by Fiona Barton
When Rosie stormed off, Jamie came and sat by Alex and stuck at her side for the rest of the morning, sympathizing, saying everyone was tired of Rosie. Of her strops and her whining.
She finally gave him the slip after lunch, when he went to the toilet. She just needed some time on her own. She knew he’d be hurt, but he was in her face all the time now. Egging her on to fall out with Rosie, pressing her to go traveling with him instead. She couldn’t face telling him there was no way she’d do that. She could see the vulnerability in his eyes. She couldn’t tell him the truth—she just didn’t fancy him.
Alex went for a walk down to the river, to watch the boats and clumps of watercress gliding on the current. She’d said to Rosie that she’d go off alone, but she knew in her head she wouldn’t. She was too nervous. What was she going to do? Her mind kept returning to Jake. He was lovely. She wasn’t sure her mum would approve—he definitely needed a shower and to cut his toenails—but her mum wasn’t here to cast her beady eye on him . . .
He was a bit of a lost soul—and Alex couldn’t resist a lost soul. The idea of having someone to rescue, like Lizzy with Mr. Darcy or Belle with the Beast, was so romantic. It could occupy her for hours.
She knew that Jake had been to university but it hadn’t worked out. He’d told her on their first date—she was calling it a date even if it had been him showing her where to eat safely. He said he hadn’t got on with his tutor so he’d decided to leave. Alex thought it was a bit extreme but she hadn’t liked to say so.
“What did your mum and dad say?” she’d asked instead. It was the first thing she’d thought of when he told her. She’d imagined telling her mum and the hurt it would cause.
“Oh, they didn’t care,” he’d said. “I’m an adult. I didn’t need their approval.” But he couldn’t look her in the eye.
“When are you planning to go home?” She’d tried to change the subject.
“Not sure. No plans.”
He hadn’t spoken again as they walked back to the guesthouse, and she’d been sure he wouldn’t ask her out again. But when they got to the end of their alleyway, he’d cleared his throat and she’d stopped.
“The truth is that I fucked it all up. My family doesn’t know, but I couldn’t hack it at uni. I failed and I couldn’t tell them. They had so much invested in me being a success. It’s all they ever talked about. They were so proud of me doing law.”
“Mine are a bit like that. I feel like they’re planning my future for me sometimes. They want me to succeed so hard it hurts. It’s a huge pressure.”
Jake nodded. “I nearly went home last Christmas. I had a ticket but I knew it meant telling them everything and whenever I thought about telling them the truth, I could see them standing on the station platform, waving me off to university. And I chickened out. And ended up here.”
“Do they know what you’re doing now?”
“No. It’s been another fuckup. I can’t get into it now. I rang recently when I was a bit pissed. I’d missed my mum’s birthday and I just wanted to hear their voices but I didn’t know what to say when my mum answered.”
Alex had reached out to touch his hand.
“I’ll get in touch with them properly when I’ve sorted myself out,” he’d said, his voice shaky.
“You should, Jake,” she’d said. “Ring them!”
He’d sort of nodded. “I’ll see. Thanks for listening. But please don’t tell anyone about what I’ve said.”
“’Course not.”
She’d wondered as she walked up the stairs why he’d chosen her to tell his secrets to, but she didn’t really care. He had; that was all that mattered. She found herself singing in the shower as she imagined falling into his arms and what those lips would feel like. Not that he’d given her any sign of taking the next step. He hadn’t even held her hand yet. Still, there was time. She’d work on it. She’d started putting on a bit of makeup to make him notice her in that way.
* * *
• • •
She hugged herself when she thought about him noticing her. Then stopped. She needed to get a move on. Rosie was already hurling herself at him. She was shameless. So Alex would have to be, too. She tried to imagine Rosie’s face when she announced Jake was coming to Phi Phi Island with her. That would stop her blond ponytail bobbing for a bit. Alex texted Jake before she lost her nerve and asked if he wanted to go for a drink later. He replied straightaway: Great. Take you to my favorite place . . .
* * *
• • •
She didn’t get back until nearly six o’clock and Jamie was still sitting there, waiting for her.
“Good grief, Jamie, have you been there all day?”
“Where have you been?” he said. “I was worried.”
“I’m fine. I just needed to clear my head,” she said. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind the bar. She looked all lit up. Jamie looked so miserable, she gave his arm a squeeze and told him she was sorry.
“That’s okay. Where shall we go to get something to eat tonight?”
“Ah . . . Actually, I’m going with Jake to one of his favorite bars.”
Jamie’s face fell and she felt irritated. She had every right to go out with Jake, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t say that she was more excited than she’d been about a boy for ages. That Jake had such nice eyes. And lovely hands. And that she was going to wear that top her mum didn’t approve of. She’d tell Mags later.
Jamie just looked at her with his mouth open.
“Alex,” he croaked. But she didn’t want to hear. She was sailing away from him on her way up to her room to shower and get ready for Jake.
“Be careful,” he called after her as she climbed the stairs.
