Berserk

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 shoulders and gut touched the walls. He would be filthy when he came back up, but the cool, damp darkness below was irresistible.

"What's down there?" Jo called. She was standing aside from the doorway, allowing as much light as possible to enter.

"Spiders," Tom called. "Big ones. Huge. Unnaturally huge! Oh my God!"

"What?"

Tom chuckled and the sound carried up and down. Above, it elicited a muttered curse from Jo; below, it echoed for a second, overlapping itself and turning into a groan. Tom took out his car keys and pressed the button on the tiny torch that hung on the keyring. Its makers' claims that it could be seen from a mile away were instantly vapourised when the beam barely managed to fight back the dark more than a couple of feet.

Thick dark, Tom thought, like it hasn't been disturbed for ages.

At the bottom of the narrow stairs he found himself in a tiny room with a low ceiling and bare stone walls. The walls had been whitewashed at some time in the distant past, but moisture had bled through and shed the paint onto the floor. His torch lit the room just enough for him to see that there was nothing down there, other than a few shelves and a damp floor that looked prone to flooding. No sign of an electric light, and no indication that the room had been used for decades.

It was cold. Bitterly cold. He wondered if everywhere underground was like this.

"Anything?" Jo called. Her voice was muffled, even though the staircase only took a half-turn.

"It's horrible!" Tom called back, putting on his best horror movie voice.

"Well, retreat from the horror and help me in the bedroom."

"That's an offer I can't refuse."

Jo laughed. "Maybe after dinner if you're lucky."

"If you're lucky!"

He started up the staircase, knees straining from the unnatural angle at which he had to climb. He thought of the people who had actually used this place to store their meat and perishables, wondered how they had lived, whether they had shared the same banter as he and Jo. Perhaps the cottage was haunted. At least a ghost tickling his foot in the night would take his mind off Steven, and that map, and the fact that Nathan King for some reason wanted him to find the grave.

Or did he? Maybe the red cross was a red herring. Perhaps King was just a cruel man, taking pleasure in Tom's desperation and loss.

"You're filthy!" Jo said. "Oh for God's sake, you and your bloody exploring."

"Want to wash me off in the bath?"

"Stop being a frisky old sod and carry our suitcase upstairs, will you?" She smiled at him, one side of her mouth rising in a look that spoke of years of love and familiarity. Sometimes Tom thought they knew each other too well—that Steven's death had left an irreparable hole in their lives that they tried to fill with more of themselves—but he found endless comfort in their strong relationship. Many people turned to God, but he had to look no farther than his wife.

Upstairs, Tom and Jo unpacked their suitcase, hung their clothes, pulled back the bedclothes to let them air, and all the while Tom was aware of the map in his back pocket. It felt heavier than a piece of paper. He kept touching the pocket, slipping his finger inside to make sure it was still there. If Jo found it he had no idea what he would tell her. Not the truth, for sure: Jo, I think this is where Steven is really buried. Oh no. That way lay madness. But lying to his wife was not something that came naturally, and he was sure that whatever happened, she would see through his lie to the terrible truth beneath.

"What shall we do for dinner?" Jo asked. Tom looked at her blankly for a few seconds, trying to haul his thoughts back from their buried son. "Dinner?" "You eat it," she said. "Here, or in the local pub?" "Oh, er …" Tom shook his head. "The pub, I think." "You sure? I could cook the steak we brought." There'll be people in the pub, he thought. Noise, bustle, spaces I can stare into without Jo wondering why. "Let's have that tomorrow," he said. "Come on, it'll be nice to eat out our first night here."

"Alright, but you're not allowed to choose steak. That chance has gone, mister." She pecked him on the cheek and went into the bathroom.

Tom clunked downstairs, making a noise so that Jo did not think he was sneaking around. He snorted, shook his head and sat on the flowery settee in the living room. Damn it, I'm not sneaking about all fucking weekend! But he took the map from his pocket, coughing as he opened it to mask the sound of paper crinkling, and spread it on his knee. There was little to reveal its location on the Plain other than the coordinates, and for that he would have to buy a larger scale OS map. There were no villages, farms or settlements, no major roads, and no names that he could see to identify any particular area. All the map displayed were the contour lines of gentle hills, a couple of stone mounds, and a meandering stream at the bottom edge. That and the red cross. How dare they bury my Steven in no place at all, he thought, the sentiment raw and sore in his eyes. He wiped away the first tears, sniffed, stood and walked to the kitchen. In one of the food boxes he had packed a bottle of Jameson's, and he spun the top off and took a long, luxurious swig from the bottle.

