Burial Page 6

'I don't know. He was, like - he was practically goosing her.'

  'And you didn't like that.'

  'No, I didn't like that.'

  'And you - what, stormed out?'

  'I did. I stormed out.'

  'With what intention?'

  'I don't know, really. I just sort of went for a walk.'

  'A walk to where? There isn't really anywhere to go.'

  'That's what she said.'

  'Who?'

  'Sara. My girlfriend.' He ground out the cigarette. 'Ex-girlfriend.'

  'Right. That'll be Sara Reed, of this address.'

  'That's right.'

  'And where is Sara now?'

  'She's staying at her friend's. Michelle's. I'd need to look up the address.'

  'No need. And how did you get back to the party?'

  'A bloke called Bob came driving past.'

  'Driving past.'

  'He'd left the party. He was on his way home. But he stopped to pick me up.'

  'Right. I assume we're talking about Robert Morrow here?'

  'Probably. I mean, yes. I didn't know his surname.'

  'He picked you up and took you back to the party.'

  'That's right, yes.'

  'And how long have you known Mr Morrow?'

  'I don't really know him. Not really. We met once, a few years back. I hadn't seen him since. Tell the truth, he's a bit odd. He's into ghosts and what have you. Spends his time in haunted houses.'

  'I know.'

  'Oh. Right. I see.'

  'It takes all sorts.'

  'Apparently.'

  'So. You and Mr Morrow were gone for some time.'

  'Probably.'

  'What were you doing? Ghost-hunting?'

  'Ha. No. I'd stormed off. I was pissed off. Drunk. I had this idea, that I'd walk into the nearest town, village, whatever. Call a minicab.'

  'Minicabs are thin on the ground, in that neck of the woods.'

  'Well I know that now. The minute I started to sober up, I felt pretty stupid. It was really cold.'

  'So Robert Morrow drives past. . .'

  'Yeah. He sees me--'

  'Limping along, thinks you're a spook . . .'

  'Ha, yes. He stops. I get in. We have a chat.'

  'About?'

  'Love. Life. I tell him about the thing with Sara, her dancing with Mark. Bob convinces me to go back to the party. Talk to her.'

  Holloway stared at him, chewing the sweets.

  He said, 'Look, Nathan. There's probably not a great deal for you to be worrying about here. All I'm trying to do is establish a timeline.

  A big party like that, it's complicated. Life's not like Inspector Morse, right? People are drunk, people take drugs, people have sex with people they shouldn't be having sex with. People get confused about what happened when. People get embarrassed about the way they behaved, they don't want to talk. They lie, pretend to have blacked out. So accounts differ - what happened when, to who, at what time.

  It's the nature of these things. I don't care what you were doing in that car with Robert Morrow. I don't care if you two were taking drugs, making love--'

  'Drugs,' said Nathan, quickly. 'Cocaine. We had a few toots of cocaine.'

  'Good for you. I just need to know exactly when you were doing it--'

  'For the timeline.'

  'Spot on. So, you and Bob are in the car. Chatting. Love and life.

  You neck a bit of Bolivian.'

  'Quite a lot, actually.'

  'You neck quite a lot of Bolivian. Bob says, don't do this, don't walk out on the girl of your dreams. Or words to that effect, and--'

  'And we go back to the party.'

  'This is what time?'

  'This is, I'm not sure. I was, y'know. My state of mind. But there were some people around when I tried to hit Mark, so--'

  'Yes, there were.'

  'Oh. Okay. So what time was it?'

  'Shortly after 2 a.m.'

  'Right. Ouch. A lot of people saw it, then.'

  'Quite a few. Something like that - drunken bloke punches the host, misses, nearly falls into the swimming pool - it makes for a bit of a highlight. People remember it. So we use it, a kind of tent pole.

  To help establish the timeline.'

  'I see. It wasn't a very good punch.'

  'From what I hear, it was all a bit Charlie Chaplin.'

  'Ah.'

  'So, that's it? You left, round midnight. Bob picks you up. You get yourselves a bit fired up. Have a deep and meaningful chat. You go back to the party. Try to land one on your boss--'

  'I embarrass myself horribly. Bob drives me home. I wake up, and I want to die. Merry Christmas.'

