Cruel Summer (15 page)

‘No way,’ Ben argued. ‘No way. She . . . she must have fallen in . . . she’d been drinking . . . maybe she banged her head.’

‘Dream on.’ Greg’s face was contorted with anger and frustration. ‘She’s been murdered. Someone bottled her and left her to drown.’

The problem was, Greg was right. The cogs of Ryan’s brain were at once turning too quickly and too slowly. But he was absolutely sure that Greg was right. One of them
had
killed
Roxanne.

Ryan had spent his whole life living a TV drama and, suddenly, he was in one for real. The fantasy was definitely better than the reality. This was way too close to home.

‘What?’ Alisha asked, trying to snatch the phone back from Greg.

‘Well, what did you think, Alisha? Some random person came off the beach and murdered her?’ Greg asked.

‘Maybe. Or perhaps someone broke in . . .’

Greg raised an eyebrow like he was struggling to communicate with simpletons. ‘One of you lot obviously killed her.’

Ryan laughed. ‘Well, of course! It wasn’t you, was it, Greg?’

‘No, it bloody wasn’t!’

The hysteria wouldn’t stop. It gripped Ryan’s body like a vice until he was shaking uncontrollably with shallow, horrid laughter. ‘OK, then,’ he said. ‘Who did
it?’

Everyone started speaking at the same time. Ryan couldn’t make out the individual excuses, but they were all emphatically negative. ‘So I suppose it was the Beach Monster,
then.’

‘Can we all just stop?’ Ben cried. ‘This is insane. It can’t be happening. I know some prat always says this, but there
has to be an explanation
.’

‘Oh, wake up!’ Greg barked, getting up in Ben’s space, throwing his weight around. ‘Roxanne said that one of us killed Janey – and now Rox is dead. That’s a
pretty big coincidence.’

Ryan considered who could have killed Rox . . .

Janey
and
Roxanne. Ryan dimly recalled reading about the differences between serial killers, spree killers and mass murderers. One more body and one of his school friends would
officially qualify as a serial killer.

Erin pushed Greg away from Ben, trying to lift the phone from his hands. ‘Greg, we
have
to call the police,’ she said.

‘We’ll be arrested.’

‘We won’t. We’ll tell them what happened,’ she pleaded.

‘What happened is that one of us killed her. Are you blind?’ Greg snapped.

‘He’s right.’ Ryan sat next to Roxanne’s head, combing his fingers through her matted hair. She was so still, so serene. She’d spent so much time
trying
to
be beautiful. All she’d ever had to do was stop. Ryan had never seen her so lovely. ‘Greg’s one hundred per cent right. We will
all
be arrested. This wasn’t an
accident. I don’t think her head slipped onto that bottle, do you?’

‘Who did it?’ Alisha sobbed. ‘Who did it?’

Everyone noisily denied it and started pointing fingers.

‘She said she knew something about you.’ Greg jabbed a finger in Ben’s direction. ‘Something to do with Janey.’

‘Oh, piss off!’ Ben responded. He gestured at Roxanne, his face red. ‘As if I’d do this!’

‘Well, one of us did,’ Greg spat.

‘No,’ Katie said from behind her hands. ‘No way. We wouldn’t . . .’

Greg glowered. ‘After last night, I’m not surprised. Whether one of us killed Janey or not, Rox was gonna blackmail us
all
.’

‘Greg!’ Erin snapped.

‘OK. Enough is enough.’ Katie stood up, some colour returning to her face. ‘Greg, please give me the phone. I really, really think we should call the police.’

‘Are you all crazy? One of us has murdered Rox, and you want to call the
police
?’ Greg was not handing over the phone. ‘We’ll all go down. Life
sentences.’

Ryan really,
really
didn’t want to go to jail. Jails were not for boys like him. Jails were for scary, heroin-addled psychopaths with tattooed faces.

Erin continued fluttering around Greg like a hummingbird, trying to soothe her boyfriend. ‘Greg,’ she purred, ‘this is a crime. It has to be reported to the police.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not a total frigging idiot. I know it’s a crime, I just don’t wanna get arrested. I don’t want my
sister
getting arrested. I
don’t want
any
of you getting arrested.’

A brief silence followed this. It was still so early in the morning, but Ryan felt exhausted. He’d known these people for years. How well did he really know any of them, though? Everyone
has secrets. We’re all acting, all the time – Ryan knew this better than anyone. Everyone has the face they show people and the face for when they’re alone in bed with only their
thoughts.

