“You don’t look so very different, apart from the hair.” It wasn’t so many years ago. My brain can’t seem to do the simple mathematics, though.
“None of us do, really.” Except Lissa and Graeme. I can’t help imagining her again, floating lazily in that red swimsuit, clouds of blond hair billowing in the slightest of currents. Before she can spin round to face me, I see there’s a silent shadow approaching, long and fluid, impossibly fast in its sinuous path. A wash of creeping dread is building up inside me, starting from the very center of my core and sweeping outward—but Adam is talking again. “Though I feel it. I feel the years.” He looks at me, considering. “Don’t you?” The serpent has stolen my voice; I manage the smallest of nods. “Come on,” Adam says gently, taking one hand and tugging on it. “We should go in.” So we do, into a large rectangular space, with glass doors running the length of the side facing across the ocean, which is a dim dark gray now, not quite as dark as the sky above it. It would be impossible to spot the serpent in this light; it could come right up to the shore, and nobody would ever know—
“Georgie?” Adam touches my arm gently, and I drag my eyes away from the windows and focus on the rest of the space, but that offers no relief. This room, too, is reminiscent of the rest of the resort accommodations, but the soft furnishings are different—no longer an innocuous bamboo and beige, instead there’s a three-piece sofa set in pale turquoise with vibrant patterned scattered cushions and a driftwood coffee table: statement items. I can’t tell if it’s Lissa’s statement, or Jem’s, and I can’t do the detective work to answer the question, either; I can’t bear to let my eyes rest where there might be another photo or object or trinket that reeks of Lissa, or I might scream and never stop. How can Jem still live here? But he can, he must be able to, for he’s here on the sofa, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands dangling between them. A glass of something golden brown is in one hand, and the bottle from whence it came is open on the coffee table in front of him. He’s in what looks like a serious conversation with Duncan, who’s standing on the other side of the coffee table. Then he turns as we enter, and I see that he’s not alone on the sofa: someone, previously hidden by his body, is beside him.
“Bron,” I say, startled enough to snap back into a semblance of my normal self. “Did you get our message?” But no, of course she didn’t. She was here already.
Bron starts to mumble an answer without meeting my eye, but Jem cuts across her. “Drink?” he asks. I glance away from Bron and find him dragging himself to his feet, gesturing toward the bottle with his crystal glass; the viscous liquid inside comes perilously close to sloshing out. “I was saving it for a special occasion. And there’s nothing quite so special as witnessing your entire livelihood—Christ, the only thing I’ve ever really wanted in life—going down the fucking tubes.”
“It’s just one employee,” says Duncan, in his most reasonable tone.
“No. No, it’s not,” Jem says savagely; Duncan blinks at his ferocity. “It’s not just one employee. There’s been a steady stream out the door since Lissa—and with Cristina gone, all faith will evaporate. And it’s not just one cancellation. There is only one booking remaining—one—after you guys leave.” He pauses for dramatic effect. He’s been drinking, but he’s not drunk. He’s too measured for that, too aware of the impact of his performance. “And, as it turns out, there hasn’t been only one fraud. There have been many.”
“What? Fraud?” Duncan looks shocked.
Jem’s smile is an exercise in ironic bleakness. “Frauds.” He stresses the s. “As in, multiple. Cristina found them. She thought it was me.” He picks up another crystal glass and hands it to Duncan, who takes it heedlessly, shock still writ large across his face. “Looks like you chose the wrong hotel to invest in.” Invest? Duncan invested in the hotel? Follow the money. I look at Adam for the briefest of moments; from the stillness in his face, I would guess this is news to him also. But Jem is pouring from the bottle into Duncan’s glass and then into his own. The liquid flows out as if runny honey: cognac, I presume. Not a tipple I would ever choose for myself. “Have a drink.” It’s a command, not an invitation. Duncan looks down as if seeing the glass for the first time, then takes a short, sharp swallow. “Anyone else?” Jem asks, waving the bottle around, but nobody speaks up. I look at Bron again, still seated on the sofa. She’s in another halter neck sundress that I recognize from previous holidays, which once again emphasizes her cleavage.