  Holloway sat there for a few long moments, scrutinizing Nathan with mint-blue eyes. Then he sighed, glancing over at Hadley. She was still looking out the window, as if waiting for another bus to pass.

  Holloway said, 'We may be in touch.'

  'Okay. Do you think she's all right? The girl.'

  'I don't know. I hope so.'

  'But you think she'll turn up?'

  'They usually do.'

  'Good,' said Nathan. 'Good. This is awful. This is awful for every one.

  Holloway gave him a courteous nod. Hadley gave him a mute glance. And they were gone, Nathan closing the door on them.

  He sat down and put his head in his hands.

  Then he went to the kitchen cupboard and removed a bottle of vodka.

  He filled the mug from which Holloway had been drinking.

  The vodka burned his gullet on the way down and sat like molten glass in his guts. He emptied the bottle. But it wasn't enough.

  Sara called.

  'Have you found somewhere to go?'

  Nathan said, 'No.' And to her teeth-grinding silence he said: 'It's been a weird week. Have you seen the papers?'

  Her voice was quiet when she said, 'What do you think? You know him. Is there, could there be anything in it?'

  Mortally offended, he cut her short, 'The last thing Mark needs at the moment is his friends gossiping about him.'

  Ashamed of herself, she gave Nathan another week in the flat.

  One more week, and that was that. If he wasn't gone, she'd have him thrown out.

  She had brothers.

  He told her thanks, he'd find somewhere as soon as he could.

  He put down the phone.

  It rang again, immediately.

  He picked it up.

  'What?'

  It wasn't Sara. It was a tabloid journalist called Keith. Keith offered Nathan half his annual salary to talk about Mark Derbyshire.

  Nathan looked at the receiver as if it was firm and warm and damp, like a semi-erect penis.

  He said, 'How did you get my number?' and, without waiting for an answer, he slammed down the receiver.

  He curled on the sofa and tried to sleep.

  He woke to the twilight and went to work. They fired him.

  He and Howard, both unemployed now, went for a drink.

  'Jesus,' said Howard. 'What a week.'

  Nathan chinked his glass.

  'Fuck it,' he said.

  Mark Derbyshire's landline had been disconnected. So in the early afternoon, Nathan called his new mobile. Only four people knew the number. Mark answered almost immediately.

  'It's Nathan,' said Nathan.

  He didn't know where Mark Derbyshire was speaking from. But he got the idea he was alone in a hotel room, watching Sky Sports and waiting for the phone to ring.

  'What the fuck are you doing?' said Mark. 'I'm trying to keep this line clear, for Christ's sake.'

  'They fired me.'

  'I know that. It's still my fucking show. I know that.'

  'It's your show. But I don't have a job on it any more. Neither does Howard.'

  'Howard will be all right. He's probably got a job already.'

  'I don't care about Howard.'

  'As soon as I'm back on air,' said Mark, 'Howard will come back.

  He'll be all right.'

>   'I don't care about Howard.'

  'Well you fucking should. He's worth a hundred of you. A thousand.

  A million.'

  'Be that as it may. They didn't give me severance pay. I'm out without a penny in my pocket.'

  'Because you were sacked for gross misconduct. You tried to hit me at my own party.'

  Nathan sighed and said, 'Why are you doing this? Surely you need all the friends you can get?'

  'You're not my friend. You were my employee. Now you're not even that. Right now, I need the station to love me. And if I can save them a few quid by firing you at no cost, and pulling in some work experience fuck who'll work twice as hard for fuck all, then that's what I'll do.'

  'You're unbelievable.'

  'Yeah. Well. Wake up and smell the monkeys.'

  'But I haven't got a pot to piss in. Or anywhere to live. What am I going to do for money?'

  'Listen. Good luck. Really. But I need to keep this line clear, so I'm going to hang up now. Okay? So fuck the fuck off But he didn't hang up. He was lost and alone and scared and desperate for somebody to talk to. Even Nathan.

  Who said, 'But I need money.'

