Murder Grove, page 20
Describe what you see on the camera. Images of the deceased. Brain matter spilling out of her head. Hit with a heavy object or rock. Jealous of a younger woman. Driven to kill. Witnesses to the argument at the party. Furious with Anna. Burning with fury. A rock. Smashed into her skull. You hated her and wanted her dead. Now she’s lying in a shallow grave.
I’m back in the ground myself. The taste of soil in my mouth. I feel the pressure of the earth on my chest. I can’t move. I can’t let myself go down the spiral again. I know where it takes me. I take a big gulp of wine, washing the gustatory memory away.
I think back to what Gloria said to the police in my defence, about how it didn’t make any sense for me to bury Anna in a shallow grave near the site where the archaeologists were going to dig. By extension, if Rich did this, why did he leave Anna’s body there? I know he wasn’t that keen on my work with Blanca. Initially, he tried to deter me from helping her find her mother’s body, for what he thought were very good reasons. Perhaps he didn’t know the spot where Esperanza had been buried? Was it just a coincidence that he left Anna’s body there? Or was he trying to signal something to me? Was this some kind of message?
A token?
The idea sickens me and I have to take another sip of wine to swallow down the bile rising from my stomach. Just then I hear something. I turn my head and stare into the half-light, past the olive trees, their tiny leaves turned to silver by the moon. I see a shadow and then two eyes moving near ground level. I take a step forward and hear a hiss. It’s only one of the village cats.
But then, just as I breathe a sigh of relief and start to walk back towards the house, I see him. Rich. He’s standing by the door, his form darkened, his expression unknowable.
I feel my voice catch in my throat. ‘R-Rich. Fuck. It’s you.’
‘Sorry, did I scare you?’
His voice sounds odd, artificial, like he’s acting. But I’m not sure which role he’s supposed to be playing.
I’m so angry with him I can’t speak. If I open my mouth, I’m frightened of what I’ll say, what he might do to me. I’m also conscious that, if things get heated, people may be able to hear our conversation from the camino.
‘Let’s go inside,’ I suggest. ‘It’s easier to talk there.’
The skin around his eyes looks red, almost raw. His face looks unwashed. I’ve never seen him look worse. But it’s not just the physical aspect that shocks me; there’s something about his expression, his energy, that unnerves me.
Despite my rage, his appearance shocks me into saying, ‘Oh my God, Rich – are you okay?’
‘Pretty broken up, to be honest.’
‘So – you heard the news? About—?’
‘About Anna? Yes, I did.’
‘It seems so unreal. I can’t seem to take it in.’
‘Really?’ There’s a cruel edge to his voice now, almost mocking. ‘I would have thought you more than anyone would have been able to understand.’
This throws me. ‘What – because of what happened to me, you mean? Because I …? Or—’
‘I see you’ve got a drink – you probably need it after everything you’ve been through. I could do with one of those. Yes, some red wine, I think.’ He fetches a glass from the cupboard and pours what’s left of the bottle into it.
‘You’ve heard that I was questioned by the police?’
‘That must have been difficult for you,’ he says. ‘And what did they conclude, the police?’
‘Thank God Payton found this hot-shot female lawyer from Almería who was able to drop everything and get over here. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t been there to defend me against—’
‘Against what? Charges of murder?’
His eyes harden. Fuck. Is he still high after last night?
‘Look, I know this isn’t easy for you, and I’d understand it if—’
As his voice rises in volume, it begins to crack. ‘Under-understand what, exactly?’
‘If … if you felt you’d acted in a way that you later regretted.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about, Mia?’ he shouts. ‘Shouldn’t you be talking about your own regrets? About what you did?’
My fear intensifies. I shouldn’t be here with him. It’s not safe. I need to get away. I take a step backwards and feel the edge of the kitchen work surface digging into the bottom of my spine.
‘I’m not so easily fooled by you. I know what you’re up to. What you’ve done.’
‘What – what do you mean?’
His words echo Anna’s last night. ‘Always playing the victim card, trying to be so brave, so strong.’ His tone is harsh and sarcastic. ‘And I suppose it’s a great disguise. No one would ever think you were capable of such a thing, after what you’d been through.’
He slowly walks towards me and stops, staring into my eyes with a terrifying power. I flinch backwards, my hands running along the top of the work surface to find something – anything – that I might be able to use. But surely it’s not going to come to that, is it? I realize he could crush me – kill me – with a single blow. If he’s capable of killing Anna then he’s …
‘Rich, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘For God’s sake, Mia – you can drop the act. It’s me you’re talking to.’
‘What do you—’
‘I saw you, Mia. Up by the olive grove.’
‘What?’
‘You were there. Last night. Up by Devil’s Head. Near where her body was found.’
46
RICH
Her blue eyes stare out of her pale face as innocent as a waxwork doll. But like those dolls, there’s something uncanny about her. Something unreal. She’s pretending to be scared of me now. But I can see it’s all an act. I’m not going to be fooled by her. I suspect I know what lies beneath her facade.
‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I saw you, Mia. You were there, near the place where Anna …’ My voice is breaking.
