Burial (21 page)

'Pretty certain, yeah.'

'I wish I could be.'

Nathan was exhausted. The walls seemed far away.

'It's all going in the freezer,' repeated Bob, patiently. 'Until I've found the best way to dispose of it.'

Nathan threw down his cigarette and drew near to Bob.

'We just took a stupid risk, digging this stuff up. Now you want to keep it in your garage, for Christ's sake? What's the matter with you?'

'Are you going to tell anybody it's there?'

'Of course not. But Jesus, you can't just leave it there. We should be dissolving it in acid or something.'

Good idea. Do you know where to get it?'

'I'll Google it.'

Excellent idea. And do you know how to handle it safely?'

"I'll Google that, too. I'll go to an Internet cafe, right now, and I'll order a coffee and I'll

He trailed off. Then he kicked the car, almost hard enough to break his toe. Then he leaned on the bonnet and said, 'Jesus fucking Christ. What a mess. What a mess.'

Bob said, 'Look, okay. It's been a long night. But we did it. So let's not fuck up now, by doing something rash when we're both so tired.

The truth is, that's how people get caught. They do something stupid when they're feeling exactly the way we're feeling right now. Like going to an Internet cafe and looking up how to dispose of a body and being caught on CCTV.' He held up a hand - pre-empting Nathan's interruption - and said, 'Look, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure we can just douse the clothes and burn them. Fine. But what if, I don't know - you've seen the way stuff floats around when you light a fire.

The embers, whatever. What if, by burning the clothes, you're leaving little fragments all over the garage? The kind of thing you can't see, but that Scene of Crime Officers can detect in two minutes flat?

Traces of human fat, or whatever.'

'It sounds pretty unlikely to me.'

'And to me. But I'm not sure. Okay? I'm not sure. I just want to research this stuff. Believe me, it's the best way.'

'Keeping her in a freezer?'

'It's as good as anywhere else. It's better than where she was.'

He watched Nathan's eyes flit to the boot, and said, 'Look, we got away with it. We're not even suspects. But we'd become suspects if they found her, out there in the woods. But they're not looking, Nathan, they're not even looking. We just have to make sure that, if they do come looking, they find nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I want to find out the best way to do that.'

There was a standing pipe in one corner. Nathan flicked away the cigarette and walked over to it. He ran the tap. He took off his shirt.

The water was unbearably cold. He forced his head under. His scalp constricted. He straightened, spluttering. Goosebumps ran the length of his torso. His sparse body hair stood erect, his hair in wet-cat spikes.

He was shivering when he said, 'You're right. I can't think straight. I don't know what to do for the best.'

Bob nodded, with gravity.

Then he opened the boot and hoisted the plastic-wrapped remains in his arms and carried them to the freezer. Still half naked and shivering, Nathan opened the lid. He removed the baskets of frozen vegetables. They put Elise in the bottom and hung the racks of frozen vegetables above her.

Then Bob closed the lid and secured it with a padlock.

Nathan watched him do it. 'Now that's suspicious.'

'What is?'

'Padlockinga freezer. Who padlocks a freezer?'

'What if some kids decide to burgle the place?'

Nathan buried freezing hands in the pockets of his trousers. He hurried to the bonnet of the car, where his clothes lay, and pulled the T-shirt and shirt over his head.

'I'm going home.'

'Do you want a lift?'

I'll take the bus or something.'

'Are you sure? You look like shit.'

I'll be fine. I need to get my head together.'

'What will you say to Holly?'

She'll be gone when I get home.'

'Better make sure she is.'

'She will be.'

'Because you look fueled, mate.'

'That's pretty funny.'

'Can you do me one favour?'

'What?'

'Take our clothes and dump them somewhere?'

Nathan sagged. He reached into the boot and removed the bag of muddy clothing. It smelled of soil. He tied a knot in it.

'Just dump it outside one of the shops on Endymion Road,' said Bob. 'There's always rubbish piled out there.'

Nathan tested the bag's weight. It seemed heavy. His arms were so tired.

He said, 'What are you going to do?'

'Sleep. Then get rid of the car. The spades. The rest of it.'

'Okay.'

