He didn’t know what they were looking for. A miracle, maybe. Chloe was inspecting every individual stone that held the cottage’s four walls together, peering into crevices, wiping away filth, guiding her light to places that Ben had only skimmed over. She sifted through the debris bestrewn across the floor, turning over rocks with her boot and dislodging the low mounds of indiscriminate shapes that gathered in its corners. Ben, all the while, did nothing.

When Jess eventually read his messages, she would be none the wiser as to what had happened. He would disappear like Carol Fortune. How long would they look for him before they gave up? The sad reality was that he knew his parents never would.

‘What have we got here?’ Chloe said, crouched down in the corner.

Ben moved in behind her, to where she was picking apart the rubble with her free hand. He watched her fingers brush aside the dirt, until there was only a thin dust coating something smooth and solid. She took a sharp intake of air. Together they stared down at the human skull and the skeletal remains of the one entombed in the creeper’s cottage.

‘Jesus,’ Ben whispered, leaning in for a closer look.

‘Not likely,’ Chloe replied.

She raked a hand through the clay, dividing and identifying what bones she could. The deceased was male. In the airless confines of the cottage, the bones’ decay had probably decelerated and so she couldn’t hazard a guess as to when he had died.

‘I reckon he was burnt alive,’ Chloe said, ‘probably sat in this corner, boarded up in the dark with no windows and no way out. The smoke would have killed him, not the flames, I think. Isn’t that what they always say in these situations?’

‘You’re sure that it wasn’t an accident?’

‘Someone locked him in here,’ she replied, ‘and there was no way he was getting out, or maybe he didn’t want to.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Ben asked.

‘Well, if I were locked in a burning building, I’d be trying to kick down the door or find some loose stone in one of the walls. I sure as hell wouldn’t just sit in the corner. I’d say whoever put him in here was waiting outside, watching the place go up in flames, and that’s why he didn’t try to escape. There was no point. But hey, your guess is good as mine.’

‘Who was it?’

‘No idea,’ Chloe replied, standing up, ‘but I think I know who to ask.’

25

They reached the point of the two cottages.

From the outside, both looked as lifeless as last time, like carcasses rotting beneath that greyest of skies. Ben and Chloe took one each for a quick inspection. They couldn’t afford to squander any time so late in the day.