The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham Page B

‘You got kids?’
    Kitson nodded. ‘Oh yeah, I know exactly what that’s like.’
    They both looked at the photograph for a few seconds more. Jodi’s hair was a little darker than in the only picture Kitson had seen previously. The one in the file.
    Just a bad dream
.
    The November before last, Jodi Batchelor, aged seventeen, had hanged herself in her bedroom after being dumped by her boyfriend via text message. Her father had found her body. The following day, Jeffrey Batchelor had confronted his daughter’s boyfriend – nineteen year-old Nathan Wilson – at a bus stop near his house and, following a heated exchange, had attacked him in front of several onlookers. In what those witnesses had described as a ‘frenzied assault’, Batchelor had kicked and punched Wilson, giving him no opportunity to defend himself. He had repeatedly smashed the boy’s head against a kerbstone, and, according to the witnesses, had continued to do so long after the boy was dead.
    ‘Stuart Nicklin is currently under police escort,’ Kitson said. ‘He’s being taken to a location in Wales, where he claims to have buried a body twenty-five years ago. And he’s taken Jeff with him.’
    Sonia stared for a few seconds. ‘I don’t understand. I only saw Jeff last week. He would have said.’
    ‘He wouldn’t have known it was happening,’ Kitson said. ‘Not exactly when, anyway. That’s not allowed for security reasons.’
    ‘Still, he would have said something, surely.’
    ‘He would have been told not to.’
    ‘By Nicklin?’
    ‘Possibly,’ Kitson said. ‘But certainly by the prison authorities.’
    Sonia sat back, shaking her head as though trying to make sense of what she had been told. ‘So, what is it that you want?’
    ‘We want to know what you think about their relationship. Nicklin and your husband.’
    ‘What are you implying?’
    ‘I’m not implying anything.’ Kitson leaned forward. ‘Listen, Sonia, we have no bloody idea why your husband is currently keeping Stuart Nicklin company, but we do know that Mr Nicklin does nothing without a very good reason. So, right now we’re scrabbling around trying to find anything that might help us. You knew that the two of them had become close?’
    Sonia nodded.
    ‘How did you feel about that?’
    She grunted. ‘Well, obviously I wasn’t thrilled. My husband’s a good man, despite what happened. He’s a man with
faith
.’ She held Kitson’s eyes for a few moments, as though keen for what she had said to sink in. ‘I’m not a believer, none of the rest of the family are, but he is. He’s not a nutcase about it, nothing like that… doesn’t force it on anybody else, but he’s kind and compassionate and he’s got a conscience. He’s everything Stuart Nicklin isn’t. So, I felt sick, if you want to know the truth. But the fact remains that Nicklin…
helped
Jeff in there.’ She leaned forward to pick up a mug of tea, which was probably no more than lukewarm by now. ‘Jeff was finding it really hard. A few weeks after he first went in, he had some sort of… breakdown. They had him on suicide watch for a couple of days. He was in a real state, to be honest…’
    Kitson had read the file. She knew that Batchelor had handed himself in to the police immediately after the attack on Nathan Wilson. He had pleaded guilty to murder and continually refused to allow any consideration of diminished responsibility. He had accepted his punishment. There was no doubt that prison would have come as a shock to a man like Jeffrey Batchelor, but now his wife was hinting that something serious had happened, over and above the necessary adjustment.
    ‘Was he attacked?’ Kitson asked.
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Maybe he was threatened.’
    ‘I really don’t know,’ Sonia said. She clicked her fingers. ‘But suddenly everything had changed and when I went to see him he wasn’t the same person he had been the week before. There was just a blackness. There was this…