by Karen Swan
The connection timed out and she pressed ‘call’ again, her eyes tracking a beaten-up pickup truck that idled slowly past on the road below – no one ever seemed to be in a hurry out here, no tail-gating or frustrated overtaking, and she realized again she was going to miss this. She had only six weeks left – six weeks of waking up to blue skies and an ocean breeze, bike rides and yoga, and housemates who may slam doors but always chilled the beer.
She saw a buggy bounce over the grass towards the first green, two men inside. One was wearing claret-red trousers and a hat, the other an emerald-green jumper, and was bald as a . . . well, a Matt. She hoped for Bobbi’s sake that Kevin – if he was either one of these guys – wasn’t the short bald one. Matt could carry it off; this guy couldn’t.
She watched as they climbed out, one of them inspecting the position of the pin by crouching down on his haunches, the other beginning to rifle in his bag for his clubs.
‘Ro?’
She jumped, startled to hear Matt’s voice rumbling against her tummy.
‘Matt!’
‘No need to look so surprised. You did call me.’
She stared down at him, not sure whether he was still prickly with her, but then he winked – ‘Thank God,’ he murmured – and she felt relief loosen the tension in her shoulders.
‘You’re growing your hair!’ she grinned, taking in the dark fuzz that crested his head like duckling’s down.
‘I got the impression you didn’t like it last time we spoke.’
‘I didn’t mention it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I could level the same charge at you,’ she said archly, tipping her head to the side slightly to indicate her bob.
‘Looks amazing. It annoyed me how good you looked. It looks very . . . sleek.’
‘Sleek?’ Ro spluttered. ‘Can hippos be called sleek?’
‘Stop putting yourself down. From what I can see, you’re looking altogether different. Kind of . . . glossy.’
‘OK, stop it. You’re confusing me with a magazine.’
He laughed, a sound that soothed her, and she preened slightly. ‘I have, however, broken the habit of wearing your clothes.’
‘What? Even my T-shirts in bed?’
She nodded triumphantly. ‘Even your T-shirts in bed.’
‘When?’ He looked almost crestfallen.
‘Oh, a while ago. Hump was about to evict me; Bobbi was on the edge of a breakdown.’ Actually, it had been Erin and Todd’s unexpected breakfast visit that had marked the beginning of the end for that phase.
‘Well –’ his eyes roamed her face ‘– guess I’ll see for myself six short weeks from now.’
‘Six weeks,’ she echoed, remembering Greg’s words yesterday, everyone keeping time. ‘Flying by now, huh?’
‘Yeah? That’s how it feels for you now?’
‘Why? Doesn’t it for you?’
‘Oh no, no . . . I’m loving it,’ he demurred. ‘But looking forward to getting home obviously.’
‘Oh yeah. Obviously. It’ll be so weird going back to the cottage again. Everything’s so . . . big and airy here. Victorian proportions are going to take some getting used to again.’ She thought of their narrow dog-leg hallway, the tiny cellar, the double reception room with walk-through arch . . .
‘I’ll be struggling enough with just sleeping in a bed again. Almost five months in a sleeping bag . . .’ He cricked his neck.
Ro pulled a face. ‘You have washed it, I hope?’
‘Of course.’ He grinned, simultaneously shaking his head. ‘I’m passing washing machines every third bamboo tree out here.’
She giggled. Both of them would have big readjustments to make, slotting back into their old life. It felt like they were both going to have to scale down to fit into it, somehow.
‘Where are you now?’
‘En route to Tonlé Sap. It’s like an inland sea. There are literally hundreds of floating villages there. The residents conduct their whole lives on the water, can you imagine?’
She shook her head. She really couldn’t. She wondered whether he would be able to imagine her dressed in sequins and hunting for diamonds in the bushes.
He pointed to his cheek. ‘You’ve got some mascara . . .’
‘Oh.’ Ro wet her finger and made vague, blind sweeping motions. ‘Gone?’
