CHAPTER ONE
Mark Robinson sat down on a dry tussock of grass in the shelter of a slab of
rock. If it hadn’t been for the breeze, this would have been a perfect July day. There was barely
a cloud in the china-blue sky and from somewhere nearby, the cry of a curlew
stirred long-forgotten memories of his own childhood. One more hour and he
could finally drop the kids off at the school gates and head for home.
Mark sighed. He’d always prided himself on his patience, on the fact that he would always take
the time to listen to his pupils and would never ever give up on them, no
matter how trying they were. And yet, after three days under canvas with this
lot, traipsing around in circles in the middle of nowhere, he was beginning to
appreciate the attitudes of some of his battle-weary colleagues. He counted his
charges yet again. God knows what would happen to them when they did the
expedition on their own in three weeks’ time. He pushed his water bottle back into his rucksack and stood up.
‘Right, where is he?’
‘Who, Sir?’
‘Very funny, David, as if we couldn’t guess who might be missing.’ Mark clambered onto the rock he had been sitting on and scanned the moorland. ‘Where is he this time?’
‘I’ve got him, Sir. Look, he’s over there by that sheep.’
‘Could you be a bit more specific in the sheep department, Sasha, help to
pinpoint it a little.’
‘The dead one, Sir, there.’
Mark looked to where the girl was pointing. Three hundred yards away, Owen Lloyd
was approaching the carcass of a black sheep with unaccustomed alacrity.
Entirely appropriate. As they watched, the boy suddenly took a step backwards,
then another, still staring at the sheep, before turning back towards the group
and breaking into a run. Mark watched him stumble over the clumps of reed and
the tufts of tough moorland grass, but it wasn’t until the boy stopped suddenly and bent forward with his hands on his knees
that Mark set off towards where Owen was stooped.
‘Stay there,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Sasha, you’re in charge of keeping everyone here, OK? Don’t let them move.’
By the time Mark reached him, Owen was retching up his packed lunch into the
peat.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
Owen wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pointed in the direction of the sheep. ‘Over there, Sir.’
‘It’s all right, it’s just a dead sheep. I know it’s sad, but it happens all the time out here. It’s difficult to get to. It’s hard for the farmers to cover such a vast, boggy area.’
Owen shook his head and stared at his teacher. His eyes looked huge and dark in
his pale face and Mark realised, perhaps for the first time, that Owen Lloyd
was still just a child.
‘It’s not a sheep, Sir.’ Owen’s bottom lip trembled and he closed his eyes.
‘Stay here,’ said Mark. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’
‘Don’t, Sir, it’s horrible.’
‘You stay here. I’ll go and check it out, it might just be injured.’
‘It’s a body, Sir,’ Owen blurted, ‘and it’s covered in maggots.’
Owen Lloyd’s description was all too accurate. The skin on the man’s face was dark and peeling. Flies buzzed lazily around him. Mark tried to look
away. The smell caught in his throat like the sickly-sweet whiff of something
decomposing gently in the bottom of a hedgerow, but far, far worse. He stood up
and struggled to swallow the bile that burnt his throat. Against his better
judgement, he glanced back at the corpse. One of the man’s hands appeared to be missing; the cuff of his black denim jacket rested in the
mud and several fingers, a couple of small bones and a gold ring lay scattered
next to him. The bones could have been sheep bones, couldn’t they? But the ragged flesh which covered some of them looked far too human.
Sheep didn’t bite their fingernails either, did they? His stomach lurched. He lifted his
phone from his pocket. No signal. He backed away as if retreating from
something sacred, then turned, took a deep breath and returned swiftly to where
Owen was sitting with his head in his hands on a clump of grass.
‘Have you got your phone on you, Lloydy?’ he asked, as casually as he could.
The boy looked up at him. ‘But you said we couldn’t bring phones, Sir.’
‘And we both know that would make no difference at all, don’t we?’ Mark forced a grin. ‘Could you check to see whether you’ve got a signal?’
‘Honest, Sir, I haven’t got my phone.’
‘OK.’ Mark took him gently by the elbow and led him back towards where Sasha was
standing high on the rock, hands on hips, attempting to keep the group in
order. ‘Listen, Owen, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell them what you saw. There’s no need for them to have nightmares too, is there?’
Owen nodded. ‘Do you think… well, could he have been murdered, Sir?’
‘Out here?’ Mark shrugged. ‘There’s not much chance of that is there? It’s far more likely that he was out walking and was taken ill, I’d have thought. Anyway,’ he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘let’s not worry about that now shall we, let’s just get you all to the minibus.’
‘What is it, Lloydy?’ David was running out to meet them. ‘You all right?’
‘Yep, I’m fine.’ Despite the wobble in his voice, Owen managed a nonchalant shrug. He looked up
at Mark. ‘It was just a sheep.’