‘He’s not going to think anything. He’s going to think we came here to walk in the forest.’

  ‘I can’t take it … do you understand? Do you?’

  I was shaking really badly. Christian got out his tobacco and Rizlas again. He was talking very slowly, evenly: ‘I’m going to roll a cigarette, and I’m going to put a bit of dope in. Then we’ll smoke it, it’ll take the edge off things. Then we’ll be calmer. We’ll be able to go through with this thing and then it’ll be over. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Suddenly I felt all compliant again. Christian rolled the cigarette and lit it then handed it to me and we smoked it together. It was true, I felt calmer afterwards. I felt in a daze too. There was a gate near the car that led into an unkempt path through the forest. Christian unlatched the gate and we carried the camp bed through with the curled body and the tarpaulin over it, and laid the whole lot down again while Christian closed the gate.

  I said: ‘People will see the car there, though.’

  ‘So what?’

  We picked the camp bed up again and made our way into the forest. It was dark, the trees closing over our heads, engulfing us. Twigs and leaves crackled underfoot. In the silence it seemed shockingly loud. We trudged on for maybe ten or fifteen minutes and every so often we stopped and put the camp bed down. Christian didn’t seem entirely sure where he was going. I said, what if we bump into someone? Christian said, we won’t. It’s a weekday. Nobody ever comes down here anyway.

  The dazed feeling came and went. I remembered the whiskies I’d had at the bedsit. I was confused as to whether I’d had them before or after the event. If it was after, I’d risked swallowing some of the glass shards that had showered the room. Maybe the shards were already inside me, worming their way into my stomach lining. Maybe I was about to die a horribly painful death. But I didn’t care. A big black bird swooped down at us, then swooped back up to the canopy and beyond. I was sweating profusely.

  ‘It’s down here.’

  We turned off the path and made our way through the trees and undergrowth, it wasn’t easy. We were moving down into a little depression, the ground was thick with mouldering leaves which were springy underfoot and gave you the impression you were walking over a mattress. Then at the bottom of the depression there was a kind of rocky bit that rose steeply up on the other side. Between two rocks was an entrance to a cave, as tall as a doorway and a little narrower. A metal frame and a barred gate had been fitted into the entrance, as if for a prison cell. It was padlocked but the padlock was rusted up and obviously hadn’t been opened in years. Christian got a hammer out of his pocket and knocked the padlock off on the first hit: ‘It’s through here.’

  We got the body off the camp bed and pushed it through the gate. We were in the narrow vaulted gallery of a cave, a corridor that led nowhere. I noticed some wire mesh covering a hole in the cave floor. Christian was already on his knees prising off the wire mesh, which was pinned firmly to the rock with what looked like giant staples. He was taking out the staples with a pincer-like tool he’d brought along with him. In the meantime I was crouched down on the ground, which was dusty and covered in dried droppings, maybe bat droppings. Then I noticed a little plaque cemented to the bottom of the cave wall:

  †

  In memory of

  JOHN FRIEDMAN

  1961–1970

  Much loved and missed by

  his mother, father and sister

  Christian had got the wire mesh off. We pushed the curled-up body to the hole. For a moment it was balanced there, teetering on the edge like a giant golf ball, stiff with rigor mortis. Then the body keeled over into the darkness below. I heard it roll down, bump on a ridge or something, then silence for a good second until a dull thump and maybe a distant splash. It must have been a good long way down. I stared into the hole but I couldn’t see anything, just the blackness. I felt a stale coolness on my face and I shivered and stood back, then I went out of the cave.

  Outside the sun’s rays strained through the trees and the air smelt warm and alive. I sat down on the ground by the camp bed waiting for Christian to come out but he was quite a while. I could hear hammering noises from inside. There was a huge rock leaning by the side of the cave, it looked like a flattened sphere. It looked as though it would have fitted snugly over the entrance and I wondered if that was where it had been originally. Perhaps it had broken off and rolled away thousands of years ago in an earthquake.

