The Moor

by Sam Haysom

  ‘So you must get to travel quite a bit too, then?’ asks Matt.

  ‘Yeah, that’s one of the perks, in a way. I’m based in London but I can be away for weeks at a time. So last month I was in Liverpool, finishing up a project with a major gallery, and next month I’ll be in Cardiff doing some stuff with a branch of the council.’

  ‘Doesn’t it get a bit tiring?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘All that travelling,’ says Matt. ‘Having to spend chunks of time in different places. Doesn’t it make it hard to get settled?’

  Tim has picked up a stick from the ground next to him, and as he stares into the fire, thinking, he breaks off bits of wood and throws them into the flames. After a few seconds he looks back at Matt.

  ‘I actually quite like it,’ he says. ‘I get bored easily in one place, I think. It’s good for me, seeing different cities. Sometimes I even think I might like to move abroad, even if it was only for a year or two.’

  ‘Do you get back to Southampton much?’ asks James. ‘You know, to visit old uni friends.’

  ‘Not if I can avoid it,’ Tim laughs. ‘No, I had enough of Southampton in the three years I was there, I think. Besides, most people I know from uni have moved on now.’

  Tim throws another segment of stick into the fire, and Matt reaches out to take his water – now boiling nicely – off the heat.

  ‘Do you ever think you’ll get bored of coming back here?’ He’s pouring the water into a mug as he asks the question, but he keeps flicking glances at Tim through the rising steam.

  Tim throws his last piece of wood into the fire and watches it burn. He nods his head, slowly, and for a second Matt isn’t sure if he’s heard the question.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t get bored,’ Tim says at last. ‘I think I’d always want to come back here, every once in a while.’

  James looks from Tim to Matt, then back to Tim again. ‘It’s an important place, isn’t it,’ he says. ‘For us.’

  Tim nods. Matt isn’t sure if it’s just the light from the fire playing tricks, but for a second he thinks Tim might be about to cry.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Matt says carefully. ‘I think about driving back down here myself. I’ve thought about doing it a couple of times, particularly on the years when we haven’t been able to meet up.’

  Tim’s staring into the fire. He nods his head without saying anything.

  ‘I thought about coming down last summer, actually,’ says Matt.

  Tim’s eyes flick up from the fire and find Matt’s face, then flick back to the flames again.

  ‘Do you guys ever think about doing that? You know, just getting away from everything and coming down here for a day or two?’

  James is nodding his head. ‘Sometimes,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I feel like I should come down when we can’t all make it. Just come down on my own. I don’t like the thought of forgetting, I guess.’

  ‘How about you, Tim?’ says Matt.

  ‘I don’t think I could ever forget about it.’ Tim has picked up another stick which he’s breaking into pieces. His eyes are fixed on the fire like a man in a trance.

  ‘But do you ever think about coming back?’ says Matt. ‘You know, on your own?’

  Tim throws another piece of stick into the fire. After a long pause he clears his throat and looks up.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I wouldn’t want to come back here without you guys.’ He pauses and lets out a dry, half-chuckle. ‘I think I’d be too spooked.’

  Matt shoots a glance at James, who meets his eyes for a second before looking down at the ground.

  Matt takes a sip of his tea. It tastes too strong, but it’s better than nothing. He puts the mug down on the ground beside him, and listens to the crackling of the fire.

  After a moment he closes his eyes.

  Saturday, Part One

  They pass Hayworth Tor around midday, and reach the spot Matt has in mind around the middle of the afternoon.

  It’s just a clearing – one of what must be hundreds, if not thousands of clearings in Rutmoor – but Matt recognises it straight away. The sun is beating down overhead, and although there are some clouds off in the distance to the east, the majority of the sky is a clear blue. It shines down on the plush grass of the clearing, and Matt finds it hard to believe that this is the same place where he last saw Tom alive.

  Tom, with his long legs and his good looks, who was always the leader of their little group. Matt supposes he’s probably the leader now – he’s the one that plans the get-togethers, and he’s the one that organised this very special reunion on the 13th anniversary of that long-ago weekend in the summer of 2002.

