But when I grabbed my keys from the hook at the back door, telling myself I wasn’t too hung-over to drive, telling myself I wasn’t going insane, I fumbled and fumbled and stopped dead. ‘Shit!’
‘What?’
I took a deep breath to slow myself down and looked, one after the other, at every key on the ring. ‘The barrier key’s missing. The boat-gate. We’ll have to hoof it.’
I hit speed-dial and speaker, when we were halfway across the grass. ‘Mum? Oh, God, voicemail. Mum, I’m in trouble down here. There’s been a … there’s been a … Listen, call me when you get this, eh?’ I hung up and threw myself through the open gate onto the path.
We slithered and skidded down and down, grabbing at the tree trunks and each other.
‘She won’t be there, will she?’ Kim said.
‘I don’t think so.’ I felt the grip of sand under my feet and looked up and out across the beach.
She was gone. The lobster pot was gone. The rope was gone. Then, into the silence, came the roar of a car engine and the whine of tyres spinning in the wet sand.
I surged forward out of the trees. At the far edge of the bay where the lane rises up, I saw just a flick of navy-blue paint and the wink of a chrome bumper.
Kim started running.
‘There’s no point,’ I called after her. ‘Listen.’
And, in between the soft hiss of the slack low-tide waves, we could hear the Range Rover shifting gear and shifting again, and then the noise of its engine fading as it raced away.
Chapter 17
They were all waiting for us in the dining room. Buck, looking as rough as he could without actually bleeding or puking, opened the side door of the bay window and stood back to let us in. He had one of The Breakers’ dressing-gowns on. In fact, they all had their dressing-gowns on, and it gave me a wry moment of pride to see how they’d huddled into them, hands in pockets and collars turned up, for comfort.
Peach looked even worse. She had a bad case of the shakes, lifting her water glass to her lips with both hands. Paul and Ramsay had the fair colouring that looks grimmest of all with a terrible hangover. Their eyes were pink and their lips yellow.
Buck sat down again with a long groan. I noticed no one was in Sasha’s place. The head of the table wasn’t set at all. I noticed too that the dining room was, in some hard-to-pinpoint way, slightly the worse for wear. The flowers weren’t wilting, and there were no crumbs on the carpet or dust on the surfaces, but there was something tired about the air. We had definitely made a mistake with this. We should definitely have had a little breakfast room in place of the study or library, or even let the guests sit in the black breakfast room attached to the kitchen. Let them watch me flipping pancakes, let them smell the coffee and hear the bacon sizzle.
‘Well?’ said Rosalie. I blinked and came back. I had forgotten none of that mattered now. ‘Where were you?’ I thought she meant in my daydreams, until I blinked again.
‘Someone took my boat-gate key,’ I said. ‘And Sasha’s car.’
‘Who cares about your key?’ said Paul.
‘Because if someone needed to shift something off the beach they might well nick a key to the barrier,’ Kim said, nodding. ‘And the Range Rover’s pretty roomy.’
‘Is that where you went?’ said Rosalie. ‘The beach?’
‘And this is Jennifer, is it?’ said Buck. ‘This “something” that’s been shifted? Is this for real? Because I’m waiting for the punch line.’
‘It’s for real,’ Kim said. She was speaking very slowly. ‘Jennifer’s killed herself. Or been murdered. And Sasha’s killed himself. Or been murdered. And someone took both bodies away. Donna saw Sasha. We both saw Jennifer. There’s no punch line.’
‘So we call the police,’ said Rosalie. ‘But can I call Mum and Dad first?’ She put her head in her hands. ‘This is going to destroy them.’
‘We can’t tell them over the phone, sweetheart,’ said Paul. ‘We’ll go before the police get here. You and me. We’ll go and break the news. Then we can come back. And if the cops don’t like it they can lump it.’
Rosalie gave him a twisted smile.
But I saw Buck shift in his seat. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t think that’s such a fantastic idea. I mean, like Kim said, someone moved the bodies.’
‘While we were all together in this room!’ said Rosalie.
‘Still,’ said Buck. ‘Maybe none of us should go anywhere. Actually.’
