Page 15 of The Bodies

FOURTEEN

Standing in Max’s room, staring at the wallet on his son’s bed, Joseph hears the doorbell chime a second time.

So many thoughts erupt inside his head that he finds himself paralysed.

He doesn’t want to touch the wallet and yet he must. He doesn’t want to answer the door and yet he has to know who’s calling.

Worst of all is the discovery that his son has not only killed a man but has lied to Joseph about key details – details which could see them both jailed.

Wrenching himself around, he steps into the hall and leans over the bannisters. Through the privacy glass in the front door he sees a pair of dark shapes.

Police , a part of him insists.

Paranoia , insists another.

Joseph dips back inside Max’s room and scoops the wallet off the bed.

The leather feels warm, alive. Grimacing, he slides it into his back pocket.

As he hurries down the stairs, he recalls the coin-eyed doorstep seller from last winter, who’d forced one foot into the hall and wouldn’t leave without payment.

A lot has changed since then. Joseph has filled the house with weapons he dare not use, and a nightmare far worse than any he’d envisaged has crept up on him unawares.

When he swings open the front door, he finds Tilly and Drew on the step, in novelty sunglasses and summer dresses. The sight is such a relief that he blows out his breath like a punctured football.

‘It was a flight of stairs, Joe, not the Matterhorn,’ Tilly says, as she comes inside. ‘Maybe it’s time to invest in a gym membership. Work on that cardio.’

Joseph flashes a sickly smile. Closing the door, he follows the girls into the kitchen. The wallet sliding against his buttock feels like a just-cooked steak. ‘I thought you went into town.’

‘Only for suntan lotion. Today’s all about lazing in the back garden like a couple of hungover hogs.’

‘You’re suffering?’

‘Not overly.’ Tilly dumps a carton of coconut water on the worktop, goes to the bifold doors and opens them.

Her sunglasses are shaped like pineapples, with yellow lenses and green plastic crowns.

Lowering them to the tip of her nose, she says, ‘I’m going to root out our sun loungers from the shed. Do we have blueberries?’

‘Some.’

‘Ginger?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Kale?’

‘I think your mum has a bag in the crisper drawer.’

‘OK if Drew makes us a couple of hangover smoothies?’

‘They’re your tastebuds.’

‘Shuh- weet ,’ Tilly says, and disappears outside.

Drew’s sunglasses, with wide pink lenses, are shaped like a pair of flamingos.

Joseph can’t see her eyes but he knows she’s watching him.

He recalls the way her coffee cup had rattled against her teeth yesterday morning in the Grind House.

And her close observation of him last night.

She looks as uncomfortable now as she’d looked then. And trying hard not to show it.

‘We need a magic bullet,’ she says. ‘Do you have one?’

‘A magic what?’

Drew takes off her sunglasses. Today, he sees, she’s back to full make-up. Her eyes only meet his own for a moment. ‘Sounds like a vibrator, I know. But it’s actually a smoothie maker.’

Joseph indicates the corner cupboard by the toaster. ‘I don’t know if it’s the same brand, but look in there.’

Drew checks the cupboard and lifts a large grey appliance on to the worktop. Then she goes to the fridge and digs out the blueberries, kale and fresh ginger. ‘Bananas?’

Joseph points, Drew nods. She looks through the bifold doors, to where Tilly is crossing the lawn with two sun loungers. As she slides past him to the smoothie maker, she leans forward and says, deep into his ear, ‘I know what you did for Max, and I think it’s really brave.’

The calm that follows is like the ocean just after a depth charge has exploded. Despite the enormous energy wave racing upwards, the surface looks tranquil, flat.

Drew reaches the end of the worktop and turns to face him.

Joseph can’t breathe. That pressure wave races closer. Then, from the bifold doors, his stepdaughter says, ‘You think what’s really brave?’

Finally, the ocean turns white. Moments later, a mountain of water climbs heavenward. Hundreds of tons of spray.

Straightening, Joseph watches Tilly step into the kitchen. Her gaze moves from Drew to him and back, her expression amused-quizzical. ‘Drewster?’

Drew grins, but she’s no poker player. She grabs a banana and begins to peel it, turning to Joseph for help.

