Page 36 of The Bodies

THIRTY-TWO

As Gabriel Roth climbs out of his hire car, he wonders if Miah’s plaid miniskirt, silk blouse and heavy make-up are a lure for prospective buyers.

If so, he hopes she’ll find him immune. He just spent a cleansing twenty minutes listening to ‘Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute’ and ‘High Mountains and Flowing Water’.

Unfortunately, meditation and classical Chinese music aren’t offering the safe harbours they once did.

These last few days, as the world has darkened around him, brief bursts of violence have become the only release valve for his pain.

Hard to know why, after so many years of celibacy, his sexual urges have similarly begun to overwhelm him. He cannot let that continue.

In his readings of Confucius, he’s learned to consider the consequences of rage.

Now, more than ever, he needs to hold those teachings close.

Because when he finds those responsible for Angus’s disappearance, he intends to apply another tenet of Confucianist thought: repaying evil not with mindless wrath but cold justice.

‘Mr Anderson,’ she says. Her lips don’t lose their plumpness when she smiles. Her teeth are as white as coconut meat.

Gabriel turns his attention to the bungalow. ‘Two bedrooms, you said.’

Miah nods, leading him up the drive. ‘It’s a lot more spacious inside than it looks. So many people are choosing single-storey properties these days. It’s a lifestyle choice, don’t you think?’ She unlocks the door and swings it open. ‘Shall we?’

He indicates that she should go first and follows her inside.

‘It’s a nice, bright hall,’ Miah says. ‘The décor might need a refresh but it’s only cosmetic stuff. Through there’s the living room, which I think is a lovely space. Kitchen leads off it to the rear, with a gorgeous view of the back garden.’

Gabriel looks around. Although the bungalow is fully furnished, he sees discoloured patches on the wall where pictures and photographs once hung. No knickknacks are on display, no keepsakes. Everything personal has disappeared. ‘Tell me about the vendor.’

‘Well, there’s no chain, for starters. Which is a real benefit.’

‘Is this a probate sale?’

Miah’s smile is strained, revealing once again those coconut-white teeth. ‘Kind of. I mean, OK, yes, but it shouldn’t put you off. I know some people are funny about that but it’s not like anyone died in here.’

She laughs awkwardly, as if embarrassed by her own sales pitch.

‘That kind of thing doesn’t bother me. So who’s the vendor?’

‘The son of the lady who lived here.’

‘What can you tell me about him?’

She shrugs. ‘Seems a nice guy. I’ve only met him a few times.’

‘Does he live here? Use the place as an office?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘How long’s it been on the market?’

‘A while.’

‘Which means what, exactly?’

‘Maybe … March? I’d have to check the file. If we’d listed it the previous March we’d have sold it in a day, but right now – well, I’m sure you know how the market’s been.’

In the living room, an armchair and a side table have been pushed against the wall, revealing the indentations on the carpet where they once stood. All the other furniture – the bookcase, the sideboard, the TV cabinet, the sofa – looks like it hasn’t moved.

‘You want to see the bedrooms?’ Miah asks.

As Gabriel follows her for the tour, he tunes out her sales patter and thinks about that pushed-back space in the living room.

He looks inside the built-in wardrobes, checks the bath for stains.

He examines the walls and skirting boards for blood splashes, the linoleum and the carpets.

He opens the kitchen cabinets to see which cleaning products they contain and in what quantities.

‘That leads to the garage,’ Miah explains, when Gabriel puts his hand to an interior door. ‘Feel free to have a look.’

He opens it and steps through. Inside, the garage is dark. He touches the wall, feels for a switch, flips it. Overhead, a fluorescent strip stutters before casting its light. In the centre of the garage stands a blue Honda hatchback.

The air in here feels like it’s being cooked. There’s a smell of dust and engine oil and hot metal – and the hint of something more unpleasant, like game meat hung for flavour that has somehow managed to get damp.

Against the near wall is a workbench scattered with equipment. Various garden tools have been stacked in one corner. A rake lies on the concrete floor beside a glass demijohn on its side.

Gabriel crouches down and checks beneath the car.

Then he goes to the driver’s side window and cups his hands to the glass.

He sees nothing of interest on the front seats, none of the usual junk that tends to accumulate inside a vehicle regularly used.

Behind the rear seats, a tonneau cover has been drawn over the boot space.

Gabriel goes the rear, finds the boot release, squeezes it.

Miah appears in the doorway. When she spots him behind the Honda her eyebrows lift, but she can’t see his hand from where she’s standing. ‘Everything OK?’ she asks. ‘Anything else you want to know?’

‘I’m just trying to figure out if I could park my car in here. It’s a lot bigger than this one.’

‘I’m sure we have the measurements on the plans.’

‘Great.’

She smiles at him again.

Gabriel drops his hand, smiles back.

The boot is locked, as he thought it would be – but he thinks he saw a Honda-branded key fob hanging from a hook in the kitchen. As he walks out from behind the car he notices, trapped between the bottom edge of the boot lid and the lip of the surround, a flap of clear heavy-duty plastic.

It stops him dead, that sight. It empties his ears of sound.

He stands there motionless for what might be ten seconds or longer before the gears of his brain re-engage.

The pulse of blood in his arteries has become a torrent, a raging flood.

He clenches his fists, unclenches them. Wordlessly, he follows Miah to the living room, where he observes once again the chair and table pushed back to the wall.

When he tries to breathe, his diaphragm spasms like a bowstring releasing its arrow. His lips feel numb, his cheeks.

‘You ever get scared?’ he hears himself ask, his gaze still on that inexplicable tableau.

Miah cants her head. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I mean, you don’t know anything about me.

And yet here we are, together, in an empty house.

If something happened, it might be an hour or more before one of your colleagues raised the alarm.

In that time …’ He shrugs. ‘I could attack you, rape you. And what could you do to stop me? What would you do?’

Beneath the silk fabric of her blouse, Miah’s chest swells. She, too, throws a glance at that patch of cleared carpet. Her hand slips inside her shoulder bag. ‘I have to say you’re scaring me a bit.’

‘I should be scaring you,’ Gabriel says. ‘You should be scared because you don’t have a plan. You’re young, you’re pretty. You’re physically weak. That makes you an easy target for those with appetites they can’t suppress.’

His own breath is coming a little easier now.

‘I’m not going to attack you, Miah, but I want you to think about how you’d react if I did, because I guarantee you one thing – I could close the distance between us before you managed to dial even a single number on that phone you’re clutching inside your bag.

So the questions remains: what would you do? ’

Miah blinks at him, licks those plump lips. Then, softly, she says, ‘I’d give you everything you wanted. If you tried to touch me, I wouldn’t resist. If you tried to kiss me, I’d kiss you straight back.’

Steadily, she removes her hand from her bag. Instead of a phone, she’s holding a switchblade. When she presses the button release, the blade flicks out. Gabriel knows switchblades, and he knows Miah isn’t holding a toy.

‘This is from Maniago, Italy,’ she tells him. ‘Locals call the place the Town of Knives, the birthplace of the modern switchblade. Which means when I stabbed you through the neck with this one, you could take solace in the fact that you weren’t killed by a cheap Chinese copy.’