FORTY-ONE
The Detective
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2014
Five hours later, Sparkes was trying to drink a cup of coffee in the staff canteen. But it curdled in his mouth as it met the all-pervading residue of embalming fluid. The aftertaste of death.
“Right, then,” he said when Salmond joined him with a copy of the pathologist’s preliminary findings. “Where are we on this? Anything we didn’t hear in the mortuary?”
“No, don’t think so. She’s sending oral, vaginal, and anal swabs to the lab with the other tissue samples. It’s a twenty-eight-day turnaround at the moment, so we’re looking at the beginning of the month for the results unless we call in favors and push them up the schedule. But she’s listed the bruises, defensive scratches, a fractured hyoid, torn fingernails, all indicating manual strangulation. It’s a bloody scandal this wasn’t picked up by the police in Bangkok. You wouldn’t have needed a postmortem to see the external marks. Just a pair of eyes and a brain.”
“Yes, let’s stick to the facts as we know them, shall we, Zara? I’m assuming no cause of death is mentioned in the prelim?”
He had a copy of the Thai death certificate for Alex O’Connor in front of him, which stated, “Inhalation of smoke and toxic gases.”
“No, but she’s put, ‘No soot detected in the airways beyond the vocal chords.’”
“It appears she was not alive when the fire started,” Dr. Mortimer had said to Sparkes in the mortuary without lifting her head from the exposed trachea.
* * *
• • •
“What time is Rosie Shaw’s PM starting?” Sparkes looked at his watch.
“We’ve got about twenty minutes. Do you want a sandwich?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m having one. Can’t do this on an empty stomach.”
“On you go.”
He waited until his DS was out of earshot and rang Eileen at home.
“Hello, you,” she said. “I’ve got my guardian angel, Helen, here, telling me I need to eat more.” Helen, the palliative nurse, was no doubt sitting in th
e old Lloyd Loom chair by Eileen’s downstairs bed. I should be there. The thought flitted through Sparkes’s head, trailing guilt behind it.
Eileen was disappearing in front of him, her color changing to gray as if she were fading away. He’d kissed her three times that morning as he left. He couldn’t stop kissing her.
“Sorry, just need to this morning,” he’d told her.
“Don’t apologize, Bob. Give me another one,” she’d said.
* * *
• • •
“Helen’s right,” he said now. “How are you doing? What time is Sam coming this afternoon?” Their daughter came every day, swapping roles to become the mother.
Their son came and went, often hovering in the doorway as if he feared he might catch something or get too involved.
Eileen made a supreme effort with him, forcing brightness into her voice, laughing at his stories. It was heartbreaking to see. It made the dread uncurl its black tendrils to choke Sparkes.
“Don’t be hard on him, Bob. He’s so afraid of it,” Eileen had said after one particularly difficult visit. “Nothing bad has happened in his life until now. He’s never had to deal with failure.”
“Failure? You’ve got cancer, Eileen. It’s not a life choice.”
“Mmmm. Well, I suspect our son secretly sees it as such. He can’t help it. It’s the way he’s made.”
* * *
• • •
“We’ll need to go and see the parents when the Shaw PM is over,” Sparkes said as soon as Salmond returned with a disgusting-looking egg mayo sandwich. He almost preferred the smell of formalin. “I’d rather tell them tonight. It’s not fair to keep them waiting. Are you all right to work late?”
“No problem, boss. Neil’s got a parent evening at school, anyway.”
“Good. Who’s the Family Liaison Officer?”
“Wendy Turner. I’ll ring her in a minute and brief her.”
Aoife Mortimer came through the canteen swing doors and waved.
“Just getting an energy bar. Are you ready?”
She eyed DS Salmond’s bulging sandwich and raised an eyebrow.
“Is that wise?”
* * *
• • •
Sparkes couldn’t help a small rush of anticipation when he entered the mortuary for the second time. He wondered if Aoife Mortimer felt the same. He glanced at her profile. The hood covered her whole face, but he knew, beneath it, she was giving nothing away.
He eagerly scanned Rosie Shaw’s face and neck for telltale bruises and hesitated. He leaned forward in his chair to get a better look but there was nothing to see.
“No visible signs of bruises or other external injuries to upper body,” Dr. Mortimer dictated into her tape recorder. “Gray-blue discoloration of skin pronounced, indicating decomposition of tissue pre-embalming.”
“She didn’t die the same way as Alex O’Connor, did she?” he said and heard the note of disappointment in his voice.
“It doesn’t look like it.”
Dr. Mortimer was swabbing the teeth and palate for samples. “What appear to be soot particles present in mouth,” she told her machine.
“But not in the trachea,” she added hours later. “This girl wasn’t breathing when the fire started either.”
“So what killed her?” Bob Sparkes said, more to himself than to the pathologist. “Was she attacked?”
“It’s far too early to say. I can see no external wounds or defensive injuries. I’ve taken swabs and samples for toxicology and we’ll have to wait for the lab results. Sorry I can’t say more.”
“When can we have the full report?”
