by Peter James
‘Are you OK if we record this interview, Miss Maclean?’ the DI asked.
‘Yes, fine – please call me Georgie.’
The interview was a laboriously slow process, as she recounted all that had happened from the time she’d arrived at the hotel until she’d found Robert Resmes’s body. She was stopped intermittently by one or the other officer, asking for clarification on points.
What they repeatedly came back to was how Resmes might have got into the hotel and whether it had anything to do with the events a couple of days ago. So far, the Crime Scene Investigators had been unable to establish a point of entry. All the windows were secure, all external doors locked. Georgie was unable to explain it either. She told them how she always locked the external door to the gym when she did her inspection round of the building. But she mentioned that Edouardo also had a key and she wasn’t entirely sure where he was at the time because it was his day off. She suggested that if they hadn’t already, they might want to speak to him.
Suddenly her phone rang. Apologetically, she removed it from her bag, and saw on the display it was Kath.
‘Do answer it if you need to,’ DI Cunningham said.
She desperately wanted to. It had to be news about the scan, but that wasn’t going to be a thirty-second conversation. Silencing it, but totally distracted, she put the phone back in her bag. ‘It’s fine, thank you, I’ll call her back later.’
What was the news? Her mind, momentarily, was all over the place. Was it bad or good?
‘Georgie,’ the DI said, ‘can you think of anything that’s happened at the hotel – or your gym – that’s struck you as unusual, either on Thursday night or before then? Anything you might have seen?’
She frowned, concentrating again. ‘Well, apart from that weird incident the day before, obviously, no. I—’ Then she remembered. Could it possibly have any bearing on this or any connection? ‘For a while now I’ve had a feeling that someone has been creeping around the hotel whilst I’ve been there. It’s a pretty difficult place to make totally secure, it’s got very old window latches. Anyone who wanted to break in could get in fairly easily.’
‘Did you actually see anyone?’ the DC asked.
She again told them about the egg timers. And how she’d agreed with the police officers who had attended that it was probably kids who must have got into the building, somehow.
‘Seems an odd thing to do,’ Cunningham said.
‘I don’t know. If you wanted to spook someone out, I’d say it was a pretty effective way – it sure spooked me!’
‘But you never saw the kids, or whoever, and no one else saw the egg timers?’
‘No, I was there alone. But I guess the locals would know a lot of the hotels are closed for the winter, and as I said, it wouldn’t have been difficult to break in.’
‘Is there anyone else working at the hotel in the daytime?’
‘Just the caretaker, Edouardo.’
‘And he’s never there in the evenings?’
‘He comes and goes at odd hours sometimes. He works as a children’s entertainer, as a clown, and occasionally in a cabaret act in town – he stores his costume and props in his room there.’
‘A clown?’ Cunningham said.
She nodded.
He frowned. ‘Dunno what it is, but there’s something about clowns I find very creepy.’
‘And me,’ she said. ‘But Edouardo’s all right.’
‘OK, we have his full name and contact details and we will have a word with him.’ He made a note to explore it later. ‘It may be significant. There was no phone on or near Resmes when he was found, yet he had his wallet on him with over £100 in it. It opens up the possibility it was someone mugging him for his phone, but it doesn’t make much sense to take his phone and not his wallet. We need to speak to this caretaker as a priority.’
‘And it still doesn’t explain what Resmes was doing in the hotel, does it?’
He shook his head. ‘You had no personal relationship with him?’
‘No, I didn’t know him very well, only through my visits to the hospital. Do you know anything about what happened – why he died? He wasn’t locked in that freezer – there was an internal door – so presumably he either passed out or was incapacitated.’
The detectives shot each other a glance. ‘You’ll appreciate, Georgie, we cannot say too much at this stage. We’ll know more after the postmortem, but we have to wait for his body to fully defrost, and for a Home Office Pathologist to arrive from the UK.’ Cunningham leaned forward across the table. ‘In confidence, Robert Resmes was apparently meant to meet the consultant he’d been under, earlier in the evening at the hospital, and never showed up.’
