Читать книгу A Meditation On Murder - Robert Thorogood, Роберт Торогуд - Страница 9

A few hours before the murder of Aslan Kennedy, Detective Inspector Richard Poole was also awake. This wasn’t because he’d trained himself to turn delicately to each day’s sunrise like a flower; it was because he was hot, bothered, and he’d been awake since a frog had started croaking outside his window—inexplicably—just before 4am.

But then, Richard thought to himself, this was entirely typical, because if he wasn’t being assaulted by frog choruses in the middle of the night, it was torrential downpours like a troupe of Gene Kellys tap-dancing on his tin roof; or it was whole dunes of sand being blown across his floorboards by the hot Caribbean wind. In fact, Richard considered, in all ways and at all times, life on the tropical island of Saint-Marie was a misery.

Admittedly, he’d collected empirical evidence that suggested that Saint-Marie was a popular holiday destination for tens of thousands of other people, but what did other people know? This was an island where it was sunny every second of every single day apart from the ten minutes each morning and night when a tropical storm would appear out of nowhere and rain hard enough to flatten cows. And that wasn’t even counting the three months of the year when it was no longer the hot season because it was now the hurricane season—which, in truth, was just as hot as the hot season, but altogether more hurricaney.

And none of this even included the constant and unrelenting humidity, which—Richard often found himself claiming—was well over one hundred per cent. (Of course, Richard knew that this was scientifically impossible, but he also knew that the one time he’d received a precious box of Walker’s crisps in the post from his mother, the crisps had gone soggy within minutes of him opening any of the packets. It was like some exquisite punishment that had been specifically designed to torture him. The insides of each packet contained perfect crisps right up to but not including the precise moment he opened the packet and tried to eat one, at which point they immediately went stale in the sultry tropical air.)

This and other wild roller coasters of despair looped through Richard’s mind as he lay in bed, wide awake, his bedside alarm clock clicking from 04:18 to 04:19, surely the most miserable minute in the twenty-four hour clock, Richard found himself musing.

A slick of sweat slipped down his neck and into the collar of his Marks and Spencer pyjamas, and before he could stop himself, Richard became a kicking machine, scissoring his legs in a frenzied attack on his sheets until they’d been balled up and dashed to the floor.

He slumped back onto the old mattress and exhaled in exasperation. Why did everything have to be so hard?

There was nothing for it, he might as well get up.

He turned on the lights and padded into the tiny kitchenette and washroom that had somehow been crammed into the inside porch of his shack as if by someone who no doubt felt that the galley kitchens on sailboats were altogether too roomy. Surely there was a way of packing even more cooking and cleaning equipment into even less space?

He went to the metal sink that was squashed in between his fridge and his front door, and discovered that he wasn’t the only person looking for a drink. A bright green lizard was already in the sink catching drops of water as they fell from the tap above.

The lizard was called Harry. Or, rather, Richard had named the lizard Harry when he’d discovered that the shack he’d been assigned to live in already came with a reptilian sitting tenant. And, like every flat-share Richard had ever been involved in, it had been a disaster from the start.

As Harry turned his attention back to catching drops of water with his pink-flashing tongue, Richard found himself thinking—not for the first time—that he should just get rid of the bloody creature.

But how to do it, that was the question.

A few hours later, Richard was sitting behind his desk in Honoré Police Station using the internet to research legal and possibly not-so-legal methods of household pest control when Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey swished over to his desk, a gleam in her eye.

‘So tell me … what do you want for lunch?’

Camille was bright, lithe, and one of the most naturally attractive women on the island, but as Richard looked up from his reverie—irked at the interruption—he frowned like a barn owl who’d just received some bad news.

‘Camille, don’t interrupt me when I’m working.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ Camille said, not sorry at all. ‘What are you working on?’

‘Oh, you know. Work,’ he said, suspiciously. ‘What do you want?’

‘Me? I just wanted to take your lunch order.’

