by Ruby Loren
“You’re definitely not meeting up with anyone from your old publishing company and taking a big payoff?” Katya looked a lot happier than when she’d first turned up at the scene of the crime.
“No, of course not!” I said and then stopped. “Oh. Oh no…”
“What?”
“There is someone from the publishing company here. He was working as a merchandise seller, but he claimed he turned up on the morning after the bust and found the company gone. He’s been looking for a job since then and just happened to get one working as a reproduction actor for the documentary they’re filming. He turned up at our villa when Tiff found out he was on the island with us. That good-for-nothing, cheating…”
Katya cleared her throat and raised her dark brows.
“Perhaps he’s lying and he’s still working for them. If he is, I haven’t been offered any payoffs. After he broke into the villa, he was trying to get me to say something controversial about the great white shark they’re trying to rescue.”
“Wait, he broke in to your villa?”
“Mmm hmmm, I’m still wondering about that,” I confessed. “My gut instinct is that he’s not anything to do with the people you’re after. He’s just too stupid.”
“He could be faking it.”
I thought about it. “I really don’t think so, but… you be the judge. You’re the agent here.”
“Oh, come on, Madi. You were never even supposed to know you were under surveillance, and you haven’t done anything wrong! I’m only here because it’s part of my cover. I wasn’t involved with the raid on the offices, so hopefully no one knows who I am.”
“Apart from whoever may, or may not, have leaked that a raid was coming,” I pointed out.
Katya’s death stare just made me smile. I didn’t take her tough act that seriously any more.
“I was chosen because I have police experience and I’m fluent in Spanish. Unfortunately, because I’m also fluent in English, when the local cops got a call about a possible murder at the site of a wildlife documentary being filmed by a bunch of English people, my new boss thought I should come along for the ride to make sure everyone was happy and felt like they were being treated fairly and not like the dirty tourists they are.”
I pulled a face.
“I’m telling you this verbatim, I swear. But in English, of course. Dirty tourists… never learning our beautiful language,” she said with a smirk.
“But propping up your economy.”
“Yeah, well… whatever.”
A moment later she sighed. “I guess we’d better get back to the scene of the crime.” It came out a little sarcastic.
“Someone really was murdered,” I reminded her.
“I haven’t actually worked a case like this for years. MI5 fabricated some more police stuff for my references. Is there anything I should know about what’s happened?”
“That’s the kind of stuff you find out by taking statements from witnesses,” I reminded her.
“All right, smarty pants. If you’re not careful, you’ll be my first arrest.”
I tipped my head to signal we really should be heading back, or someone might come to check what we were up to.
“One more thing,” Katya said, stepping in front of me. “You look way better without the makeup.”
“I’ve missed you,” I told her, meaning it.
“Don’t go getting emotional on me, Ma’am. You’re a witness and a potential suspect for murder.”
I kept the smile on my face right up until we rounded the corner back into the main plaza.
I tried not to make eye contact while Katya asked Darius questions about what he’d seen and how well he’d known the deceased. Something I’d said to him earlier about shutting up must have stuck because he’d started shaking his head and saying ‘no comment’ to all of her questions. This time I wasn’t about to bother stepping in and telling him what a fool he was making of himself.
“If he’s not going to comment, I will,” Ben said, stepping in just before I thought Katya was going to accidentally on purpose smack Darius with her iPad. “He spent last night with Leona and then this morning, she’s dead. I think it’s pretty clear who your prime suspect should be.”
“I’m the one who found her dead! I didn’t do it,” Darius protested.
Katya looked sideways at me just for a second. I was sure no one else noticed, but I immediately understood that she agreed with my deduction that Darius Villi was way too dumb to be involved with any super successful money laundering ring.
“Okay, now we’ve established a few facts, I’m going to need written statements from all of you. This will take a bit of time, so can I please ask you to not leave the set until you’re cleared to do so. I’ll start with you,” she said, pointing at Ben, who meekly followed her.
After Ben had gone with Katya towards the shell building, where the cops were setting up shop, everyone seemed to slump.
“This is awful,” Patrick said and received a pat from Ross the cameraman.
“She was such a bright star… and I thought this documentary was a dead cert for the Go Wild! awards this year. We’ve got the reproductions, which no one else is doing right now,” Travis contributed.
I blinked a little at how fast Leona’s ‘mourners’ had jumped to how badly this affected their show. Before they could get on to talking about replacing her, which I predicted would happen in the next few seconds, I walked away, looking for somewhere quiet to make a couple of phone calls I wasn’t looking forward to making. In the end, I gave up and settled for standing behind the food truck and hoping I’d be able to hear over the constant loud whispers that somehow seemed more intrusive than if everyone talked all at once.
