The Weekend Away

by Sarah Alderson

  Should I tell them the whole truth now – about the affair and about Rob being in Lisbon on Friday night? If they do already know, they could be bluffing to see if I’ll admit it. Won’t I look more guilty if I don’t speak up? Crap. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to give them any more reason to suspect me, especially if they don’t already know.

  ‘Was your husband upset you went away for the weekend?’ Nunes asks.

  ‘No,’ I answer, shaking my head. ‘Of course not. Kate and I always went away. It was a regular thing. We must have gone on over a dozen trips over the years. We’ve been to Seville and Valencia and Marrakech …’

  ‘Don’t forget Paris,’ Nunes scoffs.

  ‘But this time your husband wasn’t so happy about you going away with Kate,’ says Reza, wresting the conversation back from Nunes who I can see she’s getting annoyed with. Her lips keep pursing angrily in his direction.

  ‘He was fine,’ I argue, unsure why we’re going down this road.

  ‘Even though he was having an affair with her?’ Nunes cuts in.

  I draw in a breath. Oh dear. They know. How did they find out? It must have been Sebastian. He must have overheard me on the phone.

  Reza glances sharply at Nunes. Was he not supposed to have given it away that they know? Did he just make a rookie blunder?

  ‘You knew about it,’ Nunes says, a triumphant gleam in his eye.

  I should have admitted it straight up. They’ve caught me out. I don’t answer. I’m too scared and don’t want to say anything that might land me in even more trouble or incriminate me in some way.

  ‘You found out your best friend and husband were having an affair but you still decided to come on a weekend away with her?’ Reza asks, mildly.

  ‘No,’ I splutter. ‘I didn’t know. I just found out. After she died.’

  ‘How? When exactly?’ Reza presses.

  ‘Her phone,’ I respond in a panic. ‘The messages on her phone. I found them.’

  Reza cocks her head. ‘Her phone was wiped clean. There was nothing on it.’

  I gulp. I look so damn guilty, but what else is there to do but admit it and explain why I did it?

  ‘Yes,’ I blurt out. ‘I did that. I wiped the phone, deleted everything on it. I was worried if you found out about the affair you’d think I did it, that I killed her. And I didn’t. I didn’t do anything! I wouldn’t!’ I’m gripping the edge of the desk, leaning forwards, trying to impress on them the truth but they don’t seem interested.

  ‘You knew about the affair, you came away with Kate on purpose. You planned to get rid of her while you were here. You wanted to make it look like an accident.’

  ‘What?! No!’ I shout back at Nunes who is now leaning over the table, hands pressed to its surface. Adrenalin pumps into my veins so hard I think I might pass out. ‘That’s absurd,’ I shout. ‘It wasn’t me. I swear to God, I didn’t know until this morning about the affair.’

  Nunes leans in so his face is pressed to mine. ‘I don’t yet know how you found Konstandin, but we’ll find out. You needed someone to do the job for you so you hired him to kill Kate.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I whisper, completely blindsided by the accusation. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s not true!’

  Nunes ignores me. ‘You went around to his house today to pay him. Or maybe he was blackmailing you for more money.’

  I shake my head, not sure I can be understanding properly. Maybe something’s being lost in translation. ‘What are you on about? I didn’t hire him for anything!’ I protest, but I can hear how weak I sound, how pathetic. I’m on the verge of tears.

  ‘You paid him to kill your friend,’ Nunes says, spitting the words at me.

  ‘No! I didn’t!’ I cry again, tears welling at the frustration of not being understood or listened to.

  ‘You didn’t want your husband to leave you for her,’ Reza says, more quietly. ‘You had to do it. Get her out of the picture.’

  I shake my head at her, mute, realising that she too believes this nonsense and nothing I say is going to convince them of my innocence. But then I remember that I’m not the only suspect.

  ‘What about her husband?’ I shoot back. ‘What about Toby? Or Rob? He was here on Friday night. He flew to Lisbon. You need to investigate them if you’re going to investigate me. They had just as much motive.’