Duncan takes another sip. “Wow.” He looks at the bottle label. “Hennessy? Jesus. That is special.” His mind appears to have kicked back into gear, because he adds, “Wait, why would Cristina think it was you?”
“Because only she and I have access to our payment systems.”
“How did you find Cristina in the first place?” I ask. “Was she local?”
“No, she’s Brazilian. I worked with her at one of the Four Seasons properties, in the Maldives.”
“You really never met her?” Duncan asks me. “Dark hair? Small?”
“That narrows it down.” Nobody even cracks a smile at my drollery.
“Hot,” says Duncan decisively, as if that might be the very detail to jog my memory. “In a pocket rocket kind of way.”
“She’s not that hot,” Bron objects. Duncan mutters something that might be, Yeah, she is. “Extraordinarily white teeth,” Bron continues, deliberately ignoring Duncan. “She must bleach them.” I glance at Jem involuntarily; I’m sure Jem does exactly that.
“Regardless, could she be behind this?” I ask Jem. Right now his very white teeth are occupied, gaining a fresh cognac coating. We wait while he finishes his sip. “Until today, I would have said absolutely not. Now . . .” He raises his glassless hand and spreads the fingers wide, palm up.
“Like I said before, show me,” says Bronwyn earnestly to Jem. She’s standing, too, now, her hand laid lightly on his arm. He doesn’t shake it off or move away. How long was she here before us? And why? “I’m an accountant, remember? I might see something.”
“Can’t hurt,” Adam says blandly; it’s the first thing he’s contributed since we entered. I look at him quickly, and he looks back, deliberately keeping his face neutral. Jem shrugs and moves to the corner of the room where a MacBook is sitting open on a desk, Bron trailing behind him. After a second or two I follow nonchalantly, wondering if I can find a way to work in a question about Lissa’s life insurance, though I can’t think how to do that without it sounding like a blatant non sequitur. Jem sits at a swivel chair and clicks through to some kind of application that causes Bron to murmur in recognition: a form of accounting software, presumably.
“We only installed it this month,” Jem is saying. “It lets you slice and dice your data much more efficiently, apparently. Cristina’s been loading all the historical data onto it, and that’s how she found it.”
“Found what?” This is Adam.
“Fake supplier payments. Referencing suppliers that we do use, for F&B and the like, and for fairly typical amounts, but they don’t tie out to any actual invoices.”
“Going back how far?” Bron asks, shooing him out of the chair to take control of the computer herself.
Jem shrugs. “Several months, I think. I can’t be sure. Here, look—that’s one of them.” He points to a line on the screen that looks no different from any other line.
“When is your accounting year-end?” Bron asks.
“December.”
“It must have started after last December, then. It would have been picked up in your year-end financial audit otherwise,” she says, clicking through screens and applying filters as she speaks. “Can you put me onto your bank accounts? Let’s see if I can figure out where it’s all been going.” Jem leans over her to take control of the mouse, resting his left hand on her bare shoulder, ostensibly to brace himself. Would I do that if I was in his position? If it was Duncan sitting the
re, or Jem, or Adam? I can’t tell. At the very least I know Jem wouldn’t do it if it was me in Bron’s seat.
“How much?” asks Duncan.
“One second,” Jem says. He pulls open a drawer and rummages around, then pulls out some kind of electronic security card and starts to read off some numbers to Bron, but her attention is fixed on the still-open drawer, her face oddly still. “What?” says Jem, following her gaze. I lean in to look. Lying among the jumble of pens and assorted stationary items is a yellow cylindrical object, too thick to be a pen, with a snub-nosed conical orange tip. “Oh, that. It’s for my niece; she left it by accident. She’s allergic to bees.” He looks at Bron, puzzled. “You’ve seen an EpiPen before, surely?”
“I . . . Yes. Of course.” She takes a deep breath and pushes the drawer closed, shaking herself with a quick smile. “Go ahead.” Graeme, I think, with a wave of sympathy for her. It reminded her of Graeme.