  I’m the leader, alright, Matt thinks. I’m the leader and I need to think hard about what that means. What kind of responsibility it gives me.

  He feels a wave of uncertainty wash over him for a second, but then he closes his eyes and pictures the pages from his folder laid out on the bed he grew up in, the bed in his mum’s house where he used to lie struggling to get to sleep as a teenager, and eventually the doubt passes. It always does.

  ‘Shall we push on?’ says Tim. He glances round at Matt and James and smiles, but Matt sees something else in his eyes. Something like discomfort, maybe. Or fear. ‘If we pick up the pace a bit we should be able to make the far side of Garrett before nightfall, make camp there.’

  James unslings his backpack and looks from Matt to Tim. ‘Steady on, tough guy,’ he says. ‘I don’t know about you but I need a drink at the very least. Five minutes to catch my breath wouldn’t hurt, either.’

  ‘I thought you were Mr Fitness,’ Tim grins.

  ‘Yeah, but I mainly do weights. All this cardio bollocks doesn’t sit well with me.’

  Matt, who’s been drinking steadily from his Platypus for the last several miles, slurps the last bit of liquid and takes off his rucksack. He opens the top and pulls out the deflated bag.

  ‘I need to fill up,’ he says. ‘Who wants to join me?’

  ‘Yep, sounds good,’ says James. ‘Come on, Tim.’

  Tim stands with his rucksack still on his shoulders, unmoving. ‘I think I’m good,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, well come and join us anyway,’ says James.

  ‘I think I’m alright.’

  There’s a moment of silence. Tim stares down at his walking boots. James glances over at Matt, who nods his head, once, before taking a step towards Tim.

  ‘You remember where we are, don’t you mate?’

  Tim looks up and stares around him, a slight frown on his face, but when he catches Matt’s eye the frown disappears. Suddenly he just looks very tired. Older, too.

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘All the years we’ve been coming back to Rutmoor,’ says Matt, ‘And we’ve never once been back to this clearing. Not once.’

  Tim sighs and shrugs. ‘Too many bad memories,’ he mutters.

  ‘The whole place is bad memories,’ says James.

  Matt ignores him and continues looking at Tim. ‘I want to go and fill up at the place where Tom died.’ His voice sounds impossibly loud in the stillness of the clearing.

  Tim looks up and meets Matt’s gaze. The sun is behind him, and his face is half in shadow. After a few seconds, he nods.

  ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘We’ve been everywhere else – Hayworth, Garrett, Creek Lane – so why not here as well? Let’s go.’

  He turns around and walks across the clearing without waiting for them to follow. Matt quickly does up his rucksack and nods for James to do the same, and they follow Tim to a footpath on the edge of the clearing.

  Matt feels the sunlight beating down on the back of his head. He feels the sweat running down his neck, and hears the soft rustle of the bushes in the breeze blowing through the clearing.

  As he enters the footpath ahead of James he fixes his eyes on Tim’s rucksack, watching as it bobs along the trail ahead of him.

  Saturday, Part Two

  Matt focuses on the sound of the
river.

  It’s calming, and it helps. With each step along the footpath he’d felt less and less sure of himself, and as soon as they left the track and caught sight of the water glinting in the sunlight he’d begun to feel a deep sense of unease building in his stomach. It was the same feeling he sometimes got at work before a call; not an interview – those barely phased him at all anymore – but a big call, like when he had to ring up and confront someone before going live with a story about them.

  As Matt stares at the river – stares and listens to the sound of centuries-old water flowing over the rocks – the unease is still there, but he’s able to block it out.

  ‘This is it,’ says Tim. He’s a few feet in front of Matt and James, standing on the river bank. As Matt watches him he slings his bag off and takes out a water bottle. He walks over to the water’s edge and lowers himself to a crouch. ‘This is where it happened.’ His voice is small and weak, and Matt can hardly hear him.

  ‘Where what happened?’ Matt says. ‘I mean, what, exactly?’

  Tim pauses in the act of lowering his bottle to the river. ‘You know what happened,’ he says quickly. ‘My fucking dad happened. He came up and ambushed us, he—’

  Tim’s voice cracks and he stops talking. Matt sees him shaking his head, and then he lowers his bottle into the water’s current.

