They had been told to stay inside, and those whose bedrooms were at the back of the house had seen the helicopter land in the field behind. Simon and Stuart had stared from their window, saying nothing. They had watched the paramedics run across the field into the house and emerge a few minutes later with Kevin Hunter’s body on a stretcher.
Now, an hour later and with the boy believed to be responsible already in police custody, the ten ‘guests’ that still remained in Tides House were trooping into the sitting room, where Ruth was waiting to address them.
There was plenty of chat as they took their seats, plenty of rumour.
A few were saying that Hunter was probably dead already or that he’d been cut up so badly that he was gone well before the helicopter had even got there. Some were whispering about the boy who had done it, a softly spoken lad with a shaved head and dark eyes named Ryan Gough. Simon listened closely, but could not hear anyone talking about why Gough had attacked Kevin Hunter.
One of the screws asked for quiet. Then he asked again, rather more forcefully, until things got as quiet as they were likely to get, and Ruth stood up.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’ She looked pale and tired. She looked like she’d taken a good kicking. ‘Obviously, you know by now that a boy was seriously assaulted today. Kevin Hunter was attacked by another boy in the kitchen, just after breakfast.’
‘Is he dead, miss?’
Simon craned his head, but could not see who had asked the question.
Ruth sighed. She was wringing her hands. ‘We haven’t heard anything since the air ambulance left,’ she said. ‘It goes without saying that all of us are deeply shocked and saddened by what’s happened. A violent assault like this… coming out of the blue.’
Simon could see that she looked close to tears. It was odd because some of the other screws looked anything but upset. Watching him carefully, Simon could have sworn that the fat-faced one with the greasy hair was actually smiling. He certainly looked a damn sight more relaxed than he usually did. A lot more comfortable.
Ruth carried on, saying how important it was that what had happened did not disturb anyone else, that everyone should try to carry on as normal and that the staff would do everything possible to make sure that things stayed the way they were.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘we’re more than happy to speak to any boy who’s upset and wants to talk to someone about how he’s feeling…’
She sat down then, and the fat-faced screw came forward. The smile had gone as he announced that the police were very keen to talk to any boy who had seen what had happened that morning or who had any information at all about it. The smile came back a little when he said how mysterious it was that nobody appeared to have seen anything, despite several boys having been in the kitchen at the time, helping clear up after breakfast.
Simon was aware that, next to him, Stuart was sitting eating a bar of chocolate and softly humming to himself. It might have been some kind of tune, but was probably just a hum of pleasure, because now Simon knew that Stuart loved chocolate more than anything. Knew that he would swap cigarettes for chocolate any time.
Any
time.
Listening to the fat-faced screw, Simon felt the smallest of trembles in his leg. He wouldn’t say anything, of course. He wasn’t sure he would know what to say even if he wanted to. The fact was, though, that without knowing how he could possibly have done it, Simon was positive that Ryan Gough had only stuck a kitchen knife into Kevin Hunter because Stuart had told him to.
Ruth was on her feet again…
‘We’re not going to let what has happened destroy what we’ve built up here,’ she said. ‘What
you’ve
all worked so hard to build up.’
Simon looked at Stuart.
Stuart grinned and popped the last chunk of chocolate into his mouth.
Simon grinned back at him, happier than he could remember being at any time since he had arrived on the island.
Later, after lights out, the two boys on the other side of the bedroom were talking about what had happened. About how Hunter must have said something, must have been asking for it, and how there was no way they could possibly get that much blood off the stone floor.
Stuart
shushed
them gently and they didn’t say anything else.
Simon waited a minute, took a deep breath, then said everything he’d been wanting to say, since they’d watched that helicopter rise into the sky and swoop away over the sea.
‘I was thinking, it would be great if you and me kept in touch, you know, when we go back. Obviously you’ve got stuff to do, same as I have. Trying to sort my mum out and that, but afterwards we could meet up and hang out or whatever.
‘I don’t know if you’re sorted for somewhere to stay after, but I was thinking there’s room at my place. There’s a spare room, I mean. Sometimes there’s a stranger in there… some junky mate of my mum’s dossing down in there, but that won’t be happening after she’s clean, so you could use it if you wanted. Not all the time or anything, but you know, if you were in the area and needed somewhere to crash.
‘Just saying. The offer’s there.
‘I’ve written the address down, so make sure you hang on to it and if you want to give me an address or a phone number or something, to keep in contact. Yeah? Or maybe we can make a definite plan… like a date when we know we’ll both be out so we can arrange to meet up in the West End or somewhere, go to a pub or an arcade or somewhere.
‘I’m just saying, it would be a laugh to meet up if you wanted to, talk about this place and everything. All the wankers! The screws and everything. I mean… I don’t even know when you’re out, so I’m probably being a bit stupid.
‘Just saying…’
Simon lay there for a while longer, staring at the back of Stuart’s head, the shape of it in the half-light, then he turned over and looked at the sliver of moon that was visible through the cheap curtains.
