Burial Read online

  Every year, Nathan and Holly spent two weeks sizzling on a beach somewhere: Barbados or Bermuda. The deep-blue, gold-shot sarong knotted at her hip always aroused him. He liked to watch her walk into the sea; he loved the smell of salt and Ambre Solaire on her skin.

  To mark Holly's birthday, they'd go away for a long weekend. For their anniversary, they spent a weekend in London or Paris.

  Once or twice a year, Nathan and Graham went away to fish.

  They'd erect tents by the river and lie in their sleeping bags, watching the stars. They rose early, while there was still mist on the water, and heated breakfast on a Primus stove.

  He seldom thought about Elise. Except in the feverish immediacy of his dreams, he felt no link to the person he'd been the night she died. He still fell quiet when driving past the woods - the flickering in his peripheral vision -- but it had become almost a learned response, a Pavlovian reaction to an ancient, forgotten stimulus. Like the genuflection of a lapsed Catholic.

  By 2007, they'd saved enough to buy a larger house in a better area.

  But they knew they'd never leave this house while the painted nursery remained unoccupied. It would be bad luck.

  The pattern of their sex life was ordinary - full of troughs and peaks. But Holly had long since given up elevating her hips on pillows after sex, and they'd long since given up holding hands and discussing names and local schools.

  They took fertility tests. There was no pathology.

  Nathan had no doubt the imperfection was his. He imagined Holly's gently luminous ovum withering at the touch of his infected sperm.

  He'd first suggested the IVF programme a long time ago. Holly had rejected the idea: it would happen when it happened, she said, and it wasn't like they weren't busy. By now it was 2008 and they were considering it. Soon they were talking about names again, and schools. They stood in the doorway of the empty bedroom, looking to the future.

  And then Bob came back, to tell Nathan they were digging up the woods to build a housing estate.

  23

  Bob looked at the photographs for a long time.

  When he turned to Nathan, his voice had gone.

  'What the fuck is this?'

  'I told you not to come in.'

  Using the wall for balance, Bob lowered himself. He sat on the stripped Victorian floorboards. He looked wrong, like an optical illusion, like a drawing where the perspective and the scale have been altered.

  Fingertips brushed the hair on Nathan's nape.

  In the living room, the TV flickered - and it seemed to Nathan that the lights dimmed, and flickered, then rose again.

  Nathan said, 'My wife will be home.'

  'I need to talk to you.'

  'Then give me your number.'

  From his pocket, Bob produced a diary. Once, he had constructed a makeshift Ouija board from an identical book. Now with a shaking hand, he scribbled a number in it, tore out the page, handed it to Nathan.

  'You must call me.'

  'I will. Now, you really need to be fucking off.'

  They were lit yellow by the sweep of passing headlamps. It immobilized them. They heard the sounds of a parking car, nudging and edging into a small space.

  Nathan said, 'Oh Jesus.'

  'Is this your wife?'

  Nathan followed the line of Bob's eyes and began to understand.

  Bob had assumed he was lying. Bob thought Nathan lived alone, surrounded by stolen images of a girl they'd buried in secret, face down, a decade before.

  And now Bob was confused. What kind of woman allowed her husband to hang up so many photographs of a missing girl, a girl who never came home?

  Nathan felt a flare of savage pity.

  Then he heard the sounds of Holly's approach: the slamming of a car door, the small beep of remote central locking, the sound of jingling keys.

  Holly always walked at night with her substantial key chain clamped in her fist. The urban self-defence classes she attended before taking classes in judo had taught her that keys were an excellent first weapon: ram them into an attacker's eyes, gouge his face with them.

  Holly also carried mace in her handbag. In their bedroom was a stun gun that, at Holly's insistence, Nathan had nervously smuggled back from Paris on the Eurostar.

  Holly was scared of strangers.

  The key turned in the lock. By then, it had occurred to Nathan that he and Bob should have hurried to the kitchen and tried to do something normal

  but they simply stood in the hallway, waiting until Holly opened the door. She was wearing a belted raincoat and indigo jeans. Her hair had gone to frizz in the damp air. Over her shoulder were a laptop bag, an overstuffed briefcase and a handbag. They made her walk leaning at an angle, like a vaudeville drunk.