The silence was so perfect it made my ears ring. No one even breathed.
‘That’s … ridiculous,’ said Rosalie at last. ‘Me? Paul?’
‘Someone,’ said Buck. ‘I think we should let the police decide.’
‘My brother is dead,’ said Rosalie. She was talking as slow as Kim now. ‘Kim’s husband is dead. Who cares what you think?’
‘Poor Jennifer,’ said Ramsay. ‘Who cares about her either, eh?’
Rosalie blushed a bit at that but she stuck her chin in the air. ‘Right, then. The police it is. Donna, can I use your landline? In the study, isn’t it?’
‘Help yourself,’ I told her, then let my head sink into my hands. The unreality of it all was beginning to make me feel dizzy. That one glimpse of Sasha hanging in the dim bathroom was bleeding into all the dreams of the short night as more of them came back to me: not just the lights and rabbits, but the whistling sound of the meat knife hacking through the sugar on top of the party hats crumpled in the fireplace and the whiff of sulphur as I struck match after match trying to light them.
‘Someone should go with you,’ said Peach.
‘Et tu?’ said Rosalie.
‘It’s not about suspicion, Rosie,’ Ramsay said. ‘We need to stick in pairs to vouch for each other.’
‘I’m going to phone the police to report my husband’s murder,’ Kim said, standing up. ‘Rosalie, would you like to come with me? Personally, I’d rather have someone at my side. I don’t really want to be alone in this house any more. Because you’re wrong, Ramsay. It’s not about “vouching”. Or about “suspicion”. It’s about not being next.’
I didn’t look up but the silence told me everything. They were seeing each other with different eyes now. These people who’d been friends all their lives.
‘And you reckon I’m safe, do you?’ said Rosalie. She sounded angry. ‘What makes you think I feel safe with you?’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Ramsay. ‘We can all go, if you like. We can hold hands like children crossing the road. But someone phone the police.’
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ I said. ‘And breakfast.’ There were a few scattered groans. ‘Just some scrambled eggs or toast. It’s going to be a long day.’
‘Shouldn’t one of us go with you?’ said Paul.
‘No,’ said Buck. ‘No “us”, no “you”, no “them”. I could murder a cup of coffee, Donna.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘For the vote of confidence.’
I swerved by the bay window as if to close it against the draught. What I was really doing was picking up the transmitter. I bolted along to the drawing room to pick up the other one, making sure Rosalie and Kim didn’t see me pass the study doorway. When I got to the kitchen my phone was playing ‘Mamma Mia’.
‘Donna? You sounded terrible on that message,’ my mum said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Suicide,’ I said. ‘Murder. One guest drowned on the beach and one hanging from a ceiling light.’
She was silent. In the background the wedding fair was going on as lively as ever, a cacophony of happy girls and proud mothers still at it, even this early on a Sunday morning. I ripped out the receiver from its place by the side of the stove.
‘I need to get rid of the monitors,’ I said. ‘The cops are coming.’
‘Can you repeat what you just said?’ My mum’s voice was toneless.
‘The client’s husband and one of the other guests are dead,’ I said. ‘The police are coming. I need to get rid of the monitors and I don’t know w
here to put them.’
‘I’m on my way,’ my mum said. She was hurrying, her voice warbling as she moved. ‘I’ll be there in two hours.’ I could feel a hard ache in the back of my throat. Why not? No one would want to get married here now.
‘Mum, tell me what to do with these bloody monitors!’ I said. ‘I can’t put them in the bin. I should have chucked them in the sea, but Kim was with me. I don’t know…’
‘Put them in one of the cupboards,’ my mum said. ‘Why shouldn’t we have baby monitors? For guests with babies.’
I nearly laughed. It was so obvious when she put it that way. Listening for movement, I sidled out of the kitchen and along the passageway to the linen cupboards. I opened the one where we kept the lightbulbs and bin bags. And I stared.
On the middle shelf there was a pile of iPads, phones, cables and chargers, jumbled together. Some still had their standby lights glowing.
‘Donna?’ said my mum.
That ache in my throat had turned into a little nugget of stubbornness. The monitors were unplugged. The missing devices were back.