The milky gleam off the big stupid cross on the far wall.
He was just drifting off to sleep when he heard Stuart say something. He turned over again. ‘What?’
Stuart said, ‘Sooner than you think, maybe.’
Thorne told Jenks to stay in the school hall with Batchelor, while he and Fletcher escorted Nicklin down to the site of the latest dig. Jenks seemed happy enough, having long ago abandoned any notion of a meaningful conversation with his prisoner and found a tattered and slightly damp book of crossword puzzles in one of the cupboards. Thorne told him that they would not be long, to be ready to leave as soon as they got back. Jenks nodded without looking up from his puzzle, idly winding strands of his mullet around a finger. Batchelor looked no more or less wretched than he had since Thorne had watched him emerge into the car park at Long Lartin the previous day.
He seemed like someone who was waking up every few seconds and realising to his horror where he was.
Robert Burnham was waiting on the track outside the school, talking to a man and a woman. They were young, nerdish-looking, and Thorne assumed they were the couple Morgan had mentioned, who helped out at the Bird and Field Observatory. They stopped talking and watched as Fletcher, Nicklin and Thorne walked down the steps. Thorne had given the go-ahead for Nicklin to smoke, though he had refused to even consider taking the handcuffs off. He had watched Fletcher take the tin from Nicklin’s pocket, put the pre-rolled cigarette into Nicklin’s mouth and light it for him.
If the young couple were shocked or disturbed by the sight of the handcuffs, they didn’t show it, though they kept sneaking looks at Nicklin, as though he were a celebrity they had spotted on the other side of a restaurant.
Burnham introduced them to Thorne as Craig and Erica and confirmed that they were helping him and his wife at the observatory, collating data on nesting seabirds. They did not seem hugely keen to talk, which suited Thorne as he was keen to get down to the dig. Burnham had other ideas though.
‘I was on my way to see you.’ He held up the satellite phone. ‘Your boss called… Bristow, is it?’
‘Brigstocke,’ Thorne said. He had passed on the number when they had spoken earlier. ‘What did he want?’
‘It was nothing urgent.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He was just checking that the digging had actually started. He gave me rather a hard time, actually, when he found out I was the one who’d been holding things up to begin with.’
Thorne said, ‘Sorry,’ though he wasn’t.
‘Oh, I didn’t take offence,’ Burnham said. ‘Anyway, I told him that it had started… the digging… which I guessed you would have wanted me to do.’
‘I’d rather you’d passed the call on to me straight away. Or at least given me the message.’
‘I didn’t know where you were.’
‘I was at the lighthouse.’
‘How was I to know that?’
‘Well, next time, if you can’t find me straight away, perhaps you could pass the call on to one of my colleagues.’
‘I’ll try,’ Burnham said, looking put out. ‘I do have other things to do.’
Thorne had one hand on the gate, ready to push on into the field, when Nicklin spoke up.
‘Shame it’s the wrong time of year for the shearwater,’ he said.
Burnham looked a little wrong-footed by the comment, the fact that it had been made by the man in the handcuffs. He managed, ‘Well, yes…’
‘I can still remember the sound of them at night, when they come back to their burrows. Spooky as hell.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘Something you should hear.’
‘We’ve still got an amazing variety of species though.’ Burnham looked at Craig and Erica. ‘Haven’t we? Firecrests, snipe, the little owls, obviously. A flock of waxwings arrived the day before yesterday.’
‘We need to get on,’ Thorne said.
Nicklin nodded at Craig and Erica. ‘I don’t think he’s very interested.’
‘Well, obviously, you’ve got more important things to think about,’ Burnham said. He nodded towards the field. ‘It all seems to be happening down there.’
Pushing through the gate, Thorne noticed the binoculars hanging around Burnham’s neck. He guessed the warden had been looking at rather more than little owls and waxwings.
Within a few minutes of leaving the track, they were leaning into the wind again, a stiff sea breeze harsh against their faces. With Fletcher a pace or two behind them, Thorne asked Nicklin the question that had been nagging at him for weeks. Since Brigstocke had sat on that hospital bed, eating Thorne’s biscuits, passing on the good news and the bad.
‘Why now?’ he asked.
Nicklin raised his hands and rubbed awkwardly at his nose, scratching an itch. ‘Because Simon’s mother asked me.’
‘She’s been asking you for a long time.’
They walked on, sheep trundling out of their way.
‘Maybe I thought I might sleep better.’
‘You sleep fine,’ Thorne said. ‘And if you don’t, it’s more likely to be indigestion than remorse.’
Nicklin smiled. ‘It’s not about remorse. I won’t insult you by pretending it is. It’s about… tidying up.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all it is. It’s not complicated.’
‘I’m not convinced,’ Thorne said.
‘I just made a decision, just thought: Why not? Like you might decide what colour shirt to put on. Like your girlfriend might decide what sandwich to get from the M&S opposite her station, when she goes in there every lunchtime.’