Her hands are scrabbling behind her back. Is she trying to find a knife to use on me? I could grab hold of an arm and twist it behind her. I visualize the relevant equation. Pressure applied against certain resistance. Result: impact fracture. But I stop myself. Instead, I just take her wrists and hold her tight.
‘You’ve got to face up to the truth about what you did,’ I say, in as calm a voice as I can manage. ‘That you killed Anna.’
‘Rich, you can’t—’
‘You were so jealous of her.’ I apply a little more pressure. ‘Is that what this is all about?’
‘Okay – okay. Listen, Rich. You’re right. I was there last night, by the olive grove. But – I didn’t kill her. You’ve got to believe me. God, I wanted to. And I was very nearly tempted. I even – even …’
I press down on her delicate bones, certain that this should do the trick. ‘What?’
She takes a sharp intake of breath and stretches open her mouth.
‘Rich – stop. You’re hurting me.’
I loosen my grip on her a little. ‘Don’t try anything on.’
She nods. But then her hand claws for her pocket. I’m too quick for her. I wrench her phone out and push it into the back pocket of my jeans.
‘So let’s try again, shall we? Tell me what happened.’
‘Okay – I-I had a rock in my hand ready to do it. After what she told me up there, by the olive grove. I felt I had every right to scare her and—’
I can feel the anger pulsing through her. So I was right. There had been some kind of argument. ‘What did she tell you?’
‘Anna – she knew all about me. About what happened to my mother, to me.’ She’s spitting out the words now. ‘She said she wanted to do a story – not just write about Iain Hastings, but … about me.’
‘I thought I’d—’
‘And – and she told me all about how you’d met. At your mother’s fucking funeral. How could you do that to me, Rich? How could you lie to me like that?’
The shame of hearing this forces me to release her and she falls back towards the kitchen units, grabbing hold of the edge of the worktop just in time to prevent her from collapsing on the floor.
‘Leaving London and coming here – going off grid – doing our bit to help save the world. It was all fake, Rich. It was all bullshit!’ Her face is creased in pain and fury, her normally pale skin now bright red. ‘And to use Emily’s suicide like that – to manipulate me into coming here, when you planned it all together. How could you be so cruel?’
‘What?’
‘You heard what I said. She – Anna – told me everything.’
I can hardly get the words out. ‘What … what did she tell you exactly?’
‘Don’t make me spell out it for you again. I’m not that much of a victim. Even though both of you seem to think I’m some kind of pathetic, fucked-up masochist.’ She uses her hand to wipe away the tears. ‘Why didn’t you just finish with me in London? Why drag me to this place if all you wanted to do was—’
Shit. ‘Is that what Anna told you? Fuck. No wonder you’re so angry. But you’ve got to believe me when I say that that’s not true.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Yes, I met Anna at Marianne’s funeral. Yes, we … we slept together.’ I hold up my hands as if to acknowledge my sins. ‘And I’m not at all proud of that, of my behaviour, of my actions. But … but I thought it was a one-off. Anna told me she was going to travel around Spain and I assumed I’d never see her again. Until she turned up that day on Payton and Bill’s terrace. And you know what happened then.’
She looks at me as if she’s intent on resisting my words.
‘When we left London I did so with a real desire to make a difference, even in our small way. I didn’t plan any of it like you said. I thought Emily’s death was a tragedy, but perhaps it was a spur to help us move forwards to live a different, greener kind of life … Mia, you’ve got to believe me. God, I wish – I wish I’d never met Anna.’
She takes a moment to process what I’ve just told her. She fills a glass with water and takes a few small sips.
‘But why – why would Anna lie about that?’ She addresses the question to herself as much as to me, as if she’s trying to piece together a difficult puzzle. ‘I mean, she told me the truth about your flat. About how you’d carried on seeing one another behind my back. About how you really met – at your mother’s funeral. About how you’d told her – about my mother, about what happened to me.’
Each sentence fills me with shame. ‘I—’
‘Why throw one lie into the mix?’
‘I don’t know – because she wanted to get some kind of revenge on you? After all, I’d made it plain I never wanted to see her again.’
She purses her lips and looks at me with deep suspicion. ‘It makes me wonder what else she was going to tell me. Is there something else you don’t want me to know?’
‘What?’
‘What else are you hiding, Rich?’
‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’
‘It all makes sense now,’ she says, backing away. ‘Fuck. Why didn’t I tell the police what I thought? Shit. All this time, I was protecting you, thinking it must have been some kind of accident—’
‘What?’
‘Something you did when you were off your head on a weird drug.’
‘Mia?’
‘But what if you’d planned it all along? You talked about how you wanted her to disappear off the face of the earth.’ Her eyes look haunted, fearful. ‘It was that day when you’d gone to get water. Anna came here, to the house, and started to take photographs of me. When I told you, that’s when you said that if she ever turned up here again, you’d … you’d deal with her.’
‘I know, but I didn’t mean that I would—’
She’s backed herself into a corner of the kitchen now. She’s looking at me as if I’m a monster. ‘And what was the thing with the camera?’
