"It's not fair," Tom said, not quite sure 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 away from that place 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 recognisible 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 been away from Jo for under 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 farther along, and he walked along the top of the bank to read it:
NO ACCESS
AREA PATROLLED BY SECURITY GUARDS
"Well, if there are guards patrolling, there aren't any live firing exercises."
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 wood. 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 height of the bank slowly lessened, 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 sprained 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 crawl space beneath it, scoured clean of vegetation by whom– 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 revealed would be made open 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 cross 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 bought, he guessed that he was now at the bottom right corner of King's map. The stream would be farther on, hidden somewhere ahead of him by the lay of the land. The red cross 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.