Free The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham

the town and it was a toss-up between a nightclub and a quiet dinner somewhere.
    ‘Not got one yet,’ Thorne said. ‘For now, we need to see what we can do about getting you and Mr Batchelor a nice uncomfortable bed for the night.’

ELEVEN
    There was quite a welcoming committee.
    Over and above the staff who would be required to monitor the prisoners, there was a healthy number of North Wales police officers gathered when Thorne walked into the custody suite at Abersoch police station. It was not the warmest of welcomes. Thorne was greeted with terse nods and a cursory handshake or two from a custody sergeant, three PCs, the regional chief superintendent in best dress uniform and a plain-clothes inspector from local CID. The detective – a scruffy sod who was wearing half his breakfast on his jacket – feigned a lack of interest, but was clearly there for no other reason than to gawp at their infamous overnight guest.
    ‘You might have been better off going to Bangor,’ the custody sergeant said. ‘Caernarfon maybe.’
    ‘Why’s that?’ Thorne asked.
    ‘Well, for a start we’re only up and running here three days a week, see.’
    ‘Cutbacks or crime rate?’
    ‘Those other stations wouldn’t have had to open up specially, like. That’s all I’m getting at.’
    Bangor was another hour’s drive away and Caernarfon almost as far. Doing his best to sound good-natured, Thorne explained that he wanted to base himself and his team as close as possible to where they would be leaving from the following morning. ‘So we can get an early start.’
    ‘Just saying —’
    ‘Yeah, I’ve got it.’
    ‘They’d have been a bit more geared up for all this than we are.’
    Thorne said, ‘You’ve got cells, haven’t you?’
    Perhaps sensing that their visitor was running low on patience, the chief superintendent stepped forward and led Thorne to one side. He introduced himself as Robin Duggan. Tall and rail-thin, with wire-rimmed glasses and acne scars, he was somewhat less dour than the sergeant and his accent was certainly nowhere near as thick.
    ‘It’s both, by the way,’ he said.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Cutbacks
and
crime rate. That’s why we’ve had four stations in the region close completely, had twice that many relocated and got a bunch more like this with limited opening times to the public.’ He balled his hand into a fist and held it up. ‘We’re definitely getting a bit squeezed.
But
… a town like this one, we’ll rarely get more than fifty or sixty reported crimes a month. That’s across the board. You probably get that many every five minutes in your neck of the woods.’
    ‘I enjoy the excitement,’ Thorne said.
    If, contained within Thorne’s simple statement, Duggan detected the slightest suggestion that his own job was less than exciting, he chose to ignore it. Instead the chief superintendent straightened his cuffs and ploughed on, seemingly keen to impress on Thorne that he was highly experienced when it came to cross-border and cross-boundary co-operation. That things at his end of this operation were under control. ‘I’ve been liaising with an opposite number at the Met,’ he said. ‘And I think we’re very much on the same page on this.’
    ‘That’s good,’ Thorne said. He wondered who the opposite number might be and if talking in senior management clichés was compulsory once there were a certain number of pips on your shoulder.
    ‘There is one slight glitch,’ Duggan said. ‘Which is that nobody’s awfully clear who’s paying for all this. The manpower, the facilities, what have you.’
    ‘I wouldn’t know about any of that.’
    ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’ Duggan smiled. ‘Your job’s just getting him to the island and back safe and sound, correct?’
    ‘Spot on,’ Thorne said.
    ‘Talking of which… I’m still in two minds, but I may head on over there with you in the morning.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘I’ll confirm with you later on.’
    Thorne nodded and