We might have had our differences with the Dubois-Josephs, but I’d never wish the death of their only child on them, or anyone. And yet, I caused it.
‘You okay?’ whispers Bianka.
‘Well, no. Obviously.’
‘Hey. Hang in there, okay? If you can pull his jeans down, I’ll try to lift his lower back up a little.’ I do as she says, and unbuckle his belt, then his jeans, one tough metal button at a time. I can’t help but think back to the party, of Maxime taking his trousers off then hungrily watching Bianka and me on the bed.
Bianka manages to hoist Maxime up and I pull hard at the jeans, but they are tight and stuck to the skin. I manage to roll them down little by little until they gather at his feet.
‘Now his underpants,’ says Bianka. I swallow hard and go straight for them, classic black Calvins, the same kind as the white ones he wore the other night. I feel myself blush and brusquely cover his genital area with one of the blankets we found in Ximena’s cupboard.
‘Anything else that can identify him easily?’ I ask, shining the torch across the dead man’s naked body.
‘Well, the tattoos,’ says Bianka. He has six in total.
‘Not much we can do about that,’ I say. ‘Besides, I think after long enough in the sea, they’ll become indistinguishable.’
‘Unless… Unless we burned him first,’ says Bianka.
‘Oh, God.’
‘I know. But… It might make the difference between getting caught for this, or not.’
‘How, though?’
‘We could do it on the beach.’
‘No. It would draw attention to us. Besides, it’s illegal to light an open fire on Ibiza between May and October. The police would be here in five seconds.’
‘I see.’
‘Let’s just stick to the original plan. I think the most crucial things are that we make sure he is extremely unlikely to resurface and that the family and the police are made to believe he’s done a runner, at least initially.’
‘What about forensic evidence, though? Once it’s obvious that the guy’s gone missing, don’t you think the police are going to be poking around everywhere? Maxime’s the son of very rich people. They’re not going to leave a single stone unturned,’ says Bianka.
‘You’re right. Which is why we have to make damned sure that there simply is no connection between us and Maxime.’
‘Lots of people saw us at the party. He might have bragged to his friends after what happened. A lot of guys probably would.’
She’s right. Could it be that he initiated what happened between us to create a situation where he could blackmail me to begin with, after Bianka told him I’m the owner of Can Xara? Of course he did. How could we have been so stupid as to think that an attractive man in his twenties was just desperate to sleep with a couple of bored, undersexed fortysomething women? I can’t help the tears that rush from my eyes and drip onto Maxime’s bare skin.
‘Hey,’ says Bianka, placing a hand on top of mine. I pull it away irritably.
‘Let’s just get this done.’
‘I had an idea,’ says Bianka. ‘When we were in the bar I saw a friend of Max’s – the shorter one with the green eyes, do you remember? He was one of the two guys with those interlinked “o” tattoos on his neck. Max made some joke about them being mafia. And then something occurred to me. I think we mark him. Maxime. So that in the event he were to resurface the police would hopefully assume that he was killed by whatever mob branch his buddies belong to.’
‘Mark him.’
‘Yes.’
‘But – how?’
Bianka picks up the thick carving knife we’d found in Ximena’s kitchen and we exchange another glance, both wincing at the reality of cutting the dead man’s skin open.
‘Where?’ she says. I shake my head; I’m not sure it matters where. But it’s a good idea.
Bianka takes a deep breath, then she begins to run the knife across the smooth skin below his collarbone, already bloodstained from the gaping wound on his neck directly above it, but it doesn’t pierce the skin.
‘More pressure,’ I whisper. She tries again and this time she produces a curved line, her face contorting with concentration and disgust. I expect blood to squirt out but nothing happens – of course – he’s been dead for almost eight hours at this point. When Bianka has carved an almost perfect ‘o’, she starts on another, linking it in with the first. When she’s finished we both sit in silence for a while, the knife on the floor between us.
‘I had another idea, too,’ says Bianka. ‘The weights and the rocks are all well and good but I think we should’ – she pauses here, her voice shaky – ‘disfigure the tattoos. As in, smash them with the kettlebells. There will be massive bleeding beneath the skin.’ I’m shocked and disgusted at the idea, but I realize she’s right. As horrible as the thought is, it might be the thing that makes the difference between being caught and running free if his body is ever found.
