The Drowning Ground (15 page)

Long tracks of hard, overturned mud stretched across the lawn, marking the path taken by the two work crews with their wheelbarrows full of shattered pieces of tile, masonry and glass. The rest of the house rose behind, black and filthy-looking in the winter sunlight.

I waved to Graves to let him know I was here and then walked towards the house. All around us the blackness of the evening gathered, and the wind began to rise. I stared in awe at the jagged wreckage juddering in the cold wind, its rippling shadows cast upon the flowerbeds and the lawn. I started thinking about the girl I had dragged out just inches from where I now stood. Only a few days ago I had seen her in the morgue beneath Cheltenham General Hospital, with Brewin standing in stony silence beside me. It hadn't been just the sudden bright horror of her. That she had been buried down here like an animal was what somehow made it worse than anything else. Even worse than the terrible way in which she may have died.

For a moment longer I stood there, remembering. Brewin had admitted straightaway that it could take weeks, even months, before they would be able to determine age and even gender for sure. He was already arranging the transfer of the remains to the forensic anthropology lab in Oxford. He had also collected DNA samples from the body, which he would compare to those of both sets of parents. When the girls had disappeared, DNA for forensic profiling had been in its infancy. But two years ago Brewin wisely, and with my approval, had collected DNA from the girls' parents, so that we would be able to make comparisons should the need arise.

Brewin had placed the groundsheet on the side of the room on a stretcher. It had been laid flat, but the corners draped over the edges. It was burnt and torn in places, and the tin eyelets in the corners were bent or broken. At first, I hadn't been able to make out what it was. In fact, none of it had seemed to make any sense to begin with. Then, ever so slowly, she had begun to take form.

A mass of crumpled and charred bones. Some fragments of clothing but not many. Jeans? A dress? A school uniform? I couldn't be sure. Tarry-looking flesh clung to the bones here and there. Repulsively withered and hardened. A strand of hair. Her face had been burnt away, and there were whole parts of her missing or, worse, torn in two. Bone poked through jagged pieces of wet material. A forearm stood alone, separated from the upper arm, so that you could see the shining polished metal of the trolley beneath it. A piece of backbone. The spine curved upwards towards the neck and then the skull. The upper jaw and mandible yawning wide open as if in laughter.

I stood before the house a while longer. Glad in a way that someone had felt fit to torch it. Ash poured black and thick from the ruins and swirled in the wind amongst the snow. Within seconds, the rising wind had blown pieces of feathery black grime out and across the fields towards Meon Hill. I thought of the girls again. Which one was still buried in the blackened ground? The images of both, here, in this place, would be stamped indelibly in my mind.

17

I got home just after dark. Although I wasn't supposed to drink at all with the bright yellow pills, I made myself a drink anyway and then had a quick shower.

Hurst's videotapes were still locked in my study, along with the three pale grey files from the detective agency, which I'd been meaning to call all day. So, after I got changed, I decided to start there.

I lugged my old video player out of storage and hooked it up to the portable television in the kitchen. Then I hauled the crate of tapes on to the table.

I reached in for a tape and slid it out of its box. The white label running along the front read: ‘1 May 2000'.

I ended up emptying the crate of tapes on to the thick carpet in front of the electric fire, then I arranged them in date order, starting with February 2000 and finishing with March 2001. Two tapes a month to start. Then once a month or so, and sometimes less frequently as time went on. Then once every two months. Then every now and again, until they petered out altogether.

They had all been labelled with the same elegant hand. I went back upstairs and fetched the three files from my study. There was no doubt about it. The handwritten notes at the back of the files matched the handwriting on the tapes.

I walked quickly downstairs, grabbed one of the tapes at random from the middle of the row, slotted it in and pressed ‘play'. To begin with nothing happened. There was just white static and a blank screen. I pressed ‘fast-forward'. Again, nothing happened. The tape was empty.

