Miles glanced up at her, then looked away again. ‘Look, I think when we get back to England it’s best if we spend a bit of time apart,’ he said quietly.
What? No! Her mind cried. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. He couldn’t do this to her! She was naked, in the Caribbean Sea, for God’s sake! How could he resist her?
‘Are you finishing with me?’ she said, fighting to keep her voice even.
Miles didn’t look at her.
‘You shit,’ she hissed. ‘You are finishing with me.’
She felt a tear tremble on her eyelash and blinked it fiercely away.
‘Well, fuck you, Miles,’ she spat. ‘I can do better than you and I will.’
She stormed up the beach, grabbing her underwear, tears running down her cheeks, as she heard Alex and Grace whoop and giggle in the surf.
9
Alex got out of the water shivering. He’d had fun splashing about with Grace, but he wasn’t entirely convinced that there were no Great Whites lurking in the water. Just that afternoon in Freetown he’d seen blackboards by the marina advertising ‘Shark Dives: Sightings Guaranteed!’ More importantly, after what had happened with Miles, it just felt a bit too weird being naked in the water with him and that was why he’d kept his boxer shorts on to go skinny-dipping. Was that also why he had nearly kissed Grace back near the rocks? Certainly, holding hands with her had felt nice, so natural and right. But perhaps it had been more than that, he thought as he dried his damp body with his T-shirt; maybe he had been driven by a desire to get back on the heterosexual straight and narrow after his kiss with Miles.
Did I really kiss my best friend? he thought, unable to grasp it. What a night. He watched discreetly as Grace ran out of the sea and disappeared behind a low bush. She returned wearing her dress, her wet underwear rolled up in her hand. Sasha was already out and dressed, sitting hugging her knees up by the path, while Miles stood a little way off smoking a cigarette.
‘Do you think anyone will still be down by the bonfire?’ asked Grace as she walked over to them.
‘Doubt it,’ said Sasha gloomily, getting to her feet. Her earlier buoyant mood seemed to have vanished. She turned and stalked off, her expression stony.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Miles under his breath, walking after her. Alex wasn’t sure what had been said in the water but it appeared she and Miles were no longer speaking.
They walked for ten minutes in silence, each wrapped up in their own thoughts, an awkward, fractious atmosphere between all of them.
It was almost 5 a.m. Sunrise was not for another hour but thin light was seeping through the blackness, casting the beach in a cool monochrome shadow. The western side of the island was less lush and there were no palm or mango trees along the beach-front, just sand that led up to scrubby dunes. In front of them, about a hundred feet away, Alex could see a long black object on the path at the base of the sandy bank that ran up to the jungle; a piece of driftwood, perhaps? The sea was always coughing up things that littered the beach. Sasha was several paces ahead of him and she stopped suddenly, letting out a little scream.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
‘What is it?’ shouted Alex.
The whole world seemed to stand still.
Moving closer, Alex could see it was not driftwood. It was a body, lying completely motionless on the sand. All his nerve endings seemed to vibrate and his skin felt ice cold.
Grace stepped in and raised a hand to her mouth. ‘Who is it?’ she gasped. ‘Are they dead?’
Cautiously, Alex walked right up to the body. It was face down, but it was obviously a man and he was wearing the distinctive polo shirt of the Angel Cay staff.
He looked at Grace, then knelt down slowly and peered at the man’s face. All he could see was one closed eye and a gash down the side of his forehead. Blood was congealed around the wound.
‘Oh shit . . .’ said Alex quietly as he noticed one final terrible detail: there was a small, round burn mark on the man’s pale unmoving cheek.
Covering his mouth, Alex turned and fell to his knees, his body ejecting a stomachful of wine and spirits. After retching violently, long strings of spittle hung from his mouth. Wiping them away, he turned back to the body, his hands shaking. He looked around at the faces of his friends.
‘It’s that boat boy. Bradley.’
Sasha’s face was bleached of colour. ‘I think he’s dead,’ she said mournfully.
‘Feel his pulse,’ said Grace quietly, looking at Alex.
He looked back at her, his face pleading, but someone had to do it. Turning back to the body, he reached out to touch Bradley’s wrist.
‘Don’t be a prick,’ hissed Miles suddenly, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Don’t touch a dead body. You’ll leave fingerprints or DNA or something.’
Alex sprang back from the prone figure in alarm. His mum watched police shows all the time and he knew how it worked. The hard-bitten cop would cuff him to the table and say, ‘So, Mr Doyle, you were the last one to see the deceased alive. Did you leave him on good terms? Oh, and what can you tell me about these wounds on his face?’
No, Miles was right. Touching a dead body was not a good idea at all.
‘We can’t just leave him here,’ said Grace, taking a small step forward.
‘I mean it,’ said Miles, blocking her. ‘No one should touch it.’
‘It?’ replied Grace angrily. ‘He’s one of our staff.’
