The retreat, p.14
The Retreat, page 14
“We’ll be as quick as we can.” Awkwardly, Elin walks over to the desk, acutely aware of Jo quietly crying behind her, the sound muffled against her tissue. It’s the only part of the room that’s neat, with a water bottle, a glass, and a notepad on top of a white folder containing information about the hotel. To the left of the folder there’s an open laptop, the screen dark.
“The laptop’s mine.” Jo steps into the room. “Seth doesn’t use it.”
“Did he bring one?”
She shakes her head. “He was trying to have a week off work.”
“And his phone? Did he have it with him this morning?”
“I think so. Goes everywhere with him. We’re as bad as each other.” She gestures at the cable dangling from the wall. “It’d be here if it were anywhere.”
Wandering toward the bathroom, Elin puts her head around the door. The tangy citrus scent of the LUMEN toiletries lingers in the air, bubbles of foam still sticking to the floor of the shower. On the unit around the sink there’s a toiletry bag, and Elin quickly rummages through. Nothing controversial—aftershave, razor, spare blades.
Back in the room, Steed’s rooting through the wardrobe. Elin joins him, finding the hanging section half stripped of clothes. The ones left are clearly Seth’s—smarter shirts for evening, a few T-shirts.
Steed gestures to the top shelf. Two black holdalls, an expensive Finnish brand—a good, solid stainless-steel zipper, rip-proof fabric.
“Those are Seth’s,” Jo affirms, watching Steed pull them down. She’s still talking about him in the present tense and it rubs, a strange friction against how they saw him last: lying lifeless on the tarpaulin in the shack.
Placing the bags on the bed, Steed unzips the smaller one. “Only a few receipts.”
Elin picks up the larger one, immediately noticing something strange—the bag feels unbalanced, the right-hand side sagging slightly.
Searching through the interior and side pockets, Elin finds nothing until her eyes alight on the front two pockets; a larger, zippered one and a smaller Velcro one on top. With a growing sense of unease, she checks them—empty as expected; an optical illusion, designed to draw the gaze away from the additional width on this side of the bag.
“Oldest trick in the book reinvented,” Steed murmurs.
She nods, pulse picking up. Not a concealed base, but a side.
Jo’s watching her anxiously. “Have you found something?”
“Possibly.” Elin runs her hand along the bottom side seam, feeling the panel beneath give ever so slightly. Hooking her finger up, she lifts the panel to find a zipper hidden underneath. She tugs it backward and slides her hand into the side pocket.
Her fingertips touch plastic—a thin bag, the contents solid inside.
Tugging it down, she slides the bag out through the narrow opening. It’s transparent, so she can see what’s inside: three large rolls of cash, held together with an elastic band.
A picture is building. Slowly but surely.
“Do you know why Seth would have this much cash on him?” Elin holds up the bag.
“No.” Jo fiddles with one of the friendship bands looping her wrist. “He carries cash, but not like that.” On the last word, her voice trembles.
Elin turns to Steed. “Can you bag it and then take another look to make sure we haven’t missed anything?”
Nodding, he moves closer to the bag, pushes his hand inside the pocket, right up into the corner seam. A frown. “There’s something here, flush with the seam.”
He withdraws his hand. A glimmer of metal beneath the spotlights overhead.
Elin knows what it is even before he fully pulls it out.
A carabiner.
Why would Seth go out of his way to hide a carabiner?
Steed passes it to her. As she traces the loop of metal with her fingers, the hazy outline of a thought rises up and out of her subconscious.
“Was Seth planning on climbing while he was here?”
Jo shakes her head. “Not as far as I know.”
The back of Elin’s neck prickles as the thought fleshes out. Briefly closing her eyes, she’s suddenly back there, on the rocks, sun scorching her face as she’d stepped sideways . . .
That’s it, she thinks.
But the idea renders her mute.
Impossible. A leap of her imagination, surely?
Yet her mind starts putting other, disparate strands together—what Hana told her about someone leaving the lodge, her niggles about the CCTV . . .
She replays the image in her mind; what she’d seen and the assumption she’d made from that. Possibly the wrong assumption.
“Thanks for this,” she says to Jo, slipping the carabiner into an evidence bag. “I know it’s hard, us asking questions when you haven’t even had time to process the news.”
Jo nods, her eyes on the carabiner. “You’re finished?”
“Yes, but in light of what’s happened, I’m afraid I’m going to need you all to stay a little longer.”
“Of course. I—” Jo stops.
“What is it?” Elin’s thrown by the stricken expression on her face. Not only grief, but confusion.
“There is something, about Seth. What you asked before, if he’d behaved differently. Well, he had, but only because of what’s been happening. The past six months or so, he’s been getting emails. Nasty stuff.”
Steed glances at her, raising an eyebrow. “What about?” he asks.
“He wouldn’t show me, but I got the gist. Spoiled rich kid. Walking over people. Things about his father too. How he was a bully, had ruined people’s lives, stopped them moving on . . . random stuff. Seth didn’t make much of it, he’s had his fair share of people having a go, but even so, I could tell it had gotten to him.”
