The Accident Page 2

  David rubbed his head. There was a small lump, slightly scabbed, in the corner of his brow. To the side of the French doors, the attic roofline lowered sharply. Had he hit his head off an internal structural beam in his panic to help Ryan? He hauled himself into a kneeling position, the bare boards denting his knees.

  There was noise from below. Were the police here? An ambulance? Where was Tara? Would there be time to talk to her before he was arrested for murder? It wasn’t as if he lacked an ironclad motive.

  His dream of building his own house and living in it with Tara had been snatched away at the very last second. This would kill his seventy-six-year-old mother. His sister would be ashamed. No, it was over. The future cancelled. Soon, the world would be as if he had never been there. He looked at the fresh plasterwork around the French doors. If he was to stick his finger into it, it would leave a mark. He stuck his finger into it. It left a mark.

  David inched his head through the French doors and out over the edge. Down below, he expected to see the police, medics, yellow tape. But there was no one there. David blinked. No corpse. There wasn’t even a pit. Instead, there was freshly laid limestone across most of the patio area. Some tumbled travertine slabs had already been laid.

  A wave of sheer bliss crashed over him. Ryan was alive. Of course he was. While David had lain unconscious, Ryan must have dusted himself down and gone home.

  David inhaled deeply the morning’s summer breeze that seemed to originate from the sun itself. This was the best time of day: newly minted, before the ongoing heatwave turned everything slovenly. But the reality of his wife’s betrayal made the rustle of leaves less cheerful, the sunlight less promising.

  David checked his watch – 8.55 a.m. The builders usually started at 7.30. They had been working away for almost ninety minutes, oblivious to his comatose body on the top floor. A burst of conversation sounded from down in the kitchen before the noise suddenly shut off.

  Unsteady on his feet, David scooped up the used condom, the flimsy panties and the dried tissue. He found a glimmer of solace in the fact that, despite Tara’s pregnancy, she’d still taken precaution against disease – which considering Ryan’s reputation was a genuine, if remote, risk. Had Ryan been telling the truth when he’d said that it had only happened once? He had no reason to lie.

  Outside on the staircase, David noticed a discolouration on the wall in front of him. It looked as if something damp had been rubbed across the fresh paint and hadn’t yet dried. He touched the surface stain and smelled his fingers: a vague odour, similar to that carried on a sea breeze. Above it was a cobweb, like the sail of a yacht, already woven between the skylight and the corner of the ceiling. David pulled it down and rolled it into a sticky clump. This is my house.

  In the first-floor bathroom, he pocketed the panties before flushing the condom and tissue down the toilet. Then, descending to the hallway, he came across the electrician who was finishing up the installation of lights that would illuminate Tara’s artwork.

  David cleared his throat. ‘Hiya, Mike.’

  The middle-aged electrician almost lost his footing on the stepladder. ‘Jazus. If it isn’t the Prof. Where’d you come from?’

  Tara had told the crew that David was a college professor, rather than just an undergraduate lecturer. She’d thought it was funny.

  ‘Slipped by you earlier.’

  ‘You’re a ninja. What happened to the noggin?’

  David rubbed the corner of his forehead. ‘Just a knock.’

  ‘And probably the first time you’re on site without a hard hat. Ryan with you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Cos he was supposed to be here at 7.30. No sign. But his car’s outside. Weird.’

  ‘His car?’

  ‘Yeah. Must be gone off with a contractor or something.’ Mike turned back to the light fitting. Conversation over.

  David stepped around the tins of Farrow & Ball and entered the kitchen – a space big enough to house a car showroom. Drifting by all the new stainless steel apparatus, the granite countertops and the elegant spring-mounted, single-lever tap curving out from the centre of the island, David stared through the huge slider window to the new patio. Where was Ryan? At the hospital? Maybe he’d got a taxi home and was lying low there, embarrassed at what had happened last night but relieved to be alive. Perhaps he was furious at what David had done and was planning revenge. Well, bring it, David thought. He pictured Ryan standing in his house, pretending to be his friend, congratulating him on his design. But suddenly a new and more appalling suggestion occurred – could Ryan be under the limestone?