Jem is now reading off the numbers again, for Bron to input for access to a mobile banking system. “I’m in,” she says briskly, then starts to mutter to herself as she skims through the accounts.
“How much?” repeats Duncan.
“I don’t know yet.” There’s a reluctance to Jem now; he’s no longer performing. He leaves Bron’s side and moves back across the room to slump on the turquoise sofa. I take his spot, looking over Bron’s shoulder—pink from the sun with a pale negative of a swimsuit strap in sharp contrast—but I keep my hands to myself.
“Roughly.” The edge in Duncan’s voice has real teeth now. He drops onto the sofa, too, but sitting on the edge, as if poised to leap up at any moment. I glance at Adam and see that he’s watching Duncan. How much did Duncan invest, I wonder? Strange that he didn’t mention it the other day at lunch, when he touched upon his retirement dreams.
Jem mutters a number that only Duncan can hear, then scrubs both hands down over his face. “At least,” he adds more audibly, then reaches for his drink. I can’t tell from Duncan’s reaction whether that’s more or less than he was afraid of. “We could absorb it easily enough—well, not easily, but we could absorb it—were it not for the cancellations. Though I suppose your sighting of the creature from the Black Lagoon, or whatever it was, wouldn’t have helped, either, if it got around.”
I watch Duncan process that. It’s like watching a calculator: nothing, then an answer; there’s no indication of the operations between input and output. “You need to bring in your accountants,” he tells Jem. This is the Duncan who works in private equity and more or less runs the firm he’s with; I’d almost forgotten this version. “You probably also need to inform any lenders, since I’m sure you will have an information undertaking in your loan doc, and you certainly need to inform any other equity investors.”
“That last bit is done. You’re it.” The bleak smile has returned, though he can’t seem to look Duncan in the eye. Shame? Wounded ego? Or am I wrong, is this now the performance? Could Jem have been stealing from his own business?
Duncan sinks on the sofa next to him. “Listen,” he says authoritatively, pushing his straw-blond hair back from his forehead. “This is not the end for you. We will get to the bottom of this.” He claps a hand on Jem’s shoulder and leans in, still talking. I can’t quite hear all of what he is saying, but nevertheless I’m filled with a rush of warmth for Duncan. He’s so very nearly a caricature of a person—no, of a certain type of Englishman: so very predictable in his outdated, laddish comments, so very traditional, so very straight—and yet, all of those are his best qualities, too. So very loyal. So very dependable in a crisis. Of course he would have helped Jem and Lissa with a financial stake when they asked, if he could; though not blindly—he’s far too smart for that. He would have fully researched the opportunity. Of course he’s trying to help Jem now. Though not blindly for that, either.
I look back at the screen, over Bron’s chestnut curls, over her mildly sunburned shoulder; across the swell of her ample bosom, barely restricted by the dress. Jem must have had precisely the same view. I wonder if his grief will have stopped him noticing. I think of all the times I’ve encouraged Bron to be more adventurous in what she wears: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. It’s just that in this case I’m not sure who she’s flaunting it for.
She’s switching back and forth between the accounting and the bank account systems. “Yikes,” she mutters. “There’s like a thousand payments for around the same amount.” She sighs, then murmurs: “Follow the money.”
My head snaps round instantly. “What did you say?”
“Follow the money. The accountant’s job.” She turns to glance up at me. “Are you okay?”
“I—yes. Fine.” Coincidence. Pure coincidence. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly and silently, feeling the adrenaline subside. Follow the money. The accountant’s job—Bron’s job—so why choose me as the message recipient? And who would send an anonymous message? I can only think that it came from someone too scared to raise their issues directly. If Cristina found the fraud, could it be that another employee also found it and wanted to anonymously raise an alert? Or is the message in fact nothing to do with the company? In which case, why do it anonymously? An employee of the hotel, someone who can’t afford to upset Jem, is the only category I can think that would fit.
I’m just going round in circles. “So, um, how come you were here already?” I ask Bron.