  Eventually Christian came back out. His jeans were dirty at the knees and he looked blank and exhausted as he closed the gate and put the broken padlock back on: ‘Finished. Let’s go.’ His voice sounded mechanical. I was standing now by one end of the camp bed and Christian walked over to the other end: ‘I don’t want this thing any more. I don’t want to see it again. Let’s dump it over there.’ Then he changed his mind: ‘No, we’d better take it back after all.’

  We walked the bed back to the car. It seemed to take much less time to get back out of the forest than to get in. There was the darkness then suddenly we came to the edge of the forest and the gate, the sun overpowering my eyes. I sat down by the edge of the path, overcome with fatigue. I looked at my watch and it said three. That didn’t seem unlikely but then I noticed that the second hand wasn’t moving. I shook it but that didn’t make any difference, the watch had stopped. I’d only recently put a new battery in.

  Christian was folding up the camp bed and then I could hear the sound of a car coming from up the road. It was the man in the tweed cap, coming back from the other direction – I almost knew it was him before I looked up. This time he slowed right down and stared at us carefully, first me then Christian, as if he were trying to commit our faces to memory for future reference. For a moment I thought he was going to stop but he didn’t. He suddenly accelerated and was gone. Christian said: ‘OK, get in.’

  We drove into Oxford, into the centre – I hadn’t been there since that time with Christian. He parked the car somewhere off George Street and we got out. For a while we just walked around aimlessly. It was like we were sleepwalking. I could see that Christian was even more tired than I was, there were dark lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before.

  There were no students about. They’d probably all gone home for the holidays. The Cornmarket was full of people though, locals, you could hear from the accent. There was a sprinkling of Japanese and American tourists as well. We walked right down to the Botanical Gardens then across the meadows behind Magdalen College. Eventually we cut back through to Broad Street. We were walking about for an hour or so, maybe an hour and a half even. We didn’t say a word to each other, not until later when we got to the pub by Blackwell’s. In the meadows the sun was low in the sky, splashing a creamy light over a herd of deer grazing in the distance. We stopped a moment to gaze at the deer then looked into each other’s expressionless faces. I could feel myself relaxing slightly for the first time that day, maybe for the first time in weeks. It was this sense of giving in to whatever was in store for me. It was the dying sun and this dazed, silent intimacy. Christian put his hand on my shoulder then we turned round to walk back.

  The pub was one of those low-beamed affairs with a real log fire, only it wasn’t lit now of course, since it was summer. All about us we could hear low, satisfied fragments of conversation as we watched each other over our drinks. Finally I broke the silence. I asked Christian how he’d known about the cave in the forest. It was the first time either of us had spoken since the car and my voice sounded utterly unlike my own. Christian didn’t answer straight away, he just sat drinking his pint. But then eventually he gave me the story. He said he’d lived near the forest as a child, but it had been much bigger then – they’d cleared a lot of it since, for farming land. There’d been an accident in the cave a long time ago. A couple of kids had been playing in the forest one day. They’d found the cave and one of them had slipped and fallen down the hole. Some firemen had gone down the hole but they hadn’t been able to find the missing boy. In the end they had to send in a team of potholers to bring out the body. Anyway after the accident lots of the local kids – including Christian – used to go down to the cave out of morbid curiosity. So the council ended up putting the mesh over the hole and barring the entrance to the cave.

  Lately, since his wife’s death, Christian had been in the habit of taking long walks by himself, sometimes from early morning until dusk. Then just the other day he’d been on one of his walks when he realised he was on the path that ran near the cave. It was only later, while we were taking the body through the forest, that it occurred to him that maybe they’d filled in the hole or it would be too small to get the body down. ‘But in the end we were lucky,’ Christian murmured as he stared into the empty fireplace.

