Nicklin did not seem unhappy. ‘Fill your boots,’ he said. ‘I think I’d probably tell it better, but it’s your funeral.’

Batchelor sat back, waited until Jenks had removed his arm, then nodded, to reassure the officer that there would be no need to replace it. ‘Yes, I got a letter,’ he said. ‘I’d had a lot of letters… from Nathan’s family, I’m sure you can imagine the kind of thing. Wanting me to rot in hell. The horrible stuff they wanted to happen to my wife, to our daughter.’ He swallowed. ‘Our other daughter.

‘This one was something different though. It was a letter from Nathan’s best friend, Jack. He was writing because he wanted me to know that Nathan had loved Jodi more than anything in the world and that he would never have split up with her. Jack said he knew that was true.’ He shook his head, barely perceptible, as though he could still not quite believe what he was about to say. ‘He knew… because it was him that had sent the text message.’

Thorne looked around the room, saw the stunned reactions and guessed that he was wearing much the same expression. He let out the breath he had not realised he was holding.

‘In his letter, Jack told me he’d taken Nathan’s phone when he wasn’t looking,’ Batchelor said. ‘That he’d sent that text to Jodi as a joke. He wanted me to know that Nathan hadn’t had anything to do with it, that I’d murdered someone who was completely innocent and was as devastated by Jodi’s death as anybody. It had all just been a stupid… joke.’ Batchelor blinked slowly, screwing his eyes up. ‘I got that letter and I… went to pieces.’

Thorne reached for his cup and filled his dry mouth with tepid coffee.

‘Jesus,’ Markham said.

Nicklin grunted a laugh. ‘Yeah, well not even he could help.’ He looked around the room. ‘You do know Jeff’s a little bit Goddy, right?’ He nodded, as though that explained something. ‘Nearly lost his faith, that letter turning up like that. Understandable though, you find something like that out. That’s when we got close, isn’t it, Jeff?’ He looked across, but Batchelor had gone back to studying that fascinating piece of worn carpet. Nicklin carried on as though he was not there at all. ‘He was all over the place, back then, poor bastard. I pretty much talked him round. Saved his life, or good as.’ He leaned back, pleased with himself, rolled his head around, working the stiffness from his neck. ‘What did I tell you, though? One hell of a story, isn’t it?’

Bethan Howell was the first to move. She stood up and lifted her jacket from the back of the chair. ‘I need to get some air.’

Nicklin nodded towards the window. The rain was starting to beat more heavily against it, thrown against the glass on angry gusts. ‘It’s horrible out there,’ he said.

Howell began to put her jacket on. She said, ‘It’s horrible in here.’

FIFTY

Howell was sheltering beneath the front porch. Thorne had followed her and for a minute they stood in silence. They stared out through the curtain of rain across the dark fields, the wind riffling through Howell’s short blonde hair and whipping the smoke from her cigarette into Thorne’s face.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s nice.’

‘You sure you don’t want one?’

Thorne shook his head.

‘It’s very impressive.’

‘What?’

‘That degree of self-control.’

‘Not about everything,’ Thorne said.

Howell took a drag, sighing out the smoke like she had really needed the nicotine hit. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘That story.’

‘I know.’

‘Your daughter dies like that, you lose it and beat a kid to death, then you find out it was the wrong kid.’ She looked at him. ‘That it was just a bloody joke.’

Thorne nodded, shivered a little.

‘I’ve got two kids,’ Howell said. ‘Eighteen and sixteen, and they’re still doing stupid things like that on each other’s phone. Messing with the other one’s Facebook account, playing jokes, you know? Fraping, they call it.’

‘Right.’

‘It only takes one careless remark, doesn’t it?’

They said nothing for a few moments, then Howell half-turned and nodded back at the front door. ‘He loved it, though, didn’t he? Nicklin. Like Batchelor said, he feeds off stuff like that.’

‘I should have shut him up earlier,’ Thorne said.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Truth was, I wanted to know the end of the story.’

‘We all did.’

‘I was at the farm,’ Thorne said. ‘When I went to get the food, you know? We were talking about pollution… how there’s no pollution here at all.’

Howell nodded. ‘Yeah, the island’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?’

Thorne knew that it was. He had seen it walking to the lighthouse, sensed it standing at the abbey ruins. ‘It was,’ he said. ‘We’ve ruined it.’

‘You’re being daft.’

‘Bringing him here. That’s as much pollution as anywhere needs. Nicklin and the reason we brought him. It’s like we caused an oil slick or something. Like we turned up and dumped shit everywhere.’

‘Maybe you should come back,’ Howell said.

Thorne looked at her. The lamp hanging from the porch cast just enough light to see the fine spray across her forehead, her eyes squinting against the rain and the smoke.

‘Like Burnham said. You should come back another time.’

Thorne shook his head. ‘There’s always going to be associations, isn’t there? How much peace are you ever going to get, when all you can see is his face grinning at you and bones in a plastic bag?’

Howell watched him for a while. ‘I’m guessing you see his face quite often.’

‘More often than I’d like,’ Thorne said. ‘There’s been a few like that down the years, but he’s the worst.’ He sucked at a curl of passing smoke. ‘I hope he hasn’t got into your head.’

‘No chance,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s strictly dead people’s faces for me. Most of the people I… find don’t have faces any more, so I make them up. I don’t know what Simon Milner or Eileen Bennett looked like, but I’ll imagine it.’ She gestured back at the front door. ‘Trust me, I’ll have forgotten that arsehole’s face tomorrow.’

Thorne wasn’t sure that he believed her, but he stood for a few seconds in silence, thinking just how wonderful such a forgetting would be. He reached into his pockets, producing his phone from one and a torch from the other. He turned up his collar and nodded along the track. ‘I need to make a quick call.’

Howell took a final drag. Said, ‘You can stay here. I’m going back inside.’

Thorne explained that he had no wish to get soaked, but that the abbey ruins had so far proved to be the only place where he could get a mobile signal.

‘Typical,’ she said. ‘Six-hundred-year-old ruins on an all-but deserted island and I can’t get a decent signal in my front room in the middle of Bangor.’

‘Maybe those monks knew something we didn’t.’

‘What, silence and celibacy? I don’t think I’m interested.’

‘Didn’t they also make shedloads of wine?’ Thorne said. ‘They were probably pissed most of the time.’

‘That’s a fair point,’ Howell said. ‘Talking of which…’

She was crushing her cigarette against the wet stone wall as Thorne turned on the torch and stepped out into the rain.

‘So where’s everyone sleeping?’ Helen asked.

‘Still not sorted it out.’

‘I presume you’ll be staying close to Nicklin.’

‘Yeah, I’ll have to be.’

‘Not too close though, right?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

Standing in the ruined belltower, Thorne was largely sheltered from the worst of the weather, though enough rain to piss him off still came in through the ‘windows’ when the wind blew in the right direction.

‘What about the forensic team and what’s-her-name? The CSM?’

Thorne turned his face away from the wind and water. ‘Markham.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

He raised his voice above the growl of the surf crashing on to the rocks just ahead and below him. ‘Wendy Markham.’