Freddie called in sick again the next morning, and then spent the next few hours slouched in his car, keeping an eye on David’s drive. At eleven he saw the BMW turn onto the slip road, Jenny sitting with Catherine in the back, while David drove. He gave them a few minutes, and then made his way through the field to the boundary of David’s back garden, his newly bought spade and trowel clinking together. Just through the rustling conifers he could see Tinker’s grave. Holes, Catherine had said yesterday, and it had to mean something. David kept everything, he was obsessive, secretive, and whatever he’d buried by Tinker’s grave must be significant enough to keep, but too disturbing to keep in the house.

It was cold, kneeling in the dirt, and a fine rain fell. Freddie’s hands slipped and jarred with the unfamiliar tools. Rain dripped down his back and pooled in his underwear. After half an hour of digging in the wet, resistant earth, he was almost ready to give up when his spade hit something solid with a dull twang, and he knelt, scraping the trowel around the edges of something metal, square, until he was able to thrust his fingers far enough into the soil to touch it, grip it, wiggle it looser.

A tin box, about twelve inches long. The faded picture of playful kittens on the top was damaged, cracked; one of the kitten’s faces had warped in the time it had been in the ground, so that the metal bulged at its mouth, distorting its face into a sneer. It was creepy. As he levered and coaxed the box out of the hole, he felt… not vindication, but dread. His mind yammered no way back now. No way out of it now. And when the box was out, and sitting next to the mound of earth, it began to rain harder and Freddie, crouched still, the cold seeping into his bones, forced one unwilling hand to drag it a little closer to him, to open it.

The first thing he saw inside was a large grey rock, squarish and broken. It looked like a bit of a paving slab, or a patio block. It rested on top of a plain white carrier bag. Freddie picked up the rock, lay it reverently on the ground, and then opened the bag. The crackling rustle merged with the sound of rain like a sinister whisper. Freddie reached inside and brought out a baseball cap – sweat stains around the headband, and mud stains on the side and the peak. Inside the cap was a knife, about four inches long, still sharp, the blade slightly bent at the very top, and it too was stained with mud. With mud?

‘Not mud. Blood,’ Freddie whispered to himself.

Freddie sat dazed for a minute and then, quickly, took some photographs of the hat and the knife, and then put everything back in the bag in an approximation of how he found it, and pushed it away from himself, telling himself to bury it again, just bury it, get rid of it. This seemed imperative. But burying the box was harder than he thought – it seemed that it didn’t want to edge back gracefully into the grave it had inhabited for the last few years. Some of the soil had fallen back into the hole, and Freddie had to dig some more, scraping against tree roots with the trowel. He worked for a few minutes, sweating, until the trowel grazed against something – seemed to cut through something. Freddie took out his phone, and used the light to see what it was, and what he saw made him squeal and drop the phone.

It took him a few minutes to recover, and he was still stiff with fear as he put one, unwilling hand into the hole… his index finger brushed against the loathsome thing and he resisted the urge to snatch his hand away, telling himself that it was just bones. Just an animal, long dead. And it had to be moved to make room for the box, it had to be. He put his phone on the ground, took a deep breath and gingerly pushed at the small, fragile skull that had something in it. An oblong of silver foil, carefully folded, pinched in at the ends. Not knowing why, Freddie carefully opened it. Inside, like tiny splinters, were the animal’s teeth, sellotaped into two neat rows.

‘So that’s what he did with Tinker,’ he half moaned.

Gritting his teeth, avoiding looking, Freddie spent long, anxious minutes digging to the left of Tinker’s remains, making the hole big enough again so that the box might be easily buried again and then jammed it back into the muddy hole. Then he replaced the silver foil in the animal's mouth, and started filling everything up with earth, trying to remember exactly what the ground had looked like before he started digging – there hadn’t been that little slope, had there? Had there? Put some leaves on it, pat it down. He was faintly aware that he was crying a little now, and the sweat crawled cold on his skin.

