A week after arriving on the island, Simon was asked to go and talk to Ruth; given a fifteen-minute slot after breakfast and invited to ‘come along for a chat’. He knocked on the door of the communal sitting room and was called in. The furniture had been rearranged, to make it look a bit cosier, Simon thought. There was an armchair, to which Ruth pointed, another in which she was sitting and a small sofa off to one side, where the screw with the straggly beard sat next to the one with the fat face and the greasy hair.
They didn’t look too thrilled to be sitting that close together.
Ruth nodded towards the low table between them. There were tea things laid out on a tray, a plate of chocolate biscuits. She asked him if he wanted tea, but he said he was fine.
She poured tea for herself and her colleagues.
‘Can I have some biscuits though?’
‘Of course,’ Ruth said. ‘Help yourself.’
Simon did, then sat back and listened. Up close, her voice was even posher than he’d first thought, but it was a lot softer too, now that she was only talking to him and not to a room full of boys.
‘You’re going to be with us for the next three months,’ she said. ‘How do you feel about that?’
Simon shrugged. He didn’t know what to say. Obviously, he wasn’t happy about doing time, but this place was much better than anywhere he’d been before and because he thought it was a lot to do with her, he found himself not wanting to hurt her feelings. ‘Good,’ he said, eventually.
She was flicking through a sheaf of notes, which Simon guessed was details of everything he’d ever done. Everything he’d ever been caught doing, anyway. Now and again, she would scribble something in the margin and he tried to see what it was, but her writing was far too small for him to make it out.
‘It’s shocking,’ she said, ‘that you’ve been in and out of the system this often. You’re clearly not a danger to anyone, are you?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘It’s just this obsession with cars we need to do something about.’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Ruth.’
‘Yes, Ruth,’ he said. He felt himself blushing, shoved another chocolate biscuit into his mouth.
The governor at the last place he’d been was a fat, bald northerner whose face went red all the time. He’d sat behind a huge desk and peered over the top of a folder at Simon, who had always felt about six years old or something. Sitting there next to some scowling screw, while the red-faced governor had sighed at him. Or made some lame joke about how nice it was to see Simon again, how his usual room was waiting.
Ruth sat back and took her glasses off, then tossed the notes on to the table. ‘What do you think of the island?’ she asked.
‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘Never been anywhere like it before.’ The truth was he’d never really spent much time in the countryside, so he didn’t have anything to compare it to, but he did like it so far. He liked the fact that they spent so much time outside, for a start, and even when they were in the house they weren’t being shunted around. They could go where they liked, within reason, and as long as they didn’t trespass on private property or take liberties they weren’t being hassled or barked at. Food was a damn sight nicer too and he never worried that anyone was spitting in it.
‘Have you made any friends yet?’ Ruth asked.
‘Yeah,’ Simon said. ‘Well, sort of a friend… yeah, I think. We’re in the same room, so…’
Ruth picked up her notes again, turned the pages, nodded. ‘Stuart Nicklin,’ she said.
Simon thought he saw the fat-faced screw roll his eyes. He certainly folded his arms and let his head drop back a bit.
Ruth was still nodding. ‘It’s good to have friends,’ she said. ‘But we’re also keen to encourage self-reliance. You need to be making your own decisions, OK? This is not somewhere where someone is there to tell you what to do twenty-four hours a day like some other places you’ve been. We want you to decide what to paint, if you’re painting, what to cook when it’s your turn in the kitchen. We want you to decide what to grow in your allocated patch of garden.’
‘Can I grow some sunflowers?’ Simon asked.
Ruth smiled, scribbled something down. ‘I don’t see why not. The way we look at it, if you can make these small decisions for yourself then hopefully you’ll start to get the bigger decisions right. The decision to stop stealing cars, for instance.’
Simon nodded. He understood what she was saying. It made sense.
‘What would you like to happen when you go home, Simon?’
‘My mum’s poorly,’ he said. ‘So I want her to get better.’
‘Poorly?’ The fat-faced screw chuckled and shook his head.
‘I’m going to help her.’
‘That’s good,’ Ruth said.
‘I’ve got it all worked out.’
‘Excellent.’ Ruth scribbled again. ‘Planning is something else we’re very keen to see you do. I tell you what, why don’t you write it all down and bring it to show me, next time. We’ll be meeting like this once a week and I’d really like to see what you’ve got in mind.’