Richard finally looked at his partner. She was young, fresh-faced, and threw herself at life with a wondrous abandon that Richard didn’t even remotely understand. In fact, as Richard considered Camille, he found himself once again marvelling at how much his partner was a complete mystery to him. In truth, he knew that he was limited in his understanding of women by the fact that he’d been educated at a single-sex boarding school and hadn’t had any kind of meaningful conversation with a woman who wasn’t either his mother or his House Matron before the age of eighteen, but Camille seemed even more impossible to comprehend than most women.

To begin with, she was French. To end with, she was French. And in between all that, she was French. This meant—to Richard’s mind at least—that she was unreliable, incapable of following orders, and was, all in all, a wild card and loose cannon. In truth, Richard was scared witless of her. Not that he’d ever admitted as much. Even to himself.

‘You know what I want for lunch, Camille,’ he said imperiously, trying to take back control of the conversation. ‘Because I’ve had the same lunch every single day I’ve been on this godforsaken island.’

‘But Maman says she’s got some spiced yams and rice she can plate up for us all. Or there’s curried goat left over from—’

‘Thank you, Camille, but I’d much rather just have my usual.’

Camille looked at her boss, her eyes sparkling as she got out her police notebook and made a big show of writing down his lunch order. ‘One … banana … sandwich.’

‘Thank you, Camille,’ Richard said, somehow aware that he’d been made to look stupid, but not knowing quite how it had happened.

Camille grabbed up her handbag, sashayed out of the room, and Richard waited to see who of Dwayne or Fidel would appear first from behind their computer monitors.

It was Ordinary Police Officer Dwayne Myers. But then, as the elder statesman of the station, this was no real surprise.

Richard tolerated Dwayne—liked him, even—but it was always against his better judgement. Dwayne was in his fifties but looked like he was no older than thirty and, while he wore non-regulation trainers and a bead necklace with his uniform, he was always immaculately turned out. In fact, it was something Richard had always felt he and Dwayne had in common, their sartorial precision. And while Richard knew that Dwayne wasn’t really very interested in being thorough, punctual or following any kind of orders, he was a marvel at digging up information through ‘unofficial’ channels. And on a small tropical island like Saint-Marie, there were a lot of unofficial channels.

‘Seriously, Chief,’ Dwayne said. ‘You can’t have the same lunch day after day.’

‘I went to boarding school for ten years. Watch me.’

And now Sergeant Fidel Best’s head appeared to the side of his monitor, his young and trusting face puzzled. Fidel was a proper copper, Richard felt. He was meticulous, keen, utterly tireless, and, above all else, he knew correct procedure. The only downside to Fidel was that he was overly keen, so he’d sometimes continue with a line of inquiry long after it was sensible to drop it. Like now, Richard found himself thinking, as Fidel said, ‘But, sir, don’t you get bored eating the same meal every day of your life?’

‘Yes. Extremely. But what can I do?’

‘Well, sir, order a different lunch?’

‘No, I think I’ll stick to my banana sandwich, if you don’t mind. You know where you are with a banana sandwich.’

‘I know,’ Dwayne said, almost awestruck by his boss’s dogged determination never to embrace change. ‘Eating a banana sandwich.’

The office phone rang and Richard huffed. ‘No, it’s alright, you two stay where you are, I’ll get it.’

Richard went to the sun-bleached counter and plucked up the ancient phone’s handset.

‘Honoré Police Station, this is Detective Inspector Richard Poole speaking. How can I be of assistance?’

Richard listened a moment before cupping the phone and turning back to his team.

‘Fidel. Phone Camille. Cancel the banana sandwich. There’s been a murder.’

