The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page A

outside the main doors, sheltered from the drizzle. Nearby, a man sat looking miserable at a small concession stand selling AA membership. Nicklin looked at Thorne to check he had permission, then, having been given the nod, he removed a tin of pre-rolled cigarettes from the pocket of his anorak. ‘Nice to see you’re not going to be an arsehole about all this.’
    ‘What about you?’ Thorne said.
     
    A few minutes later, while Nicklin was being cuffed and belted back into the car, Thorne called Yvonne Kitson.
    ‘She never gets his letters,’ Kitson told him. ‘She’s got no more idea than anyone else what all this is about.’
    ‘Thanks, Yvonne.’
    ‘It was worth a try.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘I’m on my way to see Sonia Batchelor now. Then I’ll grab some food and cut back down to visit the mother…’
    Once the call had ended, Holland got out of the car and walked across to join him.
    ‘Anything from Batchelor?’ Thorne asked.
    ‘Same story we’ve heard already,’ Holland said. ‘The stuff about what happened to McEvoy. Nicklin being worried he’s going to “fall down some stairs” or whatever.’
    ‘It’s all rubbish.’ Thorne checked to see he had not missed any messages then put his phone away. ‘We know that.’
    ‘Maybe Batchelor doesn’t know why he’s here any more than we do. Maybe he’s just doing what he’s told.’
    ‘We’ll see if Yvonne can find out something,’ Thorne said.
    ‘Mind you,’ Holland said. ‘That look on his face, when he asked me about Chloe. How old she was.’ They both turned towards the car. Nicklin was watching them through the side window, contentedly clutching the chocolate bar that Fletcher had unwrapped for him. ‘Right now, I could happily throw the fucker down a flight of stairs myself.’

EIGHT
    ‘Have you worked with Thorne before?’ Karim asked.
    ‘Only the once,’ Markham said. ‘For about half an hour, but I wasn’t even a CSM then.’
    ‘Well, you must have impressed him.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh yeah.’ Karim nodded, knowing. ‘Hand-picked we were, all of us. We’re the bloody A-Team!’
    It was an hour or so since they’d left the services. They’d skirted Shrewsbury, crossed the river Severn and now they were no more than a few miles from the Welsh border. Wendy Markham stared out of her window at the north Shropshire countryside, bleak and beautiful. The occasional small village, gone before she could take in any more than a pub sign or the steeple of a church: Knockin, Morton, Osbaston.
    She’d done a fair amount of staring since they’d set off, in an effort to avoid too many meandering conversations with Samir Karim. He seemed a decent enough bloke, keen to talk about his wife and kids at any opportunity, but he wasn’t nearly as entertaining as he thought he was. She wondered why on earth Thorne had hand-picked
him
. An exhibits officer needed to be thoughtful and meticulous, well organised. Glancing at him now, humming to himself and tapping fat fingers on the steering wheel, she found it hard to believe that Karim could organise himself out of bed in the morning.
    Come to think of it, why had Thorne picked
her
? She’d only been promoted to CSM a few weeks earlier.
    Six months or so before that, Markham had been a SOCO at a crime scene in Hackney, the location of what turned out to be the murder by administered overdose of a young man named Peter Allen. In a desperate hurry for information, Thorne had shamelessly played Markham off against another forensic officer; a wager as to which of them could get much-needed results back to him the quickest. He had promised her a case of Merlot and dinner if she won. She had very much enjoyed the wine, but the promised meal had failed to materialise.
    She’d done a spot of checking up later on and it had been a forgivable oversight, all things considered. Bearing in mind that shortly after their paths had crossed professionally Thorne had been struggling with the debacle of a