There was nothing else to say. So, clasping the bag of evidence in his fist, Nathan unbolted the garage door and stepped into the fragile morning.

Behind him, Bob slid the bolts shut, one by one. Locking himself inside with the bones.

28

Nathan carried the binbag along the tree-lined street of Victorian bedsitters.

At the corner, it joined a main road. A yellow skip stood outside the gutted shell of a house in the early stages of renovation. The skip was half full of plasterboard and broken bricks and rusty wire frames. It was still early. Nathan leaned in, lifted a piece of plasterboard and wedged the binbag in the bottom corner of the skip. Then he dusted his hands and turned on to the main road.

At the bus stop, he paused to open his Adidas sports bag. He removed the pack of Nurofen Plus and dry-swallowed a handful.

There was a greasy spoon across the road. Nathan half-jogged over to it. His legs were stiff, on the edge of cramp. Inside, there was the sound of frying and hot water jets and local radio. He ordered a full breakfast and a mug of tea and sat down with a copy of yesterday's Sun. When the breakfast arrived, he looked at it without conviction. But hunger found him. He ate the breakfast and drained the tea and hoisted his bag on to his shoulder. He left the cafe and caught the bus home.

It was full daylight when he opened the door. The house was quiet. He could smell Holly's perfume in the hallway. A floorboard creaked, the house warming to the new day. He set down his bag by the telephone and stared at the photos on the wall. He could not connect that laughing girl to the cracked remains in Bob's freezer. He reached out, to straighten a frame. But he couldn't touch her. He thought of those rattling teeth, loose in the skull. And those clean limbs, gnawed at by foxes and badgers and local dogs drawn to the scent of rot.

He couldn't go upstairs.

He put the kettle on, and the television. While he waited for the kettle to boil, he sat in the armchair and fell asleep.

In the dream, he awoke. Elise was in the room with him. She didn't say anything. She was on the sofa, legs crossed. She looked at him. He felt a swell of love for her, as he might for a lost child.

He said, 'I'm so sorry.'

Elise said, 'I'm cold,' and then she began to scream.

Nathan woke in the act of wetting himself. The warm-cold stain spread across his crotch and thigh.

He moved to the centre of the room and stood there with his back to the bay window, until his queasily thrashing heart had slowed. He stood there so long that twice he nodded off, his head dropping to his chest. He saw Elise tearing at her hair, hanks of it in her fists.

He jerked awake and sat on the windowsill. The television was meaningless and brash.

He stayed there until 1 p.m. He walked to the kitchen. With every footstep he glanced over his shoulder. Each creak of the house made his heart lurch.

He opened the fridge. Looked at the eggs and the cold meats and the milk and the remains of a chicken, the half-drunk bottle of wine.

He closed the fridge door. Got himself a glass of water. He was shivering.

He went to the thermostat and turned up the heating.

He was asleep, face down on the dining table, when Holly got home.

Her smile fell.

'My God, are you all right?'

Opening one eye, he said, 'Heavy night.'

He wanted her to lower him into a hot bath, to let the heat seep into his frozen bones that felt like rods of cold steel inside him: he wanted her to wash his hair with her fragrant shampoo, and he wanted her to wrap him in a warm towel, and then he wanted to undress her, her warmth and her softness, and he wanted to smell her and he wanted to make love to her; he wanted to make her pregnant, he wanted to make a little comma of life, something to double and increase in the secret heat, the pink half-light inside her.

'What happened? Where did you go?'

He waved a hand. His fingernails were dirty.

'We went to the pub. And then back to Bob's. It all got a bit out of control. He had some drugs. Some cocaine. We were up all night.'

'It looks like it.'

She went to the kitchen: brisk and businesslike.

'Have you eaten?'

'Yes.'

'Eaten what?'

'I went to a cafe.'

Are you hungry now?'

'No.'

'Right.'

She slammed the fridge door.

'Holly, I'm sorry.'

'There's no need.'

'I've got this problem.'

She hesitated.

'With cocaine. I'm not an addict or anything. But I've got a problem with it.'

'What sort of problem?'

'Saying no. Knowing when to stop. How to stop.'

'You never even mentioned drugs to me.'

