Beach Bodies: Part Three. Ross Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ she wasn’t, was she?’ Roberto scoffs, his tone getting him cold looks. He remembers it’s best not to stick your head above the parapet. Heads on display in this place have had a habit of being detached from their owners.

      Liv recalls a phrase she once heard: ‘The weak speak too much.’ Or perhaps it wasn’t a phrase, perhaps it was something her dad once said. But it was still true.

      ‘So,’ says Justine, picking up the pieces. ‘Tell us how a woman gets killed, when she’s all alone in a locked room.’

      And all eyes stay on Simon.

London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

      The phone rings and Mr Knight picks up immediately.

      Check the temperature, he’s told. Never done that before but he knows where the meter is and is thrilled to be asked.

      All controlled remotely of course, what happens in there, but you need to have someone look over the hard copies. Cos although everything can be everywhere, everything is really only somewhere. And these things are here. The hard copies.

      As he taps the readout – tactile, real, a nice feeling – Mr Knight notices the darkness in the cold storage room. So little light in a place of such importance. His eyes wander, picking out the interruptions to the dark. Shelves, lit by neon, a line of small drawers, almost like the ones Mr Knight remembers as a kid, that held index cards or public records, before all of that really was placed elsewhere and the real things destroyed. Because you don’t need hard copies of everything. Only some things.

      The only other light in there seems to be coming from a screen. He cranes his neck to see. It’s a smaller one that he’s used to seeing, that reminds him of old times. And there are old illusions flickering away on it.

      Mr Knight remembers they’ll be waiting for the okay at headquarters. One of the oldest and best tech companies around. He stretches his arms, his back, gives his neck a crack as his feet tap on the gleaming floor, the noises echoing around, his lonely reflection staring back at him in the glass as he walks. And past the glass, the river, chopping away in the dark and overflowing as it often does this time of year.

      ‘Fine and checked,’ he says into the phone and the voice repeats back some kind words for his efforts.

      He sits back in his chair and feels the pleasure of being active in the working world. Half an hour later he spins around on it. He has tap danced alone in this place. How he remembers tap dancing went anyway. He has wandered the corridors in the dead of night. He has rested his tired body on the gleaming floor at 4 a.m. He used to wear a suit.

      His mind wanders, and he observes the movement of his thoughts. He thinks of his mother in an old hospital bed. She was in a coma, but he still spoke to her. Left the radio on the whole time she was in there. Just in case.

      Mr Knight gets up and runs a hand through his wave of salt-and-pepper hair. He glances at the extravagant chandelier above, part glass, part diamonds, part feathers from rare birds, as his feet echo back to him from high ceilings. He approaches the temperature readout, tapping it. All fine. Then looks through the window at the glow of the screen.

      He presses his face and hand against the glass to getter a better look at the screen in there. It shows an old television show repeat. Beautiful men and women in some exotic location. Just playing away in there on its own. For no one in particular.

      Tap, tap, tap. That hasn’t happened in a long time. Another pair of footsteps in the building. Unannounced. Impossible, he thinks. And his heart quickens a beat.

11.08 p.m.

      Simon thinks, moving his tongue around his mouth, checking he still has all his teeth, which thankfully he does.

      ‘I can’t explain how a woman gets killed when she’s all alone in a locked room,’ he splutters out before the blood in his throat makes him cough.

      As he does so, Liv rises to grab a tea towel, wets it at the tap in the kitchen then heads towards Simon.

      ‘Careful,’ says Roberto.

      ‘He’s not Hannibal Lecter,’ says Liv, as she wipes his mouth dry.

      ‘More like “Have No Balls, Lecturer,”’ says Roberto.

      ‘That’s terrible,’ says Summer.

      Roberto keeps smiling but something inside him dies at another knock from Summer. And the group cringe again.

      ‘Okay, what if someone went down there and banged on the door,’ says Simon. ‘Said they wanted to come in so they could be safe in there with her?’

      ‘Not possible. You have to slide the door in the wall open to get down to your lounge, it’s conspicuous as hell and we were all here the whole time,’ says Tabs.

      ‘Okay. What if someone came from the outside? Tapped on the window?’ says Simon.

      ‘So now we’re back to the outsider theory?’ says Justine.

      ‘No, can’t be an outsider. One of us. Who wasn’t accounted for?’ he says.

      They watch the smoke from the fire eek out into the room as they recall how this started and everything that has happened since.

      ‘There’s just Zack,’ says Roberto. ‘Who I’ve thought was a shark for a while.’

      ‘And he’s out there somewhere looking for help. So he can save our skins,’ says Tabs, opting to defend the man who isn’t here to defend himself.

      ‘Or we gave our one phone to the murderer,’ says Justine. ‘And now he’s waiting for us to step outside, one by one, so he can—’

      ‘Or there’s you, Si,’ says Lance. ‘You and Zack are the only ones unaccounted for at the time.’

      ‘All right,’ says Simon, and for a second Lance thinks that’s a confession before Simon starts speaking again. ‘Sly was killed by that same knife in the drawer, yes?’

      Summer nods. While Simon was unconscious, she insisted they drag Sly’s body into the partial dry. She kissed him on the cheek and confirmed the shape of the smile that had been slashed across his voice box. A crescent with a serrated edge.

      ‘Then how did I get hold of that?’ says Simon, his voice raised in challenge. ‘Surely you can all agree I wasn’t in this room?’

      ‘We can’t agree on anything,’ says Tabs.

      ‘I certainly couldn’t have picked it up, killed someone and put it back without anyone noticing. There was someone here the whole time. Right?’

      Tabs looks to the others. ‘Yes. But… maybe someone could’ve slipped it out and slipped it back? Without me noticing—’

      ‘Someone must’ve been better placed to do that than me. Any theories?’

      The truth is, as they breathe СКАЧАТЬ