‘You stay put,’ I said. ‘I can handle this.’
‘What are you talking about? You’ve got to be crazy if you think I’d leave you—’
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying this isn’t bad. It’s a bloody nightmare. But it’s nothing to do with us. This is their mess, caused by their secrets, their lies. It shouldn’t ruin our lives, you and me.’
‘You’re not making any sense! I can’t leave you to deal—’
‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll phone you as soon as there’s news. Get back out there to the booth and snag us some bookings.’
‘Don’t you hang up on me!’
‘Mum, if I don’t get some caffeine inside me I’m going to drop.’ And not only did I hang up but I switched my phone off too.
I met Rosalie and Kim coming back from the study, as I backed out of the kitchen minutes later, with two hot coffee pots in my hands.
‘On their way?’ I said.
‘I had a bit of trouble making them believe me,’ Rosalie said. ‘Typical plods.’
‘Where are they coming from?’
Rosalie shrugged and held open the dining-room door for me. ‘They’ll be here in twenty minutes,’ she announced to the room. That sounded like Stranraer. But the police had changed. Maybe for dead bodies they sent someone from a task force somewhere. ‘It would have been ten. But when the genius I was speaking to told me not to touch either of the bodies, I made the mistake of saying the bodies had disappeared and – believe it or not – he asked me if I was pulling his leg.’
‘It does sound a bit … extravagant,’ Buck said. ‘It doesn’t help that we’ve got no evidence. I mean, the box and the rabbit and the party hat – they’re all gone.’
‘Aaaah!’ Paul said. ‘I get it now. That’s why our phones got nicked. To make sure we had no photographic evidence of anything.’
‘And, as I recall, that was your idea, wasn’t it, Rosalie?’ said Ramsay.
‘Watch it,’ said Paul.
‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Rosalie. ‘That’s the second time I’ve been accused of murdering my brother in the last five minutes. My suggestion was to hand the devices over to Donna. I didn’t take them from outside our bedroom doors and I didn’t hide the fact that they’d disappeared.’
‘I can’t believe we meekly agreed to hand them over,’ said Buck, ‘and then didn’t even wonder where they’d got to. How dumb can you get?’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Ramsay. ‘How were we supposed to know we’d need phones to take pictures of corpses? And I still think it was Sasha. He goaded me. He bet me five hundred quid I couldn’t get through the weekend offline.’
Kim sank down onto the nearest chair. ‘How can you all still be arguing?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you scared?’
‘Because they didn’t see them,’ I said. She looked up at me, swallowing hard. I reckoned she was remembering Jennifer’s face, like I was. Maybe she was trying to imagine Sasha’s face. Or trying not to.
‘And listen,’ I said, putting the coffee pots down on the table and rubbing my hands on my trousers. I had thought those pots were a bargain but the handles were close to scalding after a minute or two. ‘First – and I can’t believe I forgot to say this before, but what with … Anyway, I took a snap of the party hat. In the cupboard. With the knife. So there’s that. And also I’ve found your stuff.’
They stampeded to the back corridor to reclaim their phones and iPads. There were just enough plugs in the kitchen and dining room combined to set them all charging again.
‘How did you manage to miss them before?’ Kim said.
‘I don’t know,’ I told her truthfully. But that wasn’t what was worrying me. I had just swiped up my keys from the kitchen counter where I’d dumped them down, and when I hung them where they belonged, on the hook beside the back door, I saw it as plain as day. The boat-gate key was there again. I felt the floor shift beneath my feet.
Easiest thing in the world, I told myself, to overlook one key on a bunch, in low light, when you’re exhausted and terrified and still off your face. Overlooking a pile of devices in a cupboard you’ve opened to search for a pile of devices, on the other hand? But was I concentrating yesterday when I checked those cupboards? Or was I on the phone to my mum, half my brain on what she was telling me? Did I miss the one where they happened to be? That was a solid possibility I could stand firm on.
I could hear a car. The cops were coming and I needed to think clearly and be clever about this. I’d obviously just missed the computers when I looked for them yesterday. That would explain it.