He pulled a so-so face. ‘Pretty much. So what were you up to last night, then? You only ever wear mascara on high days and holidays. Unless maybe that’s what’s different about you. You wear make-up every day now?’
‘No. God, no!’ she protested. ‘I’m like a rescue dog compared to the women here. I don’t know where they get the energy, looking so clean and perky all the time. No, we were just out last night.’
‘Let me guess: the Surf Lodge again?’
So he’d been reading her Facebook updates, then? ‘Actually, no. It was a fundraiser thing over in Southampton. Big money, free booze. A rather fun treasure hunt in the garden.’ She leaned in closer to the screen. ‘You’d have liked my dress.’ She winked cheekily.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Well, then I hope no one else liked your dress.’
She remembered Hump’s big-brotherly protectiveness, Ted’s eyes tethered to her like guy ropes. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Is that it?’ He jerked his chin up, his eyes behind her, and she turned. The red sequinned dress was hanging outside the wardrobe.
‘It is.’
‘Hold it up. Let me see it properly.’ An unhappy note sounded in his voice and she knew he knew all too well what the dress would have looked like on her.
She jumped off the windowsill and walked towards the wardrobe, holding out the laptop so that the camera could show it more accurately. Matt didn’t say anything and she felt her nerves rise. ‘Anyway, Greg got bladdered, so it was all a bit of a disaster to be honest and we ended up back home by nine o’clock,’ she gabbled, wandering back over to the bed and flopping down on it. She could still feel her own body heat on the sheets.
‘Right.’ A tense moment passed.
‘Don’t be jealous.’
‘I’m not jeal—’ he began, before deciding to change the subject instead. ‘How’s Florence?’
‘Much better. She’s recuperating in a nursing home, but you were right – there’s been nothing since. Whoever was behind it seems to have been frightened off.’
It was technically true, at least. There hadn’t been any further threats – not since she’d appeared to fall in line with Ted’s ‘advice’ to sell the house.
‘Thank God for that! I was freaking out with worry. You don’t know how hard it’s been being so far away from you when you’ve had all that crazy shit going on.’
‘I’m fine. Honestly. Things have quietened down completely. It’s just beaches and beer on the porch.’
‘Since when did you start drinking beer?’
‘Since . . . since about three days after I got here. Hump’s been on a mission to turn me into a proper American girl.’
‘You have picked up a bit of an accent, actually. Just now, when you said . . .’ A sound in the background made Matt turn his head. ‘Bugger, I’ve got to go. Dinner’s ready,’ he said reluctantly.
‘Oh. Well, I guess I should investigate the severity of Greg’s hangover.’
‘Don’t envy you that. Sounds like it’s going to be bad.’
‘Mmm.’ Bad wasn’t going to be the half of it. ‘I love you.’
‘Love you too. Just six more weeks.’
‘Forty-two days!’ she clarified excitedly.
‘We can do this thing.’
‘Yes, we can.’ She nodded firmly.
‘Bye, baby.’
‘Bye.’
He kissed the screen. She leaned in and kissed hers, slightly self-conscious as she remembered the last time she’d done this, inadvertently, in the studio not with him.
When she opened her eyes, the screen was black again. She
fell back on her pillows, staring up at the ceiling and picking over the conversation, relieved they hadn’t fought this time. It had been a good conversation, one of their better ones. Not one of their best, admittedly. Something had felt a little . . . flat? But that was probably just the last traces of the argument dissipating in the air between them. It would be gone the next time they spoke. The slate was clean again.
She pushed herself up from the bed, determined to start the day brightly. It was going to be an awful one for Greg, that much was certain, and if nothing else, she could take over from Hump’s nightshift. He could probably do with a couple of hours sleeping in his own bed. Poor guy – for someone who’d retired from medicine, he still spent a lot of time putting people back together again.
