The Murder Game, page 26
It’s not an answer really, and Stephanie starts talking about getting me to hospital to be checked over. I don’t want to go.
‘We don’t know what they drugged you with, Jemma. It might be dangerous, so we’ll have to take a sample of your blood. It may help us to identify your attacker.’
I shake my head, my neck finally free from the stiffness. ‘I don’t feel ill any longer. Just tired and sleepy. Matt will know what to do.’
It is as if mention of his name has conjured my husband up. There’s a quiet knock on the door and his head appears.
‘Can I just check that Jemma’s okay? Nina says you think she was drugged.’
‘Mr Hudson,’ Gus says, ‘your wife was injected with something which made her drowsy. We’ll have to get the police surgeon here to take a blood sample as she doesn’t seem keen to go to hospital. Jemma doesn’t remember passing out, but she also can’t remember much of what happened after the needle went into her arm. Do you have any idea what she might have been given?’
Matt groans. ‘Oh no. Please don’t tell me they used it on Jemma. For God’s sake, that could have been dangerous.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Matt bites his lip and can’t meet Gus’s eyes. ‘After you told me what had happened to Chandra I went to check my bag, to see what I had if anyone else fell sick.’
‘Where was your bag?’
‘In the wardrobe in our room. But I keep it locked. The key was in my bedside drawer, so it seemed safe enough. The thing is, I had some midazolam, but it’s gone.’ Matt’s cheeks are flushed. I know he thinks this is his fault.
‘And you’ve only just thought to tell us this?’ Gus asks, a trace of impatience in his voice. ‘What is midazolam, and why do you have it? You’re a plastic surgeon, not a GP.’
‘I know that,’ he says with a hint of irritation. ‘But I am a doctor, and if I’m needed I like to be able to help. Anyway, midazolam is a sedative. What Jemma has described – not losing consciousness but having a hazy memory of events – pretty much matches its effects.’
‘Is it normal to carry sedatives of that nature, just on the off chance?’ Stephanie asks.
Matt casts an uneasy glance at me. ‘Midazolam is good for treating anxiety, and . . . well, I haven’t been sleeping too well, so it’s good to know I have something that will help if I need it.’
I hadn’t known that. Maybe I should have.
‘Would you expect the average person to know what it is, or indeed how to inject it into a vein, which it appears they did?’ Gus asks.
Matt gives a dismissive shrug. ‘It’s not uncommon, especially for anyone who’s had any medical interventions. As for the injection, drug addicts seem to manage okay without any training. But if you’re looking at me, I can promise you I had nothing to do with this. I wouldn’t hurt Jemma.’
I know he’s telling the truth. But there is something in his words that makes me want to concentrate. I think back to the night before – to the fact that someone had known on which side of the bed to place the book and the photograph. Had they looked through our bedside tables and found Matt’s key?
Gus moves on from quizzing Matt, and I go over everything I can remember once more until finally Stephanie suggests that Matt takes me to our room.
‘I’m not staying at Polskirrin tonight,’ I say to no one in particular. ‘I don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone’s safe.’
‘I completely understand,’ Stephanie says. ‘But we’d like you to remain in the area. If you decide to stay here, we can put an officer outside your door. You’ll be safe. Or we can arrange transport if you’d rather stay somewhere else.’
I notice Matt glance at the detectives.
‘I’d be happy to take you to a hotel if that’s what you want, Jemma, but the police have said that, like everyone else, I have to stay here until they know who did this to you. And what if Lucas is right about Alex? I need to see this through until he has the answers he wants – for Alex’s sake. I owe her that.’
I stare at him. I don’t know what he means or why he owes Alex anything. But I’m sure he’s not going to tell me.
69
The crime scene team had arrived and were down at the boathouse, although Stephanie had little hope they would find anything of use. The key to the apartment was kept in an obvious place, and any one of the suspects could come up with a plausible reason for being in there. Even fibres found on Jemma’s clothes would be inconclusive. She could have brushed against anyone going into or out of a doorway. And as yet they had found no sign of the syringe.