My first call was to Tiff, breaking the news to her that her boyfriend had not only confessed to cheating on her, the woman he’d cheated on her with was now dead. Surprisingly, Tiff seemed more worried about my close proximity to yet another murder victim than the fact her boyfriend was a lousy cheat. When I queried that, she explained that things had gone cold since he’d gone to Mallorca and she’d just assumed he was a good-for-nothing - like all the guys she picked. We’d talked a little about how she was a wonderful woman who deserved so much better - which she did - and I promised I would help her to vet the next man she even thought about looking twice at.
“How did Auryn take it?” she asked when we were wrapping up the conversation and I was feeling a little more optimistic than I had prior to making the call.
“That’s the next call I’m going to make,” I told her.
There was a really long pause. “Good luck!” Tiff said and then hung up.
So, according to Tiff - Tiff who was pretty much always nice about everything - I was in deep trouble.
“Hi Auryn,” I said when he answered the phone.
“Hey! You caught me on a break. How’s your day going?”
“Not so good,” I admitted. “Leona Richards was found dead in her caravan. It looks like it’s probably murder.”
The line went quiet for a moment. “Did you find her?”
“No… Tiff’’s soon to be ex-boyfriend, Darius, did. I just went in after he did to make sure he was right and that she was really dead and not asleep, or ill, or something.”
“Of course you did,” Auryn said, actually sounding pretty annoyed. I frowned at the phone. What else was I supposed to do? It wasn’t as if I was responsible for her murder!
“I could be here longer than expected. I’ll talk to you later?” I said, hoping Auryn’s response was a knee jerk reaction.
“Yeah, sure,” he said and then hung up.
Tiff did warn you, I thought, putting my phone back in my pocket with a sigh. “Some holiday this trip is turning out to be,” I muttered, before walking back out into the bright sunlight of the square.
“Ma’am, I’d like to take your statement next,” Katya said, catching me halfway across the plaza at the point when I’d realised I didn’t actually have
anywhere in particular to go.
I nodded at Ben who nodded back, looking more than a little distracted. Some bad part of me wondered if, after giving my statement, I could persuade Katya to let me go and then leave The Big Blue and the documentary crowd behind forever. Auryn and I could change villas or, heck, we could even jump across islands! Or we could just go home, I silently whispered, feeling a little glow at the thought.
When we were inside an empty office in the shell building and Katya had shut the door behind me, we both sort of slumped.
“This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing when I went undercover with the police. I thought it would all be drunk and disorderly tourists,” Katya complained.
“I’m sorry that spying on me has suddenly turned out to be more inconvenient than you expected.”
Katya smiled. “You know the whole idea of being watched from a distance was so you could have a good holiday and never know I was there. But then you go and get involved in a murder case.”
“How careless of me,” I sniped back, but I knew neither of us were being completely serious. We’d bonded on our rather violent trip to Wales and she was the only one I even vaguely trusted who worked for MI5. Yes, she’d been sent out here to watch me, but she wasn’t now trying to hide that, and I understood that she’d had to do her job or face the consequences. I understood that very well.
“Is there anything useful you can tell me about the case?” Katya asked, after I’d scrawled down a vague statement and handed it across.
“Believe it or not, I’ve been trying not to get too involved with the documentary crowd. However, Ben told me Leona’s been acting strangely and I noticed some of it myself. She looked like she might have been hurt, or in pain in someway, and then she freaked out about being in the sun. I suggested that it might be something to do with drugs, but Ben didn’t think so.” I shrugged. “I don’t really know.”
“I’ll make sure it’s looked into,” Katya said, flipping back to police officer mode for a moment.
“Also… I don’t know if anyone’s told you,” I began, reluctantly, “but last night, we were all out for a meal together.”
“All?” Katya queried.
“I don’t know who everyone is around here, but Ben, Skye, Darius, the producers, and the director were all there. I’m guessing after Auryn and I escaped, Darius must have gone home with Leona.”
“After you escaped?” Katya looked more baffled by the second.
“We were supposed to be there for a private get together, but I believe Leona asked Skye to contact the press and clue them in on our whereabouts. I never got a chance to ask her, but I think she wanted us to be seen together? You know - two people that the press want to get pictures of.” I didn’t want to say two famous people. I was really sick of that.
“So, the press arrived, then what happened?”
“I don’t know if when you’ve been watching me, you’ve noticed I seem to have been assigned a publicist?”
Katya nodded sheepishly. “I actually thought he might be a contact with the money laundering gang until…”
I raised my eyebrows. We both knew she meant until she’d seen Colin in action. No secret organisation in their right mind would employ someone as bumbling as him. I had serious doubts over whether my publishing company should be employing him. Calling them up had been high on my to do list, prior to this new deadly development.
“He climbed over the restaurant balcony at the same time the press arrived, offering interviews and private photo shoots with me. When no one listened, he got up on the table, slipped, and ended up catapulting paella everywhere. In the fuss that followed, Auryn and I managed to get away.”
Katya shook her head. “I have so many questions, but I suppose they’re not relevant to the investigation.”