“Any idea who might have been sending them?”
A hesitation, as Elin knew there would be: there had to be a reason that Jo didn’t tell her this from the beginning.
“Please,” Elin says gently. “You need to be honest. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to find out what’s happened to Seth.”
Jo nods. “Part of me wondered . . . ,” she begins. “Part of me wondered if it might be Maya.” A flush has appeared on her neck and begun creeping up her cheeks.
“Maya?”
“Yes. Seth turned her down for a job a few months ago. It’s been messy. To be honest, it was a bad idea to suggest it, I shouldn’t have got involved.”
“But why would Maya feel so strongly about it?”
“Because of what happened. Maya got offered the job by one of the junior managers. We’re friends, so I went to him directly rather than to Seth. I knew what he’d say. Seth found out, pulled the whole thing, said it wasn’t a good idea to mix work and family. Maya . . . well, she lost her flat a few months later. Couldn’t make the rent.”
“So you think Maya may have done this out of spite?” Steed asks, dropping his voice a notch.
“I don’t know.” Jo shrugs. “I feel stupid now, saying it. Maya’s probably got nothing to do with it. I mean, there was stuff about his dad, too, and Maya doesn’t even know him. Please don’t say anything.”
Elin looks at Steed, her first thought: So why mention it? Why even contemplate the possibility if you didn’t think there was a chance it might be true?
“I won’t, but we’ll need to speak to both Maya and Hana before we go.”
“Okay,” Jo replies, but Elin’s not sure if she’s even heard her, her eyes fixed on Steed as he picks up the money and the carabiner, slips them into his bag.
* * *
—
Once they’ve left the villa, Steed shakes his head. “What do you make of that?”
“Interesting. The cash we found starts to make the drugs angle look pretty spot-on.”
“And the carabiner?” He gives her a sideways glance. “You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?”
Elin nods, wary about voicing it yet, bursting the bubble before she’s had a chance to ascertain whether it’s even a possibility. “It’s to do with where we found Bea Leger’s body. If it’s all right, I’m going to check it out while you speak to Hana, Maya, and Caleb.”
Steed nods, but Elin senses his unease, the unanswered questions in his eyes.
43
Stopping a few feet from where Bea Leger’s body had lain, Elin drags her gaze from the residual bloodstains to the cliff wall itself. It soars upward, as dizzying as before, ragged lines scored in the limestone, dips and hollows carved out by the elements.
Where had she been standing when she’d seen it?
But it’s almost impossible to pinpoint; all she’s certain of is that she’d glimpsed it after Rachel had started photographing Bea’s body.
Perhaps she’d been slightly higher, she muses, to Rachel’s left—she’d been able to see the cliff face as it curved around to the cove.
Climbing left, Elin tries different positions and angles, but all she can see are signs of natural life: pockets of vegetation, grasses, tiny ferns protruding through crevices in the rock. A cormorant, wings outstretched, is perched on one of the crags.
Stepping back, she’s frustrated, starting to doubt herself. But as she shifts her head to the side, Elin blinks, suddenly blinded.
Another dazzling flash, identical to the one she’d seen before.
This time she knows what she’s looking for, so she doesn’t make any dramatic steps back and risk losing sight of what might be causing the reflection. Instead, she tips her head slightly, enough to lose the glare.
There. Her pulse picks up. There it is, protruding from the rock.
A loop of metal, sunlight bouncing off the smooth silver ring.
A climbing bolt.
Elin’s hand wavers as she pulls out her phone and takes a photograph.
Interrogating the site, she puts the pieces together one by one in her mind: the carabiner in Seth’s bag, Maya’s belief that someone left the lodge, and now this: a bolt, directly below where Bea fell.
Is it possible that Bea’s fall wasn’t an accident?
She’d had the sense that something was niggling her about the CCTV footage of the fall.
Closing her eyes, she replays it in her mind. As the images spool, she realizes that what she saw—the wrap falling, Bea leaning over to retrieve it—might not necessarily be the right narrative. She’d put the two together because it made sense. Cause and effect.
But it didn’t have to be the case. The wrap may have fallen, but Bea might have leaned over for a different reason. A human reason.
Elin analyzes the bolt, its location. A chill works up her spine. The idea is wild, but plausible; Seth might have been on that cliff face, somehow caught Bea’s attention. She thinks about the indentation in the grass that Leon observed.
Perhaps it wasn’t Bea who’d dropped something, but Seth, using it as an excuse for a fake fall. He could have called for help, Bea would have seen whatever it was he’d dropped, trusted him, and then as she reached down . . .
Her mind doesn’t want to make the next leap, but it does: He could have pulled her over. The CCTV, already grainy, didn’t show anything below the top half of the glass balustrade, and Bea’s body was obscuring most of the glass—so his hand, reaching up, wouldn’t have been seen.
But as she churns it over, she stumbles on the logistics; in order to trick Bea, he’d have had to disguise the climbing equipment. Easy enough, she thinks, with some kind of baggy sweatshirt, especially at night, but he can’t simply have been hanging there. He’d have had to position himself in a plausible position for a fall.
