Burial

201

Neil Cross

'Are you there?'

'Yeah. I can't see a fucking thing.'

'Press on a few feet. I'll turn on the torch as soon as it's safe.'

'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.

Nathan took the shovels. Bob lifted the plastic-wrapped remains.

They were light, but bulky, and Bob's arms were tired. He couldn't carry it alone. He couldn't drag it; it might rip open on a tree root.

Nathan would have to help. But Nathan couldn't do that and also take the shovels.

'One of us will have to come back for them,' whispered Bob. 'We'll draw lots.'

'Fuck that. Let's throw her in the river.'

'What?'

'For Christ's sake. We wore gloves. We haven't bled or spat or whatever the fuck else. The river will wash away any trace elements.

And it'll scatter the bits: it'll wash them all the way downstream. To the sea maybe, to the ocean. It's the safest thing to do.'

'Are you mad?'

'No. What's mad, is to dig her up, then take her home in the boot of your car. Why not just get rid of her now?'

'It's leaving too much to chance.'

'Not so much as driving out of this lane at 4 a.m. with a fucking skeleton in the boot.'

'If we abandon the evidence, just throw it in the river, then we have to spend the rest of our lives worrying that someone, somehow, is going to find it -- and identify it. And we'll have to go to bed at night hoping we haven't left some clue, some trace of ourselves, that can be traced back to us. Christ, I don't know - maybe one of your hairs is trapped between her teeth or something, maybe it lodged there when you lifted the skull from the ground.'

'The river would wash it clean.'

'Maybe it would. Maybe not. Do you fancy taking that risk?'

'The hair would rot.'

'Maybe the cold water would preserve it.'

'Fuck,' said Nathan, knowing Bob was right.

They glared at each other and at the plastic-wrapped remains.

They taped the spades to the parcel and carried it between them like a stretcher. It took a long time to retrace their steps. They left behind several hundred muddy footprints. They used no torches and it was very dark. Because their arms were weary, the remains of Elise eventually grew very heavy.

Back at the car, they removed their shoes and shoved them into a black bin liner. They removed their clothes and shoved these into another bin liner. Inside the boot were six large bottles of Evian. They used these first to slake their thirst, then to rinse the worst of the mud from their hands and face and hair. The water was cold. They spluttered and swore. Bob had not thought to bring a towel.

Bob put Elise in the boot while Nathan put his suit back on. He was cold and wet and muddy, and the clean fabric abraded his skin.

His fingers shivered as he laced his shoes. Bob closed the boot. He supported his weight with one hand on the roof while he dressed in a pair of jumbo cords and a cable-knit sweater gone in the elbows. It smelled of motor oil.

They sat in the Audi, shivering.

'Right,' said Bob.

He engaged the engine and pulled the car through a U-turn.

Nathan turned in his seat to see how the red brake lights illuminated the half-moon of tyre tracks they left on the road behind them. Bob told him not to worry. The tyre tracks and the footprints would be long gone before the builders got here, let alone the police: erased by the wind and the rain and the passage of other cars with muddy wheels, cars that brought young lovers down this dark lane. And when the footprints and the tyre prints were gone, they would be gone forever. Any fresh traces they'd left behind would be hopelessly compromised.

The Audi stopped where the lane joined the road.

Bob waited until he was sure no cars were coming -- no car whose driver or passenger might take note of the old Audi slipping out of such a sinister track, so late at night. But it was late and there was no traffic. The road stretched empty in both directions.

They barely saw another vehicle until they pulled on to the motorway, and even then the traffic was intermittent and forlorn. Bob drove at a measured pace in the inside lane. They passed two flashing :fe police cars breathalysing somebody at the roadside. They grew tense.

But that was it.

It was after 5 a.m. when they arrived at Bob's house. People on early shifts were leaving for work. Clubbers were still getting home.

It was dark but the night had gone. It was a new day.