Robert Thorogood - A Meditation On Murder

Richard turned to Dwayne.

‘Dwayne? According to his registration document, Ben Jenkins lives in Portugal. When you do your background checks, see if he’s ever had a run-in with the authorities, would you? Not necessarily criminal. He’s a property developer there, it could be financial. Or legal. Or maybe he was investigated by the tax office. Or by the government’s Planning Department. But Camille’s right, the man was too canny for someone giving evidence for the first time.’

Dwayne looked puzzled.

‘Problem?’ Richard asked.

‘Sure. I’ll do all that, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Chief, but we’ve got the killer in our cells. She’s already confessed to the murder.’

‘I know, Dwayne, but it doesn’t mean we should believe her.’

Dwayne looked at his boss. ‘You don’t think we should believe criminals when they confess to their crimes?’

Before Richard could answer, there was the thump of footsteps on the verandah and everyone turned to see Fidel enter the station, his hands holding a manila file full of statements.

He was hot and he was very, very bothered.

‘Ah, Fidel. How were the other hotel guests?’

Fidel dumped the notes onto his desk before responding.

‘Confused. Panicked. Shocked. And all I got from them was a whole heap of nothing.’

‘Well, let’s see about that.’

‘I’m telling you, sir, I spoke to thirty-seven different guests and they’re all saying the same thing. Aslan was kind, quiet—a “man of peace” a few of them said.’ Fidel spread out his notes on his desk and read out a few choice quotations. ‘‘‘He was the person I aspire to be.” “He’s the reason I come to this Retreat year after year.” “He had a soul of pure gold.” I’m telling you, sir, they all think he was some kind of a saint.’

‘Then how come he ended up getting knifed to death?’

‘Not one of them has the first idea. But a couple of people did say something interesting.’

‘Oh?’

‘They said the only person at The Retreat who didn’t seem to like Aslan was Dominic, the handyman. Dominic would apparently make comments. He thought Aslan didn’t live in the real world.’

‘Which would be interesting,’ Richard said, ‘except for the fact that he wasn’t in the Meditation Space when the murder was carried out, so I don’t think we can consider him a suspect. Did you get anything that suggested that anyone inside the locked room with the victim at the time of the murder had a grievance with him at all?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I got nothing like that.’

‘Then what about the argument? Did any of the guests hear a man shouting at Aslan in his office at 6pm the night before?’

‘And nor could I find anyone who heard any kind of argument at 6pm yesterday—either in Aslan’s office or anywhere else.’

‘And is that likely?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘That the only person in the whole hotel who heard a man shouting “You’re not going to get away with it” to Aslan was Saskia Filbee?’

Fidel thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. It was pretty hot yesterday, most people would have been outside at that sort of time, I reckon.’

Richard considered this a moment before continuing. ‘Then what did the hotel guests have to say about Julia Higgins?’

Fidel started checking through his notes again as he said, ‘And that’s just as much of a dead end, sir. I couldn’t find anyone who had a bad word to say about her. She helps out in the office and she’s always polite. Cheerful, that’s a word a few people used. As for her relationship with Aslan, everyone said she hero-worshipped him. I couldn’t find a single person who believed for a second that she could be our killer.’

Not for the first time, Richard felt as though he were looking at the case the wrong way round. After all, why would a woman no one had a bad word to say about, kill someone who, by all accounts, she adored? And why would she do it inside a house made of paper? And in broad daylight? In front of four other potential witnesses? And, having killed a man everyone said she hero-worshipped, why would she then confess to the murder—but then fail to provide the police with any of her means, motive or opportunity?

Well, Richard mused to himself, there was one way to find out. Julia was currently in their police cells. He could ask her.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Dwayne and Fidel, I want you to finish processing the evidence. And Fidel, I want you dusting the murder weapon for fingerprints, of course, but first I want you to lift whatever prints you can find on the drawing pin I asked you to bag at the scene.’

Fidel looked at his boss. ‘You want me to lift whatever prints I can find on the drawing pin I found on the floor of the Meditation Space?’

‘That’s right,’ Richard said, a little irked. Hadn’t he made himself clear? ‘Whatever prints you can lift from the drawing pin.’

‘And you want me to do that before I start processing the actual weapon that was used to kill the victim?’

‘Yes. I said. As for you and me, Camille, I want to have another chat with our killer. And this time I want her to tell us why she killed Aslan Kennedy and how she smuggled a knife into the murder room without anyone seeing.’

Richard led through the bead curtain into the cells at the back of the station. This was his least favourite place on the whole island—which, whenever Richard thought about it, was really saying something. There were just two steelbarred rooms, an iron bed in each, a high strip of window above them both, and ancient paint that was peeling from the wall, exposing the crumbling bricks underneath.

Richard and Camille found Julia with her eyes closed and sitting in a lotus position on the floor of the first cell. Richard could see that she was now far more sensibly dressed—although he found himself musing that he’d personally not choose to go to prison wearing cut-off jeans and a tight T-shirt in bright lime green promoting hashish, but he supposed it was each to his own.

Julia opened her eyes as the police approached.

‘What have I done?’ she asked, so grief-stricken that neither Richard nor Camille said anything for a moment.

‘You know,’ Julia said, ‘I’ve been trying to put myself into a trance and go back in time.’

‘You have?’ Richard asked, already pre-emptively weary. This was what he found so tiresome about the New Age movement: they seemed to use the most cumbersome methods to reveal things that were actually already known. Like trying to go into a trance when a normal person would just use their memory. Or inventing ley lines to explain the mystery of Glastonbury Tor, when really it was just a hill in a surprising place. As for Stonehenge, Richard had always felt that the guy who’d commissioned it had probably only wanted a nice side table, but had made the mistake of asking a bunch of druids with too much time on their hands to do it.

Correctly interpreting her boss’s dismissive look, Camille tried to move the conversation on. She asked Julia, ‘And have you been able to access your memories?’

Julia looked at the police. ‘Not consciously.’

‘Not consciously?’ Richard asked, exasperated.

‘But I could access them subconsciously, I’m sure of it. If I could just get Dominic’s help.’

Richard’s antennae twitched. For a man who wasn’t a suspect, Dominic’s name was appearing a little too often in the investigation for his liking.

‘You mean The Retreat’s handyman?’

‘That’s right. He’s a wonder.’

‘Well, we can both agree about that, he’s certainly a wonder. But this case is peculiar enough as it is without bringing in a handyman to extract a confession.’