  Beyond the patio were the freshly landscaped grounds that only days ago he had considered grand and beautiful. But now David thought that the just-rolled lawn looked like a synthetic turf that could be vacuumed of dirt. Even the flowers looked plastic. It was as if the entire garden was an expensive, unnatural theme park. The grass stopped at a wooded area of pines, elms and oaks. A pathway separating the trees and lawn had been laid with leftover antique bricks. Ryan had done it for free; a gift. Tara had been delighted and had ignored David when he’d muttered, ‘It’s amazing what they’ll throw in when you spend a mere one and a half million.’

  There was a man crouched down at the far end of the kitchen. It was just Bruno, pasting silicon where the glass met the timber floor. He’d pulled his T-shirt over his head like a keffiyeh, protecting his pale Lithuanian face from the magnified sunlight blasting through the window. His pinky-white ass crack rose from the sheath of dirty blue jeans. Slowly, he shifted around on his haunches and nodded without smiling.

  ‘Good morning to you, Dave,’ Bruno said, greeting him with an apprehensive face, as if David had hurt him a few years ago and he had never forgotten it. ‘What happened to your—’

  ‘Hit it on a beam upstairs. It’s fine. Outside – there was a pit there yesterday?’

  ‘This morning I finish paving patio with travertine. Got some already done. When FlexBond hundred per cent dry, I finish off.’

  ‘How did you fill it? With a shovel?’

  Bruno laughed. ‘I use the three-tonne micro-digger.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The three-tonne micro-digger.’ Because Bruno’s responses were delayed, talking to him was sometimes like making an internet call to a developing country. ‘The small digger. We can still get it in the covered side passage. Does not look wide but it’s good designed. No storage problems in this place. Lots of space for kit-and-caboodle. We even got the telehandler through yesterday.’

  ‘Did you see anything in the pit?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Did you check the pit before filling it?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘What if there was an animal in there? A cat, or something?’

  ‘The engine scares them off.’

  ‘So you looked and didn’t see anything?’ David knew he was putting words into Bruno’s mouth. Or at least trying to.

  ‘Listen to me – I got on micro-digger and filled in last foundation for the patio. Then levelled over with eight inches of crushed limestone in layers for freeze-thaw cycle. Just one inch of sand and travertine pavers can be dry-laid. No curing. Very smart design. That’s it. If there was a deaf sleeping cat there, then it’s probably still down there now. They’ll dig it up one day and think it’s a... How you say? A dinosaur!’ Bruno laughed, pleased with his joke – then stopped abruptly. ‘You are not missing your cat?’

  ‘What? No.’

  Bruno shrugged. ‘Have you been talking to Ryan?’

  ‘Why?’ David replied, a little too fast.

  ‘Everyone looking for Ryan.’

  David was staring through the sliding door to the limestone-topped foundation that remained untiled. It’s impossible. Ryan is fine. He couldn’t be under there.

  ‘Hey, Prof!’ It was the electrician, standing at the kitchen door. ‘We’re saved, ladies. All our problems are solved. The main man is here.’

&nbs
p; Oh thank you, Jesus.

  Mike stepped out of the way to allow a tall, broad man with dark sandy hair to enter the kitchen. It was Gordon, the project’s architect. He always dressed in a suit, even when clambering across roof tiles to examine chimney cracks.

  Visibly crestfallen, David said, ‘Oh, it’s you. I thought it was…’ His voice trailed off, as if by uttering Ryan’s name it would somehow communicate to all present that he had done something terrible.

  Pressing ‘call’ on his phone, Gordon placed it to his face and waited. Then in an educated Southside accent, said, ‘Yeah, it’s me. Ryan’s not here. He’s not at his office and he’s not at home… No, it is important. My fucking builder is missing on the last day. Yes, Ryan.’ Then, staring at David and nodding to the voice in his ear, he said, ‘I’ll talk to him.’

