FORTY-FIVE

Sleeping arrangements had yet to be finalised, but it was decided that Chapel House would be the best location for everyone to eat dinner. Having been occupied by the forensic team the night before, the chill of winter vacancy had already been taken off the place. The plastic covers had been removed from the soft furnishings and wood brought in for the fire. A pair of Calor gas hotplates was up and running.

The emergency rations generously supplied by the Blacks turned out to be both limited and strictly vegetarian. It made the choice of recipe simple enough, but did not go down very well with certain members of the team.

Fletcher had stared, incredulous, as the ingredients were taken out of the bag. ‘It’s like bloody student food,’ he said. A sing-song, Brummie whine.

‘How would you know?’ Jenks nudged his colleague aside and picked up a tin.

‘For God’s sake… beans?’ Fletcher looked thoroughly disgusted. ‘It’s a farm, isn’t it? Don’t they keep chickens or whatever?’

‘Look, it’s quick and it’s easy and we can make plenty of it.’

Fletcher walked out of the small kitchen and sat down. ‘I tell you what, the only way I could stomach living here is if they flew a Nando’s takeaway in once a week…’

If the preparation of rice with tinned tomatoes and kidney beans was straightforward, the table plan was rather more convoluted. While Jenks performed cooking duties and Holland and Fletcher sat with Nicklin and Batchelor in the living room, Thorne tried to come up with the seating arrangement that would best suit the somewhat unconventional group that was gathered for the first dinner shift. With Karim maintaining the watch over the body in the chapel and Howell, Markham and Barber still working at the crime scene, the first sitting would involve only Thorne and Holland, along with the two prisoners and prison officers.

Having wrestled with several permutations, Thorne eventually settled on an arrangement which saw Nicklin and Batchelor seated at either end of the small dining table, with a cop and a prison officer separating them, one of each on either side.

‘Are we going to have those little cards with our names on?’ Nicklin was watching Thorne from the living room. ‘That’s always a nice touch.’

Thorne ignored him.

Nicklin lifted his wrists. ‘How about handcuffs as napkin rings?’

‘How about you keeping your mouth shut?’

‘Seriously, I reckon prison-chic could be the next big thing in designer tableware.’

Thorne went back to ignoring him.

Twenty minutes later, Jenks laid down a large saucepan of rice and another of tomatoes and beans, and the people around the table began helping themselves. There was a plastic bowl of grated cheese and some Tabasco sauce Jenks had managed to find at the back of a cupboard. There was bottled water and defrosted wholemeal bread, which Nicklin and Batchelor were quick to take pieces of, as they were both using it as a substitute for cutlery.

Nicklin pushed food against the bread with his fingers, then brought it quickly to his mouth. He chewed, shaking his head. ‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ he said, mouth still half-full. ‘We do have a basic right to eat like human beings.’ He looked from Thorne to Fletcher and back again. ‘They let us have cutlery in prison, you know.’

‘Plastic cutlery,’ Fletcher said.

‘There’s a lot more officers around in prison,’ Thorne said. ‘With weapons.’ He slowly and deliberately used his fork to gather another mouthful for himself. ‘I can’t take the risk, can I?’

‘Not even a spoon?’ Nicklin wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Come on, how much damage can anyone do with a spoon?’ He reached for more bread and carried on eating, clearly enjoying the reaction from those who were only too well aware of exactly what damage he had done in Belmarsh a decade earlier.

‘What about you, Jeff?’ Holland turned to Batchelor. ‘You think we’re denying your basic human rights?’

Batchelor shrugged. ‘Not really.’

‘Because you’re more than welcome to make an official complaint when we get back.’ Holland glanced across at Fletcher, sensing a receptive audience. ‘There’s probably a form to fill in where you can describe how traumatised you were by the lack of proper condiments.’

Fletcher laughed and Holland looked pleased with himself.

‘It’s fine,’ Batchelor said. He used a chunk of bread to push some of his food from one side of the plate to another.

‘Actually, Al, this isn’t too bad after all,’ Fletcher said.

‘See?’ Jenks said.

‘I mean, you’re not Jamie Oliver or anything, but it’s tasty enough.’ He reached for another spoonful of rice, then put half back in the saucepan when Thorne reminded him there were four more people yet to be fed. ‘Don’t get me wrong, be even better with some meatballs or a leg of chicken in it, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.’

‘Suffocation, I reckon,’ Nicklin said.

Thorne looked at him. ‘What?’

‘The most effective way to kill someone if all you had to do it with was bread.’ Nicklin nodded, thinking it through. ‘You fill their mouth with it, block their nose off…’

‘What the hell are you on about?’ Fletcher asked.

‘If you want to get rid of someone badly enough, you use what’s knocking around, don’t you?’

‘All right,’ Fletcher said. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Of course you do.’ Nicklin pushed some more food into his mouth and licked his fingers. ‘And seeing as I’m not being allowed any cutlery, I’d be forced to improvise.’

Fletcher pointed, said, ‘I think you need to shut the hell up, right now.’

‘Bloody hell, Mr Fletcher.’ Nicklin widened his eyes, as though taken aback. ‘Keep your hair on. I wasn’t being serious, was I?’

Thorne looked across at the prison officer, who was suddenly looking seriously rattled. It was exactly as Thorne had explained it to Nicklin a minute or so before. Normally, someone like Fletcher would have a great many more of his colleagues around him and, even then, a professional distance was always observed. There would never be this degree of… intimacy with a prisoner, and certainly not one like Stuart Nicklin. Yes, there was a relationship of sorts, a civility that was maintained wherever possible for the good of both sides. He would do what needed doing but, at the end of the day, it was Fletcher’s job to bang the likes of Nicklin up every night and walk away.

They were not supposed to be breaking bread at the same table.

‘No, because if I was being serious,’ Nicklin said, ‘I’d just use this…’ He held up a fork and, for a second, everyone at the table froze.

Fletcher shouted and pushed his chair back hard, jumping to his feet at the same moment that Thorne did; that Nicklin dropped the fork on to the table and raised his hands.

‘You took your eye off it, didn’t you, Mr Fletcher?’

Fletcher snatched the fork back, breathing heavily, relief quickly giving way to rage and the look on his face suggesting that he would like nothing more than to drive the fork straight into Nicklin’s face. Nicklin stared right back at him and then turned his eyes to Thorne. They were wide and bright, as though he were happily feeding off the tension that was suddenly fizzing around the table.

‘Let’s get the cuffs back on,’ Thorne said.

‘Calm down,’ Nicklin said. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything, obviously.’

‘Now.’

Nicklin meekly held his arms out. ‘I was just making a point.’

Thorne turned to Batchelor. ‘You finished?’ Batchelor nodded, but Thorne could see that his food had barely been touched. ‘You sure?’

‘Not hungry,’ Batchelor said.

Fletcher and Jenks were fastening the handcuffs back on to their prisoners’ wrists when the front door opened and Howell and Markham trooped in. As she stripped off her dirty plastic bodysuit, the archaeologist explained that Eileen Bennett’s body had now joined Simon Milner’s in the chapel and that Barber was still doing his penance by bringing the last of the equipment up. She tossed suit and gloves into the corner then, while Markham disposed of hers, she dropped into the seat that Thorne had vacated.