Текст книги "The Bones Beneath"

Автор книги: Mark Billingham

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

FORTY-EIGHT

‘I just came to see how you were getting on,’ Markham said.

Thorne nodded, but hadn’t really listened. ‘Were you in the back garden a few minutes ago?’

‘No.’ She looked confused. ‘Are you…?’

Thorne had already turned and was on his way back round to the rear of the property.

‘Is everything OK?’

‘There was someone out there,’ Thorne said. ‘I saw a torch.’

Markham followed a pace or two behind, pushing through the long grass at the side of the cottage. ‘Maybe it was my torch reflecting off something,’ she said. She emerged into the garden and noticed the generator. ‘Off that, for a start.’ She turned round and nodded back towards the front of the cottage. ‘Could it have been the lighthouse, maybe?’

Thorne said, ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe…’ He was in much the same spot he’d been in a few minutes earlier, shining his torch around the garden, raising it to throw the beam on to the base of the mountain directly behind. Markham did the same, though neither torch was powerful enough to see much beyond the line of rocks and small bushes twenty or thirty feet up.

‘So, how’s it looking inside?’ Markham asked.

Thorne turned and looked back at the cottage. ‘Well, it’s not exactly five-star,’ he said. ‘Probably still better than a Travelodge though.’

‘You got all the beds sorted?’

Thorne shook his head. ‘Just had a look around and put the lights on, basically.’

‘Come on,’ Markham said. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

She pushed open the back door and Thorne followed her through the two kitchens into the parlour. She took one look at the fireplace and immediately began opening cupboards until she found a small cache of old newspapers and kindling, a few logs and a box of firelighters.

‘Woman make fire,’ she said.

‘What’s the point?’ Thorne asked. ‘Once we’ve brought the others over from Chapel House, we’ll be going straight to bed. I’m not envisaging cocoa round the fire.’

Markham knelt and began tearing off sheets of paper, twisting them into knots and tossing them into the grate. ‘Might as well,’ she said. ‘Even if we just keep it going for half an hour or so now, it’ll take the chill off. You’ll all be sleeping in your overcoats otherwise.’

‘I suppose,’ Thorne said.

Before he could do a great deal to help, Markham had got a decent blaze going. She stood up and admired her handiwork.

‘You’ve done this before,’ Thorne said.

She said, ‘It’s all fairly basic,’ then looked and saw that Thorne thought it was not basic at all. ‘God, you’re a real city boy, aren’t you?’

Before Thorne could answer her, another of the ghostly seal-calls echoed from the other side of the island. ‘Can you blame me?’ he said.

Markham threw another log on to the fire and wiped her hands off on the back of her jeans. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and have a look at these bedrooms.’

They moved from room to room, lighting the lamps; pulling pillows, sheets and duvets from protective bin-liners, turning mattresses and making up beds.

‘We had a place in the country when I was a kid,’ Markham said. ‘Me and my brother hated it most of the time. Moaned like mad and drove my mum and dad barmy, going on about how boring it was. Still, I learned how to make a fire up, how to skin a rabbit, all that.’

Thorne looked at her.

‘I’m kidding,’ she said. ‘This was the Cotswolds, for God’s sake. You were never more than fifty feet from Waitrose or a tea shop.’

Thorne tossed a pillow on to a single bed. ‘No, I’m not the biggest fan of the countryside. My ex used to talk about getting out of London. She was Job too, so we talked about relocating every so often, but I just can’t imagine being a copper and not being in a city.’ He began stuffing a second pillow into its pillowcase. ‘I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do all day in the countryside if you’re a copper? Nick people for being pissed in charge of a muck-spreader?’ Markham laughed and he enjoyed hearing it. ‘Patrol the village fête and make sure there’s no drug-cheats at the duck racing?’

‘Trust me,’ Markham said. ‘I’ve been at plenty of seriously nasty crime scenes in places like this.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, not like this. You know, the countryside, but in places where there are actually some people around to do things to one another.’

Thorne dropped the second pillow down, straightened it. ‘It’s not for me,’ he said. ‘Too much fresh air, I get dizzy.’

‘Your ex…?’ Markham said.

Thorne looked at her. Each was holding two corners of a duvet cover; the final one of six. They shook it out.

‘Ex, because she was a copper too? I can understand how tricky that is.’

‘No, there was other stuff,’ Thorne said. Stuff he had no intention of talking about. That he had only recently begun talking to Helen about.

A lost baby.

A grief that had gone unexpressed until it was far too late.

