Page 56 of The Bodies

FIFTY-ONE

Standing in the kitchen of his brother’s place on Hocombe Hill, Gabriel Roth stares through the window at the Honda parked on the drive.

Earlier, returning to the bungalow in Saddle Bank after the estate agent had left, he’d forced the back door and found one of the vehicle’s key fobs, still hanging on its hook in the kitchen.

Standing behind the car, he’d prepared himself for the unimaginable.

But when he’d unlocked the boot and raised the lid, he’d discovered, wrapped in plastic, the body of a young woman.

Barbie Girl.

Real name Drew Cullen.

Angus’s latest plaything.

And Tilly Carver’s best friend.

Any remaining hope Gabriel might have had for Angus’s survival had died in that moment.

All men, pushed beyond the limit of what their ego can endure, are capable of murder.

But Joseph Carver has demonstrated a depravity beyond anything Gabriel had anticipated.

Instead of reserving his wrath for those who crossed him directly, he’s rampaged far beyond the natural boundaries of vengeance, his killing indiscriminate.

In truth, Drew Cullen’s fate has moved Gabriel only in relation to his brother’s.

What he fears most is that Carver killed her first, intending to terrorize Angus in his last moments.

Gabriel will have to respond in kind. He’ll take no pleasure from it – this is a dead world, now, in which anger and hatred are redundant – but perhaps he can find a measure of satisfaction in retaliatory justice.

Gabriel has suffered the loss of everything he held dear.

He’ll ensure Joseph Carver suffers the same.

Now, taking out his phone, he dials a number committed to memory. When the call connects, he says, ‘She looks even more like you in the flesh.’

For a while he hears nothing but ravaged breathing.

‘Have you hurt her?’ Erin Carver whispers.

‘Not yet.’

‘We found blood.’

‘She’s a little banged up. Nothing a few painkillers won’t fix.’

‘What do you want?’

‘What I want is my brother. But I think we both know I can’t have that. So by way of recompense I want your husband. And I want you to deliver him to Thornecroft within the next hour.’

‘Gabriel,’ Erin says. ‘I know how badly you must be hurting, but—’

‘You have no idea !’ he screams. For a moment, his grief and his rage meld into something so hot he nearly surrenders to it.

Closing his eyes, he visualizes plum blossom falling over a slow-moving river. He imagines floating downstream among the petals, the water cool and cleansing. Gradually, his pounding heart slows.

‘Don’t talk,’ he says. ‘Just listen. You need to listen because you have a very serious decision to make, and not much time to make it. I’m afraid you don’t get to walk out of this with your whole family intact. None of us do. But if you’re brave enough you can at least bring your daughter home.

‘Deliver Joseph to Thornecroft. I don’t care how you do it. Call me when you’re here and I’ll trade Tilly for your husband. You’re an intelligent woman, so you don’t need me to explain the consequences if you deviate even one degree from what I’ve asked.’

More tortured breathing. Then: ‘What about Max?’

‘What about him?’

‘He’s family.’

‘Not by blood, he isn’t. Why do you care?’

‘I just told you. Because he’s family.’

Even in the silence that follows, Gabriel can hear Erin Carver’s fear. He listens to it for a while. Then he ends the call.

Crossing Thornecroft’s grand entrance hall, he opens the door to the formal dining room. At the head of the table, secured by zip ties to a chair, sits Joseph Carver’s only son.

Their eyes meet.

‘If you—’ Max begins.

Gabriel closes the door and goes to Angus’s office. Tilly Carver is lying on a couch beside the window, her bandaged head supported by a cushion. He’d applied the dressing himself. No need to treat her discourteously until it’s time. She can’t go anywhere – not with her wrists and ankles bound.

‘How’re you feeling?’ he asks. ‘How’s your head?’

‘It hurts,’ she says, her voice small enough to thaw any heart that remained whole. ‘But not quite as much as it did.’

‘I’m sorry I had to do that. There was no malice in it.’

Tears gather in Tilly’s eyes. When she blinks, one of them breaks loose, taking a stuttering path down her cheek; Gabriel, to his surprise, finds himself supressing an urge to go to her, reassure her, blot the tear away.

‘I think I know what you want with us,’ she whispers.

‘You do?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Before he’s quite realized what he’s doing, Gabriel has moved closer to the couch. ‘What do I want?’

‘Your brother is missing,’ she says. ‘And you want to find him because you love him. But you think my stepdad was cross with him and did something bad.’

She reminds him, in that moment, of Teri Platini.

Sunday morning, as he’d questioned Teri, she’d acted increasingly childishly. He’d treated her more harshly as a result, because he’d known she was putting on an act to illicit sympathy.

Tilly Carver, by contrast, seems utterly genuine.

He perches on the edge of the couch. One of Tilly’s sandals has fallen off, revealing a delicately arched foot. There is, he thinks, something quite compelling about its shape. ‘How do you know that?’ he asks.

‘Because Max told me.’

‘Max?’

Tilly blinks, spills another tear, takes a shuddering breath. ‘My stepdad wouldn’t hurt anyone. I know he wouldn’t.’

She winces, rotating her bare foot at the ankle.

Gabriel watches, transfixed.

‘It’s cramped up,’ she says. ‘Is there any chance you could loosen the ties? Just a little? My wrists hurt, too.’