Rianka had set up The Retreat eighteen years ago when she’d bought a derelict sugar plantation for a knock-down price. The main house had been abandoned for nearly fifty years by this time, but it wasn’t its outside that Rianka found herself responding to, it was the inside. Admittedly, the interior wasn’t much less damaged, but what Rianka noticed was how the rooms were still as beautifully proportioned and airy as they’d always been; the rotten ceilings were just as high; the main staircase, while leaf-swept and missing many of its boards, was just as grand. To Rianka, the house was no less than a metaphor for the island itself—shabby on the outside, but full of soul on the inside—and, within the year, she’d restored the main house and grounds to their former glory and opened for business as a luxury hotel called ‘The Plantation’.

When Rianka then got together with Aslan, they’d increasingly started to market the hotel as a high-end health farm, and it wasn’t long before they’d relaunched the whole venture as a luxury spa that was now called ‘The Plantation Spa’.

The business went from strength to strength.

Then, as Aslan got more involved in exploring the spiritual side of life, he started offering holistic treatments and therapies to hotel guests—either led by him, or by other instructors he hired especially—and it wasn’t long before they’d relaunched the hotel for a third and final time as ‘The Retreat’.

For a good few years now, the hotel had been specifically tailored to the internationally wealthy who wanted to heal their minds just as much as they wanted to heal their bodies. Guests could sign up for sessions in healing, be it Crystal, Reiki or Sunrise; or yoga, be it Bikram or Hatha; or meditation, be it Zazen or Transcendental.

Now, as the police drove up the gravel driveway in convoy, their blue lights flashing dimly in the bright Caribbean sunshine, they could see that the main hotel building was the old plantation owner’s house; manicured lawns swept down to a private beach, and there were incongruous quasi-religious buildings dotted here and there around the grounds with hotel guests coming and going from them.

Richard, Camille and Fidel climbed out of the police Land Rover and Dwayne dismounted from the Force’s only other vehicle, a 1950s Harley-Davidson motorbike that had an entirely illegal sidecar attached to it. No one quite knew where this bike-with-sidecar had come from, or how it had got tricked up in the livery of the Saint-Marie Police Force, but legend had it—and records seemed to confirm—that it had joined the Saint-Marie Police Force just after Dwayne did. Not that Dwayne was saying.

Dominic came out of the house—still wearing flip-flops and cut-off shorts, but the gravity of the situation was such that he’d deigned to slip on a vest.

‘Man, I’m glad to see you,’ he said, running a hand through his lustrous hair before shaking his head a little so his mane would settle.

‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘And who are you?’

‘Dominic De Vere. The Retreat’s handyman.’

Dominic was British and Richard could tell from his drawling accent that he was from a moneyed background. In fact, Richard knew the type well. Posh, dim, wealthy, entitled—and therefore able to waft through life exploring the counter-culture as a hobby. No doubt, if Dominic’s money ever ran out, he’d make a phone call to one of his old school chums, land a high-paid job in the City and then, for the rest of his life, complain that ‘the youth of today’ were feckless layabouts.

It was fair to say that Richard disliked Dominic on sight.

‘If you could just take us to the body,’ he said.

‘Sure thing.’

Richard had no interest in continuing the conversation with someone who wore a shark tooth on a string around his neck, so they all walked on in silence until they reached the corner of the house, which is when Dominic stopped and frowned. Richard looked at him.

‘Sorry, is there a problem?’ Richard asked.

It was clear that there was, but Dominic didn’t know where to start.

‘Go on,’ Camille said altogether more tolerantly.

‘Okay,’ Dominic said. ‘Well, it’s just …’

As Dominic stopped speaking, he started to waft his hands near Richard’s body.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Richard asked.

‘I’ve never seen this before.’

‘I’m a police officer, would you stop stroking my arms?’

‘But this isn’t possible.’

This got Richard’s attention. ‘What’s not possible?’

Dominic exhaled as if he was about to deliver some very bad news.

‘You don’t have an aura.’

Richard looked at Dominic a long moment.

‘I know I don’t. Auras don’t exist. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to stay exactly where you are while we go and inspect the body.’

‘But your team all have auras.’

‘We do?’ Camille said eagerly, holding up her hand for her boss to wait. She wanted to hear this out.

