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.
One of the maids looked from Nelson to Grace and shook her head.
‘Maybe he’s sleeping in,’ said the chef. ‘Independence Day yesterday an’ all.’
Nelson pulled a face and walked out. ‘Well, wherever he’s got to, we should tell your dad. Whether he’s injured or not, we can’t have a missing boat boy on the island when he’s bringing over those important clients.’
Grace looked over to the house, feeling as if she wanted to be sick.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nelson with a sympathetic expression. ‘He’ll be understanding.’
Grace snorted. You don’t know my father very well, she thought as they walked back along the path. No, you don’t know him at all.
11
Alex had run all the way back to the house, ahead of Nelson and Grace, carried by a wave of hope and relief. Maybe Bradley wasn’t dead after all, he thought as he sprinted up the path. Maybe we didn’t leave a dying man out there. Back on the beach, when he’d bent over the deckhand, he thought he had seen movement in the boy’s face. He wasn’t certain, just a flicker at most, but a possible sign of life, certainly. And now the boy was gone – he must have been OK.
But you still left him, didn’t you? mocked an inner voice. You still abandoned someone who needed your help.
It was true. What Miles had said out there had frightened him. He had come so far from a mill town terraced house, living a life of luxury on a private island beyond his wildest dreams, and – he was ashamed to admit it – his first thought when he’d seen the body was that it was all going to be taken away.
Alex stopped by the pool and bent over to catch his breath, then powered on to the house, eager to break the news to Miles. Down on the beach he’d hated Miles for somehow trying to implicate him in that stupid fight he’d had with Bradley. But there was no body. And if Bradley was OK, what was the problem?
He was just feet from his bedroom when the door to the room next door creaked open. Miles was standing there in a navy dressing gown, his expression flinty.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he spat, looking up and down the corridor warily.
Alex searched for words but could find none.
‘I said where have you been?’ snapped Miles.
He stepped back into his room and Alex followed. Miles closed the door.
‘I went to see Nelson,’ said Alex finally.