Page 67 of The Bodies

SIXTY-TWO

Tuesday night, at the Tamarind Hotel and Spa, Teri Platini eats a late room service dinner alone. Afterwards, she channel-surfs for a while, glancing periodically at her phone.

At ten p.m., she turns off the TV and climbs into bed. She thinks about texting Brittany, decides it’s too late. She thinks about calling Barbie Girl’s number again. Decides against that, too.

Dousing the bedside light, she lies there in darkness, her mind on Thornecroft. And on Gabriel Roth. Her face throbs, the skin raw. Her lips sting when she licks them.

An hour later, she’s still no closer to sleep. Throwing on jeans and a hoody, she grabs her keys and rides the lift down to the lobby. It’s a ten-minute drive home from the hotel. On Hocombe Hill, the only vehicle she meets is a small hatchback that blasts past in the opposite direction.

Teri parks on a grass verge a few hundred metres from Thornecroft and heads back along the lane on foot. When she reaches the driveway she pauses and studies the house.

Its two entrance doors are gaping open, the lights in the ground-floor rooms all burning. Outside, she doesn’t see Gabriel’s Mercedes, but Angus’s Lexus and his tarp-covered Morgan are there – plus a dirty panel van she doesn’t recognize.

Teri checks her watch, waits. Two minutes later, she’s spied no movement.

She edges down the drive towards the house, using the panel van to screen her final approach.

Pausing at the passenger-side window, she peers inside.

All sorts of junk has been stuffed between the dashboard and windscreen; fast food bags, crushed coffee cups, crumpled flyers.

She wonders who drove it here, and where they are now.

Climbing the porch steps, she peeks inside the entrance hall.

Since her last visit, someone has removed the wrecked console table and fragments of broken vase. Gabriel, most likely; Angus hadn’t employed a cleaner, insisting that was her job.

The house is silent, no sounds of conversation or TV. Then Teri notices the blood.

It’s smeared along the far wall connecting the east and west wings. Beneath it she sees a trail of bloody footprints.

Adrenalin stitches threads of sensation up and down her spine.

She thinks about getting out of here, running back to her car, but that’s how old Teri would have reacted.

Those prints were made by small feet. Someone inside the house might need help.

Besides, if she’s serious about her plan to retain Thornecroft, she needs to understand what happened here.

Silent, Teri crosses the hall to the junction of the two wings. To her left, the blood is heaviest outside Angus’s office, where she thinks the trail must have originated. Teri turns right, following it to the orangery, careful not to disturb the prints.

Inside, the glass exterior doors have been thrown open to the night. There’s blood on a wicker sofa back, red handprints on the doorframe. At the top of the garden, near the oak tree, she sees a human-shaped black mound.

Teri’s skin contracts on her flesh. Again, she thinks about getting as far away from Thornecroft as she can, but the prone figure near the tree exerts a pull impossible to resist.

Outside, she feels like she’s gliding above the grass rather than walking upon it. Moments later, she’s standing over Gabriel Roth, trying to make sense of what she’s seeing.

He looks more like a butchered carcass than a man.

In the moonlight, the blood that’s soaked his shirt shines like black paint.

Two glistening arrowheads have burst through his chest. A third arrow, shot from a different angle, has penetrated up to its fletching. A fourth shaft is lodged in his neck.

Gabriel’s eyes are glossy pools. She thinks he must be dead – until the reflections in those pools ripple, and his gaze slides over her.

Teri stiffens. She glances away from Gabriel, checks the rest of the lawn. A few metres away lies the weapon that must have done the damage: a squat but powerful-looking crossbow.

Gathering her courage, she lowers herself to a crouch. The person who did this might still be here, but fear hasn’t crippled her. She thinks again of the small feet that made those prints.

The arrow lodged in Gabriel’s neck must have nicked an artery rather than severing one; otherwise he’d already be dead. Still, there’s no coming back from his other injuries. Even if she calls an ambulance, he likely won’t survive until it arrives.

‘I want you to know something,’ Teri whispers, holding his gaze. ‘You and Angus don’t have any power over me.’

A blood bubble forms on Gabriel’s lips, slowly inflates.

‘You only had what I gave away freely, and now I’m taking it back. I’ve been frightened too long. I won’t let anyone frighten me again.’

His eyes roll away from her. The bubble on his lips bursts.

Teri grimaces, but she doesn’t recoil. And then she follows his gaze – and sees that they’re not as alone as she’d thought.

The teenager standing a few metres away is a broken thing; a pulverized ruin.

Her face looks like a fruit that ripened until it burst and spilled its pulp.

In one hand she’s holding a jerry can. In the other she grips a knife.

Behind her, across the lawn, the door to the outhouse where Angus keeps his petrol mower is hanging open.

The newcomer isn’t Barbie Girl – that’s obvious despite her injuries – but she’s very similar in age.

For a while, the pair don’t speak, the silence between them finely balanced. Finally, Teri says, ‘You need a hospital. I can drive you.’

The teenager shakes her head. Her fingers tighten around the knife.

Raising her hands, hoping to communicate that she’s not a threat, Teri asks, ‘Did he do that?’

The girl nods. With the knife, she gestures at Teri’s swollen eye, split lip and grazed cheeks. Her voice, when she speaks, is a wet rasp. ‘That?’

Teri nods in return, then indicates Gabriel. ‘You did this?’

Another nod. A glimmer of broken teeth that’s almost a smirk.

‘He’s still alive.’

The girl rocks on her feet, limps closer. Carefully she lowers herself to the grass on the other side of Gabriel; and Teri sees, in his eyes, something she’d never expected: more than just fear; a blossoming terror. It doesn’t make her feel good, but it doesn’t make her feel awful, either.

The girl watches him for a while, impassive. Then she lifts her gaze to Teri, waiting as if for a signal.

Air rushes into Teri’s lungs. Because suddenly the question she’s being asked is very clear. She closes her eyes, opens them, sees the girl still watching her. She thinks of the past year with Angus; the past week with Gabriel; the life she wants to lead. And then she nods.

The girl leans forward. Wrapping her fingers around the arrow shaft, she twists it like a screw. Blood wells, a sudden flood. Gabriel sighs, his chest sinking. And then it’s done.

Teri shudders. She can hardly believe what she just witnessed; the seismic consequences of her consent. ‘Angus,’ she says. ‘Is he gone, too?’

The girl nods. Then she points at Gabriel. ‘Angus,’ she croaks. ‘Angus.’

Thinking she understands, Teri says, ‘What now? What do I—’

‘Go. Never here.’

She rubs her arms, glances at the jerry can. ‘What will you do?’

‘ Go .’

Teri looks across the lawn at Thornecroft, the house Angus built to hoard his treasures. She thinks of its bloodied walls and floors; of the violence and the humiliations it’s hosted, not just tonight but all those days and nights previously.

This isn’t the ending she’d planned, but maybe it’s more fitting. Twenty minutes later she’s back in her room at the Tamarind Hotel and Spa. Switching off her phone, she climbs into bed.

When Teri Platini falls asleep, she dreams not of Angus or Gabriel Roth, but of flying like a bird above the earth.