Page 18 of The Bodies
SIXTEEN
An hour later, Erin returns from town. In the downstairs office, she packs an overnight bag with work files and printouts.
Then she throws in a few clothes. ‘I bought a couple of ready meals for this evening. Or there’s food in the freezer if you feel like cooking.
Try not to get up to any mischief while I’m gone. ’
‘I’m sure it’ll be a quiet one.’
He drops her at the train station in Crompton. On the way home, he detours through Jack-O’-Lantern Woods, taking the main road north to south. He passes no police vehicles, spots no evidence of anything amiss.
Pulling into a rest spot, Joseph climbs out of the car, retrieves the wallet from his pocket and flips it open.
This time, he fully removes the driving licence from its slot.
When he sees the photo he leans against the doorframe – because, despite the cranial injuries he observed on Friday night, and the washed-out colours of the licence, this is, indisputably, an image of Max’s victim.
The dead man’s face bears all the hallmarks of a high-testosterone individual: hollow cheeks, square jaw, strong chin. His eyes are set wide apart, his stare unsettlingly intense.
According to the licence, Angus Roth is thirty-eight years old. His home address is on Hocombe Hill, a few miles from Jack-O’-Lantern Woods.
Joseph checks the banknote pocket and counts ten fresh twenties. In the left-hand slip pocket he finds a couple of petrol receipts. In the right-hand pocket he finds a heart-shaped pink Post-it. Written on it in pencil are the words, If you dare . Below them, a mobile number.
Joseph removes the remaining cards and cycles through them: an Amex Platinum card, a British Airways Executive Club card, two First Direct debit cards.
He returns the cards to their slots and gets back in the car. Then he programmes his satnav with the postcode from the licence.
The journey from Jack-O’-Lantern Woods takes ten minutes.
Hocombe Hill is one of Crompton’s most affluent roads, lined with huge properties screened by mature trees.
Joseph passes Thornecroft, Angus Roth’s place, too fast to get a proper look.
At the top of the hill, he turns around and drives back.
This time, slowing to a crawl as he reaches Thornecroft’s entrance, he sees a grand mock Tudor residence designed to radiate power.
The place must be worth a couple of million.
Joseph’s stomach somersaults. Teeth clenched and temples throbbing, he puts his foot down and gets out of there. None of this is good. None of it.
Back at home, he grabs a bottle of Evian from the fridge and drinks till his thirst is slaked. In the garden, Tilly and Drew are still draped across their sun loungers. Watching them from the bifold doors, Joseph wonders how much Drew knows.
Has Max told her everything? Or an edited version? Surely he didn’t make the same claim he made to his father: that he’d done the dead man a kindness by staving in his skull.
Joseph recalls Erin’s assessment of his son’s relationship: This is just a bit of summer fun until they go their separate ways.
If she’s right, what happens after the break-up? Drew might stay quiet for now, but what might she do once they split? Admittedly, that’s not a concern for the next twenty-four hours, nor perhaps even the next few weeks. But it’s still another tsunami rushing towards him.
So intensely is Joseph focused on these thoughts that it’s a while before he notices that Drew has turned her face towards the bifold doors.
Her sunglasses obscure the focus of her gaze, but then she raises them – and he realizes she’s been watching him all along.
Worse, he sees that Tilly, her expression faintly mystified, has noticed their wordless exchange.
Conscious of just how creepy he must look, he abandons the kitchen for the hall.
Briefly, Joseph considers doing what he failed to do earlier – confronting his son about the wallet. Because if Max lied about that, it’s possible he lied about the dead man’s phone. If he hasn’t turned it off, it’ll lead anyone searching for it straight here.
Despite the danger, Joseph isn’t ready to look into his son’s eyes and listen to another lie. Instead, he goes upstairs and locks himself inside the ensuite. Taking out Claire’s iPhone, he opens the browser.
He’s always assumed that a grave should be six feet deep, but he finds no modern-day justification for that online.
The practice seems to have sprung up during the plague years of the sixteen hundreds; back then, the deeper the victims were buried the better, and six feet was likely the maximum depth a man could dig while comfortably shovelling soil over the lip.
These days, most cemetery graves run to a depth of four feet, allowing three feet to the top of the coffin.
Joseph isn’t burying a coffin – he’s burying a man wrapped in a tarp – but four feet still seems a good target.
At that depth there’s little chance of scavengers uncovering the remains, or a storm washing away the topsoil.
He’s about to unlock the door when he remembers Max’s mention of cadaver dogs.
Back online he goes, where he discovers a number of facts to make him nauseous, among them that American cadaver dogs are often trained on rotting human placentas.
Finally, he lands on a site that claims they can detect human remains even under fifteen feet of soil.
There’s zero chance of him digging down that far, so he may as well accept that if a dog is deployed he’s fucked.
Joseph checks his watch, sees that it’s gone three.
If he sets off from his mother’s bungalow in four hours’ time, he’ll arrive at Black Down near sunset.
That’ll give him a while to pick out a grave site before the sky grows fully dark.
After brushing his teeth a second time, he daubs more Sauvage on his upper lip.
At six thirty, he leaves a note in the kitchen, saying that he’s off to see a friend, will be back late, and that the fridge is stocked with ready meals for anyone who gets hungry.
Then he fetches a bike from the shed and walks it through the side gate.
Ten minutes later, he arrives at his mother’s bungalow in Saddle Bank.
The stench hits him the moment he steps inside the garage, immeasurably worse than last night.
Decomposition seems to be progressing far quicker than his online research had suggested.
Joseph breathes through his mouth, but the tainted air still fills his lungs.
While he hunts around for his father’s old pickaxe, three huge bluebottles perform aeronautic displays.
He flails wildly whenever they come close – and when one of them lands on his arm he cries out in disgust.
He discovers the pickaxe in a pile of rusting garden tools. Holding his breath, he opens the Honda’s boot. Three more flies loop out of it. Dry-heaving, Joseph tosses the pickaxe inside and slams shut the lid.
Back in the bungalow, he fills the bathroom basin with cold water and submerges his face until his breath runs out.
Then, returning to the garage, he climbs into the car and uses the remote to raise the garage door.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, he reverses on to the driveway and drives the dead man to Black Down.