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

siege gone very wrong, dealing with his demotion to uniform.
    It was understandable that dinner had slipped his mind.
    Yes, she was damn sure she
had
impressed him. He’d remembered her, hadn’t he? She couldn’t help wondering though, if it was just about the work. Of course, she hoped Thorne’s choice had been based on her qualifications for the job, on an unbiased assessment of her considerable ability. That said, an instinct told her there was something else going on and she would not have been wholly outraged to discover that some small degree of physical attraction had been a contributory factor. Or, to put it in terms that didn’t sound like she was in court giving bloody evidence:
    Wouldn’t hurt if he fancied her a bit, would it?
    ‘What?’ Karim said.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Just wondered what you were smiling about, that’s all.’
    Unlike Sam Karim, Tom Thorne hadn’t talked about his domestic set-up at all…
    ‘Nothing,’ Markham said. ‘Just remembering something.’
    ‘Looks like it was something nice!’
    ‘So, how much longer d’you think?’
    Karim glanced at the clock on the dash. ‘A couple of hours, maybe.’ He nodded, smacked his palms against the wheel. ‘Going to be an interesting one this, I reckon. Oh yes, I can feel it in my water.’
    Markham doubted that Karim could piss in a straight line, never mind predict the future with it, but she could not disagree with him. Even allowing for the brief time she had been a qualified crime scene manager, she knew that this operation was out of the ordinary. The place they were going for a start. It was certainly a long way to travel without knowing if there would be any crime scene to manage at the end of it. On top of which, she would normally have been free to select her own CSIs, rather than having them foisted on her at the other end.
    It wasn’t a major problem. She would show Thorne that she could work with whatever, whoever was thrown at her. If she could handle four hours in the car with Sam Karim…
    ‘So, your wife’s OK with you being away for a few days?’ she asked.
    Karim laughed. ‘Are you kidding? She can’t wait to get rid of me. She’ll have her feet up by now, dirty great box of Black Magic on the go.’ He laughed again.
    Markham laughed right along with him, then said, ‘What about Thorne’s wife?’
     
    In the rear-view, Thorne could see that Nicklin was asleep, his head lolling to one side, jaw slack. Aside from issues of self-preservation or personal pleasure, Thorne knew that there was not too much that would keep a man like Nicklin awake at night. All the same, it was disconcerting to see just how easily he drifted away. How untroubled he appeared by the stuff inside his own head.
    Thorne adjusted the mirror slightly and saw that Jeffrey Batchelor was very much awake. The side of his head was pressed against the window, eyes wide and fixed forward.
    He was the one who looked troubled.
    A murderer, yes, but not one like Stuart Nicklin. Not a man whose crime itself would obviously have drawn Nicklin to him. Not someone Thorne could easily imagine Nicklin being attracted to sexually either, even if – as Phil Hendricks never tired of telling him – he was hardly an expert.
    So, what was he doing here?
    Perhaps Holland had been right and even Batchelor himself did not fully understand why he was in that car with the rest of them. It made a degree of sense. Over the years, Nicklin had not only proved himself extremely adept at persuading people to do what he wanted, but also at keeping the reasons for it to himself, until he was good and ready.
    What had he threatened Batchelor with? What had he promised?
    Thorne could only hope that, in an effort to get explanations, Yvonne Kitson would be luckier with Batchelor’s wife than she had been with Nicklin’s ex.
    He glanced across at Holland and felt the warm, familiar blush of guilt.
    Holland and Kitson…
    Just two months before, in uniformed banishment south of