  We were silent for a good while but then I asked Christian about his wife. I was curious about her for some reason. Christian told me she’d been a teacher, a primary school teacher, but she’d given that up two years ago when she’d discovered they couldn’t have children – she’d found it too painful being around kids every day. She’d been unemployed for a while then eventually went back to university, to do an MA. Is that where she met her lover, I asked. Yes, he replied tonelessly, the guy’s a lecturer. He was at the funeral too. Christian twisted up a beer mat and tossed it at the fireplace: ‘It’s all finished now. I’ve written to Jamie, I’ve resigned. I want to travel for a while. West Africa maybe. Anywhere except England.’

  We stared at each other without embarrassment for another long moment. But then Christian started rambling on, in short phrases, almost like someone talking in their sleep: ‘Intolerable at first … in the morning wishing for the evening … in the evening wishing for the morning … it all grinds on and on … dreams of her not being able to breathe properly … but it’s strange. In a way I’m not sad about it any more. I don’t know why.’

  We walked back to the car, barely aware of each other. A dull silence reigned on the journey back to London, the monotonous hum of the engine mesmerising me, sucking in my thoughts until there was nothing left but a kind of abstract contemplation. At one point I saw Christian blink then try and rub the exhaustion out of his eyes. We climbed a slight incline and accelerated into the valley stretched out before us. It was getting dark though and all you could see was a lonely snake of car lights, trailing into the blackness towards the city.

  Then all of a sudden, just after the Slough turnoff, Christian said: ‘I’d always thought you were a cold bastard. Never said much. I used to wonder how you ended up working in human rights. I didn’t really like you.’

  I tried to remember my initial impressions, if any, of Christian. I recalled that when we’d first met he’d been wearing that same suede jacket he’d had on the day of his wife’s death. I said: ‘I didn’t think much about you. I didn’t like you or dislike you. Maybe you rubbed me up the wrong way. I probably thought you were a loser.’

  ‘I know. I knew that’s what you thought.’

  There was silence again. I remembered something that had happened just before the Jarawa campaign had been launched. I’d been in my office, and a call from some guy in Senegal had been put through to me. But with my pidgin French I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Eventually I’d had to say: ‘Je suis désolé mais je ne parle pas français.’ Just at that moment Christian had walked into the office. He’d looked at me in surprise and asked if I needed any help. Christian speaks fluent French. Everyone assumes I do too, because of Marianne. If Jamie had realised I didn’t, he might well have given the Jarawa campaign to Christian, and not me.

  I stared out of the window. A car had drawn up beside us in the other lane. It was a Mercedes and there was only the driver in it. He had one hand on the steering wheel and with the other he seemed to be conducting an imaginary orchestra. It looked kind of dangerous. Suddenly the Mercedes pulled out in front of us and then it was gone.

  An instant later we were back in London, turning into Holland Road. That was where my car was. It must have been getting on now, eight thirty maybe. Christian found a parking space right outside the block of flats where the bedsit was. I got out and stared up in horror at this building that seemed to be pushing its way out of the ground and surging up into the dark London sky like some kind of nightmare congealed in stone. Christian walked me up the road to my car. He asked me if I was all right and I said yeah. He asked me if I thought I could drive OK and I said yeah. Then he said he’d better get going. There were still things I wanted to say to him but it was difficult: ‘It isn’t what you thought. It isn’t that.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  He probably didn’t realise what I was talking about. He probably thought I was trying to tell him that I hadn’t killed the guy. But it wasn’t that at all. What I’d actually meant was that I wasn’t paying him back for making me identify his wife’s body. I hadn’t called him up for that. Perhaps he understood me after all, I don’t know. I felt incredibly lonely all of a sudden. I didn’t want Christian to go. I tried to spin out the goodbyes: ‘What was it you’d wanted to talk to me about? That time in the pub. What was it you kept ringing me up about?’

  He shrugged his shoulders: ‘It doesn’t matter any more … not now.’

  I nodded: ‘No, it doesn’t matter now.’

  I was trembling with emotion as we shook hands for the first and maybe the last time. Christian turned round and strode off into the blackness and I got into my car. There was every chance I’d never see him again. I sat there for some time trying to compose myself and wondering if I really was able to drive. I looked at my watch. It still said three o’clock. I’d forgotten it had stopped. The watch was a fake Rolex someone had bought for me in Thailand. I took it off and tossed it out of the window. Almost immediately I heard the crunch of a car running over it. I stuck the keys in the ignition and the engine coughed and started.

