‘You’re kidding right?’

‘Some poor bugger’s got to do it, haven’t they?’ Thorne said.

THIRTY-THREE

Holland was still drinking when Thorne got back to the hotel. Proving definitively what an effective social lubricant alcohol could be, he was deep in conversation with a couple of the formerly surly locals at a table near the bar. Seeing Thorne in the doorway, they beckoned him across and demanded to know what he was drinking. Thorne told them that he was tired, that he had a stupidly early start in the morning, but they would not listen, pushing a chair towards him and insisting that he join them for a nightcap.

Holland went to get a round in and Thorne joined him at the bar. ‘We’ve all got an early start,’ he said. He told Holland they were going back to Bardsey and filled him in on the conversation with Bernard Morgan.

‘Nicklin was telling the truth then,’ Holland said.

Thorne was slowly and systematically tearing a beer mat into small pieces, laying them one on top of the other. He said, ‘Best way to make a lie convincing is to chuck a bit of truth in.’

‘So, what’s he lying about?’

‘No idea,’ Thorne said. He tore the final fragment of the beer mat into two and added the pieces to the pile. ‘I’m too bloody tired to think straight.’

Pritchard set the drinks down. He scribbled down the charges on a scrap of paper with Holland’s room number on it, then swept the pieces of the beer mat off the bar into his hand. Holland picked up two of the glasses, drank the top from one of them.

‘One more won’t hurt…’

They carried the drinks across to the table and the two local lads immediately began urging Holland to carry on with his story. Holland looked a little embarrassed, more so as they pressed him.

‘Come on, how many more did he kill, like?’

‘Was he the worst one you ever had?’

‘What happened when you got him into the interview room…?’

They hung on Holland’s every word as he described what could have been almost any interview, deliberately making the whole thing sound a lot less interesting than he might have done had Thorne not been sitting there. As he doubtless had been doing before. One of the lads nudged Thorne and said, ‘You heard this one? Bloke who cut his victims’ tongues out and kept each one as a souvenir in a different matchbox.’

Thorne nodded.

‘In a bloody matchbox.’

‘I know…’

As far as war stories went, he’d heard them all, told them all. The bare bones or a heavily embellished version, depending on his audience and the reaction he was looking for.

Kudos, when he craved it, or maybe just a free drink. Sex, occasionally.

‘I’d bloody love your job,’ one of the lads said. ‘Sounds fantastic.’

Holland tried to demur, but the man would not listen.

‘I got no problem with the blood and the bodies, nothing like that, and I mean, how good is it to actually have a chance to hurt some of these bastards? I know you’re not supposed to, there’s laws and all that, but I bet you still have the chance to get a dig in every now and again, right?’ He went to take a drink, but lost interest in it before the glass reached his mouth, so fired up was he about the job of his dreams. ‘It’s got the lot, hasn’t it?’ He looked at his mate, who nodded, excitedly. ‘Blood and gore and all the sick stuff, if that’s what you want… the chance to solve crime and put people away or whatever, and I bet you’re beating the birds away with a shitty stick, aren’t you?’ He looked at Holland, who could do no more than shrug and stare into his beer.

It was a very different assessment of the job than the one Thorne had been given half an hour before by Bernard Morgan. While it was hard to take the opinions of two beered-up idiots seriously, Thorne could not help wishing that their ill-informed enthusiasm was in some way justified.

That the old man had been wrong.

‘You all right?’ Holland asked.

‘Just knackered, like I said.’ He pushed his chair away from the table and told Holland he’d see him in the morning. He had not taken more than a couple of sips of his beer and asked Holland’s drinking companions if they fancied helping him out with it. They had divided up what was left between them before Thorne was on his feet.

Tonight, there was no boo-hooing coming from the adjacent cell and, though Nicklin guessed that Batchelor was only pretending to be asleep, he was grateful for the peace and quiet nonetheless.

He had thinking to do.

It was not the reason for doing it, not the main one at any rate, but he’d really enjoyed the reaction he’d got on the boat, when he’d casually told Thorne about the second body. He’d enjoyed the way they’d been with him ever since too. Solicitous and wary, both at the same time.

It was like telling a joke, wasn’t it?

It was all about the timing, and he’d got it, bang on.

It had been so great afterwards, sitting in the car and watching Thorne on the phone to his boss, stomping about in the mud; shouting and screaming and waving his arms around like a madman. It was obvious that they hadn’t got the first idea whether he was telling the truth or not. Thorne had been studying his face ever since they’d got off the boat, staring at him, looking for some hint. Why was he so suspicious, for heaven’s sake?

He wasn’t much of a copper, not if he couldn’t recognise an honest-to-goodness confession when he heard one.

Nicklin guessed that, by now, the decision had been taken to go back the next day. They might not have found out who the woman was yet, but it hardly mattered. They might not have been able to confirm anything he’d told them, but the simple fact was that they couldn’t afford to take the risk, could they?

That looming spectre of bad press…

They knew very well that Nicklin would find a way to get to the papers and tell them the same thing he’d told Thorne on the boat. This was a red-top’s dream after all. A story that wrote itself:

I OFFERED TO SHOW THEM HER BODY 

BUT THEY DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW! 

We can reveal that the grave of a long-missing poet will remain hidden, despite her killer offering the police chapter and verse… 

He got up and took the two steps across to the far wall. He leaned the side of his face against the cold brick.

‘Jeff… what did Thorne talk to you about?’

There was no answer, but he didn’t feel any need to push it. He would ask again in the morning and besides, he knew that Batchelor would not have said anything he had not been given permission to say. He walked slowly back to his bunk and lay down. His feet were sore and he could feel himself starting to stiffen, his back and his thighs. It certainly knocked you for six, being out and about all day. Marching backwards and forwards across those fields.

He thought about Thorne barging into his cell after him and shouting the odds, all fired up and full of himself. The stuff about his mum’s letters, the things he knew, who was in whose head, all that.

Nicklin had felt like the straight man in a freakish double act.

God, it had been so hard to keep a straight face.

THIRTY-FOUR

Thorne was staying in the same room he’d been given the night before and, with no further guests expected, he had more than a vague suspicion that they had not bothered to change the bed. He wondered if that was why he had been allocated the same room. Perhaps Pritchard thought a customer was less likely to make a fuss if it was only himself he could catch a whiff of on the sheets.

That aside, Thorne found the rust-spotted bathroom mirror and the cracked handle on the wardrobe door as oddly comforting as the curly wire on the TV remote. He lay on the bed in his underpants and a faded Willie Nelson T-shirt. The phone was pressed to his ear. Though the sound of the television was muted, he continued to flick back and forth between the channels.