  James takes his bag off and walks towards the edge of the river. He dumps it a few feet behind Tim and then looks back at Matt, as if he’s about to say something. Then he wipes the sweat from his forehead and looks down at the ground.

  Matt takes a couple of steps forward. ‘Why do you think they never got suspicious?’ he asks.

  Tim turns his head slightly but doesn’t stop filling up his bottle. ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, everyone, I guess. Our families, teachers, the police. All of them.’ Matt pauses. ‘Especially our families.’

  ‘What do you mean, suspicious?’

  ‘Well, all those years ago when the three of us walked out of Rutmoor, we told them that we didn’t know anything. They asked us where Mr Stevens and Gary and Tom were, and we said we had no idea. We’d gotten separated, we said. Told them the others must still be out on the moor.’ Matt pauses again and stares at the back of Tim’s neck. ‘It’s a bit surprising how easily they accepted it, don’t you think?’

  Tim turns his head back to the river. He takes his bottle out of the water, peers into it, then dips it back in to top it up.

  ‘I don’t think it’s that surprising,’ he says. His voice is still quiet, but it’s lost its shaky quality. ‘We were just kids, and we stuck to a simple story.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And as for our families, they loved us. Everyone always wants to believe in the people they’re closest to. That’s natural.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Matt. He glances at James, who’s staring at him intently, and nods his head, once. ‘Yeah, they do.’

  James falls on Tim like a stone. One moment he’s standing a few paces behind him, the next he’s got a hand clamped on the back of Tim’s neck. His other arm wraps around Tim’s chest and he wrestles him to the ground. Tim lets out a startled grunt and drops his bottle into the river. It bobs in the current and catches the light as it floats away. For a second he struggles wildly, bucking his body back and forth –he’s fast, Matt thinks – and James has difficulty holding on to him. Then James moves his hand from Tim’s neck and wraps it around his shoulder, simultaneously pushing off from the ground with both his feet, and Tim collapses beneath the weight of his body.

  ‘Hey!’ Tim yells. ‘Hey, hey!’

  Tim’s right arm is dangling over the small ledge of ground that juts above the river and he flails it back and forth, struggling for purchase. He finds none. James swings a leg over Tim’s buttocks and straddles him, pinning him to the earth.

  Matt sees all these things from a long way away, as if he’s the observer in a dream. None of it feels real. He walks forward and kneels on the ground beside Tim’s thrashing body.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, get off me!’ Tim yells. ‘What the fuck, James?’

  ‘Shut up,’ says Matt. ‘Just shut your mouth and listen for a minute.’

  There must be something in his voice that takes Tim by surprise, because he suddenly goes quiet and stops struggling.

  ‘Jesus Matt. What the fuck?’ He twists his head to the left and stares up at Matt with one eye. Matt isn’t sure if it’s just a trick of the sunlight, but that eye looks yellow to him.

  He looks down at Tim’s helpless, pinned body, and he feels a mixture of disgust and pity pulse through him. Sadness, too. Maybe that most of all.

  ‘We know what you’ve been doing,’ Matt says. He looks for a reaction on Tim’s face, but sees none. Tim squints his eye and spits dirt from the side of his mouth.

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? James, can you get the fuck off me now please?’

  James’ eyes are wide, but his mouth is a firm line. ‘I’m afraid not, mate,’ he says. ‘Not just yet.’

  ‘Look, is this some kind of wind-up? Because if it is I thought we were too old for this kind of crap now.’

  ‘It’s not a wind-up,’ says Matt.

  ‘Then what the fuck?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, Matt, I really fucking don’t. I know I’m dirty and pissed off, but that’s about it.’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t come down to Rutmoor on your own without us.’

  ‘Yeah, and what’s your point?’

  ‘You lied.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Last year, you did come down. And don’t try to deny it, because I had a tracking device on your car. I’ve got your whole route, including the dates and times, saved on my laptop.’

  Now Matt sees something in Tim’s face. A narrowing of the eye, maybe a slight tensing of the jaw. It’s gone as quickly as it comes, but it was there. Part of Matt’s job as an investigative journalist is to find out whether or not people are telling the truth, and he’s learned to look out for the signs.