I genuinely don’t have a clue what’s she talking about. ‘The camera?’
‘Why did you leave it here? Anna’s camera. The police have taken it away. They found it – in the studio.’
I don’t understand what she’s saying.
‘And – and the worst thing,’ she adds. ‘Those photographs. Why did you take them? Of Anna’s body … after her death.’
I feel sick. My vision swims in front of me, as if everything is melting away.
47
MIA
Rich collapses into a chair, as if the air has been sucked out of him. His eyes look dead, unseeing. He begins to mumble something under his breath, snatches and fragments of memories that make no sense. Is it my words, the after-effects of that South American drug, or his guilt over the murder of Anna that have pushed him over the edge? I’m not sure what to say, what to do. A voice inside my head tells me to run, to get as far away from him as possible. If he’s killed once, he could kill again. I know how strong he is. I remember him telling me that he could snuff someone’s life out with his bare hands. But I think back to the Rich I knew, the one I loved, the one I’d met at that Eighties’ theme party dressed in that George Michael wig. I can’t leave him like this. I need to find out what happened.
I’m careful over my choice of words, conscious that if I say the wrong thing he could react badly.
I try to make my voice as soothing as possible, the kind of tone employed by the legion of therapists I’ve listened to over the years. I make myself another coffee and I pour some more water into two glasses and pass one to him. ‘Rich – Rich.’ He begins to stir, and looks at me with tears in his eyes. ‘What do you remember about last night? Do you remember anything at all? About what happened?’
His face crumples and suddenly he looks like a lost little boy. ‘Some of it … but not all.’ Tears fall down his face and his hands are shaking. ‘There’s – there’s great swathes I can’t remember.’
I take a deep breath, reach out and enclose his hands in mine. I notice they’re scratched and covered in bandages. Could they be injuries he received during his attack on Anna?
‘What happened to your hands?’
He looks down and whispers, ‘I don’t remember.’
If he saw me up by the olive grove then he must have left the ceremony early, but I need him to realize this. ‘Surely the person who was in charge last night – I don’t know what you call them, a guru? A shaman? They’ll be able to tell the police that you were there.’
‘That’s – that’s just the problem. I left.’
‘What do you mean?’
His voice rises in anger, for once not directed at me but at himself. ‘Fuck!’ He bangs his fist on the table, which causes the water to spill out of both our glasses. I stand up, tell him I’m going to get a cloth, but he forces me to stay, his hands gripping mine with a clamp-like strength.
‘You need to calm down, Rich. Tell me what you can remember.’
As he releases me his hands fly up to his head and he presses hard onto his temples. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.’
‘Rich, you’re scaring me now. What is it?’
His voice cracks and breaks as he speaks, a bubble of spit foaming at the corner of his mouth. ‘I saw – I saw you – up there by the olive grove. That’s why I thought that … But after that I don’t remember anything.’
He pushes himself up from the table, spilling yet more water. He looks down at his hands. ‘This morning I – I had to be patched up by Hans. My hands were a mess, torn up. And …’
His body starts to shake, as if it’s being hit by wave after wave of shock, like he’s resistant to vomiting up something from deep within him.
‘Rich, tell me. You know you can trust me.’ As I say the words, I’m not sure I mean them. ‘Perhaps we can show that, because you weren’t in your right mind, it’s a case of diminished responsibility—’
He begins to look around the room, staring into pockets of emptiness with a frightening intensity, almost as if he can see things that aren’t there. I need to get some help. But there’s no landline in the house and Rich still has my phone.
‘Rich, I need you to give me my phone back.’
His hand automatically moves to his back pocket to check it’s still there.
‘I don’t know what happened to you last night, but I think whatever you took, or the combination of the drink with the ayahuasca—’
His eyes have a manic quality that is frightening.
‘You need a doctor or at least let me take you to the medical centre to get checked over by a nurse. Rich – I need my phone.’
I hold out my hand, hoping the gesture will do the trick, but he turns away from me. My eyes study the pocket in the back of his jeans. Could I jump up and grab it? But even if I did, he would force the phone from my hands. He’d be so angry he could hurt me. Really hurt me.
‘You’ll call the police,’ he snaps. ‘You’ll tell them that I did it. That I killed Anna.’
‘No, of course not.’ I try the smooth, therapy voice again. ‘You’re confused. You’re feeling—’
‘Don’t tell me what I’m feeling.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ I’m going to have to try a different strategy. It’s a gamble, one I could soon regret. I take another deep breath and steel myself for what’s to come. ‘Just that – Rich, can’t you see, you’ve got to face up to it. It’s hard for you to hear, I know that, but you’re behaving like …’
‘What?’
‘Like you’re guilty. Like you did it.’
Rich turns back to me and stares at me with the look of someone realizing their water has been spiked with poison. His face expresses a myriad of emotions: hatred, anger, disappointment, regret, and finally, a touch of lost love. He says nothing, but through his tears he tries to smile. But the smile is false, crooked. He looks shattered, broken, as if he’s trying to hold together a personality that is splintering, disintegrating.
