The Bones Beneath (11 page)

‘A good boatman won’t just know what the weather’s going to be like in twelve hours. He needs to know what’s going to be happening in twenty four hours or thirty-six.’ He nodded out across the waves. ‘Especially with this stretch of water. This can be a pig…’

‘Yeah.’ Thorne had read about just how treacherous the crossing could be. ‘So, what’s it going to be like later, then? The weather.’

Morgan turned, grinning. ‘Changeable.’

Thorne was stepping away when he heard Morgan say something else. He turned back. ‘Sorry?’

‘I said, it’ll be nice over on the island though.’

‘Really?’

‘They reckon it’s got its own microclimate. I’ve known days when it’s snowing on the mainland and I’ve been walking around over there without a jacket on. Bloody strange, sometimes.’

‘Not the strangest thing I’ve heard,’ Thorne said.

‘Yeah, well a lot of that’s nonsense. King Arthur is
not
buried over there, for a kick-off.’

‘Plenty are though.’ Thorne was not thinking about Simon Milner. ‘What is it, twenty thousand saints supposed to be buried there?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Morgan said. ‘Certainly that’s what all the pilgrims thought, what plenty of them still think, the number of them that come every year. Used to say that four trips to the island was the same as one visit to Rome.’ He shook his head. ‘God knows. I just think it’s a special place, that’s all. I don’t know what you’re up to over there and I’m not sure I want to, but you need to remember that.’

‘Are you going to wait for us?’ Thorne asked.

‘Well, I wouldn’t normally, but me and my dad need to service the lighthouse anyway, so we might as well hang around and take you back. I want to be away before dark, mind.’

‘You and me both,’ Thorne said.

‘Gives you about seven hours, I reckon.’

‘Your job to do the lighthouse, then?’

‘Yeah, when I’m not being a boatman and when we’re not being lobster fishermen. Need to do all sorts if you want to make an honest living these days.’ He turned, flashed a smile at Thorne, showing off a chipped front tooth. ‘Well, I suppose the likes of you are doing all right. Now that there’s a lot more people trying to make a living
dis
honestly.’

They fell into a silence, the boat smashing through waves which were suddenly a lot higher as they drew close to the tip of the peninsula. Thorne turned to look at Holland and saw that he was deep in conversation with Wendy Markham. He had no idea if Holland had managed to get hold of any seasickness pills, but he certainly looked all right.

It was Thorne who was starting to feel his guts churning, the sweat prickling on his neck and forehead.

He hadn’t said anything the day before, when Holland had been talking about trying to get tablets; hoping he would get away without showing himself up on what was, after all, only a short crossing. But he was already feeling as though he might not make it.

He had never been good on the water. He remembered holidays to Devon when he was a kid and nightmarish outings with his dad, on small boats, fishing for mackerel. He had always gone, not wanting to miss out on the time with his father, but if by some miracle he did manage to get through the trip without throwing up, the smell of the fish later on when his dad was gutting their catch would usually do the trick.

Now, he took deep breaths, kept his eyes fixed on the horizon through the dirty window of Morgan’s cabin.

‘You all right?’

Thorne nodded, hoped it wasn’t going to be too much longer. ‘I meant to say, I met your cousin last night. Eddie, is it? He was propping up the bar in the Black Horse.’

Morgan said nothing for ten, fifteen seconds. Then he muttered, ‘Arsehole.’

A minute or two later, they were rounding the peninsula and Thorne got his first look at their destination.

‘There you go,’ Morgan said. ‘Bardsey Island. Well… that’s what the
English
call it.’

‘What do you call it?’

‘Ynnis Enlli in Welsh. Island of Tides. Bloody tricky ones at that…’

Approaching as they were – from behind the mountain that dominated one side of the island – the first view was of cliffs and the snowflake specks of wheeling seabirds against the black crags. The island was shaped like a giant, humpbacked tadpole; no more than a mile from end to end and about half as wide. Thorne looked up at the cliffs, the hundred-foot drop on to the rocks, but having studied a map, he knew that where they would be coming ashore the landscape would be very different.