Jo said he drank too much. But then she barely drank at all, so she did not understand the pleasure he derived from it. That was his excuse, anyway, and his stock answer when she brought it up, though sometimes he thought his drinking had more to do with drowning pain than promoting pleasure.

He took another swig, put the top back on, and closed his eyes as the whiskey burned its way into his stomach. Upstairs he heard the toilet flush and the tap turned on, the water hammer in the pipes actually seeming to set the house shaking on its foundations.

"Tom!" Jo called.

"Okay, I hear it!" he shouted. "Probably the ghost trying to get out of the pipes."

Jo was silent. Tom knew he could take this ghost thing too far; she claimed not to believe in them, yet they terrified her. Perhaps the mention of ghosts only brought Steven to mind.

The local pub was surprisingly accommodating to visitors. It had a smattering of locals—they gathered at one end of the bar, playing darts or sitting protectively around their pints of local brew—but there was still an honest welcome from the staff, and a friendliness that put Tom immediately at ease. The landlady recommended a pint of local beer for him, and she let him try a half before he committed to buying some, which he did. She gave Jo her first glass of wine on the house, and when Tom said they'd like to eat she showed them to a comfortable, private table in an alcove close to the front door. Its window looked out onto the village street, and past the houses opposite they could make out the rolling hills of Salisbury Plain in the dusk. Tom glanced that way, saw Jo do the same, and then they both concentrated on the inside of the pub.

Tom had left the map back at the cottage, hidden in the book he had brought to read this weekend. His pocket felt empty without it, as if he had left purpose behind.

They ordered food, and while waiting they indulged in one of their own private games; spotting peculiar-looking people, giving them a name, then building a background around them. The old farmer at the end of the bar, sporting sideburns the size of small rabbits, became Major Crisis of the Indian Expeditionary Force, here on leave and making the most of British beer brewing. Whenever he spoke he spat at those around him, and Tom had to bury his face in his hands when Jo muttered, "Machine gun effect."

There was a huge open fireplace but the fire remained unlit. Tom imagined it would be very cosy here in the winter, with flames roaring in the hearth and hail pummeling the windows. Perhaps they would have a lock-in after eleven o'clock, allowing the locals to remain here lest the wind blow them away. The landlady would cook them bacon sandwiches throughout the night, and if any beer barrel needed changing one of the regulars would volunteer, sparse payment for their use of the pub as a shelter against the elements.

And maybe Steven had drunk here once.

Tom sighed and took a drink. Jo spotted his instant mood change but ignored it. He thanked her silently, smiled, and made a joke about the young family that had just come in. They had a daughter and son, both under five, and the parents looked hassled and strained. The children stared around the pub wide-eyed, marking places for forthcoming expeditions and items to investigate as soon as their parents turned their backs.

He might have grandchildren that age, if Steven hadn't been killed.

Tom tipped his beer, and as he was looking into the bottom of the glass King's face came back at him, pale and haunted by what he had seen. He had obviously wanted to tell Tom everything, and yet from that first moment in the pub he had seemed reticent about speaking. He had let out a few details, but everything he said inspired a dozen more questions. And then he had left the map.

Why? What could Nathan King gain from revealing any of this? Unless it really was as he said: Maybe sharing my nightmares will lessen them.

"Do you remember how he used to like vampires and werewolves?" Jo said. Neither of them ever had to say who they were talking about.

"And not just when he was a kid," Tom said, smiling. "There was always something going on with him. He always liked to think about things differently."

"Just like his father," Jo said, smiling. "I never understood the fascination." She was moving her wineglass around in small circles, setting the wine swirling, staring into its centre as if seeing the past in there. "Stuff like that always seems so nasty."

"I think maybe that is the fascination," Tom said. "Finding nastier things than anything you'll meet in the world. Reading about them. Facing them."

"Still, there's nicer things to read about and watch."

Like war, and death, and murder, Tom thought, but he said nothing.

"I wonder if he'd still be into all that stuff if he were still with us," she said, setting the glass down and watching the wine settle. She looked up at Tom, eyebrows raised.

"The person he would have been is someone we'll never know," Tom said. "Ten years is a long time."

"A stranger," Jo said sadly, and she turned and looked out the window. A street lamp reflected in her eyes, catching the moisture of threatening tears.

"Don't cry," Tom said. His wife looked back at him, and then their food came to save them.

They ate in silence, enjoying each other's company and the fact that there was not always the need for conversation. Tom often saw couples sitting in pubs or restaurants, not conversing, uncomfortable, obviously having nothing to say to each other. He and Jo had never been like that; their silence was merely another form of conversation. It said, I'm alright, I'm content, I love that you're here next to me. A big part of their being together was their ability to be on their own.