  I know I’m throwing them under the bus. But there’s no way I’m going down for something I didn’t do. ‘You said you had a list of suspects,’ I say to them. ‘They should be top of that list. Not me!’

  Reza looks surprised by the knowledge that Rob was here on Friday night in Lisbon. She glances at Nunes, then gives him an order in Portuguese and he leaves the room, probably to look into the truth of what I’ve said. Sorry, Rob, I think to myself. But not sorry really. When it comes down to it I’ll do anything I have to do to get back to Marlow, whatever it takes. My loyalty is to her, not Rob. He can go to hell for all I care.

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ I hear myself say.

  ‘Why?’ Reza responds, shaking her head as though confused.

  ‘Aren’t you arresting me?’

  She studies me and I wait, holding my breath.

  ‘Not yet,’ she answers, tersely. She sounds annoyed about it, as though she brought me here to try to wrangle a confession. That must mean they don’t have enough to charge me. That’s something I suppose.

  I exhale, trying not to show my relief, but in truth I’m shaking all over. ‘So I can leave?’ I ask, praying she says yes.

  Clearly very annoyed, she nods. ‘For now.’

  I stand up, expecting her to tell me to sit back down, or to slap cuffs on me, but she doesn’t. I’m able to exit her office and as soon as I’m out of it I hurry towards the front desk, head down, aware I’m being looked at by all the police officers there, that speculation and gossip are swirling around me. They all think I did it.

  Weak-legged I stumble outside into the humid night, reaching a hand to steady myself against the wall. I need to sit down. The inky sky tilts around me; sounds are muffled; time is speeding up then slowing down. I put my head between my legs and force a few deep breaths, trying to get control over my anxiety.

  Finally, I lift my head and take in my surroundings. I’m outside. I’m free.

  For the moment at least.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  As the Uber drives me back to the apartment, I check Konstandin’s Uber profile. He has a rating of 4.8 and hundreds of reviews.

  All those things he told me about himself, the story about how he came to flee his country and be in Lisbon, were they true? Was he hired by Toby? Is he involved in Kate’s murder? If he is, why haven’t they arrested him? I test the theory out in my mind but it comes up blank. Not because I’m discounting him – I’m learning not to do that anymore about anyone, not since the people I trusted the most turned out to be the ones hiding the biggest secrets – but because something else is niggling at me, something Nunes said. I can’t quite pinpoint it, I can just feel it, like when you forget something on your shopping list and you try to remember what, but it’s swimming just out of reach. My mental fog is dense and a lot of things are getting lost in it.

  I stare out the window of the car, my brain dully noticing the sights. We’re passing the big castle on the hill. Kate and I were meant to do a tour of it as part of the e-bike trip. I try to avoid looking right, towards the glittering blue water.

  That’s it! The thing I’ve been trying to grasp at emerges from the fog. Paris. Nunes mentioned Paris. He knew Kate and I had been there. But how? I never told him or Reza about that trip. I rack my memory to double-check but I’m certain that I didn’t. There’s no way the police could know about it. The trip was years ago, almost twenty years ago in fact, before even Facebook was around to document it on. Nunes was probably still in nappies.

  But I do remember talking about it to Kate when we were lying on the bed in the apartment, before we went out for di
nner. We listed off all the places we’d been together. She had that look on her face – a sad look as if she’d been crying. She probably had. I’ll never know for sure what about, but perhaps she was thinking of Rob, or perhaps she was thinking ahead to the escorts she’d booked and having a moment of introspective guilt at what she was about to do to our friendship. She must have known that causing a rupture in my marriage and then moving in on my husband would definitively destroy our friendship. Did she care at all? Was she pretending to be friends with me all this time, just to stay close to Rob?

  But I’m getting distracted. The point is how did Nunes know about Paris? Is it the same way I think they found out about the affair? Through Sebastian’s spying and informing? But no, Sebastian lives downstairs from the apartment I stayed in with Kate. How would he have heard the conversation? We were in the bedroom. The only way Sebastian could have overheard that conversation was if he had been in the room with us. My skin prickles with goose bumps, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

  I think about how he’s always lurking, skulking around in the background, eager to hoover up gossip. I think about that room he always locks himself into and am overcome with queasiness.