“Just think up the most ridiculous answer you can and you’re probably right when it comes to Colin.” I glanced around the neat office. “I’m actually surprised he hasn’t popped up. I wouldn’t put it past him to consider a murder an excellent opportunity for publicity.”
“Yikes. But actually, I’m afraid he already has turned up.”
The reluctant way she said it made me wonder if he’d been found washed up on the beach, or something. A moment later, I was sorry for my morbid imagination and dark wishful thinking.
“When we arrived, the protesters outside went crazy. They thought we were here to arrest everyone in the park, or something.” She rolled her eyes. “However, one of the group was more persistent than the rest. We had to leave an officer behind to stop him from climbing over the boundary fence.” She tilted her head. “Well, technically, he’d already stopped himself. He was stuck on top of the fence.”
I groaned.
We sat in contemplative silence for a few moments.
Katya glanced around and then leant in close. “Look on the bright side - if everyone in the world knows your face, it’s pretty unlikely that they will ever get to you. What use could you possibly be?”
“Thanks… I think.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” Katya said and I knew she meant it. Perhaps she was right that fame would act as a protective barrier against me being manipulated and manoeuvred again, but honestly, it felt like a choice between giving up my privacy forever and becoming so private I had no friends left. I had no idea which one was worse.
On the way out of the office, I nearly collided with Doreen, the park manager’s PA. A bundle of papers she’d been carrying flew everywhere, and I didn’t have to speak Spanish to know she was cursing as they fell like fluttering feathers.
Katya glanced at her tablet screen and then excused herself in a professional manner, probably to deflect any suspicion that we knew each other. I was left helping Doreen to pick up the pieces.
“This is terrible. It’s just awful,” she said, while we gathered everything up. “The press are going to be all over this. Do you know how she died?”
“I don’t think anyone knows at the moment. There’ll be an autopsy, I assume.” Katya hadn’t specifically told me not to say anything about what I’d seen inside the caravan, and she was going to have a heck of a hard time keeping the other witnesses quiet, but I wasn’t going to be the one to spread it around. I assumed the secret agent trusted my integrity on that.
“You can bet that the angry animal people outside will pick up on this and tell all of their photo taking friends. We’re all going to be in trouble. There will be journalists everywhere!” She shuffled the papers and nearly dropped them again.
“I’m sure it will all calm down once her killer is found.”
The PA jumped. “It was murder?” Perhaps I wasn’t as good at keeping my mouth shut as I thought.
“It looks like it,” was all I said.
“That’s even worse.” She shook her head, looking horrified. “All this exposure…” She looked up, as if only just remembering I was right there with her. “I must go and file these papers.”
I watched as she hurried off up the stairwell, going the opposite direction to the way she had been travelling. There was definitely something fishy about Doreen Lopez, but all things considered, I thought there were probably bigger fish to fry right now. I frowned, wondering if my mind had been joggled by the body and was now only thinking in fish puns.
I was still feeling funny when I walked out into the sunshine and finally considered that my strange mood may partially be down to a lack of food. It had been a long time since I’d had that doughnut and I really wasn’t the kind of girl who skipped lunch.
Aimee waved to me when I approached the food truck. I noted that she was now dressed in chef’s whites and looked more than a little harried.
“You are my hero,” I said when she whipped a foil wrapped sandwich out of the food truck for me.
“Someone’s still got to be working around here,” she told me with a slight roll of her eyes. “I think I’m about to run out of food. Normally, people pick at what we have, but now everyone’s hanging ar
ound here doing nothing, suddenly they all want to eat.” She sighed. “Of all days for Marco to have off!”
“Hopefully we’ll all be getting out of here soon. The police surely can’t keep us here for too much longer.”
Aimee nodded thoughtfully. “Someone’s going to be happy that she’s dead and gone.”
I stared at her in surprise and a blush rose in the catering assistant’s cheeks.
“Sorry, just saying what everyone’s thinking, I guess.”
I took a bite of my sandwich to save saying anything without thinking it through.
“I’m just the nobody who serves the food, but I do hear all the gossip. Leona has been annoying all kinds of people recently. I guess one of them got tired of her,” she said with an easy shrug.
I was vividly reminded of the dent in Leona’s head and the gore smeared on the hideous statue. Strangely, I wondered who had given her the souvenir in the first place. Had the whole thing been planned, or had the killer just used the first weapon that came to hand?
“You guys talking about what happened? It’s so awful, isn’t it?” Skye slipped in next to me and grabbed one of the last remaining dry-looking buns. I was secretly very pleased with my tuna and lettuce baguette that Aimee had put aside for me.
We both murmured that it was indeed terrible.
I watched as Skye bit into her bun and her eyes took on a thoughtful look. “It’s such a blow to the documentary. They’ll be missing a co-presenter!”
“You don’t think Ben will do it alone?” I asked.