Ryan continued to play with Rox’s hair. He looked at his friends the way they were looking at him – with suspicion. His chaotic thoughts ordered themselves. The dominoes were falling
faster for him than for the others and he could predict exactly where the trail was leading.

There was no way he was getting caught up in a murder investigation. That was so
not
his story arc. The funny thing was, he was ready for this. Now that his mind was calm, all that TV
was about to pay off. A lifetime of films had left a file ready-made in his mind called ‘What to do with a body’.

‘Of course one of us killed her.’ Ryan didn’t mean to shout, but that’s how it came out. ‘Did you miss the episode last night where she blackmailed us? It’s
not just Janey – she said she had dirt on
all of us
. Obviously someone didn’t want their secret getting out.’

‘So it wasn’t you either, then, Ryan?’ Alisha wiped her nose.

‘No.
I’m
pretty much secret free.’

‘Yeah,’ Ben argued. ‘But you wanna be an actor. Maybe she had something embarrassing.’

‘That’s right, Ben. She got hold of my Year Nine audition for
Little Shop of Horrors
so I killed her.’

‘Stop it!’ Katie gulped back more tears. ‘Just stop it! Roxanne’s dead. We are
not
going to stand around making stupid jokes. We
have
to call the
police.’

‘No.’ This time Ryan controlled his voice. ‘I’m with Greg. We have to talk about this.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about.’ Erin tugged her wet hair off her face.

Ryan stopped playing with Roxanne’s hair. Her head lolled to the side. ‘Yes, there is. I am
not
going to jail over Roxanne Dent.’

‘Amen to that.’ Greg seemed to breathe a sigh of relief now that he had an ally.

‘We wouldn’t go to jail,’ Katie protested.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Ryan pointed to the body on the floor. ‘We are screwed. They are gonna throw the book at us so hard, it’ll hurt. Somewhere in this villa is
incriminating evidence about
all
of us. We don’t know what Rox was hiding.’ Except, of course, that he knew only too well. That video – if it went viral, it didn’t
bear thinking about.

‘Well . . . well that doesn’t mean anything,’ Katie said, although now she sounded far less certain.

‘Don’t you people watch TV? We all had a motive. We all had the opportunity. There were no witnesses,’ Ryan pointed out.

Erin shook her head. ‘That’s not true. We were all sharing rooms.’

‘Ben, did you leave the bedroom in the night?’ Ryan turned to his roommate.

‘Yeah, I went to get some water, but so what? That doesn’t mean—’

‘I know. The point is, I never heard him go. Any one of us could have snuck out of our rooms. The police will crucify all of us – for Rox
and
Janey. I don’t know about
you, but I
really
don’t wanna be the pretty nineteen-year-old in a man’s prison.’

That mental image read on everyone’s face for a moment and there was grim silence. Alisha started to cry again, fresh tears making streams down her cheeks. Greg put his arm around her and
she leant against him. Silently, Alisha had sided with her brother. Ryan steeled himself. He knew this was awful. The
right
thing to do was to call the police. But sometimes the right
thing isn’t the
clever
thing.

‘Damn it, you’re right.’ Ryan wasn’t sure if Ben was talking to the group or himself.

Katie rushed to his side. ‘No, Ben. No.’

‘Katie, they’re right. Any of us
could
have done it and none of us is going to admit to it.’

‘I didn’t even know her!’ Erin exclaimed.

‘Yeah, but who even are you?’ Ryan demanded, surprised at the venom in his voice. ‘We know jack about you. You could be an escaped lunatic serial killer, for all we
know.’

‘Back off, Ryan,’ Greg snapped.

Ben’s body went limp and he flopped onto a sun lounger. ‘Oh, God. They’ll reopen Janey’s case, won’t they?’

Ryan nodded, sensing he was grinding Ben down. ‘Roxanne had evidence about Janey. I guess it’s here at the villa – unless whoever did this,’ he gestured at the body,
‘got rid of it.’

Ben buried his head in his hands. ‘What will my dad say? And my mum? Oh, God.’

‘This is insane!’ Katie made another grab for the phone. Greg tossed it into the swimming pool. ‘Greg!’

‘It’s the end of the discussion,’ Greg told her flatly.

‘There’s another phone in the master bedroom,’ Katie said. ‘Look, if we
don’t
call the police, things will just be a million times worse.’