I reached for another tape and then another, starting on the left of the pile this time and moving slowly along the row. But they all seemed to be blank. I would have to go through them sooner or later, so I fast-forwarded through the tapes, beginning at the latest one first, as I prepared myself a huge steak. I flipped the meat and when I turned round I saw that something had come into focus on the screen. I turned down the heat on the pan. Then I reached for the remote, rewound the tape and pressed ‘play'.

I looked more closely at the television screen and saw the dim interior of a car. The footage had been taken by a camera that was propped up on the dashboard on the passenger side; concealing it was a blue coat or sweater that was getting in the way of the top of the picture. Outside the car window it was night. Yellow lights and cars lined both sides of a narrow, curving street. Sitting with its mouth open on the driver's side of the dashboard was a half-empty packet of Benson & Hedges. After a few moments a podgy male hand reached for the gold packet and removed one. There was the sound of a window being wound down and then of a lighter being clicked open and then snapped shut. Grey smoke filled part of the screen.

Smoke, I now realized, was filling my own kitchen, so I moved quickly to retrieve my steak from the hob and open the kitchen windows. With the remote still in my hand, I again looked closely at the television. It looked as if the camera was pointing very purposefully to a house about three quarters of the way along the street. It was more run down than the other properties. There was a new-looking white van parked in the driveway.

I turned up the volume on the television. There was a rustling sound of someone shifting restlessly in their seat. Someone in the car sighed loudly. The car radio was on in the background. Pop music. But very faint. The camera stayed steady and focused on the house. A man's voice started humming tunelessly along with the song.

I did not recognize the street. I wondered if it might be London. Maybe that detective fella – what was his name? – Bray had found Rebecca after all. Perhaps there had been other files in Hurst's house that had gone up in smoke. But it didn't look like London to me.

What
was
he up to? I picked up the penultimate tape and looked at it before inserting it into the slot. November 2000. Around four months before the last tape. This time something flickered on to the screen almost immediately. The same view from the dashboard. The camera was still concealed by a blue sweater or a jacket, and the cigarette packet had been crushed into a tight ball beside it. The windscreen looked slightly dirtier. But this was a different house, and it was daytime. Yet the same white van was sitting outside in the driveway.

This street was more affluent than the last and stood somewhere in the middle of a small village. The warm yellow Cotswold stone was unmistakable, as were the grey, sloping roofs. I didn't recognize the village, though. It looked sunny but cold, and leaves were falling on to the green and on to the small lane in front of the house and on to the roof of the white van.

The camera stayed where it was. There was more impatient shuffling. A cough. Then ever so suddenly more light fell on to the dashboard as the car door opened. The car rose a bit as the occupant climbed out, and the man could then be seen through the windscreen of his car. And there, in a perfectly framed shot, stood, I assumed, Mr James Bray of the Bray Detective Agency.

Bray stared at the house and ran his fingers through his long but thinning brown hair. Then, with his head straining forward, he took a few tentative steps towards the van. He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his old leather jacket and moved in the direction of the house next door. He stood behind a rhododendron bush for camouflage.

I paused the tape. Bray was in his mid-forties with soft brown eyes behind thick-rimmed black glasses. He was big, stocky and powerful, but he didn't look all that light on his feet. The old leather jacket didn't quite go with the old-man spectacles and newish-looking trainers either. I pressed ‘play' and saw Bray throw a cigarette to the ground and stamp it out with the toe of his shoe, then stare at the sky in exasperation. His hands fell to his sides. Then he returned wearily to the car, which once more rocked under his weight. His hand seemed to reach automatically for the cigarette packet, but, as it was empty, he only threw it back and sighed loudly.

I waited, then pressed ‘forward' and ‘play'. A few minutes later the front door of the house opened and someone approached the white van from the side. A hand reached for the camera and the focus shifted to the outline of the van. A man approached the back doors. He had a relaxed, swaggering gait. It was too far away to see his face, but there was a glimpse of black hair, white overalls and trainers as he swung the doors open wide.

