by Peter James
‘No – no – I – I checked. Nothing I could find. I’m sure he’s dead.’
‘An ambulance is on its way to you, Georgie, and a police car. They’ll both be with you in less than ten minutes.’
‘Thank you.’ Her voice came out as a squeak. She shot another petrified glance behind her. Did a shadow move in the corridor?
‘I’m staying on the line with you, Georgie, until they arrive.’
‘Please,’ she gasped.
‘Are you safe?’
‘I – don’t know. I – I’m not sure.’
‘Can you wait outside to guide the ambulance and police to where you’ve found this person?’
She hesitated. Did she dare move from here? ‘OK.’
Taking a deep breath, she walked along the corridor and towards the foyer of the hotel, stopping every few moments to listen. Then finally reached it. The silent reception desk. The pigeonholes for the guests’ mail on the wall behind. A stack of American Express leaflets, and another stack of Jersey tourist maps. The revolving door was locked in position. So was the side, wheelchair access door, next to it. She knew the keys were in a drawer beside the printer in the back office. She grabbed them, ran back, unlocked the door, pushed it open and burst out into the night air.
‘I’m outside,’ she said to the call handler. Below, she could see the lights of vehicles travelling around St Aubin’s Bay. Faintly, in the distance, was the wail of a siren. And a second siren, fainter. Both growing louder.
Nearer.
‘I can see their positions, Georgie,’ the call handler said, reassuring her. ‘They are now less than five minutes from you.’
‘Oh God, thank you.’
‘There’s no one with you?’
She turned again, looking behind her. All around her in the darkness. ‘I – I think I’m on my own.’
Moments later, a siren even nearer now, Georgie saw a flicker of bright lights. Then blue streaks. Headlights appeared around the front of the building. Shards of blue showered the darkness. Seconds later, as she stood in the middle of the driveway, waving her hands wildly, an ambulance pulled up in front of her and two paramedics jumped out.
‘The ambulance is here now,’ Georgie said.
‘The police are just a couple of minutes behind. Are you OK if I end the call now?’
‘Fine, yes, fine, thank you. Thank you.’
Numbly, she led the paramedics inside, along the labyrinth of corridors through the kitchen and into the deep-freeze room. Then she hurried back out just as the police car pulled up and guided the two officers in.
They were visibly shocked as they saw the body.
‘How did he get locked in here?’ asked one of the officers, a young woman PC, reaching up and silencing a crackly voice on her radio. She didn’t direct the question at anyone in particular. ‘And how long has he been here?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s really weird – we had a break-in on Wednesday night, two of your officers attended but we couldn’t find anything and assumed it was just kids playing about.’
‘Do you work here?’ asked the male officer.
‘I run some gym classes and I’m keeping an eye on the place in the winter, along with the caretaker, who is on his day off. But I know who this person is – Robert Resmes. I saw him yesterday afternoon,’ Georgie said in a faltering voice.
‘Here?’ the officer asked.
‘No, at the hospital – he’s a medical student at Jersey General Hospital. I saw him yesterday – he was with the consultant obstetrician, Marcus Valentine.’
‘What time did you see him?’ she quizzed.
‘It was about 3 p.m.’
‘Did you see him after then?’
Georgie thought for a moment. Thought about the strange expression on his face. Almost, she wondered now, as if he wanted to say something to her. ‘No, I didn’t,’ she answered. Unable to take her eyes off Resmes.
‘Do you also work at the hospital?’ the other officer asked.
‘No – my fiancé’s there after an accident. He was badly injured in that crash at the airport. I – was visiting him.’
Her mind was spinning.
How? How on earth – what on earth – had happened? How could this young man possibly have ended up dead in this hotel freezer?
And why? Was Edouardo involved in any way?
