Scott was about to get in the car and drive home when he noticed the woman was up and rushing away, running almost, clutching her clothes. She kept looking back over her shoulder. Was she looking at Jeremy, or looking at him? Hurrying away with shame, perhaps? She was still half-naked. Scott almost called out to her, but stopped at the last second because he didn’t know what to say. He felt like he didn’t know anything anymore. Nothing made sense. How could she possibly be embarrassed now after such an exhibitionist performance seconds earlier?
He noticed that Jeremy hadn’t moved.
Scott could still see his feet sticking out from around the side of the bus shelter, one of them twitching. He thought about Phoebe back at the house. How the hell am I going to explain this to her? For a moment he considered taking Jeremy back with him. His mess, his fault. He can do it…
‘Oi, Jeremy,’ he shouted. ‘Get up you useless bastard.’
Nothing.
Had he fallen asleep? Again the immature side of Scott’s character took hold. Michelle was always having a go at him for falling asleep straight after sex, was this just the same thing? Was poor little Jeremy exhausted after all that uncharacteristic exertion? No way. Jeremy was a nervous little shit, scared of his own shadow, terrified of not doing everything ‘by the book’. So why was he still lying there?
He walked around to where the semi-naked man lay on the grass verge, then stopped.
Fuck.
If Jeremy wasn’t already dead, then he would be in the next few minutes… the next few seconds, even. His face was unnaturally pallid. His mouth moved slightly, as if trying to form his final words, and though his eyes looked directly at Scott, he knew they weren’t seeing anything.
There was blood all over the grass: puddles of it under his pale white buttocks, pools forming between his spindly legs, dribbles running down his thighs.
Where the hell’s it all coming from? Did that woman cut him?
Scott gagged when he saw it, almost threw up. The end of Jeremy’s penis looked like it had been torn apart, as if someone had first skewered the hole, then ripped the flesh away in sections like they were peeling a banana. Flaps of skin hung uselessly over the end of the stump from which blood continued to pump in dull spurts, slowing with the weakening pace of Jeremy’s pulse.
And, for the briefest of moments, all Scott felt was relief. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he didn’t care because he immediately knew this was what had happened to Shona McIntyre. This was what he’d seen in all those grotesque photographs that frigging detective had shoved under his nose while he was in custody. This was proof positive to the rest of them that he wasn’t the killer.
The woman.
Was it her?
He reached for his mobile, but stopped. He scanned the horizon looking for the woman and spying her almost out of view, half-running into town. He couldn’t be the one to tell the police, could he? They’d jump to all the wrong conclusions if he admitted to being here. No, Scott knew he had to get away from here fast. He’d phone them from home, let them know what Jeremy had tried to do to Michelle, tell them where he thought he’d gone then let them find him and his fuck-buddy… Better still, maybe he’d stay quiet and plead ignorance and let someone else find the corpse.
He got back into the car, turned a tight circle in the empty road, then drove away at speed.
24
‘Well?’ Michelle said. She was in the kitchen, waiting. They all were.
‘Well what?’
‘Did you find him?’
‘No,’ he said, because lying was easier than the truth.
‘But he can’t have just disappeared.’
‘Well I couldn’t find him.’
‘You can’t have looked very hard,’ Tammy said.
‘I looked hard enough.’
‘So what do we do?’ Michelle asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do you want me to do? I’m not exactly heart-broken, if that’s what you’re thinking. Call the police if it makes you feel better. Tell them he’s disappeared. Tell them he was acting like a fucking freak.’
‘Scott…’
‘Tell them what you like, just don’t involve me. I’m sick of getting dragged into other people’s messes.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Tammy said.
‘No, I’ll do it,’ Michelle said. ‘It’d be better coming from me.’
Tammy followed her out into the living room, leaving Scott with Phoebe. George played on the floor, oblivious to everything.
‘Thanks for looking,’ Phoebe said.
Scott looked at her, confused. ‘What?’
‘I said thanks for looking for Dad.’
He turned away. ‘It’s fine. Sorry I didn’t find him.’
‘He’ll come back later, won’t he?’
Shit. Is she testing me? Does she suspect? ‘Sure he will.’
‘He’s not well, is he? There’s something wrong with him. He must be sick.’
‘He must be.’
Scott went to the bathroom, more to avoid Phoebe than through any real physical need. He leant against the wall, shaking with nerves. What he’d just seen happen to Jeremy made no sense at all, and yet he felt in his gut that it should explain everything. Who was that woman? Was she the cause of all of this? If so, why hadn’t she been seen or caught previously? Was she the killer, or just another victim? Could it be that these weren’t murders, that they were something else entirely? Some kind of infection? A killer STD passed from person to person? He laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, then sat down on the toilet and held his head in his hands, unable to think straight.
When Scott returned to the kitchen, several minutes later, Michelle was back. ‘They won’t do anything,’ she said.
‘Who won’t?’
‘The police. They won’t do anything about Jeremy. They say someone walking off after a fight doesn’t qualify as a missing person.’
‘They’d know. Fucking top-notch police force we’ve got round here.’
Michelle stared out of the window, looking for something to help make sense of this impossible day. Maybe she should go and look for Jeremy herself? She quickly dismissed that idea, knowing full well how Scott would react. Besides, she thought that if she left this house, she might not ever come back, and she couldn’t leave the kids. She glanced up as a convoy of three khaki-coloured trucks thundered past on their way into Thussock. If they’d been going the other way, she thought, I might have thumbed a lift.
This was stupid. They were grown adults. She couldn’t explain how she’d felt around Jeremy this morning – maybe it was just a reaction to how she was beginning to feel around Scott? Anyway, as close as it had been, nothing had happened. She turned around, looking for her husband.
‘We need to talk, Scott.’
‘You need to shut the fuck up and keep out of my sight. You think I want to talk to you after what’s happened?’
‘Phoebe, would you take George upstairs please,’ Michelle said, undeterred. Phoebe looked from face to face, unsure.
‘But I don’t want to go upstairs.’
‘I need to speak to Scott. Just do it. Please.’
She grudgingly did as she was told, scooping up her little brother and his toys and carrying him out. Scott watched Michelle intently, trying to work what she was thinking, how she thought she was going to worm her way out of this mess. If only she knew what he knew. This inexplicable urge to copulate – first between Michelle and Jeremy, then Jeremy and the woman – was it pheromones or endorphins, he wondered, something like that?
The silence between them was deafening. Michelle didn’t know where to begin. She was starting to wonder if she even wanted to, if it was worth the effort anymore.