A Meditation on Murder

by Robert Thorogood

  ‘You think the tea they were all drinking was maybe drugged?’

  ‘I don’t know, but that was a pretty frenzied attack, I’d be interested to know if anyone was under the influence of anything.’

  Richard next turned to the youngest member of the team. ‘Fidel, I want you working the scene—but be sure to bag the drawing pin that’s loose on the floor by the far wall.’

  Fidel looked at his boss. ‘You want me to bag a drawing pin, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s on the floor by the far wall?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Richard said again.

  Before Fidel could ask why his boss wanted a drawing pin bagged for analysis, Richard turned and started heading for Julia, who was still being guarded by Dwayne.

  As he approached, Richard pulled a little notebook and silver retractable pencil from an inside pocket. He clicked the lead out and said, ‘Hello. My name’s Detective Inspector Richard Poole. I’m investigating the murder of the man we’ve just found in that paper and wood structure just there.’

  Richard indicated the tea house and Julia nodded slowly. She understood. Richard looked at Dwayne and he shrugged as if to say that Richard was right, the witness was indeed this slow.

  Richard was at his most gentle and coaxing as he tried to find out who the woman was and what had happened. In truth, Richard didn’t really have a ‘gentle’ or ‘coaxing’ side—his idea of doing either was to leave slightly longer pauses in between each of his questions—but he found his manner softened anyway as Julia was so naturally beautiful. It brought out Richard’s paternal side. Or that’s what he told himself. As she talked, he was able to notice how sparkling and blue her eyes were; and how her skin was bronzed by a golden tan; and how her blonde hair seemed to capture the Caribbean sunlight and radiate it back out in golden strands of light.

  It turned out that the young woman’s name was Julia Higgins. She was twenty-three years old and had graduated from Bournemouth University the year before having completed a degree in alternative medicine. Since then, she’d been working and travelling, but at the beginning of the year she’d come out to The Retreat for a holiday. She’d loved the experience so much—and had got on so well with the owners, Rianka and Aslan—that she’d asked if she could stay on.

  Julia was surprised when they said yes, but, apparently, her timing couldn’t have been better. Rianka and Aslan had been looking for help in the office for some time, so they offered Julia free lodging, a small wage—but, most importantly, free access to all of the treatments and therapies—and in return all Julia had to do was a few hours of secretarial support each day. It was an arrangement that had suited both parties and Julia had been happily working at The Retreat for the last six months.

  As Julia told her story, Richard tried to work out what he found so puzzling about her. After a while, he realised what it was. Julia was clearly still numbed from the shock of what she’d done—of course she was—but she was also acting as though she was just as keen as Richard to identify the murderer. Which was odd, considering that she was the apparent murderer.

  ‘Then tell me,’ Richard finally asked, knowing it couldn’t be put off any longer, ‘did you kill the man we found in there?’

  Julia blinked back tears as she looked deep into Richard’s eyes and said, ‘His name’s Aslan Kennedy. And I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Julia gulped. She then decided that maybe Richard was right to want this point clarified. ‘I know so.’

  ‘You know so?’

  Julia nodded slowly, frowning.

  ‘Then can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t get. I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know how you killed him?’ Richard exchanged a quick glance with Dwayne. What was this?

  Julia explained how she’d been looking forward to the Sunrise Healing, it was the only therapy Aslan still had time to lead himself.

  ‘So we all went into the Meditation Space,’ she continued.

  ‘Meditation Space?’ Richard asked.

  Julia indicated the Japanese tea house. ‘It’s what Aslan and Rianka call that building there.’

  ‘And who went inside with you?’

  Julia thought for a moment. ‘Well, Aslan … and four other hotel guests. Their names are Saskia, Paul, Ann and Ben.’

  ‘So there were only six people in total in there?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Julia said. ‘The five of us plus Aslan when he locked us inside.’

  Richard caught Dwayne’s eye, both thinking the same thing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. ‘He locked you in?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Julia said, puzzled. ‘It’s a Yale lock. You know, one of those latches that closes itself. And Aslan locked it before we all sat down. He said he didn’t want us to be disturbed.’

  ‘I see,’ Richard said making a note in his book. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Well,’ Julia said, ‘we then all sat on our prayer mats and shared a cup of tea. It’s a way of relaxing before the session starts. And then we put on our eyemasks and headphones and lay down on our prayer mats. Although Aslan tends to stay sitting up, cross-legged. He’s far more advanced in reaching an autogenic state than the rest of us.’

  ‘I see,’ Richard said, not really seeing anything at all. ‘And what’s an autogenic state?’

  ‘It’s a state of perfect relaxation, and it’s what the Sunrise Healing’s all about. You lie down, put on some headphones and an eye mask and the idea is to let your mind wander as the sounds of nature and the rays of sunlight overwhelm you. It’s like being plugged into a recharging station. You wake up half an hour later full of energy. But this time, the next thing I knew, I was standing over Aslan’s body holding a knife … I killed him.’

  As Julia was saying this, she lifted her bloodied hand and looked at it as if she couldn’t understand how it was attached to her body.