“The usual length of time, Bob. We’re looking at mid-October for the full monty. They’re stacking up in the labs.”
“We can’t wait that long. I’ll put through a request to prioritize the DNA swabs from both girls. We need to know who’s done this.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
BANGKOK DAY 17
(TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2014)
She was so deep in her head, she didn’t realize what she was seeing at first when she pushed open the door. She knew she needed to check in with the mums—it was her day for a text—and was planning what to tell them.
Rosie was sitting cross-legged on the bed with Alex’s handbag emptied onto the sheet in front of her.
“Oh,” she said, startled, and started stuffing brochures and timetables back in. “Sorry, I was looking for a paracetamol.”
Alex nodded uncertainly. That’s what she was doing, wasn’t it?
“They’re in the side pocket of my backpack. Where they always are.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry. I forgot.”
Alex picked up her bag. The air in the room felt charged, as if something was about to happen. Something bad.
“My arm is feeling better,” Rosie said, pointing to the site of her tattoo, as if everything was normal, but her voice was high and tight.
“Good.”
“Are you going out?”
“Yes. I came up to get changed. I’m going out with Jake.”
“Oh!” Rosie pulled a face.
“Yes.”
They were talking but not looking at each other. Alex pulled her emergency wallet out of her bag.
“I’ll come, too. I’ll pay tonight,” Rosie said quickly. Too quickly.
“No, thanks,” Alex muttered, opening her wallet. “We want to be on our own. Anyway, I need to get the money out for my bus ticket. I’m losing track of how much I’m spending. I never seem to have as much money as I thought. Maybe I should keep a record . . .”
“Stop fussing,” Rosie snapped.
Alex put her wallet on her lap.
“I’m definitely leaving,” she said.
“I want to stay.”
“Then stay.”
Alex went to pull out the notes she’d carefully counted the day they’d arrived. They weren’t there.
“What’s the matter?” Rosie said loudly, her concern sounding fake and overdone.
Alex looked up at her. “It’s gone. My money’s gone.”
“No! Someone must have taken it.”
She isn’t going to win any Oscars, Alex thought.
“Where is it, Rosie?”
“What the hell do you mean? I don’t know!”
“That’s what you were doing when I came in. First you try and take Jake; now you’re taking my money.”
Rosie’s face was a dull red. “I . . . I . . . I can’t believe . . .” She tried to voice her outrage, but Alex could see her mask slipping. There’d be tears next.
Rosie didn’t disappoint. She cried like a baby and Alex sat with the lump in her stomach hardening with every sob. She couldn’t bring herself to touch Rosie. To comfort her. She wanted to punch her.
“Where is the money?” she asked, hardly recognizing her own voice. It startled Rosie, too.
She pulled two twenty-pound notes from under her thigh. “This is all I’ve got. The rest is gone.” She hiccupped.
“All of it? There was two hundred pounds in there when I last checked.”
“I’m so sorry, Alex. I was going to put it back. I will—I’ll pay it back. What are you going to do? Don’t tell anyone, please.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Alex said, more to herself than to Rosie. She didn’t. She felt totally alone and vulnerable. She wished more than anything that she could go home and her mum could sort it out. She needed time to think.
“I’m going to move into another room,” she said finally. “I don’t want to be in here with you. I can’t trust you.”
Rosie’s weeping intensified.
“Don’t hate me,” she wailed.
“Shut up, Rosie. It’s always about you, isn’t it? How do you think I feel?”
; “Upset. I know you’re upset. I can explain . . .”
“Can you? I doubt it.”
“Alex, listen to me. Please. I’ve got myself into trouble.”
FORTY-TWO
The Detective
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2014
“Knew it,” DS Salmond said as she buckled herself in.
“Don’t get smug. No one likes a smart-arse,” Sparkes muttered. “Is the Family Liaison Officer in place?”
“Yep, Wendy is all sorted. She’s there. The meeting is at the O’Connors’ house.”
“Well, come on, then. I need to get home tonight at some point.”
“’Course, boss. Sorry.”
* * *
• • •
DC Wendy Turner opened the door and pulled a worried frown. “They’re all very agitated, sir.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. Hardly surprising, really.”
Sparkes put on his professional face as he walked through the sitting room door and went to shake hands with everyone.
“What did the postmortems show, Inspector? What news have you got?” Lesley said, halting the attempt at formalities.
“Give him a moment, love. We’re here to listen, Inspector,” Malcolm said.
Sparkes hated these moments. Some coppers loved them. The Poirot complex, he called it. That moment when, in their heads, they call everyone into the library and give them all the answers. He knew the huge effect his words were going to have on these four people and hesitated. Nothing could be unsaid after this. He wanted to choose his words carefully, but the overthinking made him stumble.
“Thank you. Er . . . I know you’ve been waiting so I’ll come straight to the point. Right, well, we have the preliminary findings from the postmortems. It’s not the full report, obviously, but what the pathologist has found is, er, evidence that suggests neither girl was alive at the time of the fire.”