Page 30 of The Bodies

TWENTY-EIGHT

Joseph drives home cautiously, hoping to balance the karma of his white-knuckle race to the bungalow. Erin, phone in hand, confronts him the moment he comes through the door.

‘Joe, seriously,’ she says. ‘What the hell is going on? We’re in the middle of a conversation, then you grab your keys and hare off like a lunatic. And now you’re limping.’ She steps closer. ‘Jesus, you’re bleeding . Did you crash the car? Are you hurt?’

He glances down at himself. His trousers are torn at the knee, the fabric stiff with drying blood. ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘I just tripped.’

‘Tripped where? Where did you go?’

‘I had a … a work thing I forgot about. A document I was meant to send. And then you mentioned the bungalow and I realized I left my laptop there.’

‘What was your laptop doing at the bungalow?’

‘I took it there yesterday. I thought I’d do an audit of the furniture. Put some of it on eBay, declutter the place a bit.’

He’s about to say more when Erin’s mobile rings. She checks the number, accepts the call. ‘Hi, Miah. Thanks for calling back. Yes … How did it go?’ She listens for a while, then says, ‘Look, bit of a weird one, but can I just check: did my husband turn up during the viewing?’

Erin stares at Joseph as she listens to the answer. Then she thanks Miah and ends the call.

‘You phoned the estate agent?’ he asks.

‘You weren’t picking up. I wanted to know where you’d gone.’

‘I’m sorry. I should have … I know I haven’t …

I know I’ve …’ Joseph begins, and realizes, suddenly, that he’s gasping for breath.

He’s trying to figure out what’s wrong when the strength drains from his limbs.

His head nods forward, and even as he jerks it back upright his knees sag and he staggers towards the newel post at the base of the stairs.

Somehow he prevents himself from falling, but the hall is yawning all over the place.

Erin rushes close, sliding an arm around his waist. Then she yells for Tilly. ‘Joe? What is it? What’s wrong?’

Tilly thunders down the stairs. When she sees what’s happening, she takes half Joseph’s weight. Together, they lead him into the living room and lower him on to the sofa. ‘Get him some water,’ Erin tells her daughter.

‘No, get me a beer.’

‘Joe, bad idea. Tilly, do as I say.’

‘It’s just my knee. I must have banged it worse than I thought.’

Erin fetches a footstool and positions it under his heel. Then she grips the tattered edges of his trousers. ‘They’re ruined, anyway,’ she says, ripping a larger hole. ‘So let’s just – oh, Jesus .’

When Joseph sees the damage, he groans. His knee looks like something Max might meet in the woods and decide worthy of his mercy – a swollen mess of blood and tattered skin.

Still, he knows the injury wasn’t the reason he collapsed.

The stress of the last three days, and the last half an hour in particular, appears to have momentarily doused his lights.

Tilly returns with a glass of beer. ‘Here you go, Axe Man.’

Joseph cringes when he hears that, a reference to the ridiculous tomahawk he’d hoped they’d both forgotten. He drinks down the beer in two long gulps and hands back the empty glass. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ he says. ‘Then I’ll patch this up.’

‘You can’t—’

‘Yes, I can. I’ll clean the knee, put a dressing on it. I just need you to help me up. Where’s Max?’

‘He went out looking for you.’

‘Bloody hell.’

Once Tilly and Erin have hauled him off the sofa, Joseph limps up the stairs to his bedroom.

Locking himself in the ensuite, he turns on the shower and strips off his clothes.

Then he removes the first-aid kit from the medicine cabinet and puts the Montblanc wallet in its place.

Beneath water as hot as he can bear, he scrubs himself clean, watching the water run red, then pink, then clear.

Afterwards, he dresses his wounded knee, steps into fresh clothes and douses himself in cologne.

He feels marginally better than he did – less like he’s actively dying and more like he’s on life support – but it’s only a temporary reprieve.

He knows he hasn’t fooled Erin. She’ll be watching him ten times more closely from now on.

When he opens the bedroom door, Max pushes him back inside the room so forcefully that he collapses on to the bed.

His knee and his hamstring scream in tandem.

The boy is pale-faced, shaky with adrenalin. ‘Dad, what the fuck ?’ he hisses. ‘You tell me there’s a viewing, that people are at the bungalow, and when I ask you about it you cut me off?’

‘I couldn’t—’

‘And then, after leaving me hanging for over half an hour, you come home and take a shower, without even bothering to contact me?’

Abruptly, he realizes how hellish the last sixty minutes must have been for Max. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You’re right. You’re completely right. I was so—’

‘What happened? Did they see her?’