Over the course of the next hour, Georgie felt increasingly helpless. She called Tom Vautier to tell him what had happened, promising to update him when she knew more. He was horrified, disbelieving, but rang off after saying he’d book a flight back right away. Crime-scene tape was placed over the hotel’s front entrance, and she had to stand outside it as a posse of police vehicles began arriving. One contained the Duty Inspector, who spoke to her briefly, asking her not to leave and telling her she was a significant witness and that someone would come and talk to her to take a brief statement.
Next to arrive was a woman called Vicky, who was introduced to Georgie as the Scientific Services Manager. She was followed shortly after by two Crime Scene Investigators.
Approaching midnight, dog-tired and almost numb with cold, Georgie had a chat with one of the original officers who had attended and was now acting as scene guard. She told him she was pregnant and asked if it would be OK for her to go to her car. Sympathetic and frankly freezing himself, he told her absolutely, yes.
Gratefully, she told him where she would be, then hurried back to the rear of the hotel, climbed into her Golf, started the engine and, after a couple of minutes, turned the heater to full blast. Ten minutes later she was finally beginning to feel as if she was thawing out.
At a few minutes to 1 a.m. a young man in a suit approached, who introduced himself as Detective Constable Langdale. He sat in the car with her, asking her a number of questions and tapping in her answers painfully slowly on an electronic pad. When he was done, he gave her his card and asked her to call him in the morning so he could arrange for her to come into the station to make a more detailed statement. Then he suggested she go home and try to get some sleep.
She didn’t take much persuading.
75
Saturday 19 January
Kath Clow woke early, as she did most mornings, and slipped out of bed as quietly as she could, so as not to wake her husband. She’d slept badly, her mind troubled by one persistent, nagging thought – worrying her like a dog worrying a bone. The biopsy report on dear Georgie Maclean.
How could she have missed the results that the biopsy had shown? The pathologist was a meticulous man – could he have made a mistake? She doubted it. But she was meticulous, too. Mistakes did happen.
The house was quiet. Charlie was no doubt still asleep and would be until breakfast in a couple of hours’ time, before which she’d spend ten minutes trying to shake him awake. She shrugged on her dressing gown, thinking about the day ahead. Bob was taking Charlie to rugby today, and she’d agreed to take him to practice tomorrow, so her husband could go and play golf. Although she had the weekend off, she intended going into the hospital for a couple of hours, later on, to catch up on a mounting backlog of paperwork.
Kath made her way downstairs in the semi-darkness, almost tripping over the cat, which liked to curl up and sleep on the bottom step, and went into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. The cat, Pogo – named because when she was a kitten she jumped rather than walked around the house – followed her in, meowing.
Kath opened a tin of fishy cat food and Pogo eagerly started to eat before she’d even finished scooping the contents into the bowl. Then she switched on the radio, to catch up on the local weather and news whilst she made herself a macchiato. The forecast for today and tomorrow was fine, thank goodness – she was due to take part in a round-the-island cycle race next weekend, and had planned to get in a couple of long rides for practice.
Through the window, dawn was breaking on a fine morning, as the forecast had predicted. She would go for an early-morning training ride, she decided, unpeel
ing a banana and taking a bite for some energy as the coffee machine gurgled and spat. Pips on the radio signalled the 7 a.m. Radio Jersey news.
The first item was the discovery of the body of a man in a hotel on the island, the Bel Royal. His name was being withheld until relatives had been informed, the announcer said. Then came a statement from a Detective Superintendent Stewart Raven.
‘We are treating this death as suspicious,’ he said with fitting gravitas. ‘My Major Crime Team have commenced an investigation and a postmortem will be carried out this morning. I have no further information at this time, but we will be giving an update later in the day.’
Random murders were, fortunately, rare on this island. This was big news for Jersey. Perhaps it had been a fight between a couple of employees, Kath speculated. The news moved to another item, a controversial planning issue on an area of land designated as a nature reserve. It was then followed by a mention that Jersey States Police had arrested a suspect in connection with the collision between two aircraft at the airport on Monday.
