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Thirty seconds later, Joseph is in the car. He reverses off the driveway so fast that when the car bounces into the street, the front bumper sparks against the tarmac. Hauling the wheel around, he finds first gear. He floors the accelerator, smoking his tyres. On the passenger seat, his phone lights up. Over the car’s speakers he hears its ringer. The dashboard screen shows Erin’s name.
Joseph reaches the end of the street, hits the brakes, checks for traffic, sees none. He guns the engine again, screeching on to Hiltingbury Lane and changing up through the gears.
The phone goes dark. A moment later, it relights – Max this time. Joseph jabs at the dashboard screen, trying to turn it off. He must hit the wrong button because immediately his son’s voice issues through the speakers.
‘Dad, what’s happening? I overheard some of it but not everything. That guy was hisbrother? Why was he at our house?’
Ahead, a learner driver is pootling along at half the speed limit. Joseph overtakes, swerving back into his lane just in time to avoid a lorry coming the other way. Its air horn blasts. Joseph swears. He grips the wheel with one hand, wipes sweat from his forehead with the other.
‘Dad? Talk to me. Why’d you run out like that?’
‘Get off the phone, Max.’
‘Tell me what’s going on.’
He grinds his teeth, realizes how hard he’s breathing. ‘The bungalow,’ he says. ‘I just heard there’s a viewing.’
‘When?’
‘Like, right now.’
‘But Drew—’
‘I know.’
Max groans. ‘Itoldyou we had to move her! We should have done it last night. What’s going to happen when they—’
Joseph punches the screen, disconnects the call. He has to clear his head of distractions, focus on what’s important. That means getting to Saddle Bank as fast as he possibly can.
He shrieks to a halt behind two cars stationary at a set of lights, fingers drumming the wheel.
Since Friday night, he’s tried to anticipate every possible gotcha, every tiny mistake that would see him lose his boy. And now, three days later, it looks like his downfall might come thanks to a goddamned fucking estate agent.
The lights change. The cars ahead of him begin to move. When Joseph reaches the junction, he rips the wheel left, taking the A road towards Saddle Bank. He accelerates hard towards the tail of traffic in front of him. Veering into the opposite lane again, he overtakes three vehicles in a row.
He’s doing twice the speed limit, now. If he hits something, he’s dead. If a tyre blows out, he’s dead, too. There was a time, not too distant, when he might have welcomed the oblivion, but he won’t abandon his boy, regardless of what his boy has done.
Hunched forward in his seat, Joseph grips the wheel with two hands, ready to react should a vehicle pull out in front of him.
His phone lights up again. At this speed, he daren’t evenlook. Spotting the turning for his mother’s road, he stands on the brakes. Taking the corner, he almost loses the rear.
Ahead, the road curves in a long crescent, revealing itself bit by bit. Any moment he expects to spot a line of police cars, an ambulance, maybe even a few news crews.
Finally, he sees his mother’s bungalow. Parked on her driveway is a silver Skoda he doesn’t recognize. Joseph skids to a stop, clambers out of his car and sprints past the Skoda to the front entrance. He plunges his key into the lock, bursts into the hall and slams the door behind him. There he pauses, hands braced against his thighs, sweat dripping from his nose, heartbeat thumping in his ears.
The house is quiet. Mortuary still.
Before Joseph can even catch his breath, a shadow falls over him. He straightens, hears the clatter of the door knocker behind him and side-steps into the living room.
His mother’s armchair remains by the wall where he last saw it, along with her glass coffee table. Spread across the carpet is the same heavy-duty plastic sheet. Drew, lying upon it, is wearing the same tartan miniskirt, the same high-necked halter cut to the midriff. Overnight, the pool of blood has dried, its surface dull.
Joseph sinks to his knees. Grabbing the plastic sheet’s leading edge, he lifts it up. Behind him he hears the machine-gun rattle of the knocker, harder now.
He folds the sheet over Drew and tucks it tight around her body. Outside, he hears another vehicle pull up. From the sound of it, right behind the Skoda. A car door opens.
‘I’m sorry,’ Joseph says, and doesn’t know if he’s talking to Drew, to Max or to Erin. Gripping the bottom of the folded sheet, he heaves upwards and rolls Drew on to her front, encasing her in more plastic. He hears a groan of expelled breath and leaps backwards, half expecting her to startclawing herself free. Then he remembers the dead man’s identical protest last night.
Footsteps, outside. Someone passes the front window. Joseph glances through the net curtains a fraction too late to see. Multiple voices, now, outside the front door.