Into the Fire

by Rachael Blok

  ‘He replied to me this morning. He was paid five hundred dollars. It was worth so much more.’

  There is movement in the hall, footsteps. Voices carry even through the closed door and time presses. Lois leans forward, her voice dropping to a whisper, and he’s scared – scared that her tendency to secrecy is a sign she had known all along? He can’t bear to believe it, but he recalls the flash of suspicion when he saw her in the amphitheatre at midnight, sure she was there to meet the ‘researcher’ from Dhaka. He protected her secrets then, thinking Maarten was suspicious. Would he do it again? His fingers flex at the memory.

  Iqbal shakes his head. ‘He said he signed a document, but he couldn’t read it. He can’t read English. He was told it was a good idea, but it needed a lot of improvement. They offered him the money, and said it was up to him if he took it and wanted to sell his idea.’

  Lois is ashen. Green stones staring from a white wall.

  ‘So, he took some money, was told he was getting a good deal. And if it is our product – if, if, if – then Archipelago used fraudulent means to obtain the IP. IP theft. It would ruin us.’

  Shaking his head, Iqbal says, ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Have you mentioned this to Maarten?’ Lois asks.

  ‘No,’ Iqbal says. It needs to be handled carefully. Compensation with no legal battle – it seems to him the most sensible route. If they could credit Obaidur, pay him what he’s owed, then it need never see court. They could easily avoid being in breach of contract on the new franchise gaming rights.

  With his skin, teeth, nails and bones, he hopes Lois doesn’t ask him to ignore it. To ignore Obaidur.

  ‘Can we fly to him? Once the police are finished with this? Can we fly to him, and explain it all in full? I’ll come with you. We can tell him the whole thing, and he can choose what to do next.’ Lois leans and pulls him in close. He can feel her heart thudding at speed. He thinks of her hands shaking in the hospital. Those same hands pulling him in tight now.

  ‘Iqbal, I’m so sorry. We’ll fix this.’

  The door rattles, and she can hear Ebba talking to a voice she doesn’t recognise, and shouting from the stairs, calling everyone down. There’s barking somewhere. The police must have brought dogs.

  ‘Iqbal.’ Her voice strangled, Lois pleads with him; her nails dig into his forearm, and he’s surprised by the sudden panic in her tone.

  The footsteps are louder now, almost at the kitchen. Lois speeds up her words, they tumble quickly, quietly. Like breath against his ear.

  ‘I know it was you on Friday night. I saw you hit Maarten. I don’t know why you did it, but I won’t say anything. Was it you? Did you suspect Aksel then? Did Maarten see you do something? Was it you…’

  But there’s no time. Iqbal chokes on whatever he wants to say; the kitchen door opens, and an officer he doesn’t recognise enters the room, wearing a full covered white suit, like the kind he’s seen on the TV.

  There’s no time to say anything at all.

  PART THREE

  56

  FILIP

  ‘Filip, I’m scared. Do you think they know?’ Sophie holds his hand and her palm is warm; she pulls into his shoulder, turning her back to the rest of the room, where low chatter mixes with the sound of teacups clinking and the noise of the search above them: footsteps on the stairs, the bark of a dog; doors slamming outside as the vans from SOCO unload and reload.

  He tightens his grip on her hand, leans down and kisses her head. He feels sick this morning. His stomach is lurching, but then he hasn’t eaten anything. Drunk nothing since the coffee in the kitchen earlier. It had been bitter, but he was polite, didn’t want to refuse.

  ‘No. They don’t know. We need to sit here, look calm, drink tea. We have nothing to worry about,’ he whispers, but he is worried. They burned the evidence, but even he knows that forensic examination is likely to find some traces in the fire. He hadn’t factored in a police search, and so soon. Once again, instead of actually looking after her, he’d gone for gesture.

  Grand gestures are how he’s composed himself in his head. He had wanted to seem determined earlier, in charge. But he’d been stupid. He’d been the fool he was always so worried he would seem. He should have gone straight to Maarten. Now what are they left with?

  And a whisper, at the back of his head: Did she do it? Had she tried to kill Marieke and killed Aksel instead?