‘Of course you do,’ Dominic continued, smiling easily for Camille’s benefit. ‘Yours is yellow, golden … it’s like sunlight. Warm. Impetuous. Open. Sexually adventurous.’

Camille seemed delighted by this analysis as Dominic held her gaze much longer than he needed to, and Richard found himself noticing that Dominic wasn’t just tanned, muscly and heroically square-jawed, he was also extremely good-looking. In a slightly obvious way of course, Richard found himself adding as an afterthought in his head.

Dominic next turned his attention to Fidel and considered the air that encompassed him.

‘As for you, you’re blues and greens … of kindness … valour. Hard work. Hey, you’re one of the good guys.’

Fidel blushed. He was clearly just as thrilled with his ‘reading’ as Camille had been with hers.

‘Oh for heaven’s sakes!’ Richard said. ‘Thank you, Mr De Vere, but I can see that people are congregated over there’—Richard pointed at the Meditation Space as it sat some way away on the lawn—’and I want to make this clear: my colleagues and I are going over to the crime scene right now, and you’re going to stay right here.’

‘But what about me?’ Dwayne said, eager as a puppy dog. ‘What’s my aura?’

Richard huffed in indignation as Dominic turned to Dwayne and took his time to consider. But then a knowing smile slipped onto Dominic’s lips.

‘You’re like me. A shape-shifter.’

Dwayne beamed at what he perceived to be the highest of compliments.

‘I knew it.’

Dominic turned back to Richard. ‘But I’m telling you, when I look at you, I don’t see … anything.’

‘Whereas I see a murder scene over there, so thank you very much for your help. Team, you’re with me, but if you try to move even an inch’—Richard said this to Dominic—’I’m going to arrest you for wasting police time.’

Richard strode off across the lawn, his team trying not to catch each other’s eyes as they got into their boss’s slipstream. After all, it wouldn’t do to turn up at a murder scene giggling.

But then, there was no chance of Richard or his team laughing by the time they arrived at the Meditation Space, where they found six shell-shocked Brits sitting or standing on the grass. Five of them were wearing white cotton robes that were variously spattered in drying blood. The sixth of them—Rianka—was sitting on the grass on her own. She was wearing a long Indian-style skirt with little mirrors sewn into the hemline, a light summer blouse, and leather sandals.

‘Okay, my name’s Detective Inspector Richard Poole,’ Richard said. ‘And this is Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey. Can any of you tell me what happened?’

‘That’s simple,’ said a well-tanned man in his fifties with a Yorkshire accent, a thick gold chain just visible around his neck. Richard also had time to notice a chunky gold watch on the man’s wrist. Clearly he was seriously wealthy.

‘The name’s Ben Jenkins,’ the man said. ‘And you should know, that woman over there, she says her name’s Julia Higgins. And she’s admitted it all. She killed Aslan Kennedy.’

Richard could see that Ben was pointing at a young woman in a bloodied white robe who was standing on her own on the grass. She was in her early twenties, had long blonde hair that was tied up in a ponytail, and she was looking back at Richard with doe eyes, seemingly as dismayed by the accusation as everyone else. But she wasn’t denying it, either, Richard noted.

With a quick nod of his head, Richard indicated that Dwayne should ghost over to Julia and make sure she didn’t make a run for it. As Dwayne started to move, Richard turned back to Ben.

‘And where’s the body?’

‘In there.’ Ben pointed at the Meditation Space.

Richard turned to the group. ‘Then if you’d all just wait here, please. The Detective Sergeant and I will only be a moment. Camille?’

Richard headed over to the Meditation Space, Camille coming over to join him, but Richard found himself stopping at the threshold to the building.

‘One moment,’ Richard said as he held his hand up for Camille to pause, because it was only now as Richard approached that he saw that the walls to the building were made of paper. In fact, as he looked closer, he could see that the paper was waxy, clearly very strong, and was even somewhat translucent. Richard put his hand on the other side of the door and noticed that he could still dimly see his hand’s shape through the paper.