Morgan turned, saw Thorne looking. ‘Special, like I said…’

Thorne became aware of shouting, a commotion on the deck behind him, and he turned to see that Nicklin was trying in vain to stand up. Fletcher had a hand firmly on his shoulder in an effort to stop him and while Batchelor just stared out at the cliffs, Jenks was leaning across him to help. Holland was already on his feet while Howell and her team had moved back, as far away as they could get from the struggle.

‘What’s going on?’ Morgan shouted.

Nicklin tried again and was quickly pushed back down. Thorne saw something very dark flash across Nicklin’s face, but when he turned to look up at Thorne, there was no sign of it.

‘I just want to get a better look at it,’ he said.

‘Don’t want you hurting yourself, do we?’

‘It’s been a long time…’

Thorne considered for a few seconds, then gave Fletcher the nod. The prison officer moved his hand from Nicklin’s shoulder, allowing him to get slowly and unsteadily to his feet. Jenks kept hold of one arm to prevent him falling.

‘Happy memories?’ Thorne asked.

‘Not especially.’ Nicklin stared past him towards the island, squinting into the spray. ‘Just that last time I saw it, I was somebody else.’

The engines were switched off and, as the boat was guided gently towards the dock, they watched what looked very like a welcoming committee walking down a steep track to meet them. Once ashore, the boatman waited at the foot of the ladder to help each of his passengers down, taking their heavy rucksacks from them, though all but a couple of them waved aside the offer of a steadying hand. Just before he took his turn to jump down into the shallow water, Simon looked back at the boy he assumed to be the son of Mr Morgan, the boatman. The boy, who was probably eleven or twelve, had been staring at Simon and some of the others all the way across. Once or twice, he had ventured shyly out of the cabin and moved to within a few feet of them on the deck, only to be called gruffly back or given a job to do or just firmly warned to keep away.

‘Huw. What have I told you…?’

Simon waved, then jumped from the ladder.

He didn’t see the boy wave back.

One of the three staff members who had travelled with them – two men and a woman – clapped their hands together, shouted for silence and began gathering the boys into a group. When the man and woman who had walked down to meet the boat reached them, there were handshakes all round. The woman who appeared to be in charge pulled a knitted shawl tight around her shoulders and said she hoped the crossing had been a smooth one. She looked at the boys and said, ‘We’ve got something back at the house if anyone has a dodgy tummy.’

A boy next to Simon said, ‘
Tummy
?
For fuck’s sake…’

The five staff members and eight boys began walking up the hill towards the line of buildings spread out at the foot of the mountain. Simon had no idea if there were only going to be eight of them. Perhaps there were more to come, or maybe others had arrived already.

For some reason, there were no members of staff at the back of the group as the caterpillar made slow and untidy progress uphill, so things fell apart fairly rapidly. The group stretched out and broke up until some of the boys began drifting from the path. One by one, a few dropped their rucksacks and went tearing down across the fields towards the sea; yelling and laughing like lunatics as they ran and pushed one another, sending sheep scattering in all directions. A staff member shouted, hands cupped around his mouth, then went running after them. Simon heard the woman say something about the new arrivals needing to let off steam. She stood and watched them, but she was seemingly more bothered about the wind messing her hair up, and after a minute she said that the boys were too hungry to go very far. That there wasn’t very far
to
go, even if they wanted to. The man she was talking to looked unconvinced, but sure enough, all those who had broken ranks had fallen back in or been rounded up by the time they reached the farm.

It was like a toy set Simon remembered having as a kid. Even the colours were the same as they’d been on the box. A bright red door and red tiles on the roof, the white geese and that lush sweep of green pretty much wherever you looked.

