by Agatha Frost
“What’s going on?” Dot asked, startling Jessie enough that she dropped her phone.
“Turns out Rodger’s hotel wasn’t a hotel at all.” Jessie scooped up the phone and tucked it into her denim shorts, which were revealing quite a lot more of her legs than Dot would have done at that age; how things had changed. “It was a factory for his shady fake-clothes shops. Proper sweatshop style. They’ve been carting this stuff out all morning.”
“They’re the same clothes we were wearing, Dorothy!” Percy pointed to a box stuffed with the same bright fabric used to make the graffiti tracksuit Dot had so briefly been forced to wear.
“Rodger owned all those clothes shops?” Dot asked.
Jessie nodded. “All part of that weirdo’s grand scheme. Must have been bringing in a fortune. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how he made the money he needed to snap up every business in town. Those shops were packed out. Were being the operative word. Funnily enough, none of them opened this morning. All the shutters are down, and the tourists are spending their euros in the few businesses that resisted The Buyer’s offers and threats.” She paused and glanced sideways at Dot. “That kid is awake, by the way. I took him breakfast. Didn’t say much, so I left him to it.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“What do you take me for?” Jessie rolled her eyes. “An amateur?”
“Not for a second, kiddo.”
They walked back to La Casa. Barker rushed out and, with Jessie’s help, carried Percy down the stairs in the chair to save him having to test the strength of his painkillers. When they were safely inside, Barker returned to the terrace again, where Julia was talking with the officer who had taken Dot’s statement at the hospital. Julia spotted them and hurried over, her pink maxi dress fluttering around her and making her bump look gigantic.
Even in less than a week, it seemed to have grown.
“Lisa’s awake,” Dot announced.
Julia let out a giant sigh as she wrapped Dot in what had to be the hundredth hug since she stumbled out of the trees and into her granddaughter’s arms the night before.
“Did you say Lisa was awake?” the police officer asked, joining them in the reception foyer. “If this is the case, I must get to the hospital to take her statement.”
“She confirmed everything we already knew,” Dot said. “Rodger was waiting for her in the kitchen that morning, and he attacked her for daring to figure out who he was – which she did by answering the phone Hillard left lying around.”
“Never the brightest bulb,” the officer said before checking his watch. “I’ll leave you to settle in. I have a meeting with my superiors in an hour, and all of this will make a lot more sense with a statement from Lisa.”
The officer left, and the four of them sat around a table in the dining room while Jessie perched on the edge of the pool, feet submerged in the water and her mind submerged in whatever was happening on her mobile phone.
For the first time all week, things felt normal, and Dot couldn’t have loved it more.
“That was Sub-Inspector Castro,” Julia explained when they were all settled in with cups of tea. “He’s been secretly building a case against Hillard for over a year, and desperately trying to get people to take him seriously. Nobody would.”
“Turns out Hillard wasn’t the only corrupt officer on the force,” Barker added. “Hillard’s singing like a canary and revealing the names of everyone who accepted a hefty bribe from Rodger to ignore his dodgy dealings. His confession alone is enough to send Rodger down for a very long time, even without all the other insane stuff. He’ll go from his hospital bed to a jail cell, where he’ll hopefully stay until his last breath.”
“He’ll be running the place within a week,” Dot said after a sip of tea, still longing for her usual teabags. “Although I’m sure his bribes will be downgraded to chocolate bars and soap, and his market will go from clothes to cigarettes and wine made in toilets.”
They kept the conversation light as they finished their tea, and the serious questions Dot knew were on the tips of Julia and Barker’s tongues never came up. Barker wheeled Percy out to the terrace on Dot’s request, leaving her alone with her granddaughter. They left the dining area and walked back into the foyer, and Julia retrieved something from behind the desk.
“I think these belong to you,” she said as she pushed the photo album into Dot’s hands. Her emerald brooch wobbled precariously on top of it. “Your little trick with the bin and the note at the café was quite clever.”
