The spade hits a stone, sending a judder right up Kees’ arm into his neck and shoulders.
It’s not the first.
There’ve been countless stones already, and, if he knows anything about life, there will be many more.
Because even though he’s been working on this for over an hour – his back pouring with sweat and aching only slightly less than his leg, the blisters on his hands surely going to burst soon – he still hasn’t managed to dig a hole big enough to bury a large dog, let alone Hof’s body.
Which right now is crumpled up in the boot of the car parked twenty metres or so outside the woods he’s digging in. Also in the car, though sadly still alive, is the Lumberjack. He’s the one who’s driven him out here and ordered him to get digging whilst he sits and smokes a joint and watches porn on a smudged iPad.
Kees reaches down into the hole and tries to work loose the stone with his fingers, dirt already packed tight under his fingernails.
The moon’s up; it has a yellowish tinge which makes Kees think of pus, and he can just see the stone has a sharp edge running along one side. It also seems to be much longer than the others he’s pulled out so far, widening out where it disappears into the soil at the edge of the hole.
He scrapes earth away from underneath it, scooping it out in handfuls, then works the spade underneath, trying to prise it up. He applies pressure. Nothing.
He tosses the spade aside, gets back down and scrabbles at it with his hands like a mad burrowing animal, like evolution hasn’t happened.
He comes out of the frenzy to find his hands aching like everything else in his body, but he’s got used to that over the last couple of years.
The morning he’d gone to the hospital is a vivid memory, fresh and untainted, presumably because he’s tried ever since not to think about it, kept it in the dark to protect it from scrutiny. But it’s all unwrapping now, unfurling like an evil tentacle, and he can smell the disinfectant, feel the churning in his stomach as he sat next to a man in a large waiting area. The man’s body was contorted like his back had twisted up wrong, curled in on itself, and his breathing was laboured, rasping in and out of his mouth like each breath was a struggle. He had white flecks on the side of his mouth, lips taut in a grimace.
Kees had been on a night stake-out when the call had come in. He and Jaap had been working a case where a woman was suspected of knifing her abusive boyfriend then torching the house to try and hide the evidence. Kees was stuck with watching the woman’s closest relation’s house on the off-chance she’d try and seek refuge there. The night had been long, and although he’d been to the hospital a few days prior, he’d been doing a great job of putting it out of his mind. The uniform who was supposed to be relieving him at 9 a.m. was late, and when his phone had gone off he’d been expecting the person at the other end to apologize and assure him he was just round the corner.
Instead he’d listened as the woman, after verifying who he was, asked him to please visit the hospital as soon as possible. He’d replied he could probably make sometime next week.
There’d been a pause before the woman had wondered out loud if he could make sometime that very day.
So once he’d got off shift, the uniform finally having turned up with some bullshit story about how one of his kids was sick, instead of driving home and trying to get some catch-up he’d motored over to the hospital, his mind trying to block out all the possible scenarios that were crashing around in his head.
And then his name had been called and he’d jumped up and made his way to the specified room, it was all going to be good, because he was young, something minor, nothing like any of the truly sick people he’d been sitting around with in the waiting area. They’d give him a drug perhaps, and then he could just go about his life.
All would be well.
But the doctor’s face when he stepped into the room told him otherwise.
Kees had sat in the chair placed to the side of the man’s desk as he talked. For at least half of it Kees had felt like he was underwater, his ears only picking up a quiet roar whilst the man mouthed his way through something, like he was eating an invisible meal.
He had picked up enough though.
The basic message was that his immune system was attacking his own body. Kees had never heard of such a thing, it didn’t really make sense. Why would it do that? The doctor didn’t know, but said it seemed to be accelerating and that the only thing they could realistically do was give him some drugs to shut it down.
Kees had asked if that wasn’t dangerous long-term.
The doctor had talked about a rock and a hard place.
He’d also informed Kees that long-term was, in his opinion, unlikely.
The stone gives a little. Kees stands up, grabs the spade and wedges it under. He leans on the handle and the stone shifts a couple of millimetres. Then it stops dead.
Kees pushes harder. Still nothing. Jesus fuck.
He goes back to it with his hands, pulling more and more dirt out of the hole. But the more he removes, the wider the stone seems to get, like it’s an iceberg, the tiny tip above the earth, a colossus below.
Something jabs the end of one of his fingers, deep enough to get past the numbness, and he jumps back. He grabs the finger with his other hand. He can feel blood seeping out. The same blood which is transporting whichever part of his immune system is doing the damage round his body.
He feels like howling but snatches up the spade, jamming it under the stone and pushing down with all his weight.
Nothing else is important now. Nothing else matters. He just wants to move the fucking stone and be done with it.
The wooden shaft creeks. Then it cracks.
A bird detonates out of one of the trees behind him.
‘Fuck was that?’ a voice says.
It belongs to Lumberjack, who must’ve got bored of the pair of smoothly shaved lesbians on his iPad licking each other like they’re nutrient-starved.
Kees doesn’t bother to answer as Lumberjack steps up beside him and inspects the hole. He smells of weed and damp clothes. He pulls something out of a pocket. Kees sees it’s a torch.
The beam light-sabers on and is guided towards Kees’ work, sweeping back and forth until it settles.
‘Seriously,’ Lumberjack says, ‘he’s not a pygmy. We’re gonna need a bigger hole.’