“I wonder if the road will be passable with all of this,” Adam says. “Steve said it’s prone to landslips.” I’m watching the drops bounce back up from the ground. There’s so much water in the air that there’s a haze around all of the outdoor lights.
“I, for one, am absolutely in favor of leaving early for the airport,” I say. I want to leave and never ever come back. I want to leave and have it all be no more than a memory, not much different to a bad dream.
“Bron,” Duncan says gently. “Have you any idea what that message is about?” It’s difficult to wrench my eyes away from the rain to look at him. “It’s just, you know, it’s just—it seems very personal. Surely you must have an idea.”
I can feel Georgie’s eyes upon me. It occurs to me that she’s waiting for me to tell it; and that she won’t say if I don’t. And if she won’t say now, then she never did; not to anyone. And that, suddenly, is the scariest thing of all: Georgie didn’t tell. And then I finally see it, the bigger picture, and I almost say, Aha! For the briefest of moments I have the same elation I would have at work when I finally found the error in a spreadsheet, the mistake I’d missed that was throwing all the calculations off, but that elation is immediately swept away by the subsequent wave of fear that engulfs me. I have the bigger picture now, but not the detail, and the devil is always in the detail. I look at Duncan, his earnest eyes fixed on me. You could tell me that kind of stuff, he said. But I knew I couldn’t, and I still can’t, not while I haven’t quite pinned it all down. I’ve got to move carefully, right now. Maintain a balance. I scrub a hand over my face, deliberately obscuring my expression. “I’ve no idea. It doesn’t make any sense.” I try for a weak joke. “You’d think that if I’d done something deserving of that kind of vitriol, I’d at least remember it.” Georgie is still watching me, her face very still, though I either see, or imagine that I can see, disappointment in her eyes. That’s another of Georgie’s contradictions: she’s disturbingly secretive but also inordinately honest.
“A madman, then?” Duncan sounds dissatisfied with that.
“Or woman,” says Georgie, rather tartly.
Duncan sighs. “Mad person, then. Believe me, I wasn’t meaning to suggest that males have the monopoly on madness.”
I rush in. “Georgie, can I borrow your charger? My phone is almost dead, and I want to speak to Rob.”
“Of course,” she says, getting up. I follow her into her bedroom. The ferocity of the rain hasn’t lessened in the slightest. If anything, it’s even wilder and more blustery out there. Periodic gusts drive the rain almost horizontal; it’s like seeing the wind drawn in contour lines. “Are you going to tell him what’s happened?” she asks over her shoulder, as we enter her room. “Won’t he worry?”
She’s leaning over the bedside table to unplug the charger. I take the opportunity to nudge the door until it’s just a few inches ajar. Closed would be too obvious. Then I cross the room and grab her wrist when she straightens to pull her into the en suite bathroom. “What—” she starts, but then falls silent as I shake my head. I close the bathroom door behind us.
“We’re in danger. Or at least I am; I can’t quite figure it out.” I’m whispering, which is stupid in this enclosed bathroom, but nonetheless I am. Georgie’s eyes are huge in her face, her brows drawn close over them. “I think . . . I don’t know how to say this. I think Lissa is still alive. I think she planned all of this; I think it’s retribution for sleeping with Graeme, though I don’t know how she found out. I know I sound crazy, but actually it’s the only thing that makes sense, I—”
“Yes.”
“I—what?” That’s the last thing I expected her to say.
“Yes. I think so, too.” She closes her eyes briefly and sighs, expelling what must surely be all the air in her lungs. “I found her red TYR suit in the pool cupboard. I have to go back and photograph it; it was stupid of me not to. I must have been in shock.”