There was a massive, old-fashioned farmhouse, with a walled area for ducks and chickens. There were barns and outbuildings and it smelled of pig-shit. Boys were already complaining about the smell, but the woman said that they’d soon get used to it. She told them that they would be eating as soon as everyone had been inside for a wash, but that it would be the last time anyone cooked for them. From now on, they would be taking turns to cook for one another. They’d be working out their own menus and then preparing meals using local livestock and fresh vegetables grown on the farm; that they would grow themselves.

One of the boys said something about growing herbs. The woman seemed pleased, then saw that the boy and his mates were laughing. She said, ‘You can’t grow
that
kind of herb, I’m afraid.’

Simon hoped that he would not be chosen to do the cooking first. He couldn’t cook anything except pot noodles and toast maybe, but it wasn’t his fault. How were you ever supposed to learn how to cook when the person whose job it was to teach you all that stuff was nodding out on the sofa with a needle in her arm? Shooting up red wine or vinegar or whatever because she couldn’t afford proper gear. Stood to reason that you were never going to be Delia Smith while that was going on, didn’t it? When all you could do was eat beans out of a can or try and nick enough money for a bag of chips.

He didn’t blame her for anything else.

He’d made a mess of things all by himself.

The whole cooking thing though, that was definitely down to her…

In the farmyard, they were instructed to take off their boots, told that there would be special indoor footwear provided. Simon slumped down on a cold stone step to take his muddy Nikes off. He watched one of the men come out of the farmhouse with what looked like a basket of Chinese slippers or something. One of the boys said it was stupid and another aimed a kick at a passing chicken. He asked why they couldn’t wear their own trainers and some of the other boys joined in. He started to get worked up and said it was an infringement of his ‘basic human rights’.

A boy, who Simon had been a row or two behind in the minibus, sat down next to him. He seemed a year or two older than Simon, sixteen or seventeen maybe, though Simon was a couple of inches taller. ‘They don’t get it, do they?’ the boy said.

‘Get what?’ Simon asked.

They sat and watched as the argument continued.

‘You get to wear your own trainers in a YOI, and it’s like a status thing, isn’t it? Kids wearing the most expensive ones, having special edition ones brought in to show that they’re bad men, or whatever. This place is different though. They don’t want any of that stuff going on, because they think it’ll make us… I don’t know,
calmer
or something. That’s why we’ve got to cook, why we’ve got to grow our own grub. It’s all about
trust
and
responsibility
.’

Simon watched and listened, nodded occasionally. The boy used his fingers to make speech marks around certain words, like he was taking the piss. He turned away and stared back down the hill towards the boat, the red and white striped lighthouse beyond.

‘Yeah, right,’ Simon said. He pulled off a muddy boot. His socks were soaking wet. ‘Trust and responsibility. I get it.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, they’re mad as a box of frogs.’ The boy turned back, grinning. ‘But it’s a damn sight nicer than Feltham, right? Smells better too…’

Simon laughed and the boy seemed pleased and laughed right along with him. The boy stuck out a hand, saw it was muddy and wiped it on his jeans before offering it a second time.

‘Stuart,’ he said.

The boat bumped gently along the thick layer of tyres that had been fixed to the wall. Showing remarkable agility for a man who must have been in his sixties, Bernard Morgan hopped from the boat on to the walkway and hurried towards a line of small metal sheds and a larger wooden boathouse on the dockside. As Huw Morgan restarted the engines and backed the boat away, Thorne watched the old man climb into a specially adapted tractor, similar to the one that Owen had driven back on the mainland, and use it to push the wheeled trailer down the slipway and into the water. Once it was safely in position on the trailer, the
Benlli III
was hauled out of the water, up on to Bardsey Island.

‘
Croeso
,’ Huw Morgan said.

Thorne looked at him.

‘Welcome…’

Nicklin said, ‘Thank you, but actually I’ve been here before. A long time ago.’ He smiled. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Huw.’