‘Marcus Valentine?’
‘Yes, I believe that was his name.’
Marcus had some serious issues, but that was for another day.
‘Resmes was then going on to see his girlfriend – she’d had a day off and was cooking a meal for him.’
‘Girlfriend?’ Georgie said.
‘A nurse at the hospital. She’s on the floor, utterly distraught, hasn’t a clue what could have happened. The last time anyone saw him was in one of the Maternity wards at around 7.30 p.m. on Thursday. His pass card has been retrieved – he had it on him – and the High Tech Crime Unit will be able to get the last time it was used off it, which should give us an accurate time for when he left the hospital.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a real mystery but we are now very keen to speak to this caretaker.’
When they had finally finished, the DI asked Georgie to let him know if she thought of anything else, however trivial, over the next few days, then thanked her for her help.
‘I don’t think I’ve been much help, really,’ she said. ‘I’m just so sad for him. And his girlfriend – and his family back in Romania. Maybe Edouardo will throw some light on it all.’
‘We’ll get to the bottom of it,’ the DI said. ‘We normally do.’
‘But not always, right?’ She smiled.
He smiled back. ‘This is a small island community where, thankfully, incidents of this nature are a very rare event. I’m confident we will find out what has happened, it’s still very early on in our investigation.’
‘I hope so.’
As soon as she was back out in the dark, cold street, just after 5 p.m., in her coat and gloves, she pulled out her phone and listened to her voicemail. There was just one message, from Kath Clow.
‘Hi, Georgie, it’s Kath. Call me back when you’ve a moment.’
Her normal cheerful voice was tinged with a trace of hesitation, which instantly alarmed Georgie. She stopped and dialled. And got Kath’s voicemail. Leaving a message that she was returning her call, she walked rapidly down towards the town centre and the hospital.
She entered the pedestrian precinct of King’s Street, teeming as always with people, and hurried on, past January sales signs in almost all the windows, clutching her phone in her hand, willing the obstetrician to call back.
A couple of minutes later, to her relief, the display lit up and she heard the ring tone.
‘Hi, Kath,’ she answered, instantly.
The woman, normally so bright, sounded subdued. ‘Georgie, look, I’ve just had the results of the MRI scan.’
‘That was quick,’ Georgie said.
‘Yes, well, the thing is that when I did the colposcopy, I didn’t see anything abnormal. But the histology showed the possibility of something not right. Now I’ve got the scan result which has also indicated something I’m not happy with. I’d like to see you first thing Monday. I know it’s over a day away, but we can’t do anything until then, so take tomorrow to relax as much as you can, then we’ll tackle it all when you come in to see me and we are both fresh.’
Georgie stepped into a shop doorway, in a daze. ‘Oh my God, Kath, what is it? What are you trying to tell me?’ she asked.
‘I may need you to make a decision,’ Clow said.
‘What do you mean?’ Georgie a
sked, bewildered. ‘What kind of decision?’
‘Let’s go through it all on Monday.’
‘Please tell me, Kath, tell me the truth. What – what has the scan shown?’
‘Georgie, I don’t want to worry you. I want you to know it would be much better to talk about this face to face.’
‘You don’t want to worry me? Let me tell you as your friend, I’m fucking worried. OK?’
‘Hey, listen, don’t be worried, there are plenty of options. You’re going to be fine, trust me. We just have to make some decisions.’
‘Trust you? What kind of decisions?’
Kath sounded more serious and firmer than ever before. ‘Ten o’clock Monday, come and see me at the hospital. We’ll discuss it all then.’
‘Why can’t we discuss it now, Kath?’
‘Because I need some more information before we do. Please, my love, try to relax – as I said, there are plenty of options.’
