Looking down at the documents spread out across his duvet, he moves the folder marked ‘News Cuttings (1951–1998)’ over to the left, and places a slightly smaller folder – this one marked ‘News Cuttings (1998–2015)’– over on the right.

He takes the Polaroid photo of them all together at the campsite and puts it in the middle and slightly above everything else, thinking of the way detectives always map out crimes in the TV series he likes to watch.

It’s getting late now, and he needs to get a decent night’s sleep – he’s got a big day ahead tomorrow, and he’s getting picked up early – but he can’t turn in just yet.

His hand hovers over the bed, then moves to pick up the folder marked ‘News Cuttings (1998–2015)’.

He’ll get to bed in a few hours. His adrenalin will be up tomorrow, anyway, so he should be fine.

For now he has some reading to do.

Tom (2002)

1

Tom Carpenter opened his eyes and turned over onto his back.

Judging by the faint greyish light shining through the material of the tent and creating a swampy glow, it was the morning. Tom rolled onto his side, checked his watch, and saw it was just after seven.

He glanced over at Tramper and saw him sprawled on his back with his mouth wide open, snoring lightly. He’d half-kicked his sleeping bag off in the night and it lay partly off him, exposing one bare, meaty thigh. As Tom watched, James muttered in his sleep and twitched, before falling back into a regular breathing rhythm again.

Bad dreams, thought Tom.

Tom had had a couple of bad ones himself, but he could barely remember them now. He thought one had been a replay of the fairly dramatic events of yesterday morning –‘the fight’, as James had started calling it – but Tom knew he’d had other dreams too. Nightmares, really.

At one point he’d woken up sweating, sure that he’d heard something or someone screaming, and when he looked at his watch he’d seen it was after 02:00.

What had that dream been about? Tom thought hard, summoning up images that were now like shadows disappearing as the sun goes in. For a second he almost had something – a faint sensation of running along a dark corridor – but then it was gone again.

Tom sat up and reached for his bottle. He took a swig of water that was flavoured with the sharp tang of purification tablets, resisted the urge to spit, and swallowed it down. Mr Stevens might be annoying, but his constant comments about the importance of staying hydrated had clearly had some effect.

Tom wondered if the others were up yet. Mr Stevens and Tim struck him as the early riser types, but Matt liked his sleep, and Gary…

Gary.