“You don’t find it a little odd?”

She shrugged clumsily, rubbing at the back of her neck. “He’s an intense guy. That’s one of the things I like about him.” God, she was young; I had a sudden urge to pat her shoulder and remind her to use protection. The rest of the housemates told Cassie that Mark and Mel had been the last ones left in the garden Tuesday night, that they had come out of his room together the next morning and that everyone had spent the first few hours of the day, until Katy’s body turned up, mercilessly giving them grief about it. They also said Mark sometimes stayed out, but they didn’t know where he went. Their version of “an intense guy” ranged from “a little weird” through “a total slave driver.”

We got more plasticky sandwiches from Lowry’s shop and had lunch sitting on the estate wall. Mark was organizing the archaeologists into some new activity, gesturing in big militant jerks like a traffic cop. I could hear Sean complaining vociferously about something, and everyone else yelling at him to shut up and stop skiving and get a grip.

“I swear to God, Macker, if I find it on you, I’m going to shove it so far up your hole—”

In the Woods 105

“Ooh, Sean’s PMS-ing.”

“Have you checked up your hole?”

“Maybe the cops took it away with them, Sean, better lie low for a while.”

“Get to work, Sean,” Mark shouted across.

“I can’t work without my fucking trowel !”

“Borrow one.”

“Spare over here,” someone yelled. A trowel flew spinning from hand to hand, light spiking off the blade, and Sean caught it and settled down to work, still grumbling.

“If you were twelve,” Cassie said, “what would get you out here in the middle of the night?”

I thought of the faint gold circle of light, bobbing like a will-o’-the-wisp among the severed tree roots and the shards of ancient walls; the silent watcher in the wood. “We did it a couple of times,” I said. “Spent the night in our tree house. This was all wood back then, right up to the road.” Sleeping bags on rough boards, torch-beams close against comic books. A rustle, and the beams skidding up to cross on a pair of golden eyes, rocking wild and luminous only a few trees away; all of us yelling, and Jamie leaping up to fire a spare satsuma as the thing bounded away with a crash of leaves—

Cassie glanced at me over her juice carton. “Yeah, but you were with your mates. What would get you out here on your own?”

“Meeting someone. A dare. Possibly getting something important that I’d forgotten here. We’ll talk to her friends, see if she said anything to them.”