He let go of the duvet cover, stood back and watched Markham wrestle a duvet into it. ‘Actually, I’m with another copper now,’ he said. ‘So…’

‘Helen,’ Markham said.

‘Right.’ Thorne guessed that she had got the name from Karim. ‘Yeah, she’s great.’

Markham looked at him and nodded, as though she knew he had said that to try and counteract the potent fantasy that was unfolding in his head and working elsewhere. Images that had been taking shape and growing more elaborate since he and Wendy Markham had walked into that first bedroom.

To water down the guilt a little.

Once the final duvet had been laid in place, they made their way back downstairs. In the parlour, the fire had died down somewhat, but it was noticeably warmer.

‘You were bang on,’ Thorne said.

They stared at the flames for a few moments, the shadows moving on the wall behind them; across painted stone and watercolours of seascapes in heavy, wooden frames.

‘So, who gave you that then?’ Markham asked.

‘Sorry?’

She lifted a finger, touched it to Thorne’s chin. The short, straight scar that ran along it.

‘Ah… that was a woman with a knife.’ He nodded when he saw Markham grimace. ‘Believe it or not, a woman I was actually in bed with at the time.’

Markham’s eyes widened. ‘Blimey. You must have seriously under-performed.’

‘No, it wasn’t that.’

Something else Thorne most certainly did not want to get into. The wound a prelude to an event that even Helen did not know about yet.

‘She got stroppy,’ he said, ‘when I refused to sleep in the wet patch.’

A log crackled and spat and Thorne bent to grab tongs and retrieve a smouldering ember. When he straightened up, Markham was smiling and now it wasn’t only his proximity to the fire that was making Thorne’s face hot.

‘Some women are just plain bloody selfish,’ she said.

FORTY-NINE

When Thorne and Markham got back to Chapel House half an hour later, dinner was finished and Karim had returned to his less than pleasant duties at the chapel itself. Holland – relieved in every sense – was talking to Bethan Howell while Barber, having finished clearing things away, had continued the necessary arse-kissing by volunteering to wash up in freezing water.

Once Thorne was back, people began gathering in the cottage’s large sitting room. Extra chairs were pulled in from the parlour and around the dining table. The fire was in need of some attention, which Markham was happy to provide and, within a minute or two, she had worked the same incendiary magic as had been conjured at the Old House a short time before.

‘That’s lovely,’ Nicklin said. He raised cuffed wrists, as though to warm them at the fire. ‘No crumpets in those plastic bags, were there?’

There were nine of them crowded into the room. Markham had been quick to get one of the bottles of wine open and pour glasses for herself, Howell and Barber. With everyone else present on duty or in handcuffs, they were the only ones drinking anything stronger than tea. Thorne was on the last of the coffee from the school, already resigned to the fact that he would not be getting a great deal of sleep.

Truthfully, Thorne was uncertain as to the best way to proceed. It was only a little after nine o’clock and, though he was not exactly comfortable with everyone sitting around as though they were all on holiday together, it was still too early to go to bed. There was an hour or so yet before he would want to move the prison party across to the Old House for the night and he was happier killing the time somewhere warm.

‘We’ll stay here for now,’ he said. ‘It’s more comfortable and I’d prefer it if we all stayed together as long as possible.’

There were several murmurs of approval. Markham muttered something to Howell about ‘opening that other bottle.’

Nicklin seemed keen to endorse Thorne’s decision. ‘Yeah, definitely better to be together,’ he said. ‘We should make the most of it anyway, because it’s back to reality tomorrow.’

All eyes in the room were on him, but nobody said anything.

‘It feels a bit unreal this place, don’t you think?’ Nicklin looked from face to face, seeking a response. He shrugged. ‘Well, it always felt that way to me.’

Thorne grunted, made no attempt to disguise his contempt. ‘So what, when you were killing Simon Milner and Eileen Bennett, that just felt like a dream or something, did it?’

‘Killing always feels a bit like that to me,’ Nicklin said. ‘Like I’m watching someone else do it.’

Suddenly, Thorne’s mouth was very dry. Something about the casual way that murder was being described, like any hobby, humdrum and unremarkable. That, and the tense being used.

Feels, not felt.

Nicklin smiled. ‘I always enjoy the view, though…’

A shocked silence settled for a minute or so after that but, as soon as it had been broken, conversation in the room quickly splintered into assorted hushed and simultaneous exchanges: Holland asking Thorne what time he thought they’d be back in London the following day; Fletcher and Jenks talking holidays; Howell and Markham laughing as the wine continued to go down easily and they whispered about Sam Karim and Andy Barber.