There was a brisk knock on the study door, and it was pushed open.
‘You wanted to see me?’ Lucas said, a polite smile failing to hide the haunted look in his eyes.
‘We did, yes.’ Gus indicated a chair and Lucas sat down.
‘We’ve spoken to Jemma about her plans to leave Polskirrin this morning, and she tells us that she didn’t ask you about a taxi.’
Lucas nodded his head. ‘Well I suppose that’s true.’
Stephanie could sense Gus’s mounting frustration at the lies and obfuscation. He didn’t say a word, simply waiting for Lucas to continue.
‘I heard her tell Matt that she wanted to leave, and so I offered her a list of taxis. It amounts to the same thing.’
‘It doesn’t, but even that version doesn’t tally with Jemma’s.’
Lucas gave a slow shrug. ‘I can’t account for that. Maybe with everything that’s happened to her she’s forgotten. I printed the list from my computer. You can probably check that – or your tech guys can.’
Gus gave him a long look, but it was clear Lucas wasn’t going to change his story.
‘Who else would know where the key to the apartment was, Mr Jarrett?’ Stephanie asked.
‘Just about anyone. It’s where we’ve always kept keys – third stone from the right.’
‘But if you didn’t want anyone going in there, why not hide it somewhere more secure?’
Lucas let out a long breath. ‘In retrospect that would have been smart. But I thought my friends would respect my wishes and stay out of the apartment.’
‘What,’ Gus said, ‘even though you think one of them is a killer? You would still expect them to respect your sister’s personal space?’
The note of incredulity in Gus’s voice couldn’t be missed, and Lucas’s lips tightened.
‘Hindsight is a marvellous thing, isn’t it, Inspector?’
That was a statement they couldn’t argue with, and for now they had nothing else to ask Lucas so told him he was free to go.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Gus picked up the phone to update DCI Prescott while Stephanie paced the room, keen to know what their next steps would be.
As he hung up he looked at her with raised eyebrows.
‘That’s three enquiries running now – Jemma, Lidia, Alex. And we’ll have to see if it’s soon to be four. Chandra is out of danger, but they’re still running tests, so we won’t know for a while if she was intentionally poisoned. Andrew Marshall asked for a message from Chandra to be passed back to us via the police at the hospital. She said she wanted to finish what she was going to tell us earlier.’
‘Which was?’ Stephanie asked.
‘That Alex told Chandra the morning before she died that she’d heard something at dinner the night before. She was convinced that someone at that table knew what had happened to her all those years ago. She told Chandra she needed to ask one more question before she would know for certain.’
‘And do we know what that was, or who she was going to ask?’
‘No, or at least not yet. But I’ve said I want Marshall back here – he is, after all, a suspect in Jemma’s abduction. There’s an officer waiting to drive him. We still have to treat Chandra’s illness as suspicious in view of everything else, but Jemma’s false imprisonment is our number-one priority.’
‘She’s convinced she was attacked because she’d threatened to call the police.’
Gus gave her a grim look. ‘I suspect she’s right. Someone doesn’t want us here. The intelligence on all of them should start to come through soon, so let’s see what that tells us.’ He glanced at his phone. ‘And why doesn’t the sodding Internet work here? That’s not going to help. I can’t believe Lucas runs his foundation from a place with a flaky Wi-Fi signal.’
He picked up the router sitting on the desk in front of him, and for a moment Stephanie thought he was going to bang it on the desk in frustration.
‘Let me have a look,’ she said, taking the offending device out of his hands and carefully checking that all the leads were pushed fully in.
She crouched down to look under the desk and saw a cable dangling uselessly.
‘Bloody hell! The line isn’t even attached.’ Stretching forward she connected the cable and sat back on her haunches, raising her eyebrows at Gus, who looked ready to explode.
‘Christ, that man’s a control freak! I would put money on him disconnecting it while he played his little game so his friends were out of touch with their real lives. We’ve thoroughly buggered up his plans though. I guess the game is well and truly over.’