Thorne said nothing, determined not to give Nicklin the satisfaction of showing him anything.
‘Like I might decide whether to use a knife or a gun or a cricket bat. You know me, I’m impulsive.’
Thorne knew that Nicklin had indeed used each of those things as murder weapons in the past, but there had been nothing rash or reckless about doing so. Plenty of time had been taken to carefully plan and cajole, to bully his partner-in-crime into killing alongside him. Control had been all-important back then and Thorne had every reason to believe that it remained so.
Nicklin smirked. ‘Well, I’m impulsive
sometimes
.’
‘So, no ulterior motive whatsoever?’
‘No, but not out of the goodness of my heart either, because we both know there’s not a lot of it in there.’
‘A snap decision then, that’s it.’
‘Yeah, just something to do. A change of scenery and a couple of days out for me and Jeff.’
‘Yeah,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s the other thing.’
‘You know why I brought Jeff along.’
‘Right, you’re afraid for your well-being.’
‘Can you blame me?’ Nicklin nodded ahead, towards the figures up ahead of them. ‘Look, we both know how fond Sergeant Holland was of Sarah McEvoy, don’t we? Who knows, even the coppers who
didn’t
shag her might still be harbouring a grudge.’
‘It’s rubbish,’ Thorne said. ‘I know it, you know it.’
‘There’s some nasty drops off this island,’ Nicklin said. ‘Easy to slip and lose your footing. I might be nervous about the fact that you left Jenks back up there with Batchelor, if it wasn’t for the fact there are so many witnesses around. That nosy old sod with the binoculars…’
By now, they were only a few minutes’ walk from the dig. The light was starting to go and Thorne could see the camera flashes from what he assumed to be the gravesite.
‘I’m glad we found him,’ Nicklin said. ‘Simon. I mean, obviously there’ll be more legal nonsense, a new trial or what have you, but that’s not the end of the world, is it?’
‘Gets your name back in the papers as well, doesn’t it?’ Thorne looked at him. ‘You must have missed that.’
‘None of it’s going to make any difference to how much time I spend inside, is it? We both know it’s going to be
all
of it. That I’m going to die in there, unless we get a Home Secretary who’s tired of being popular.’
‘How d’you feel about that?’
Nicklin raised his hands again; rubbed at his scalp through the black beanie hat. ‘You’re not stupid, Tom. You know there’s not very much that would be available to me on the outside that I can’t get in prison. Most of the things I’ve always enjoyed are still there whenever I fancy them. I just need to be a little cleverer about getting them organised, that’s all. The things I can’t do are neither here nor there, really. I won’t be losing too much sleep about missing long walks in the park, sunsets and all that. Evenings curled up by a log fire in a country cottage.’ He looked around. ‘Having said that, this is nice, I won’t pretend it’s not. A bit of outdoors.’
‘Make the most of it,’ Thorne said. ‘You’ll be back at Long Lartin by dinner time.’
‘Thank God for that,’ Fletcher said, behind them. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d left the school. ‘This place is doing my head in.’
As they drew closer to the freshly excavated grave, Thorne saw Barber help Howell up and out of the hole. Karim was sitting on one of the metal equipment cases scribbling in a notebook, while Markham was taking photographs of those bones that had already been removed and laid out neatly on black plastic sheeting a few feet away.
Fletcher stopped next to Holland and, without anything being said, Howell and Barber took a step or two away from the grave as Thorne and Nicklin walked up to its edge.
It was odd, almost as though they were family.
As though the men and women in the mud-spattered overalls and dirty gloves were giving them space to mourn.
Thorne looked down and saw glimpses of red, white and green through the mud. A tattered strip of what might have been a shirt. A frayed waistband, the loops for a belt. The human remains were tea-coloured where they were not caked with earth and it was shocking to see how much was left of the training shoes, in comparison to the few shreds of flesh that clung to the scattered bones. The sole and tongue, fully intact. Thick laces so much more resilient than veins, than the clotted strands of hair that were pasted here and there to the filthy skull.
Thorne looked across at Howell.
‘Teenage male,’ she said. ‘The age is about right too. Certainly not ancient and I don’t need the trainers to tell me that.’
Thorne glanced at Nicklin who was staring down, stony-faced. Had he not known him better, he might almost have believed him to be upset. Thorne nodded down at the remains. At a pair of flattened ribs, curling from the mud like speech marks. A glimpse of clawed fingers and one leg bent backwards. The hole in the skull that was clearly visible, even from where they were standing.
‘To your knowledge,’ Thorne said, ‘is this the body of Simon Milner?’
Nicklin nodded.
‘And are you responsible for disposing of his body?’
Another nod.
‘A little louder.’
‘Yes, I’m responsible.’
It was getting darker by the minute, and colder. Thorne thought he felt a drop or two of rain, though it might just as easily have been seawater.
‘Why did you kill him, Stuart?’