Page 48 of The Bodies

FORTY-THREE

It’s a fist-sized puddle, dry at the edges, still wet and glistening at the centre. Two smaller stains the size of fifty pence pieces mark the floorboards a few inches away.

Joseph stares at the blood in silence. He’s still shaking from the abrupt end to his phone call with Max, from his godawful discovery at the bungalow.

And now this.

He checks the hallway runner, the skirting board. He sees no other blood splashes, but a chunk of plaster is missing from the wall to his left, level with his nose. A few fragments lie on the floor directly beneath it.

It’s not his blood. It can’t be Erin’s. And he just talked to Max.

Oh Jesus , he thinks. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus.

Tilly.

When he stands close to his stepdaughter, he can just about see over her head.

If Max had clubbed her as she came out of her room and turned towards the stairs, her skull would have hit the plaster at that exact spot.

If she’d tumbled to the floor, the puddle of blood is right where she might have landed.

Joseph’s lungs have seized. He puts out a hand to the bannisters. Tries to stop himself from falling. What does he do? What?

First the dead man. Then Drew.

Now Tilly.

Just like the ground floor, all the doors up here are closed, too.

He definitely doesn’t remember that from before he left the house.

Is Tilly lying lifeless inside one of the bedrooms?

Is Erin, drinking coffee downstairs, the oblivious mother of a dead daughter? Just like Enoch is an oblivious father?

There’s a sickening pressure inside Joseph’s head, as if a major artery is about to burst. Max might be his primary reason for living, but Tilly has been a reason for living, too.

Since their first meeting in that Hampton Court bistro, they’ve become like father and daughter.

Could he possibly stand by his son if he’s done this?

Of course not , a part of his mind shrieks. Of course not!

He grips the bannisters, forces his eyes to return to that stain. Then he steps over it, opens his bedroom door. Tilly isn’t there. Crossing the hall, careful to avoid the blood, Joseph opens all the remaining doors. He doesn’t find his stepdaughter behind any of them.

He has to tell Erin what he’s discovered up here, he has to, even though he knows that in her terror she’ll call the police. He won’t have the right to stop her. To even consider it would be monstrous.

Joseph takes a breath, breathes it out. Then, recalling his conversation with Ralph Erikson, he closes his eyes, gets down on his good knee and presses his hands together.

‘Claire,’ he whispers. ‘Claire, please. I’m listening.

For the first time, I’m really listening, but you’ve got to talk to me.

Right now, right this very moment, you’ve got to talk to me, because I really don’t know what to do. ’

He empties his mind of thought, concentrates on nothing but his breathing. It hitches, smooths. Hitches, smooths. Hitches, smooths, smooths.

Darkness, a rushing of sound. Silence, then that rushing sound again. As if he’s caught inside a giant lung. Or a tunnel through which air is racing in steady pulses.

A memory forms. And then it’s more than a memory.

Suddenly, Joseph isn’t kneeling in his upstairs hallway but bending over an incomprehensible network of pipes and tubes: white ones and clear ones, straight ones and articulated ones.

Around him machines suck and whir and beep.

Somewhere inside all that equipment lies Claire Carver.

And now, at last, he sees her; a part of her, at least. A triangle of smooth cheek. A closed eye.

The machines are doing his wife’s breathing and keeping her body alive.

Claire’s brain, the doctors have told him, is already dead.

They haven’t yet asked his permission to turn off life support, but he knows that conversation is coming.

For now, he just needs to stand here and process the unutterable cruelty of what he’s seeing.

Joseph feels strangely calm. Almost a disinterested observer.

He finds himself studying the various items of medical equipment.

He’s never been that interested in how things work, but now he tries to guess the purpose of each machine and the components he might find inside them.

He examines the bags of liquid, the beeping displays, all this high-tech wizardry brought here for the purpose of ensuring that Claire Carver’s body – for a while longer, at least – remains a living tomb.

She looks like she’s just sleeping.

Somewhere beyond the hospital grounds, police are hunting the burglar who attacked her before fleeing; but they’ll never find him. Claire’s killer won’t serve a single day in prison.

If Joseph had listened to her in the bedroom, if he’d gone downstairs instead of back to sleep, if his antennae for danger hadn’t been so poorly developed, her body wouldn’t be lying in this bed, the rest of her gone to a place he cannot follow.

