The Marriage Act(96)

Corrine paled. ‘You can’t do that.’

‘I can and I have. As I said in my speech after my assault, I will not kowtow to anyone. Especially not bullies, blackmailers or misguided members of Freedom for All. Now, is there anything else?’

But Harrison didn’t allow her to respond. She nodded to Andrei who frogmarched Corrine out of the car park, through the gates and back out into the street.





80


Jeffrey




Jeffrey’s eyes darted in all directions like startled birds as he made a priority list. On the bed lay Luca, and, on the floor, the crumpled body of Noah. The latter’s blood and strands of hair were smeared across the wall.

He was wracked with guilt over what he had done to Luca but not Noah – Noah only had himself to blame. He was supposed to process what had happened between Jeffrey and Luca, declare his marriage over then leave. But when he’d lashed out, Jeffrey had had no choice but to suppress him. And, in doing so, Noah had created an extra layer of complication. Eventually he decided on dragging Noah’s body downstairs to store in the boot of his car until he could find somewhere to dump it permanently. Then he would come back and handle Luca.

Jeffrey made his way into the guest bedroom, slipped on the rest of his clothes and turned on his watch to check the time. He had missed a further eleven calls, alongside voicemails and voice notes from his supervisor Adrian. He didn’t need to listen to or read the messages to appreciate the mess Noah had left him in.

On his return to the other bedroom, a first glimpse of a lifeless Noah created an unexpected tidal wave of memories that hit him with great force. Suddenly, he was his fifteen-year-old self again, the night he’d killed Rosie Morrison. He was on his knees, straddling her body and glaring at her as if waiting for her to suddenly awaken. However, before he had time to understand his actions, the bedroom door opened and his brother Bobby appeared, reeking of last night’s booze.

Jeffrey scrambled to his feet as a bewildered Bobby glared at his naked brother, then his motionless girlfriend, and back to Jeffrey again.

‘It was an accident,’ Jeffrey blurted out, tears rolling down his cheeks and onto his bare chest.

‘What did you do?’ Bobby gasped and approached Rosie.

‘I begged her to stop shouting but I . . .’ His voice trailed off.

He watched as Bobby slipped his arm under Rosie and scooped her upright, his other hand patting her cheeks as if to rouse her from a deep slumber. When that failed, he laid her back on the bed and tried resuscitating her. It was too late.

Jeffrey was too hindered by shock and grief to avoid Bobby’s first punch. It caught him clean on the jaw and sent him sprawling to the floor. ‘You killed her!’ he screamed as the second blow reached Jeffrey’s eye socket with a crack. Next he felt Bobby’s hands on either side of his head, lifting it up before smacking it down against the floorboards with great force. Twice more it happened, dazing Jeffrey. But it wasn’t disorientating enough to make him drop an empty vodka bottle he’d grabbed from the floor. He slammed it against the side of Bobby’s head, stunning him. And with just a jagged piece of bottle left in his hand, he plunged into the back of Bobby’s neck, fracturing the bone connecting his spine to his skull.

Bobby fell to his side as Jeffrey scrambled to his feet. He steadied himself against the wall and watched helplessly as a haemorrhage sent his brother’s eyes spinning in the back of their sockets before the final breath left his lungs.

Jeffrey stumbled backwards into the corner of the room, trying to understand how he had just killed two people he loved. Despite his own fractured eye socket, blurred vision and a pulsing head, he slipped on his clothes and used a wet towel to wipe his fingerprints from outside and inside Rosie’s body. And before he called the emergency services, he made sure Bobby’s palm and fingerprints were spread across the pillow.

In his police statement, Jeffrey claimed he had woken to hear Rosie’s muffled screams and witnessed his drunken brother smothering her. Bobby had been too robust to be dragged away from her and had lashed out at Jeffrey, knocking him to the floor and causing him to black out.

When he came to, a frenzied Bobby was trying to kill him too and Jeffrey had only struck him in self-defence. Thanks to Bobby’s criminal convictions for actual bodily harm against a former girlfriend a year earlier, Jeffrey’s claims were accepted and no case was brought against him.

Now another message on Jeffrey’s watch flattened the tidal wave and returned him to Luca’s bedroom. Adrian was clearly desperate to speak to Jeffrey but he would not be returning his call. Instead, he approached Noah. The man’s face was barely recognizable under a sheen of crimson, matted hair. He could just about make out a golf ball-sized concave dent in his forehead. He placed his hands under Noah’s lukewarm armpits and began to drag him towards the door.

A groggy voice stopped him in his tracks.

‘What happened?’ asked Luca.





81


Anthony




Anthony closed his eyes and took a moment to listen. Aside from a faint tinnitus ringing in his ears – a hangover from a childhood punch by one of his mother’s violent exes – the only sounds in his office were his breaths and the tap of a stylus against the surface of his desk.

On purchasing their home three years earlier, a team of security experts had been sent by Hyde to soundproof Anthony’s office, install steel doors with biometric locks alongside reinforced glass windows and thick metal shutters. Then, Anthony thought transforming that room into a modern-day Faraday cage was an exaggerated and unnecessary measure, but now he was grateful. Because hidden inside it, he was protected from the interference of the outside world.