“Oh.” She’s looking straight ahead again. The blue-tinged wash from the screen somehow seems to highlight her freckles. If she was blushing, would I see it in this light? “Well, I ran into Jem on my way back from the spa. I was going to book a treatment.” Suddenly she leans in to the screen.
“Found something?”
“Maybe.” She’s flicking between the two systems too quickly for me to see what she’s looking at. “Twenty-fourth, twenty-fourth, yes . . . there it is. Now where did you go?” She’s on the banking system again, scrolling down. I risk a glance at the windows. It must be entirely dark outside now; all I can see is the reflection of ourselves. Jem and Duncan on the sofa, in a golden pool of light provided by the floor lamp behind them. Bron and myself lit in cold blue by the computer. And Adam, barely visible in the shadows.
“Here you are. Let’s see . . .” Bron mutters. I wonder if she misses this. I’d been taken aback when she quit her—very successful—accountancy job; it didn’t seem in character at all, but I hadn’t felt able to ask. There wasn’t a way to do it without sounding judgmental, as if I, the unmarried, childless friend, was accusing her of betraying the sisterhood. I’d even wondered if it was a knee-jerk reaction to her interlude with Graeme, a statement of sorts: a very public commitment to family above all else. Not that she and Graeme were public.
Duncan calls across suddenly. “Time for dinner, surely? Jem? Soak up a little of this Hennessy?” I glance across and see Duncan signaling, none too subtly over Jem’s head, that he needs us all on board.
“Absolutely. I’m starving,” I say obediently. “Right, Bron?” I glance down at her, but she’s frozen, staring at the screen with none of her previous efficient motions. “What’s up? Did you find something?”
She starts. “No.” Then she glances up with a quick smile. “No, nothing. A red herring. I’ll try again tomorrow; this is probably going to take a while. Let me log off.”
As Adam and Duncan coax Jem off the sofa, I move to scoop up my shoulder bag. “Ready, Bron?” I ask, turning back to see her stuff a piece of paper in her pocket, a pen on the desk next to the MacBook behind her. She smiles brightly as she joins me at the doorway, but there isn’t a smile in the universe that’s bright enough to blind me to the fact that she’s hiding something.
HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND
Method 3: Hire a hit man
Hire a hit man. As if. Where would you even find someone like that? And anyone willing to kill for money would also be willing to sell me out, too, so in all
likelihood I’d end up thousands of pounds poorer and in jail to boot.
I can’t involve anyone else. That’s how people get caught: the stupidity of others. That, and random chance. It’s funny how many affairs are discovered because the wife who never goes anywhere happens to pop into a pub that’s miles from her normal patch, or the husband who has never paid attention to the bills happens to read a credit card statement. The universe takes a perverse joy in making sure our secrets don’t stay secret for long.
SEVEN
BRONWYN
This dinner is going to be a car crash. Adam is trying valiantly to talk to me, but I can’t think straight, let alone hold up one end of a conversation. My mind is entirely focused on the two sets of eight-digit numbers, on the slip of paper in my pocket, and the third number of only six digits scribbled beneath them. Account numbers—UK ones, specifically; I saw the IBANs when I clicked through to see the full payment details. Two accounts, exactly the same except the last two digits; two account numbers with the same bank, hence the same six-digit sort code for both. Like a pair of accounts opened at more or less the same time.
They can’t be. It makes no sense. I’ve misremembered.
And after all, it’s been quite the day—and, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, all of it somehow stacked against me. That vile message on the mirror, followed by too much alcohol and too much sun (admittedly both my own fault), and then that terrifying boat bearing down on me—and, even before that, the awful shadow slipping beneath me in the sea . . . When we first reached the restaurant, I overheard the boat pilot, Steve, giving one of the waiters short shrift for having asked him about his sighting of “Kanu,” which seems to have run like wildfire through all of the staff already, but for all of Steve’s robust bluster, I could detect the same self-doubt we’ve surely all been feeling: what was it we saw, or felt? What can we actually be sure of and what did we imagine? It’s ridiculous to feel like the creature—or serpent or thing; whatever we’re calling it—is part of a deliberate campaign against me, but under the circumstances perhaps I can be forgiven a little paranoia.
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