Good, she thought. God, that had caused such a terrible tragedy. And it was probably some idiot flying the drone who’d had no idea of the consequences.
She finished the banana, drank her coffee and went upstairs to put on her winter cycling kit. Five minutes later, exhilarated by the cold morning air, she rode out of her driveway, clipping into the pedals, and enjoyed the ride down the steep, twisting hill towards Bouley Bay, with the glorious view of the sea beyond. Although as she pedalled, she noticed an unfamiliar clicking sound in some gears. After a brief plateau at the bottom, she prepared for the steep climb up the far side.
All the time thinking and worrying about her friend.
How can I put Georgie through such shit when she’s already in a terrible place, worrying about her fiancé?
If the diagnosis was correct – and the MRI scan would show later whether it was for certain – the only sensible option would be termination. Had the foetus been more advanced, it might have been possible to save it, but not at this early stage. How could she break that news to Georgie?
Standing up on the pedals and working hard, the chain suddenly slipped on the cogs and she almost came off. She was going to have to get the bike looked at before tomorrow, she realized, then her thoughts immediately returned to Georgie, as she finally crested the hill.
As she rode along a stretch of flat, rural road, her heart was heavy. Normally, she tried not to get emotionally invested in her patients. But Georgie was her friend, so it was different. She tried to remain professional, but she really sympathized with her for all the years she had been trying for a baby, and especially because of all the years that she and Bob had been through the same thing. The frustration, the disappointments, the gradual erosion of hope. And the moment of indescribable joy she had felt when the pregnancy test finally showed positive.
Kath had seen that very same joy in Georgie’s face, the realization that her dream had at last come true. Followed by the terrible accident and poor Roger in such a bad way. An emotional trauma like that was enough to cause some people to miscarry, but fortunately, so far, that had not happened. It would be too cruel if after all Georgie had been through she would now have to have a termination.
She had to delve further, she owed it to Georgie. Abruptly changing her route, Kath made a sharp left turn onto a narrow lane and pedalled in the direction of St Helier, and the hospital.
Twenty minutes later, shortly before 8 a.m., as she rode past the front entrance – the clicking sound even more pronounced now – Kath saw a police car parked outside. She turned down towards the Gwyneth Huelin wing, where she always padlocked her bike in the covered rack. A police presence in the hospital on a Saturday morning wasn’t an unusual occurrence – they were often there, interviewing victims of a drunken Friday-night brawl in one of the town’s bars.
As she walked in through the entrance to the wing, she was greeted politely by a uniformed female police officer who was standing like a sentry, accompanied by a man in a suit, a detective she presumed, who stood a short distance behind her.
‘May I ask your business here?’ the female officer asked.
‘I work here – in Obstetrics – although I realize it doesn’t look like it,’ she said with a smile, noticing the officer take in her cycling outfit.
‘Would you mind having a word with my colleague?’ the officer asked, pointing behind her.
‘What about?’ she asked, politely.
‘He’ll explain, he’s looking for background information,’ she said, immediately distracted by a young woman entering the building.
Kath walked over to the man in the suit. ‘I was asked to come and talk to you,’ she said.
He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Peter Shirreffs.
‘You work here?’ Shirreffs asked.
‘I do, I’m an obstetrician.’
‘Have you ever met a gentleman by the name of Robert Resmes?’ he asked.
‘Robert Resmes? Yes, he’s a medical student who’s been with the department shadowing various consultants. Why?’
‘Would you mind going to the admin office by the ICU unit? My colleagues there would like to talk to everyone who knew him.’
She stared at him for some moments. ‘Knew him?’
But even before the last word had escaped her lips, the penny was dropping.
Robert Resmes.
The news item she had heard earlier about the discovery of the body of a man in the Bel Royal Hotel. Was that what this was all about?
‘Please tell me, has something happened to Robert?’
The officer was poker-faced. ‘If you go up to the admin office, I’m sure they will explain everything to you.’