“How did you find it?”
“Maria, the waitress.” Julia pulled one of the missing posters from the pile on the desk. “Never stopped handing these to people. Must have given out hundreds, all over Savega.” Julia paused and looked down, her brows dropping. “I gave up hope.”
Dot clipped her brooch back onto her blouse and immediately felt much more like herself. She fiddled with it, her posture stiffening. She reached across the desk and lifted Julia’s chin.
“Gran’s home now,” she whispered, pinching Julia’s cheeks. “You weren’t going to get rid of me that easily.”
Julia nodded, her frown turning into a smile. She had a great deal on her mind, Dot could see that much, but she didn’t ask. Not yet, at least. When the dust settled and the time finally came, Dot was sure she’d be ready for honesty, but for now, she was glad not to go into the details.
Ready to finally have the long soak in the bath she’d been looking forward to, Dot crammed herself and the wheelchair in the tiny lift. When the doors slid open, she wheeled Percy down the corridor. The sights and sounds were almost brand new, given how brief their stay before their capture had been. At least she remembered which room they’d been in. She didn’t have a key, but she didn’t need one. She knocked, and Rafa opened the door immediately.
“How did you sleep?” Dot asked, noticing that he’d had a shower and used one of the single beds. “Beds are too soft if I recall.”
“Fine.” Rafa closed the door behind them. “What is going on? There is police crawling all over Savega.”
“Don’t worry.” Dot gestured for Rafa to help her get Percy into the made bed. “I didn’t give them your name.”
“Neither of us did,” Percy insisted.
“Why are you protecting me?” Rafa scooped Percy up and plopped him in the middle of the bed, leaving Dot to straighten out his legs. “I do not deserve this.”
“You saved us, lad,” Percy patted him on the cheek. “You showed up when it mattered the most.”
Dot pulled the covers up to Percy’s chin and fluffed up the pillow behind him. Knowing he needed a nap, she closed the curtains. The painkillers made him sleepy, and he hadn’t stopped yawning since leaving the hospital. Adrenaline mixed with the mild caffeine hit from the cup of tea was enough to keep Dot going. She’d fall asleep the second her head hit the pillow, but she had things to do before that could happen. Leaving Percy to drift off, she took Rafa out onto the balcony and closed the door.
She looked out into the valley, and even though she’d spent the worst week of her life somewhere out there, the view was still as breath-taking as it had been upon arrival. She inhaled the air, its freshness what she’d missed most. The air really had been thinner up in the mountains. And the smoke had, quite literally, added injury to insult.
“Inspector Hillard has confessed everything,” Dot said, motioning for Rafa to join her at the small patio table. “While we didn’t give your name, there’s no guarantee he won’t. He’s your uncle?”
“Yes.” Rafa sat down, his demeanour the shyest Dot had seen so far. “He was born . . . how do you say this? Out of the marriage? My abuela visited England many times, and one time, she came home with a half-English surprise in her tummy. My grandfather was furious. The child was banished to England as soon as he was born.”
“But Hillard eventually moved to Spain?”
“Ten years ago,” Rafa explained. “I was a boy only. My parents were dead. He neve
r met his brother. But my abuela, his mother, he got to know. We have never been close. My English was not good enough, and his Spanish was worse.”
“And your gran – your abuela – she married Rodger?”
“Five years ago.” Rafa’s gaze drifted off into the valley, no doubt to the clearing Dot wouldn’t go searching for. “He bought businesses in our village. My abuela always joked that she liked English men. We came to Savega two years ago. Rodger said it was for a business opportunity. Everything unravelled from there.”
“How long have you worked for him?”
“Since I am eighteen.” He sighed. “Fetching and carrying. Then things were more complicated. He is good at convincing people to do things for him. Good at explaining things away. Like the kidnapping. He made it sound like this was a play only to put pressure on Minnie. I did not think you were in real danger until he stabbed Lisa. My uncle had warned me of this man. Behind the mask lived this monster.”
