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Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

‘It’s the hoodie Kier was wearing in some of the videos. The lettering’s the same, isn’t it?’

Briefly closing her eyes, Elin pictures it again – the white hooded sweatshirt, knockoff YALE logo daubed across the front.

‘Explains why the dog was barking its head off down there.’ Isaac’s voice is shaky. ‘It was Kier’s stuff they were digging up after the explosion, putting into that bag.’

‘And then brought up here to—’ Blinking, Elin imagines it: the dancing light of the fire, the bag curling up in the flames. As she turns away, another image arrives – Bridie stood here, part of this, watching Kier’s clothes reducing to ashes.

‘What are you thinking?’ Isaac’s watching her.

‘About Bridie. No proof the ash on her boots is from the fire, but I reckon it’s more likely she got it from here than from the cabin. ’

‘Not looking good, is it?’ he says, his expression grim. ‘Burning up her stuff.’

‘No.’ Seeing the remains of her sweatshirt there, among the ashes, makes her blood run cold.

Isaac’s right. Why go to the effort of burning something unless you had good reason?

‘Elin, there’s something else. Over here.’ She turns to see Isaac a few feet away, gesturing at something. ‘A ring. Reckon it’s been blown out from the force of the fire.’

Elin walks over and Isaac points to a patch of faded grass at the edge of the clearing. ‘There, in that patch of grass.’

She leans a little closer so she can see what he’s pointing at. A ring is sitting on a thin cluster of grass that’s interspersed with weeds.

The silver is dulled, tarnished from the fire, but she can make out interlocking loops of silver forming the band. There’s a distinctive green stone in the centre, marbled with blues and greys.

‘Definitely too big to be Kier’s,’ Elin says slowly. ‘That’s a man’s ring. Maybe the bag wasn’t just Kier’s stuff.’

Isaac nods, his eyes glassy. ‘Perhaps the camp’s got form in getting rid of other people’s stuff.’ His voice is strained, a note of fear creeping in. ‘Remember what the guy from the tourist office said about the man who went missing a few months ago?’

Elin thinks about his words, gooseflesh rising on her arms.

A tourist. Camping out with his friend. They were hiking on a trail near one of the falls. There one minute and gone the next.

Could the camp have been involved in the tourist’s disappearance too?

The thought wears a groove in her mind as they search through the rest of the ashes, taking photographs as they work. We know nothing about them , she thinks. Nothing at all.

They find more fragments of clothing littered among the remains of the fire, but it’s impossible to tell what’s Kier’s and what might belong to someone else .

‘We done?’ Isaac asks a few minutes later. Standing up, he dusts down his trousers. ‘Don’t reckon there’s much left we haven’t gone through.’

‘Nearly. If you’re all right to do a last check by the fire, I’ll take another look around.’ Easing past him, Elin walks forwards until she’s in the centre of the clearing.

Slowly turning, she soaks it all in, immediately struck by the shift in atmosphere from where she’d just been standing. A completely different feeling: no smell of smoke or accelerant, no violence of the fire still lingering in the air.

Here, there’s a sense of calm, the trees around her forming an almost perfect embrace. A cocoon.

Stepping forwards a few paces, her gaze drops to the floor, and her eyes travel forwards a few feet and then back.

All at once, something stirs inside her. A sudden sharpening of her senses.

It wasn’t visible from the edge of the clearing, but here, the earth, the grass looks different. Patchier than she’d thought … it looks like some kind of pattern.

Elin walks across to the corner and looks again, but as the cloud shifts, dulling both sky and ground, the effect is lost.

Is she imagining it?

‘What do you think about heading off soon?’ Isaac’s voice disturbs her train of thought as he comes towards her. ‘Probably best we don’t hang around. We’re not that far from camp. If anyone’s about …’

‘You’re right.’ Elin’s still distracted by what she’s seen.

‘Hard to know what to do about this,’ Isaac gestures in the direction of the fire. ‘Not enough, is it, to take to the police?’

‘Not sure. With the video footage we have of Kier in the hoodie, there might be, but I don’t know if getting them involved at this stage is the right call. If the camp get wind of it there’s every chance they’ll bolt. We need them here. Place this size, the chance of us finding anything concrete without them is going to be impossible. I think we do everything we can to keep them close, see if they let anything slip. ’

‘Yeah, good shout. Maybe we try to build on what you’ve started with Bridie …’ Isaac tails off as her phone loudly beeps.

‘Looks like we’re going to have the ideal opportunity to do just that,’ she says slowly, taken aback by the message that’s appeared on her screen. ‘I’ve had a message from her. Inviting us to the camp tonight, for drinks.’