Beach Bodies: Part One
Ten hopeful contestants. A popular island-based reality TV show. And one headless corpse... Bronzed, beautiful and hungry for love, the contestants on ‘Sex on the Beach’ – the most-watched show on TV right now – are all there for one thing: fame. Holed up together in a glamorous island paradise, what could possibly go wrong? It’s been five weeks now and the group are tighter than ever, even if some friendships are beginning to fray and unlikely allegiances are being forged in their place. But when one of the contestants is found brutally murdered, what should have been a summer of sun, sea and sex soon becomes a living nightmare. With no-one able to get in or out of the complex, the murderer must still be among them. And they’re not done yet... Shutter Island meets Love Island in this first instalment of Beach Bodies... look out for parts two and three later this summer! Praise for Ross Armstrong ‘Absolutely loved Head Case. Couldn’t put it down. Tragic, funny and frightening. Ross Armstrong has written another cracker’ Chris Whitaker ‘Ross Armstrong has created a brilliant hero in Tom, and this novel is an enjoyable addition to the psychological thriller genre. Five Stars’ Heat ‘Like Christopher Nolan’s Memento, Ross Armstrong delivers a twisty mystery through the perspective of a fractured brain. Original and gripping. Tom Mondrian, and his unique outlook, will stay with me’ Peter Swanson ‘An eerily atmospheric reworking of Hitchcock’s Rear Window’ The Guardian ‘Addictive and eerie, you’ll finish the book wanting to chat about it’ Closer ‘A twisted homage to Hitchcock set in a recognisably post-Brexit broken Britain. Tense, fast-moving and with an increasingly unreliable narrator, The Watcher has all the hallmarks of a winner' Martyn Waites ‘Ross Armstrong will feed your appetite for suspense’ Evening Standard ‘Unreliable narrator + Rear Window-esque plot = sure-fire hit’ The Sun
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PRAISE FOR ROSS ARMSTRONG
‘Addictive and eerie, you’ll finish the book wanting to chat about it’
– Closer Magazine, Must Read
‘A twisted homage to Hitchcock set in a recognisably post-Brexit broken Britain. Tense, fast-moving and with an increasingly unreliable narrator, The Watcher has all the hallmarks of a winner.’
– Martyn Waites
‘Ross Armstrong will feed your appetite for suspense’
– Evening Standard
‘Unreliable narrator + Rear Window-esque plot = sure-fire hit’
– The Sun
‘Brilliantly written… this psychological thriller is definitely one that will keep you up to the early hours. Five Stars.’
– Heat, Book of the Week
‘A dark, unsettling page turner’
– Claire Douglas, author of Local Girl Missing
‘Creepy and compelling’
– Debbie Howells, author of The Bones of You
‘The Watcher is an intense, unsettling read… one that had me feeling like I needed to keep checking over my shoulder as I read.’
– Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me
ROSS ARMSTRONG is an actor and writer based in North London. He studied English Literature at Warwick University and acting at RADA. As a stage and screen actor he has performed in the West End, Broadway and in upcoming shows for HBO and Netflix. Ross’ debut title The Watcher was a top-twenty bestseller and has been longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.
Also by Ross Armstrong
The Watcher
The Girls Beneath
Beach Bodies: Part One
ROSS ARMSTRONG
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Ross Armstrong 2019
Ross Armstrong asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008361358
Version: 2019-05-16
Table of Contents
For my wonderful mother, who barely watches TV and falls asleep in the cinema.
‘Let me sing to you now, about how people turn into other things’
Ovid, The Metamorphoses
3.06 p.m.
Sly, Liv and Summer smoke cigarettes on the sun deck as they discuss what to do about Zack’s wild mood swings, and more than that: about his habit of stealing the girls’ clothes, his insistence on spraying everyone with water every five minutes ‘cos it’s jokes’, and his constant attempts to get everyone to wrestle.
He has become bannoying: a phrase coined by Summer to describe that point where boring becomes annoying.
Sly flicks his long mop of wet-look mohawk to one side as he listens to both women speak, peering over his purple half-moon shades like a black Nineties vampire. His look is augmented by a nose ring; he was picked by the producers as ‘the edgy one’. Though this refers purely to his look. His personality, by contrast, is very simple. He’s either a man at peace with his inner thoughts, or one that doesn’t have many.
Liv talks passionately, sawing the air with her hands, as she explains that she feels that Zack’s not being real. She suggests they confront him in a peaceful but firm way and give him a fair hearing, a kind of intervention, that would allow him to understand their views in a non-confrontational way. ‘A kind of non-confrontational confrontation, if that makes sense,’ she adds, pushing her dark hair away from her olive-green eyes.
She believes Zack should be given a chance to come out of himself.
Summer, however, is more concerned Zack is being himself. And the last thing she wants is for him to come out of himself any more. Summer’s Sly’s girl, and he takes a long draw on his cigarette as he watches her push out her chest when she pulls her long blonde hair back and ties it up with that artful flourish of fingers he has come to adore.
Sly has practised the art of speaking little and agreeing with all. He nods and says nothing. Everyone is happy they’re on the same page: Zack gives them the ick, he’s being totally extra and they need to tell him to play it low key.
Sly nods again as he pushes up his shades to rub his eye. It still stings.
*
Curls of smoke carry up, swim eastward on a breeze. They drift through an open window, their charcoal scent turned invisible as it dances under the nostrils of Justine and Roberto as they have yet another tearful conversation, this time in the bathroom. Him: backside against the tiles, next to the toilet, his chin resting on his right knee. Her: standing over him in a crouch, the kind used to greet a toddler at the climax of their first toddle. A pose you’d call sympathetic if there wasn’t another grace note being played in her stillness. Her expectancy. She’s waiting. She wants him to admit something.