“That cut must have hurt.” Dot wished she had a cup of tea to busy her hands. “Where is your abuela now?”
“Hidden away in another of his properties.” He looked back out into the valley again. “She will have no idea what is going on. When Rodger does not come home, she will realise. I do not think she understood how her husband made his money. She did not want to understand, I think. But she enjoyed the results. She is probably lounging by the pool right now.”
“Will you go to her?”
Rafa looked down and shook his head.
“She will think I betrayed the family,” he said, his voice small. “Her son and husband are in prison, and not me. She will know.” He slouched into the chair. “I should be there for what I did to you.”
“Have you ever killed anyone, Rafael?”
“Never.”
The answer didn’t surprise her. He was a scared boy trapped in a world he should never have known about. The innocence of youth was complicated, and Rafa had lost that innocence too soon. Dot wouldn’t take any amount of money to go back to that time, not for all the tight skin and pain-free joints in the world.
“I want you to have this,” she said, pulling the cash from her bra strap. “Might be a bit warm, but there’s nearly five hundred euros there.” She put it on the table and pushed it across to him. “I’m not intending on leaving this hotel much until it’s time to go home, so I have no use for it.”
“I cannot accept this.”
“You can.” She pushed it closer. “And you will.”
“But, Mrs Dorothy, I—”
She held up her hand. “When you followed us through the market, I thought you meant to mug us. That’s when I hid the money there. I did everything in my power to stop you getting your hands on it, but it turns out you didn’t even want it.” She pushed it towards him as far as she could. “So now, I offer it freely. I have enough saved-up pension money stuffed under the rugs around my cottage to keep me going. Take it and get as far as way from this place as you can. Please, Rafa.”
Rafa scooped up the money and slowly rolled it up before putting it in his pocket.
She turned her head up to the sun and closed her eyes. “Now get out of here, Rafael. Have a nice life and be good. There are plenty of honest ways to make a living.”
Dot kept her eyes closed and listened as Rafa’s chair scraped back against the balcony floor. His figure blocked the sun before a soft kiss landed on her cheek, and when she opened her eyes, Rafa had already gone. The bedroom door was closed, and she knew she’d likely never see the boy again. In the end, he’d proved he was better than blindly following orders. Dot had faith he would follow the right path from now on. She was glad to be the one to have help course correct his future.
After basking in the sun for a couple of minutes, Dot stood and stretched. The longest yawn of her life caught her off-guard. She scratched at her deflated curls. It was beyond time for that long, hot bubble bath.
“Dorothy?” Percy whispered as Dot crept in. “Shall we stay the extra week? I’d quite like to have some sort of honeymoon before we go home.”
She smiled even though his eyes were closed and he couldn’t see it. “You know, my love, I’d quite like that too.”
23
JULIA
T he second week of the holiday was exactly what Julia had hoped her honeymoon would be. Most of the remaining days were spent lounging lazily around the pool, glancing at the clock only to remind them when to eat meals.
On the penultimate day, they ventured down to the beach and spent time sunbathing like everyone else, with a constant flow of cold drinks and ice creams in between dips in the sea. Jessie and Barker even braved an adventurous round of paragliding, although a closer zoom in on the pictures Julia snapped on her phone showed Jessie enjoying it a lot more than her husband.
Minnie spent most of the week claiming she wasn’t ready to venture into Savega, too embarrassed to face her neighbours after almost falling for Rodger’s tricks. On the final morning of the honeymoon, Julia and Barker finally coaxed Minnie out of La Casa and into the plaza.
“This is more like I remember it,” Minnie announced as she took shaky steps into the plaza, Julia and Barker looping arms with her on either side. “I can feel the difference in the air.”
Despite its delectable window displays, Julia had avoided sampling the treats at Chocolatería Valor until now. She’d wanted to end the honeymoon on a high – and there was no high better than the one from a café dedicated to chocolate creations.
