The Bones Beneath

Tides House was an experiment that failed.

It was neither a young offenders’ institution nor a children’s home, but something in between; something different, with the day-to-day emphasis on spiritual awakening and reflection. Somewhere a kid whose future looked bleak might grow and change. Doomed to constant sniping from reactionary quarters of press and Parliament, Tides House closed its doors only three years after opening them, leaving little to show for the efforts of those behind it but ruined careers and crumbling buildings. It was while Nicklin was there, twenty-five years before, that he had met Simon Milner, a fifteen-year-old-boy with a history of repeated car theft behind him.

The boy whose body they were on their way to look for.

‘It’s going to get a lot better as well,’ Nicklin said. ‘Trust me. You want scenery, you just wait until we get there.’

Thorne looked at the rear-view again. Nicklin seemed to have shifted as far as he was able to his left, so as to place himself directly in Thorne’s line of sight. So that their eyes would meet.

‘We’re not going for the scenery,’ Thorne said.

Nicklin grunted and shrugged. ‘What, you’d rather be searching on a council estate, would you, Tom? Dodging the dog turds while you’re digging up some chav’s back garden. You’d rather be draining a quarry?’

Thorne’s fingers tightened a little around the steering wheel and he knew that it was unlikely to be the last time. He exchanged a look with Holland, reminded himself that they were still only twenty minutes into it.

His mobile sounded, a message alert.

He reached down to the central cup-holder for the phone, keyed in his pass code and read the text from DI Yvo

how’s it going? on my way to talk to the ex-wife

He looked at the mirror again when he heard tutting from behind him.

‘Don’t you think you should keep your eyes on the road, Tom?’ Nicklin shook his head and turned to Fletcher. ‘What do you think?’ The prison officer said nothing. ‘You look down at your phone for that all-important message from whoever it might be, next thing a tractor appears from nowhere, rolls across our path…’

Thorne’s fingers started to tighten again and, in an effort to relax a little, he conjured a memory that immediately did the trick. A vivid and wonderful image that eased the tension in his neck and shoulders. One that allowed his jaw to slacken and the corners of his mouth to widen just a fraction…

He remembered a cold February afternoon. The echo of a gunshot still ringing and the look of surprise on a ruined face. Those frozen, perfect moments just after Thorne had smashed the butt of a revolver into Nicklin’s mouth. Shattered teeth splitting the gums and full, flapping lips that burst like rotten fruit.

Eyes wide and strings of blood ru

‘I mean, for heaven’s sake,’ Nicklin said, leaning forward again. ‘Let’s get there in one piece, shall we?’

Thorne’s eyes stayed on the road, the half-smile still in place.

He said, ‘I’ll do my best.’

FIVE

It was a sign of the times perhaps, but even as a respectably dressed woman in her forties, it felt uncomfortable to be hanging around outside a primary school. Was it best to wait in one place or move around a little? Which looked less like lurking? Yvo

Still, it made her feel decidedly uneasy.

She had been there fifteen minutes or so already and been on the receiving end of hard looks from a middle-aged couple, a woman walking past with a pushchair and a male teacher who had stood for half a minute and stared through the fence at her from the far side of the playground. Kitson had stared right back. She had been hugely tempted to march through the gate, push her warrant card into his fat face and shout, ‘On top of which, I’m a mum of three kids, you twisted little tosspot…’

Tempting, but ultimately stupid and unjustified.

Stupid, because it would almost certainly have scuppered the meeting she was here for. Besides which, she knew that the teacher was doing his job. Those who preyed on children came in all shapes and sizes and were not all as conveniently recognisable as Jimmy Savile.

Or should that be unrecognisable.

It was horribly ironic, Kitson thought, that the man who for decades got away with being one of the most active predatory paedophiles in the country’s history had actually looked like most people’s idea of one.

After another few minutes, the woman Kitson assumed to be the one she was waiting for walked out of the school and across the playground towards her. She stopped just for a few seconds outside the gate, long enough to produce cigarettes from a pocket and nod towards a small park on the other side of the road. To say quietly, as though to herself, ‘Over there.’

Kitson waited half a minute, then followed and sat down at one end of a bench as the woman at the other was lighting her cigarette. She looked a little older than the thirty-nine Kitson knew her to be. She had brown hair past her shoulders and glasses with heavy black frames. Like Kitson, she wore a dark skirt and jacket.

They could both have been teachers. Or police officers.

‘Waiting long?’

‘Quarter of an hour or something,’ Kitson said.

The woman showed no inclination to apologise for having kept Kitson waiting. She just smoked for half a minute. Said, ‘Paedo patrol check you out? Short teacher with a fat face?’

‘Yeah,’ Kitson said, laughing.

‘You want one of these?’ The woman proffered her cigarette.

Kitson shook her head. ‘Thanks for doing this, by the way. Agreeing to talk to me.’

‘I don’t have a lot of choice, do I? I need to keep you lot sweet.’ She flashed Kitson a look and took a long drag. ‘Only takes one stupid copper gabbing in the pub, one mention of the wrong name and the whole lot falls apart.’

‘I suppose so,’ Kitson said.

‘It’s taken ten years to build this.’

Kitson nodded back towards the school. ‘Where do they think you’ve gone?’

She waved her cigarette. ‘They think I’ve come out to do this, same as usual. Which means I’ve got about five minutes, which is fine because I don’t want to talk to you for longer than five minutes.’ She put the cigarette to her lips then lowered it again. ‘I don’t want to talk about him for five seconds.’

‘It’s nice round here,’ Kitson said. The school was on the outskirts of Huntingdon, in Cambridgeshire, seventy miles or so from London. Far enough away. ‘Leafy.’

The woman nodded, smoked.

‘Kids nice?’

Another nod. She said, ‘I was lucky,’ then snorted at the absurdity of it.

The woman who had once been Caroline Cookson was still doing the same job she had been doing ten years before, when her life had changed beyond all recognition. Everything else about her was different though. Her name, her accent, the colour and style of her hair. She had been relocated and given a new identity once the full horror of what her husband had done became clear. A man who had called himself Cookson back then, but whose real name was Stuart Nicklin.

‘I don’t know what to call you,’ Kitson said.

‘Claire Richardson. My name’s Claire Richardson.’

The officers monitoring Caroline Cookson’s witness protection had given Kitson a name and phone number, the address of the school where ‘Claire Richardson’ worked. Beyond that though, Kitson knew nothing about her. Had she remarried? Did she have children?

Kitson asked her.

‘No kids,’ Claire said. ‘I’ve had a boyfriend for a couple of years.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Yeah, well he hasn’t killed anyone yet, so you know… that’s a plus.’ She took a last drag on her cigarette, dropped the nub and ground it beneath her boot. ‘Mind you, I didn’t know any of that was happening last time, did I?’