Beach Bodies: Part Three. Ross Armstrong

assumes the posture, waving Day away. Years ago, he might’ve stuck his feet up on the desk, but these days a higher standard is expected, and someone is always watching.

      Instead, he trains his mind. Mr Knight clears his inner chambers from intrusive thoughts and focuses on the phone, because sometimes it rings and it looks good if you pick up straight away. The odd phone call from some suit who wants you to check on a few things.

      Some mad question, they always ask. Do this, do that. Makes a change from sitting watching the thing. They use an old white phone, a real one, from days gone by. It’s a professional joke, Mr Knight has been told. And he enjoys the opportunity to interact with old technology. He likes handling the thing. It feels cold against his ear. The weight, the ceremony of it all. It’s this sort of thing that made him take the job in the first place. It’s one of the little privileges.

      He doesn’t have to be here. He gets his Basic Income. He could take that and use it to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Not quite a tropical island, but not too far off. But he likes being here. And it’s nice to have a purpose. At his age.

      Mr Knight takes the phone off the hook and puts it to his ear, just for the feeling of it. He mimes a few words into it that no one will ever hear; he’s from a generation that never grew up. Then he puts it down and stares at it, indulging in the most basic pleasure there is: breathing, feeling well, and feeling time pass by.

      Four hours later, the thing rings and Mr Knight picks up immediately.

10.10 p.m.

      The heat from the fire reaches Roberto and Justine first, the flames licking out towards his granite biceps and her sculpted figure.

      The heat moves on to the next two bodies; Summer and Liv, the former recently widowed by the body that lies beyond the patio glass. Summer rests her head in Liv’s lap, and Liv strokes her hair.

      The heat, now downgraded to a subtle warmth, then reaches Lance and Tabitha. Lance placed his hand on her back a few minutes ago, but Tabs wriggled away. She’s the only one who hasn’t found herself in intimate contact with anyone in the time they’ve been cooped up in this place, and she’s not about to start now.

      In the middle of the room, Simon leans limp against the sofa, his arms fixed to his side, tied up with an orange extension cord Lance found under the sink.

      After Simon’s appearance was met with a volley of screams, he had to be shown through the patio window the fresh body he had apparently missed in the garden. When he turned back, his ashen face was met with the pounding fist of Lance. The punch looked like it could’ve taken Simon’s head off, as Lance had charged, barely breaking stride, before making the connection.

      As Simon comes to, he meets Lance’s eye and tries to stand on impulse, falling back down into the tiles when he realises his legs don’t work as well when bound with two metres of extension cord.

      ‘We do not want to hurt you, we want to talk,’ says Justine.

      Simon breathes hard, blood ribboning from both of his nostrils, his eyes darting around to assess the danger level of the situation.

      Roberto’s eyes flick to Lance’s. ‘Well, some of us do want to hurt you. But they won’t be allowed to. For now.’

      Simon avoids Lance’s malevolent gaze as his mind rattles through the chain of events that led him here. ‘It’s not supposed to go like this,’ Simon whispers.

      Liv, in particular, is disturbed by these words, her mind spinning off down a host of avenues in search of possible meanings.

      ‘Don’t play punch-drunk,’ says Lance. ‘I only gave you a tap. If I’d really wanted to hit you, you would’ve known about it.’

      ‘Please – I don’t know what’s going on,’ says Simon.

      ‘Don’t worry, we’ve pieced it together for you, mate,’ says Roberto. ‘We just need you to fill in the last couple of blanks. If you do that for us, we won’t hurt you. We’ll hand you over to the police once that boat comes, and you can deal with—’

      ‘We don’t even know if he called anyone. If there even is a boat coming,’ Summer says.

      ‘There is a boat coming. It’ll be with us at… 5 a.m.,’ says Simon, struggling to check his little round watch on his bound wrist. ‘That’s less than seven hours.’

      ‘Lie,’ says Lance. ‘That’s his first lie.’

      ‘How do you know?’ says Tabs.

      ‘I can tell. When you’ve worked the doors, you can tell a lie: I found the pills on the floor, I was just brushing up against her, this ain’t my Bowie knife. Trust me, I can sniff this shit out.’

      ‘I’m not lying,’ says Simon. ‘If you believe nothing else, hang on to this. I really don’t know how this is going to go. But if I don’t make it, remember, you just have to make it to 5 a.m.’

      The group want to be buoyed by this, but any glimmer they’ve had in the past few hours has been quickly snuffed out.

      ‘Okay, mate, here’s the meat of it,’ says Roberto. ‘We know you locked Dawn inside that office with you, and when she tried to escape you killed her with the shutter.’ Simon’s eyes look like they’re doing long division. ‘Then we figure you made your way upstairs without anyone noticing, saw Sly was apart from the group, you slit his throat and pushed him through the window. But how did you get the knife back into the kitchen without any of us noticing?’

      Simon lowers his head. They can’t see his eyes – he could be laughing or crying. ‘No, no, no,’ he says. ‘Dawn’s dead?’

      He moans, heaving large sighs.

      ‘Oh, give the man an Oscar,’ shouts Lance. ‘It’s you that ended her!’

      ‘Can’t be dead. Not her,’ he mutters.

      ‘Don’t act like you care!’ Lance shouts, Tabs holding on to him as he leans in further. ‘What d’you care?’

      Then Simon pushes his face towards Lance, their heads almost touching.

      ‘Because I lo…’ In the briefest fraction of a second Simon gives a rueful smile, then shakes his head again. ‘Because… she was a sweet and beautiful person. And this isn’t what was supposed to happen. It’s not…’

      Lance sits down, a look of triumph on his face. ‘I know you wanted to finish your plan, you probably had some order you wanted to pick us off in. But we got to you first.’

      ‘Someone’s making you look like fools. Someone here. But it isn’t me,’ says Simon.

      Uncomfortable glances get passed around as Simon spits, his mouth filled with blood, his chest with grief.

      ‘Dawn and I were locked safe in the office,’ says Simon. ‘I thought for a moment we could stay there together. Until the boat came. But I knew the one person who didn’t do this was her, which meant we were leaving all of you in the dark with a murderer. She said we had to do something. The least I could do was get those lights back on using the back-up generator.’

      ‘A real heart of gold, eh?’ says Lance.

      But he’s soon met with shushes, from the others.

      ‘So I opened up the shutter, climbed out the window into the rain, and told Dawn to wait for me and that she should pull down the shutter immediately if anyone else came. I found the generator and got everything working again. You didn’t think about how those lights came back on?’

      ‘But then you came back into the living room. You didn’t go straight back to Dawn, where it was safe. Why?’ says Tabs.

      ‘Conscience got the better of me,’ he says. ‘I brought you all here, and I know each and every one of you, maybe…