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Over the next week he composed the letter again and again in his mind, each time paring and shaving and whittling until he decided to start from the other end of the scale of information required. That resulted in the first 90 percent of the letter.

What took him another two weeks to wrestle with was whether to use “Yours sincerely” or “Yours faithfully.”

Although this was a personal letter where the name of the intended recipient was known to him, “Yours sincerely” stuck in Steven’s craw. He just couldn’t do it.

And yet, Mrs. O’Leary would have quibbled over “Yours faithfully.”

It kept Steven awake at night and left him staring vacantly into space in history and geography classes. His preoccupation reached its climax when he sat next to Lewis the whole of one breaktime without saying a word. After three attempts to engage Steven in conversation, Lewis called him a “tosser” and stalked off.

Steven knew he had to commit to one or the other.

It was only when he actually put pen to paper—using his neatest block capitals—that he suddenly had the brainwave of writing “Sincerely” instead of “Yours sincerely.” It solved every problem he’d had. He was sincere in his request, but he sure as hell wasn’t Yours.

Steven posted the short letter with high hopes.

Ten days later, he received a reply.

Chapter 8

“SCUM-SUCKING EGG AND TOMATO.” LEWIS GLARED AT HIS sandwich, then squinted up at Steven. “What you got?”

Steven leaned on his spade and wiped sweat off his face with his bare arm. He hesitated as if he might lie, but finally it was too much trouble.

“Peanut butter.”

“Peanut butter!” Lewis got up. “You want to swap?”

“Not really.”

Lewis knew he wouldn’t want to swap. Tomato made Steven sick. He knew that, and he knew Steven knew that he knew that, but the thought of peanut butter instead of egg and tomato made him selfish.

“Ah, bollocks; you can take it out. Half and half. Can’t say fairer than that.”

He was already rummaging in Steven’s Spar bag. Mr. Jacoby’s shop used to be Mr. Jacoby’s shop. Now it was a Spar and Mr. Jacoby had to wear a green Aertex shirt with an arrowhead logo on his ample bosom.

Steven looked helplessly at Lewis’s back.

“Don’t take the good half.”

He sighed inwardly. Having Lewis with him was a mixed blessing.

When he was on his own, Steven dug and dug and dug and ate his sandwiches and drank his water and dug some more. On a good Saturday he could dig five holes. Each was the length, depth, and breadth of an eleven-year-old boy, although Steven was not stupid enough to think that this gave him any advantage. He understood that he’d have stood a similar chance of success if he had dug a series of two-foot-wide, four-foot-deep holes shaped like elephants. But he was looking for a body of a particular size and shape, and the holes he dug were a constant reminder of that. It was an exhausting and usually solitary pursuit, but a strangely satisfying one.

But when Lewis made his occasional forays onto the moor everything changed. Certainly, it was more companionable and there was less chance of the hoodies chasing him home, but there were drawbacks.

For a start, Lewis always arrived with the words “Want some help?” but no help was ever forthcoming. Lewis never brought his own spade or offered to relieve Steven of his.

What’s more, Lewis’s very presence—far from helping Steven—actually hindered him. Lewis talked and asked questions, which Steven felt compelled to answer. Lewis pointed things out too—things which Steven, with his head bent over the heather, would never have seen, much less cared about—and wanted to discuss them.

“Shit! Look at that!”

“What?”

“That. There!”

And Steven would have to look up and lean on his spade.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I think it was an eagle.”

“Buzzard, most like. There are tons of them around here.”

“What do you think I am? Some kind of moron? I know a buzzard and this wasn’t a buzzard.”

Steven would shrug and turn back to his hole. Lewis would sit and look around, or pick up the Ordnance Survey map with its blue biro crosses, denoting where Steven had dug, scattered like a constellation.

“This is a bad place to dig.”

“It’s as good as anywhere.”

“No, it’s not.” Long silence. “You know why?”

“Why?”

“You don’t think like a murderer.”

“Yeah?” Steven would wrestle with a knot of vegetation, grunting and twisting.

“Yeah. What you got to do, see, is think: If I murdered someone, where would I bury them?”

“But he buried them all between here and Dunkery Beacon.”

Lewis would be silent, but only for a moment.

“Maybe that’s where everybody’s gone wrong. See, if I killed six people and buried them here, maybe I’d start somewhere else after that. Over there. Or up at Blacklands. Reduce the chances of anyone finding them, see?”

Long silence.

“Steven? See?”

“Yeah. I see.”

“Next time I come up to help, I’m digging at Blacklands.”