'Because I stay away from them. I just -- y'know. I was drunk. And my judgement was off. Believe me, I'm paying for it now.'

She looked at him with something like pity. A knot of hope rose in him. Pity was good. He could start at pity and work up.

She said, 'I tried it a couple of times. Cocaine. I didn't like it much.

It made my heart all biddy boom.'

He said, 'You're a dark horse.'

'Well. There's a lot about me you don't know.'

'I don't doubt it.'

'Good.'

He lay cold in the dark with his wife asleep beside him. When he cuddled up to her she made a sleepy noise and rolled away.

At some point, he must have slept because he woke in the dark.

Holly was raising herself above him. Her hair tickled his face. Her nipples brushed his chest. She was shaking his shoulder.

'Are you all right?'

'Why?'

'You were talking in your sleep.'

A fluorescence of terror.

'What did I say?'

'I don't know. You were mumbling.'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'm worried, that's all.'

'I'm fine.'

'Is it the drugs?'

'Probably.'

'Don't touch them again.'

'No chance.'

'Your feet are freezing.'

'I know. It's cold in here.'

'It's boiling. It's like somebody turned up the thermostat.'

He'd forgotten about that.

'Anyway,' she said. 'Get some sleep.'

"I'm sorry.

'Don't be silly.' She turned over. She reached behind her and cupped his flaccid cock and balls in her hand. She gave them a friendly, gentle squeeze, and fell back to sleep.

She phoned her parents and told them Nathan was too fragile for Sunday lunch. So they stayed home and Nathan had a long, very hot bath. With each tick of the clock, it got further behind him. Time - a few more days, weeks, years - would push it inside him like a prolapse.

On Sunday night, as he showered and shaved and cleaned his teeth and laid out tomorrow's work clothes on the bed, he felt something like confidence, almost pleasure. It had been bad. It was still bad. But eventually it would go away.

Sometimes he believed this for minutes at a time. Then he remembered what lay bundled up in the freezer, in Bob's garage, and the chill crept back into him.

Monday morning, he went to work.

Everything was the same: there was reception and there were Fiona and Maude, the receptionists. Here were the pot plants on either side of the lift doors, and here was the same lateral scratch across the door, like a key-vandalized car. And here was the first floor. Take the first turning on the left for the sales department. And here was the same open-plan office with the same furniture and the same computers, smudged with inky fingerprints. Here were the same novelty gonks and teddy bears and amusing mugs and family photographs, and here were the same staff, and here was the same glass-fronted office with the same laptop computer, and here were the same problems, the same cock-ups and blunders and lost orders and pissed-off reps, the same staff complaints and affairs and annual appraisals, the same marketing meetings and board meetings and finance meetings, and here was the same Justin, the same mendacious, pitiful Justin with his too-short trousers and his six-pint lunches and his little breath mints, and this was the calm place the dread had dumped him -- this was the place that did not change, and as long as he was here, he was safe.

Two weeks later, Bob called.

29

'Hello,' said Bob.

'Hold on,' said Nathan, cupping the mouthpiece. He leaned over and, with the tips of his fingers, closed the office door.

'How are you? How's the research coming?'

'Not good.'

'You or the research?'

'Both. We've hit a snag.'

'What snag?'

'I can't talk. Can you get over here?'

'As soon as I can.'

He put the phone in its cradle and consulted his diary. He had a meeting at 2.30. He told Angela he was stepping out for an early lunch -- it was 11.30 -- and he grabbed his coat and made straight for the door. Outside, the taxis weren't biting. He stood for a long time on the corner, hailing cabs that were already occupied. His tie flapped at his shoulder like a flag.

Eventually, a taxi stopped for him. But they hit every red light on the way. It took forty-five minutes.

Bob came to the door scrub-bearded and hollow eyed. Over his jeans and T-shirt, he wore a tatty, dirty pink chenille bathrobe; it looked like a woman's. He smelled bad, like milk left too long on a July windowsill.

Nathan

followed him downstairs. The bedsitting room was yet more shambolic. Improvised ashtrays had been placed on the tables, the bookshelves, the kitchenette, the windowsill, the arms of all three sofas, alongside the computers, the reel-to-reel tape machine. All of them were overflowing.