Page 28 of The Bodies

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 behind a 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.