by Jo Furniss
“All the evidence was fake, designed to make me leave, so you and Ed could be alone,” she said.
“As fake as your handbags. Shout from the window if you want. No one will understand what you’re saying.” Josie gave a sardonic laugh. “Welcome to my world.” She slid two fingers into the front pocket of her jeans to extract a tiny ziplock bag. “This is real, though.” She tossed it at Amanda, who caught it against her chest. Inside was a yellowed relic.
Amanda stared at the shriveled nail under plastic. “Your mother’s?”
Josie shrugged. “It’s all she left me.”
On the bed, Ed murmured, “Josie,” which made Amanda shudder; but did she want to succor him or silence him? She couldn’t do either while Josie stood over him with a knife, watching through luminous toddler eyes. Finally, she has what she needs: our full attention. She flicked the fingernail onto the bed, where it slipped between the sheets crumpled between Ed’s legs.
“Is this because of your mother?”
“I can’t even remember her name.”
“I don’t think that’s true. On your website, you were counting down to the anniversary of her death.”
“No, I was counting down to the day we were going to die. Me and Teddy. Like Romeo and Juliet. It would have been fitting to do it on my mother’s anniversary, but when he came to Burma and you skipped off to follow him, I saw an opportunity. I reckon their policing is rubbish here. Makes it easier to blame on you. But after seeing Awmi . . . I’m not sure I can go through with the suicide part.”
Josie reached over to soothe her father. While her back was turned, Amanda twisted her wrists against the belt that bound her hands. She had to keep Josie talking.
“He tried to do what’s best for you, Josie. He’s been a good father.” Amanda gestured at Ed, fetal on the bed. “What has Teddy done to deserve this?”
“Don’t call him Teddy. Only I call him Teddy. And he hurt me. Over and over again, he hurt me. So I needed to make it stop.”
Amanda nodded, an idea flickering. And a nip of relief. She had detected something rotten in Ed; it wasn’t all in her imagination. The girl sought revenge, the abused child turned abuser. How long had she suffered? On the bed, Ed kicked out with one leg.
“When did he start abusing you?” Amanda asked.
“You’re being simplistic again. Teddy never touched me.” Josie screwed the knife handle around in her grasp. “I thought those pictures would make him see what I’m capable of, now that I’m grown up. But instead he decided to send me away.”
“You want him to see you in a sexual way? But you’re his daughter.”
“You read the blog: we’re not blood. There was nothing to stop us. Even when he knew he could have me, that we could stay together, like we’d always wanted—once she was out of the way—he still resisted. Again, like Romeo and Juliet, it was only foolish social convention keeping us apart.”
Amanda’s relief burst into a physical stab of pain. Ed had done nothing wrong, and she had done nothing to defend him—so who was the guilty party now? Amanda leaned against the wall to keep herself upright. On the bed, Ed’s muscles tensed and then released with a long sigh. The pain focused into a point as sharp as the tip of Josie’s knife. Amanda was beyond caring. She went to him, the mattress sagging as she kneeled, and he rolled into her. She used the sheet to wipe bile from his chin. His eyes cracked open and widened when he saw her face.
“Mrs. Bonham.” His voice was so rough that Amanda’s throat burned in response.
“I’m sorry. I thought—”
“Watch out for Josie.”
Amanda wiped her bound wrist over wet eyes. Unbelievable. He still thought she was the innocent one. After all the girl had done. Watch out for Josie. She stood with the knife turning in her fingers. Watch out . . . The ghost was back, its fingertips raising welts on her skin. Watch out . . . He didn’t mean watch over his daughter; he meant beware of her. Amanda backed away from the bed. Unless she got out of this room, it looked likely that Josie would go for the full house and kill her stepmother too.
Chapter 50
Camille skittered across the lobby, chin up and eyes fixed on her destination. If she had to speak to anyone, she would cry, just dissolve into a stain on the marble. The elevator was closing. “Hold the lift!” Her voice came with the force of a death throe. The mirrored doors retreated. A few more steps and she almost slammed into the back of the elevator. She hit the button for the fifth floor.
