The man in the chair says nothing.

‘So, letting this thing get infected is really stupid. You got any idea how serious that could be? How dangerous? Just takes a few hours for infection to set in and then all this has gone tits up, your whole plan, whatever. You need to think about that.’

He looks for a reaction, but the man just seems bored. He watches as the man bends again to pick up his paper, folds it and drags himself grunting to his feet.

‘No, wait.’

The man turns and walks slowly towards the door.

‘For fuck’s sake…’

As the door closes with no more than a quiet snick, he is already lashing out with his foot to send the tray flying, the plate careering across the dirty carpet into the skirting board on the far side of the room. He yanks fruitlessly at the plastic cuffs, which only cut deeper into his wrist, then falls back with a roar of frustration. He has forgotten for a moment what has been done to him, until the instant he makes contact with the bare mattress and the pain is scalding, stabbing, exploding across his back.

Then there is nothing to do but scream.

SEVENTEEN

Thorne was up, showered and getting dressed before seven. He did not need to open the curtains to know that the weather was bad. He had to turn up the TV to hear it above the noise of the rain chucking itself against the windows. He stuffed his dirty clothes down into his overnight bag then checked his phone. There was a text from Phil Hendricks.

plenty 2 tell u 2!

In addition to a slew of junk emails there was one from Yvonne Kitson. She told him she had read through the most recent of the letters given her by Annie Nicklin. There was no important information relating specifically to the trip Thorne was on, to Tides House or the murder of Simon Milner. There were one or two things she thought Thorne would be interested in reading, however, and she had sent him a number of extracts.

Thorne downloaded the attachment and finished packing his things.

Before leaving the room, he sat on the bed and watched a local news bulletin. He wanted to make sure that the hotel manager had been the only person anyone from the police station had been mouthing off to. The last thing he needed to see this morning was the local newscaster cheerily announcing that a notorious serial murderer was visiting the area. He was relieved that a stolen skip-lorry in Pwllheli and some offensive graffiti at a bus stop on the Caernarfon road was as sensational as it got.

He was the last one down to breakfast.

Karim was already tucking enthusiastically into an enormous fry-up and Wendy Markham was eating poached eggs. Holland appeared to be sticking to coffee and toast and was looking warily out of the window. The sun was almost fully up and now, beyond an empty car park and a sliver of beach, the sea was – unfortunately – all too visible. It lashed relentlessly against the shingle, wind-whipped, the colour of strong tea.

Thorne took the empty seat next to Markham, who shifted slightly to make more room and smiled at him. ‘Sleep well?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, fine,’ Thorne said. ‘You?’

A nod, another smile.

‘I wonder if they’ve got any seasickness pills here?’ Holland said. ‘Maybe I should ask…’

Thorne waved until he caught the attention of the teenage girl who had served them the night before. He asked for builders’ tea and a bacon sandwich. The girl solemnly informed him that the sandwich wasn’t actually on the menu, picking one up to prove it, but as they definitely had both bacon and bread she’d see what they could rustle up. He told her he was very grateful.

Karim looked up from his plate and cheered and Thorne turned to see Fletcher and Jenks sloping in. They dumped their overnight bags near the door and dropped on to chairs at an adjoining table. Their grunted greetings and less-than-chirpy demeanours suggested they might have had a somewhat later night than was advisable. Thorne suggested they should get some coffee and, as if on cue, the manager appeared, instructing the waitress to bring a pot of coffee across for the two extra guests. Pritchard hung around, ostensibly to make sure that everyone was enjoying their breakfast, though it quickly became clear that he was keen to quiz Fletcher and Jenks on the night they had spent at the rival hotel.

‘OK for you, was it?’ he asked. ‘Over there?’

Fletcher managed a ‘yeah’.

‘Decent rooms? I mean, I know they’re a bit pricier than here, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it?’ Uninvited, he pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Some people think a coat of paint and a satellite dish means they can rip people off and I don’t think that’s on. What about the dinner, then? Up to scratch?’

Jenks told him that they’d spent most of the evening in a nearby pub and called in at the Chinese on the way back. Pritchard nodded and cast a knowing look towards Thorne and the others. Said, ‘Feeling all right, are you?’

While the manager carried on interrogating the largely monosyllabic prison officers, Karim and Markham began talking about boats and Holland wandered towards Reception in search of seasickness pills.

Thorne turned away from the table and took out his phone.

He read through the extracts from Nicklin’s letters that Yvonne Kitson had thought would be of interest. Scrolling through the text, it was a jolt the first time he came across his own name; seeing the casual way in which he and some of those close to him had been talked about. As though Nicklin was one of their number. Before he had finished reading, though, the shock, the anger had graduated into something else entirely. Having Nicklin’s thoughts laid out before him like this – in a manner over which Nicklin himself could have no control, about which he had no knowledge – gave Thorne a welcome sense of something that was hard to name, but felt like empowerment.

Made him feel, for once, as though he had the edge.

The feeling stayed with him through breakfast and for the time it took the team to check out, load up the vehicles and drive down to the police station. It was still there somewhere, even when he was tearing a well-deserved strip off the custody sergeant and his two PCs; telling them he hoped that their ‘fat, flapping mouths’ had not jeopardised the security of his entire operation. Thorne could only assume that when he had finished shouting, once the shame-faced officers had scuttled away to collect Nicklin and Batchelor from the cells, his good mood had started to show through again. As the prisoners emerged, as Jenks and Fletcher moved to reapply the heavy-duty cuffs, Thorne tried to give nothing away, but his disposition was clearly obvious to one person at least.

Nicklin took one look at him and said, ‘Someone’s happy about something.’

They drove along the coast for fifteen minutes, passing quickly through the seemingly deserted village of Aberdaron, where – according to the owner of the Black Horse – their boatman lived. A mile or so beyond it, they began to climb steeply and then, following the set of printed instructions provided by the sergeant at Abersoch police station, they turned sharply off the narrow road on to an even narrower dirt track.

The two cars slowed to something below walking pace as they bumped heavily across deep ruts and potholes. The track twisted sharply down, with the overhanging branches of bare, black trees scraping against the car on one side and a steep drop to a water-filled ditch on the other. In places the Galaxy’s wheels were no more than inches from the edge and though the rain had eased considerably, the wipers still had work to do. Thorne leaned close to the windscreen, hands tight around the wheel, and Holland braced himself against the dash.

‘You sure that sergeant wasn’t taking the piss?’ he asked. ‘You did upset him, remember?’