Stephanie said nothing, instead grabbing her bag to pull out her laptop. She waited until he had calmed down a little before asking if he would please read her the password from the bottom of the router. Within moments she was up and running.
‘Let’s go through everything again, starting with Jemma. Did you speak to the assembled guests about where they were this morning?’ Gus asked.
‘I did. Lucas says he was here, in his study. But no one can either confirm or refute that. Nick says he was lying on a sunbed next to Isabel. She concurs, so they both have alibis. But they’re twins so who knows? Matt was walking – on his own. And we believe Andrew was out on the boat, getting it ready. We only have his word for that. Nina was in the kitchen.’
‘So not helpful at all, then. Until we have something more concrete, let’s look at motive – who had something to gain or something to hide? You’d been asking about Lidia’s disappearance, and that was Jemma’s main reason for the call. So let’s run through what happened to Lidia that night, see if we’ve missed anything.’
‘I’ll create a timeline,’ Stephanie said, typing into her laptop. ‘Lidia arrived here in the late evening – her mother said she spoke to her some time before ten. Shortly after that Chandra saw her coming down the drive, and someone – Lucas, it seems – went to meet her.’
‘He must have brought her round the back because Jemma heard her speaking to a man. Again Lucas, I assume.’
Stephanie added a line to her spreadsheet. ‘Okay, he then goes to talk to his wife, who isn’t there, and returns to Lidia to ask for her number and offers to get her a taxi, which she refuses.’
‘Correct, although the offer of the taxi might be an embellishment of the facts, given today’s events. But, either way, Lidia sets off towards the coastal path let’s assume some time between 10.15 and 10.45.’ Gus leaned back in his chair. ‘Now according to Nick Wallace, the lights went off when he was on his way back up, and that’s where he passed Lidia. He thought that was 10.30 or maybe a little later. We know Lucas didn’t turn the lights off – or at least he says not – and it seems unlikely that it was Nick because why would he mention it?’
‘I think we can be more precise than that,’ Stephanie said. ‘When I took Jemma up to her room I asked if she thought she had been attacked because she knew something about the night Lidia disappeared. She said she’d seen someone go down the beach path just after she went up to her room – we can assume that was Nick Wallace – but then she saw someone else quite a while later, and a few minutes after that the lights went out. The thing is, she could see the switch – it’s on a wooden plinth at the top of the path – and there was no one near it. She’s fairly sure that was 10.40.’
Gus pursed his lips. ‘Okay, that tallies with our timeline, but it means the lights were definitely turned off at the boathouse. There must have been someone else down there. We know it wasn’t Alex, because she was talking to Matt. And if we’re to believe Nick, it wasn’t him either.’
Stephanie was typing furiously, keen that they didn’t forget a word of this.
‘Did Jemma tell anyone else what she saw?’ Gus asked.
Stephanie stopped typing and looked up. ‘Yes, she did. She told Andrew Marshall.’
70
Nina made her way up the outside staircase, balancing a tray on one hand as she knocked on the French windows.
‘Jemma? It’s Nina. I’ve brought you something to eat.’
She heard a noise from inside the room, and Jemma opened the door a crack.
‘Why did you come up the outside staircase?’ she asked, her voice taut with suspicion.
‘Because it was the quickest way with the fewest doors. Look, I know you’re frightened, but why would I want to harm you?’
Jemma laughed without amusement. ‘Why would anyone? But they did.’
‘Perhaps they didn’t mean it to turn out that way, and whoever did it might have had a very good reason.’ Nina kept her voice low, hoping a soothing tone would convince Jemma, but she saw a flash of anger in her eyes.
‘There is no good reason on this earth for taking someone captive and drugging them, Nina.’
Nina took a breath. ‘Can I come in? This is just tea and a sandwich. It’s still a couple of hours till dinner, and you missed lunch so you must be starving. If you don’t trust me, I’ll eat some of it and have a cup of tea with you.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sure the food and tea are fine, but I’m not hungry.’