“You found . . .” I stop, thinking that through. The mirror is slightly tinted. An unnaturally brown version of me scratches at my hairline. “But the fisherman—”
“Yes, I know. He must have been lying, which means someone must have paid him to.” I had always thought it odd that the fisherman particularly noted the brand of swimsuit, not just the color; there’s only one small logo on that suit, on the upper left breast. I’d wondered if it was a reaction to the shock: had the image been seared in his mind? But no, he remembered the brand because he was parroting what he’d been told to say. Georgie is still speaking. “Lissa, I suppose. I thought it was Jem; I thought maybe he killed her. But nobody but Lissa would do that.” She gestures toward where my bedroom lies, the bedroom with the foot-high letters and the knife in the wall, which I’ll never sleep in.
“Yes.” It’s worse than I thought, having her agree with me. It means that all of this is real. It means that I’m not being stupid, or paranoid, or hysterical; not that those are things that I usually am, but today I’d take any one of them over being right.
“I thought I would be so happy if Lissa was alive,” she mutters.
“We could be wrong,” I say, which sounds like a backward sort of comfort. “But surely it’s safer to act as if we’re not.”
She nods silently then shakes herself before I can say anything further, and she looks at me gravely. “Whatever she’s up to, she’s not doing it alone. She couldn’t move around the hotel; she’d risk being recognized. She must have an accomplice.”
“I know. We can’t trust anyone.” But then, I never thought I could. Not even Georgie, as it happens. I feel a flash of absolute gratitude toward her now, and then a terrible, awful pang for having ever allowed myself to doubt her, but neither lasts. The fear is too great; it doesn’t allow room for anything else. “Not Jem. Not even Adam or Duncan.”
“Wait—I meant that she must have had local help. You can’t truly suspect Adam or Duncan are helping her?”
“No, but . . .” I hesitate, rubbing my hairline again. “I just don’t know. You heard Duncan; he gets ownership of this place if Jem is convicted of anything. Maybe he made a deal with Lissa.” I don’t really believe that, but I just can’t bear to tell Duncan what is behind Lissa’s enmity. He would be so disappointed with me on both counts: for doing it, and for not telling him.
“That’s ridiculous.” But she is less vehement about it than she might have been. “And what can Adam possibly have to gain?”
“Adam? He’d be more than happy to have Lissa disappear. Then he gets a clean crack at you.” She opens her mouth and then shuts it silently. “Then there’s Jem. I mean, he was willing to obstruct justice with the swimsuit. What if he’s actually on Lissa’s side? Helping her disappear in exchange for her shares in the hotel?” Her eyes widen. She hadn’t thought of that angle. “And I bet there’s life insurance he can collect on her, too. So. I don’t really suspect Adam or Duncan, not truly, but if we tell them, there’s always the chance they’ll say something to the wrong person, and who knows what danger that would put us in. Until we know more, we don’t share anything with anyone. Deal?”
“I . . . All right, deal.” She looks as if she wants to swallow the words back as soon as they come out of her mouth, but it’s too late. And Georgie keeps her promises; I know that beyond doubt now.
A thought suddenly occurs to me. “Wait: do you think she shot Cristina?”
She doesn’t flinch; she must have already wondered that. “I don’t know. Maybe the guy who attacked me is working with her; it could have been him who shot her. We have to be really careful. Nobody should ever be alone.”
“And we have to get away from the resort as soon as possible. Now, if we can.”
“Yes. If we can convince the others, somehow.” She sounds doubtful, though. “I don’t know how we do that without telling them—”
“No. We’re not risking it.” She doesn’t nod, but she doesn
’t try to press her point again. “What do you think Lissa’s plan is?” I ask hesitantly. “What does she want?”
“What she always wants.” She grimaces. “Justice, as she sees it.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But it can’t be good for either of us.”
I’m frowning. “Either of us? Why, what did you ever do?”
“I didn’t tell her. About you and Graeme. Which in her eyes means I chose you.” She closes her eyes briefly. “I was trying to choose both of you.”
“She wouldn’t . . .” I try again. “She wouldn’t really hurt me, would she? I mean, it’s just not reasonable.” Even as I say it, I can hear the flaw in my logic, that assumption that Rob always cautions me against: that everyone will behave reasonably. Cristina is dead; shot. That’s not reasonable.