In a moment of quiet, Markham said, ‘Come on then, who’s got a good story?’ When Thorne looked across, she added, ‘Last night, we sat around telling stories. It was a laugh.’

‘Nothing scary,’ Howell said. ‘Well, not very scary, because we didn’t want to frighten Barber too much.’ Fletcher muttered something and she looked across. ‘What?’

‘What are we, Girl Guides?’

Jenks laughed, said, ‘Girl Guides.’

Howell stared daggers at Fletcher across the top of her glass. ‘I don’t think you’d have been tough enough for the Girl Guides.’

‘I don’t know,’ Thorne said. He could easily imagine the forensic team sitting around the previous evening, putting the red wine away and swapping tales, but this was a very different line-up of potential storytellers. ‘Not sure it’s a good idea.’

‘Why not?’ Markham asked. ‘It helped to pass the time.’

‘Still.’

‘That’s all I was thinking.’

Thorne looked hard at her, in the hope that Markham might see what he was driving at. The slight shake of her head and widening of her eyes made it clear that she didn’t.

‘I know a fantastic story,’ Nicklin said.

Thorne pointed at him. ‘That’s why it’s not a good idea.’

‘No, seriously.’ Nicklin leaned forward in his chair, excited. ‘This is an absolute cracker, I promise you. It’s got the lot… it’s tragic, but it’s also funny. There’s a murder, obviously, I know you wouldn’t expect anything else, but it’s also got pathos, mystery… and there’s a twist at the end I guarantee you won’t see coming.’ He nodded. ‘Best. Story. Ever.’ He looked at several of the faces now turned to his. ‘Well?’

‘I got no problem with it,’ Fletcher said.

Nicklin turned to Thorne. Said, ‘It’s only a story.’

‘This better not piss anybody off.’ Thorne looked to Markham and Howell but saw no sign of anxiety, no inclination to object. ‘If you upset anybody…’

‘What are you going to do?’ Nicklin asked. ‘Send me to bed?’

Thorne was hugely irritated to see Fletcher and Jenks smile, half-expecting the latter to moronically repeat, ‘Send me to bed.’ He gave Nicklin the nod, stared down at his coffee.

Nicklin cleared his throat. ‘Now, I should point out before I start that this isn’t really my story at all.’ He nodded across to where Batchelor was still sitting on one of the sofas next to Alan Jenks. ‘It’s Jeffrey’s.’ Heads turned towards Batchelor, but he continued staring at a spot on the worn carpet a few feet in front of him, as he had been doing for as long as anyone else in the room could remember. ‘I promise to try and do it justice, Jeff.’ Nicklin waited, shrugged when Batchelor gave no response. ‘So, you all know why Jeff’s sitting over there in handcuffs, do you? How a nice, mild-mannered history teacher like him ended up in Long Lartin with a bunch of murderous nut-jobs like me.’

Thorne raised a hand. ‘OK, that’s enough.’

‘It’s background,’ Nicklin protested. ‘It’s important if the story’s going to make any sense.’

Thorne glanced at the man Nicklin was talking about. If Batchelor was bothered by what was being said about him, there was no sign of it.

‘Come on,’ Fletcher said. ‘What’s the big deal? I don’t think anyone here seriously thinks he’s in prison for not returning library books, do they?’

‘Whatever,’ Thorne said.

‘Right,’ Nicklin said. ‘Well… the sad truth is that Jeff walked into his eldest daughter’s bedroom one morning and discovered that she’d killed herself.’ He spoke quietly, without colour. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how horrible that was. Just unthinkable, especially for those of you who’ve got kids.’ He looked at Holland, gave a small nod. ‘Now, the agony that Jeff must have felt that morning is not even something I can begin to put into words, but it turned into something else when he found out why his daughter had hanged herself. It turned into rage.

‘Seems that Jodi, his daughter, had been dumped by her boyfriend.’ He shook his head. ‘Little scumbag she was going out with decided he wanted nothing more to do with her, and instead of telling her face to face, he’d sent her a text. That was it. Jeff’s little girl woke up one morning, saw that text message and it felt like her life was over.

‘So, she took the cord off her dressing gown, put it round her neck and five minutes later it was.

‘Now… bad luck usually plays a part in stories like this and it was Jeff’s bad luck that he ran into Nathan, the aforementioned little scumbag, at the bus stop, the day after Jodi had killed herself.’ There was more in Nicklin’s voice now as he began to relish the telling, reaching a part of the story he found especially appealing.