  'Don't we all.'

  'Listen, Mark. Just listen for one minute. Please?'

  'One minute,' said Mark Derbyshire. 'Fifty-nine seconds. Fifty eight seconds. Fifty-seven seconds.'

  'I've been fired,' said Nathan. 'Not made redundant. Which means I can't even claim benefit for - I don't even know. Months. And I've got to leave my flat because I broke up with my girlfriend. And don't say I should kick her out, because it's her flat. Yesterday a tabloid journalist phoned me. I don't know how they got my name or my number, but they were willing to pay me - and I'm not kidding here -- they were willing to pay me a lot of money.'

  Mark Derbyshire stopped counting down.

  'Pay you money to what?'

  'Talk about you.'

  There was another, longer silence before Mark said, 'Talk about me, how?'

  'I'll say whatever they want to hear,' said Nathan. 'I can't afford not to.'

  He didn't even feel empty. He felt like he didn't exist.

  'Jesus Christ,' said Mark. 'How much do you want?'

  'Thirty grand.'

  'Fuck you. I haven't got it.'

  'Sell something. They offered me fifty.'

  'And if I pay? How do I know you won't go to the papers anyway

  'Because I'm telling you I won't. You have to trust me.'

  Three days later, 30,000 pounds was credited to Nathan's bank account.

  The same morning, he stuffed some belongings into a black nylon holdall.

  He paused to look at what he was leaving behind: his CDs, a few books, some videotapes. His television, his stereo, his sofa.

  None of it meant anything. It seemed strange to think that it ever had.

  He left the flat and checked into a seaside bed-and-breakfast hotel: the kind of place that shouldn't have existed since about 1975. It was a backdrop for repeated sitcoms, for laughter-tracks behind trapped lives in a bygone England.

  But it was real. He dumped his bag on the single bed, and slept with the lights on.

  Three weeks after Elise disappeared, Nathan endured the sight of her parents and her sister on the local television news, making a plea for her safe return. He stared at the screen.

  The family knew Elise wasn't coming back. He could tell by the way they looked at the camera. By the way they looked through it, and directly at him.

  In the early weeks of March 1998, it was leaked to the press that the police were interviewing Mark Derbyshire in connection with the case.

  It got a lot of coverage. On television, Nathan saw it announced that an 'item relating to the case' had been found on Mark Derbyshire's property. This didn't sound remarkable to Nathan; everyone knew that Elise had been there. God knew what she might have dropped or left behind. But whatever the item was, it was enough for the police to take Mark in for questioning.

  Once again, Mark Derbyshire's past was rehearsed in every newspaper and on every news report.

  Mark was released after questioning: he was never charged. But the country knew he'd done it, even if nobody was legally allowed to say so. And so Mark Derbyshire's long career finally ended.

  The police didn't find Elise's body, and nor did anyone else.

  Nathan couldn't imagine why; he didn't think he and Bob had done such a terribly good job of burying her.

  Perhaps the police were simply looking in the wrong place.

  Every morning, he woke and immediately turned on the radio expecting to hear an announcement that her body had been found.

  But the announcement never came.

  11

  That spring, he bought a rucksack and a six-week European travel pass. But he took Elise with him.

  He was too old to be sharing late-night trains with gap-year students. After six weeks, he found himself alone at 3 a.m., dangling bare, tanned legs over the dock on Icaria. He'd sat all night outside a restaurant, alone with a book he was pretending to read, half-hoping somebody might strike up a conversation. But nobody did.

  Since leaving England, he'd barely spoken, except to order a drink, or dinner. His orbit was marked by something dark. People didn't come too close.

  He pretended to himself that he wished he'd gone to America instead, that he'd chosen this cheap travel pass because he was trying to conserve money. But that wasn't true.

  When Nathan was eighteen, he'd come to the Greek Islands with Chloe, his girlfriend. It was their first and only time away - and for its three weeks they were happy-sad, because they knew this trip was an extended goodbye. They were about to start at different universities, and they knew that what was to come would change them. There was no way to maintain their relationship - Chloe had seen her two brothers make that mistake, and it had brought them nothing but unhappiness.