Simon told her that he would, and she seemed pleased, then the screw with the straggly beard stood up and Simon guessed it was time to leave. He hesitated, glancing at the table, and Ruth told him to take another biscuit if he wanted one. She said, ‘Don’t tell any of the other boys, though. That’s the last packet and we won’t be getting any more until the boat comes across again.’
Simon promised that he wouldn’t tell, then turned towards the door. Walking past the fireplace he noticed a collection of small china animals, like the ones you got in fancy Christmas crackers or something, and he slowed down so he could get a good look. There were loads of them, lined up like they were all friends or in a zoo or whatever. A tortoise and a cat and an owl, all sorts of others. He wondered where they’d come from, if they were already here when Ruth and the others arrived.
He thought that his mum would like them.
Stuart was sitting outside and Simon realised that he was waiting to go in, that he was the next one on the list. That made sense, because they were next to one another alphabetically.
Milner and Nicklin.
Simon had been happy when he’d found that out. Maybe it was the reason they were put in the same room. He decided it was another sign that they were meant to be mates.
‘What’s all that about then?’ Stuart nodded towards Ruth’s door.
‘It’s just like a chat,’ Simon said. ‘There’s a couple of screws in there, but it’s mostly just her. She’s got all your notes and all that. Wants to know what you think of the island. Who your friends are.’
‘So, what did you say?’
Simon shrugged. He held out the biscuit he’d taken right at the end. ‘I took this for you,’ he said. ‘I know you like chocolate.’
Stuart studied it for a few seconds, like he was trying to work something out. He said, ‘Thanks,’ and took it.
The biscuit had already started to melt and Simon suddenly began thinking about holding his hand out. Letting Stuart lick the chocolate from his palm and fingers. He felt the blood flooding his cheeks, so he quickly lowered his head and did it himself.
Stuart stood up and knocked on the door. He was still eating the biscuit, pushing in the crumbs from the corner of his mouth. He said, ‘See you afterwards, yeah?’
Fletcher and Jenks had deposited Nicklin and Batchelor, still cuffed, on hard chairs beneath the window. Fletcher went to make himself and his colleague more tea, while Jenks explored the hall. He opened cupboards, took out grubby plastic toys and mildewed textbooks. He lifted the dust sheet and played a few horrendous-sounding chords on the out-of-tune piano.
Fletcher brought the tea across. Said, ‘I don’t know if this is strong enough.’
Jenks took it, grunted. ‘Cheers.’
‘I could do with a few more of those sandwiches, to be honest.’ Fletcher scratched at his goatee. ‘That greedy CSI bastard took all the decent ones.’
‘Probably fancies himself because of that TV show.’
‘Right, but he’s basically just a dogsbody.’
On the other side of the hall, Nicklin tuned out the officers’ conversation and turned towards Batchelor. ‘You didn’t eat much, Jeff.’ He spoke softly, barely above a murmur. ‘When that nice old woman brought lunch down.’
‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘Did you eat breakfast?’
‘I didn’t feel too good this morning.’
‘What about last night? Or were you too busy crying like a girl?’
Batchelor looked at him for the first time. His expression suggested that, once again, tears were not very far away. ‘How can you act like this is… normal?’
‘You need to keep your strength up, Jeff. All this charging about in the fresh air. You’re not used to it.’
‘I want to speak to my wife,’ Batchelor said. ‘I want to talk to Sonia.’
Nicklin sat back. ‘Well, of course you do, and I’ve told you it’s going to happen, but I don’t think it’s very likely right this minute, do you?’ He nodded towards Fletcher and Jenks. ‘I mean even if one of those idiots decided to lend you his phone, you heard what they were saying about signals. It’s going to be tricky getting to the top of that lighthouse with those handcuffs on.’
‘What about the satellite phone? I could use that.’
Nicklin glanced across to make sure that Fletcher and Jenks were still too engrossed in their own conversation to have been listening. ‘You need to shut up about this now, Jeff. You need to stop whining.’ He closed his eyes and thought for a few seconds. He listened to the low moan of the wind outside, the bleating of sheep like the horns of toy cars, and the distant scream of gulls. All these sounds were reassuringly familiar to him and the pictures that came into his head prompted a nice broad smile.
He leaned across. ‘This is a chance to blossom, Jeff,’ he said.
Batchelor’s head dropped, then sank lower still as a sigh pushed the breath from him.