‘We were talking about kale,’ he says. ‘I was explaining how I avoid most forms of roughage in my diet.’

‘Avoiding roughage is brave?’

‘It is if you’re his colon,’ Drew replies, finally recovering her composure.

Tilly wrinkles her nose like she’s still not quite in on the joke. ‘Right now, I’m a little too hungover to think about colons.’

If Joseph’s jaw clenches any harder his teeth will shatter. Avoiding Tilly’s gaze, he makes his excuses. In the downstairs cloakroom, he locks the door and yanks the pull cord light. From the kitchen he hears the smoothie maker begin to blitz.

In the mirror over the basin, Joseph stares at his reflection.

He can’t think about Drew’s comment, not yet.

Nor its awful implications. Instead, he fishes the wallet from his back pocket, cringing once again at its flesh-like feel.

On the bottom edge is a logo he vaguely recognizes – a plump six-pointed star inside a white circle.

He doesn’t want to examine the contents, doesn’t want proof, irrefutable, that Max has lied to him. What troubles him even more is the prospect of learning the dead man’s identity – and details of the life his son has destroyed.

Joseph flips open the wallet. Inside he sees six credit card slots, two slip pockets and a full-width pocket for banknotes. Embossed into the leather on the right-hand fold is MONTBLANC .

That’s why he’d recognized the logo. On his fortieth birthday, Claire had given him a Montblanc fountain pen. Its cap had featured the same plump white star.

The wallet’s frontmost card looks like a driver’s licence. Joseph eases it half an inch from its slot. He’s not ready to look at the face of Max’s victim, but he does want to learn his name, which he discovers is Angus Oliver Roth.

Out in the hall, he hears the snick of a key, the rattle of the door latch. If Tilly’s already home, and Erin just left for the print shop, it must be Max. Joseph slides the wallet back into his pocket. He grips the wash basin, takes five long breaths. Then he unlocks the cloakroom door.

The hallway is deserted, as is the kitchen. Through the bifold doors he sees Tilly and Drew carrying their smoothies across the garden. As they set up their loungers, Drew throws Tilly furtive looks. She seems spooked, as if she knows she just messed up and is wondering if she got away with it.

Joseph returns to the hall and creeps up the stairs. He pauses outside his son’s room, gathers himself. The door is closed but not fully. He gives it a gentle push.

Max is hunched over on his chair, muttering to himself in an urgent, animated tone.

His words are indistinct but the emotion in them is clear.

He sounds wretched, distraught. When he notices Joseph, he lurches off his seat, so violently that he nearly collides with his desk. Tear tracks glisten on his cheeks.

‘Dad,’ he says, dragging his shirtsleeve across his face. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’

Joseph stares at his son, trying to reconcile himself with what he’s seeing. ‘What,’ he says, ‘the fuck,’ he continues, ‘is going on?’

Max flinches as if he’s just been struck. ‘What’re you talking about?’

‘What am I talking about? How about you start by telling me where you’ve been this morning, and what you’ve been doing? I woke up and you’d disappeared.’

‘I went out.’

‘No shit. Where?’

‘To the hospital.’

Joseph baulks. ‘The hospital ?’

‘Mealtime support,’ Max says. He raises his hands as if in surrender. ‘My old volunteering role. I called them yesterday, arranged it. I just … I just wanted to do something positive, you know? Start paying back.’

‘And you thought now was a good time for that?’

The boy opens his mouth, blinks hard. ‘I didn’t think it wasn’t.’

‘Maybe you weren’t thinking at all. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I don’t know. I …’ He shrugs, swallows. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Honestly, you’re really starting to worry me, here, Max. I’m beginning to doubt your judgement.’

‘Dad,’ the boy says. He looks frightened, confused even – and, somehow, small. ‘Other than doing a volunteer shift at the hospital, and forgetting to mention it, what exactly do you think I’ve done wrong?’

Joseph opens and closes his mouth. Half of him wants to put his arms around his son. The other half wants to shake some sense into him. ‘Have you spoken to anyone? About what we’re trying to deal with?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Really? You didn’t tell Drew? You didn’t tell her what happened in Jack-O’-Lantern Woods? That I’m helping you to bury this guy?’

