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“Where is the fucking food?” Angel yelled.
“What food?” came from the far side of the clearing, together with, “I have it,” from behind us.
We all swung around in different directions, trying to identify the voices.
Bayer was coming up the path from Palm Tree Rest, his face like thunder. Conor, calm and collected, was walking up behind us from the beach, with a bottle of water and a box of muffins in either hand.
“I have it,” Conor repeated equably. He held up the box. “Don’t worry.”
“You?” Angel stalked down the steps towards him, her hands on her hips. She looked like a haughty queen. “You have the food? Where is the rest of it?”
“It’s safe, don’t worry. But rats had started to go for some of the packaging, and in view of that, and your boyfriend’s elastic attitudes towards rations, I felt it would be safer over at the water villa.”
“I’m sorry, you felt?” I said at the same time as Bayer growled, “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” and Dan said, “Wait, you took our food?”
Angel seemed to have lost the power of speech. Only Joel looked unshocked. In fact, he looked more than unshocked. He looked… shifty.
“Joel.” I swung round on him. “Did you know about this?”
“I—” He opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “I mean, he’s not wrong. We were going to lose half of it to rats. The water villa is a much safer place to store it.”
“Then we discuss that.” I could feel my blood pressure rising. “You don’t just wait until we go to bed and make a unilateral decision.”
“We’re discussing it now,” Conor said. He smiled, but I didn’t smile back.
“There is fucking nothing to discuss,” Bayer said furiously. The veins in his neck and forehead were standing out, and I could see one big vein running down from his jaw that was throbbing visibly. “Nobody died and made you king of this island, you fucking prick. Give me back my share or I will end you.”
He said the last words with a barely contained ferocity that sounded like he meant it literally. I think if he could have killed Conor in that moment, he would have done it.
But Conor didn’t back down. He didn’t even move. He simply set the water bottle down on the path and folded his arms.
“I’ll give you your share when you prove you can be trusted,” he said. Then he smiled. I think it was the smile that did it—at that, Bayer snapped.
He rushed at Conor with his head down, like a bull, and slammed into him with a force that I felt in my knees. Conor folded with the impact, and the two of them crashed onto the path, grappling like pro wrestlers, rolling this way and that on the sand. Angel was shrieking again. Dan was shouting, “Stop it! Just fucking stop it, the two of you!”
Conor had pulled himself upright, and now he was backing away from Bayer, towards the cabana steps, but Bayer rushed him again and they both fell to the ground again, their bodies thumping against the wooden stairs in a way that made the whole cabana shake. For a few minutes there was nothing but confusion, their bodies rolling this way and that, first Conor uppermost, then Bayer, then Conor again. And then, somehow, Bayer was on top, straddling Conor. He pulled back his fist and punched Conor square in the face. Blood sprayed everywhere, spattering across the sand, and then Conor twisted out of Bayer’s grip and was on top of him, straddling him like a bull. He was hitting Bayer again and again in the head, Bayer’s skull bouncing off the steps with every blow.
“Stop it!” Angel was screaming. “Stop it, you’re killing him!”
And then suddenly… suddenly I knew she was right. Bayer was no longer fighting back. In fact, Conor had him by the front of his T-shirt with one hand, hitting him with the other, and Bayer’s body was flopping like a rag doll with every one of Conor’s punches.
“Conor!” I shouted. “Conor, for God’s sake, stop, stop right now!”
For a minute I wasn’t sure that Conor had heard me. And then, with what looked like a supreme effort, he got ahold of himself and let Bayer’s shirt go.
Bayer fell back onto the steps with an audible thud, and Conor stood up and staggered over to the bushes, spitting blood out of his mouth.
Angel rushed across to Bayer, and I followed.
“Bayer,” she was crying, kneeling beside him. “Bayer, are you okay? Wake up! Fuck, Lyla, help me, he won’t wake up.”
“Bayer?” I crouched beside her, touching his cheek. There was no reaction. In fact, no sign of life at all that I could see. The blood in his nostrils wasn’t bubbling, and I couldn’t detect any trace of breathing, though it was hard to hear anything above Angel’s stifled sobs.
“Bayer.” I slapped his cheek very gently and then pulled back an eyelid. My stomach turned uneasily. Beneath, the pupil of his hazel eye was dilated to a glassy, uniform black—and it didn’t contract as the light hit it. I pressed a hand over one ear and put the other to his chest but could hear nothing above the sound of Angel weeping. “Angel, I’m sorry, could you be a little quieter?” I felt horrible asking her, but it was impossible to hear anything with her gulping next to my other ear.
“Angel,” Dan said softly. “Angel, come and sit over here with me for a second. Just a second, okay?”
He led her a few feet away, and I put my ear back to Bayer’s chest, right over his heart, and held my breath, the better to hear.
