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Beach Bodies: Part Three
Ross Armstrong
Part Three of the gripping Beach Bodies thriller by Ross Armstrong The shocking final instalment of Beach Bodies – with a twist you won’t see coming! Following the distressing events of the previous hours, the ‘Sex on the Beach’ contestants are coming apart at the seams. Previous loyalties start to fray, and with secrets the group thought buried now coming to the fore, it seems like murder isn’t the only thing on the agenda. Will the contestants survive until morning? Or is this one summer they really won’t be able to forget... Shutter Island meets Love Island in this unmissable final instalment of Beach Bodies! Praise for Ross Armstrong: ‘Absolutely loved The Girls Beneath. 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’ 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
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 (#ulink_d35a1ffa-1d69-56a2-ab2f-2fc025dc8281)
The Watcher
The Girls Beneath
Beach Bodies:
Part Three
Ross Armstrong
Copyright (#ulink_cc84b673-8595-5bdf-a57f-a5f9424e92f7)
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 © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008361372
Note to Readers (#ulink_d0655f0b-944a-5a1a-ab10-e0b112bdb8c7)
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
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Praise for Ross Armstrong (#ulink_548ae995-7e5a-5fa3-9141-f9e252d25189)
‘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
For my wonderful mother, who barely watches TV and falls asleep in the cinema.
‘My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange!’
Ovid, The Metamorphoses
(trans. Brookes Moore)
Contents
Cover (#u55a32154-4476-536e-8884-5f7492c6afc4)
About the Author (#u2b93328b-8eab-5382-912d-9c39919cb9e7)
Booklist (#ulink_4c4fcc65-be41-5fb5-b5c7-414e99062a3c)
Title Page (#u60f17f80-c225-5987-8f5f-9db79e66d355)
Copyright (#ulink_360d8976-05f8-5663-bdbf-45d0ad3c10bb)
Note to Readers (#ulink_8c48dede-fa78-5a46-908d-a6c69043eef6)
Praise (#ulink_481408ec-d755-5e94-ae9a-d905c36ef233)
Dedication (#ue70c59a8-abb6-55c6-8e35-141da0a1a1f6)
Epigraph (#ua7a0ef2e-8710-5475-878e-1e134e22a8c2)
Previously in Beach Bodies… (#ulink_c1014b95-425e-557c-b574-ab46d7ff2b64)
8.41 p.m. (#ulink_828ce3d9-000d-5bc7-b4fb-806b7f0be886)
London, Waterloo, Rennie Street… (#ulink_7dd9e312-3f45-5a23-a655-aec855231136)
10.10 p.m. (#ulink_6aeb0245-ed24-5151-934c-db7bd4875428)
London, Waterloo, Rennie Street… (#ulink_981bf9ed-0947-57b3-99d2-513dcb8c7d22)
11.08 p.m. (#ulink_33a3743c-a9af-5a98-97b5-fcc5c245fd0f)
Zack: Outside (#litres_trial_promo)
00.32 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
Zack: Afloat (#litres_trial_promo)
01.01 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
London, Waterloo, Rennie Street… (#litres_trial_promo)
01.33 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
02.10 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
02.52 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)
04.44 a.m.: London, Waterloo, Rennie Street… (#litres_trial_promo)
Far away. But not so, so far… (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Previously in Beach Bodies… (#ulink_3179cde6-4a66-50cf-9c24-333de9946e00)
- Tommy’s head hits the sun-lounger, while his body leans against the Love Nest window high above.
- Every single contestant on the show is in some way accounted for when it happens.
- To further the mystery, Tommy is said to be the most universally loved of the group.
- The only other person in the villa, Simon, their handler and psychiatrist, finally appears from his office below the building to tell them the show is over and they will be picked up in fourteen hours. They just had to see out the night. He explains that because the motion-intuitive cameras were still feeding back to London, the villa is, as strange as it may seem, the safest place to be.
- However, during a session with Justine, she sees that the feed is actually down. But has he sold them this lie to keep them safe, or is he making excuses to keep them here? And what’s the cause of the meltdown he has when a local fisherman brings them wood for the fire?
- During this episode a tense Liv brandishes a knife, which has a whisper of blood on it. She also has a small cut on her hand. Liv claims the wound got there when she cut herself on a different knife while chopping vegetables with Tabs, but others think this is the murder weapon and Liv could’ve injured herself on it in the act of killing Tommy.
- Lance, however, has turned his attentions from Zack to Simon, whom he accompanies to his office, along with Dawn, to review camera footage depicting Liv’s story about the knife.
- In the living room above, Liv tries to rally Sly and Summer to take a look at the body upstairs. But Sly in particular is reticent to do this. Not least because the only place there are no cameras, which he believes are still on and keeping them safe, is the Love Nest.
- In the basement office, footage seems to indict Liv, but when they rewind the images and watch a second time, they do indeed show her cutting herself. Now Dawn definitely thinks that something ‘surreal’ is going on.
- Zack heads out into the storm to try and locate the police on the island, as the group grow increasingly nervous that Simon hasn’t contacted anyone about the murder at all.
- Liv’s suspicions about Lance deepen when she, Sly and Summer find no trace of a body in the Love Nest.
- Far below, Lance, still suspicious of Simon after he seems to be trying to get the women alone, comes within an inch of strangling the doctor to death. As he lies on the carpet of the office, they find a piece of footage that shows Sly arguing with Tommy shortly before Tommy was killed.
- When the power goes out, Sly goes missing.
- We learn about Sly telling Simon stories about his military background.
- Down in the office, Simon reveals he is not technically a doctor. He and Lance fight over a moleskin Simon has been using to take notes on them all. But it is Lance that gets shut out behind a thick panic room door, leaving Simon and Dawn alone together.
- Justine finds Lance at the foot of the door exhausted from trying to get in. She slaps him hard and takes him back upstairs.
- When the group come back to find Tabs alone breathing heavily and apparently in trauma, she reacts wildly to being patronised or cast as weak.
- Simon and Dawn have sex in the office below. They have, in a bizarre twist of love and logic, been having an affair for some time.
- The lights come back on. Sly’s body lies on a broken sun-lounger in the garden, his body thrown from a height and his throat slashed with what looks like the same serrated knife as the one in the kitchen drawer.
- The group find fresh blood on it, but have no idea how anyone managed to spirit it away, let alone sneak it back into the drawer, without anyone seeing.
- Out in the storm, Zack sees that there is no dormant volcano on the island, as Simon had claimed.
- We learn that Tommy secretly kissed Liv late one night.
