by James Dawson
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 las
t-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.
‘Yes, it is. If this were a film, you’d have been waiting for Roxanne to die. You’d have been expecting it.’ He pointed at each of them. ‘Nerd, Jock, New Girl, Bad Girl, Good Girl and The Bitch. The bitch always dies. We’ve all seen the bloody films. We know exactly what to do.’
‘We dump the body,’ Ben whispered.
‘They never get away with it,’ Katie said, grasping at straws. ‘In the films, they always get caught.’
‘Well, it’s a bloody good job we’re not in a film then, isn’t it?’ Greg gave her a cold look.
‘So we might just get away with it,’ Ryan finished. ‘Katie, I know this is awful. We are all clearly going to hell, but we don’t have to go to prison. There are six of us still alive, and Rox is dead. If we call the police, we might as well all be dead. It’d be over for us. There is nothing we can do to bring Rox back to life now, and I want to know what happened to Janey, but I’m not risking my life to find out.’
‘He’s right,’ Greg said. ‘We’ll wait until it’s dark.’
‘Wait!’ Ben snapped. ‘We need to vote on this.’
‘We vote?’ Katie was aghast. ‘This isn’t an election for Head Boy, Ben.’
‘We vote. We all agree to go with the majority. It’s the only fair way.’
Ryan could see that Ben was squirming. This row must be torture for him. He’d known Ben since they’d been babies and all Ben ever wanted to do was keep the peace, keep everyone happy. But drama did seem to have a knack for finding him.
‘I . . . I wish there was another way,’ Ben mumbled.
‘But there isn’t.’ Ryan pulled his old friend into a hug. He looked like he needed it.
‘Thanks, mate. OK. Here we go. Who votes for us to bury Roxanne at sea?’ Ben asked.
‘You can’t make this sound better than it is, Ben.’ Katie looked at her ex with a mixture of disgust and sheer disbelief. ‘We won’t be burying her, we’ll be dumping her. Dumping her body at sea.’
Greg ignored Katie and turned to Erin. ‘Baby, listen, I am so sorry you had to see all this. You know I love you.’
Ryan knew a lie when he heard one, and he knew Greg didn’t love Erin. She seemed to buy it, though.
She started to cry. ‘Greg, I’ll get kicked off my course. I have worked so hard . . .’
‘Only if we call the police,’ Greg insisted. ‘If we don’t, we can go on as normal. All we have to do is hide Roxanne. She’s already dead. Erin, please. There’s no way I’ll be able to play if I get arrested. My career will be over. So will yours.’ Hard, heavy sobs wracked Erin’s thin frame. ‘Please, baby. For me,’ Greg finished.
‘OK,’ was all Erin said.
Greg kissed her hard on the lips. ‘Thank you. I promise it’s gonna be OK.’ He hugged her tight.
‘So,’ Ben said. ‘Raise your hand if you agree we hide the body.’
Ryan couldn’t back down now; he raised his arm. Greg and Ben did, too, followed by a reluctant Erin. Katie abstained. Alisha said nothing, but had already made her feelings clear enough.
‘OK, then. It’s decided,’ Ben said.
‘We’ll wait until it’s dark,’ Greg added.
Ryan realised he was holding his breath. He exhaled shakily, fighting a new wave of nausea. Although glorious sun beat down on them from a cloudless sky, they were in a dark, dark place.
SCENE 19 – ALISHA
Not for the first time, Alisha wondered whether this could all be a particularly vivid dream. Rox was dead. Ryan and Greg wanted to dump the body. A minute ago, she had just agreed to it. It was wrong and she knew it was wrong, but she’d agreed nonetheless. She was most surprised at Ben – she’d always had him down as someone with an iron-clad moral compass, but he’d gone along with Greg pretty quickly. But then, so had she. As awful as it seemed, it felt easier to let Ryan and Greg take control, to be the bad guys.
Alisha pushed her hair off her face. ‘This is so, so messed up,’ she said, incredulous.
‘If we all stick together,’ Ryan said, ‘it’ll be fine.’
