'But I can't fucking see.'
'Then be careful.'
Nathan moved with great caution. But still, he caught his foot in the twisted root of a tree. For a terrible moment, he believed that a human hand had reached out and grabbed his ankle.
He'd fallen before he could scream.
A cold point of light popped on and passed across him. Bob's torch.
Nathan stood, brushing himself down, and picked up the shovels.
Bob's face was blanched by the torchlight.
He handed Nathan a torch. Nathan tucked the shovels under his arm and followed its wavering beam deeper into the forest.
Eventually, they found the brook. Its waters were black round white boulders. They stuck close together, did not speak, and began to dig around. In less than half an hour, they had found the place.
They had buried Elise near the fork of a massive old tree, adjacent to the brook. The bank had crumbled away since, exposing the tree's root base.
Further up the bank, where it began to level off, they lay out the plastic sheeting, weighing down the corners with branches and rocks.
Weighed down, it inflated and deflated with the wind, like something breathing.
Bob laid his torch on the ground. Then he thrust the blade of his shovel into the earth. It made a slicing sound. He looked at Nathan, then turned off the torch. To Nathan's eye, he simply disappeared.
Nathan whirled the beam of his torch until it crossed Bob's form, made him briefly luminous like the moon. Bob paused, spade in hand and whispered, 'Turn off the fucking torch and give me a hand.'
It was hot work, far hotter than burying her. Nathan removed his fleece and cagoule and worked in his T- shirt. His trousers and boots were muddy to the knees and clagged with clots of mud and soil.
They wished they'd remembered to bring the water. It was in the boot. It was thirsty work.
They dug around for an hour or more. Then Bob hissed for him to stop.
They kneeled, brushing at the soil with their clumsy gloves. Bob had overturned a white knob of something.
Nathan stood. He walked to the water's edge and breathed rapidly through his nostrils. Leaning on the shovel, he looked at the racing sky. Then he looked at the water.
He walked back to Bob.
'What is it?'
'I don't know. An elbow?'
'Or an ankle.'
'Whatever.'
In the black soil, it looked like the head of a mushroom.
They got down on their knees and began to dig and sift the soil with their gloved hands. The cold seeped through until their fingers ached.
Bob told Nathan to stop. Under his hand was a long bone. It looked cracked and old, even in the darkness.
Nathan sat.
'There's nothing left.'
He was on the edge of the excavation. The soil was cold and it wet his arse. He wanted a cigarette. He said, 'What do we do?'
Bob leaned on his shovel. Dirt like camouflage on his face.
'Find as much as we can. The skull. The hips. The important bits.'
'It's a fucking skeleton, Bob. She's gone.'
Bob was breathless. He looked at Nathan, and then began digging.
Over the next forty-five minutes, they found a number of vertebrae; they were scattered through the soil like the beads of a snapped necklace. They found a few dozen smaller bone fragments. They threw them all on the plastic sheeting. They found two more long bones. They chucked them on the sheeting, too. They lay like firewood.
Then
Bob stooped, examining the ground.
He'd found Elise's skull. It lay close to the river's edge.
It was no longer face down.
Close by, Nathan spotted the edge of her lower mandible, protruding from the soil. He lifted it clear and placed it on the plastic.
Then he joined Bob, digging under the skull with his fingers, prising it from the soil.
They placed the skull on the plastic. Nathan turned it to face away from them, into the trees.
An hour later, they found the carrier bag. It was black and oily and had been compressed by the weight of the soil, but it was intact.
Inside were the damp remains of Elise's clothing. Nathan felt it: congealed fabric gone black and rotten. Even the rubber remains of the Adidas had perished. But they threw the bag on the plastic sheeting too.
Then they stopped to examine it all. It didn't look like much. A ,
broken skull, a few cracked bones. A bag of rags. Nathan looked down at the churned soil.
'We'll never find it all.'
'It doesn't matter. If a builder unearths what he thinks is a human skeleton, he's obliged to call the police. But if he finds a few scraps of bone by a river in the woods, what's he going to think ? He's going to think it's an animal. I mean . . .' He stooped to lift a chipped fragment from the plastic. He cleaned the caked earth from it and said, 'What's this?'
'I don't know.'
'I don't know either. It might not even be part of her. And we're the ones who put her here.'
Nathan counted the long bones.
'Bits are missing. A leg, or something.'
Bob considered the plastic sheeting.
'It was probably dragged off and eaten in the early days. By a badger.'
'A badger?'
'How the fuck should I know?'
'A fox. A dog maybe.'
They examined the grave.
Bob said, 'What time is it?'
'Gone three.'
'Right. So we don't have much time.'
They rolled the bones into a plastic bundle and sealed it with duct tape. They left the bundle in the woods and began to fill in the hole.
They threw rocks and rotted leaves and twigs and branches at the area where they'd been digging. It hurt to breathe. Nathan's hands were numb.
When they were done, Bob evaluated the scene. He probed at the ground with the beam of his torch.
He said, 'Now, have you got everything? Keys, wallet? Glasses?
Everything you bought. You haven't left anything? Your mobile phone?'
'No.'
'You're sure?'
'Pretty sure.'
'Two torches,' recited Bob. He counted off on his gloved fingers.
'Two shovels. Carpet knife. Tape.' He looked round himself. 'I think that's it.'
He patted his pockets.
'Car keys.'
Nathan waited until Bob found the keys. They walked into the trees. They'd come to the end of their endurance, and their tempers.