A view he enjoyed.

‘Bad luck for Nathan too, as it turned out… because the old red mist descended, understandably, all things considered, and our Jeff, who up until that point would not have said boo to a goose, beat the little shit to death right there and then with his bare hands.’ He looked at Jeff, then to his audience. ‘I know… who would have thought it?

‘So, Jeff hands himself in, because he’s a good, God-fearing citizen. On top of which, he’s covered in this kid’s blood and there’s half a dozen witnesses, so there’s not much point pretending he didn’t do it. He’s charged with murder, blah blah blah, there’s a trial and he’s sent down. End of story.’ Nicklin paused for effect, then leaned even further forward and dropped his voice to a whisper in an attempt to heighten the drama. ‘Only it isn’t… not by a long chalk. This is actually where it starts to get really interesting, because a few weeks after Jeff gets sent to prison, he receives a letter —’

‘Shut up!’

Everyone turned to look at Jeffrey Batchelor, who was staring white-faced at Nicklin. The muscles were working in his jaw and his skinny chest strained against the arm that Jenks had thrown across it.

Nicklin cocked his head. ‘I beg your pardon, Jeff?’

‘I said, shut up…’

Thorne watched, intrigued. Batchelor had seemed oddly disconnected from almost everyone for the majority of his time away from the prison, but on those occasions when he had interacted with Nicklin, there had always been an element of fear in the way he spoke; the manner in which he held himself. Looking at Batchelor now though, Thorne could see that it was entirely absent.

Batchelor was no longer afraid.

‘This is my story,’ he said. He raised his cuffed hands and pressed them against his chest. ‘It’s my pain.’ His clenched fists rose and fell in his lap as he spoke; measured, the anger held in check. ‘It’s all mine and you can’t have it… however much you want it, however much you feed off it. It’s mine, so I’ll tell it, OK?’

Nicklin did not seem unhappy. ‘Fill your boots,’ he said. ‘I think I’d probably tell it better, but it’s your funeral.’

Batchelor sat back, waited until Jenks had removed his arm, then nodded, to reassure the officer that there would be no need to replace it. ‘Yes, I got a letter,’ he said. ‘I’d had a lot of letters… from Nathan’s family, I’m sure you can imagine the kind of thing. Wanting me to rot in hell. The horrible stuff they wanted to happen to my wife, to our daughter.’ He swallowed. ‘Our other daughter.

‘This one was something different though. It was a letter from Nathan’s best friend, Jack. He was writing because he wanted me to know that Nathan had loved Jodi more than anything in the world and that he would never have split up with her. Jack said he knew that was true.’ He shook his head, barely perceptible, as though he could still not quite believe what he was about to say. ‘He knew… because it was him that had sent the text message.’

Thorne looked around the room, saw the stunned reactions and guessed that he was wearing much the same expression. He let out the breath he had not realised he was holding.

‘In his letter, Jack told me he’d taken Nathan’s phone when he wasn’t looking,’ Batchelor said. ‘That he’d sent that text to Jodi as a joke. He wanted me to know that Nathan hadn’t had anything to do with it, that I’d murdered someone who was completely innocent and was as devastated by Jodi’s death as anybody. It had all just been a stupid… joke.’ Batchelor blinked slowly, screwing his eyes up. ‘I got that letter and I… went to pieces.’

Thorne reached for his cup and filled his dry mouth with tepid coffee.

‘Jesus,’ Markham said.

Nicklin grunted a laugh. ‘Yeah, well not even he could help.’ He looked around the room. ‘You do know Jeff’s a little bit Goddy, right?’ He nodded, as though that explained something. ‘Nearly lost his faith, that letter turning up like that. Understandable though, you find something like that out. That’s when we got close, isn’t it, Jeff?’ He looked across, but Batchelor had gone back to studying that fascinating piece of worn carpet. Nicklin carried on as though he was not there at all. ‘He was all over the place, back then, poor bastard. I pretty much talked him round. Saved his life, or good as.’ He leaned back, pleased with himself, rolled his head around, working the stiffness from his neck. ‘What did I tell you, though? One hell of a story, isn’t it?’

Bethan Howell was the first to move. She stood up and lifted her jacket from the back of the chair. ‘I need to get some air.’

Nicklin nodded towards the window. The rain was starting to beat more heavily against it, thrown against the glass on angry gusts. ‘It’s horrible out there,’ he said.