She left, hurried up the two flights of stairs to the ICU floor and along the corridors to the admin office. The early-morning sunshine felt as if it had been blotted out by a dark cloud.
76
Saturday 19 January
After a restless, troubled night, in which he was woken at 3 a.m. by a registrar in the Maternity ward, worried about a patient, Marcus Valentine had finally drifted back into sleep as dawn was breaking. Almost immediately, it seemed, he was woken by the twins crawling across the duvet, tugging at it, tugging at his ears, tugging at Claire’s hair and yelling.
And yelling.
Unable to stop himself, he yelled back, ‘Be quiet, for fuck’s sake, be quiet!’
‘Marcus!’ chided Claire, now awake, too.
He rounded on her. ‘What the hell is your problem?’
‘You,’ she said, simply. ‘What’s got into you? They’re just being kids.’
‘I’m working my arse off at the moment, and I’m on call all weekend – I have to put up with them using me as a play mat? I’m tired, I need some sleep.’
‘They’re your children, Marcus,’ she said. ‘Just as much as mine. When you raise your voice and swear, you scare them, and anyhow, I’m also working my arse off, in case you haven’t noticed.’
Rhys and Amelia were staring at him, open-mouthed. They’d never been shouted at like that before. But it had an immediate effect on them. They shut up.
‘Hey, guys!’ Marcus said. He sat up, threw the top of the duvet over their heads, then began tickling them both through the cover.
It was only a few moments before the twins were giggling and writhing again. He tickled them harder and they responded by wriggling and laughing even more. Just then, on his bedside table, the 8 a.m. local news came on the clock radio.
The first item was the discovery of the body of a man in the Bel Royal Hotel.
He sat up, rigid. The twins were still giggling, but Marcus tuned them out, listening intently.
‘What’s the matter?’ Claire asked.
He waved with his hand for her to be quiet, listening to the voice of Detective Superintendent Raven. Then the news switched to a planning dispute.
‘Marcus?’ Claire asked. ‘Are you all right? You look pale.’
>
Through the baby monitor, Cormac could be heard crying.
‘What is it?’ she insisted. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you doing the parkrun today?’
‘No, I’m on call, I have to go in.’
Marcus climbed out of bed, went through to the bathroom and shut the door behind him, needing to think. He sat down on the closed toilet seat without lifting the lid. Trembling. Heard the scolding voice of his mother, as if she was shouting with a megaphone pressed to his ear: ‘You are an embarrassment, Marcus, a failure. You’re such a failure. Can you do anything right?’
That body should have remained undetected in that freezer for months. How had he been found so soon? Georgie had specifically told him the kitchens were all shut down and they didn’t regularly check them.
There was something that concerned him deeply: who might Resmes have talked to?
He was thinking back to Thursday. When he’d asked the young student doctor to meet him at the Bel Royal Hotel.
His reply. I have a date tonight. She’s cooking for me.
What had Resmes told his date? What excuse had he given her for being late? Had he told her where he was going? Had he mentioned his name to her?
But he was fine, he’d covered his tracks. He’d been at Georgie Maclean’s gym session. And after that, he’d returned to the hospital, with a coat covering his gym wear, and made sure several people had seen him, chatting briefly to a number of them. Perfectly natural he would be there late, as he was on call. If questioned, he would simply say he’d asked Robert Resmes to come to his office for a debrief before he moved on to Kath Clow. But Resmes had never showed up.
He relaxed a little. After his session with Georgie on Thursday night, when he’d returned to the vicinity of the hotel to meet Resmes, he’d worn a swimming cap with a bobble hat over it, his scuba wetsuit beneath his coat. Latex gloves. No exposed flesh. No DNA at the scene. He was confident about that. At least he’d had the benefit of forensic awareness from Claire’s obsession with the CSI series over the past years. The police would be trying to figure out the cause of death; who had caused it; a motive.