When the doors opened again onto the stillness of the corridor, she hesitated to step out. She was desperate for a friendly face, a lifeline to reality. Then she would gather herself up and scurry back to Singapore with her tail between her legs. But the corridor was intimidating with its trick-eye pattern on the carpet. Beside her, a businessman sighed at his watch. Camille propelled herself into the rat run between doors, sure that the pupils of the peepholes followed her all the way.
Outside room 513, she raised her fist to knock but stopped when she heard voices. Female voices. She lowered her arm. Housekeeping? She heard a bark of laughter. Whatever Ed was up to now, it could wait; he’d brought her here, thrown her into this bizarre situation with no warning, and now he could deal with the fallout. She rapped hard on the door. The voices stopped. She rapped again. The faintest shadow behind the peephole told her she was being watched.
“Ed? It’s Camille.”
With a shush on the carpet, the door opened halfway. Despite the gloom, Camille recognized Amanda Bonham’s immaculate feet inside expensive sandals. But she didn’t recognize the ugly twist on the woman’s face as she screamed at Camille to run. In Camille’s second of hesitation, a knife appeared under Amanda’s throat. The woman froze, her eyes swiveled toward the blade, and she staggered backward, hauled into the depths of the room. “Get inside or I’ll cut her throat.” The voice was female, young. “Bolt the door or I’ll cut you.”
Camille fixed the safety chain behind herself. Amanda fell heavily onto the sofa beside the french windows. She had her wrists tied. Beside her, Josie Bonham held a steak knife. The girl’s eyes flicked to the bed, and Camille noticed Ed. He was wrapped up like a fist, shivering. For the first time, she registered the stench: vomit and whisky, cut through with something as sweet and acrid as bleach. Her eyes snapped back to the knife.
“Hello again.” Josie swapped the blade into her left hand, so she could hold the right one out to shake. Camille slowly reached over the glass coffee table and felt the girl’s fingers, as limp as asparagus.
“What’s wrong with Ed?”
“Poisoned. By my stepmother. But Ed’s going to stab her to death before he succumbs.”
Amanda was brushing loose hair behind her ears, pulling herself together, her blue eyes fixed on Josie. She didn’t look murderous; she looked terrified. Josie, for her part, possessed an unnatural calm, but the sheen of sweat on her face suggested it was a veneer, a carefully constructed front. Her eyes were slightly too wide, her breathing slightly too shallow. Camille thought of the cobra she’d seen on the boardwalk, ferocious with fear. The girl was also terrified.
Josie used the handle of the knife to scratch a strand of thick, dark hair from her brow. “You’ve fucked up my plan, Camille Kemble.” She went to the bed and sat next to Ed, pressing two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. Camille backed toward the door. “Stop or I’ll stab you in the back. Why are you here?”
“Ed brought me to meet my father. But he’s a drug dealer, a gangster. I—”
“I know that. I mean here in the hotel. Why did you come back?”
“I needed him.”
Josie sprang from the bed and pointed the knife at Camille.
“What is it with women and my Teddy? Why do you all need him? What about me? What happens when I need him? I go to the back of the queue. It was supposed to be me and him, me and Teddy, Teddy and Jo-Jo Sparrow—that’s what he said. He told me. He promised it would be me and him, for always, on our own. That’s why I di
d it.”
“Did what?”
“Killed her. So we could be together, Teddy and Jo-Jo Sparrow. And now—” Josie dropped onto the bed. Ed rolled but made no more noise, not even a groan. “There’s always someone else. There will always be someone else. When it should be me and him.”
Camille slid a foot toward the door. The girl had killed a woman. Her mother? The ground slid beneath her feet. Josie with a knife. Ed dying. Amanda as stiff as the Chinese vases decorating the room. And her own father a criminal. What would happen if Camille should be found here, beside the body of a known drug dealer? They’d think she was another limb of the family tree. She’d die like her mother in a Burmese prison.