Nicklin lifted hands that were cuffed tightly, one above the other, and gently touched them to Batchelor’s. ‘You need to embrace this opportunity,’ he said.
From the track, Thorne could just make out the team at work in the field far below him. The shiny white overalls of Howell and Barber, the bright red waterproof jacket Wendy Markham was wearing.
He keyed his radio and asked Holland what was happening.
‘Just digging,’ Holland said. ‘Obviously, they have to go through the soil that’s being removed, in case there’s evidence.’ Thorne could hear Howell shouting something, Holland responding. ‘She says it’s the backfill from the original gravecut.’ Howell said something else, her words muffled by the wind. ‘As soon as we find anything, I’ll let you know…’
Thorne looked up to see Robert Burnham wandering along the track from the direction of the observatory, which was a couple of cottages along from the school. He stopped next to Thorne. He lifted his stick, gestured towards the fields.
‘Been busy?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Nothing yet.’ As much to stop the conversation drifting into awkward areas as anything else, Thorne said, ‘So, tell me about this king.’
Burnham looked blankly at him.
‘Earlier on, remember? In the school hall, we were talking…’
‘Oh yes, the man in the handcuffs.’
‘Yeah, him.’
‘He obviously knows a fair bit about us.’
‘He was here a long time ago,’ Thorne said.
The warden stared, then nodded, pleased with himself when the penny dropped. ‘Ah… the home for young offenders. I remember Bernard Morgan telling me about that when I first came here. Bit of a disaster, by all accounts.’
‘So, this king…?’
‘Oh well… long before my time, but yes, we used to have our own king. Went back to the nineteenth century, I think, when the island was privately owned. There was a decent-sized population then… well, over a hundred anyway and a local man would be crowned King of Bardsey. There was a crown made of tin, a ceremonial snuff box, it was all very serious.’ He thought for a few moments. ‘Apparently, when World War One broke out, the last king offered himself and the men of the island to the war effort, but the government of the day turned him down because he was into his seventies by then. So, he thought: Stuff ’em, and declared the island to be a neutral power. Some say he actually threw in his lot with the Kaiser.’ Burnham laughed. ‘There’s loads of stories. Hard to separate the myths from the facts when it comes to this place.’ He turned to Thorne. ‘What we were talking about before. The prison for young offenders that wasn’t really a prison. That’s almost become a myth around here.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘Definitely not a myth.’
‘Such an odd idea,’ Burnham said. ‘Don’t you think? I mean, where do you stand on that kind of thing?’
‘I just catch them,’ Thorne said.
‘Of course… which is exactly why your opinion should count, because you’re someone who actually does the job. You spend your working life taking these people off the streets… people who have done some pretty awful things, I imagine. So, do you think we should try and rehabilitate wherever possible? Send them off for a bit of a holiday? Or should we just lock them up and throw away the key?’
Thorne stared out across the lattice of green. He could still see the white overalls, the red waterproof jacket. A still figure in a black beanie hat.
‘Some of them,’ he said.
The radio came to life in Thorne’s hand and Holland’s voice was tinny through the hiss and crackle.
‘We’ve found something. You should probably get down here…’
‘Perhaps later then.’ Burnham had clearly overheard. ‘We could carry on chatting, if you’re going to be around for a while.’
‘Doesn’t look like we will be.’ Thorne had already pushed through the gate and turned to close it behind him.
Burnham raised his stick in a kind of salute and turned away as Thorne broke into a gentle jog, letting the slope of the field do most of the work. For the first time since he’d boarded the
Benlli III
, he could feel the good mood returning. It would be great to get away and have Nicklin banged up again by dinner time. He could certainly think of a great many better ways to have spent the last forty-eight hours, but the thought of Simon Milner’s mother finally being able to lay her son to rest would more than make up for it.
Those moments with Nicklin that would linger a while yet; eyes meeting in a rear-view mirror.
He was no more than a minute away from the group when his radio crackled again. He stopped and snatched it from his pocket, fought to regain his breath. ‘I’m nearly there.’
‘I know,’ Holland said. ‘I can see you.’
Thorne looked across and saw Holland waving. ‘What?’
‘You need to go back and get Nicklin. We’ll have to start again.’
‘I thought you’d found something.’ Thorne could hear laughter in the background. Karim, Barber maybe.
‘Yeah, we did.’
‘What’s going on, Dave?’
‘Well, unless this kid we’re trying to find had cloven hooves, this is looking very much like a dead sheep.’