  ‘You put a tracking device on my car?’ Tim’s voice is neutral. His face is an expressionless mask.

  ‘I had to,’ says Matt. ‘I had to know for sure.’

  ‘Matt, this is ridiculous.’

  ‘I had to know for sure, and once I got that GPS tracker back I did. Of course that wasn’t quite enough; I ended up coming down here myself and speaking to some people anyway, just to be on the safe side. You’re careful, but you’re not careful enough. I spoke to three different people who were able to give me a description that matched yours. That, coupled with everything I suspected from before…’

  ‘Matt, please, please listen to me.’ Tim’s voice is high and thin, and Matt can hear real fear in it now. ‘Whatever you think I’ve done, it’s not true. Yes, okay, I did come down here last summer. You got me. It’s the first time I’ve been down on my own, and to be honest I felt embarrassed admitting it to you guys. But I felt like I needed to come.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just needed—’ Tim’s voice cracks and he closes his eyes for a second, breathing rapidly. ‘I just needed to see the place where it all happened, to have some alone time here. I still get nightmares about that weekend, and I thought—’

  ‘You’re lying. I can tell you’re lying.’ Matt’s heart is thumping hard in his chest. Despite the litres of water he’s drunk over the last several miles, his mouth feels dry. ‘Your dad would be proud of you, you know that?’

  ‘DON’T YOU FUCKING MENTION HIM!’ Tim screams the words and James flinches but manages to keep his balance. Tim’s face has contorted into a sudden mask of rage, and as Matt sees the way his lips pull back over his teeth – as he takes in the now unmistakably yellow tint in Tim’s eyes – the main thing he feels isn’t disgust or pity or sadness. It’s relief.

  ‘You’re more like him than I suspected.’

  Tim’s yellowing eye rolls around and finds Matt’s. For a second he stares at Matt in
defiant anger, but then he drops his gaze to the ground and his face creases up. He closes his eyes and starts to cry. This time Matt thinks the tears are genuine.

  ‘That boy who disappeared last year on Rutmoor was 13, Tim. He was the same age as us.’ Now Matt feels like he might cry. He bites his lip to hold the tears back. ‘And he wasn’t the only one, was he? In Southampton… those twin girls…’

  Tim’s face is red and his eyes are screwed up. His mouth is wide open as he sobs silently into the ground, lines of spit falling from his mouth to mix with the dirt. His whole body shakes.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He repeats the words again and again, like a mantra.

  Snot runs from his nose. Tears slip from his closed eyes and trickle down his cheeks into his open mouth.

  Matt stares at him for a second or two longer, then bites his lip again. He gets to his feet.

  ‘Not as sorry as I am.’

  Matt takes two steps forward and jumps down into the river. His feet sink into its soft bed and the freezing water comes up to his thighs. Then he turns and grabs Tim. He takes Tim’s flailing arm in one hand and the hood of his coat in the other and nods to James, who stands up and grabs Tim’s other arm.

  ‘NO!’ Tim screams. The sound is high-pitched and deafening. ‘NO, NO!’

  James jumps down into the river with Matt and they yank Tim forward. He spills over the bank and lands on his belly in the water, kicking and writhing. He comes up, spluttering, and as Matt tightens his grip on the back of his hood Tim manages to twist his head and find Matt’s eyes with his own.

  ‘Wait, wait!’

  Matt pauses, keeping his grip on Tim’s hood, and looks at him. There is no longer any trace of yellow in Tim’s eyes. For a split second Matt feels a final wave of doubt, but then he remembers the missing teenager on Rutmoor and the stories of decapitated dogs in Southampton; he remembers the failed abduction attempt in Christchurch – he actually managed to track down the parents of the eight-year-old boy who was nearly taken and arrange to speak to him, and the kid had given him an almost spookily accurate description of Tim – and he remembers the twin girls. Yes, they’re the ones he thinks of most. The drowned twin girls. The papers didn’t publish a description of the bodies, but Matt read the police report. He doesn’t even want to think about how much those little girls suffered before they died.