by Agatha Frost
“Lost something?” Julia called back into the bathroom as she leaned against the doorframe.
“It’s nothing,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s just – I seem to have misplaced my blood pressure pills. I must have put them down somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I could have sworn they were on my bedside table.”
“Old age can do that to you,” Dot said with a knowing nod, despite having at least fifteen years on Hilary. “They’ll turn up where you least expect them. Have you checked the fridge? I once found my slippers in there. To this day I still have no idea how they got there.”
“I’ll find them,” Hilary snapped. “I haven’t lost them, I just don’t know where they are right now.”
“Need some help?” Julia offered, eager to return the favour after Hilary’s tip-off over the cookies. “Four sets of eyes are better than one.”
“I said, I’ll find them.”
Hilary pushed past Julia and shuffled across the hallway towards her bedroom, pausing to glance over the bannister at DS Christie as he chatted to the officer on the door.
“Maybe she wouldn’t need blood pressure pills if she wasn’t so tightly wound,” Dot exclaimed, her lids fluttering as she pushed up her curls. “I’ve always been a very relaxed person, and my blood pressure has always been impeccable.”
“Relaxed?” Jessie scoffed with a roll of her eyes. “And I’m the Queen of England.”
“Shush!” Dot whispered, mushing her finger against Jessie’s lips. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Jessie muffled through the finger, her eyes narrowed.
Julia listened in the direction Dot’s ear was pointed, but she could not hear anything.
Dot released Jessie’s lips before hurrying down the hallway, stopping at the last door on the other side of Katie’s great-grandfather’s bust. Dot sprung open the door, and to Julia’s surprise, Conrad and Bella were squashed up on the floor underneath the boiler.
“Hey!” Conrad cried, squinting into the light. “We have rights!”
“Why are you hiding in the airing cupboard?” Dot asked, planting her hands on her hips. “You look ridiculous!”
“We refuse to take part in this investigation!” Bella cried, wriggling in the tight space, her legs clearly hurting. “We’re letting the world know about this. It’s illegal to keep us here! We’ve researched it.”
“I really hate them,” Jessie whispered to Julia as they stood behind Dot. “Please, can I punch one of them?”
“Threats of violence!” Conrad cried, pulling out his phone with shaky hands. “Do you want to say that again for my one hundred thousand followers?”
Dot snatched the phone from the boy and tossed it down the hallway. It vaulted along the floorboards before bouncing down the stairs, rattling and cracking as it hit each marble step.
“That’s my property!” he cried, his voice squeaking, reminding Julia of Katie. “I’ll have you arrested for that!”
“Which one do you want to speak to, Julia?” Dot asked, ignoring the handsome young man as his orange streaked face turned a violent shade of red. “Innocent people don’t hide in cupboards.”
“You can’t make us leave,” Bella said, a little more unsurely. “We have rights!”
Julia wondered how she could explain that Dot cared about their rights to hide in a cupboard as much as she cared about the expensive mobile phone she had just flung down the stairs. From the terrified look on Bella’s face, it was obvious Dot was somehow conveying that with her tight expression.
“C’mon, Becky,” Dot said as she leaned into the cupboard to grab the girl’s arm. “Time to stretch your legs.”
“It’s Bella!”
From the horrified look on Barker’s niece’s face as Dot pulled her out of the cupboard and dragged her towards the bathroom, it was obvious it had been a long time since anyone had ignored her. Julia wondered if it had something to do with the eleven thousand strangers backing her up online.
“In you go,” Dot said, pushing Bella into the bathroom with the strength of a woman a quarter her age. “You might want to use the quiet time to reflect on your life choices.”
Bella stumbled into the bathroom, her brown and blonde hair cast dramatically across her alarmed face. Before she could say a word, Dot shut the door.
“Jessie, hold this in place,” Dot said, clinging to the doorknob as Bella rattled it on the other side. “Becky will tire out eventually.”
“It’s Bella!” she cried through the wood. “Bella!”
Jessie took over holding the handle, leaving Dot to march back to the cupboard. She stood over Conrad, and without needing to say a word, he scrambled to his feet. Julia was too impressed to berate her grandmother for her ham-fisted tactics. If they had not worked so effectively, she might have interjected.
“I need a cup of tea,” Dot said with a wave of her hand. “I can only handle stupid in small doses.”
As though shrinking back to the little old lady she was, Dot slowly made her way down the long staircase. She cast an eye over the shattered phone at the bottom before wandering into the kitchen.
“I – I -” Conrad blurted out. “She’ll pay for that!”
“Why don’t we get some fresh air?” Julia suggested, smiling as politely as she could. “You look like you need it.”
“Get yourself a cup of tea,” Julia said to the young officer guarding the front door. “You look like you need a break.”
“Are you sure?” he asked with a relieved smile. “It’s been a long night.”
“You look frozen through, and the kitchen is nice and warm. I’ll keep watch for fifteen minutes.”
The officer let out a thankful sigh before heading into the house. Julia walked into the icy night and sat on the cold stone doorstep, patting the space next to her for Conrad to follow.