Later, Tom sipped some single malt while Jo had one more glass of wine. They had finished their meal and moved their chairs so that they both sat behind the table, looking into the pub. They watched the young couple struggle through a noisy dinner, bickering with their children and each other, leaving when the little boy began crying and refused to stop, whatever the parents offered him. Major Crisis remained at the end of the bar, slumping farther and farther down in his seat the more he drank. He was a quiet drunk, his moist eyes blinking slowly and heavily.

Tom began to feel tired, worn out by the journey here, but also troubled by the map and Nathan King's comments. Such a weight on his shoulders, unshared. Such a burden to carry, secret from his wife. And that lie by omission caused a form of mental exhaustion. For the first time in years there was something between them, blocking the total contact their minds enjoyed and demanded, and it was something that Tom had brought on himself. If only he had been able to take things as they were, accept whatever reality made life most comfortable. But he had never been one to shy away from truths hidden in the dark. Just as he liked to explore derelict houses or dingy basements, so he could never resist delving into mysteries secreted away in hidden corners of reality.

Somewhere not too far away from where they now sat, Steven may be buried. However disturbing that was—however wrong that made everything feel—it was something that Tom could never simply ignore for the sake of a quiet life.

But he would spare Jo that knowledge for as long as he could. Forever, perhaps.

Next morning, fate dealt Tom a powerful hand. Jo woke up with stomach cramps and reached the bathroom just in time to vomit. Tom went to her, held her, wiped her mouth, wanting to shy away from the stink but too concerned to do so. After a few more dry heaves she staggered back to bed, muttering about gone-off food or too much wine, and Tom sat beside her, stroking her hair.

"You think maybe this is all too much?" he asked.

"I don't think so, really, love," she said. "I wanted to come here, for us as much as Steven. I enjoyed our time together last night. I feel a little sad, and I'll have a weep this weekend, but I'm glad we came."

"You look glad," he said, pleased when she offered a weak smile.

"I feel bloody awful." She closed her eyes and sighed as Tom stroked her cheek.

A few minutes later, when Jo was almost asleep, Tom leaned down and whispered to her. "Do you mind if I go out?"

She shook her head. "No, go, go, leave me to sleep, I'll be fine," she mumbled, tiredness distorting her words.

Tom kissed her forehead, pleased to feel no fever there. It was bad food or too much wine, as she said. He would have never left her if she were truly ill, but now …

He picked up his book containing the map, closed the bedroom door quietly behind him, and hurried downstairs to gather his things. Food for lunch, money, walking boots, and a shovel he took from the lean-to shed behind the cottage.

I'll not be digging anything up. That's just fucking crazy. I'm not doing any digging. Of course I'm not.

But he put the shovel in the car boot anyway, glancing up to make sure Jo was not watching from the window. He closed the door and stood there for a while, listening to the sounds of the world waking up. Birds chirped, fallen leaves rustled, but his breathing was loudest.

As he drove away from the cottage he felt unreality settling around him. Part of it was being away from Jo, he supposed, and part of it was the map in his back pocket once again. But there was also a sense of foreboding, hanging over him like thunderclouds on the dawn horizon.

Did I really just put a shovel in the car boot?

He smiled and shook his head. But he could not dispel the sense of danger that accompanied him as he drove away, nor the feeling that his life was changing by the second.

He picked up a hiker's map at the post office on the outskirts of the village. It was an expanded Ordnance Survey map, with rights of way and footpaths added to enable walkers to find their way across the Plain. It also had a boxed key to one side, where local areas of interest were listed and coordinated with the map. As he sat in the car, the village behind him and the expanse of Salisbury Plain ahead, Tom felt the full desolation of that wild place opening up before him.

It was a beautiful autumn day. The sky was clear. The leaves remaining on trees were gold, orange and yellow, still clinging to branches but almost ready to fall; beauty in death. A mile from the village he pulled up on the grass verge, looked around to make sure he was totally alone and took out Nathan King's map.

It only took a couple of minutes to locate the area on the new OS map. The scales were different, but the coordinates were accurate, and Tom stared down at the point of his search. It was nowhere. There were no villages nearby, no farms, no signs of habitation or humanity whatsoever. Such a cold place to die. Such an empty place to be buried. He closed his eyes and saw Steven as a toddler, running through the local woods and swishing at fern heads with a stick, laughing back at Tom when he growled and clawed his hand and threatened to give chase.

"It's not fair," Tom said, not quite sure what he was referring to. All of it, perhaps. Life. "It's not fair."