  David quickly tried to think of all the mistakes he might be making.

  Gordon closed the phone, stared at Bruno and, after finding his face in his mental card index, nodded. Then he scanned the kitchen like he owned it and said, ‘Morning, Dave,’ with the alertness and resolve of a forty-five-year-old who enjoyed a 6 a.m. run to kick-start every day. But despite the swish of his presence, he also held the bearing of a person who desperately fought to keep his weight under control. His face was unlined and his skin soft, but his jowls were beginning to sag, while at the back of his neck, flesh had started to gather in small rolls.

  David told himself to be normal and say something casual, but still said nothing.

  ‘Dave, I’m surprised you’re here already. And of course, for this time of the morning, you’re looking great,’ Gordon said, in a tone that conveyed that David was actually looking awful. ‘I love the I-don’t-wash look. Very hot. The homeless are so sexy. You know, where I live they’ve got this incredible new technology called soap. What happened to your head? Looks sore.’

  Achieving something close to sober decorum, David tried to smile but only succeeded in baring his teeth. ‘Just a knock. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ Gordon added, as if it was the worst crime in the world. He turned on his phone’s camera and reversed the lens so that the screen acted as a mirror. In his other hand was an electric razor and it began to buzz its incessant one-note hymn. David wondered why Gordon couldn’t have shaved at home or even in his car. Plus, he was now getting tiny hairs on the floor. However, the man did like to make a production of everything.

  David couldn’t put his finger on why he liked Gordon. His architect was of the privileged class he’d always despised. Gordon came from old money and a well-below-average share of worries. He’d been birthed into the security-gated quarantine of a beautiful Dalkey home with rock stars and movie directors for neighbours. The last time David had been out for lunch with Gordon, the architect had ordered a bottle of Dasani. Not ‘water’, but Dasani. Meanwhile, everything David had achieved was the result of a struggle – a struggle to educate himself with scholarships while working in a warehouse; a struggle to lose his accent; to become a lecturer; to work on his PhD; to get the girl. He had never had a ‘home’ in the maze of the Cawley Estates when growing up – David, his parents and his sister had simply spent a few years in one council house before being moved down the road to another. He could never forget the creaks, hiss and moans of those small, jammed buildings that had caged him in. And while he didn’t like people to know where he’d come from, he privately, secretly, despised the quasi-aristocratic upper-class.

  Gordon placed his Prada-encased foot next to David’s on the low windowsill.

  ‘What’s wrong, Dave?’

  ‘Nothing,’ David said, feeling like a student in an exam trying to hide his cheat notes.

  ‘You’re distracted. And you’re not happy. It’s my job to make you happy.’

  ‘I’m just... I’m just thinking.’

  Despite the fact that Gordon was David’s employee, Gordon had a natural ability to intimidate him. Most of the people David had gone to school with were now addicts, incarcerated, dead or had emigrated. Most people from Gordon’s school were now politicians, lawyers and even judges. At David’s school, all he had learned was fuck school.

  ‘Jesus, I love my job, and building your house in particular was fun. And challenging,’ Gordon said, with the confidence of a man who believed in two things: that if he wasn’t an architect then he would be just like everyone else, and that everyone else was an idiot. ‘Smile, my friend. It’s over today. You did it. We did it. The project is wrapping up right on time. Your furniture is on the way. Dave, this house will keep you clean, keep your body at an optimal temperature and it will protect you from the evils of the outside world.’

  David forced a smile, trying to look grateful. But while Gordon had been speaking, he had suddenly realised that Tara must be worried about him, since he hadn’t come home last night. What will I say to her? Actually, why am I even thinking about this? After what she did? Has she done this before? Done it with someone else? Is the baby mine? No, wait. This is Tara. Of course there was no one else. The baby’s mine. And what happened... Is it because she’s depressed and doesn’t know it? Something to do with being pregnant?

  David looked at his phone, expecting to see a litany of missed calls and texts to ignore. But there were no messages. Jesus. But wait – keep your focus on Ryan. Quickly, he checked his emails, having suddenly convinced himself that there would be something from his builder. There was nothing.