“Are you some kind of police officer?” he asked as he perched stiffly next to her. “I thought you worked in a café?”
“I do,” Julia said as she looked up at the bright half-moon peeking out from behind the faint clouds. “I’m helping on an unofficial basis.”
“That means I don’t have to tell you anything,” he said defiantly, relief spreading across his smug face. “I know my -”
“Rights?” Julia jumped in. “You’re correct, you don’t have to tell me anything, but when you hear what I have to say, I think you might want to explain yourself.”
Conrad narrowed his sparkling blue eyes on her, his blond hair glowing in the dark. Despite his streaky fake tan, his thick hair looked natural. She could see how he had gained so many followers online based on his looks.
“I know you visited Luke’s bedroom right before he was murdered,” Julia started. “And I know you spent twenty-five minutes in his room.”
It became obvious from the way Conrad’s eyes sprung open he had thought his visit was still his little secret.
“I – He –” Conrad stuttered, his cheeks darkening. “We were discussing business. He was developing a new app, and he wanted me to promote it.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Julia said confidently. “Do you usually conduct your business meetings naked?”
Conrad’s eyes widened even more. His lips parted, but all he could do was gasp like a fish out of water; he knew he had been caught out.
“I’m not judging you,” Julia said. “Well, maybe I’m judging that you’re in a relationship with his cousin.”
“It’s my brand.”
“Brand?”
“I can’t be gay,” he said with a heavy sigh as he planted his face in his hands. “Big parts of my audience are heterosexual men. Not all, but a lot of them won’t buy protein powder and food supplements from a gay guy, no matter how much I work out.”
“That’s not very fair.”
“But it’s true,” he said, turning to Julia, the seriousness in his face making her believe him. “You have no idea how cut-throat it can be when it comes to building an online pers
ona that can get brand deals. When I started posting pictures with Bella, my engagement went up overnight. Companies started paying me more. It all just slotted into place. I became ‘aspirational’. Guys see the pretty girlfriend and the good body, and they want to buy whatever I’m talking about so they can be like me.”
“But it’s fake.”
“So?” Conrad laughed, shaking his head. “Nothing online is real. It’s all filtered and processed. We frame our lives to make them look perfect. Even if we’re not making money from it, we never post the bad pictures. People see an image of my six-pack, and they think I rolled out of bed looking like that. They don’t see that I don’t drink water the day before the photo-shoot so I don’t bloat up, and that I’m exhausted from the three hundred sit-ups I’ve just done. I breathe in, take twenty pictures, and then I pick the one that looks the best. It’s not easy, but it’s just the way things are. You must understand.”
“I only really post pictures of my cakes,” Julia admitted. “I’m not really into the online thing.”
“But I bet you don’t post the pictures that make your cakes look bad, do you?”
“Well, of course not, but -”
“It’s no different,” he jumped in. “I’m the cake. I’m the product. I’m selling me. Bella helps me sell it. She’s part of the image.”
“Does she know you’re using her?”
Conrad suddenly turned away from Julia. He dropped and shook his head.
“I know it’s wrong,” he said glumly. “But she’s benefitting from it too. She has gone from three to eleven thousand in the four months we’ve been together. Four months. It’s not easy to grow that quickly without someone with more followers helping. It’s a two-way street. When she gets to fifty thousand, she can start selling, and then she’s got a job.”
Julia knew she was never going to understand the warped logic behind it. She could not imagine living her life for the sake of selling a lie, so she decided to change the course of her questioning.
“How did you meet Luke?”
“In London,” he started, before inhaling the cool night air as he looked up at the moon. “I was meeting with a sportswear brand for a business lunch. He was at the bar after his own meeting. He recognised me from Bella’s pictures. We had only been together for a week at that point, but she’d been posting since our first date. We started talking. I liked him. I didn’t even know he liked me in that way, but I was staying in London that night, and he took me to Heaven.”
“Heaven?”
“It’s a gay club,” he explained. “It’s quite famous. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”
“I’m not the club type,” Julia explained with an apologetic smile. “Haven’t set foot in one since my twenties.”
“We had some drinks, and one thing led to another,” he continued. “I really liked him, and he promised to help my career. We saw each other every chance we got. He lived in London, and I was constantly getting the train in for meetings, so it was easy. I hadn’t seen him for three weeks until coming here. I’d missed him so much. When he went for that nap, I knew it was code for me to follow. I thought I was being careful. I could have sworn nobody saw me. I don’t care what you think because I didn’t kill him. I was falling in love with him.”
“I believe you,” Julia said, his honesty refreshing. “But someone did, and that’s what I need to figure out. You probably knew him better than his own family. Did he tell you anything about them?”
“Not really,” Conrad admitted with a shake of his head. “I only really know Bella and Theo. I’d never met the others until I came here.”
“So, there’s nothing he told you?”
“There was the money.”
“What money?”
“He was in debt,” Conrad said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the gravel. “A lot of debt. About three hundred thousand pounds. It’s not like he didn’t have money coming in. His company was a big deal, but business is complicated. He said he was stressed about paying the money back because the bank was putting pressure on him.”