* * *
It was a long, grim, exhausting day. If I hadn’t had snacks and meals to make, I’d have gone mad.
One by one we were all taken into the study, a room I had thought was airy and purposeful, good light on the desk, with no glare, a footstool by the reading chair and somewhere to put a cup of coffee down. I’d imagined businesspeople and writers extending their leases because they were getting so much done and couldn’t bear to leave. But put an exhausted cop who didn’t want to be working on a Sunday behind the desk and perch a bored PC on the reading chair and my lovely study might as well have been a windowless interview room down at the station. I sat listening to the faint sounds of another two uniforms, who were – with my permission – searching the house and felt the last of my happy hopes for The Breakers leach away.
‘I know you’re a stranger to all of them,’ Sergeant Wilson said, ‘but have you gleaned anything over the course of the weekend? Anything that would point to someone having a problem with Mr Mowbray? Or with Ms Mowbray – with Jennifer?’
I tried not to laugh, even though they must be used to hysterical laughter. The sergeant waited with infinite patience for me to gather my thoughts. He was wearing his life like a costume: his hair sticking out in spouts from him running his hands through it when it was greasy, his tie mangled from him tugging at it to loosen its grip, his hands not quite steady either from last night’s booze or today’s coffee. But his eyes were sharp and his smile was kind, if weary.
‘She wasn’t liked,’ I said. ‘Sorry to speak ill of—’ He held up a hand and shook his head with his eyes closed. I supposed they must be used to that too. ‘Well, she was hard to like, to be honest. She didn’t really fit in with them all, as far as I could gather. A bit chippy. Bit of a drag. But everyone’s got one of them in the family. No reason to kill her.’
‘But Mr Mowbray?’ he said, reading my silence.
‘Different story altogether. He got under everyone’s skin one way or another. Okay, not always seriously, but to some extent, you know?’
‘See, now, this is what’s so useful,’ he said. ‘The family are giving it “united front”. As families do. Not a word against him between the lot of them. Talk me through it. Best as you can.’
‘He was pretty rotten to Buck, indirectly. He told a mean anecdote ab
out his wife – Buck’s wife, I mean. I forget her name – and I got the impression it wasn’t the first time. And he was rough with Rosalie. He got physical with her – grabbed her arm. That pissed off Paul. They got into a bit of a slanging match over it. And Ramsay seems pretty easy-going but Sasha kept trying to wind him up anyway. And it was more like they’d picked a scab off a wound and opened it again than like they’d fallen out for the first time. Do you know what I mean?’
He nodded, tugging his tie again. I wondered why he didn’t loosen the knot, wondered too how he’d ever get it off at the end of the day without a pair of scissors.
‘Then there was a moment at breakfast yesterday. Peach – Mrs Plummer – was drinking. Having a hair of the dog, kind of thing? And Sasha outed her. It was a complete set-up. He pretended to be choking on a bramble and he grabbed her water glass to get a drink and then he pretended to be all surprised that it had vodka in it. But the whole thing was fake. He hadn’t choked at all.’
‘I see,’ Wilson said. ‘You’re a good witness, Donna. You’ve certainly got all their names straight in the space of a weekend.’
The memory hit me hard, of nearly winkling the sisters’ names out of them all last night. I felt my face drain.
‘Okay?’ Wilson said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Just the thought of being a witness. If you had evidence, no one would have to— Oh!’ I stopped. Sergeant Wilson made a gesture like winding a handle to get me going again. ‘Did the others tell you that someone soaked a paper hat in perfume and spiked it to the wall inside a cupboard?’ I expected him to look at me as if I was daft, but he only nodded.
‘They told us. We smelt it. And we saw the knife mark,’ he said. ‘Aftershave. Eternity for men.’
‘I’ve got a photo of it,’ I said, digging my phone out and scrolling. ‘I saw it and Sasha came in and sniffed and asked what the smell was. But he went dead white. And it’s not like it’s a bad smell, exactly. So there had to be a reason for him reacting that way. Does that make any sense?’
I had scrolled right through my photos without finding it. I went back to the top and started again.
Go to My Grave Page 20