Joseph cringes, holds a finger to his lips. He struggles up, checks the hallway and closes the bedroom door. ‘No. I got there just in time.’

‘Where’s Drew now?’

‘Keep your voice down.’

‘Where is she, though?’

‘ In the Honda ,’ he mouths.

Max stares at him, wild-eyed. His fists clench and unclench.

‘Dad,’ he says. Then his shoulders slump.

He sits on the edge of the bed and puts his head in his hands.

‘This is exactly what I worried might happen. You get involved in something and the next minute you’ve taken over.

You can’t keep shutting me out. You’re going to make a mistake, get us both caught.

I wanted to protect you from this, not drag you deeper into it. We’ve got to get Drew out of there.’

‘I know,’ Joseph says. ‘We will.’ He sits back down beside his son, stares at the carpet. ‘Have you told me everything?’

‘Of course.’

‘You’ve missed nothing out?’

‘No.’

‘In the woods, Friday night, you never found anything? Anything that would have identified that guy?’

‘No, I already told you. Multiple times. I swear to God.’

Joseph nods, squeezes Max’s shoulder. Then he gets off the bed, limps into the ensuite and returns with the Montblanc wallet. ‘I wonder what God would make of this.’

Max stiffens when he sees it, inhaling sharply through his nose. Watching his son’s reaction, Joseph decides to go all-in. ‘Last night I checked the car, went over every inch. It looks the same as it always did. No dents. Not even a scratch.’

‘I told you. He—’

‘Yeah, I know. It was dark, he fell, you drove over him – and then his wallet bounced all the way from Jack-O’-Lantern Woods to here, where it landed inside your footstool.’

‘Dad, you don’t have to—’

‘Did you know he knew Erin?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘I’m meant to believe that’s just a coincidence?’

‘It was just some random guy, out walking in the woods.’

‘Max—’

‘It’s the truth.’

Joseph indicates the wallet. ‘Like this was the truth? For God’s sake, I can’t be clearer.

If you aren’t honest with me – and I mean total honesty – there’s only one outcome.

You just gave me a kicking for shutting you out, and rightly so, but it’s about time you took your own advice.

Otherwise, as you say, both our lives are over. ’

Max sucks in a breath, puffs out his cheeks.

And then Erin calls up the stairs, asking for any requests from Mr Wu’s.

‘Think about it,’ Joseph says, opening the bedroom door. ‘Let’s talk after dinner.’

The food order arrives within forty minutes. In the kitchen, Joseph pulls lids off plastic containers and empties prawn crackers into a bowl.

As usual, Erin’s ordered far too many dishes. ‘I thought Drew might drop in,’ she explains, removing the foil from a bottle of Sancerre. ‘You know how she has a sixth sense for barbecue spare ribs.’

Joseph grabs a pale ale from the fridge and makes a mess of pouring it.

Slurping foam, he goes to the dining table and sits.

Already, the rich smells of plum sauce and fermented black beans are beginning to turn his stomach.

Erin joins him at the table. Tilly traipses in, placing her phone beside her plate. Max sits opposite.

The meal is a feast of eyes: Max watches Joseph; Joseph watches Tilly; Tilly watches her phone screen; Erin watches everyone.

The dearth of conversation accentuates the sounds of eating: the beetle-back crunch of crispy seaweed, the wet mastication of noodles and rice; the pulverizing of chicken and pork.

They bite, they chew, they drink, they swallow.

They suck meat from bones, smack their lips, probe their teeth with their tongues.

For Joseph, it’s almost too much – a horrifying aural affirmation of their squishy organic states.

He wants to cover his ears and drown it out.

He grabs his beer glass, nearly swipes it off the table. Takes a long gulp.

Erin looks at him sidelong. She’s about to speak when Tilly’s phone rings. ‘Oi, Missy,’ she tells her daughter. ‘You know the rules when we’re eating.’

But the device is already at Tilly’s ear. ‘Oh, hi,’ she says. ‘I was going to text you, but then I realized I didn’t have your number.’ She listens for a while, her eyes meeting those around the table. ‘No … No, she isn’t … You haven’t? … Wait, since when?’

A longer pause, now. Joseph feels Max’s gaze and forces himself not to meet it.

An awful pressure is building in his chest. There’s no doubt in his mind who’s calling.

The fallout from Drew’s disappearance was always going to arrive sooner than Angus Roth’s.

Surprising, really, that Enoch Cullen waited this long before reaching out.

Worst of all is the knowledge that he’s witnessing, in real time, the opening beats of another man’s tragedy. One that he could have prevented.