Midnight is a Lonely Place

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In the stillness of the night the tide lapped imperceptibly higher along the beach, round the headland and slowly, oh so slowly, into the backwaters of the estuary, licking at the mud, floating strands of trailing grasses and weeds, curling round the toes of sleeping geese and ducks. Rising.

In the dune the sand had dried. It was brittle, friable, ready to fall. Beneath it, only a centimetre down now, was the clay – clay which was plastic, impervious to air or water, and in the clay was the peat which held preserved the remains of four human bodies.