  She saw Bob and said, 'Oh, hello.'

  'Hello,' said Bob, and extended his hand. 'I'm Bob.'

  Nathan had to watch him, touching his wife.

  'Holly.'

  'Pleasure to meet you.'

  She set down the bags by the telephone and closed the door.

  'Bob's an old friend,' said Nathan. 'From university days.'

  'Oh,' said Holly. 'Right.'

  Bob said, 'He hasn't mentioned me, has he?'

  Holly brushed a wet ringlet from her forehead, sheepish. 'Sorry.

  Not really. He doesn't talk much about the old days.'

  'Well,' said Bob. 'They weren't much fun.'

  Holly nodded. She glanced at Nathan and beamed a big, bright, private question.

  'Anyway,' said Nathan. 'Bob popped round.'

  'Right,' said Holly.

  'But he's just off. So . . .'

  Bob was trying without success to ignore the photos of Elise.

  Nathan clapped him fraternally on the shoulder, meaning Fuck off.

  'Well,' said Bob. 'Nice to meet you.'

  'And you.'

  Nathan squeezed past Holly to open the front door. The rain gusted in.

  'Anyway, mate. I'll give you a call.'

  The hallway was narrow. Holly had to go up three stairs to let Bob squeeze pass. He stopped in the doorway and turned to her, saying: 'Girl trouble.'

  'Right,' said Holly.

  'Anyway,' said Bob, and to Nathan he mimed the action of picking up a telephone and dialling. Nathan nodded once, angrily - showing Bob his dog's teeth. Then he shut the door on him.

  Holly sat on the stairs. She was still wearing her coat. A wet strand of hair was tickling her nose and her make-up had run a little. She said, 'Well. Who was that?'

  'That was Bob.'

  She was fiddling with something in her lap; a wet hair band. She squeezed it and stretched it and passed it through her fingers.

  'Well, obviously it was Bob. Bob told me that. But who the hell is Bob?'

  'Just a bloke.'

  'He smells.'

  Nathan hadn't noticed.

  'Like vegetables. I don't know. Like rotten tomatoes or something.'

  She made a revolted face, then slipped the hair band over her wrist.

  'How about a cup of tea?'

  Finally, she stood and slipped off her coat, hanging it over the knob of the banister. She massaged the back of her neck.

  'I think I'll have a proper drink.'

  He followed her to the kitchen, where she opened a bottle of wine.

  Nathan badly wanted a drink. But he thought it would be dangerous to start drinking now.

  Instead, he opened the middle drawer in the kitchen and removed a cellophane-wrapped pack of emergency cigarettes he kept there, breaking the seal. Holly said nothing about it. She just opened the kitchen window to let the smell out. He stood in front of the open window and lit his cigarette, blowing a plume of smoke out of the window.

  'So. Who is he?'

  'Just a bloke.'

  'Yeah, but what bloke?'

  'I don't know. He's more of a friend of a friend really. He was a mate of Pete's.'

  'Pete the pop star?'

  'Well, I wouldn't say pop star, exa
ctly. But yeah.'

  'So, what's he doing here?'

  'To tell the truth, I don't know. I mean, he just turned up. I don't even know how he got my number. I'm not in contact with anyone from back then.'

  'And what?'

  'I just wanted rid of him.'

  'There's something wrong with him. Was he on drugs or something?

  He looked like he'd been crying.'

  'I think he's had some problems. You know. Mentally. I think he might be on medication.'

  'Jesus.'

  He clutched the edge of the work surface and squeezed.

  'Poor you,' she said, and laughed. She hugged him from behind, nestling her wet fragrant head in the crook of his neck. He could smell shampoo and the rain itself, the faint tang of pollution. She squeezed his arse and slapped it. 'So, what are you going to do?'

  'I promised to go out for a drink with him. Is that all right?'

  She nibbled his neck. 'Of course it's all right; I wish you'd go out more often, you know that. It just seems a shame that, when you do finally get a social life, it's with weird Bob.'

  ?'