‘What are you doing?’ Camille asked.

Richard ignored Camille as he took a moment to inspect the door to the building. He saw that there was no handle on the outside, but there was a Yale-style latch lock on the inside of the door that was screwed deep into the wooden frame—and that there was a corresponding housing on the door frame that it slotted into when the room was locked.

But without a keyhole on the outside, it appeared as though the door could only be locked and unlocked from the inside. Richard filed this information away for later consideration.

Stepping into the room, Richard immediately understood why the walls and roof were made of translucent paper, because every inch of the walls glowed with brilliant sunshine. And not only was it brighter inside the room than it was outside, it was significantly hotter too, like being at the heart of a supernova. Which was just bloody typical, Richard thought to himself.

Camille joined Richard inside and looked at her boss as he prickled in his suit.

‘Hot, isn’t it?’ she said, helpfully.

Richard decided to ignore his partner and instead, squinting against the light, saw that the body of a man lay sticky with blood in the middle of the floor. His hair, beard and white robes were now thick with blood. And there was a bloody knife on the floor by the body.

Richard gave the room a quick once-over, but there wasn’t much to see. The floor was polished hardwood planks; there were six woven prayer mats arranged in a circle around a tray of tea things. Six pairs of fabric eye masks and six wireless headphones were also lying here and there, but other than that the room was empty. No furniture—no cupboards, tables, chairs, statues or other ornaments—to hide behind or conceal murder weapons in.

To all intents and purposes the room was entirely bare.

Richard bent down and picked up one of the wireless headsets. He put it to his ear and frowned.

‘What is it?’ Camille asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Richard said, listening, but unable to work out what the noise was.

It was a strange keening.

He listened a bit longer, but, as far as he could tell, it was just more of the same yawling noise. And then dread filled his heart as he realised what it was.

With a shudder, he said, ‘It’s whales singing.’

Richard lowered the headphones, sharpish, and put them back down on the floor, before he joined Camille at the centre of the room to inspect the victim.

Crouching down, Richard could see that the murder weapon to the side of the body was a carving knife of some sort. Utterly vicious. The blade was covered in blood, although the handle seemed to be clean.

‘We’re going to need to get this bagged and tested for prints,’ Richard said.

Camille was inspecting the body.

‘There are no signs of a struggle … no fabric or skin caught under the victim’s fingernails … and no cuts to the hands, wrists or arms. It doesn’t look like he tried to defend himself from the attack.’

Richard looked at the tray of tea things on the floor by the pool of blood that had spread from the body. The teapot was willow pattern and there were six bone china cups that had all been turned upside down on the floor, one cup in front of each prayer mat. Richard tried to work out what had happened.

If the mats and cups were to be believed, there’d been six people in here. They’d all been sitting on the prayer mats around the tray of tea things. They’d all then had a cup of tea and turned their cup over and placed it down on the floor in front of them to show that they’d finished their drink.

But how did the eye masks and headphones fit into this? And how exactly had the victim been killed?

Camille inspected the stab wounds in the victim’s back.

‘There appear to be five separate sharp force injuries in the victim’s neck, shoulder and back,’ she said. ‘Two wounds on the right side of the neck, and three wounds on the right side of his shoulder and back. I’d say the assailant was standing behind the victim—and was almost certainly right-handed.’

Richard came over and could see the sense of what Camille was saying. The pattern of wounds suggested that the victim could only have been killed by someone who was standing behind him and striking into his neck and back holding a knife right-handed.

Richard made himself look at the face of Aslan as it lay in a pool of blood on the floor. Who was this man? What had he done to warrant such a violent death?

Richard exhaled. This was his job. To start with the end of the story: the body; the murder. And then he had to uncover the evidence that would allow him to wind time back until he could prove—categorically prove—who’d been standing above the body when the victim was killed; who it was that had wielded the knife.