Morgan stared for a few seconds, nonplussed, then walked past Nicklin to the ladder.

By the time the passengers had disembarked and most of the equipment had been offloaded, Bernard and Huw Morgan had driven back from the lighthouse in a two-seater quad bike with a small trailer-box attached to the back. Huw hopped off the bike and moved to help unload the remainder of the gear. He nodded back at the trailer. ‘Stick it all in there,’ he said. ‘We’ll run it up.’ He looked along a narrow track twisting up towards the mountain, a quarter of a mile or so away to their right. Five or six properties of various sizes were dotted along the base, in a line leading towards the cliff tops they had passed on their way in. Thorne could just make out thin ribbons of smoke drifting from a chimney or two and what looked like an enormous cross near what he guessed to be the ruins he had read about.

The convoy moved slowly.

The quad bike bumped up the track, the trailer bouncing and rattling behind it across rough ground thick with mud and stones. Howell moved alongside, keen to point out that there was delicate equipment on board and, after she had politely requested that they take things a little easier, Morgan slowed down still further to a notch above walking pace. Behind them, Thorne and Holland led the way, with Nicklin, Batchelor and the two prison officers a pace or two behind and Markham, Karim and Barber the grim-faced CSI bringing up the rear.

Morgan had been spot on about the weather; the difference in temperature between the island and the mainland. They had been walking for no more than a few minutes and Thorne was already sweating. He tugged off his waterproof jacket, unzipped the fleece beneath.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ Howell said, taking off a sweater and tying it around her waist. ‘Should make our job a bit easier though.’

Five minutes later, Thorne watched the bike come to a halt fifty yards or so ahead of them, and a middle-aged man emerge from one of the buildings to meet them. The man exchanged a few words with Huw Morgan and his father, then strode down the track towards Thorne and the others. He was tall and distinguished-looking, with silver hair that poked from the sides of a flat cap and a walking stick that appeared to be for show as much as anything. He proffered a hand and, with no more than a trace of a Welsh accent, introduced himself as Robert Burnham.

‘I’m the island warden.’ He raised his stick and pointed back towards one of the cottages. ‘And I also look after the Bird and Field Observatory up there.’ He smiled. ‘Jack of all trades, like most people around here.’ He spread his arms out. ‘Welcome to Bardsey.’

‘Thank you,’ Thorne said. To his ears, the man sounded more English than anything. Posh English.

‘Right, we’ve got a base organised for you up there,’ Burnham said. ‘So it’s just a question of sorting out the admin.’

Thorne blinked. ‘Sorry?’

‘Well, looking at what’s in that trailer, it’s fairly obvious you’re planning on doing a bit of digging.’

‘A
lot
of digging,’ Howell said.

‘Well, OK, but I wasn’t told about any digging and as of now I haven’t seen any paperwork to that effect.’ He looked from Thorne to Howell and back again. ‘I mean, I’m sure you’ve got the necessary permissions.’

Thorne said, ‘I don’t understand.’ He was trying to sound cheerful, to appear mildly bemused at what was happening, but a heaviness was already starting to gather around his shoulders.

‘Look, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.’ Burnham’s eyes were flicking nervously towards Batchelor and Nicklin, towards their handcuffs. ‘Why don’t we get everyone inside, get some refreshments organised and we can sort everything out.’ He turned and walked back up the track, leaving Thorne and those behind him with little choice but to follow.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Holland asked.

Thorne shook his head. The heaviness was growing, the irritation becoming something far stronger. The nausea on the boat had quickly put paid to the good mood he’d been in after reading the extracts from Nicklin’s letters, and now there seemed little chance of it coming back.

They walked up the track, then up a short flight of weathered steps to a small stone building. The sign on the door, white letters etched on to black slate, read
YSGOL
.

‘The school,’ Burnham said.

‘So how many kids are there here?’ Thorne asked.