Freddie considered staying at his parents’ house that night. He felt cold, frightened, and he wanted to be looked after and reassured, but they were bound to notice his muddy clothes, his distraction, and he couldn’t trust himself not to tell them everything. He couldn’t do that, not before talking to Jenny. So he drove back to the city. The rippling waves of fever rose, and by the time he parked, negotiated the stairs and unlocked his door, he knew he was sick, but he had one more thing to do before he showered, had a well-needed drink and tried to sleep.

He messaged Ryan.

I’m not being stalkery I promise but I need to ask you some questions about David. Please!

Instantly Ryan responded:

Who?

David Crane? He’s going out with one of my friends?

There was a pause.

Yes I know David.

How do you know him?

Download this.

Ryan attached a link to an encryption app.

Why?

Ryan was silent for a long time.

I’m only comfortable talking about D if you use this. Only way I can do it.

Freddie did a quick check, but it seemed legitimate enough, so he downloaded it.

I’m back. How do you know David?

I went to school with him. Why?

He says it was university.

Both.

Did he give you a lift to the airport last month?

Yes. Vegas. Why?

Freddie frowned at the screen. None of the flight codes were for Las Vegas. He doubted that their regional airport had any flights to America. As far as Freddie knew, you could only get to Europe and Scandinavia from there…

Do you see a lot of him?

Why?

I’m sorry, it must be really strange me contacting out of the blue again and asking all these questions.

Silence.

Freddie’s fear billowed… this had been a mistake. What was he doing? What if Ryan told David about this? It’d make things worse for Jenny…

Not spoken to D for a long time. Didn’t know he had a girlfriend.

Then:

What’s he done now?

‘What’s he done now’? That indicated that he’d done bad things before… Tread carefully here, Fred, tread carefully.

I’m worried about my friend. I found some things?

Long silence.

What kind of things?

Pictures of my friend as a child. And some other things he shouldn’t really have of hers.

I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what kind of things. This has happened before you see.

‘Knew it!’ Freddie whispered to himself, texted back.

You mean he’s done this with another girl before?

Ryan said after a long pause:

Can we meet up somewhere to talk about it? It’d be better than this I think.

OK. Phone me, message me, but please don’t tell David about this conversation.

I don’t have contact with D any more for various reasons. You know he was in hospital? And he didn’t have a stroke?

Yes I worked that out. That’s sort of why I’m worried – what if he’s had a relapse?

Long pause.

No I don’t think it’s that. I don’t believe he was ever ill, he’s the sanest person I’ve ever met.

Longer pause, and then Ryan said:

I think I can help. I’ll call you tomorrow or the day after. Would you be able to meet face-to-face?

For sure.

And Ryan left the conversation.

A second later it disappeared completely.

Freddie only semi-slept that night, sweating through the sheets and existing in a kind of half-world in which he knew he was sleeping, even while he shivered at the end of David’s garden, feeling the cold, wet earth on his hands. His flatmate found him wandering about the kitchen in his boxer shorts muttering about buried treasure. He persuaded Freddie back to bed, managed to make him drink some water and take aspirin, and then, at a loss as to what to do next, he called the only person in Freddie’s phone he knew the name of. Jenny said she’d be over within the hour.

For what seemed like a long time, Freddie burned and froze, reeled and wilted, and Jenny was there through it all. She sat on a kitchen chair next to his bed, reading. He could see her quiet, delicate profile, her mass of hair, her long slim fingers. She was beautiful. He said so, too, or tried to, but she hushed him, laid one cool palm on his cheek.

‘You feel a bit better. Up. Up. Take this.’ And he gratefully swallowed cool water. The room was dim, quiet.

‘I love you, Jen,’ he whispered.

Her face, unsmiling, hazy, hovered above his. ‘I know.’

Later he heard her on the phone. She was saying: ‘David, listen—’ She was pacing the small living room. ‘No, just listen, will you?’ Freddie half raised his head. He wanted to tell her that she didn’t need David’s permission to do anything, that he wasn’t the boss of her. ‘No. No! It’s more complicated than that…’ she was saying.

Freddie fell asleep before he found out what was more complicated.