Georgie is looking at me with an expression that suggests she can’t quite believe I said that. “Bron,” she says patiently, as if speaking to a child. “She has engineered a situation where she’s technically dead. She’s thrown off all connection with any of us that might curb her; there is literally nothing to limit her. She has probably already killed, or at least ordered a killing. At this point I really don’t think she’ll give a solitary fuck about what you or I or anybody else might consider reasonable.”
“Yes.” There’s something wet on my hand. I look down absentmindedly to see blood running from the cuticle of my thumb. I don’t remember picking at it, but there’s blood under the fingernail of my first finger, too, so I must have. “Fuck.”
HOW TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIEND
Method 7: Strangulation. Assault. Battery.
A blow to the head, or suffocation—or both. The problem is that it’s so very personal. Direct. Which I suppose it should be; if you’re going to kill someone, you shouldn’t be insulating yourself from the process. That was always my objection to the use of drones: warfare ought to be immediate; it ought to be bloody, to be close combat. You should be forced to witness, to feel, each and every impact. You shouldn’t be allowed to put it at arm’s length.
But I digress. Again. I keep doing that. Because it’s so awful to contemplate, I suppose: her eyes looking into mine, with full knowledge and horror at what I’m doing. She would see it as a betrayal—except, would she? Some part of her has always relied upon me to reel her in. That’s the contract: I have to love her absolutely and save her from her worse instincts. And in return I get—what? Redemption, I suppose. So perhaps she would understand what I was doing.
EIGHTEEN
GEORGIE
We exit the bedroom to find Adam and Duncan on the sofa, in close conversation. Duncan looks up. “I just heard from Steve,” he says. “He thinks we should head to the airport ASAP, in case the road gets blocked.” The weather is playing into our hands. I manage not to exchange relieved glances with Bron. Our plan is a simple one—keep quiet, never be alone, and leave as soon as possible—but it was the last step that I’d been most concerned about. We could be wrong, of course: perhaps I’m just seeing what I want to see. Bias confirmation, they call it at work: that tendency to only take notice of evidence that supports your preferred thesis. Do I want Lissa to be alive so much that I’ve lost all objectivity? And then another thought comes: Do I want Lissa to be alive at all?
“Is there anyone who can drive us?” Bron asks Duncan. Some of the tension has leached out of her since our tête-à-tête in the bathroom. I suppose she feels that every passing minute takes us closer and closer to leaving for good, but that isn’t having the same effect on my own stress levels. If anything I feel stretched tighter. Every minute that nothing happens takes us closer to the point when something will. Lissa hasn’t set this all up for nothing.
“He’s found someone who can do it. He said he would have driven us himself, but he’s had way too many beers. Can you be ready in forty-five minutes?”
“I can be ready in about three minutes,” I say. “I’ve not unpacked after the move here.” For once there’s a benefit to my lack of industriousness where my wardrobe is concerned. I pause, glancing at Bron. “Bron would have to go into her room, though. Which kind of messes up the, um, crime scene.” Crime scene. We are in a villa with a crime scene, with a bedroom that holds a scrap of chlorine-resistant nylon dangling from a butcher’s cleaver. But we have a plan. I keep telling myself that I feel better with a plan. You would think that knowing Lissa so well would mean that I would be in the best possible situation to figure out what she might do, but I can’t fathom it. She isn’t reasonable, but that doesn’t mean she lacks reason: there is a point to all of this, but we just don’t know what it is yet.
Duncan shrugs. “If we stay and get stuck, the police won’t get to us for a while anyway, and you’d surely have to go in to get some clothing.”
“We could photograph it first,” Adam suggests. “I know it’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. Did you unpack much?” he asks Bron.
“Everything,” she says, as I knew she would. “I always do.” It wouldn’t have crossed her mind not to unpack, even for just one night.