  *

  Rounded up in the dining room, they sit waiting. Tense. Expectant. The occasional bark of a dog or a shout from the SOCO team reminds them of the greater powers at play. Maarten enters and looks tired. He touches the side of his head where he was hit on Friday.

  Friday, Filip thinks, feels like a lifetime ago.

  Maarten begins, and there’s a scratch to his voice, of lack of sleep and dehydration. ‘We would normally interview you down at the station, but the press is starting to gather, so we’ll stay here. It will protect your privacy as much as possible.’

  ‘I can’t believe Aksel is dead,’ Marieke says.

  A hush falls. Filip sees Lois reach out a hand to Iqbal, and Ebba, standing close, falls into an overstuffed chair, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

  Marieke is shaking her head. ‘I just can’t believe it. I never expected… I just thought he’d always…’

  Marieke must be scared, Filip thinks. If someone tried to kill her and got Aksel instead, then she must be more terrified than ever.

  The hairs stand on his arms. He thinks of Aksel’s clutch, of the taste of his breath. The kiss of a dead man.

  Maybe it’s that which has taken hold of his stomach. The room is fuzzy for a second, and he feels himself sway.

  And the whisper, Is it her? Is it Sophie? But no. It can’t be. She might occasionally rank car brand above kindness when choosing friends; she can be rude to waiters, rude to cleaners. She listens only to the parts of conversations that interest her, tuning out the rest. And she’s always late – like it’s a policy. But she’d never kill anyone. She can’t even kill a spider. She screams for him to take them away, but if he flushes it down the bath she’s incensed.

  There’s no way she has killed someone. And he mustn’t allow exhaustion to cloud his judgement. She had tried to frighten away Marieke, but there’s no way she tried to kill her.

  ‘How did he die?’ This time it’s Ebba who speaks. Her chair is by a table that is too small for all the teacups, but no one seems to want to sit at the dinner table, where they’d sat only thirty-six hours ago; when Aksel had played the piano, when Filip had cried.

  ‘That is something we’re looking into,’ Maarten says.

  ‘Surely he died in the crash?’ Iqbal asks. ‘And if it wasn’t the helicopter that actually killed him, I thought he had a heart attack?’

  There’s some muttering.

  Marieke says, ‘Those are sniffer dogs.’ She looks out of the window. ‘What are they sniffing? Are you looking for drugs?’

  ‘Oh God, it’s not poison!’ Sophie’s face is pale and she grabs a chair. ‘Oh my God, you don’t think he was poisoned?’

  Ebba stands slowly. ‘Marieke gave her drink to Aksel. Was something intended for Marieke? And Aksel got it instead?’

  Now the muttering becomes loud, chattering; someone half screams. Filip’s head is aching and a blond officer has run towards Sophie, to allow her to lean on him. She’s swaying. ‘Oh God,’ she says.

  ‘It could just have been a heart attack!’ Lois says loudly.

  Filip wonders why he himself is so doubtful about this, why he actually believes it to be something else. Maybe it was the helicopter that had triggered a heart attack. Had anyone actually said anything other? He tries to remember what the police had said last night. He thinks of himself, Ebba and Lois, looking at each other. Thinking of murder.

  ‘Please, calm down. Please.’ Maarten raises his hands. The room falls quiet.

  ‘Well,’ Maarten says, ‘we will know much more very soon. If I can ask you all for
your patience. The search won’t take long, then you can return to your rooms. If you wouldn’t mind, DS Atkinson and DI Verma here will take your statements in the study, which leads just off the top of the room.

  ‘Filip,’ he says, and Filip finds himself the focus of the room. He knows he didn’t kill Aksel, but he feels a flush build in his cheeks. That morning he had burned evidence of the letters Marieke had received.

  ‘Of course,’ he manages, and Sophie’s grip is tight on his arm. He gently removes her hand, kisses her and follows the two officers that flank Maarten. ‘Back soon,’ he says.

  The room is silent.

  57

  LOIS

  There is rain again. Lois listens to it, holding Iqbal’s hand lightly and finding she is unable to let go.