  Richard noticed that Julia was holding up her left hand.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, as though it wasn’t of much consequence, ‘are you left-handed?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Julia said, puzzled by the question. ‘Why?’

  Richard smiled blandly. ‘No reason.’

  ‘It was like an out of body experience. I could see myself with the knife … but if I’m honest, I don’t actually remember the moment. You know … I was just standing there, the knife in my hand. And that poor man was at my feet … not moving …!’

  Julia was overwhelmed by her memories and started to weep. Richard flashed a panicked look at Dwayne. What was he supposed to do now?

  Dwayne stepped in.

  ‘Hey. We don’t have to do this now. We can take you in, get you a lawyer. Take your statement later.’

  Julia turned to Dwayne with a look of gratitude, and she wiped her tears from her cheek.

  ‘No,’ Julia said, after a moment’s thought. ‘You have to know what happened. I owe that to Aslan.’

  Richard was frankly baffled. Since when did self-confessed killers feel they owed anything to the corpse they’d just created? Dwayne looked over at his boss and shrugged that maybe they should carry on.

  ‘Okay,’ Richard said. ‘But don’t worry. Only a couple of questions, then we’ll be done.’

  In short order, Richard got the remaining details. Julia was able to explain how she had no particular grudge against Aslan. In fact she liked him. Which was why she was stunned to discover that she’d just killed him. What’s more, she not only hated knives, she had no idea where the knife came from that she’d just used to kill Aslan, or how she’d managed to smuggle it into the Meditation Space.

  In fact, Richard had to conclude, Julia seemed no less baffled by the murder than he was.

  ‘So, to sum up,’ Richard said checking over the notes he’d taken. ‘You say you have no motive—you have no idea where the knife came from—you don’t know how you got it into the Meditation Space with you—you hav
e no clear memory of actually killing the victim—but you’d noneth-less like to confess to his murder?’

  Julia looked at Richard.

  ‘But I have to. It was me. I killed him.’

  Richard looked at Dwayne. Dwayne looked at Richard. Oh well, a confession was a confession. Dwayne got out his handcuffs and started to bind them to Julia’s wrists. As he did this, he cautioned her.

  ‘Julia Higgins, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  ‘But before you go, can I ask you one last question?’ Richard said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you know why there’s a drawing pin on the floor of the Meditation Space?’

  Julia didn’t really understand the question.

  ‘What drawing pin?’

  So that was the end of that.

  As Dwayne led Julia off, Richard took a moment to look about himself. The old plantation owner’s house that was now the main hotel building sat in a sea of manicured lawns, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was all wrought-iron balconies and horizontal planks of white-painted wood. But Richard also noted the other structures that were dotted around the hotel’s grounds. There was what looked like a red and gold Shinto shrine off in one clearing; a colonnade of vine-entwined Corinthian pillars straight out of Ancient Greece in another; and, up on a bluff that overlooked the sparkling sea, there appeared to be a Thai temple, with sharply sloped roofs in copper green.

  It was all very strange and incongruous to Richard’s mind. As for the hotel’s guests, Richard could see that they’d apparently all vanished into thin air, although—now he was looking—he could see a clump of them down on the beach looking back at him.

  Camille came over from the house and Richard went to meet her.

  ‘Okay,’ Camille said. ‘I’ve sent Rianka—the wife—to her room and I’ve said I’ll go to her as soon as I can. As for the other witnesses, they’re off getting changed into their normal clothes. I’ve then told them to meet by the ambulance so we can take samples.’

  ‘Good work. Thank you.’

  ‘But what did Julia say? Is she the murderer?’

  ‘Oh yes. She’s made a full confession.’

  Camille looked at Richard and shifted her weight onto one hip, a suspicious look slipping into her eyes.

  ‘And yet …?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just she didn’t really make a very good fist at explaining the murder.’

  ‘She didn’t?’

  ‘No. For example, she didn’t say she had any reason to want to kill the deceased. In fact, she said how much she liked him. And she claimed she not only hadn’t seen the knife before that she used to kill him, but she had no idea where it even came from.’

  ‘But she’s the murderer, of course she’d say that. She’s lying.’

  ‘I know. But seeing as she’s already confessed to killing him, why bother to lie that she doesn’t know what her motive was, what her means were or what her opportunity was?’

  Camille could see the logic of what Richard was saying.

  ‘And she’s also left-handed,’ Richard said.

  ‘She is?’

  ‘Or so she says.’

  ‘Maybe she’s trying to trick you.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Camille knew her boss well. ‘You don’t think she did it, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I think—but it’s definitely not stacking up. Not yet. Not if she can’t provide us with a decent means, motive and opportunity. And there’s something else as well.’ Richard paused a moment, and then turned back to face the Japanese tea house. ‘It’s this tea house. Because Julia also said Aslan locked her and the others inside it before they started their meditation.’

  ‘So?’

  Richard looked at his partner. ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  Camille refused to be drawn, so Richard explained for her.

  ‘Because who in their right mind would allow themselves to be locked inside a room with four other potential witnesses before committing murder?’

  Camille considered this a moment and then said, ‘Oh. I see what you mean.’