‘Oh no, it’s not used any more.’ Burnham pushed the heavy wooden door open. ‘Not been a school for sixty-odd years, but we still call it that. You should all be comfortable in here. It’s as good a place as any to use as a base, I would have thought.’

One by one they walked through the outer door, turned sharply right and trooped through another into a damp-smelling hall which, even when the school had been fully functional, could not have seated more than a dozen children. The dark parquet flooring was worn and had come away in several places. There were cupboards lining a whitewashed wall, while the grimy windows in the other allowed no more than the suggestion of light in from the outside. At one end of the room, beneath a small stage area, was a piano covered in a filthy dust sheet, directly opposite a trestle table which had been set up near the door and laid with a shiny plastic tablecloth. A hotplate was connected to a gas bottle. Pump Thermos flasks of tea and coffee sat next to a large bottle of milk and a bag of sugar. There was a tray of sandwiches covered in cling-film.

‘Just help yourselves,’ Burnham said.

Before any of his team could take up the offer, Thorne raised a hand. Said, ‘Can we just get this permission business sorted out first.’

Burnham explained that the island was actually administered by a privately funded trust, dedicated to protecting its wildlife and archaeological heritage. ‘I’m just the manager really,’ he said. ‘But I’ve not been told anything about digging and obviously that’s problematic.’

‘Why?’ Thorne was making less effort to hide his irritation. ‘Why is it
problematic
?’

‘The island’s an area of Special Scientific Interest. It’s also a place of huge religious significance. There are rules and regulations.’

‘I was told I couldn’t bring cadaver dogs,’ Howell said. She pulled off the cap she had been wearing to reveal ash-blonde hair cut very short. She ran fingers through it.

‘That’s right.’ Burnham blanched a little at the word. ‘There are strictly no dogs allowed on the island.’ He stepped forward and laid a hand on Thorne’s arm. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s just an administrative snafu of some kind. I’m sure your boss or whoever it is will have completed the necessary paperwork.’

Thorne wasn’t so sure. He had known many investigations hamstrung by the failure to fill in a form and convictions overturned because someone forgot to dot an ‘I’ or cross a ‘T’. It was somewhat hypocritical of him to be so irritated, he knew that, because following procedure of any sort was not exactly his strong point. His strengths lay elsewhere and he left it to others to make up for his… failings in that department. After all, there were plenty paid to be little more than pen pushers, so Thorne believed he was justified in counting on them to push those pens in the right direction.

‘What do you suggest?’ he asked.

‘Well, obviously in the first instance I’ll need to speak to the trust director,’ Burnham said. ‘He’s back on the mainland.’

‘I’ll speak to my boss, too.’

‘Yes, good idea. Belt and braces is always the best approach with this kind of thing and like I said, I’m sure it’s nothing that’s going to hold you up for very long.’ Burnham paused, seeing that Thorne was already frowning at his mobile phone. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘That’s going to be tricky.’

Thorne looked at him. Waited.

‘If you’re Vodafone, you’re completely out of luck. O2 isn’t a lot better, unless you want to go to the top of the lighthouse.’

‘Seriously?’ Holland said.

‘It’s the mountain,’ Burnham said. He nodded towards the window, even though nothing could be seen through it. ‘Blocks almost everything out. Orange is the best bet, but you’ll still need to head along the track for a few minutes until you’re past the line of the peak, then you might be lucky and pick up a signal.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Thorne said. His contract was with Orange, but his phone still showed
NO
SERVICE
.

‘What were you expecting?’ Burnham used his stick to push at the powdery edge of a loose parquet tile. ‘We’re almost completely cut off here. There’s no running water or mains power. Compost toilets…’

‘Shitting in a bucket,’ Karim said.

‘Basically.’

Thorne reached into his pocket and took out his Airwave radio. Holland and Karim both had them. ‘What about these?’

