was only the second or third time he had ever worn the boots, though he’d actually bought them a couple of years before. Against his better judgement, he had allowed his former girlfriend, Louise, to talk him into a weekend’s hill-walking. Country pubs and sex in a four-poster bed had sounded like a nice idea, but in the end there had been only blisters and an almighty row that had lasted most of the weekend.

After they had walked for ten minutes, Nicklin stopped and looked back towards the farmhouse. ‘Yeah, we’re definitely in the vicinity,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Thorne shoved his hands into the pockets of his waterproof jacket. The temperature had dropped again and the wind was gusting, noisy against the nylon.

‘I think there could have been trees between me and the house, but they might have gone now. A landscape can change a hell of a lot in twenty-five years, can’t it? Plus, it was dark, of course.’

‘Sounds like you’re getting your excuses ready,’ Thorne said.

Nicklin shook his head. Said, ‘Not at all.’

A few hundred yards further on, Nicklin stopped again. He looked around then began pacing slowly, counting out his steps. Fletcher seemed happy enough to let him walk on unaccompanied, waiting next to Jenks who was standing with Batchelor at the back of the group.

Nicklin turned around on the spot. ‘We’re close,’ he said. He nodded towards the place where the fields fell suddenly away to the sea. ‘That’s where I went over,’ he said. ‘Went into the water near one of the big caves down there.’ He proudly described his escape twenty-five years before, the meticulous pla