Stepping to the side to get more of a profile view of the cliff, she spots a small ledge a few feet below the bolt.
The chill settles deeper in her chest.
Definitely wide enough for Seth to have stood there, asked Bea for help, and when she did, reaching down a hand, he’d pulled her to her death.
The more Elin turns it over in her mind, the more plausible it becomes. Bea, perhaps tipsy, judgment impaired, would have gone to his aid, not picked up on anything awry.
She shakes her head. If it is the case, then it’s clever. Not an accident at all, but murder. Ingenious as an idea—the perfect murder being one that doesn’t appear to be a murder.
But for what motive?
Given the timing, it has to be linked to Seth’s death, but what did Bea have to do with Seth?
No way of knowing, not at this point, but whatever it was, it still leaves questions. Something like this needs planning. If Seth was involved, how did he transport the climbing equipment, and where is it now? A carabiner, yes, but the rest—harness, ropes—was bulky, would have drawn attention at that time of night.
It’s unlikely that he’d have dumped anything in the water, risked it washing up at the retreat. More plausible is that he’s stashed it somewhere close by. Not so close as to be noticed when the crime scene was examined, but equally not too far away; he’d have been under pressure to get back to the villa before he was missed.
She doubts he’d have hidden anything on the side closest to the retreat, so that leaves the left-hand side, where the cliff curves around to the next cove.
Picking her way along the cliff, she scours the rocky face for suitable hiding places.
Nothing obvious, until she notices a large hollow in the rock, about a yard wide, stretching from foot level to just below head height. Ducking her head, she squeezes inside. The space is shallow, extending back only a few yards; barely wide enough to turn.
Tamping down a growing feeling of claustrophobia, Elin looks for any natural hiding places, but the walls reveal nothing but barnacles, lumpy protrusions of rock.
After giving it another once-over, she squeezes out of the hollow to start again.
She follows the cliff face around until she comes to another opening, similar in size to the last, but narrower. Once inside, she glimpses it right away: a small opening about half a foot above the bottom.
Crouching on her haunches, Elin slips on a pair of gloves, pushes her hand inside.
Her fingertips touch something. A crinkling sound.
Burrowing her hands in farther, adrenaline rushes through her chest as her fingers grasp a plastic bag, something solid inside.
44
One sharp tug and thin coils of brown and green rope spill from the bag and onto the ground. Sitting half exposed beneath is a metal harness.
Elin stares, not surprised but aghast at what this means: not only the cementing of her theory but how carefully planned it was.
Bea’s death was no accident.
That makes it even more likely that her death and Seth’s are linked. Most depressingly, the motive is probably drugs.
Senseless deaths over a senseless poison.
After taking several photographs, she roughly pushes the rope and bag back into the hollow.
Too heavy to carry alone across the rocks; she’ll have to come back for it.
Outside, Elin peels off her gloves. Wiping her clammy fingers on her trousers, she starts walking across the rocks toward the beach.
She’s only gone a few yards when she hears something. A faint noise, from above her.
Tipping up her head, she glances around, but the rocks, the cliff above, are deserted. Despite that, Elin has the strange sensation that she’s not alone.
With every step she takes, her unease grows.
She’s about to pick up her pace when there’s a flash of movement above her.
It seems to be coming from the rock itself, or rather, a part of it: a small boulder, careering in her direction.
Elin’s almost surprised at first—she feels a cool detachment, as if she’s watching it fall toward someone else, observing with an almost scientific interest as the boulder bounces against the rock face, tiny fragments of stone splintering with a skittering sound.
She stands, motionless, still expecting it to ping off at an angle, veer away from her.
But it doesn’t.
The boulder keeps falling.
Time seems to stand still, each pivot and jerk, as the rock ricochets off the limestone and tumbles, taking place in an agonizing kind of slow motion.
The hairs on the back of her neck lift, but her legs won’t move, won’t do as her brain is instructing.
Move. Move.
45
We can’t stay here.” Jo stands up from the sofa. “First Bea, now Seth.” The muscles in her arms are taut with tension as she paces the room.
On the second lap, she brushes past the cheese plant in the corner with such force that the leaves shudder violently, the pot rocking from side to side on its stand.
Catching Hana’s eye, Maya smooths a dark curl away from her face with a panicky gesture, as if willing her to say something, but Hana doesn’t know what. Jo’s right.
This is surreal. No other way to describe it.
“It’s an awful thing to happen,” Maya says quietly, “but it’s a horrible coincidence, that’s all. Accidents.”
“You really think so?” Jo swivels, face brimming with emotion. “I thought you were being paranoid, Han, with what you were saying about Bea’s fall, but now I think you’re right, there is more to it.”
“But we know Bea fell, and Seth, the detective said his scuba equipment—” Caleb says from the corner of the room. He rubs at his eyes, exhausted from it all, Hana can tell.
Jo’s eyes are bright, glittering. “No,” she interjects. “She didn’t say that explicitly. It was obvious from her questions that she doesn’t think it was accidental. Something’s not right . . . not just the money, but the fact that he went diving on his own, without telling anyone.”