The boy licks his lips. ‘No, I—’

‘Max, you fucking schoolboy!’ Joseph hisses, slapping the doorframe in frustration.

‘She just told me.’ He shakes his head in disbelief.

‘Apparently, she thinks – and these are her exact words, by the way, which is just fantastic – “it’s really brave”.

I mean, is there— Do you want us to go to prison? ’

Max’s holds his father’s gaze a moment longer. Then he goes to the bed and slumps down on it. ‘She shouldn’t have said that.’

‘Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t have told her.’

‘I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I promise you.’

‘You do realize that both our futures might now depend on whether Drew knows how to keep her mouth shut?’

Max runs his hands through his hair. ‘She won’t say anything.’

‘Well, I’m delighted you’re so confident. She’s certainly made an excellent start.’

‘Dad, please. Not the sarcasm. Not right now.’

Joseph is so surprised – so shocked and outraged by his son’s response – that he laughs. ‘My God,’ he says. ‘What is going on here? What is happening inside that brain of yours?’

‘Look, I said I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to do, but Drew won’t say anything, I guarantee it. Our focus should be on where we go from here. I realize this must have spooked you, but I’m not flaking out. You can trust me – and my judgement. I’m not going to let you down.’

‘I hope you’re not just saying what you think I’m hoping to hear.’

‘I swear to you, Dad.’ He massages his neck, grimaces. ‘You haven’t told me about last night. Is it done?’

‘Yes, it’s done.’

Max frowns, holding his father’s gaze. ‘So where is he now?’

‘It’s best you don’t know.’

‘And my clothes? My trainers?’

‘Burned,’ Joseph says. ‘Gone.’

‘What about the car?’

‘Back at your grandmother’s place.’

‘What do we do with it? There might be traces of the guy’s blood. His DNA.’

‘I’ll deal with that on Monday, when everything reopens. Best thing you can do, in the meantime, is stay here, keep out of trouble and resist the temptation to blab about this to anyone else.’

He searches Max’s face for any sign of dissent. Then he says, ‘I need to ask you something. And I want a one hundred per cent honest answer.’

‘Sure.’

‘Do you really have no idea who this guy is?’

When Max begins to respond, Joseph holds up his hand.

‘Don’t just say the first thing that comes into your head.

We’re in trouble, here, you and me. We’ve a lot of work to do to dig ourselves out of it.

This may get much worse before it gets better, and if we can’t even be honest with each other, we’ve no hope.

So think about your answer first. I only want the truth. ’

‘Dad,’ Max says, his gaze wandering to the wall. ‘I have absolutely no idea who that guy was.’

Joseph’s heart breaks, then – because he knows without doubt that his son is lying. Even worse is the realization that if Max can lie to him about something so fundamental, perhaps the good-hearted boy he knew before Claire’s death somehow died alongside her.

He shudders, expelling that thought as forcefully as the bile he vomited up last night.

There’s a way back , he thinks. There has to be.

‘And you found nothing where he fell?’ he asks. ‘No car keys, no wallet, no phone?’

‘I already told you. More than once. None of that stuff, I swear.’

‘Look at me, Max.’

As Joseph stares into his son’s eyes he feels, for the second time since Friday night, like he’s looking at a stranger.

Briefly, he considers confronting Max with the wallet.

But admitting that he searched the boy’s room will obliterate trust rather than reinforce it, and he’s not ready to do that just yet.

‘OK,’ he says finally. ‘Let’s leave it there. But remember what I said: stay at home, keep a low profile, and for God’s sake steer clear of Tilly and Drew. You think you can do that?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything at all you think I should know?’

Max shakes his head. No longer a stranger. More like a scared and exhausted child.

Joseph goes to the bed, puts his hand on his son’s shoulder, squeezes. ‘I know how difficult things have been. I mean, since—’

‘Please, Dad. You don’t have to say it.’

‘You know I love you.’

‘And you know I love you too.’

Joseph nods, turns away, closes the door behind him. As he heads back downstairs, he hears a single hard sob from Max’s room. Then silence.