Huw Morgan stepped forward and peered over Thorne’s shoulder at the unit in his hand. ‘Yeah, those should be OK,’ he said. ‘Not to make calls, mind, and you won’t be able to reach anybody on the mainland, but should be OK for keeping in touch with each other. Switch to the main maritime frequency, you’ll be all right.’

Thorne turned to look at him. He had forgotten that the boatman was still with them.

‘We’ve got a receiver up at the lighthouse,’ Morgan said. ‘We can listen in on the boats doing illegal fishing. See, it’s only me and my dad supposed to lay the lobster and crab pots round here, but that doesn’t stop plenty of others trying to muscle in —’

Thorne had no wish to get dragged into a dispute about fishing rights. He held up a hand. Said, ‘Let’s get this done then.’

‘I’ve got a satellite phone across at the observatory office,’ Burnham said. He saw Thorne shaking his head. ‘I don’t tend to carry it around with me.’

‘Well, I’d be very grateful if you kept it with you from now on,’ Thorne said. ‘In case anyone needs to get hold of me and I don’t happen to be at the top of the lighthouse.’

‘Yes,’ Burnham said. ‘Absolutely not a problem.’

Thorne walked towards the door, still staring at his phone. Fletcher and Jenks were already making themselves tea and Karim was ripping the cling-film off the sandwiches.

‘Like I said, if you keep walking up towards the abbey… towards the ruins, you should hopefully start to get a signal in a few minutes…’

After being cut off twice and perching precariously on a low drystone wall, Thorne managed to get through to Russell Brigstocke long enough to hear the DCI swearing for almost half a minute without drawing breath, then blaming it all on the detective superintendent.

Thorne wasn’t surprised.

You didn’t get very far up the greasy pole without learning how to pass the buck. He suspected that there was a course you were encouraged to attend as soon as you were promoted beyond inspector. A weekend of seminars in buck-passing, with refresher courses in fence-sitting and advanced arse-licking thrown in for the extra-ambitious. Brigstocke promised he would get everything sorted as soon as he was off the line.

‘How’s Nicklin?’ he asked.

‘He seems fine,’ Thorne said.

‘You know what I mean.’

‘What?’

‘How’s he being with
you
?’

Thorne did not want to get into the letters that Nicklin’s mother had handed over, or that moment in the toilets at the service station, or the way his guts jumped whenever Nicklin smiled at him. He did not want to talk about it or think about it any more than he had to.

‘He’s enjoying it,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I bet.’

‘He likes it when we’re on the back foot.’

‘Well we need to get on the front foot again,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Get this boy’s body found and get Mr Nicklin back to Long Lartin. See how much he enjoys that.’

‘We’re not going to find anything, Russell. Not unless we’re allowed to dig.’

‘I know.’

‘This forensic archaeologist seems good, and I’m no expert but I reckon she’s definitely going to need a shovel.’

Brigstocke began to swear again, this time as much at Thorne as anybody else. ‘I’ll sort it,’ he said.

Back at the school, they sat around awkwardly, killing time.

Huw Morgan and his father had gone, presumably to begin work over at the lighthouse. A middle-aged woman, who Burnham introduced as his wife, came in to replenish the sandwiches, then left again without talking to anyone, her husband included. Burnham clutched his satellite phone as though his life depended on it, while cups of tea were drunk and small groups conducted muted conversations around the edges of the gloomy hall.

Holland, Markham and Karim. Howell and her CSI.

Thorne got up and walked towards the trestle table, past Nicklin and Batchelor, whose handcuffs had been removed for as long as it took them to eat a couple of sandwiches each and who were now sitting silently with Fletcher and Jenks, the four of them in a row beneath the line of grimy windows. Thorne helped himself to a couple of sandwiches, knowing he might not get a chance to eat anything else until they were on the road back to Long Lartin.

He did not hear Robert Burnham moving up behind him.

‘Sorry,’ the warden said.

‘It’s fine.’

‘You must think I’m a dreadful bloody jobsworth.’