Burial

At the edge of the village stood a Norman church: grey stone, simple geometries. Nathan and Bob wandered the graveyard. The stones leaned at crazy angles, green with lichen and rubbed smooth.

' All the names had gone from them. They wandered around like amateur local historians.

"' Nathan muttered, 'Do we even know she was Christian?' 'Doesn't matter.'

'It seems to matter to you.'

'Not at all. Look at that.' He was pointing to a yew tree that stood in one corner of the churchyard. It was an old and hideous thing. Four people, linking arms could not have encompassed its girth.

That tree's a thousand years old. And there would've been another tree, a thousand years old, on the same ground, before it. This church was built on ground sacred to the Druids. It's not the church which is sacred. It's the earth itself. You can feel it. It's like electricity.'

Nathan didn't feel anything, except thirsty.

Bob said, 'It's the ground that sanctifies the building. Not the other way round.'

'Fine. So we come here. In your car, not mine.'

'Why mine?'

'Company car. I can't get rid of it.'

'Fair enough. We'll bring mine.'

'So we leave Elise. Leave the note--'

Bob pointed to the nailed and banded double doors, restored in the nineteenth century and now polished with time.

'Right there.'

'And then it's done?'

'I hope so.'

On the way to work, Nathan called Jacki Hadley.

'Nathan? What is it? Is it Holly?'

'No. No, it's not Holly.'

'Is she okay?'

'She's fine. She doesn't even know I'm calling.'

'Okay.'

'Can we talk?'

He met her in a coppers' pub not far from the station. A few thickset men sat at the bar. A fruit machine flashed in the far corner. Nathan got the drinks - two Cokes with ice and a limp slice of lemon.

'So,' Jacki said. 'What's going on?'

'What's going on. I told you a lie.'

'What sort of lie?'

'When you questioned me.'

'About what?'

'Elise.'

Before his eyes, she became a police officer.

She waited.

Eventually, Nathan said, 'Bob Morrow and I - Bob Morrow's the man I was with--'

'That night. I remember.'

'Well. The statement I made. It wasn't completely true.'

'In what way?'

'Well. . .'

'Go on. It's all right.'

'Well, I said I'd stormed out of the party--'

'Because you'd seen your girlfriend dirty dancing with Mark Derbyshire and got jealous. Your girlfriend being Sarah Reed.'

'Sara. You remember this stuff?'

'I remember this stuff.'

'Anyway. So that's true enough: I saw Sara flirting with Mark, and I stormed off. I mean, I hated the bloke. Really hated him.'

'And...?'

- 'I told the police that Bob was driving home when he saw me by the side of the road. I was trying to walk into Sutton Down to find a taxicab.'

He made a scoffing noise at that, because in truth Sutton Down was the last place in the world to find such a thing.

Jacki said, 'So Bob pulls over, picks you up. You have a chat, love and life. He drives you back to the party. You have an argument with Sara--'

'Sara.'

'You try to hit Mark Derbyshire. You fall on your arse. Bob picks you up and drives you all the way home. So that's not true?'

'Well, it's kind of true.'

'How true?'

'It's essentially true. Bob did see me by the side of the road. He did pull over. We did a few lines, had a chat.'

'Love and life.'

'Love and life.'

'But...?'

'But when he saw me, he wasn't headed away from the party. He was heading back towards it.'

She took this in.

'Where did he say he'd been?'

'Into town. To score.'

'To buy drugs?'

'Cocaine.'

'And had he?'

'He had loads of it. Five, six grammes. The most coke I'd ever seen. And now he was headed back to the party. He was pretty wired.

Like, gibbering. Off his trolley.'

'And why didn't you mention this before?'

'He asked me not to. Kind of begged me.'

At the far end of the bar, the group of coppers suddenly laughed at something. Jacki glanced their way -- as if she'd heard what they were saying and didn't like it. Then she turned back to face Nathan.

'And from the infinite kindness of your heart, you said okay.'

'Look, when Elise - when this thing happened, Bob called me.'

'When is this?'

'On the Sunday, the Monday maybe.'

'Go on.'

'We talked about being interviewed - we thought everyone at the party would be. So we knew the drug thing would maybe come out.

But Bob's got a conviction, apparently. Intent to supply. Selling a bit of weed when he was a kid, funding his degree.'

'So you agreed to say the cocaine was yours.'

'I didn't want to see the poor bastard go down. And - well, Mark Derbyshire was all over the newspapers. I thought you had your man.

We all thought you had your man. It didn't occur to me. Not in a million years.'

'And why are you telling me this now?'

'It's probably nothing.'

'If you thought that, you wouldn't be here.'

'Okay.'

He tried not to blurt it out - he wanted Jacki to think him reluctant.

He said, 'After that night, I didn't really see Bob Morrow again.

I didn't want to, to be honest. He kind of gave me the creeps.'

'In what way?'

'I don't know. I couldn't put my finger on it. He was just -- not right, y'know. Just not right. And anyway, after the party - after Elise and the rest of it - I lost my job.'

'Because of the Mark Derbyshire thing.'

'Yeah. Plus, Sara and I split up. I had nowhere to live. I just [Wanted to forget about the whole thing. The entire night was a disaster.

You know what I'm saying?'

She said she knew.

So then, a few weeks back, Bob Morrow turns up at my door. I don't even know how he got my address.'

'What did he want?'

'Well, this is it. He said he didn't want anything. He said it would be nice to catch up, go for a drink.'

'And you hardly know him?'

'I don't know him at all. We were just at this party together. But now he says he's split up with some girlfriend, he's a free man. You know how it is. So I'm thinking, fuck, what do I do? I want rid of him. If anything, he's worse now than he was then. He smells a bit.

I'm not sure if he's working. He says he's a research assistant at the university, but he never seems to be there.'

'So?'

'So, anyway. We go for a drink. And after a couple of pints -- where have we been, what've we been doing -- he starts to ask about the worst thing I'd ever done.'

He paused, to take a long sip of Coke. He wanted a proper drink, but he also wanted to impress Jacki with his considered sobriety.

'I said -- oh, I don't even know what I said. Stealing from my friend's stash of porn mags when I was a kid. Club Celebrity Edition, 1979. It had Victoria Principal in it.'

Jacki smiled and nodded. But the smile did not belong to Jacki. It belonged to the police officer who was interviewing him.

Nathan said, 'Anyway. So then, Bob starts talking about Elise.'

'Elise Fox?'

'Yes, Elise Fox. What other Elise is there?'

'Keep it down. What did he say?'

'Do I ever think about her? Do I ever dream about her?'

'And what did you say?'

'I said, who wouldn't? I never even met her, but she changed my entire life.'

'Did you tell him about Holly?'

'God, no.'

'Why not?'

'He was giving me the creeps. I kept trying to change the subject.