Richard always made a silent promise to the victims of murder, and he made it once again now: he’d catch their killer. Whatever it took. He wouldn’t rest until the killer was behind bars.

A flash of light caught Richard’s eye in the far corner of the room. He turned back to look, but the little flash of light had gone as soon as it appeared. So he moved his head a fraction. No, still nothing. He moved his head back. There it was again.

There was something shiny on the floorboards he hadn’t noticed before.

‘What are you doing?’ Camille asked as Richard went over to the wall at the end of the room and got down on his hands and knees to inspect the floor.

‘What’s this doing here?’ he asked.

‘What is it?’ Camille asked as she came over to join her boss.

Richard found himself looking at a shiny drawing pin. It was just sitting there loose on the floorboards.

‘It’s a drawing pin.’

‘And why’s that of interest?’

‘Didn’t you see all of the witnesses out there?’ Richard said.

‘Of course. What about them?’

Richard turned to his partner as though he was a magician about to reveal the end of a particularly impressive trick. ‘Because, I’m sure you noticed, Camille, that most of the witnesses were barefoot.’

Camille was utterly unimpressed. ‘So?’

‘So who would leave a drawing pin like this loose in a room where people were going about barefoot?’

Camille waited a moment before answering. ‘That’s it?’

‘What do you mean, “that’s it”?’ Richard asked, irritated.

‘Your big revelation? That there’s a drawing pin at the scene of crime?’

‘No, Camille, that’s not what I said.’

‘But it is. I just heard you.’

‘No you didn’t. You heard me say that it’s loose on the floor. That’s what’s interesting. For example,’ he said, standing up and indicating the rough-hewn wooden pillars and beams that made up the internal structure of the paper house, ‘if I found a drawing pin in one of these wooden pillars, that would be less interesting. It would just mean that someone had pinned something to a pillar. But here?’ Richard pointed at the drawing pin as it sat blamelessly on the polished hardwood floor. ‘How did it get there? Who dropped it?’

‘You’re right,’ Camille said, deadpan. ‘We’ve got a dead body over there that’s covered in knife wounds, so let’s concentrate on a tiny piece of metal we’ve found on the floor over here. In fact, I think you’re right! What if the carving knife we found by the body is a double bluff and the killer used this tiny drawing pin to stab the victim to death?’

Richard decided to ignore his subordinate entirely. Without another word, he went outside again, pulling his hankie as he went and mopping his brow. Really, he thought to himself, his life on Saint-Marie was blighted by bloody sunshine. His shirt collar chafed at his neck; the dark wool of his suit trousers stretched hot and tight across his thighs; and his suit jacket pressed heavy and scorching against his shoulders and back. Wearing a suit in the Caribbean was like living inside a bloody Corby trouser press. But what could he do? He had to wear a woollen suit. He was a Detective Inspector. And Detective Inspectors wore dark woollen suits, that’s just how it was.

Richard saw that an ambulance had arrived over by the main house and paramedics were getting out a gurney.

‘Very well, Camille,’ he said. ‘While I talk to our apparent murderer, I want you to take the remaining witnesses off. And I want you to get the paramedics to take samples of the witnesses’ blood and urine.’

‘You think the tea they were all drinking was maybe drugged?’

‘I don’t know, but that was a pretty frenzied attack, I’d be interested to know if anyone was under the influence of anything.’

Richard next turned to the youngest member of the team. ‘Fidel, I want you working the scene—but be sure to bag the drawing pin that’s loose on the floor by the far wall.’

Fidel looked at his boss. ‘You want me to bag a drawing pin, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s on the floor by the far wall?’

‘That’s right,’ Richard said again.

Before Fidel could ask why his boss wanted a drawing pin bagged for analysis, Richard turned and started heading for Julia, who was still being guarded by Dwayne.

As he approached, Richard pulled a little notebook and silver retractable pencil from an inside pocket. He clicked the lead out and said, ‘Hello. My name’s Detective Inspector Richard Poole. I’m investigating the murder of the man we’ve just found in that paper and wood structure just there.’