It took half an hour to drive across the Plain toward the red X on King's map. A mile or so away from that place the road veered to the south, bounded on the left by a bank topped with a security fence. Warning signs were placed at regular intervals:

WARNING

NO ACCESS

M.O.D. PROPERTY

LIVE FIRING ZONE

"Fuck." Tom pulled over onto the side of the road and stared at the fence. It was tall, anti-climb, and though it showed signs of age it still seemed sturdy and intimidating.

So close! He checked the map again, trying to imagine what this fence and the bank it stood upon hid. He left the car and climbed, grasping at shrubs and clumps of thick grass for purchase. It was steep, obviously meant to deter the curious. Perhaps he was being observed even now.

He paused, looked over his shoulder, confirmed that he was alone. He could see no security cameras lining the fence. There were no other cars out here, and no sign at all that there was anyone other than him on the moor this morning. Yet the feeling of being watched lingered, and Tom put it down to guilt.

At the top of the bank he knelt and looked between the metal fence uprights.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the landscape beyond. Wilder than the area he had just driven through, perhaps, but only because he could see no roads or tracks in there. There were no buildings, no artificial earthworks, and no sign of any activity.

Out there, that's where Steven may be buried, he thought. That bush on the hillock over there, perhaps its roots are in his skeleton. Or over there, that spread of heather, like a bruise on the land, maybe that was planted to cover the mass grave.

He wondered how close he was to Porton Down. He had not been able to find it on the OS map, but that was hardly surprising. Though everyone knew of its existence, a chemical and biological warfare research establishment was hardly a place that the military would want advertised.

They kept monsters there.

Tom shivered. The wilderness was getting to him already. He loved the countryside, but only the version he was familiar with, where he would meet neighbours walking their dogs or kids damming a stream, all of it recognisible and safe. This was a truly wild place. He could imagine the big cats of legend prowling the Plain, and at night, when there was only moonlight and mist, the ghosts would have it to themselves.

He glanced at his watch. He'd been away from Jo for under an hour, but already she felt far away.

"So how the hell do I get in there?" he said, leaning against the fence, shoving, feeling absolutely no give whatsoever. There was another sign farther along, and he walked along the top of the bank to read it:

NO ACCESS

AREA PATROLLED BY SECURITY GUARDS

"Well, if there are guards patrolling, there aren't any live firing exercises."

He tried to picture this place crawling with military hardware, aircraft swooping low across the Plain, unleashing awesome firepower against target vehicles and vehicles they only believed to be targets. But that version of Steven's death was rapidly dwindling in Tom's mind, fading like an old photograph, replaced already by the mystery planted by his brief talk with Nathan King. Life had become complicated again, and here he was trying to exacerbate that confusion.

Whatever he found in there, he knew that it would not give him easy answers.

Tom walked the fence. He chose to go south, simply because the geography of the land hid the fence in that direction, swallowing it with a small wood. He remained on top of the man-made bank of earth, holding onto the fence here and there when it became too narrow, glancing left again and again, wondering whether at any moment he was looking directly at Steven's grave. He had brought the shovel and a bag of food from the car, and the exertion was making him sweat.

He had no idea what he would say if he was stopped. The shovel was hardly easy to explain. And just why the hell am I bringing it? It's not as if I'm going to dig up a mass grave, even if there is one. But he shoved the thought aside, hid it away, aware that it was there but happy for now to ignore it.

The height of the bank slowly lessened, leaving the fence sitting on the natural levels of the Plain. Not far beyond that it wended its way into a small woodland, edging left and right between trees, and it was here that Tom found his way in. The fence had been erected years ago, and even though the trees had been here for much longer, they continued to grow. Roots had sprained the metal, twisted the foundations of some of the posts, and one section of the fence had been so badly warped that there was a crawl space beneath it, scoured clean of vegetation by whom– or whatever used it.

Badgers, he thought. Foxes. Wild cats.

Tom sat on a fallen tree, opened the bag of food and ate a sandwich whilst staring at the depression beneath the fence. This was where he would cross a line. Until now he was only investigating around the edges of what King had told him, circling the myth, trying to draw from it whatever facts he could without getting too close. Now, if he crawled beneath this security fence, he would be grabbing hold of the story and interrogating it. Action, not words. And with the trepidation that idea brought came that same old feeling; the conviction that he should be leaving this alone.

Nothing he did could bring Steven back.

"But he's my son," Tom said. The sound of his voice in such silence surprised him. He finished the sandwich and tied a knot in the bag.

The fence was cold. The trees whispered above him, though there was no breeze at ground level.

As Tom crawled on his stomach, the base of the fence scratched at his back on the way through. Now this has marked me, he thought, and he pulled himself up into the restricted area.