  I scroll on my phone to the Airbnb app on my phone and quickly tap in the details of the apartment and Sebastian’s name. His profile comes up and I click on it. The apartment is listed underneath, along with the other four he mentioned to me. The bedroom in his own apartment isn’t listed though. He told me he rented it out, so that’s weird. Why would he lie, unless he doesn’t usually rent it but he wanted me to stay close by? It would explain the lack of lock on the bedroom and bathroom doors, but why would he want me to stay with him? Unless of course he wanted to keep an eye on me, and the investigation.

  I click on the listing for the apartment Kate and I stayed in, and scroll down to read the reviews. There are almost eight hundred and they’re all five stars for cleanliness, location and amenities, but I notice a couple of people have given him one-star ratings. They’re both women and they both comment on feeling uncomfortable. One mentions the ‘creepy owner with his annoying rules’ and the other ‘a lack of privacy and an anal owner spying on my every move.’

  Spying.

  The chill intensifies and I lean forward and ask the Uber driver to turn the air conditioning down as I’ve started to shiver uncontrollably. What if he’s done more than just spy?

  A minute later we pull up outside the apartment and I get out the car, glancing up at the building with its whitewashed walls. Is Sebastian up there now, looking down on me?

  What about that room of his? I wonder, as I climb the steps to the front door. And what about his strange behaviour, not wanting to let me see inside that room? I need to find a way to get into it. I feel sure it’ll hold answers.

  I knock on the front door – still having no key – and Sebastian opens it. He asks me straightaway how things are and what the police wanted. He’s anxious, I bet, that the police haven’t given him away to me for his spying, so I smile politely and respond to his friendliness in kind, faking it as much as I can so he doesn’t get suspicious that I know he’s a slimy, spying liar. I’m vague with details about what the police wanted, saying it was just to run through some details about Kate’s history. He seems to buy it.

  After turning down a cup of tea with him I make my excuses and head to my bedroom, passing the recording room and eyeing the sleek door without a handle, only a keyhole. Where is the key? He must have it on him.

  In my bedroom a feeling of claustrophobia presses in on me. All I want to do is grab my things and leave. I’m desperate to get the hell out of here. But I need to get into that room.

  I had Sebastian on my suspect list at the very start and for some reason dropped him – because I thought he was too weak and too pathetic to have been able to overpower Kate – but thinking on it now, he was angry about the noise and the extra guests. It’s possible he went upstairs to complain when I was passed out, and he got in a fight with Kate about it. I can totally see Kate telling him where to go if he made a complaint. She wouldn’t have liked it. And she wouldn’t have held back from telling him so.

  ‘Hello?’

  I startle. Sebastian is standing in the doorway to my room. I try not to look frightened but can’t help the quick glance around as I search for something to defend myself with.

  ‘I’m going out,’ Sebastian tells me.

  ‘OK,’ I say, my heart pounding. ‘Could you leave a key?’

  ‘You’re going out again?’ he questions.

  ‘I might do,’ I answer, wondering why he cares so much.

  ‘It’s only that I don’t have another set,’ he explains, essentially confirming the fact that he doesn’t rent this room out ever. He holds up his key ring as he says it, which contains a cluster of a dozen keys.

  ‘Right,’ I say. How do I get those keys away from him? ‘Well maybe I could order food in. Can you recommend anywhere that does delivery?’ I ask.

  He nods, eager to help. ‘Of course, here.’ He gestures for me to follow him into the kitchen. I do, keeping my eyes on the keys as he sets them down on the side. He opens a drawer and pulls out a pile of delivery menus.

  ‘Some are in Portuguese,’ he says. ‘Do you know what you want?’

  I shake my head. ‘No, what’s good?’ I ask, my focus on the keys.

  ‘There’s pizza, Thai, tacos.’

  ‘Pizza,’ I mumble.