‘Maybe later,’ he murmurs. He can’t take his eyes off that foot, its lazy revolutions and the way the light winks off her nail polish. He feels his pulse rate climbing, his breathing beginning to quicken. ‘I could massage it for you.’

‘Would you?’

She has her mother’s eyes, he thinks. Her mother’s lips. But unlike Erin Carver, Tilly is unspoilt by age or motherhood. When he touches her foot, he feels a spark of electricity pass between them.

‘There’s something you don’t know,’ she says. ‘And I really think it would help you.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It’s about Max, but I’m scared of saying. Because …’

‘Because what?’

‘Because he scares me.’

‘Your stepbrother scares you?’

She nods, her eyes huge.

‘Listen,’ he tells her. ‘You don’t need to be scared. But you do need to be honest.’

Her foot is warm in his hands. When she breathes, his gaze is drawn to her chest.

‘Once you know who hurt your brother,’ she says, ‘what’s going to happen to me?’

‘Do you think I’d hurt you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You hurt me already.’

‘Am I hurting you now? I bandaged your head, gave you something for the pain. I’m even massaging your foot.’

‘You’re doing a good job. It’s feeling a lot better.’

‘What do you want to tell me? Because now really is the time.’

Tilly takes a deep breath. ‘Max was seeing Drew. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. He really loved her. Then your brother came along.’

She looks through the window at Thornecroft’s landscaped garden before returning her gaze to Gabriel. ‘Who do you think she wanted more? It wasn’t even close. But then Max found out, and he …’ She puffs out her cheeks. ‘He went mad.’

Gabriel falls still. He’d known about his brother and Drew Cullen from Teri Platini, but he’d never guessed that Drew was Max Carver’s girlfriend. If that’s true, he might have been looking at this all wrong. He might already have Angus’s killer bound to a chair in Thornecroft’s dining room.

Releasing Tilly’s foot, he stands. He needs a moment, space to think. Leaving the office for the kitchen, he braces his palms against the worktop and lowers his head. He has to bleed off a little adrenalin, compose his thoughts. Now, more than ever, he cannot allow emotion to dictate his actions.

The killing of a twin isn’t one death; it’s two. But it’s far worse than that – an irreversible severing of souls.

Stepping into the boot room, Gabriel takes a set of keys from his pocket.

Secured to the far wall are two gun cabinets.

He opens the first, revealing Angus’s three shotguns and two hunting rifles.

He won’t use any of these; Thornecroft’s grounds might be extensive, but the sound of a discharge will carry far beyond them, and he doesn’t intend to be rushed.

Locking the first cabinet, he opens the second. Inside, among boxes of cartridges and rifle rounds, he finds what he’s looking for: a collapsible police-issue baton.

Returning to the dining room, he stands in front of Max Carver. ‘Your stepsister says Drew Cullen was your girlfriend. Is that true?’

The teenager blinks. He looks dazed, as if he can’t quite believe what’s happening. Or if he’s trying to figure out what Gabriel wants to hear.

‘Is she telling the truth?’

Max blinks faster. ‘I … no.’

‘So she’s lying?’

‘Not … maybe not lying. Just mistaken.’

‘You know what I think?’ Gabriel asks. ‘I think you’re the liar. But we’ll get to that, don’t worry.’

He leaves the dining room, returns to the office. In his absence, Tilly has dislodged her other sandal. When he pulls out a Stanley knife, she shrinks against the couch.

‘Lie still,’ he says, slicing through the zip tie securing her ankles.

Tilly draws up her knees, watches him.

‘You know Drew Cullen is dead?’ he asks.

She’s silent for a while. Then, gasping for air, she says, ‘Drew was my b-best friend. And Max … He … He …’

‘It’s OK. Can you stand?’

Tilly heaves another breath. ‘I’ll try.’

Gently, he helps her up. ‘Did he kill my brother, too? I need you to tell me the truth.’

‘He did,’ she whispers. ‘I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you.’

Gabriel nods. There it is, then. But Tilly is only confirming what his heart had already surmised. The world doesn’t change, because the world was already dark.

‘When you have a twin,’ he says, ‘you sense when something is wrong. I already knew Angus had passed. Not only because he’d never have stayed out of contact this long, but because when I reach out I don’t feel him.

I realize how strange that must sound – almost a kind of witchcraft – but that’s what our bond was like. ’

‘It doesn’t sound strange. It sounds … magical, beautiful. Which makes it even more tragic, more heartbreaking. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling, Gabriel.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Since … a few days, maybe. I’ve been so scared.’

Plum blossom on slow-moving water. The art of Dong Yuan and Juran.

‘I want to thank you,’ he says. ‘Telling the truth was the right thing to do. Hold out your wrists.’

She complies. He severs the plastic tie and puts away his knife. ‘What kind of man do you think I am, Tilly?’

‘I’m … I don’t know you.’

‘Do you think I’m the kind to hurt a young woman with bound hands and feet?’

Tilly blinks. Her gaze moves from her freed wrists to the collapsible baton Gabriel just extended at his side.

She steps backwards, which helps, because it gives him more room to swing.

The blow lands hard into her side. She doubles up, collapses on to all fours.

Gabriel leans over her. ‘You stayed silent about my brother’s death for two days,’ he says. ‘I can’t excuse that. Because it’s inexcusable.’

Lifting the baton, he goes to work.