Emerging from the woods on the other side, Tom felt completely exposed. He hung back by the trees for a while, looking across the Plain and up at the sky, trying to spot whoever may be watching him. A pair of buzzards circled high up, uncontained by fences and restricted areas. They would see him walking across the landscape, watch as he found the place marked on the map, and whatever he revealed would be made open to them as well.

Soon, Jo would start to wonder where he was.

Tom stepped away from the trees and set off across the moor.

He had always enjoyed the moors, his love stemming from the many camping holidays he and his parents had taken on Bodmin. The spring of the ground underfoot, the smell of heather and tall ferns whipped aside by a stick, the thrill of exploration as he and his brother ventured into old surface mines, the wonder of every new pile of ancient rocks or hollows in the ground that contained a sheep's skeleton, a bird's nest, or simply a shadow promising more secrets to come. He adored the smell of the place, and the feel of a wild breeze on his face, and the humbling sense that the moor itself was a living entity. It had secrets, that was for sure. As he grew older he had become used to what he knew—the safe countryside where he lived, no risks, no dangers, no sense of true wilderness—but now, walking across Salisbury Plain, he felt charged with the raw energy and mystery of this place. He felt good.

He paused and took out King's map. The red cross drew his eye, but he looked at the surrounding area, almost featureless and without any point of reference. From the walker's map he had bought, he guessed that he was now at the bottom right corner of King's map. The stream would be farther on, hidden somewhere ahead of him by the lay of the land. The red cross was almost central, and by converting scales he guessed that he had maybe half a mile to walk before he was in the vicinity of the grave.

"Oh shit." The full import of what he was doing suddenly hit him. His knees felt weak, his stomach rolled and his balls tingled with fear. What if he was caught? What would he say? How could the truth possibly help him, when it had always been the army keeping the truth for itself?

Tom knew that there was only one way to confront his doubt and fears; he moved on. He counted his paces. There was little to see on the small map, so the only way he could approximate his location was by estimating how far he had come from the fence. He crossed the small stream, and that at least gave him a point of reference. When he had come over half a mile into the military zone he paused, looked around, consulted the small map again, ran his fingertips over the indent of the red cross, and saw something that would change his life forever.

At first he thought it was a small rock buried in the ground, its matte surface pitted by years of frost and sunshine. There was a hint of yellow to it, and one edge was badly cracked, a thin line of moss growing there. As he moved closer a feeling of dread came down, sending a chill through him even though the autumn sun fought to hold it back.

It can't be.

Tom closed the map, crumpled the piece of paper, leaned on the shovel as he eased himself to the ground. Kneeling, he was that much closer to the object. He reached out to touch it, but one of the buzzards called out high above. He sat back on his heels and looked up. The bird was circling him, and if he was not so scared he would have laughed at the outrageous symbolism of this.

He leaned forward and touched the buried object, and it was not a rock.

Something happened then, a momentary realisation that this was the point at which he could change his future. Jo would be wondering where he was. She had been sick, he had been away for a couple of hours already, and that provoked a cool sense of guilt. She would be sitting up in bed reading, perhaps having made herself a cup of tea, and after each paragraph her eyes would flit to the bedside clock, then back again. Soon she would check the time after every line, and then perhaps she would not be able to read at all. He should go to her. He should leave this place—where he really had no right to be—and forget everything that Nathan King had told him. Perhaps he had been drunk. Or maybe he and his friend had simply decided that it would be fun to mess with Tom, fuck with his mind.

He reached out again to touch the thing buried in the ground.

He should leave.

And as his fingers skimmed what he already knew to be a buried bone, he actually felt the world shifting around him. Whatever safety net he had been living with was ripped away, leaving the bare landscape of stark truths ready to pull him down and tear him to ribbons. Preconceptions of what was right and wrong, true or false, were suddenly questioned again. He had never truly believed most of what he had been told about Steven's death, but he realised with a jolt that he had never imagined his own idea of the story. Perhaps it would have been too terrible. Now, everything he knew could be a lie. There was no safety in the world anymore. He was in his mid-fifties, and his childhood was at an end.

Tom stroked his finger across the pitted surface. I could be touching my son right now. There was a definite curve to the bone. A skull. He came to the crack and, using his thumbnail, scraped out the moss. Then he moved his fingers down to where the skull entered the ground, pushed, found that he could slip his fingers in quite easily. He worked them deeper, feeling the coolness of damp soil on one side and the smooth, slick skull on the other. He pulled, tugged, and his hand came free with a clump of earth attached. Tom dug again, using both hands this time, amazed at how easily the soil moved. He pulled away an area of heather around the buried skull, lifting soil as it came, and soon he had built a small pile of the purple-flowered shrub. He sat back panting, glanced down at his hands, realised how filthy he was already and how worried Jo might be, but he went back to work at the ground around the skull, the depression deepening with every handful of earth he removed.

