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He rolls Drew over a second time, a third. Gathering the plastic below her feet, he crimps it like a Christmas cracker and drags her across the room.
Behind him, from the hall, a key snicks into the lock. As he pulls Drew into the kitchen, the front door squeals open. With one hand he opens the garage’s connecting door.
There’s the Honda, parked just where he left it. Joseph tows Drew across the concrete. He knocks over a rake, sends a glass demijohn rolling, finally gets Drew into position behind the car. Dropping the bunched plastic, he searches his pockets for the keys. Did he even bring them? He can’t remember.
Voices in the front hall. Keys in Joseph’s right hand. He unlocks the boot, yanks up the lid.
Pulling the dead man from the car was straightforward. Lifting Drew into it won’t be nearly as easy. Dead bodies are dead weight, difficult to manoeuvre – but the adrenalin in Joseph’s bloodstream thinks otherwise.
Wrapping his arms around Drew’s plastic-wrapped torso, squeezing her into a bear hug, he powers out of his crouch. A muscle screams in his shoulder. Beneath his right buttock, something pops.
Drew tumbles into the boot. Joseph collapses to the floor. The pain comes instantly – maybe a torn hamstring. He drags himself up regardless, putting all his weight on his left leg. He slams the boot, locks it, limps around the car, trips over the rake, goes down on one knee, hears it crack against the concrete.
Sparks erupt behind his eyes. He staggers up a secondtime, so crippled by agony he can hardly believe he’s still moving. Crashing across the garage, right leg dragging behind him, his momentum carries him into the kitchen, where he falls against the worktop. He braces his arms, pivots on his good leg and smiles through his teeth at his audience.
TWENTY-SIX
Three people are standing in the living room: a woman in her twenties and an older couple. The younger woman is wearing a trouser suit and big hoop earrings. Joseph remembers her name is Miah. She’s holding an iPad, a set of house keys and a few sheets of stapled paper. The couple, in their seventies, are dressed in golfing attire.
Nobody speaks. Everyone looks uncomfortable.
Joseph’s hamstring hurts only marginally less than his kneecap. If he opens his mouth to say something, he can’t guarantee he won’t scream. If he clenches his teeth any harder, he’ll likely spray the kitchen with enamel.
Miah stares, wrinkles her nose. ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘It’s Mr Carver, isn’t it?’
A bead of sweat rolls down Joseph’s nose and drips off the tip. He wheezes for breath, tries to stop his body from contorting in agony.
‘I think my colleague spoke to your wife about a viewing? This is Roger and Mary Boyd. They’re looking to downsize.’
‘Hello,’ Joseph hisses.
The Boyds recoil a little.
‘I’m sorry,’ Miah tells the couple. ‘I thought we’d be alone.Still, it’s a good opportunity to ask the vendor any questions you may have.’
Mary Boyd is standing on the very patch of carpet where Drew was lying not a minute ago. Briefly, she glances at her husband. Then she says, ‘Have you ever had any problems with Japanese knotweed?’
Joseph doesn’t know how he ends up outside. Nor can he recall any of the nonsense he spouted inside the bungalow. He limps down the drive, conscious of the unseen eyes that might be watching behind lace curtains across the street. Only once he’s back in his own car with the door closed does he allow himself a shriek of pain. He sounds like a camp kettle reaching its boil.
He cannot believe what just happened, nor how narrowly he averted disaster. The knowledge that right now the estate agent is showing a couple around the very property where Drew’s body is hidden is almost too appalling to contemplate.
Did he even lock the boot? No prospective buyer with a shred of sanity would expect to look inside a vendor’s car, but during his time in the property market, Joseph’s met plenty of oddballs – although perhaps none odd enough to use their mother’s garage as a makeshift mortuary.
Cringing, he starts the car and tentatively touches the accelerator pedal. The lance of pain is bad but not incapacitating. Maybe he hasn’t torn his hamstring, after all. Maybe it’s just a muscle sprain.
Putting the car in gear, Joseph pulls away from the kerb. He doesn’t want to sit outside the bungalow, but he can’t leave until he’s made sure his visitors have gone. If the unthinkable happens and his secret is revealed, he wants to know about it even if he’s powerless to intervene.
A few doors down, he turns around and pulls up behinda parked van. If he leans across the passenger seat he can monitor the bungalow, the Skoda and the estate agent’s car behind it.
Ten minutes later, Mary Boyd emerges and starts nosing about in the shrubbery. She doesn’t look like she just discovered a dead girl wrapped in plastic. Her husband appears on the front step, followed by the estate agent. The three have a short conversation. Then they get into their cars and drive off. Joseph waits a while longer before twisting his keys in the ignition.
His brain is so fried by the close call that he doesn’t notice the white Mercedes parked across the street.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Late afternoon, Teri Platini arrives back at Thornecroft. She makes an early dinner of salad and hard-boiled eggs, opens a bottle of Chablis and pours herself a small glass. Rarely does she drink alcohol during the day, but she hopes the wine will take the edge off her nerves.
She eats in Thornecroft’s formal dining room, taking Angus’s seat at the head of the table. From there she looks through the window at his Lexus. Four days, now, since he disappeared. Far too early to assume he isn’t coming back, but long enough for it to be a possibility. She needs to plan, covertly, for the latter, while avoiding any repercussions should he reappear.