“Just a tea, please,” Minnie said to the waitress when she offered her the wine menu. “Need to keep a clear head for Lisa’s homecoming tonight.”
Nobody had mentioned it, but everyone had noticed that Minnie hadn’t reached for the bar all week, opting for cups of tea, instead. Two days earlier, Julia had educated her great-aunt on the caffeine content of tea when she found her anxiously pacing the terrace at one in the morning, unable to sleep one night after going through twelve cups of the stuff in one day.
Julia also ordered tea, although she chose her favourite peppermint leaves, and Barker opted for a double espresso. The menu for the chocolate creations was entirely in Spanish, and twenty years sheltered in her hotel hadn’t made Minnie as fluent in the language as a few short years had done for her daughter. She knew enough to point out the key words, but the pictures were so gorgeously shot, they hardly needed descriptions. It wasn’t so much that Julia struggled to pick something – it was limiting herself to picking only one.
When put on the spot by the waitress, Julia stabbed her finger at one of the two options she’d dithered between after Barker and Minnie placed their orders. Minutes later, a chocolate cheesecake encased in an interwoven dome of chocolate lattice was presented to her. Each of the curved lines forming the lattice was a different kind of chocolate. After admiring its beauty, Julia smashed it open with her spoon and tasted each colour at once. White, milk, and dark, and they all blended together magnificently against her tongue.
The cheesecake itself was perfect, even by Julia’s exacting standards. She’d often found chocolate cheesecakes could stray too far into the sickly sweet territory. The flavours at Chocolatería Valor, however, were so balanced and well thought out, Julia was jealous of the inventor. She scribbled down notes as she ate, shooting in the dark at the ingredients, hoping to take something new home to experiment with.
“How’s yours?” Julia asked Barker, who had ordered the same silky chocolate cake as Minnie.
“Amazing,” he muttered through a mouthful. “Not a patch on your double chocolate fudge cake, which you know I love so much, but it’s close. Really close.”
“I’ll second that,” said Minnie, sucking her fork with her eyes closed. “Although I can’t compare. It’s a shame I never got to try any of your famous baking, sweet Julia. The reviews I’ve heard are nothing short of perfection.”
“You’ll have to come to the café one day,” she offered, meaning it. “Unless you’re still thinking of moving back to
Peridale?”
Minnie stared at the cake and smiled as she forked off another chunk. She took her time and ate it slowly, her cogs no doubt churning up an answer.
“Not just yet,” she said finally, still smiling. “The pull of the old place has never left me, but I think we’re going to stay here. For a little while, at least. Lisa and I have had some very serious and honest discussions, and we’ve decided we’re going to give the hotel another go.”
Julia and Barker shared a look.
“Yes, I know what you’re thinking.” Minnie laughed before dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “It was Lisa’s idea, don’t worry. It turns out I’m not the only one who has realised a lot during this ordeal. She sends her apologies again, Julia.”
Julia wafted her hand. “Lisa doesn’t need to apologise. She was a victim in all of this too.”
“She just feels so terrible for not telling you as soon as she figured out what was going on.” Minnie sighed as she traced her fork around the cake on the plate. “I think she’s embarrassed she let herself get sucked into The Buyer’s games. She’s not a malicious woman. Far from it, actually.”
“And she’s happy to get back to work when she can?” Barker asked.
“On the condition that I give her an official managerial position,” Minnie said with a nod. “She wants to see if she can revive the old place. She has a lot of ideas. Good ideas. Reminds me of Bill, actually, but she’s more tech-savvy than either of us ever were. Holidays were booked in travel agents last time I checked, but it all seems to be done over the internet these days.” She cut off another piece. “She can do her own hiring and firing, and I’ll step in to help where I can. I’m not exactly going to be slaving away in the kitchen or flipping mattresses at my age, but I think there’s a hosting position somewhere in there for me. And I don’t mean the kind where I sit around drinking sangria and telling those same stories over and over every night. They might be new to the guests, but if I’m honest, I’m sick of hearing them.”