  Now I was back at the house. Marianne was lying on the couch and she turned right round, looking up at me quizzically: ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Nowhere’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  I didn’t answer, I just stood there. She got up and put her arms round my shoulders: ‘I called you at the office but they said you weren’t there … God, you stink of cigarettes. Have you started smoking again or something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I noticed that she was wearing the skirt that had been on the back of the chair at the bedsit, the one the man had put away in the drawer. I shivered and couldn’t speak for a moment.

  Marianne was being very solicitous. She heated up some dinner and asked me if I wanted a drink first and I said yeah. It was peculiar that she was acting like this, since things had been so tense between us lately, but I didn’t think too much about it. I didn’t have any room for it. It even took me a while to realise that since Marianne was wearing that skirt, it necessarily meant that she’d been back to the bedsit since Christian and I had been there. I wondered when exactly she’d arrived. Perhaps only minutes after we’d left. In any case it had been a near thing, because it would have had to have been before she picked Jessica up from the crèche. Had she noticed the shiny patch on the floor? And what had she made of the missing vase? Or had she failed to notice it? No, that’s not possible. She has an artist’s eye.

  I ate in silence, with Marianne looking at me reflectively from the other side of the table, her elbows resting on the edge and her chin in her hands. At first I hadn’t wanted to eat but after a couple of mouthfuls I felt a raging hunger and started shovelling the food into my mouth. Then after a minute or two I slowed down again to a more civilised pace. My mind had been spinning on as I ate: it had occurred to me that when Marianne eventually found out about the man she might connect it with my odd behaviour tonight. So I thought I’d better try and act as normal as possible. I asked Marianne about her day and so on. The sense of shock faded in and out a little, and right now I started feeling a bit more self-composed. In fact, it surprised me how normally I could carry on once I set my mind to it. I listened to Marianne’s lies but they didn’t cause that horrible ache they normally did. Maybe because I was lying too. Maybe because I could see now how easy and above all how natural it was for people to lie. I could forgive her that much at least.

  We went and sat on the sofa and Marianne got me another drink. Then she put her head in my lap for a while and I stroked her head, combing my fingers through her hair. Eventually she sat up and started kissing me, but I pulled away a little. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings though so I said: I appreciate you being this way with me but I still feel funny about things, after what you said the other night. Marianne nodded. She said I understand that – but we’re both going to make an effort now, aren’t we? We’ll try and understand each other’s needs. Yes, I replied, we’ll both make an effort.

  I went into the bedroom and got undressed then went through to the bathroom. I put the shower on as hot as I could take it and stood under the jet of water. It pummelled my back and felt good. I noticed for the first time that I was aching all over and that I had a deepish cut on my forearm. I couldn’t think how I’d got it. Perhaps it was the glass from the vase. I washed it clean.

  I wished I could stop the exhausting flow of thoughts but I knew that it wasn’t possible. The steam was gradually filling the shower cubicle until I could barely see my hands in front of me. I wanted to save Marianne from the horror of it and that meant she must never discover the truth. Of course, that would require a specific sacrifice on my part, which was this: if the man simply vanishes into thin air then in a way he’ll never die for her. He’ll remain a mystery that will only grow with time. The man will always be there between us, in a kind of stasis. But perhaps that’s my punishment.

  I was in the shower a long, long time, first just standing there, then scrubbing and scrubbing like mad, then just standing there again. I hadn’t even had the grace to thank Christian, it upset me terribly that I hadn’t even apologised for getting him involved. It had me almost in tears and I tried to blank it out of my mind. Marianne would find out in the end of course, how could I think otherwise. In any case she’d discover something. She’d have to tell the police about the bedsit eventually, and then they’d find forensic evidence of one sort or another. Perhaps Marianne would even become a suspect. Perhaps I’d have to turn myself in, precisely to save her.