  He hands me the menu. ‘If you choose I can order for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say taking the menu. I watch Sebastian reach for the keys and drop them into his leather backpack. Shit.

  ‘A small Hawaiian is fine,’ I tell him, handing him back the menu.

  He smiles and takes out his phone to place the order, turning away for a moment to do it. It’s my chance. Without stopping to think about it I reach into his bag and grasp hold of the keys, gripping them tight to stop them clinking together, and pull them quickly out.

  Sebastian turns, his eyes flashing to his bag and then to me. Did he see?

  ‘And some garlic bread,’ I tell him, smiling widely.

  He must be able to see the sweat on my brow and the pulse jumping like live bait in my throat but he says nothing, just adds to the order and then hangs up. ‘It will be here in twenty-five minutes,’ he tells me.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

  I am holding the keys still in my fist, hidden behind my back. I need to get out of here without him noticing they’re gone and that I have them, but his gaze is already falling to my odd stance and he’s frowning. He must have seen.

  I stretch my other arm high in the air and pretend to be stretching and I give a big yawn. ‘I hope I’m not asleep by then. It’s been such a hard day. And then there’s the funeral to plan.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He grabs his bag. Please don’t check inside, I pray. ‘I better go,’ he says.

  I watch him head for the door, wondering where he’s heading to at this time of night. It’s almost ten already. Once he’s gone I hurry to the window in the living room and peer down until I see him exit onto the street, then I race to the little locked room and rapidly flick through the keys trying to find the one that fits. I try four before I hit on the right one and the little click tells me I’m in.

  The room’s as I saw from my quick glimpse the other day. The walls are covered in soundproofing material. There’s a desk with a computer monitor on it, as well as what looks like recording equipment. A pile of textbooks sits beside the computer and on the monitor I can see an audio file is open. It’s some kind of recording program.

  I’m about to turn away when my attention is caught by a second monitor on the desk. If all Sebastian does is record textbooks in here, why does he need so many monitors? I reach over and turn it on.

  The screen is divided into four equal rectangles. It looks like the screens you see on police shows when they are checking CCTV footage. Each rectangle is a still image of a r
oom.

  My heart leaps into the stratosphere. I recognise the room in the top left corner. It’s the room I slept in, in the apartment upstairs. I recognise the tiles on the wall. My eyes fly to the next rectangle. It’s Kate’s old room. The rectangle below is a shot of the living area and kitchen from above – the camera must be hidden in the light fitting. And the final rectangle shows a feed from the bathroom. The en-suite bathroom that connects to the master bedroom. I was right all along – Sebastian has been spying on me.

  My heart stops at the realisation he watched me shower and go to the loo. He watched me strip naked and sleep too. He must have watched Kate having sex.

  A movement catches the corner of my eye. I scan the monitor and jump back in fright when I see the shower curtain in the bathroom video yank back. A woman steps out naked, reaching for a towel. It’s live! I’m watching the woman in the apartment upstairs as she gets out the shower and starts to towel off.

  Horrified I look away, feeling like a voyeur, but my whole body is suffused with rage. I feel dirty, covered in grime.

  Sebastian locks himself in this room and pervs on people in their most intimate moments; as they shower, undress, sleep. He spied on Kate and me, as he must have spied on countless others. Another thought occurs: did he see anything the night she went missing? Was he watching? He knew how many people we brought home. He must have watched on the video feed. So what else does he know?

  I press the keyboard’s space bar, wondering if I there’s a way to navigate to a homepage. It doesn’t take long before I discover sixteen more live feeds, a total of four cameras installed at each of his five apartments. Every feed is much the same. I watch people sleeping, eating, watching movies, and am shocked when I land on one screen and see two people having sex. The camera must be installed right above the bed.

  I notice a pair of headphones on the desk in front of me and reach for them. The audio comes through loud and clear; groans and moan and gasps. It’s the couple having sex. I rip the headphones off, pressing a hand to my mouth in shock. That’s how Sebastian knew so much. He’s not just watching, he’s listening too. Where has he hidden the mics?