Howell began to put her jacket on. She said, ‘It’s horrible in here.’

FIFTY

Howell was sheltering beneath the front porch. Thorne had followed her and for a minute they stood in silence. They stared out through the curtain of rain across the dark fields, the wind riffling through Howell’s short blonde hair and whipping the smoke from her cigarette into Thorne’s face.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s nice.’

‘You sure you don’t want one?’

Thorne shook his head.

‘It’s very impressive.’

‘What?’

‘That degree of self-control.’

‘Not about everything,’ Thorne said.

Howell took a drag, sighing out the smoke like she had really needed the nicotine hit. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘That story.’

‘I know.’

‘Your daughter dies like that, you lose it and beat a kid to death, then you find out it was the wrong kid.’ She looked at him. ‘That it was just a bloody joke.’

Thorne nodded, shivered a little.

‘I’ve got two kids,’ Howell said. ‘Eighteen and sixteen, and they’re still doing stupid things like that on each other’s phone. Messing with the other one’s Facebook account, playing jokes, you know? Fraping, they call it.’

‘Right.’

‘It only takes one careless remark, doesn’t it?’

They said nothing for a few moments, then Howell half-turned and nodded back at the front door. ‘He loved it, though, didn’t he? Nicklin. Like Batchelor said, he feeds off stuff like that.’

‘I should have shut him up earlier,’ Thorne said.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Truth was, I wanted to know the end of the story.’

‘We all did.’

‘I was at the farm,’ Thorne said. ‘When I went to get the food, you know? We were talking about pollution… how there’s no pollution here at all.’

Howell nodded. ‘Yeah, the island’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?’

Thorne knew that it was. He had seen it walking to the lighthouse, sensed it standing at the abbey ruins. ‘It was,’ he said. ‘We’ve ruined it.’

‘You’re being daft.’

‘Bringing him here. That’s as much pollution as anywhere needs. Nicklin and the reason we brought him. It’s like we caused an oil slick or something. Like we turned up and dumped shit everywhere.’

‘Maybe you should come back,’ Howell said.

Thorne looked at her. The lamp hanging from the porch cast just enough light to see the fine spray across her forehead, her eyes squinting against the rain and the smoke.

‘Like Burnham said. You should come back another time.’

Thorne shook his head. ‘There’s always going to be associations, isn’t there? How much peace are you ever going to get, when all you can see is his face grinning at you and bones in a plastic bag?’

Howell watched him for a while. ‘I’m guessing you see his face quite often.’

‘More often than I’d like,’ Thorne said. ‘There’s been a few like that down the years, but he’s the worst.’ He sucked at a curl of passing smoke. ‘I hope he hasn’t got into your head.’

‘No chance,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s strictly dead people’s faces for me. Most of the people I… find don’t have faces any more, so I make them up. I don’t know what Simon Milner or Eileen Bennett looked like, but I’ll imagine it.’ She gestured back at the front door. ‘Trust me, I’ll have forgotten that arsehole’s face tomorrow.’

Thorne wasn’t sure that he believed her, but he stood for a few seconds in silence, thinking just how wonderful such a forgetting would be. He reached into his pockets, producing his phone from one and a torch from the other. He turned up his collar and nodded along the track. ‘I need to make a quick call.’

Howell took a final drag. Said, ‘You can stay here. I’m going back inside.’

Thorne explained that he had no wish to get soaked, but that the abbey ruins had so far proved to be the only place where he could get a mobile signal.

‘Typical,’ she said. ‘Six-hundred-year-old ruins on an all-but deserted island and I can’t get a decent signal in my front room in the middle of Bangor.’

‘Maybe those monks knew something we didn’t.’

‘What, silence and celibacy? I don’t think I’m interested.’

‘Didn’t they also make shedloads of wine?’ Thorne said. ‘They were probably pissed most of the time.’

‘That’s a fair point,’ Howell said. ‘Talking of which…’

She was crushing her cigarette against the wet stone wall as Thorne turned on the torch and stepped out into the rain.

‘So where’s everyone sleeping?’ Helen asked.

‘Still not sorted it out.’

‘I presume you’ll be staying close to Nicklin.’

‘Yeah, I’ll have to be.’

‘Not too close though, right?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

Standing in the ruined belltower, Thorne was largely sheltered from the worst of the weather, though enough rain to piss him off still came in through the ‘windows’ when the wind blew in the right direction.

‘What about the forensic team and what’s-her-name? The CSM?’