She’d rather get a knife in the back. If she ran, she’d get through the door at least, head for the stairwell, scream. Or she could lock herself in the bathroom; it would take an army to break down these mahogany doors, and there might be an emergency phone beside the toilet. She took another step backward.
Behind her, a knock, three sharp raps. Camille flattened against the wall.
“Mr. Bonham?” the voice boomed. “This is the manager. A guest reported that someone on this floor is sick. Are you there, Mr. Bonham?”
“Help us!” Camille shouted, her voice becoming a croak as Josie’s thin arm lashed her shoulders, twisting her around to hold the knife at her throat. She tried to shout again, but the pressure made her gag. She felt a hot surge of nausea that sent her head swimming, an instinct to bend forward to vomit fighting with a conflicting instinct to shrink from the knife.
“Mr. Bonham? I’m going to open the door.”
The pressure on her throat eased a fraction, enough to breathe. There was an electronic click as a card slid into the lock. The mechanism released and the door slammed open, but caught on the chain. Camille gagged again as the blade drew her sinews into her spine. “Mr. Bonham?” The voice was louder now. It spoke rapidly in another language. “Stand back, please. We are coming in.”
Camille heard a smash, but the door didn’t move. Instead, shards of glass rained down. Not glass, she realized as she landed in the debris: china. She rolled to one side to see Amanda standing over a fallen Josie, the base of a smashed vase clamped between her bound hands. But the girl stumbled to her feet. Behind Camille, the door chain strained but didn’t break. Amanda thrust a jagged shard at Josie, who knocked it easily from the awkward grasp as she lunged to snatch a clump of Amanda’s hair and haul her like a cow caught by the nose ring through the french windows to the balcony.
“I don’t see any other option, Teddy.” Words directed at her father, who groaned and rolled toward the edge of the bed. Josie threw one long leg over the ornate balcony, straddling the railing on her tiptoes. She tugged Amanda forward until she too pivoted on the ironwork, hands trapped beneath her own body weight. “This is a family matter, Camille Kemble.” Josie jutted her chin at the interconnecting door across the room. As though mesmerized, Camille pulled it open to reveal a mirror-image bedroom.
Behind her, the scrabbling of tools and overlapping voices in the corridor echoed the scramble of Amanda’s leather sandals. The curtains that framed the teetering women swayed, beckoning Camille to help. She let go of the connecting door and lunged toward the balcony just as Amanda’s feet left the floor. As she grabbed Amanda’s hips, she heard a low groan from Ed, as he pushed himself from the bed and lumbered through the muslin to grab his wife by the arm and fling her aside.
A gunshot sounded—no, Camille thought, not a gunshot—the doorframe shuddering under a heavy blow from the hallway.
Framed by golden streetlights, Ed crushed Josie in his arms. Her knife, bloody now, bounced across the mahogany floor to where Amanda had fallen heavily onto bound hands. On the balcony, Ed faltered, disoriented. Another blow from the hallway obliterated Amanda’s voice as she screamed his name.
Josie’s arms wreathed her father’s neck. “It’s time,” she said, and kicked off with her free leg, tipping the two of them over the railing into the warm tropical air.
The doorframe splintered.
A long scream echoed from below the balcony. Then silence again.
It was as though they were in the eye of the storm. A moment of respite before the security guards came through the door, before they were arrested, two foreign women charged with killing a father and child.
“Come on.” Camille tried to haul Amanda to her feet. She instinctively ducked as the doorframe withstood another blow. One more and it must surely come in. She released Amanda and opened the connecting door—fuck Mrs. Bonham, stay if she wants, it’s her funeral—but Amanda pushed herself up, dashing into the next room, Camille behind her, just as the main door slammed back against the wall.
“Mr. Bonham? My God!”
The voices in the room switched to Burmese and were shut out altogether as Camille closed the interconnecting door without so much as a click. She stared into the swirling grain of the wood. Behind her, the bed crunched under a woman’s weight. Ed’s wife sat with a picture frame in her hand. The room was decorated with Josie’s childhood ephemera and photographs, a museum of herself.