Alisha knew it was over. There were no arguments left. ‘How? How, Ryan? How will this ever be fine?’ Sooner or later, someone would miss Roxanne. She was – had been – vile, but someone out there cared about her, surely? The thought that no one would even notice she’d gone was too sad to contemplate. No – eventually Rox’s uncle would report her missing and then they’d have to lie. Forever.
‘Well, obviously, it’s not exactly ideal.’ Ryan threw his hands up. ‘We’re meant to be eating ice-cream and getting drunk, but that’s impossible! After what happened to Janey it was never going to be fine! We were screwed before we got on the plane. One of us is playing an astoundingly clever game – making sure we’re all implicated in Rox’s death. I’m almost impressed.’
Alisha looked down the beach. The sun was climbing higher in the sky with each passing minute. The sand was golden, the sea was tropical blue, the villa was dazzling white, the dead girl was ghost grey. Spot the odd one out. Alisha couldn’t think of anything else to say. Next to her, Katie slipped her hand into Alisha’s. It was good to know one of them sympathised.
Erin spoke, cool and professional again. ‘We need to move the body. We can’t leave her by the pool all day. Someone might walk down the beach and see her.’
The boys sprang into action, suddenly united by a practical task. They took up position around Rox’s body. Katie hid her face in Alisha’s shoulder.
‘Nobody but us has walked down the beach in forty-eight hours,’ Ryan pointed out.
Greg nodded. ‘Yeah, but we can’t risk it. If someone sees, we’re dead. We’ll have to take her inside.’
Ryan slapped Greg’s arm. ‘No! Are you mad? Don’t you watch CSI? We’ll get her hair and DNA all over the villa.’
‘You’re right. We’ll have to wrap her in something . . .’
Alisha pulled on Katie’s hand. ‘This is sick. Let’s go inside.’
Katie nodded. The pair started for the stairs.
‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going?’ Greg didn’t miss a trick.
‘Inside,’ Alisha said. ‘I’m not touching a dead body. This was your idea; you deal with it.’
‘Fine,’ Greg caved. ‘Lish, are you OK?’
Alisha thought about that. The irony that she would give anything, literally, anything in the world that she possessed, to have Roxanne Dent wit
h them, right now, was not lost on her. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said eventually.
‘This is for the best, Lish.’ Her brother turned his attention to the dead body, ready to move it.
Alisha led Katie up the stairs to the villa. ‘What about you, Katie? Are you OK, hon?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll get you some water.’ Alisha pushed open the sliding doors and steered Katie straight to the sofa. Katie flopped down onto it, resting her head on her knees. Alisha’s mouth was bone-dry. This was happening. No going back. Events had taken on a demented momentum; the runaway train was careering downhill.
Alisha decided to focus on looking after Katie. She hurried to the kitchen and grabbed two glasses from the side of the sink. She took some mineral water from the fridge, and, with shaking hands, managed to fill both glasses without spilling. She carried them through to the lounge, ice rattling against the sides. ‘Here – drink this.’
‘Thank you.’
Alisha sipped the water, her lips like parchment. ‘I’m sorry,’ Alisha whispered, confessing her sins. ‘In a choice between my brother and my best friends in the world on one side, and Roxanne Dent on the other . . . Well, it’s no contest.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ Katie closed her eyes and held the ice-cold glass to her temple.
‘Janey and now Roxanne. Who could do something so . . .’ Alisha mused.
Her train of thought was interrupted by Ben, who stepped through the sliding doors. ‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
Alisha nodded and perched next to Katie on the sofa, suddenly awkward.
Ben knelt before them. He reached for Katie’s hand, but she recoiled. ‘Katie, I’m sorry.’
‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
He looked at her like it might be a trick question. ‘It’s me.’
‘No, it’s not. The Ben I knew would never agree to this.’
‘The Ben you knew changed when his girlfriend killed herself,’ Ben replied flatly.
Even Alisha flinched at that. Perhaps none of them knew how hard Janey’s death had hit Ben. He’d seemed so strong, so resilient, but perhaps it was all a front. ‘I’m just, just getting my life back on track and then this . . . Roxanne was going to blackmail us all, Katie. I’m not going to feel sorry for her.’