The Bones Beneath Read Free

to overhear. ‘Look, Tom, nothing about this is run of the mill, I know that. Normal procedures will be going out of the window to a large extent. This stupid place you’ll be taking him back to, for a kick-off. It’s already throwing up certain… logistical nightmares, so I’m just saying you might have to do a fair amount of thinking on your feet.’
    Thorne nodded slowly and reached around for his jacket. ‘I’ve got a few conditions of my own,’ he said.
    Brigstocke waited.
    ‘I get to pick the rest of the team,’ Thorne said, standing up. ‘Not you and not the chief superintendent. And the
moment
me or anybody else starts to think that there’s no body to be found and that he’s just getting off on taking us all for mugs, I’ll have him and his boyfriend banged up again before his feet have touched the ground. Fair enough?’ Brigstocke opened his mouth, but Thorne hadn’t finished. He was already on his way to the door. ‘And I don’t want to hear about how much grief the chief constable’s getting from the
Sun
or the
Daily Mail
. I don’t care about MPs, I don’t even care about grieving mothers and I really couldn’t give a toss about that sodding barrel…’
     
    ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Holland said, now. He slapped his gloved hands together as he trudged around to the front of the car. He hunched his shoulders and nodded towards the prison entrance. ‘I hope somebody’s got the kettle on in there.’
    Thorne hummed agreement. He might even have said something about hoping so too, but in truth he could think of little beyond the reason he had risen so early after a sleepless night and watched the sun come up driving a hundred miles to Long Lartin prison. Little beyond the man who had brought him here.
    They walked towards the first of many gates, footsteps ringing against the tarmac and breath pluming from mouths and noses.
    The man who would be patiently waiting on the other side of that wall.
    They reached for warrant cards simultaneously.
    The man who put that twist in Thorne’s gut.
    ‘Here we go then,’ Holland said.
    Stuart Nicklin was the bad news.

TWO
    There
was
tea and there were also biscuits in a fancy tin, which were gratefully accepted despite being offered without too much in the way of goodwill. Holland tried smiling, then felt rather stupid and grimaced at Thorne as he turned away. He carried his tea across to the small sofa at one end of the long, thin office, leaving Thorne at the desk to deal with the red tape and the woman dispensing it.
    Thorne looked no happier about the situation than she did.
    The demeanour and attitude of Long Lartin’s deputy governor could most generously be described as businesslike, but Thorne felt sure that both prisoners and prison officers had a different word for it. On top of the fact that she was not what anyone would call ‘touchy-feely’, it quickly became apparent that Theresa Colquhoun was in no hurry. She had been tasked by the governor with completing the formalities necessary for a prisoner handover. This meant a good many forms to fill in. It meant risk assessment statements to be completed and ‘handover protocol’ guidance notes to be distributed and carefully read through. She had reservations about what had been agreed on this occasion between the Met and Her Majesty’s Prison Service and had told Thorne exactly what she thought while she’d poured the tea. Nonetheless, she was determined to carry out the job with a rigour which, to Thorne’s eye, bordered on compulsion.
    ‘This business is iffy enough as it is,’ she said. She tapped a manicured fingernail against the photograph of Stuart Nicklin clipped to the top of a file. ‘We don’t want to make a mistake before we’ve even started, do we?’
    Colquhoun was somewhere at the fag-end of her fifties. She was tall and angular and had seemingly done her best to avoid anything that might have softened her appearance. Her greying hair was fastened tightly back and