The Bones Beneath

‘What’s it going to be, three or four hours?’

‘Could be closer to five,’ Thorne said. ‘Depending.’

‘Plenty of time for everyone to get acquainted with one another.’ She looked at Thorne. A well-practised expression of compassion that could not disguise a degree of naked curiosity. ‘Though I gather you and Nicklin…’

‘Yeah,’ Thorne said.

I think I know you pretty well.

‘So, these just for us then?’ Smiling, Holland waved the tin of biscuits at Thorne. ‘Or do we have to share them?’

‘Well, I’m sure my officers aren’t going to say no.’ The deputy governor walked back around her desk and sat down. She adjusted the position of a framed photograph whose subject Thorne could not quite make out from where he was standing. ‘But the prisoners will obviously be cuffed, so it’s up to you.’ She looked up at Dave Holland with the first proper smile she’d managed all morning. ‘Do you really want to be hand-feeding Stuart Nicklin custard creams?’

THREE

Jeffrey Batchelor raised his forearm, buried his face in the material of the thick, brown crew-neck sweater and sniffed. Fully dressed again, he looked at himself in a small mirror on the back of the door, then across at the senior prison officer who had only finished strip-searching him five minutes before.

‘Just feels odd,’ he said.

‘Bound to,’ Alan Jenks said. ‘First time back in your own clothes since you came in, right?’

Batchelor nodded. ‘I suppose that’s right.’

First time in eight months. In two hundred and thirty-six days. He pointed at Jenks, managed a dry laugh.

‘First time I’ve seen you out of uniform.’

Jenks checked himself out in the mirror. He was wearing jeans, same as Batchelor, with a black sweater over a denim shirt. ‘Yeah, well, they don’t want what’s going on to be too obvious,’ Jenks said. ‘They want it all low-key.’ He used his fingers to put quotation marks round the last words, then nodded towards the door and another room on the far side of Reception where two of his colleagues were prepping the other prisoner. ‘He does, anyway. He’s the one calling the shots, you ask me.’ He nodded, conspiratorial. ‘Don’t you reckon?’

Batchelor shrugged, as though any opinion he might have was hardly worth considering. He certainly had one, but he knew that where Stuart Nicklin was concerned, it was usually best to say nothing.

He’d learned that before he’d even met the man.

‘I mean, you’re his mate,’ Jenks said.

‘Not really.’

‘Or whatever it is.’

‘I’m not,’ Batchelor said.

‘Doesn’t matter to me either way.’

‘It’s not like that.’

Jenks stared at the prisoner for a couple of seconds, then smiled like he wasn’t convinced and turned away. He reached up into an open metal cupboard on the wall for the D-cuffs. Turned back and dangled them. ‘Yeah well, not easy to be too low-key when you’re walking about wearing these buggers.’

‘I suppose not.’

Jenks stepped across, workmanlike. ‘Hardly going to look like we’re sightseeing, is it?’

Batchelor closed his eyes and held out his arms.

On the wing the evening before, he had looked up to see Nicklin in the doorway of his cell. A small wave like there was no need for concern, like he was just passing. He had laid down the book he was reading, got to his feet.

‘All set?’

He had nodded, his mouth too dry suddenly to spit out an answer quickly.

‘Not having second thoughts, are we?’

‘Just a bit nervous,’ he had said, eventually.

Nicklin had laughed, hoarse and high-pitched, then stepped across the threshold. ‘You should be excited, Jeffrey,’ he’d said. He had lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘We’re going on holiday…’

Batchelor winced and sucked in a breath as the cuffs were double locked, the snap catching the skin.

‘Sorry,’ Jenks said.

‘No problem, Mr Jenks,’ Batchelor said. ‘Not your fault.’

First time back in cuffs since he’d climbed out of that van, two hundred and thirty-six days before.

Thorne stood by the side of the back-up vehicle – a Ford Galaxy identical to the one he and Holland were in – talking through the half-open window to DS Samir Karim, who would be driving, and to the woman in the passenger seat. Once they had reached their destination, Karim would be working as exhibits officer, while Wendy Markham was on board as civilian crime scene manager. This was assuming that any crime scene was actually found, that there were any exhibits.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Thorne said.

‘Exhibit A… bugger all,’ Karim said, gri

Thorne glanced at Markham, who seemed happy enough. Maybe, like Holland, she was just looking forward to getting out of the city. Thorne could not think of anywhere much further out.

Karim was chuckling now. ‘Actually, better make that Exhibit Sweet FA!’ With no discernible quality control when it came to his jokes, Karim was every bit as indiscriminate about gambling. He regularly took bets on time of death or length of sentence, but was equally happy to run books on the grisliest of murder case minutiae. Since being brought into the team, he had been predictably keen to discuss the odds on finding the body they were going to look for, the number of hours they might have to spend digging.

For now, Thorne was happier talking about the route.

While other areas of security were causing him a degree of concern, he could be confident that this part of the operation at least had stayed under wraps. Their progress would be monitored, the two vehicles tracked by satellite in real time, but only he and Karim actually knew which way they were going.

They went over it one more time.

‘Don’t worry, it’s sorted,’ Karim said. He tapped the side of his head to suggest that the information had been memorised. As though he had no need of the sat nav and would have happily swallowed the map Thorne had supplied were it not for the fact that it was laminated.

Thorne looked at his watch. ‘If we ever get going.’ They had been at the prison almost an hour and a half already. He had wanted to be long gone by now. ‘Don’t know why we bothered to get up so early.’

‘Maybe we can make up some time on the road,’ Karim said.

‘Not going to happen,’ Thorne said. The cars would stay in touch by radio, but it was important that they maintained visual contact too. ‘Inside lane on the motorways wherever possible, Sam, all right? Nice and steady and don’t be playing silly buggers and trying to overtake.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘It’ll take as long as it takes.’

‘No worries,’ Karim said. ‘All goes a lot quicker when you’ve got company, doesn’t it?’

‘If you say so.’ Thinking about who he and Holland would be sharing the journey with, Thorne decided that they were definitely getting the shitty end of the deal. Just before turning away towards his own car, he caught Wendy Markham’s eye. He read the expression and decided that he could be doing worse after all. Four or five hours stuck in the car with Sam Karim, the crime scene manager might well be creating a crime scene of her own.

Climbing into the driver’s seat, he was glad that Holland had left the engine ru

‘Almost like that’s what it was designed for,’ Holland said. He had already started on the biscuits and offered the tin to Thorne.

Thorne shook his head. He had been up for more than four hours, but despite having had no more than a cup of tea – creeping round the flat so as not to wake Helen and Alfie – he was still not hungry. Catching movement on the far side of the compound, he looked up and saw an officer walking the perimeter, doing his best to control a fearsome-looking German shepherd. He watched dog and handler walk past two more officers on their way towards the purpose-built staff coffee shop, a Portakabin that had been tarted up and pithily christened The Long Latté.