She padded downstairs, everything still quiet in Bobbi’s room. She stopped in the hall at the entrance to the sitting room, looking in on the two overgrown men, sleeping with their legs hanging over the armrests on opposite sofas. Greg didn’t appear to have moved from where he’d fallen last night, a towel and a washing-up bowl strategically positioned below him on the floor – mercifully, still unused, although the alcohol fumes hung in the air like pea soup.
She walked to the front door and opened it, closing her eyes as the breeze swept in like a welcome visitor, freshening the house. She stepped out on the porch just as a police car raced past, its siren off but blue lights flashing.
No doubt it was responding to a house alarm, she thought, stretching – just as another police car shot by. And then another.
She frowned. That was no house alarm. Dropping her arms, she walked briskly down the porch steps and out through the front gate, standing on the small green and looking towards the beach.
But it wasn’t there that the district police were congregating.
She watched in mounting apprehension as one patrol car after another, and then an ambulance too, sped in silence towards the pristine greens of the Maidstone, where a bright yellow privacy screen was being erected – at the tee to the first hole.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ro blinked back at the police detective sitting opposite her, wishing she could stop wringing her hands together, her jigging ankles knocking the washing-up bowl still by her feet and making the detective look down at it with sporadic flashes of irritation.
Mainly the police officer was watching her closely, now that he had ascertained she was the nearest thing he had to a witness. ‘Let’s go through it one more time. Tell me what happened from the moment you woke up.’
Ro took a deep breath again, feeling the pressure of getting it right. ‘I had had a . . . bad dream –’ lie: it had been exceptionally good, actually ‘– and I woke up suddenly. I got up, walked to my window and looked out. A car was parked outside the house and it gave me a shock as it was turned on suddenly—’
‘So you didn’t see anyone actually getting into the car?’
‘No.’
‘So they could have been there for some time.’
‘I suppose so. Maybe.’
‘All night, even.’
‘Why would someone sit in a car all night?’ Ro frowned, before giving a little gasp. ‘You mean they could have been spying on us?’
‘Why would anyone spy on you?’ the detective countered.
‘Well, that’s just the thing – I don’t know. We’re so . . . boring.’
The detective looked down at the bowl by her feet again; Greg’s dinner suit was still strewn across the coffee table.
‘Have you noticed anyone acting suspiciously outside the house? Anyone taking an unusual interest in you?’
Ro swallowed hard as Ted Connor flashed into her mind. He had taken an unusual interest in her last night – there’d been no doubt about it. She was worried he’d picked up on her suspicions, that she’d given herself away somehow; Matt always said she wore her emotions on her face, that she was as easy to read as a book. But he couldn’t possibly be involved in this. Even she didn’t think that. Her mind couldn’t go there. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No one.’
The detective stared at her for a long moment, as though wondering whether to believe her. ‘So you don’t know how long the occupant had been in the car for?’
‘No.’
‘And you said the car was a Porsche.’
‘Yes, a navy one. Soft-top.’ She sat a little straighter, pleased she had caught this detail.
‘But you didn’t get anything of the licence plate?’
‘Well, no, I wasn’t watching it for that.’
‘But you were watching it?’
She shrugged. ‘It just drove slowly down to the junction and turned into Old Beach Lane. I was quite surprised that the driver would bother to drive such a short distance from here when it’s just a few minutes’ walk.’
‘And what happened after the car turned into the lane?’
‘Well, I figured if he was play—’
‘He? Why did you assume the inhabitant was a male?’
‘I don’t know.’ She swallowed nervously. His questioning style was intimidating, making her question her own mind. ‘My flatmate’s boyfriend had stayed over. I automatically assumed it was him. He drives a Porsche and it would make sense for him to have parked outside.’
He blinked at her and she sensed he didn’t appreciate her making assumptions. ‘Continue.’
Ro tried to remember her train of thought. ‘Uh . . . so . . . oh yes, I figured if he was playing golf, I’d see him on the first tee in a couple of minutes. So that’s when I got my laptop and started trying to Skype my boyfriend while I waited.’