‘Is one of the options that I’m a healthy mother-to-be, and that the MRI scan showed everything was OK, and that by Monday the man I love will be up and about and dancing around the ICU?’
There was a long silence.
86
Monday 21 January
At 6.05 a.m. on Monday morning, despite feeling exhausted, Georgie decided to give up on any attempt at sleep and hauled herself up in bed. Thinking. Gathering her thoughts.
A week, today, since Roger’s accident.
He should have been alongside her, lying in the large bed, but instead, there was just a void.
A Roger-sized void.
He was still in Intensive Care. No improvement on yesterday, instead a further decline. Slight, she had been assured. But still a decline.
Was he dying? Was sepsis, so common in hospitals, steadily poisoning all his internal organs?
She’d been in the grip of fear every second since her phone conversation with Kath on Saturday, after leaving the police station. All day on Sunday she’d sat with Roger, worried sick about him, and worried sick about herself. What on earth was Kath keeping from her?
Trying to make sense of that conversation. Thinking it through, as much as she could remember, word by word.
Only a few hours now until she saw her. Found out. Oh God, please let everything be OK. She closed her eyes, exhausted but wired. She opened them again and glanced at the calendar on her phone, checking what else she had for the week ahead, and saw she had an appointment with her hairdresser at 11 a.m. How long would she be with Kath Clow? How would she be feeling after she’d seen Kath? Why was she even having a haircut when she, her baby and her fiancé were all going to die anyhow?
Gathering herself together, she made a mental note to call as soon as the salon was open to push back her hair appointment, and if that was not possible, to reschedule. Then she got out of bed, put on her kit and let herself out into the darkness.
The cold air on her face felt good and she wished so much she could run rather than walk. After a gentle warm-up stroll, turning left along the promenade towards the lights of St Helier, she started power walking. She kept going, keeping up the pace. And as she did so she began to feel better. So much better. She was feeling good.
Sod you all, I’m going to be fine! Bump’s going to be fine! Roger’s going to be fine! We’ll cross each bridge as it comes.
87
Monday 21 January
Marcus Valentine was feeling fine, oh yes, so good! He stroked the heads of his little twins who had climbed into bed with them, as they always did around 6 a.m., usually waking him.
But today, they hadn’t woken him. He’d been awake for a long time.
Claire was still sound asleep.
He stroked them again, fondly, but detached. In his vision of his life post-Claire, he would get to choose the times when he saw his children, and it certainly would not be at 6 a.m. every morning. Early morning would be his and Georgie’s time in bed together. With their insatiable appetite for each other, they would keep their passion alive and never let it go the way his and Claire’s had.
They were destined for each other.
It was all working out so brilliantly.
He got up feeling in a great mood, and even better still after a long shower. He dressed and went downstairs, adjusted the time on one of his precious clocks and sat down.
On his phone he opened RunMaster and saw that Georgie Maclean had been out already, impressively early. Her time wasn’t so impressive though. Barely above walking pace. He could beat that, beat it easily!
That’s what being pregnant does to you, young lady.
But don’t worry. In a couple of days, it’ll all be taken care of. You won’t be running for a while. Really don’t worry, you’ll get over it and be back to form come the spring. And you’ll have a spring in your step! A whole new life beckoning. Roger will be long gone, and all those dumb hormones telling you that you need to reproduce, they’ll be gone, too. Up in smoke. That’s where your foetus will be in a couple of days, in the hospital incinerator, rising up that tall chimney stack out the back of the building.
I will have set you free!
88
Monday 21 January
On the dot of 10 a.m., Georgie knocked nervously on Kath Clow’s office door.
‘Come in!’
As she entered, instead of being in her usual scrubs, her friend was sitting at her desk dressed in a smart suit. And instead of her usual warm smile, there was a much more forced one on her face. Kath got up and hugged her hard, then pointed her to a chair. ‘Georgie, come in, come in, my love. You must be feeling dreadful, absolute shite.’