‘Maybe I could come in for a moment, even if you don’t want to eat? I’d just like to make sure you’re okay.’
With a reluctant sigh Jemma pulled the door open wide. Nina stepped inside, placing the tray on the chest of drawers. With her back to the room, she closed her eyes for a moment. She had to get this right. She had been practising what to say, but now the words had flown from her mind. She turned to face Jemma, her hands gripping the edge of the chest behind her.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been treated so badly in our home, Jemma. It’s not what I would have wanted for anybody. It’s been a distressing year, and I think maybe people have behaved in a way that isn’t true to their character.’
‘Are you making excuses, Nina?’
‘No, no, of course not. But the police say this is a serious crime, and that someone could serve a prison sentence – a long sentence – for this.’ Nina heard her voice falter. ‘False imprisonment carries a potential life sentence – did you know that? I looked it up. But if someone made a mistake, acted rashly, would you really want them to suffer that much?’
Jemma sat down on the bed, head bowed, her hands clasped between her knees. She seemed defeated, and Nina felt a flash of guilt about what she was trying to do.
‘I don’t know. For the terror I suffered, the answer would be a resounding yes. So until we know who did this and why –’ Jemma raised her eyes to Nina’s ‘– I can’t know whether it’s something I can forgive or not.’
Nina had to look away from the challenge she saw there. She had said enough.
‘I’ll leave the tray here in case you change your mind and decide you’d like something to eat. Let me know if you need anything – anything at all.’
Nina walked towards the French windows, and as she pulled them open, Jemma called to her: ‘Nina, the earring I gave you the other day. It was Alex’s, wasn’t it?’
She spoke without turning round. ‘I think it might have been, yes.’
‘It’s lovely. She never struck me as the kind of girl to wear diamonds, though.’
‘They were a present from Lucas. She wore them every evening, even if she was eating at home, on her own.’
Nina held on to the edge of the door, wishing Jemma would stop asking her questions.
‘Do you know if she was wearing them when she died? And if so, did the police return them to Lucas?’
Nina looked back over her shoulder. ‘No. Alex always took them off when she was swimming – she was scared she might lose one. The only thing the police returned to Lucas was a black bracelet she was wearing when she drowned.’
Jemma lifted her eyes. ‘Are you sure?’
Nina gave her a puzzled frown. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jemma said.
But clearly it did.
71
Since Nina left I’ve been puzzling over what she said, but Matt has come back to the room to tell me that Lucas is demanding that we all go to the dining room. He has something to tell us.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to do anything he tells me to. I don’t even want to be here. But if I go to a hotel I’ll feel exposed, vulnerable. At least here I have a policeman keeping guard and the French windows are locked and bolted.
Matt has said that he’s going to do as Lucas asks – of course he is – but I’m staying here in the room.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ he asks, more attentive than he has been for a long time. But he’s not really with me. He’s twitchy, nervous, and now that I’m safe I don’t understand what is scaring him.
‘Go, Matt,’ I tell him, and with a last look under lowered brows, he turns and walks out.
As soon as he leaves I push a chest of drawers behind the door. I’ve seen too many movies where the police officer keeping guard is distracted while someone sneaks into a so-called protected area.
I climb back onto the bed and feel myself drifting, the drugs not yet fully out of my system. Suddenly I’m back in the boathouse, looking at the wetsuits. Someone is standing in the doorway. I feel a rush of air behind me, and I’m falling, falling. Now I’m in Alex’s bathroom, looking through her cabinet. There’s something that isn’t right. I don’t know what it is. The door to the bathroom bursts open and in strides a woman. There’s a man behind her, taller, looking over her shoulder, grinning at me. At first it’s Lucas, then Nick, then Andrew. Their features merge and distort. The man’s hands are reaching out towards my neck. I’m trying to back away, but I can’t. I can see him, feel him, taste his breath – but my body won’t respond. My heart is pounding, and I try to cry out, but I don’t make a sound. He’s getting closer, and finally as his fingers reach for me, I manage to scream.