  The other hand holds a mug of coffee. The large cup is made with a thick clay and looks hand painted. She can’t remember buying it, but then Ebba is a whirlwind, and sometimes things arrive in the house. They’d employed an interior designer, she remembers. She examines the mug without really looking at it. She thinks of the dark warm Friday night. Of seeing Iqbal raise a stick, hesitate, and whack Maarten over the head. Then he’d stood for a second. She’d frozen. She’d watched him throw the stick away, glance once in her direction and run full pelt up the lawn.

  She squeezes his hand. Marieke sits opposite. They’re in the armchairs near the fire, set aside from the dining table. There is a rug in front of the fire, but she does remember where that came from. She’d bought it in Dhaka. She’d paid what had been asked – she’d heard a few Western voices at the market, pushing for a bargain in their pale chinos and expensive sunglasses, proud of their skills. She’d talked to the man selling the rugs, who had been full of questions: Where are you from? What do you think of Bangladesh? She smiles, thinking of the warm air, drinking sweet cha. She’d browsed in bookshops, taken a river trip. All the day before the factory visit.

  Marieke pours another tea and pushes it into Ebba’s hands. Their brief conversation allows Lois a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, speaking as low as she dares. She’s turned to Iqbal and he dips his head, doesn’t quite meet her eye. ‘I threw it at you, that I’d seen you hit Maarten. I haven’t had a chance to ask you about it. It wasn’t fair of me.’

  ‘Lois… I,’ he says, his voice quiet. ‘I saw…’

  ‘Lois, would you like to go next?’ the female officer calls over.

  ‘Of course,’ Lois replies, sending her answer loudly across the room. As she stands, she clutches Iqbal, leans in to his ear. ‘What did you see?’

  Finally, he looks up, his brown eyes kind, wet. His lips are near her ear as she leans down on his shoulder, as though she needs help rising.

  ‘I saw you. In the dark. I thought you were meeting… I thought you were meeting him. I saw Maarten follow you and I didn’t want—’ He stops, and Lois can feel the officer’s eyes on the back of her neck.

  ‘Meeting who? Meeting who, Iqbal?’

  ‘I thought you were meeting Aksel. I thought maybe you knew. That maybe the police had wind of what had happened, with all the eyes on Marieke and Archipelago. Maybe Maarten was on to it, and was following you. Despite it all, I couldn’t let him… I had to protect you. I had to stop him.’

  There are few moments where breath is really taken away, despite all the talk of it. It is, Lois supposes, how some people feel after a marriage proposal. But in this moment, where someone had protected her and thrown himself against every instinct he held, her breath is nowhere to be found.

  ‘Iqbal,’ she manages.

  And he shrugs, looking down, not proud of himself. ‘I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him later. I’ll tell him I thought I was chasing the sender of the letters, and then when I saw it was him, I was afraid. I ran away.’

  ‘Lois?’ There’s a change in tone from the officer now, and Lois makes her way across the room.

  58

  MAARTEN

  ‘How are we getting on?’ Maarten asks Adrika. They’re all tired, including the guests. They’ve been going for a few hours now.

  ‘I can’t say we’re miles further forward.’

  Maarten thinks of the earlier interviews from the catering staff: That dark-haired woman talking to Filip Schmidt. Really angry, almost passionate.

  Maarten thinks of Filip’s discomfort when his wife had arrived, of Sophie’s hands, clenched tight.

  ‘Ask Sophie Atwood. If her husband is having an affair with Marieke Visser, she has a motive.’

  Adrika nods. ‘Anything come back on the search yet?’

  ‘I’m stepping outside for an update now.’

  Looking round the room as he weaves his way through the chairs, hands twist, eyes glance back and forth. They all sit with secrets, he’s sure of it. Secrets they believe are worth protecting, with the lives of others.

  Thinking of a possible affair, Maarten realises there had been undercurrents. He could feel it in the room: the taste of jealousy, of something festering.

  And Sophie hadn’t been on the helicopter. They hadn’t really thought about her.

  Maarten glances out of the window. There are dogs sweeping the grounds, sniffing for clues.