‘Pretty shite, actually, yep, Kath. That’s about the right word for it.’
The consultant nodded, sympathetically. ‘What have you heard about Roger, any signs of improvement?’
‘No – they’ve changed his meds again.’
Kath looked down at her desk, shuffled some papers around, then peered at her screen for a moment.
‘OK, look, let’s not beat about the bush. I’m really sorry, but when I did your last colposcopy it didn’t appear to me that there was anything wrong. But the lab report has shown that the biopsies I took on Thursday are cancerous, and the MRI scan has confirmed it. It’s not good news, Georgie. We have to deal with it, and we will.’
Numbly, Georgie replied after a long moment. ‘Yes, of course. I mean – how bad is it?’
Kath relaxed a little and sounded more positive now. ‘It’s stage-2 adenocarcinoma of the cervix, which means it is serious, but can, hopefully, be stopped in its tracks if you agree to the treatment. It’s an aggressive cancer, which means that every day matters, so it’s important to start the treatment as quickly as possible.’
Georgie stared back at her. ‘What treatment, exactly?’
‘Well, this is the hard part. I’ve spoken to Mr Valentine, and I’ve talked to the Royal Marsden, which is the leading cancer hospital in the UK. You need chemo-radiation over six weeks and I’m afraid this can’t be done while you’re pregnant, because of the damage it could do to your baby.’
There was a long silence as Georgie’s mind went into free-fall.
When she finally spoke, her whole body was trembling. ‘What are you saying, Kath? That I have to wait for my baby to be born before I start any treatment?’
‘Honestly? If you want my opinion, and it is Mr Valentine’s view, also, you don’t have the luxury of that time without very seriously risking your life. He feels that if you wait for the baby to go to term – and this is backed up by the Royal Marsden – your cancer will almost certainly progress. If we act now, with luck, we could prevent that from happening. I’m recommending termination, I’m afraid, Georgie.’
‘Termination? No, oh God, no. Please – there must be an alternative, surely?’
It felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. As if she was in some kind of decompression chamber. Her ears popped. She bowed her head, staring at the floor, gripped with fear and total
ly lost. God, all the years of trying. Now she had a healthy baby growing inside her.
‘How – how would you – what – will happen to my baby?’
‘You need a hysterotomy, which means going in through the abdomen to remove your foetus. When that’s healed, I’d organize for you to go to the Royal Marsden for chemo-radiation.’
‘Hysterectomy? Removing my uterus?’
Clow shook her head. ‘No, Georgie, it’s a hysterotomy – the same cut into the uterus we would perform for a caesarean.’
‘What – what happens to my baby?’
‘I’ve been through this before, with other patients, my love. Some have opted for a funeral with a priest attending.’
‘What?’ she screamed. ‘Funeral? My baby has to die? This is going to kill it? No. Fucking. Way. Kath. No. No. No!’
Kath held back from telling Georgie that one of her patients had had a cast made of her baby’s feet, and another a tattoo from her baby’s cremated ashes. And another had had the cremated tissue put in a glass pendant. Everyone coped with grief in a different way. Georgie needed time to absorb this terrible shock, with everything falling apart around her now. Kath’s heart ached for her friend.
Georgie held a stoic, numb silence. Before exploding into tears. ‘I can’t lose it, I can’t, I just can’t go through with this. I can’t lose my baby.’
89
Monday 21 January
After several minutes, once Georgie had collected herself a little, Kath pulled up a chair next to her and held out a box of tissues.
‘I know it’s terrible news, Georgie, I can’t begin to say how awful I feel to tell you this.’
Georgie looked at her with wide, staring, bloodshot eyes. She took a tissue, then crushed and held it in her hand. ‘I’m dying, aren’t I? My baby is dying, Roger is dying and now I’m dying.’
‘No, Georgie, you are not dying. The treatment for this type of cancer, if caught early enough, gives a very good prognosis and we are early enough if we don’t delay. OK?’