“Did he say what bank?” Julia asked, pulling her notepad from her pocket along with a small pencil. “That might be helpful.”
“He didn’t,” Conrad said with a shake of his head. “He didn’t even say it was a bank, but where else do you get money from these days?”
Julia snapped her notepad shut, knowing exactly where Luke could have got the money.
“You’ve been very helpful,” Julia said, pushing her notepad back into her jeans pocket without needing to make any notes. “Thank you.”
“Oh, is that it?” Conrad asked as they both stood up. “You’re not going to arrest me?”
“Having a love affair isn’t a crime in this country,” Julia said with a soft smile. “Although, I suggest you think about if the money you’re gaining from Bella’s image is worth your integrity.”
Conrad nodded, giving off the impression it was something that had been weighing on his mind for months. Julia suspected she was the first person who had been so blunt when it came to his ‘job’.
Julia walked back into the entrance hall as the officer walked out of the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea clasped in his hands.
“Your gran made a pot,” he explained before taking a sip. “She’s really sweet.”
“Sweet?” Conrad scoffed. “Are you sure you’re talking about the same –”
Darkness abruptly fell on the entrance hall, cutting Conrad off mid-sentence. She felt the young model edge closer to her side.
“Power cut!” Dot exclaimed as she shuffled out of the kitchen with a teapot in her hand. “Typical!”
“Theo!” a shrill voice came from the sitting room. “Stop it!”
Julia and the officer wasted no time running to the archway. With only the moonlight casting a silvery glow on them, Theo and Ethan were scrambling together on the floor, Dawn and Barker attempting to pull them apart.
“What’s going on?” Julia cried, noticing that Theo had Ethan’s shirt in his fists. “Stop it!”
Dawn pulled Theo off his twin brother with a forceful tug and stood between them, her hands on Theo’s chest. Barker pulled Ethan’s arms behind his back, his face bright red as he fought to release himself like a savage animal.
“Do I need to arrest you?” Barker cried at his twin brothers. “This needs to stop!”
Theo dropped his head, his body convulsing as he laughed frostily to himself. Silence fell on the tense room as the pressure bubbled up. Theo pushed Dawn to the side and launched forward, his fist primed. Theo aimed to punch Ethan, who ducked out of the way, leaving Barker’s nose to absorb the force of Theo’s knuckles.
“Barker!” Julia cried out, rushing to his side in the middle of the battle zone.
Theo stumbled back as he stared down at his split knuckles. He blinked heavily as though he had just awoken from a nightmare. Julia looked up at Barker, his eyes wide with rage as he clung to his bleeding nose.
10
“Ouch!” Theo winced as Julia dabbed the cold cloth against the cuts. “This really isn’t necessary.”
“Do you want to get an infection?” Julia soaked up the rest of the blood before holding his hand up to the kitchen window. “I don’t think it needs stitches.”
“I still think I should arrest him, boss,” DS Christie snapped from his position at the door. “He assaulted an officer.”
“It’s fine,” Barker said again for the third time, his voice muffled as Dot worked on applying butterfly stitches to the split across the bridge of his nose. “He’s my brother.”
“I wasn’t aiming for you,” Theo said with a small shrug. “I’m sorry, bro. You know I would never hit you on purpose.”
“You shouldn’t be hitting anyone,” Julia said before grabbing the antiseptic spray from the first-aid box. “This will hurt.”
He winced as she covered the red cuts in the spray. When she was satisfied they were clean, she applied a wad of dressing
before wrapping it up in a bandage. She secured it in place with a piece of bandage tape before finally letting go of his hand.
“You’ll live,” she said as she patted him on the shoulder. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Thank you,” he replied, opening and closing his fingers. “It’s been a weird night.”
“Candles!” Katie announced shrilly as she wobbled into the room clutching two already lit candlesticks. “Brian is down in the basement looking at the fuse box. I’ve been telling him we need to replace it for months, but do men ever listen?”
Katie placed one of the candles on the kitchen island and the other on the counter near the patio doors, prime positions to wash the kitchen in their yellow glow.
“You’re done,” Dot said, dusting off her hands as she stepped back to assess her handiwork. “Gives you an edge.”
“Thanks,” Barker said with a subdued smile as he slid off the stool. “Hopefully those painkillers will kick in soon.”
“They’re the good ones,” Katie said with a wink. “You’ll be on cloud nine within the hour.”
Clutching her lower back, Katie shuffled out of the room, followed quickly by Dot.
“No hard feelings?” Theo asked Barker, his hand outstretched.
“Sure.” Barker slapped his hand into Theo’s. “Just promise me you’ll stay away from Ethan.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not the same as a promise, boss,” DS Christie jumped in. “I still think you should nick him.”
Barker slapped DS Christie on the shoulder as he walked through to the entrance hall. DS Christie looked Theo up and down before doubling back to follow Barker back into the study.
“What a mess,” Theo said, leaning against the island. “I should never have come here. I work for the St. John’s Ambulance and had to take this as sick days because I had no holidays left.”
“We weren’t to know this would happen,” Julia said, rubbing his back softly. “I just wanted to throw Barker a nice party. I never knew things were so tense, especially since –”