The Role Model: A shocking psychological thriller with several twists by Daniel Hurst (big ebook reader txt) 📗

The first job on my list had been an obvious one. I had to get the body out of the house.

After listening out for any signs from upstairs that my daughter might have woken up and heard what happened, I had felt assured enough from the silence above that she was still asleep. Therefore, I had got to work straight away, grabbing several bin liners from the cupboard under the kitchen sink and laying them all out in a line, starting at the body by the coffee table and ending at my back door. Then I put my hands under Tim’s armpits and dragged him towards the door, careful to ensure that the blood being left in his wake was only spilling onto the bin liners and not onto the carpet.

There would only be so many red stains that I would be able to blame on a red wine spillage.

Opening the back door, I had dragged Tim through it and along the side of the house before bringing him to a stop just before my driveway. There, I had checked that there was nobody out walking on the street at that time in case they witnessed what I was about to do. After putting a couple more bin liners in the boot of my car, all I had to do then was get Tim from the side of the house and into the back of my vehicle without anybody seeing me in that two minute window.

If there was ever a time when you didn’t want a nosy neighbour peering out through their curtains, it was that moment right there.

It had been hard work to not only drag Tim the rest of the way to the car but more so to lift him into the boot. But I had managed it, no doubt helped by a combination of desperation and fear, and it had been a relief to close the boot and have his body out of sight.

From there, I had run back inside and done my best to clean up the mess in the house, which mainly involved trying to get the bloodstains out of the carpet. Already knowing most of the tricks in the book when it came to getting red wine stains out, I tried everything, but all I had seemed to do was make more of a mess. There was no doubt about it. The carpet was ruined. So too the sofa where Tim had reached out a bloody hand in a desperate attempt to cling to life. I knew Chloe would buy my lie about it being a disaster caused by a bottle of red wine, but not many other people would, which meant a redecoration was in order. But that came later.

The body in the boot took priority.

With Chloe asleep upstairs, I hadn’t been able to deal with Tim’s corpse that first night for fear of leaving her on her own. Therefore, I had little choice but to wait for the next day, where I would be able to arrange for my parents to have Chloe for a sleepover so I could deal with the small matter of burying the body in the boot. That meant I had to go to bed that night with the knowledge that Tim was still out there on my driveway, his blood dripping onto the bin liners in the boot as I tried to close my eyes and get some rest.

Just as had been the case with Rupert more recently, I got no sleep that night as I counted down the hours until the morning when Chloe would wake up and ask me if I had a nice time with Tim. She had been her usual sleepy self when I had gone into her room that morning to make sure she was up in time for school, and she only really woke up properly when she went downstairs and saw the red patches on the carpet and sofa.

‘What happened, Mummy?’ she had asked me, looking rather upset at the state of the room that she spent so much time in after school.

‘Mummy spilt some red wine,’ I had told her, shaking my head to reinforce how silly I felt about the whole thing. ‘Almost a whole bottle.’

‘Do you want me to help you clean?’ Chloe had replied sweetly, but I had shot that idea down straight away, not wanting her to go anywhere near the red patches if I could help it.

‘Thank you, love, but that’s the best I can get it. I’m going to have to get a new carpet, I’m afraid.’

‘And a new sofa?’

‘Yes, and a new sofa.’

I was fortunate that Chloe didn’t mention Tim much that first morning, instead content to quietly have her breakfast before I told her it was time to leave to catch the school bus. Normally we would drive to the bus stop, which was around five minutes from the house, but that day, and with what I knew to be residing in the back of the car, I suggested that we walk. Thankfully, Chloe hadn’t protested.

It had been a relief to see her off on that bus so that I could get back home and organise my day. I’d phoned in sick from what should have been another day of police training before calling my parents and asking them if Chloe could stay over that night. I told them I had an issue at the house that needed fixing, and it would be easier if she was out of the way, but they didn’t complain. They always loved spending time with their granddaughter, although I did have to resist all attempts by my father to call around and offer his assistance to whatever the problem was at the house.

With that done, I had been free to get started on the tedious but critical task of ripping up the blood-stained patches of carpet from the living room floor. I knew that calling a carpet fitter to do this for