Tom suddenly remembered the shovel and the going became easier. He threw the soil behind him, not wishing to pile it up in case he had to move it again. He placed the shovel, stood on it, pressed down, bent and heaved up another load. He took care not to work too close to the skull so he would not damage it. That could be Steven down there … or maybe there were more, the remains of fifteen men buried deep after being killed by whatever had escaped from Porton Down.

Tom paused and looked at his hands, the mud beneath his nails, the muck already ground into the creases between his fingers. Whatever they had died from could still be here. Plague? Some dreadful chemical warfare agent? It could be eating into him right now, entering his bloodstream and revelling in this unexpected new victim. He closed his eyes. He felt no different, other than the fact that he was digging up a secret mass grave close to a biological warfare establishment.

He laughed out loud, fell to his knees and held his stomach. The shovel dropped and landed in the hole he had created, clanking against the top of the skull, and Tom's laughter turned to tears. Tears for himself, for Jo, for Steven buried somewhere beneath him. He could turn and leave, accept the truth now that the lie was revealed, get on with his life; or he could carry on digging. He had come this far.

My son's corpse? Do I really want to see that? His skeleton, his skull, whatever is left of his skin? He looked up at the rising sun, squinting, seeing no answers there.

"It's madness," he said, and the sound of his own voice startled him into action. He picked up the shovel and worked around the skull.

A few minutes later he revealed the first eye socket. Tom backed away and slid around the hole to work at the back of the skull. He had no wish to be watched. He knelt and used his hands again, and minutes later they tangled in a chain. Tom cursed as he felt the metal pinch his finger, but then he tugged gently at the chain around the skeleton's neck, bringing the dog tags up into the sun for the first time in a decade. He did not question why they were still there, why they had not been removed, the panic that this suggested in the men who had buried the bodies. He could not. Because here, at last, was a name.

His heart thumped as he spat on the metal and cleaned away the muck. He scraped with his thumbnail, revealing the letters and numbers, sobbing as he did so. Tears blurred his vision and he wiped them away, smearing mud across his face.

Gareth Morgan. This was not his son.

Tom kept digging around the skeleton, not so careful now that he knew it was not Steven. He was sweating, his clothes stuck to his body with sweat and grime, and his heart was hammering from the exertion. He thought of Jo again and how worried and afraid she would be right now, but this was for her as well, this truth he was uncovering out here on the Plain. But could he tell her? Even if he found Steven's corpse would he be able to tell her? That was something he would have to overcome should the situation arise.

Bastards! Anger filtered in past the shock. The bastards, killed our sons and lied to us about it! The significance of this weighed heavy, and the implications of what he was doing suddenly felt so much more serious. If he was captured doing this—uncovering a scandal that could very well explode the heart of the British government—what would be done? Would he simply be added to the hole before it was filled in again?

He stood, looked around, saw the buzzards still circling high overhead, then carried on digging.

Around the remains of the stranger called Gareth Morgan the soil suddenly became loose, and Tom stumbled as it fell into a hollow with a rush. As his foot sank in, he dropped the shovel and spread his arms, falling onto his rump beside the skull. Mass grave, he thought, and then the smell hit him. Wet rot, decay, age, not the smell of the recently dead but the stench of time. He leaned back and pulled his foot free, rolling across the disturbed ground away from the new hole and the smell drifting up from it. He closed his eyes and buried his face in heather, breathing in the muddy freshness of it, trying to clear the smell of his son's death from his lungs.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Tom said, suddenly sobbing into the ground. He had no idea what he was doing. His hands clawed, fingers dug in, as if afraid that he would fall off the world if he loosened his grip. And wasn't he doing that already? So much had changed in the last hour that he would not be surprised to open his eyes and find the world spinning the opposite way. Smelling the honest peaty smell of the ground beneath him, he wished that he had never overheard those two men in the pub.

But he had. And King had given him the map, and now here he was. Looking for his dead son.

Tom crawled back to the skeleton—revealed to its chest now that the soil around it had tumbled into a hollow—and stared down at what he had done. There were other bones visible down there, touched by sunlight for the first time in years. The corpses must have been piled in together, covered over with a layer of soil and heathers, and as their flesh rotted away beneath the ground it left hollows behind, dark wet spaces filled with nothing but the gas of decay and the undying echoes of their violent deaths. The skeleton called Gareth Morgan still wore the remnants of a uniform, and shreds of leathery skin clung to its bones, moist and browned by the damp soil. Beneath it a tangle of bones and clothing, skin and hair, marked where other bodies had found their final resting place.