‘I’ll do it,’ I say. Bianka raises an eyebrow but says nothing, merely watches as I pick up one of the kettlebells and raise it above my head. Come on, I tell myself. You can do this. I tighten my grip but my palm is slick with sweat and my heart is beating so hard I can hear its thud as loudly as if it were a separate entity in the room with us. The weight is very heavy and my muscles twitch with the effort. All I have to do is let go and let my arm follow its natural trajectory downwards onto the back of his hand. I try to summon the fury I felt earlier when I stood on the path with Maxime and he insulted my mother. But in its place is just deep, bleak exhaustion and fear. I can’t do it. In the split second before I was going to bring the weight down full force onto Maxime’s immobile hand, I slowly lower it and place it upright next to his body. I feel an intense wave of nausea and quickly stand but don’t make it to the bathroom before I start throwing up, mouthful after mouthful of foul vomit splashing onto the tiles.
‘Lie down over there for a bit,’ says Bianka, pointing to the slouchy sofa, across which one of Ximena’s hand-crocheted blankets is flung. I could lie down and cover myself with the throw. I could turn my back to Bianka and stick my fingers in my ears, leaving her to do the dirty work. But in the end, I slump down onto the floor and sit with my back against a kitchen cabinet, watching as Bianka continues our grisly job with a determined look on her face. She’s quick, now, not hesitating for a moment. Over and over she brings the kettlebell down onto Maxime’s hand, then his shoulder, and his thigh, its sickening thud filling the little space as she crushes his tattoos and the bones underneath.
I’m dizzy and feel as though I’m not really here on the floor but hovering somewhere above the unfolding scene, safely tucked away among the dark wooden beams reaching across the vaulted ceiling space. I close my eyes every time she brings the weight down but its sound reverberates through me. I keep my eyes mostly closed as she cuts Maxime’s stomach open and places the iron kettlebell inside, followed by the second unused one, the way we planned it. She motions for me to come back over and together we tape his stomach closed with the heavy-duty gaffer tape I found up at the house.
‘Almost there,’ whispers Bianka. She inserts a finger into Maxime’s half-open mouth, and tries to prize his jaw open but it won’t budge much and she has to use real force, her biceps growing taut in the meagre light from the torch. I worry that his jaw will snap and that I’ll never forget the sound, but she manages to open his mouth enough to wedge a round pebble we brought from the beach between his teeth, propping it open. She then places stone after stone into his mouth as though she were feeding coins into a slot machine until no more will fit. Then we tape his mouth shut, and his eyes, too.
‘Are you ready?’ asks Bianka, standing up and looking down on Maxime with an odd look of satisfaction at the final result. I nod, trying to avoid looking at the dead man any more than I have to.
‘Let’s go.’
It takes us over twenty minutes to drag Maxime down the path and the stone steps onto the beach, still wrapped in the tarpaulin, his feet sticking out and dragging behind us as we go. We manage to get him onto the boat and he crashes into the forward space of its hull. My hands tremble violently as I release the rope from its metal hook and throw it into the boat, where it lands on top of Maxime with a wet slap. We take turns rowing and this is the easiest part so far, though it’s heavy and dark, because we are outside, breathing fresh air, not the stale air of the finca with its sweet stench of blood, and in spite of everything, it is beautiful out here on the water underneath the stars. We can more easily choose to avoid the sight of the dead man slumped at the bottom of the boat.
I manoeuvre the boat past the towering sentry rocks at the entrance to the sheltered little cala, keeping it calm even when strong winds whip the island. The moon is high in the sky and shines its crystalline light onto the sea, highlighting the lines of a current. This is well known for being an especially perilous spot due to the riptides. And it’s deep. Again my thoughts return to all of the other bodies in the Mediterranean, and I wonder where the next closest one is, whether it might be right around here, held still in the chilly depths beneath us. I glance at Maxime. He looks like a black mummy, covered almost entirely by duct tape. His longish brown hair partly sticks up in messy tufts, and partly lies matted to his scalp with blood. I recall how meticulous and sleek it was in life.