  Gordon straightened his perfectly straight tie, leaned over the black granite island top and blew across its surface. A cloud of dust rose. Orchestrating a big whoosh of a sneeze, he ah-chooed into his hands. ‘The house was meant to be professionally cleaned yesterday. Where is Ryan? And why is his car outside? Ryan doesn’t go off-grid. Ever. Jesus, if I was to take him out for a two-hour lunch, he’d consider it an unauthorised vacation.’ Gordon’s phone rang, and he turned his back on the room to take it.

  David’s stomach felt as if it was working its way up through his oesophagus. He placed a firm, supportive hand against the wall. If Ryan was dead, what would happen to Tara? Her career would be over. Her work would never again be referenced without mention of the great scandal of her murderous husband and her dead lover. It would be the intelligentsia’s equivalent to a slow gassing. David had a vision of Tara alone in their new house, living in the shell of her lost dreams. But she would hardly raise their child alone in the hugeness of a home in which her husband had killed her lover, would she? And regardless of what she decided to do, David didn’t want her to waste her life waiting for his return from prison in ten or twenty years.

  When Ryan was screwing her, had Tara seen herself as being injected with an elixir of life? David pictured her again at his birthday party, staring at the floor, not singing, not smiling. Had she suddenly glimpsed the future? Was that the moment when she realised that me being ten years older than her was something she could no longer ignore – especially with a baby on the way? When the kid’s twenty, I’ll be sixty – closer to the age of grandparent than parent.

  And then there was his unborn child. You never wanted a kid. You never planned for one. She just presented you with it. David despised that voice in his head. It had a sly tone; one that tried to justify his self-doubt with the shrugged, ‘I didn’t ask for this.’ Each time that voice sounded, it felt like he was betraying his own flesh and blood, abandoning those who needed him most, like a coward creeping off the battlefield.

  ‘There’s a problem.’ Gordon’s lips were inches from David’s ear. He added in a whisper, ‘Something unprecedented has happened. Regarding Ryan.’ The architect glanced at Bruno, who was in the corner of the kitchen, squeezing his left foot into the cold tube of his wellingtons.

  David touched the cut on his forehead. ‘You found him?’

  ‘Gotta finish this call. Do me a favour and wait for me on the patio. We need to talk. In private.’

  David opened the kitchen door and stood at the edge of the exposed foundatio
n, where only hours ago the pit had been. The time to come clean was now. Admit to Gordon what he’d done. Tell him there was a possibility that Ryan was buried there. It had been an accident, and David had tried to help him but had somehow knocked himself out. The police would be able to examine his head, see the wound, understand that he was telling the truth. Or, more likely, the police would believe he was guilty and if they couldn’t pin the murder on him, they’d get him for manslaughter and throw the book at him.

  Obeying his old Pavlovian response to stepping outdoors, David took out the packet of cigarettes he’d bought last night and lit up. He focused on shutting down the voice in his head that was screaming treacherous advice about telling people the truth. If Ryan was dead, under the patio, then no one knew. David could feasibly wait until all the furore around Ryan’s whereabouts went away. It had been an accident, after all. Nothing he now did or didn’t do would bring Ryan back. However, David’s wife and child would need him around in the future. Tara’s career was in free fall and David had already become the main breadwinner. It wasn’t fair that his unborn child’s reputation and prospects could forever be tarnished by a split-second mistake committed by its father. The time had come to make a choice, and choice in this situation was very dangerous. Because once a choice was made, he would have to forego all other possibilities.

  From behind him, Gordon said, ‘Is that a cigarette?’

  Exhaling a tube of smoke, David answered with, ‘You found him?’

  Gordon continued towards a cast iron table and two chairs on the lawn next to the hedge. The bees bobbed and weaved on the breeze before dipping to the rows of lavender and red trumpets of oriental lilies. David tried to soak up the garden, wanting it to calm him, wanting its depths of colour and space to subdue his pulsing angst. But it didn’t happen.