by Tim Lebbon
“You think maybe this is all too much?” he asked.
“I really don’t think so, 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 joked, 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 together. Food for lunch, money, walking boots, and from the lean-to shed behind the cottage he took a shovel.
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 front door and stood there for a while, listening to the sounds of the world waking up. Birds chirped, fallen leaves rustled, but his breathing eclipsed them all.
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 thunder clouds 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 that remained 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 took only 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 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 sure quite 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 from that spot 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 recognisable 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 only been away from Jo less than 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 further along, and he walked along the top of the bank to read it:
NO ACCESS
AREA PATROLLED BY SECURITY GUARDS
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 forest. 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 bank slowly reduced in height, 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 strained 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 crawlspace beneath it, scoured clean of vegetation by who- 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 uncovered would be revealed 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 X 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 brought, he guessed that he was now at the bottom right corner of King’s map. The stream would be further on, hidden somewhere ahead of him by the lay of the land. The red X 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 hiding 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 X, 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 within. 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, and leaned on the shovel as he eased himself to the ground. He reached out to touch the object, but one of the buzzards high above called out. He sat back on his heels and looked up. The bird was circling him, and if he had not been so scared he would have laughed at the outrageous symbolism.
He leaned forward and touched the buried object. 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 beside 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 or 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 really imagined anything else. 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, and 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 purple heather. He sat back panting, glanced down at his hands, realised how filthy he was already and how worried Jo may 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 of soil. He took care not to work too close to the skull to avoid damaging 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, g
et 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 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 not. Because here, at last, was a name.could
His heart thumped as he moistened his thumb and rubbed it on the metal, cleaning 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.
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?