Page 7 of The Bodies

SIX

Headlights appear at the end of the street.

Joseph tries to formulate a question, but his brain seems to have seized again.

He feels his eyebrows fluttering, worries he’s about to pass out.

The headlights grow brighter. He hears the whine of a battery motor, the clink and clatter of glass.

Three parked cars from theirs, a milk float pulls into the kerb.

The driver jumps out, grabs a carry crate and disappears up a nearby driveway.

‘You remember the deer?’ Max asks.

Joseph’s stomach yawns away from him. Because he knows, immediately, what his son is talking about.

The milkman reappears. He transfers his empty bottles to the float and starts to refill his crate.

They’d hit the deer last summer, driving home. A fawn had sprung from the undergrowth and bolted across the road. Joseph managed to avoid it, but he couldn’t avoid the mother, who followed an instant later. The impact took her in the flank and sent her pirouetting past his window.

Joseph stopped the car, got out. The doe was a mess of broken legs, wild eyes and frothing blood.

He stared at her for a while. Then he fetched a torque wrench from his car and did the only humane thing possible.

His first strike didn’t kill her, just distressed her further, turning her chest into forge bellows.

His second attempt cratered her skull and ended her life.

When he turned around he found two sets of eyes watching him: the fawn’s and his son’s.

‘Max,’ he croaks, now.

‘I … It was obvious he wouldn’t make it. He wouldn’t even have lasted long enough for an ambulance. And he was in so much pain. I thought it was for the best. That deer you hit, in our old car. Remember how you said it was kinder to … to …’

He twitches, seems to veer from that thought.

The milkman finishes loading his crate and walks up the street towards them. Max seizes Joseph’s shoulder and pulls him level with the dashboard. Moments later, footsteps pass the passenger door.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Max whispers. ‘But I’m not a killer, Dad. I’m not. It was a kindness, what I did. Just like you and that deer.’

Joseph closes his eyes despite the darkness. He can’t believe what he’s hearing. Doesn’t know how to react. Max understands the difference between an injured deer and an injured human being, of course he does. He understands you don’t treat them the same way, apply the same brutal logic.

Claire , he thinks, finally invoking the name that appears on his lips each time he wakes. As always, it brings pain so exquisite his body contorts to withstand it.

Joseph clenches his teeth, bites down on his guilt. Claire , he pleads, eviscerating himself. What do I do? This isn’t our boy, this isn’t. When did I stop paying attention?

A personality change as stark as this should have been obvious for a while, should have been observable in a thousand different ways, but Joseph appears to have been blind to it – because for far too long his eyes have been firmly closed.

For two years after Claire’s death, he’d lived in a state of purgatory, of permanent torture, his guilt too enormous to address, his only focus Max.

Then he’d met Erin. Within months she’d become the centre of his world.

He’d abandoned his guilt entirely, immersing himself in the elixir of new love, but in the process he’d also abandoned his son.

Max, cast adrift, had withdrawn from the world around him.

Then had come marriage, and a new family home. Trying to make it all work, Joseph had spent more time establishing a relationship with Tilly than he had on Max.

He’d hoped, as everything settled down, he’d feel less torn. But that hadn’t really happened. Thank God Erin had spotted Max’s isolation. With love and patience she’d rejuvenated him. Tilly, too, had played her part. That had been Joseph’s wake-up call.

This last year, determined to rebuild, he’s poured all his focus into his son. But in doing so he’s distanced himself from Erin, with predictable consequences for their relationship.

He’s been a weathervane blown by guilt, each pivot causing further heartache. Worst of all, his efforts with Max might have come too late to make a difference.

His late wife doesn’t answer his call, as he’d known she wouldn’t.

Perhaps that, in itself, is her message: this is his responsibility to fix.

But before he can even think about trying to put his son back together, he has an even more pressing crisis to tackle.

Because Max’s latest revelation means the calculus has fundamentally changed.

And Joseph’s earlier options have all but disappeared.

He hears the milkman return to the float. The whine of a motor. He sees a brief wash of headlights and wonders if the vehicle is equipped with a dashcam – and if it’ll record the car’s registration plate.

Max releases his shoulder. They sit up straight in their seats. Joseph can’t seem to breathe without shuddering. ‘Keys,’ he says.