‘He’s called Bradley,’ said Alex quietly. ‘He only got here today.’
‘It, he,’ said Miles with irritation. ‘What does it matter if he’s dead?’
Dead. Alex felt glued to the sand. He could feel his heart pumping wildly. God, how can he be dead?
How? he asked himself. He looked at Miles and felt a sense of dread well in his stomach, then pushed the dark thought to one side as fiercely as he could.
‘We need to go and get help,’ he said.
‘I think he’s past helping,’ said Miles in a low, steady voice.
Although he was younger than Alex and Grace, Miles had a natural authority, assisted perhaps by the fact that his father owned the land around them. Sasha seemed happy to toe the line and Alex watched as she slipped her hand into Miles’.
‘What should we do, baby?’ she asked.
He looked at her, then at Alex and Grace. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ asked Grace incredulously.
‘Nothing,’ repeated Miles. ‘We should just stay calm and let someone else find it.’
Alex couldn’t believe his ears. ‘We have to call a doctor. The police.’
‘A doctor?’ scoffed Miles. ‘He’s dead. And even if he wasn’t, no one will be able to get here for at least half an hour. And the nearest coppers are in George Town.’
Alex pointed to the ground. ‘Miles, our footprints are all over this beach. We can’t pretend we weren’t here.’
‘This is our island, Doyle. And let’s just say my father has a way of making these things go away.’
‘Hang on,’ said Sasha quickly, looking up towards the sandbank above them. ‘We’re assuming this is some sort of attack or something. Maybe it was an accident. I mean, maybe he fell. It looks like he rolled down this bank.’
Miles shook his head. ‘Either way, we should still leave him. Think about it: every one of us is going to look suspicious, running around the island in the dark. None of us can prove where we were every minute of the night, can we? The fact is, he’s dead. The police are going to want to point the finger at someone. Who better than the four pissed-up kids who found the body?’
‘Come on, Miles. That’s a bit paranoid,’ said Grace, but her voice lacked confidence.
‘Listen, Alex and I had a bit of a pop at him earlier,’ said Miles angrily. ‘The guy was being a prick, wasn’t he, Alex? That’s not going to look too good for either of us. I mean, we had nothing to do with this’ – he
gestured towards the body – ‘but who would you believe?’
Alex stared at Miles, his eyes wide. He didn’t know when he’d felt more angry and hurt. Was Miles trying to implicate him? He’d always known his friend was arrogant and volatile, but this . . . this was cold.
‘I’m going to get someone,’ said Alex, beginning to walk away.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Grace.
Miles strode after him and grabbed his arm. ‘Stop.’
Alex whirled around, challenging him. ‘Why?’
‘I can’t afford to get mixed up in something I had nothing to do with. Can you?’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ said Alex with more bluster than he felt.
‘And you want to take a chance on the police believing that?’ Miles didn’t flinch, holding Alex’s gaze, his eyes boring into him.
He turned to Grace. ‘You know Father has important clients coming to Angel tomorrow. How is it going to look if there’s a police investigation going on? Especially when his son and daughter are right in the middle of it.’
For a few moments no one spoke as the cold chill of Miles’ words sank in.
When he spoke again, his voice had an eerie calmness. ‘OK, it’s five fifteen. Let’s get back to the house as quietly as possible. Some of the staff should be getting up any time. Let one of them find the body. They can tell my father and he can sort this out. Agreed?’
He looked at them one by one and slowly, reluctantly, one by one they all nodded.
‘Bradley’s dead,’ said Miles as they began to walk away from the body. ‘We can’t help him. But we can help ourselves.’
10
It had started to rain as soon as she had got back to her bedroom. Fat, sweet-smelling, tropical rain that lashed against the window and seemed to make the whole house shake. Grace glanced at her watch again; it had been barely an hour since they had been at the beach, but time seemed to be passing horribly slowly.
Down at the beach, Miles’ selfish ‘let’s help ourselves’ speech had had a certain perverse logic, but now she’d had time to think, letting someone else find the body seemed wrong on every level. Not that any of them had anything to do with that poor man’s death, of course, but to just leave him there ... It was immoral, heartless, corrupt.
Should I go to see Alex? she wondered. He had been the only one who seemed to have a problem with leaving the body. But his room was next to Miles’ and the last thing she wanted to do was alert her brother to what she was thinking of doing. No, Grace knew she had to do this alone. The downpour started to ease. Steeling herself, she slipped on her flip-flops and was just heading for the door when she heard a gentle, almost inaudible knock.
It was Alex, his face grim. ‘Can I come in?’
She nodded, glancing up and down the corridor before she closed the door gently behind him.
‘We can’t just leave that guy on the beach,’ he said with quiet urgency. ‘I think we should tell your father.’
Grace shook her head. ‘I have another idea. Nelson.’