  She knitted her hands across the bulge of his belly; he wasn't as skinny as he used to be. 'I'm sorry. Is that a really horrible thing to say

  He patted the back of her hands - a signal to disengage. She stepped away and he turned to face her.

  'Of course not. Do you think I want to go drinking with someone who smells like rotten tomatoes?'

  She picked up her wine.

  'Poor you.'

  He turned to go upstairs, and Holly said, 'Who's the girl?'

  'What girl?'

  'He said he was having girl problems.'

  'I don't know. He didn't even say.'

  'Poor bloke.'

  'Poor bloke? You've changed your tune.'

  'I don't know. He must be lonely. Coming to you with his problems - when you hardly even know him.'

  Nathan gave a non-committal grunt and made a gesture with his hands, exaggerated like a Hollywood Mafioso.

  Then he walked past the photos of Elise in the hallway, and went upstairs and passed the photos of Elise on the upstairs landing. He let himself into the upstairs bathroom and turned on the light. He locked the door and rushed to the lavatory and was copiously but silently sick. He puked until he was passing green bile, and what looked like spots of blood.

  24

  In the morning, Nathan slipped out of the office and called the number Bob had given him. They arranged to meet.

  Nathan had left a spare suit jacket hung on the back of his chair -- this was to imply that he was still in the building, but away from his desk, perhaps in a meeting or on his way to the post room.

  He walked to the main road and hailed a taxi. It took less than fifteen minutes to drive to Bob's house. He and Bob lived in the same city. They'd watched the same buses go by, had perhaps shopped in the same shops, seen the same films at the same cinemas. Perhaps at the same time.

  The cab dropped him off at the corner. It was a street of Victorian mansion blocks long since gone to subdivision and seed. Nathan walked down an overgrown front garden to what had been a four storey house. He stood on the worn stone step, reading the faded paper strips adjacent to the ranked doorbells. The ink in 'Morrow'

  had faded almost to illegibility.

  He rang the bell and, waiting, lit a cigarette.

  Eventually, the big, peeling door opened and Bob let him in. The hallway was dirty and dusty, grey-carpeted. An improvised mail drop, a melamine bookshelf, was a landslide of bills and junk mail. A bicycle was propped against the two-tone walls, as were an empty plastic laundry basket and an old drop-leaf table. Nathan followed Bob along the hallway and down into the basement, where Bob lived in a single, under-lit room.

  It was large and square and its walls were jam-packed with second-hand books. A home network of computers stood on a few junk-shop tables - three elderly laptops and four or five desktops, two of them brand-new Dells. Beside them stood a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

  Musty sofas made three edges of a square. Nathan noticed a crusty towelling sock balled up in the corner of the kitchenette, by the fridge.

  It smelled in there.

  Bob shifted magazines and a frayed sweater from one of the sofas, bidding Nathan sit.

  'Coffee?'

  'No.'

  'Right.'

  While Nathan waited, Bob boiled the kettle, making himself a pint of black Nescafe. Then he lowered himself into a sofa opposite Nathan and said, 'So, how have you been?'

  'How the fuck do you think I've been?'

  'I don't know. Which is why I was asking.'

  Nathan patted his pockets and produced a cigarette. He lit one.

  'What's this all about?'

  Bob sipped scalding coffee. 'Funny, isn't it?'

  Nathan looked away, at the book-lined walls.

  'The way things turn out,' said Bob. 'Did you hear about Detective Holloway?'

  Nathan had. A few years back, Holloway had apparently absconded with some ransom money. Nathan and Holly had quizzed Jacki about it, but Jacki would say nothing. That was a while ago now, a few years. Holloway had been caught and, as far as Nathan knew, he was still in prison.

  Nathan was looking at the reel-to-reel tape recorder.

  Bob followed his line of sight. 'Don't worry. I'm not taping this or anything.'

  'What is this stuff?'

  'Research.'

  Nathan looked away from it all. It gave him the creeps. He ran his hands through his hair and said, 'Oh, Jesus Christ, what am I doing here?'

  'Who is Holly?'said Bob.

  'My wife.'