The man disappeared inside the house and returned carrying a metal ladder, which he slid into the van's roof rack. Once more he disappeared into the house. He came back a minute later, carrying large heavy bundles of yellowish cloth, which he hurled into the back of the van. He slammed the doors shut and waved in the direction of the front door, where a woman was standing; he seemed to be making some sort of joke to her. Then he got in the van and reversed out of the drive.

Bray scrabbled and grabbed the camera and placed it on the seat beside him; then came a blurred hunched shoulder and the sound of fabric rubbing against a leather seat – Bray ducking down, out of sight. The dim roar of a car passing nearby and very fast. The car shook. The camera was jolted as Bray reversed and began his pursuit.

The camera rolled dangerously close to the edge of the brown leather seat covers from time to time. Both Bray and the white van must have been going at quite a clip by the sound of it. Bray's hand reached for the gear stick as the car surged forward; and then suddenly he braked. The camera rolled and fell to the floor. Bray absently reached for it. His face appeared for a second in the camera, filling the screen. Then it went dark.

I waited.

Bray's wide, anxious-looking face reappeared. He placed the camera carefully once more on the dashboard and gently covered it with the sweater. And there it was: the white van. Parked halfway up on the pavement of a busy road on the outskirts of a village or small town. It looked as if Bray had tucked away his own car at the end of a side street. The straight outlines of the van could only just be made out in the growing darkness, which meant that some time had passed – though it was difficult to know how much. I could also see some kind of car park and a big square building: a sports centre perhaps. I could see the blue-green of a swimming pool in a large window at the side. And next to it there was something else: another, much larger building. It sprawled out on to the grey tarmac. Figures were pouring out of all the buildings. I froze, watching, listening. Children were screaming and laughing as they left the gates of a school.

18

‘
No lo puedo creer,
' I mumbled to myself in the warmth of my kitchen.

The doors of the white van suddenly opened, the man got out and slammed the door. He had changed out of his overalls and was wearing jeans and a heavy-looking donkey jacket. I could see the smudge of a pale face above the blue upturned collar of his jacket.

Bray reached for the camera and placed it firmly in the bottom of what looked like a thick brown satchel or sports bag. The camera was pushed forward until its lens was facing into a small neat hole cut into the bag's front.

Almost immediately, the camera was swung round and hung from Bray's right shoulder. There was the sound of the car door opening and then being closed with some care. For a few moments there were shots of nothing but the pavement and the road along with a stretch of grey afternoon. Then a glimpse of grass on the other side of the pavement. Then children.

They were laughing and talking excitedly to each other as they passed by Bray, giggling and shouting out as they headed on home. One of the boys dropped a blue schoolbook, picked it up and frowned as he wiped the mud from the front with the sleeve of his coat. Another boy punched him in the arm. The boy's face screwed up in an exaggeration of pain. More small knots of children unravelling as Bray's hulking shadow walked through their midst in the direction of the school.

But Bray didn't go to the school. Instead, the camera paused as he waited to cross the road. Then came another lane with houses on either side, and then a much quieter suburban-looking street – at the end of which was a dilapidated fence and a muddy path leading to a small grassy slope and a park. The man's figure trudged ahead of the camera on the wet grass.

Bray crested the top of the rise, and he could be heard to be breathing heavily. For a few moments everything was still. But Bray, obviously realizing he had become exposed to view, ducked into the cover of a small copse of trees at the top of the rise. He moved towards the brown slats of an old wooden fence; I could hear the sound of undergrowth slapping against the sides of the camera bag. The camera stayed where it was for the moment, while Bray caught his breath.

Bray placed the bag on to the ground – I could see fallen twigs and leaves – and took out the camera. He crept forward to the edge of the trees and zoomed in on the scene below.

At the near end of a wet field stood an old cricket pavilion and leading up to it was a crumbling whitish mass of concrete that, I supposed, once might have been steps. Suddenly, the camera moved forward as Bray, no doubt on his haunches, pushed himself through the undergrowth and to the edge of the trees. The camera zoomed in. There were kids, around five or six of them, gathered on the broken steps. A handful of girls and a few lads. The boys were around fifteen. Maybe sixteen years old. The girls looked around the same age.