"Oh God," Tom muttered, reaching down into the dark. "Oh God, oh God …" He could taste decay on his tongue, sweet yet vile. He wondered whether each body smelled different in decomposition, and if so which smell was his son.

But death was the great equaliser. Personality had no part in rot. Humour or seriousness held no truck with the processes of bacteria and decay. Steven was long gone from here, yet Tom had never felt so close.

He slid on the wet soil and moved forward, his outstretched arm sinking deeper into the void. He cried out in alarm but came to a stop, his hand closing around a clammy bone. He pulled gently but there was no give. The shovel was under his stomach, and he eased it out and used the blade to shift more of the soil above the grave. It took little effort now, and by kneeling up he found he could simply push the heather to one side like a carpet, revealing the horrors of what lay beneath.

Sunlight struck the bones. Subtle autumn heat ate away the coolness of their decade-long rest. The buzzards cried out and drifted away, perhaps sensing death even from such a height. Tom knelt among the rotted corpses of so many men and looked up, welcoming the sun on his face and the sense of his skin stretching and burning. "Jo," he said, but she did not answer him. "Steven." Still no answer. Tears dripped from his chin and disappeared among the bodies, perhaps cleaning small spots on his son's bones.

Shaking his head, his whole body shivering, fear and shock and rage combining to draw his mind back from what he was doing, Tom bent over and reached back into the grave.

For just a few seconds the madness of this reached down and clasped Tom's hand. It was his wife holding him, whispering into his ear, telling him to let go because they still had each other, and no matter how Steven had died it was only the living that really mattered now. But Tom let go of her hand and held onto what he was doing. His belief that perhaps he and Jo had too much of each other reared up again, a selfish justification. And as Jo's voice faded away, and the touch of her hand seemed more remote than at any time in his life, Tom turned back to his work.

Richard Parker. That was not his son. He dropped the dog tags and stared at the skull of the body he had uncovered, its crew cut of auburn hair so colourful against the stretched grey skin of its face. Here lay a million stories Tom would never know, other than the lie of Richard Parker's violent death.

He shoved the skeleton aside and delved deeper. He encountered tangles of bones and clothing, and mud-caked hair brushed his hand as he quickly withdrew.

There were too many. He would have to start moving the bodies, sorting them, until he found Steven.

He's not here.

Tom shook his head. Where had that idea come from?

He crawled back and prepared to grab hold of the first skeleton, Gareth Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan's son, another soldier whose family had buried a coffin filled with rocks or earth or something else they would never know. He wondered whether this boy's family had doubts about the story as well, and whether they had entertained the idea of travelling to Salisbury Plain to honour their son on the tenth anniversary of his death.

Tom looked back toward the fence, half-expecting to see other fathers coming at him with shovels at the ready. But he was still alone.

Gareth Morgan grinned at him. His skull was almost bare of skin, but there was a hint of a moustache still clinging beneath the hollow of his nose. Tom reached out and grasped the skeleton's ribs, heaved, and cried out in surprise as it sprang from the ground with a brief sucking noise. He tumbled forward and threw it ahead of him. It landed with a thump and its arms spread above its head, as if relishing the sudden feel of sunlight on its wet bones. So light, Tom thought, and he realised he had been thinking of it as a man.

Its spine was snapped, several ribs broken off, and one thigh bone was splintered and holed. Another violent death.

Tom moved back into the hole and dragged out Richard Parker, hands beneath the skeleton's armpits, its legs dragging, heavy with wet clothing and the mummified remnants of muscle and skin. He pulled it across to lay next to Gareth Morgan, and the skeletons' arms seemed to entwine, friends together again.

Back at the hole, Tom went deeper. He pulled out more bodies—some of them rotted down to the bone, some still hanging on to a leathery layer of skin or dried brown flesh—investigated the dog tags, moved the bodies to one side, going deeper still, breathing hard and trying not to pay any attention to his heart as it pummelled at his chest, demanding that he rest, cease, stop this insanity.

It was hot. He could blame his madness on the heat, perhaps.

Tom looked at his muddied hands, felt his forehead, spat in his hand and checked his saliva for blood. No disease had taken him. No chemical warfare agent had turned his insides to mush. Perhaps whatever had killed these men had been released to the air, only to bide its time before striking again. Perhaps it would wipe out the world. Right then, the only thing that mattered for Tom was the image he had built in his mind: Steven's dog tags, muddied and cold, resting in his hands.

Leigh Joslin, Anthony Williams, Stuart Cook … none of these were his son. Jason Collins, Kenny Godden, Adrian Herbert… all strangers, all the dead sons of other families. Eight now, and there were more down there, he could see the mess of their bones and skulls and clothing, muddy and damp, he could smell their sweet smell of decay, taste the wrongness of this in the air.

