TEN

They cut north for a while, the single-lane B-road running almost parallel with the Welsh border, just a mile or so away across the fields. Though they were still in England, the small towns and villages they passed through had decidedly Celtic-sounding names: Gronwen, Gobowen, Morda. ‘You sure we haven’t taken a detour into Middle Earth?’ Holland said, clocking a road sign.

Jenks, who looked like he was no stranger to the world of fantasy fiction, laughed from the back seat. Said, ‘I’ll keep a lookout for Orcs.’

Once across the border, Thorne turned west and they made good progress through the Dee Valley, the Holyhead road almost precisely following the path of the river as it wound through Llangollen. To the left, the landscape was soon densely wooded with conifers, while hills rose steeply away on the other side of them, mist shrouding the higher peaks. Holland pointed out the ruins of an abbey, said that Sophie had mentioned it.

‘You wait until we get where we’re going,’ Nicklin said. ‘There’s remains way older than that.’

‘Nice to know,’ Thorne said.

‘Shame there won’t be time to enjoy the sights.’

‘We find the remains of that boy, I’m happy.’

‘You should try and come back,’ Nicklin said. ‘Bring your other half.’

Driving through the small town of Corwen, they passed a statue of a warrior on horseback brandishing a sword, a couple posing for photographs in front. Jenks wanted to know who the soldier was, but no answer was forthcoming. A mile or so down the road, Batchelor said, ‘It’s Owen Glendower. The statue.’

‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ Jenks asked.

‘Last proper Prince of Wales,’ Batchelor said. ‘Last one who was actually Welsh, anyway. He led a rebellion against the English at the start of the fifteenth century. Very much the father of Welsh nationalism.’

Thorne nodded. ‘One of those groups in the seventies and eighties who tried to burn the English out, weren’t they called the Sons of Glendower or something?’

‘That’s right,’ Batchelor said. ‘A bit like the Free Wales Army.’

‘Maybe there should be a statue of him setting fire to a holiday cottage instead,’ Holland said.

Nicklin laughed. ‘He loves his ancient history, Jeffrey does. Can’t get enough of it, still keeping his hand in. Always got his nose buried in some book, haven’t you, Jeff?’

‘I wish I knew a bit more, if I’m honest,’ Thorne said. He slowed for a set of temporary traffic lights, waited for the oncoming traffic. To his right, the hillside looked almost black, dotted with drifting, white clumps of grazing sheep. ‘All we got taught at school were dates, basically. Battle of Hastings, Wars of the Roses, whatever. I can still remember the dates, but I couldn’t tell you who was fighting or what they were fighting about.’

‘I can recommend a couple of books if you want,’ Batchelor said.

‘Wish I had time to read them,’ Thorne said.

‘Not so fond of recent history though, are you, Jeff?’ Nicklin turned in his seat to look at his fellow prisoner. ‘A few too many dead teenagers for his liking, isn’t that right?’

Batchelor blinked at him.

Fletcher laid a hand on Nicklin’s shoulder and gently eased him round again. ‘I think that’s enough now, Stuart.’

‘Just making conversation, Mr Fletcher,’ Nicklin said.

The lights changed and Thorne pulled away. Checking the rear-view as he put his foot down, Thorne could see how very pleased with himself Nicklin looked. As though he had just been congratulated for a remark that was hugely funny or clever as opposed to being pulled up for saying something nakedly malicious. It was clear to Thorne that the casual cruelty had not been about trying to make Batchelor feel bad. That had simply been the inevitable result.

It had all been a question of where the interest was.

Nicklin had been completely unable to tolerate someone else being the centre of attention, even if it was someone to whom he was supposedly close, even for just those few minutes of trivial conversation.

It had become necessary to adjust the focus.

Thorne remembered something he had been told many years earlier by a senior officer, when he had first joined a Murder Squad. There were, so he learned, two basic types when it came to murderers. There were those who would run from the scene of their crime as fast and as far as possible, and those who would hang around and offer to help the police with their enquiries.

There was little doubt as to which type Stuart Nicklin was.

Thorne was happy that Nicklin had been caught, happier still that he had been the one to catch him. Sometimes though, he regretted the part he had played in giving so much attention to a man who could bear almost anything except being ignored. In many ways, that man was still the child who had been expelled from school. The boy who had rescued Martin Palmer from the bullies, only to dominate and control him in unimaginable and perverse ways. Someone who had discovered, at an absurdly early age, how good it felt to hurt people and how much fun it was to make others do it for you.

Suddenly, Nicklin leaned forward, sighing heavily. He spoke in a theatrically whiny voice. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

‘God, you sound like one of my kids,’ Fletcher said.

Thorne had to admit, it was a very good impression of a bratty teenager. It hadn’t struck him so forcibly before that Nicklin was such a skilled mimic. It made sense, he supposed, when you had spent so much of your life pretending to be someone you were not.

Nicklin was clearly enjoying Fletcher’s reaction. ‘Are we? Are we nearly there?’

Thorne looked at the sat nav. There was less than sixty miles to go, but according to the timings on the screen, they were still an hour and a half away. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Only difference is I can’t threaten you with taking your PlayStation away,’ Fletcher said. ‘Or no more trips to McDonald’s.’

Nicklin turned to the prison officer and now his face was completely expressionless; eyes flat and unblinking. ‘Not very much anyone can threaten me with, Mr Fletcher…’

All but the last few miles of their journey took them across Snowdonia National Park: eight hundred square miles of mountains, forest and agricultural land, the majority of which remained privately owned. They drove west towards the coast for a while, the road twisting just beneath Blaenau Ffestiniog, the ‘hole’ in the middle of the park where the heritage railway and the once thriving slate mines drew thousands of tourists every year. As they skirted the edge of the huge, manmade reservoir at Trawsfynydd, Holland pointed out a pair of hulking concrete towers, stark against the mountains on the far side.

‘Looks like a Bond villain’s hideout,’ he said.

This time it was Nicklin who enthusiastically seized the chance to provide the required information. These were, he told them, the twin reactors of a now decommissioned nuclear power station; a place to which he and the other boys from Tides House had been brought on an educational visit a quarter of a century earlier.

‘They took us up to that steam railway at Ffestiniog too. Chuff, chuff, pennies on the line, all that. Then someone had the bright idea of teaching us all about nice, clean nuclear power.’ He stared across the water. ‘It was a bloody disaster though. There were a lot of dead fish in there and apparently animals had been dying all over the place… bit of a scandal at the time. I swear that when we left they waved Geiger counters all over us.’

Fletcher said, ‘Bloody hell.’

‘We were all fine,’ Nicklin said. ‘Assuming the Geiger counters were working properly. Mind you, this stuff can take years to affect you, can’t it? Maybe, if I’d ever had kids, they’d have been born with two heads or webbed feet or whatever.’

Thorne was thinking that Nicklin’s absence from the gene pool was no great loss. Glancing across and catching Holland’s eye, he could see that he was thinking much the same thing.