Page 14 of The Bodies

THIRTEEN

Sunday mornings during the football season, Max is out of the front door by eight.

In summer, he rises late – although not, it seems, today.

Just before nine a.m., after a paltry three hours’ sleep, Joseph checks the boy’s room and finds it empty.

Downstairs, he discovers Erin in the kitchen.

Despite her heavy drinking at the party, she looks like she spent the previous evening alternating between meditation and yoga.

Joseph, by contrast, sank one beer and feels like his head might explode.

‘He left hours ago,’ she replies, when he asks after Max.

‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No. Maybe he was off to see you-know-who. He was out of the door before I could ask. You want some coffee? I’ll be honest, Carver – you look like you need a saline drip.’

‘I’ll get it,’ he says. Rinsing out the portafilter, he pushes it into the electric grinder’s jaws.

‘Was it a bad dream?’

‘Dream?’

‘When my alarm went off, you were thrashing about, muttering some very strange stuff indeed.’

‘Like what?’

Erin’s features pull into a leer. ‘ Feed it, feed the machine ,’ she says, in a witch’s voice.

‘ More meat, fingers and legs, got to feed the machine. You could have been auditioning for a horror film. If it were anyone else it’d be creepy.

Actually,’ she adds, ‘I’m being too generous. It was creepy.’

Instantly, Joseph recalls his dream. He’d been in Samsons, the butcher’s on Crompton’s high street, feeding the dead man’s body parts into a grinder. But however many limbs he pushed through it, there were always more. Soon, he was knee-deep in red mince. Then, thigh-deep.

He shudders. ‘Is that all?’

‘That’s not enough?’ She looks at him strangely, grabs her purse. ‘Right, I’m heading out – got to pick up some print work for the next fundraiser. Don’t forget I’m in the London office tomorrow. I’m updating the board on our high-value donor push. I’ll be leaving this afternoon.’

Joseph had forgotten, but the news is a relief. Tonight he needs to drive out to Black Down and succeed where last night he failed. Now, he won’t have to lie to Erin about his whereabouts. ‘What time’s your train?’

‘After lunch.’

‘When are you back?’

‘Some time tomorrow evening. I’ll make sure I’m not late.

’ She touches his arm, wrinkles her nose.

‘I know – it isn’t ideal. But once this fundraiser’s wrapped up, things will settle down – at least, until the next one.

I meant what I said last night. I’d really like things to get back to the way they were. ’

‘Me too.’

‘Tilly took the bus into town so you’ve got the place to yourself for a while. Garden looks like a war zone if you’re feeling up to it, but I’ll tackle it when I’m back if you’re not.’

Once she’s gone, Joseph brews coffee and loads the toaster with bread. He still isn’t hungry, but he hasn’t eaten since Friday night and he’s starting to feel faint. He manages one slice before the ghost scent of the dead man wrecks his appetite again.

Upstairs, he showers and brushes his teeth. Then he douses himself in cologne and dresses in clean clothes. On the landing he pauses outside Max’s bedroom. He doesn’t want to do this, but he can’t see any alternative.

Gingerly, he pushes open the door. The room is characteristically tidy: the bed made, the floor clear.

On the desk stands a collection of football trophies, along with a human heart of dense foam, which opens to reveal a detailed interior.

Claire had bought the heart, along with the foam brain beside it, when Max first took an interest in biology.

Tacked to the wall above the desk is a human anatomy poster, one side illustrating the skeletal structure, the other side illustrating the musculature.

Peering from the skull’s red half is a single bulging eye.

It looks, to Joseph, uncannily like the dead man’s stare from Friday night.

Grimacing, he opens Max’s desk drawer. ‘Sorry, buddy,’ he mutters.

‘But you’ve given me no choice.’ Inside the drawer he finds ID cards, loose change, pens, bookmarks, a couple of ancient fidget spinners, a birthday card from six years ago with a handwritten message from Claire, an orienteering compass, an old GPS watch, a pocket knife Joseph once bought him for camping trips, spare boot studs, a brick charger, old phone leads, old batteries.

The birthday card slows Joseph down but doesn’t stop him.

When he finds nothing of interest in the drawer, he turns his attention to Max’s bookcase.

He slides his hand along the narrow gap above each row.

Then he opens the boy’s wardrobe and searches the two wicker baskets on the bottom shelf.

He finds clothes, shin pads, odds and ends; everything he might expect.

The space beneath Max’s bed houses several nine-litre storage boxes.

Joseph pulls them out one by one, prising off their lids and searching through them.

He unearths certificates, old school exercise books, Lego instruction manuals, chemistry sets, comics – and toys that haven’t seen daylight in years.

Right at the back, near the wall, he discovers something that makes him feel ugly for invading his son’s privacy, because he has one just like it – equally priceless – in his own room.

Max might not call this a bereavement box but that’s exactly what it is: a shoebox filled with memories of Claire. There are letters, cards, photographs; even a pair of old football socks into which she’d stitched Max’s name label.

While Joseph has kept one of his late wife’s scarves, Max has kept her favourite woollen cardigan.

Wrapped inside it is the Cabbage Patch Kids doll from her childhood, along with her wooden recorder.

There’s a gift aid card for a local charity shop with Claire’s signature, and a mug Max once chose for her birthday with the legend, MAMA BEAR .

Joseph repacks the box as carefully as he can and puts it back where he found it. Then he replaces the storage boxes in their original positions.

Feeling dirty, but doing it anyway, he searches Max’s bedside table and checks down the back.

He’s about to leave the room when his gaze falls on his son’s wooden footstool, a christening present from Claire’s parents.

The front is inscribed with Max’s name and date of birth.

Inside the seat is a secret compartment accessed on the underside by a sliding panel.

Joseph turns it upside down – and hears something flop around inside it. He slides open the panel, revealing a dark interior. Then, holding the stool above the bed, he flips it back over. On to the duvet falls a black leather wallet.

Oh, Jesus Christ , Joseph thinks. Oh, you foolish, foolish boy.

Because he knows whose wallet this must be. He’s working out what to do next when, downstairs, the doorbell rings.