Tom caught sight of the dead men laid out in a row and looked away, unable to believe what he had done. Joslin's head had slumped from its mounting atop its spine. Herbert was missing an arm. Godden's ribs had been smashed, as if something had tried to get inside. Such violence, such death.

The next body he grabbed still wore hair, and dried flesh sunk in between its bones, and its eyes were pale yellow orbs nesting in its skull. Its strange, misshapen skull. Tom frowned and leaned in closer, edging to one side to allow more sunlight to enter the depression in the ground. The soldier's skull seemed elongated, jaw distended, and his teeth must have risen from their roots because they looked too large for the head. His brow was heavy, nose cavity bulging out over the mouth in a canine aspect.

"What the hell … ?" Tom whispered. There was a bullet hole in the back of the skull. Perhaps that accounted for the distortion.

He reached out and grabbed the body's legs, trying to ignore the feel of cold leathery flesh beneath his hands, clammy with moisture. He pulled. The body shifted a few inches toward him then stopped, held fast by something he could not see.

The skull had remained exactly where it was.

"Fuck!" Tom moved sideways to another skeleton, dragging it up the small slope to the expanding pile laid out on the heather above. He checked the dog tag, discarded it—another stranger—and went back for more.

Jo grabbed his hand again. She squeezed tighter and Tom cried out, a wretched exhalation of despair. He looked up at the sky and it was pure, clean, unsullied by death. But though he saw blue, and heard Jo whispering her love for him, he could still feel the slickness of the grave between his fingers.

Have I changed? he thought. Have I changed so much?

He rubbed his fingers together and let Jo go.

"It's all for you," Tom said, and he looked down again. The strange skull stared at him with its shrunken eyes. The unnatural distance between it and its departed body gave the whole tableau a surreal aspect, and Tom almost pushed the body back close to the head … but its limbs were too long, the ribs too narrow, and why was he doing this? Why was he playing games with himself?

"Steven!" he shouted, and as he dug down again …

He's not here.

Tom wondered when that sensation of being watched had amplified without him really noticing. The buzzards were gone, but the skin of his neck was tingling, set in motion by a gaze he could not pin down.

The weird skull grinned at him through lips shrunken back from the jaws.

"You're dead," he said, pulling at another skeleton, not Steven, then another, also not Steven.

And that was it. Eleven bodies excavated and spread across the heather, eleven sets of dog tags, and none of them were his son. There had supposedly been fifteen killed; perhaps Steven and the other three missing had been buried elsewhere, or incinerated, or …

Why leave the dog tags? Too dangerous? Too much risk of infection?

Down in the pit, though, there were more. Behind the body he could not move he saw the glint of more bones. He reached underneath and his hands touched something cold, heavy. He tugged the corpse again and heard the chink of metal on metal. He pulled harder and another body slipped from the mud, this one also headless and as deformed as the first. Its skull—left behind—also had a bullet hole behind one ear.

I'm not seeing this, he thought, I've been digging up fucking corpses and now it's getting to me, it's hot, Jo is worried, I'm crying and my tears are distorting everything, I'm just not seeing this!

The dead thing slithered toward him as he pulled, connected to the first headless body by the thick metal chain, and then another, smaller corpse followed it up. Tom stood and backed away, only partially realising that he still had a hold of the first body's mummified legs. He brought the dead things with him, two headless adults and what could only have been a child, also headless, its skull lost somewhere in that rank pit.

He was about to drop the legs, back away, run away, when he saw that the chain was wrapped around another bundle, another corpse. This one still seemed to have its head attached. He pulled again and it popped free of the ground, wet and filthy and yet obviously whole. It was chained to the three headless corpses, the metal wrapped around its chest, under its armpits and between its legs, thoroughly entangled, and Tom wondered why anyone would need to bury a dead person like this.

He faltered only for a second before moving slowly down into the pit again. These bodies were more whole than any of the others he had brought out, mummified rather than rotted, perhaps because they had been buried deeper in the peaty ground. The first skull stared at him as he reached over the two adult bodies, grabbed the headless child's skeleton and pulled it across to himself. He was crying, and moaning, and there was a strange keening sound that took him many seconds to realise actually came from him. The child was as light as a pillow, its body seemingly whole and yet dried out, desiccated. The only thing that gave it weight was the chain. Tom placed the corpse gently between the headless adults, clasped the chain and pulled. He lifted, grunting with the effort, tears and sweat blurring his vision as he tried to make out what was wrong with this thing's head, why it was shaped like that, why it was turning…

And then the tiny corpse reached out and grabbed Tom's arm.