The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham Page A

time. He had systematically ground her down. Gradually, his real intention masked by fake concern for her well-being, he had worn away any resistance to the deep-seated conviction that she was actually to blame for
everything
he had done. That she had made him what he was. It was clear that Nicklin despised her and that making her suffer was every bit as important, as sustaining to him, as the suffering he had inflicted on his victims and their families.
    Perhaps more so.
    Annie Nicklin told everyone who she really was because she thought she deserved to be hated.
    ‘So, he killed another one, did he?’ Annie asked. ‘This boy on the island, you said.’
    ‘He claims he did.’
    ‘Well, he tends not to lie about that kind of thing.’
    ‘He’s left it a long time though, don’t you think?’
    ‘He’ll have his reasons.’
    ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Kitson said. Later, Kitson would remember that at no point did it occur to Nicklin’s own mother that it might have been because he was sorry.
    Annie was looking around, waving to attract the attention of one of the care workers, who came over and asked if everything was all right. Annie looked at Kitson. Said, ‘I get very tired, love. Have to sleep a lot during the day.’
    ‘It’s time for your tablets anyway,’ the care worker said.
    Annie reached for her sticks. ‘It’s a wonder I don’t bleedin’ rattle when I walk.’
    Kitson started to gather up her things. In the last look before the old woman turned away and began the slow walk back to her bedroom, Kitson saw a snapshot of someone for whom the pain of arthritis or whatever else she needed tablets for was negligible in comparison to what her own son had done to her. Was still doing to her.
    Thin lips stretched across discoloured teeth. Light going in the eyes.
    No, definitely not peace, Kitson thought.
    After a trip to the toilet, Kitson was on her way to the front door when the care worker came hurrying towards her carrying a small box. ‘Annie wants you to have this.’
    Kitson took the box and turned back one of the cardboard flaps. She saw the bundles of letters, batches of sealed and faded envelopes bound together with elastic bands. ‘Is she sure?’
    ‘That’s what I asked her,’ the woman said. ‘I mean, I know what’s in there. She told me that she’d heard some of her friends crying in the night.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Sometimes a few of the residents can get distressed during the night. It’s quite common.’ The care worker took half a step away, nodded back at the box in Kitson’s arms. ‘Annie said getting these out of the building might stop them having nightmares.’

THIRTEEN
    The owner/manager of the Black Horse in Abersoch was clearly thrilled at having four of his rooms occupied in the depths of the off-season. Seeing his reaction, Thorne tried to imagine how excited the man might have been with
six
rooms taken, but Fletcher and Jenks had booked themselves into a rival establishment at the other end of the village. Sitting in his cubby-hole at Reception, the manager had taken the news well. He had smiled as he shrugged and muttered, ‘More fool them.’
    Welcoming the new arrivals like long-lost relatives, that smile had stayed plastered to Elwyn Pritchard’s round, red face as he gleefully handed over keys on oversized wooden fobs, scribbled down the Wi-Fi password and escorted each of his guests to their rooms in turn. The unalloyed joy was there in his voice as he ran through checkout times the following day, made sure they knew about regulated parking hours in the street outside and explained that the boiler was playing up, while assuring them that there should be plenty of hot water for everyone provided they ‘didn’t go mad’.
    ‘We’ll try not to,’ Thorne said.
    Within a few minutes of shutting the hotel room door behind him, Thorne had taken his shower – unable, as it turned out, to go
too
mad beneath the lukewarm dribble – then