He still hated the tropics of course: the climate, the spicy food, the shack he had to live in—the sand that got everywhere—and the fact that even though Saint-Marie was larger even than the Isle of Wight, it wasn’t possible to get a decent pint of beer anywhere. But while Richard told himself that he was still hell-bent on getting posted back to the UK, he hadn’t noticed—although his team had—that he hadn’t actually applied for any jobs back in the UK for the last few months.
This didn’t mean that he was happy, of course. Someone like Richard could never be happy—but his levels of unhappiness had perhaps bottomed out.
On this occasion, though, Richard was having a typically frustrating time trying to find even a single whiteboard marker with enough ink in it to work. Once he’d finally found one that would just about do, he turned to face his team.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Five guests at a fancy health-spa-cum-hotel get up at dawn and go for a morning swim. Saskia Filbee, Ann Sellars, Paul Sellars, Ben Jenkins and Julia Higgins.’ Richard wrote the names on the board, leaving plenty of space between the names so they could later annotate the board with evidence as they collected it.
Richard carried on making notes on the board as he recounted how the witnesses all went swimming that morning, and how one of their number—Paul Sellars—handed out fresh cotton robes to them all, Julia Higgins included, before they all went with Aslan to the Mediation Space, and how all of the witnesses agreed that Julia couldn’t have hidden a knife about her person before the room was locked down.
He then went on to explain that once inside, it was Aslan who locked the door from the inside. All five guests and Aslan then drank from the same pot of tea and all turned their cups over. They then all put on their wireless headphones and eye masks and lay down on their prayer mats.
And then there was a ten to fifteen minute window in which Aslan was brutally slain, somehow without any of the witnesses hearing or seeing anything until Julia started screaming, which was when everyone inside the Meditation Space woke up and saw Julia standing over the body holding a carving knife in her left hand.
‘Even though the wounds in the victim’s neck and back look like they were delivered by a right-handed person,’ Camille said.
‘Precisely.’
‘And you should know,’ Camille said, ‘when I watched Julia write out her witness statement, she used her left hand to do the whole thing.’
‘So what do we think? Is she really our killer?’
‘She’s confessed to the murder,’ Dwayne pointed out.
‘I know, but I don’t want us to rule anything in or out for the moment. Not until we know more about what we’re dealing with. And you should know, all the witnesses said they felt groggy when they woke up. Camille, did we manage to get samples of the tea they were drinking off to the labs in Guadeloupe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And samples of the witnesses’ blood and urine?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Richard looked at the board and realised something.
‘Because there’s something you should all know,’ Richard said. ‘Paul Sellars’s registration card for the hotel had his profession down as a pharmacist. If the tea was doctored in any way, he’s the person on this list who’d have had the easiest access to any kind of mind-altering drug.’
Richard recorded this fact by Paul’s name on the whiteboard.
‘And two more things,’ Richard said. ‘Firstly, why was Aslan killed inside a house made of paper and wood? It’s such a strange place to commit murder. Don’t you think? And secondly—and just as important—why did we find a drawing pin loose at the scene?’
As Richard finished writing his notes up, it was fortunate that he couldn’t see the sceptical looks that passed between Dwayne and Camille behind his back.
‘Very good,’ Richard finally said, looking at the board. ‘Yes. That’s a start. Have you got the witness statements?’ he asked Camille.
‘Of course, sir,’ she said.
As Camille hunted for the statements among the slick of other casework on her desk, Richard marvelled once again at how he managed to work so effectively with a partner who was so very disorganised. Her desk alone was enough to send him into conniptions with its mess of paperwork, files, bits of old orange peel and desiccated tubs of make-up that she’d leave the lids off and then lose interest in entirely. Richard’s desk, on the other hand, was of course neat and tidy; his in tray empty, his out tray just as empty. There was no pending tray. As far as Richard was concerned, pending trays were for wimps.
‘Got them!’
Camille triumphantly held up a manila folder containing the witness statements.
‘Yes. Well done, Camille.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Camille asked, picking up on her boss’s tone.
‘Only that it shouldn’t be such an achievement to find the witness statements to a murder case.’
‘I knew where they were.’
‘Self-evidently you didn’t.’
Camille pointedly opened the buff folder by way of a reply, and, as she gave her verbal report, Richard wrote up his version of what Camille was saying on the whiteboard.
‘Okay … as for witnesses, first we’ve got Rianka Kennedy of course. And it’s basically what she’d already told us: she sat down on the verandah to do some sewing at about 7.30am, and no one other than Aslan and the five known witnesses went into the Meditation Space before 8am. She then saw no one else enter or leave the building, and the only person who was even remotely nearby was Dominic De Vere, the handyman. But Rianka said that although Dominic had a history of arguments with the deceased, he was definitely outside the Meditation Space when the screaming started.’
Dwayne said, ‘And if he was outside, he can’t be our killer.’
‘Quite so,’ Richard agreed. ‘Then what about our actual suspects? The people who were inside the locked room with the victim. What did you make of them all, Camille?’
Camille fanned out the witness statements so she could see them all. ‘So first we’ve got Saskia Filbee,’ she said. ‘I thought she was the classic innocent bystander. Shocked, but willing to help.’
‘I’d agree. That’s what I thought of her, too.’
‘And then we’ve got the husband and wife, Paul and Ann Sellars. And they’re an odd couple, aren’t they?’
‘Go on,’ Richard said.
‘Because she’s kind of crazy. I had an aunt like that. You know, larger than life. Talked too much. But it was because she never married and she had to keep noisy or she’d notice there wasn’t much going on in her life.’
‘You think Ann’s unhappy?’ Dwayne asked.
‘I don’t know. But she definitely talked too much. You know?’
‘Maybe she’s feeling guilty?’ Dwayne offered.
‘Maybe,’ Camille conceded, though she wasn’t too sure.
‘Then what about Paul?’ Richard asked.
‘He’s so sure of himself. And in control. Isn’t he?’ Camille said, and Richard couldn’t help but smile as this tallied with his impression of Paul as well. ‘And patronising. I got the distinct impression he didn’t take me seriously because I was a woman.’
‘Then what of Ben Jenkins?’
‘I don’t know,’ Camille said. ‘He was happy to give his statement, but there was something about him I couldn’t quite pin down.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He was helpful enough, but I felt he was being careful. Like he’d had a brush with the law in the past.’
‘That’s exactly it!’ Richard said, delighted. He’d been unable to place Ben’s manner himself, but Camille was right. When Richard talked to Ben it was as though Ben knew he had to be guarded around policemen.
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