Greg charged towards her, suddenly bull-like. Ben stopped him before he could reach her. ‘Worse than what, Katie? Worse than jail? I’ll never play football again if this gets out.
We’ll be all over the TV; is that what you want?’

Ryan laughed again. So true. But that was not how he intended to break into TV – on the evening news, accused of murder. Oh, God, “The Telscombe Cliffs Six” –
that’s what the press would call them.

Katie did her best not to flinch as Greg’s rage burned like a forest fire. ‘Greg, did you . . . do this?’

‘I swear I did not.’

‘Then please—’

‘No.’

Another penny dropped for Alisha. ‘Oh, God, we have to get out of here. One of you is properly mental – like, dangerous.’

‘We can’t leave,’ Ryan told her. ‘They’ll find the body and then come after us. Anyway, Lish, unless you plan on blackmailing us, I’d say you’re
probably safe. The only reason Rox died is because she was going to expose one of us.’ Ryan pointed at the body. It wasn’t even Roxanne any more, it was just a thing. A terrible thing.
He wanted it out of sight. ‘We need to get rid of
it
.’

‘Agreed,’ Greg stated.

‘You and Erin dug a pretty big hole on the beach,’ Ryan remarked under his breath. He wanted to laugh; the hysteria was bubbling up again. He suppressed the urge.

‘No.’ Ben left the lounger, his eyes red. ‘We can’t bury her in sand. It’ll get washed away by the tide.’

‘I was kidding!’ Ryan said.

‘I wasn’t.’ Greg paced the swimming pool, hands on hips. Ryan could tell he was struggling to form a plan. ‘We’ll dump her at sea. There’s the boat, right?
We’ll wait until it’s dark, go out into the middle of the ocean and throw her over the side.’

Katie stepped forwards. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Ben, please, tell him we can’t do this.’

Ben looked as though his heart had just broken on the spot. ‘I’m sorry, Katie, I can’t go to prison. Have you ever seen inside a jail? You wouldn’t last a day. I
wouldn’t. None of us would.’ He pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘When I went to Cambridge, my dad was so proud. I . . . I can’t . . .’

Ryan decided it was time to wheel out the big guns. ‘Alisha, do you want Greg to go to prison?’

‘No!’

‘Excellent. Katie, do you want Ben to go to prison?’

‘Of course not!’

‘So we need to get rid of Roxanne’s body, then. It’s the only way,’ he said firmly.

Katie sighed and turned away. Ryan was oddly fascinated by the whole scenario. No play in which he’d ever performed had been this macabre. These were his friends. Overnight they’d
gone from being schoolmates to murderers and ghouls. He was no better. It was funny – he’d assumed Janey’s death was the finale. Turned out, it was only the beginning – the
pre-credit sequence.

‘We can get rid of her stuff. Did anyone even know she was here?’ Greg asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ryan replied. ‘She said coming here was a last-minute decision. She was travelling alone.’

Greg strode back to Katie. ‘Did you arrange it on Facebook?’ She ignored him. He seized her arms. ‘Was it on Facebook? Tell me!’

Alisha pushed her brother off. ‘Greg, leave her alone.’

‘Yes,’ Katie admitted.

‘Good. You’ll delete the messages, OK?’ Greg meant it. His anger was hotter than the sun. Ryan swore he could
feel
it.

‘Greg, I’m not doing—’

‘Delete. The. Messages.’

‘It won’t do any good,’ Katie protested. ‘It’ll only delete the messages at my end.’

Greg thought about this. He stalked away like some wounded lion.

‘Wait, though,’ Ryan said. ‘Do we even have to? We could just say she went for a swim last night and drowned. We could even call the police ourselves.’

‘No,’ Erin replied with authority. ‘The head injury would be way too suspicious.’

‘Crap. Well, anyway . . . Rox never confirmed her trip. Katie, you weren’t expecting her yesterday. We’ll just say she never came,’ Ryan decided.

‘Ryan, why are you doing this?’ Katie asked. She crossed to his location and took his hands. ‘Please . . . if this were a film, we’d be screaming at the screen, right
now. We’d all be saying “Don’t do it, you idiots! You’re out of your minds!”’

Ryan shook his head. ‘No, we wouldn’t.’

‘What?’ Alisha said.

‘We wouldn’t. We’d be saying “Dump the bitch in the sea.”’

‘No, Ryan, that is
not
—’ Katie started, but he cut her off.