  Now -- alone on the dock at Icaria -- he saw that over the last few weeks he'd followed almost exactly the route he and Chloe had taken, when he was a child who thought himself nearly a man.

  He spat into the dark and watched it loop and spin into the lapping, oily Mediterranean. Then he got up, brushing the grit from his arse and slinging the rucksack over his shoulder. He found an all night bar and sat in the corner drinking Amstel until the sun came up. Then he slapped a pile of euros on the bar, didn't wait for his change, and walked out to greet the early morning ferry. His flip flops slapped to the rhythm of his feet.

  He watched the ferry dock. It was rusted and ponderous, weathered as a coastal rock.

  At length, it discharged blinking, fuzzy-headed young backpackers, American and German and Dutch, British and Canadian and Australian, on to the dock. Some of their faces were still marked with the weave of the ferry's dirty carpet.

  Nathan was one of three or four people to embark. He sat in a patch of ringing sunlight, cooled by the sea breeze, and stared past the corner of a lifeboat, into the ferry's frothing wake.

  In Goa, he saw a Hindu funeral. The corpse, draped in white, garlanded with roses and jasmine and marigold, was carried on a stretcher to a riverside pyre. On the pyre, it was arranged with its bound white feet facing south - the direction of the dead.

  The chief mourner walked round the pyre three times, sprinkling water. Then he put the pyre to flame.

  Nathan watched the body burn. The perfumed smoke, billowing, diffusing against the sunset. The yellow flames. The brown river.

  He grabbed his bag and walked away.

  He flew from Delhi and walked wearily through UK customs.

  He stood in the English airport, ridiculous in his gap-year student clothes -- this man with no idea who he had become.

  Before leaving Heathrow, Nathan called Sara at work. She answered on the fourth ring.

  'Nathan?'

  He swelled with a violent nostalgia. It took him a moment to speak. And then, all he could say was: 'Hi.'

  'Where have you been ?'

  It seemed to her that los
ing his job, his girlfriend and his flat within a couple of weeks had worked something loose in Nathan's head. She'd told her friends (in a grave, not unhappy tone): Nathan had a breakdown.

  He said, 'I'm okay.' It sounded true when he said it. Then he told her, 'I've been to Greece,' and it sounded like a lie. Before she could ask any more questions, he said, 'Look, I've no right to ask this. But I need a reference.'

  'What kind of reference?'

  'A landlord's reference. I need a place to live.'

  'So what you're phoning to ask is: pretend we never went out, and write a letter saying what a fabulous tenant you were.'

  Pretty much. I know it's a shitty thing to ask.'

  It was a shitty thing to ask. But she said 'Fine' because she pitied him.

  He caught the train home and booked himself into a cheap hotel, then showered and shaved and went to buy a local newspaper.

  The next afternoon, armed with Sara's reference, he paid the deposit and two months' rent in advance on a small, clean, one-bedroom flat.

  It was on the top floor - into the eaves - of a big, Victorian building.

  On the ground floor was a day nursery; his little bedroom overlooked the playground.

  Since it was summer and the nights were short, Nathan could afford to wait until the first comforting signs of dawn before trying to sleep - which meant that, often, he woke to the pleasant screams of young children at playtime. He lay in bed listening to them, just as he might lie in a sun-warmed tent, listening to a chattering brook.

  The sound of the children made him happy. Their existence seemed so tremendously unlikely, he took comfort from it. He never watched them playing, because he thought that from their perspective his face -- peering down from the small, high bedroom window -- would look ghostly and lost, and he wanted to spare them that.

  But even their tears and tantrums, from this high place, sounded good to him.

  He lay there, listening to them, and wondered what he was going to do about getting a job.

  It was easy.

  He visited an employment agency, where his agent displayed contempt for his paltry CV, enquiring in a frigid tone why he'd left his 'previous employment'.

  He took in a slow breath, held it for a moment and then told her: 'I was kind of made redundant.'

  'Kind of. Was there a restructure?'

  'Not really. Kind of

  'Kind of

  'The show I was working on - it was called The Mark Derbyshire Solution!