“She was watching from in here,” Amanda said. “I felt her as soon as I entered. Like I do at home. She’s always been watching us.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“But I killed him,” she whispered.
“If you plan on taking the blame, stay. But I’m leaving.” They were sitting ducks. The police would question whoever stayed in this room. And when they saw photos of Josie strewn around, the same girl who fell from the balcony of the attached room . . .
Camille could not be found in this room. She went to the main door and cracked it an inch. Enough to peep down the corridor. Tools and broken wood were scattered over the carpet. Rapid voices next door. She had to move before more people arrived. Police, ambulance. She had to get out now. But she would need to pass the open door of room 513 to get to the lift; the other way was a dead end.
“There’s a fire escape at the end of the corridor.”
Camille jumped at the voice close to her ear. She looked up at the cool blonde who was handing her a way out. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I should be dead too.”
“You will be if you get done for murder in this country.”
Amanda glanced at the framed photo of Josie and her mother, their dark hair entwined in the wind. She propped it on the table for the police to find.
Chapter 51
Neither woman spoke as they juddered along in the taxi, but every so often Camille saw Amanda raise a stringy tissue to her face to wipe away sweat and tears. Camille succumbed to the heat, tasting salt on her top lip. Faces slid by the window as busy sidewalks spilled pedestrians into the road. She wanted to scream at them to get out of their way. But she took a breath and forced calmness to fill her up like a balloon. Soon she’d be leaving this place. She could leave it all behind. Maybe.
At the drop-off point outside departures, she put a hand on her companion’s arm. “Can you hold it together in there? We have to get out before the police come after you—”
“I’m on a false passport. It’s South African. They won’t connect me at the airport.”
“How the hell did you get a fake—”
Amanda waved her out of the taxi. They walked to the terminal. One hour until the flight. The clock marked the passing minutes with a juddering hand. Camille thought of Ed’s final movements. She had no idea what to say to Amanda, who had just seen her husband die. Her poise was fragile; she had no idea how long it might hold. While she waited in line at the ticket counter, she switched on her phone to a string of missed calls from an office number. How long would it take for news of a dead British national in Burma to reach the High Commission in Singapore? She redialed the missed call. A curt voice answered on the first ring.
“Camille.” It was Josh.
“Did you call?”
“Once or twice. Where are you?”
“On
holiday.”
“Are you with Edward Bonham?”
Camille glanced at Amanda, who was mesmerized by a television screen showing BBC News with no sound.
“No.”
“Good. We just got word from the British consul in Yangon that Mr. Bonham was found dead at the Oriental Hotel.”
“Dead.” He had to be—the room was on the fifth floor—but it sounded so cold in Josh’s official tones. “What happened?”
Josh’s voice became tinny as he explained the few details that were known. “And there was a young woman with Mr. Bonham. We believe it was the daughter, Josie.”
Camille glanced over to check that Amanda was still placated by the television. “How is the daughter?”
“I’m afraid Josie Bonham is also dead. The police are thinking murder-suicide. Thing is, it’s not clear who was the murder and who was the suicide. Edward Bonham had defensive knife wounds on his hands and was covered in vomit and God knows what else. The hotel manager claims there was another woman at the scene, but the police are not convinced. Descriptions of this second woman vary wildly. Tall, short. Aged twenty, aged forty. Blonde hair, red hair. They could only agree on the fact that she was Caucasian.” The phone broadcast white noise. “Are you with me, Camille?”
“I’m confident the local police will get to the bottom of a simple murder-suicide.”
“I’m sure that’s true. You’re heading back to Singapore now?”
“I’m at the airport.”
“I spoke to the high commissioner. He’s willing to bring you back onto the press team, though you’ll have to go through another probationary period.”
While she thought about it, the phone faded to black.
“Camille?”
“Thank you, Josh. I appreciate your efforts.” After he rang off, she stared at the blank screen.
“They know?” Amanda’s voice made her start. She handed Camille a paper cup of coffee.