'I was at Porton Down too,' King said. 'I had to bury the bodies.'
Bury the bodies. Tom closed his eyes and tried not to imagine his son's rotten body, flopping around in the bucket of a JCB with a younger Nathan King at the controls.
'Where's my son's grave?' he asked, eyes still closed.
'Tom, you'll never—'
'Where is my son's grave? Nathan, I need to tell you something. I've mourned for ten years, and I'll mourn until the day I die. What you told me bears up what I've always believed: that we were lied to. But I don't see what I can do about it, other than visit my son one last time. I've spent too long crying over an empty grave.' But there is more I can do, he thought, so much more. But not here and not now … I have to think first. Make plans.
'Don't go looking,' King said, standing. 'I saw the bodies. And I know the truth.'
'What truth?' Tom asked, and then the comment he had heard the previous day came back to him just as King spoke.
'They kept monsters there,' he said. And before Tom could hit him with any more questions King had left the pub and disappeared into the night.
Something escaped, the ex-army man had said. A plague of sorts. They kept monsters there. …
Tom sat at the table for a long time, staring into the murk of the pub and seeing so much farther—to the moors, to Salisbury Plain. Though he saw something there, its true form was blurred by lies.
But now that the seed of truth had been planted, Tom needed to see it bloom.
Chapter Two
When Tom and Jo left home for their journey to Wiltshire, it felt as though they were going for more than a long weekend. Tom checked that the doors and windows were locked, unplugged the TV and stereo, closed all the internal doors … and he felt as though he should be laying white dust sheets over the furniture. Only three days, he thought, taking one last look around the living room, noticing some of it instead of just seeing it. The picture of them on their wedding day, with such a promising future evident in their happy smiles. And Steven, photographed at his passing out parade, with that same potential future reflected in his eyes. Nobody expects catastrophe, Tom thought. Everyone knows it's coming at some point, but nobody expects it. We just can't live like that. But that makes it so much harder when it arrives.
Tom wiped the dust from Steven's picture and smiled, and a peculiar thought came to him unbidden. Coming to see you, son.
'Tom?' Jo stood behind him, watching him stroke the picture frame.
'I'm coming now, babe.'
'We're doing the right thing, aren't we? You don't think this will just dig it all up again?'
Tom winced at her choice of words. 'Jo, we've agreed that we'll go, and I think it's the right thing to do. Really. It'll be good to get away, anyway. Steven will be on our minds, but it'll be a break for us, too. A break from everything.'
'Some things you can't escape from,' she said.
He nodded, hugged her. 'Let's go.'
Jo hugged him back, and as Tom looked around the room he held on hard to his wife.
They were silent for most of the journey. Jo made occasional comments—pointing out a hovering sparrow hawk, an air balloon, asking Tom whether he wanted some mints—and Tom answered briefly, with a yes or a no, or sometimes with a nod or a shake of the head. It was not because he did not wish to talk, nor even because he knew that Jo really only wanted to sit there and think about the coming weekend. His silence was borne mainly of frustration.
In his back pocket sat the envelope he had found shoved beneath a wiper blade when he had been loading the car. He had not yet had a chance to open it without Jo seeing. And he had a feeling—a certainty—that whatever it contained he would not want to share with her.
He must have waited outside the pub, followed me home.
'Shouldn't be long now,' Jo said. Tom nodded.
Couldn't finish the story face to face, and now it's there in my back pocket, more hints at the truth.
'It's been a long time since we were down this way.'
Tom was certain the envelope was from Nathan King. Anything else would be a huge coincidence, and a cruel one.
The miles swept by and Jo nodded off, the envelope burned in Tom's trouser pocket. Read me, read me. He even began to reach around to delve into his pocket, but the car drifted into the next lane and the blare of a lorry's horn startled him back to reality.
'Shit,' Tom muttered, heart pummeling him for his stupidity.
'You want me to drive the rest of the way?'
'No, no, I'm fine. Fine.'
Don't feel fine. Feel fucked.
Motorway filtered down to dual carriageway, then they turned onto an A-road, and then B-roads led through startlingly beautiful countryside to the village where they were staying.
Not far from here, Tom thought. Not far from here at all.
After a few minutes they pulled up in the driveway to their holiday cottage.
'You check out the box in the shed where they said they'd leave the keys,' Tom said. 'I'll start unloading the car.'
As soon as Jo's back was turned Tom pulled out the envelope, and though there was no writing in the clear window, Tom's name had been scrawled across the front in red ink. Whoever had written the name had pushed so hard that the pen had Tom the paper, like a cut in pale flesh. He ripped it open, glanced at Jo disappearing around the side of the cottage, and pulled out the sheet of folded paper.
It was a map, an enlarged OS section of part of Salisbury Plain. And near the centre, away from any distinguishing features, sat a small, neat X. It was marked in red. There was nothing else, but no explanation was needed.
'X marks the spot,' Tom whispered, and then he heard Jo's footsteps in the gravel behind him, and he crumpled the map and envelope in his hand.
'Lovely cottage,' he said, even though this was the first time he had even glanced at it.
'Don't break your back unloading the car, will you?'
Tom smacked Jo's butt as she walked by, delighted at her giggle, already wondering how he could get away on his own for a few hours.
After unloading the car, they had a look around the cottage together. It was small, cosy and very countrified, with plates lining walls, dried twigs stacked on windowsills and arranged in old china pots, and dozens of landscape prints by local artists gracing the walls upstairs. The bath was an old cast-iron freestanding type, great chunky pipes standing proud of the floor at one end like the exposed arteries of the house. The toilet would not have looked out of place in a museum. The air was musty with age, and although Tom spotted air fresheners secreted in several places upstairs and down, he thought they were fighting a losing battle. This house was old—maybe three hundred years—and it would take more than a few modern chemicals to purge the tang of its history from the air. It had stood for a long time, and it had a right to project its age. He breathed in deeply and enjoyed the aroma, smiling at Jo when she gave him a quizzical look.
From the kitchen, a low door revealed an impossibly narrow staircase that led down to the cold room. Jo declined Tom's offer to investigate, but he had always been one for exploring hidden places. It was that idea of never quite knowing what he would find; an old painting in the attic, a forgotten master; a half-buried chest in a seaside cave, the padlock a rusted remnant from centuries before. He never had found anything of value, but that did not deter him. In fact it encouraged him to explore further, because really it was the mystery that lured him. If he ever did find something other than darkness and empty spaces, the mystery would be dissipated, and perhaps he would change.
The staircase was narrow and twisted in a tight half-spiral, so that even moving down sideways Tom's