  'You know what I mean. I was thinking about it all night. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't put it all together. You know what that's like?

  Lying awake, worrying about something?'

  'I've got a pretty good idea, Bob. Yeah.'

  'She knows her, doesn't she?'

  'Knows who?'

  'Your wife knows Elise.'

  Her name on his lips.

  Nathan made a gesture with his fingers, like someone batting mosquitoes from his face, telling Bob not to bother him.

  Bob jumped to his feet, apparently elated. 'I knew it! I knew it was something like that. Jesus. You're sick. It's unbelievable. Jesus. She even looks like her.'

  Outside, a car went past.

  Bob said, 'Is it, like, a sex thing? Do you get off on it?'

  Nathan wanted to scream, but all the strength had gone from him.

  He said, 'Jesus, no.'

  'Does she look like her? I mean, naked?'

  He couldn't endure Bob even contemplating Holly's nudity.

  He made as if to leave. The weight of Bob's eyes fell on his shoulders.

  'Really,'

  said Bob, 'you have to stay.'

  Nathan stopped. Eventually, he turned.

  'Don't mention my wife again.'

  'Fine. Whatever.'

  'I mean, not ever.'

  'Cool. You have to admit, though. It's pretty sick.'

  They locked eyes. Nathan blinked first.

  He looked at his shoes, then at a ball of soiled underwear lying dead on the kitchen linoleum.

  'You wouldn't understand

  Bob seemed about to speak. Instead, he slurped coffee and wandered to one of the tables, the one with the reel-to-reel tape recorder on it. Its plastic had yellowed with age and gone brittle. A crack ran across it like a fault line.

  Bob pulled up an office chair, the kind Nathan used at work. It was threadbare and pilled and greasy.

  Nathan said,'So?'

  'So. The forest where we buried her has been sold off to some property developer. They're going to build a new housing development - or extend a housing development they already built, a couple of years back. Depends how you look at it.'

  Nathan reached out for the sofa, as if he were about to fall.

  'In the course of doing this,' said Bob, 'they're almost certain to find her. It's not like the
grave was very deep or anything.'

  'I never understood why they didn't,' said Nathan. 'I was waiting for it. I expected it every day.'

  'Who knows? They had their suspect. He didn't leave the party all night. So maybe they just didn't look in the right places. Maybe one of the sniffer dogs had a head cold. Jesus, I don't know.'

  Nathan had a feeling like he was descending too quickly in a lift.

  'If they find her,' said Bob. 'Which they will, they'll recover traces of semen from two different men. They'll assume, quite understandably, that she was raped and murdered. And they'll take a voluntary DNA sample from every man who attended Mark Derbyshire's party, and they'll identify us, and we'll go to prison for the rest of our lives.'

  Nathan thought of Holly and he thought of Graham and he thought of June. He thought of the day they rehung the photographs.

  He walked slowly round the sofa and sat in it. He put his head in his hands.

  Bob said, 'We have to move her.'

  'I can't do that.' The intervening ten years had not happened.

  'Jesus fucking Christ. I can't believe this is happening.'

  'It won't be difficult. There can't be much left. Not after all this time.'

  'Then what's the point?'

  'I mean, she won't be heavy. She won't weigh much.'

  Nathan began to laugh. He clapped his hand over his mouth.

  'Can we be sure they'd find her?'

  'Your sperm is inside her. How much of a risk are you willing to take?'

  'But won't it have -- rotted by now?'

  'They have forensic techniques that you wouldn't believe. All they need is a fragment of genetic material - just a tiny, a teeny tiny fucking scrap. They can amplify it. They, I don't know what they do, they spin it or something. It's called PCR. A polymerase chain reaction. Where there's a little DNA, suddenly there's a lot. And believe me, if there's anything left in her or on her, they'll find it. It's not like they don't know where to look ... in her womb, her mouth, in her anus .. .'

  'Fuck.'

  'We drive down there, we park in the lane, we dig her up, we put her in the boot and we drive her to ... I don't know where. I haven't thought it through yet. Somewhere they can't find her. We might have to pour acid on her or something. You know. On her, um, nether regions. Battery acid or something.'