Alex immediately grasped Grace’s scheme. Nelson was known as a loyal, efficient man who, while he worked for Robert Ashford, was not afraid to voice an opinion. ‘I’ll come.’
Outside, the air smelt damp and floral, as if it had been freshly laundered. They walked quickly down the stairs and outside, following the path around the house and past the tennis court, beyond which they could see a weathered but well-kept clapboard house.
‘Nelson lived here as caretaker before my father bought the island,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve actually always felt it was more his island than ours.’
There was a light on in the top left window, so Grace tapped on the door while Alex hovered nervously behind her. Nelson Ford looked surprised when he answered the door; no wonder, it was just after six. He rubbed his dark, lined forehead as if he were still tired.
‘Grace. What can I do for you?’
Grace glanced at Alex, then took a deep breath. ‘We thought we saw something down at the beach. I wanted you to come and take a look.’
‘What is it?’
Alex hesitated before speaking. ‘A body maybe.’
‘A body maybe?’ asked Nelson cautiously.
‘We didn’t want to get too close,’ offered Alex, not meeting Nelson’s gaze.
The older man looked at them for a long moment, then turned around and glanced back into the darkness of the house. ‘Come on then. Let’s go take a look.’
They walked down to the beach in silence, Alex and Grace going at such a brisk pace that even Nelson’s long legs struggled to keep up with them.
Getting closer to the beach, Grace felt another stab of uncertainty. Maybe Miles was right: why should we get mixed up in this when it’s nothing to do with us? The police would be only too happy to pin this on the rich Europeans; there was little love for the flash incomers buying up their own corner of paradise from the native islanders.
At least Nelson was on their side. Or was he? It was hard to get anything straight in her head. Already they had begun lying: maybe we saw a body. There was nothing maybe about it.
She stepped on to West Point Beach and immediately sensed something was wrong. In the time between leaving with Miles and Sasha and getting back here with Nelson, the tide had come in, but there was still ten yards of exposed white sand between them and the water’s edge. Her eyes scanned up and down the beach and her heart started pounding.
‘What are we looking for again, kids?’ asked Nelson, slowing his pace to a stop.
The body had gone.
‘It was here,’ she said, looking around wildly. ‘It was.’
Alex had already run further up the shore, looking to see if they had picked the right spot, but Grace was sure of it: this had been the place. She wouldn’t forget it in a hurry.
Nelson looked at her cynically. ‘Well, there’s nothing here now.’
‘Tell him, Alex,’ said Grace desperately, pointing to the spot on the path. ‘There was a dead body right here.’
‘It’s true, sir,’ said Alex, running his hand through his hair. ‘We saw him.’
‘Him?’ asked Nelson. ‘Did you see who it was?’
‘It was that boy Bradley,’ said Alex. ‘I think he’d just started as a deckhand or something.’
‘Him,’ Nelson said disapprovingly. ‘I nearly fired him last night. Someone saw him drinking.’ His brows knitted. ‘Are you sure he wasn’t just asleep or passed out? If he was drinking, that seems the most likely thing to have happened here. He woke up and walked off. You did say you didn’t get that close?’
Grace shook her head vehemently. ‘He wasn’t moving. Or breathing, I’m sure of it,’ she said, feeling tears well behind her eyes.
Alex examined the shoreline, looking for footsteps, but the rain had smoothed the sand. ‘Do you think the tide could have taken the body out?’
Nelson shrugged. ‘The sea can be unpredictable, so I guess it’s possible,’ he said in his thick Bahamian accent. ‘But it’s not quite high tide. It would have had to be one hell of a freak wave to sweep up and snatch a body.’
He looked at Alex through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t you doing the drinking?’
Alex looked pale in the thin morning light. ‘No . . . well, yes, but I know what I saw. He was here!’ he said, gesturing at the path. ‘We all saw him, didn’t we, Grace?’
‘You all saw him?’ said Nelson.
‘No, no, I mean, we saw him, me and Grace,’ stammered Alex.
‘Just you two?’ said Nelson.
No more lies, Grace told herself. ‘Miles and Sasha too,’ she said reluctantly.
‘Let’s try Bradley’s room,’ said Nelson finally.
They took the ten-minute walk to the staff cabins and Nelson knocked on the door of the last room. Hearing no movement inside, he pulled a large bunch of keys from his shorts pocket and opened the lock. The cabin was empty, but the bed looked rumpled as if it had been slept in.
; ‘Well, it looks like someone was in here last night,’ said Nelson. ‘What time did you think you saw him?’
‘Around five,’ said Grace. ‘And we did see him.’
‘OK,’ said Nelson sceptically, locking the door and leading Grace down to the staff mess at the end of the block where they were met by the smell of frying bacon. It made Grace feel sick. Inside, a chef and two maids were having breakfast at a long table.
‘Anyone seen Bradley the boat boy this morning?’ Nelson asked them.
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