  He stops and shuffles the statements around, rereading comments relating to Filip and Sophie Atwood. Filip’s statement was interesting, or rather, the figures were: ‘I’d found out that Aksel was getting much better terms – millions. I know that makes it sound like I might have a motive. I know people have killed for less…’ and they had, Maarten thought. But there had also been tension between Filip and Aksel over Sophie Atwood. He remembers their piano duet.

  Jealous of money, jealous of love.

  His head is thick. He picks up the coffee, which left untouched has gone from hot to warm to cold, and drinks it quickly.

  Looking for Niamh, the CSM today, he asks, ‘How’s the search going?’

  ‘Interesting. We’ve just finished in the bedrooms upstairs. A mess of DNA. But we did find this.’ Niamh holds up a bag of evidence. She’s new as a crime scene manager but she’s worked for the Hertfordshire police force for longer than Maarten has lived here. He feels a prickle of anticipation. She wouldn’t highlight something unless it was promising.

  ‘It looks, from the remains in Sophie Atwood and Filip Schmidt’s fire in their bedroom, as if the letters sent to Marieke Visser came from their household. Someone has burned the evidence in their room, and we have a fingerprint match for Sophie Atwood in Marieke Visser’s room. It looks relatively fresh.’

  Maarten allows a whistle through his teeth. ‘You think she went to Marieke’s room to get rid of the letter? Surely she’d have guessed that she would have handed the letter to us?’

  ‘She might have just been sneaking around, looking for evidence of an affair, if that’s what you’re thinking of. Either way, she’s looking likely, Maarten.’ She holds up a finger. ‘Wait for it – big news to come…’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’ve got a match on the toxin in Marieke Visser’s glass with the toxin in Aksel Larsen’s blood. You were right. He drank from her drink, and it probably killed him.’

  *

  Pushing open the door to the room that leads off the back of the dining room, where the interviews are being held, he enters quietly. Sophie Atwood is sitting, white as a sheet, fingers tightly pulling her wedding ring on and off, quickly, roughly. Her ring finger is red and looks sore. Her eyes are blood dark.

  ‘You suspected, didn’t you,’ Adrika is saying, ‘you suspected Filip was sleeping with Marieke. You suspected, and yet you came here. This weekend. Was this the showdown weekend? Did you come here to kill her?’

  Pale, still. The only thing moving is the wedding ring: on, off, on. She says nothing.

  ‘You suspected, and what, you came here to bring it to a close? To end things, once and for all? Come on, Sophie, talk to me.’ Adrika sits back.

  ‘You can have a lawyer, if you like,’ Maarten says, and Sunny stands u
p and exits, leaving the third chair for him.

  She shakes her head, still not speaking.

  The small room is warm, intense. He leans in, placing his hand on the table gently, watching his fingers curl down flat, giving her a moment. There is fear in her eyes. It rattles out of her, like the windows rattling on a shaking building. Her foundations are loosening. Her left eyebrow lifts and falls.

  He likes her. He has liked her from the moment she stood on the step, collecting herself, when everyone else sat inside drinking. He liked her when he gave her his arm.

  Did she try and kill Marieke?

  ‘Sophie. We found the remains of the letters in your fire grate.’

  A small sound, a whimper, passes quickly from her lips.

  He feels Adrika beside him stir only the slightest bit. This evidence is the biggest find they have.

  ‘Was it because you thought they were having an affair, Sophie? I don’t know how I’d feel if I found out Liv was with someone else.’

  Sophie sits up slightly straighter. He watches her pull her shoulders back a fraction, and her eyes close, then a second later open again, and she takes a deep breath.

  ‘Yes, it was me.’ The wedding ring comes off, slips back on. Her fingers shake. Her eyebrow lifts again, just the one. She must be tired, Maarten thinks. It’s that kind of twitch lift that pulls when you’re so tired you can’t think any more. And a flutter of relief passes over her face, mixing with the fear like sugar falling into a hot drink. The swirls of sweet relief ease the tension around her eyes, her mouth. Her voice warms as she speaks, and she settles, the telling of the story flowing like hot sweet tea, spilling from a mug.