Thorne turned his face away from the wind and water. ‘Markham.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

He raised his voice above the growl of the surf crashing on to the rocks just ahead and below him. ‘Wendy Markham.’

‘Yeah, her.’

‘She’s staying in the same place she was last night,’ Thorne said. ‘With Howell and the CSI.’

‘What about you and the prison lot?’

‘We’re in a separate cottage. Me, Dave and the four from Long Lartin.’

‘Sounds cosy,’ Helen said.

‘Oh, it’ll be lovely. I reckon we’ll be keeping each other awake all night, giggling and talking about girls and football.’

‘I still find it hard to believe there’s only one boat. Or that there’s nobody else capable of sailing the bloody thing.’

‘Just the way it is.’

‘It’s definitely coming tomorrow, is it?’

‘Don’t tempt fate, for God’s sake.’ Thorne turned and looked towards the sea, watched the beam from the lighthouse sweep across the stretch of water in his line of vision and away. Once the darkness had returned he could just make out the lights of a large boat in the far distance. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Any problems with the weather tomorrow, I’m swimming for it.’

For a few minutes they talked about what Helen had been doing at work. They talked around some of her ongoing cases – the banter and the bullshit and the less than serious moments – though it was clear that she still wanted to talk properly when Thorne got back.

‘I know it’s only Wales,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It feels like you’re on the other side of the world, or something. Just a long way away, you know?’

‘Feels like that to me too,’ Thorne said. ‘Something about this place. It’s like going back in time.’ Helen replied, but the line broke up and he couldn’t catch it. ‘Listen, do you know what fraping is?’

‘Yeah, it’s when kids put fake pictures or status updates or whatever on somebody else’s Facebook page. Frape is Facebook rape, you get it?’

‘Nice.’

‘You’re so not down with the kids.’

‘I think that’s probably a good thing,’ Thorne said.

‘You fancy going out somewhere tomorrow night?’

Thorne could not be sure exactly what time he would make it home the following day, but barring disasters it would be in time for dinner. ‘Sounds great,’ he said.

‘I’ll see if I can get my dad to take Alfie.’

‘What about Indian?’ Thorne waited a few seconds for a response, then looked at his phone and saw that he had lost the signal. He moved from one corner to the other, held the handset at arm’s length, swearing loudly enough to raise several dead saints as he tried to get the signal back. When the tell-tale bars eventually reappeared on the small screen, he called Helen again, but she was engaged.

He waited, guessing that she was trying to call him back.

He looked out into the blackness, paying particular attention to the lower slopes of the mountain rising up behind the chapel, still thinking about that torch-beam he had seen in the back garden of the Old House.

He turned and stared past the point where the land fell away, but he couldn’t see the boat any longer. It was only the noise that told him the sea was there at all.

Howell and the others were sitting around a table in the parlour when Thorne returned to Chapel House. If the empty one on the floor was not evidence enough, the laughter and increased volume of conversation pointed towards a second bottle of wine having been opened. Barber was dealing from a tatty-looking pack of playing cards and each person had a pile of matches in front of them.

‘All good?’ Holland asked.

‘Wet,’ Thorne said. He looked around for something to dry his hair with, but could see nothing. With no bathroom facilities, towels were clearly the responsibility of those visitors who could bring themselves to wash at a kitchen sink in ice-cold water. He shook the water from his hair, pointing towards the closed door and the sitting room beyond. ‘Everything all right in there?’

‘Fine,’ Holland said, picking his cards up. ‘Nobody fancied listening to Nicklin any more, that’s all. So we came out here.’

‘He’s in a talkative mood,’ Howell said.

‘Nobody likes a chatty psycho, do they?’ Markham fanned her cards out, every inch the experienced player.

‘I don’t know,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s when he’s sitting there saying nothing that you want to worry. When the cogs are turning.’

Holland tossed a few of his matches into the middle of the table. ‘Four,’ he said.

‘Call,’ Markham said.

Thorne leaned down and snatched Holland’s cards from him. ‘Come on, Dave. I think we need to get that lot bedded down.’

‘Shame,’ Holland said. He pushed back his chair, then reached for the empty box at the other end of the table and began dropping his matches back in. ‘I was making a killing here.’

When Thorne opened the door to the sitting room, all heads but Batchelor’s turned to him. ‘We should make a move,’ Thorne said. He stepped inside and looked at Fletcher, then at Jenks. ‘Time to get your boys to bed.’

Nicklin was the first one to his feet, Fletcher quick to follow, a little taken by surprise.

‘Bagsy the top bunk,’ Nicklin said.