“I’ll confirm forty-five minutes from now, then; at the reception,” Duncan says. He looks at his watch. “That would make it twelve thirty a.m.”
“Better make it twelve forty-five,” Adam replies. “We ought to go by Jem’s place first and explain to him that we’re leaving.”
“No, stick to twelve thirty,” I say quickly. “Adam and I can get our stuff sorted and then go and explain to Jem—I have to return something anyway—and Duncan can stay here with Bron while she packs. I’m sure he’ll come to the reception with us to see us all off; you can say your goodbyes then.”
“Makes sense,” says Adam, quickly backing me up; he knows I need to photograph the TYR swimsuit. I look at Bron with a question in my eyes—Okay?—and she nods back in a short jerk. I had wondered if she would demur, if she would find some reason for a private goodbye with Jem; even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew it was unfair, but I couldn’t unthink it. For a moment, when Duncan asked outright about the message, I thought she would spill all, but no. Perhaps I’m being selfish in wanting it to be out in the open; perhaps Bron is right, and it benefits no one. But if I had kept fewer secrets, would we have got to where we are now? I keep thinking of Diane, right back on that first evening, and the words that she spoke so bitterly: Was it something I did? Or didn’t do? Or Philip? Or you? She had the right of it: I am me because Lissa is she; she has made me who I am, and she must bear some responsibility for that, although it’s the corollary that’s really biting here: I have made her who she is. That responsibility lies with me, with every action I did or didn’t take, with every blind eye I turned. The blame sits with me.
But right now, I have to focus on the present: Jem. Jem, who I thought killed his wife, but didn’t. Probably. Perhaps this will be the last time I ever see him. I expect Duncan will keep in touch, given the business connection, but I don’t see why I should or would. Nothing on earth could persuade me to come back here again, and certainly there’s no reason for him to reach out, to suggest grabbing a drink if he happened to be in New York. He doesn’t like me, and there’s no social pressure to spend time with your dead wife’s friends that you’ve never liked.
Except that the wife isn’t dead after all. And he might even already know that.
* * *
—
There’s still enough staff on hand that Adam manages to rustle up a porter to take us to Jem’s villa in one of the electric buggies. The storm’s onslaught continues unceasingly, and the buggy’s rain protection is not much better than that of a child’s pram, consisting of clear plastic sides rolled down to fasten with Velcro against one another and the frame of the buggy, but the wind is so fierce that the Velcro is no match and they keep snapping apart; we will be soaked long before we get to Jem’s place. I climb in to sit side by side with Adam, co
nscious of his watchful eyes upon me, directly behind the driver, who is a young man that I remember working as a waiter at breakfast. And then we’re off, Adam and I trying to hold the plastic sides down as we go. The puny headlights of the buggy illuminate the rain such that it seems to become as solid as glow sticks, blurring and smearing when viewed through the flimsy plastic windscreen. There’s standing water almost the entire way, and at times I’m not quite sure where the path is, but the driver takes it all at a speed that suggests he has no such doubts. It is not a comfortable journey.
I hear a crackle of the driver’s handheld radio as we pull up at Jem’s villa. “One moment, please,” he says. He lifts the radio from his belt to his ear and holds a rapid conversation, then turns to face us all. “I wait for you?” he asks hesitantly, looking expectantly from Adam to myself and back again. “Or can I go and . . . ?” He gestures with the radio, and I deduce that he is needed elsewhere.
“No, that’s fine; you crack on, mate. We’ll call again when we’re done here,” says Adam.
“Okay. Thank you.” He smiles genially in a remarkable display of Colgate-white teeth.
The short dash of ten meters or so from the buggy to the shelter of Jem’s porch is long enough that my shoulders and hair are soaked, and the two enormous puddles that I have to run straight through make my sandals treacherously slippery underfoot. Adam gets there ahead of me and holds the door open, simultaneously swiping at the rain on his hair; drops fly from his flicking hand in a way that’s somehow reminiscent of a dog shaking itself after a bath.
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