‘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?’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Tides House

There was a head count just before lights out, but everyone knew it was a waste of time, the screws included. They used to joke about it. The one with the straggly beard said he couldn’t count up to twelve anyway. The fact was, a couple of the lads would sneak out at least once a week and everybody knew it.