The police officer looked at her through interested eyes that made her nervous. ‘And why were you so intent on seeing your housemate’s boyfriend play golf?’
Ro’s eyes flicked upstairs. Bobbi was still sleeping. Hump and Greg had been relegated to the kitchen by another police officer as soon as Ro’s status as a ‘witness’ had been identified on their door-to-door enquiries. ‘Because I . . . I was being nosy. She hadn’t introduced him to us yet and I was curious about him. He was older than—’
‘How much older?’
Ro wrinkled her nose. ‘Fifty-one, I think she said?’
‘And—’
‘Well, to be honest, I thought maybe the reason she was reluctant for us to meet him was because he was married, had a family. I was worried about her getting hurt. She’s not as tough as she makes out.’
The detective watched her, his eyes moving side to side over her face like he could fathom the truth from her freckles. ‘So you assumed that any person you saw coming out on the first tee might be him. Do you know for a fact that your housemate’s boyfriend stayed here last night? Did you see him?’
‘Well, no, I didn’t actually see him myself. If I had, I would have known what he looked like, wouldn’t I?’ The detective’s eyes clouded at her flippancy. ‘But I heard him upstairs,’ she added quickly. ‘Bobbi told us it was him.’
‘How do you know he didn’t leave later in the night?’
She exhaled, weary now. ‘I don’t. Greg, our housemate, had had too much to drink –’ her ankle kicked the washing-up bowl lightly ‘– and we were all trying to help him onto the sofa here. We heard someone upstairs. Bobbi said it was Kevin and we told Bobbi we didn’t want some stranger seeing him like that.’
‘Greg’s the one with the bloodshot eyes in the kitchen?’
Ro nodded. It wasn’t vodka that had done that, although there’d been no time for broken hearts this morning – even one as destroyed as Greg’s. ‘I went to bed straight after we’d got Greg sorted. Hump stayed down here with him. I fell asleep immediately and didn’t hear a thing until I woke up this morning.’
‘Can you be sure it was a bad dream that woke you?’
‘It was a very . . . shocking dream, yes. It took me a couple of moments to recover from it.’
‘But could it have been a sound – such as the front door closing, car doors closing?’
‘I thi
nk it was definitely the dream. It frightened me awake.’
The officer nodded, not remotely interested in pursuing a conversation in dream psychology.
‘Let’s go back to what happened when you called your boyfriend.’
Ro brightened. ‘Oh well, he picked up, which was nothing short of miraculous. He’s in Cambodia, you see. Really dodgy connections. Half the time I can’t get him.’
The police officer nodded again, bored by her diversions. ‘And?’
‘And so I started talking to him.’
‘Were you still watching for the man to appear on the golf course?’
Ro frowned, concentrating hard. ‘Yeah . . . Oh! No, wait, I’m getting it wrong. I saw the two men come out onto the first tee before my boyfriend picked up.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’
The detective scratched out something in his notebook with a suppressed sigh. ‘What did they look like? Could you give me a physical description?’
‘Well, not in any detail. It’s too far to see clearly from here. I could just see that the taller man was wearing red trousers and a panama.’
‘A panama?’
‘It’s a hat.’
‘I know what a panama is, ma’am.’
‘Right, yes, of course you do.’ Ro shifted position on the sofa.
‘What about the other man?’
‘He was shorter, bald – from what I could see, anyway – and wearing a bright green jumper.’
‘That’s it?’
His tone suggested she had failed in some way and her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘What were they doing? Were they talking? Did they appear to know each other?’
Ro hesitated, trying to think back. It had all been so innocuous, fractions of moments she had barely registered, even with her curiosity piqued about the possibility of finally seeing Kevin. ‘They just came over on a golf buggy and one of them started, you know, crouching down and looking at the slopes or whatever. You know, like they do in the Masters and stuff—’