  ‘Precisely. Why not kill him in the dead of night? Or when he’s on his own?’

  Richard looked over at the Meditation Space again.

  ‘If you ask me, there’s something about that tea house that’s important. Something we haven’t realised yet. Either because of how it’s made—or where it’s located—but the victim had to be killed inside it in broad daylight in front of a load of other potential witnesses. Why?’

  Chapter Two

  While Fidel processed the scene, Camille oversaw the paramedics taking the blood samples from the four remaining witnesses, and Richard watched all the activity from the shade of a nearby palm tree. This, in fact, meant standing nowhere near the palm tree in question that was actually shading him, but Richard had long ago learnt that a palm tree’s vertical trunk was too narrow to offer any shade from the blistering tropical sunshine. Instead, his technique was to follow the shade of the thin trunk along the ground until he found the much larger clump of shade that was thrown by the bush of fronds at the top of the tree.

  Which is why, at this precise moment, if anyone had been looking, they’d have seen Richard standing in the middle of an entirely sun-bleached lawn apparently in his own personal shaft of darkness. But he wanted to take a moment to watch the four remaining witnesses interact with Camille. After all, they’d just been locked inside a room where a vicious murder had been carried out. How were they bearing up?

  To this end, Richard had already got the witnesses’ check-in details from The Retreat’s receptionist.

  He could see that Camille was currently talking to a woman he now knew was called Saskia Filbee. The photocopy of her passport had her down as forty-two years old. And according to the hotel’s registration card she lived in Walthamstow and worked as a temporary secretary in London. Like the other witnesses, she’d now changed back into her normal clothes and Richard could see that she’d chosen to put on a sensible A-line dress in dark blue. And he could also see from the way that Saskia listened to Camille with her head cocked slightly to one side that this was someone who was happy being told what to do.

  He saw Saskia nod her head and go over to one of the paramedics. Yes, Richard thought to himself, Saskia was a sensible secretary. And she would of course volunteer to give her blood sample to the paramedics first.

  Richard shuffled the registration forms in his hand and came up with Paul Sellars and Ann Sellars next. According to their passports, Ann was forty-five years old and had been born in Birmingham. Her registration said she was a housewife and, now that she’d changed into her normal clothes, Richard could see that while she was somewhat plump, she seemed to fizz with the energy of a middle-aged woman who, rather than despair at how she’d ‘let herself go’, had instead decided to embrace this fact.

  Gold flashed at the thick necklace around Ann’s neck, her wrists were similarly festooned with glitz, and she seemed to be wearing electric-blue trousers and gold slippers straight out of an Arabian nightmare, a violently fuchsia blouse, and the whole ensemble was finished off with a silk shawl that she wore draped over her shoulders and which seemed to have been constructed from every colour in the world that didn’t actually occur in nature. On it, neon swirls of blue fought with psychedelic greens; and both lost out to attacks of fluorescent yellow.

  Richard could see from the way that Ann was now talking to Camille—with almost windmill gesticulations as she pointed from the house to the Meditation Space and back again at the paramedics—that Ann clearly had a personality as colourful and slapdash as her clothes.

  He watched as a man wearing tan chinos, brown deck shoes and a white short-sleeved shirt joined Ann. Richard
could see from the papers in his hand that this was Paul Sellars, Ann’s fifty-two-year-old husband. He was a pharmacist at an independent chemist’s in Nottingham, where he and Ann lived. And as Paul calmed Ann down, Richard could see that everything Ann was, her husband wasn’t.

  For starters, he was rake thin. And almost entirely bald. But it was more than that. It was his manner that was so different. Richard could see that Paul was smooth, conciliatory. In charge. Just a few words into whatever he was saying, Ann quietened down and looked at her husband as though waiting for instruction. And instruction was clearly what he was giving her because, as he pointed off to the paramedics, Ann seemed finally to understand what was expected of her and she went over to give her samples meekly.

  Richard saw Camille thank Paul for his timely intervention and Richard then saw him smile briefly and nod once. Paul was clearly a quietly capable person.

  Which left only one witness, Ben Jenkins, who Richard had briefly spoken to when he’d first arrived at the murder scene. He could see from Ben’s photocopied passport that he was fifty, had been born in Leeds, but he now listed his home address as Vilamoura, Portugal.

  As Richard looked up, it took him a moment to find Ben, but then he saw him standing off to one side in the shade of the ambulance. He wasn’t that tall, and now that he’d been allowed to get back into his normal clothes, Richard could see that Ben wore what looked like white leather shoes, stone-washed blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt in vertical pink and blue stripes that was tucked tightly into a thin belt that cinched him tight at the waist.

  Richard thought he recognised the type. Ben had done extremely well in life and was now trying to use expensive clothes and accessories to draw attention away from his increasing girth and decreasing attraction. Looking down at the forms again, Richard saw that Ben had listed his occupation on the hotel form as ‘Property Developer’.

  Richard found it interesting how Ben was off to one side. Alone. In fact, as Richard watched him, he found himself noting that Ben seemed to be watching Camille and the others, just as Richard was watching Ben.