Max passes them over. ‘Where’re we going?’

‘Just don’t say anything for a while. OK?’ Joseph tells him. ‘Please, just let me think.’

He pulls out of Berrylands Road and heads east. All the while, Max’s words replay in his head: He was in so much pain. I thought it was for the best.

No one in their right mind believes that. No one.

Up ahead, he sees the twenty-four-hour BP garage and instinctively checks the Honda’s fuel gauge. When he looks up, he realizes two things simultaneously: he’s drifted across the road’s white centreline and a police patrol car has rolled off the BP forecourt, signalling to turn right towards him.

Joseph corrects with a flick of the wheel.

The Honda rocks back into its lane. As he passes the patrol car he gets a close-up view of its occupants and makes fleeting eye contact with the driver – a sharp-faced male a decade or so younger than himself.

The officer in the passenger seat is older and fleshier, focused on opening a sandwich box.

Joseph glances in his rear-view mirror, willing the other vehicle to follow its indicated route. Instead it turns left, falling in step behind them.

He locks his arms, grips the steering wheel with trembling hands and tries to prevent the car from weaving.

‘Dad,’ Max mutters.

‘I know.’

Behind them the headlights grow closer, a pair of hunting eyes. Joseph checks his speed. He hasn’t seen a sign, can’t remember if this is a thirty zone or a forty. Or possibly even a twenty. Too slow and it’ll look suspicious. Too fast and he’ll get pulled for speeding.

The road swings left and right. The white eyes in the rear-view mirror swell as if with hunger. Then, shocking even in their silence, a rack of flashing blue ones joins them.

Teeth clenched, Joseph lifts his foot from the accelerator. He steers towards the kerb, gently touches the brakes. Behind him, accompanied by a howl of rubber, the lights swing away into darkness.

For a moment, Joseph can’t work out what’s happening. Then the realization hits him that the white eyes were intent on different prey. He groans, swears, wipes sweat from his forehead.

In the passenger seat, Max exhales explosively. Then he leans forward in his seat. ‘Are we going where I think we’re going?’

A few minutes later they arrive in Saddle Bank, where winding residential roads serve widely spaced bungalows.

This is where Joseph’s mother had lived for the last fifteen years of her life.

Her home has been up for sale since probate.

So far, thanks to a tanking housing market, there’s been little interest.

The clicker for her electric garage door is on the key fob. Joseph pulls on to the driveway, activates the door and rolls into the garage. Once he’s turned off the engine he presses the clicker again, sealing them in darkness.

Bringing the dead man to his mother’s feels worse than obscene, but Joseph can think of nowhere else.

He sits in silence for a while, recalling the near-miss with police.

‘We’ll leave the car here,’ he says, retrieving his torch.

‘Just until I’ve figured out what to do.

First, though, I’ve got to see what we’re dealing with. ’

Opening his door, he edges along the Honda. He rests his hand on the boot lid, gathering his courage. Then he swings it open, dials up the torch’s brightness and clicks it on.

White light with the brilliance of burning magnesium fills the boot.

In its incandescence, there’s nowhere for the horror to hide.

The green tarpaulin glitters, each ridge and hollow thrown into a sharp relief of light and shadow.

Earlier, Joseph had relied on touch to confirm what lay beneath. Now, it’s obvious from the shape alone.

Max climbs out of the car. ‘Dad, you don’t need to—’

‘Quiet,’ Joseph snaps, more harshly than he’d intended – because it won’t take much to dissuade him from this task, and he knows he can’t avoid it.

From his pocket he takes a second torch and hands it to his son.

‘Last time I was here, I left a roll of duct tape on the workbench. See if you can find it. There should be a few old blankets kicking around, too.’

With Max occupied, and with his own torch gripped between his teeth, Joseph unclips the bungees securing the tarpaulin and rolls back the first layer.

With his knife, he slices through the remaining material.

Doing this in semi-darkness, the colours of his surroundings corrupted by white LED light, makes the job even more ghastly.

Finally, he eases aside the tarp’s severed edges – and confirms that five years after Claire’s death, the wheels of his life have once again jumped the rails and plunged into the realms of nightmare.