Except … except … the vital signs monitor now registers a change in his wife’s state. He hears a beeping different to that which has so marked his vigil. Onscreen, the numbers change, showing a spike in heart-rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and respiration.

Claire’s eye opens. Her pupil contracts, then dilates. Her mouth, forced open by a tracheal tube, begins to move. And Joseph hears her voice, not in his ears but inside his head: Protect our son, Joe. Whatever it takes.

He staggers, feels his balance going, and then he’s not in the hospital at all. He’s on one knee in the upstairs hall of this house he bought with Erin, trying to work out what just happened.

In the hospital that day, Claire hadn’t spoken, hadn’t opened her eyes and looked at him, because despite the steady rise and fall of her chest, and the regular ping of the machines, she’d already departed.

Protect our son, Joe. Whatever it takes.

His eyes are burning. His throat, too. He stares at the puddle of what can only be Tilly’s blood and pulls himself up. What he’s about to do is inexcusable, indefensible. And he’s going to do it all the same.

Limping to the bathroom, he tears two fistfuls of toilet paper from the roll.

Back in the hall, ignoring the pain of his injuries, he mops up Tilly’s blood as best he can.

It’s a messy job; most of it has congealed, leaving grim, jellylike trails on the wooden boards.

Once it’s done, he collects the tiny pieces of broken plaster.

Downstairs, he hears Erin open the fridge and close it. A kitchen cupboard bangs. Joseph flushes away the blood-soaked toilet paper, returns to the hall. Then, lifting the runner rug, he drags it towards him until it covers what’s left of the stain.

In the ensuite, he scrubs his hands with soap and water. He tries not to think about what he’s just done. Better to focus on each new task exclusively and prevent his mind from wandering.

Joseph retrieves the landline handset, removes the batteries and hides it under his pillow. Then he leaves his bedroom for Tilly’s. On her desk he sees a stack of MISSING flyers, freshly printed.

There’s no evidence of violence in here, no clues to aid Joseph’s understanding of what might have happened. Did his stepdaughter hear an intruder and decide to investigate? Did Max, waiting in the hall, call out to her?

Protect our son, Joe. Whatever it takes.

Joseph leaves Tilly’s room and pauses on the landing. He needs to find Max, but he can’t leave Erin. He needs to locate Tilly, and tell Erin what has happened, but he can’t let Erin call the police. He needs to find the Honda, find Drew.

If Tilly has a head injury, she could be bleeding out. Erin might be about to lose her daughter without even knowing it. The thought of that turns his insides into daggers, makes him soul-sick. And yet if says anything he’ll lose his son.

Joseph calls his stepdaughter’s number, hears it divert to voicemail. Putting away his phone, he grips the handrail and begins to descend the stairs.

Hard to understand any of this. Impossible, really.

How did his wife’s affair lead to the deaths of two people, maybe even three?

In less than a month, Max is due to start medical school, the culmination of what feels like a lifetime of preparation.

He’d wanted to be a doctor from an early age; the lost photo on his grandmother’s dresser is testament to that.

The boy’s room is a trove of medical texts and equipment, from stethoscopes and blood pressure sleeves to the foam hearts and brains bought for him by Claire to encourage his interest.

But it was the burglary, and Claire’s death, that turned Max’s passion into an obsession.

Rather than grieve, he took solace in his studies.

It’s what makes the events of this past week so difficult to process, the boy who dedicated himself to saving lives taking them instead – and all to protect a father who didn’t deserve protection, who should have opened his eyes and seen what was happening around him.

All of this, Joseph’s fault. All of it.

At the bottom of the stairs he turns towards the kitchen. Erin is sitting at the breakfast bar, elbows on the worktop. She stares at him, cat-like, over the lip of her coffee cup.

He has to tell her.

Now.

He has to tell her.

As he limps into the kitchen their eyes meet. And then a bass thumping starts behind him. The floor shivers beneath his feet.

Erin slides off the stool and comes around the island. Joseph’s breath is in his throat. He twists his head towards the door, sees it reverberating in its frame, sees shadows moving beyond the dimpled glass.

And suddenly he can’t breathe at all.

Did Erin manage to call the police despite his precautions? Maybe she has a phone he doesn’t know about – one she’d bought solely for contacting Angus.

The banging escalates. Joseph’s head pounds in tandem. Erin slips past him, pads down the hall to the door. ‘Wait,’ he croaks. ‘Don’t answer.’

She hesitates, just for a moment. Her expression seems almost one of pity. ‘Joe, I don’t think they’re going away.’

‘Please, you can’t—’ he begins, but Erin’s hand is already on the latch. The moment she twists it the door bursts open, nearly knocking her off her feet.

Into the hall staggers Enoch. His eyes are small, networked with red capillaries. The knuckles of his right hand are bloody, the skin scraped and raw. ‘Tilly,’ he growls through clenched teeth. ‘Get her now.’

Erin takes a backward step. ‘Enoch, has something happened? What are you—’

‘I found this,’ he says, lifting up a phone. ‘Hidden in a cupboard. Only came across it when it rang. Got to be Drew’s. Not the one I found yesterday Something’s got to be on it – otherwise why would she hide it? Tilly might know the code. Where is she?’

Erin takes a breath. ‘OK, Enoch, let’s figure this out together.’ Hands raised, palms outwards, she skirts around him and closes the door.

Enoch watches, sweat running into his eyes from his forehead.

Joseph can smell him: a fug of body odour and sour beer breath.

Abruptly, he recalls how he’d caught Max raking through Drew’s underwear drawer.

Last night, he’d closed his mind to it, because the very worst explanation was simply too troubling to consider – that his son was hunting for a trophy.

Now, a conviction seizes him that the target of Max’s search was the phone in Enoch’s hand – which means whatever’s on it will implicate the boy if discovered, sending him to prison for life.

Joseph’s hand twitches. He has to get that phone off Enoch, but any move to take it will implicate him. If Enoch raises the alarm, the house will be searched, the bungalow, too.

Joseph’s bagged and balled-up T-shirt, soiled with the dead man’s blood, is still hidden at the back of a kitchen cabinet.

Hidden in his ensuite is the dead man’s wallet.

At this point, taking the fall for everything that’s happened would almost be a relief – except Max has already indicated he wouldn’t allow that; that he’d insist on revealing the truth.

His vision begins to stutter again. These next few moments might dictate how this all ends.

‘Tilly isn’t here,’ Erin says, ‘but I can call her.’

Enoch shakes his head. ‘I just tried. She wasn’t picking up.’

‘She might pick up for me. Why don’t you come through?’

His eyes narrow further. Finally, he grunts his agreement.

They assemble in the kitchen. Erin opens her bag, searches through it. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I forgot. Joe, I think you might have my phone.’ She smiles tightly. ‘I gave it to you in the car on the way home. Remember? It’s in your front pocket.’

Joseph stares, trying to read her intentions. Can he trust her? An hour ago he wouldn’t have asked the question, but in the last sixty minutes so much has changed. He certainly has no right to that trust. Not after what he just did upstairs.

Returning her fake smile with one of his own, he passes her the phone, holding it a fraction longer than necessary when she takes it.

If Erin understands the message, she gives no outward sign. Dialling her daughter, she lifts the phone to her ear.

Joseph retreats to the archway leading to the utility, within reach of the baseball bat he keeps hidden there. Enoch watches like a man primed for violence, veins standing proud on his neck.

Erin lowers the phone, shakes her head. ‘No answer. But we might not need her, Enoch. What codes have you tried?’

‘Just the usual. One-two-three-four. Four zeros.’

‘What about the number Tilly gave you last night?’

He grimaces. ‘I don’t remember it.’

‘I do. Sixteen-thirty-eleven.’

‘This phone only wants four numbers.’

‘Let’s try the first four, then. Sixteen-thirty.’

‘Wait,’ Joseph says. And instantly realizes it was a mistake.

He’d spoken without thinking, and now both Erin and Enoch are looking at him strangely.

‘Wait for wait?’ Enoch demands. His grip around Drew’s phone tightens.

Joseph’s mouth has turned so dry he can barely speak. ‘I just think …’ he begins, but the rest of the sentence fails him, because there’s no credible reason in existence to delay or second-guess any initiative that might locate Drew.

‘Joe?’ Erin asks. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’

His guilt must be written large on his face, because Enoch slides the phone back into his pocket and draws himself up to full height. He raises his bloodied hand and points his index finger at Joseph. ‘You,’ he whispers, ‘fucking know something. Don’t you?’