Richard indicated the tea house and Julia nodded slowly. She understood. Richard looked at Dwayne and he shrugged as if to say that Richard was right, the witness was indeed this slow.

Richard was at his most gentle and coaxing as he tried to find out who the woman was and what had happened. In truth, Richard didn’t really have a ‘gentle’ or ‘coaxing’ side—his idea of doing either was to leave slightly longer pauses in between each of his questions—but he found his manner softened anyway as Julia was so naturally beautiful. It brought out Richard’s paternal side. Or that’s what he told himself. As she talked, he was able to notice how sparkling and blue her eyes were; and how her skin was bronzed by a golden tan; and how her blonde hair seemed to capture the Caribbean sunlight and radiate it back out in golden strands of light.

It turned out that the young woman’s name was Julia Higgins. She was twenty-three years old and had graduated from Bournemouth University the year before having completed a degree in alternative medicine. Since then, she’d been working and travelling, but at the beginning of the year she’d come out to The Retreat for a holiday. She’d loved the experience so much—and had got on so well with the owners, Rianka and Aslan—that she’d asked if she could stay on.

Julia was surprised when they said yes, but, apparently, her timing couldn’t have been better. Rianka and Aslan had been looking for help in the office for some time, so they offered Julia free lodging, a small wage—but, most importantly, free access to all of the treatments and therapies—and in return all Julia had to do was a few hours of secretarial support each day. It was an arrangement that had suited both parties and Julia had been happily working at The Retreat for the last six months.

As Julia told her story, Richard tried to work out what he found so puzzling about her. After a while, he realised what it was. Julia was clearly still numbed from the shock of what she’d done—of course she was—but she was also acting as though she was just as keen as Richard to identify the murderer. Which was odd, considering that she was the apparent murderer.

‘Then tell me,’ Richard finally asked, knowing it couldn’t be put off any longer, ‘did you kill the man we found in there?’

Julia blinked back tears as she looked deep into Richard’s eyes and said, ‘His name’s Aslan Kennedy. And I think so.’

‘You think so?’

Julia gulped. She then decided that maybe Richard was right to want this point clarified. ‘I know so.’

‘You know so?’

Julia nodded slowly, frowning.

‘Then can you tell me what happened?’

‘That’s what I don’t get. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know how you killed him?’ Richard exchanged a quick glance with Dwayne. What was this?

Julia explained how she’d been looking forward to the Sunrise Healing, it was the only therapy Aslan still had time to lead himself.

‘So we all went into the Meditation Space,’ she continued.

‘Meditation Space?’ Richard asked.

Julia indicated the Japanese tea house. ‘It’s what Aslan and Rianka call that building there.’

‘And who went inside with you?’

Julia thought for a moment. ‘Well, Aslan … and four other hotel guests. Their names are Saskia, Paul, Ann and Ben.’

‘So there were only six people in total in there?’

‘That’s right,’ Julia said. ‘The five of us plus Aslan when he locked us inside.’

Richard caught Dwayne’s eye, both thinking the same thing.

‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. ‘He locked you in?’

‘That’s right,’ Julia said, puzzled. ‘It’s a Yale lock. You know, one of those latches that closes itself. And Aslan locked it before we all sat down. He said he didn’t want us to be disturbed.’

‘I see,’ Richard said making a note in his book. ‘And then what happened?’

‘Well,’ Julia said, ‘we then all sat on our prayer mats and shared a cup of tea. It’s a way of relaxing before the session starts. And then we put on our eyemasks and headphones and lay down on our prayer mats. Although Aslan tends to stay sitting up, cross-legged. He’s far more advanced in reaching an autogenic state than the rest of us.’

‘I see,’ Richard said, not really seeing anything at all. ‘And what’s an autogenic state?’

‘It’s a state of perfect relaxation, and it’s what the Sunrise Healing’s all about. You lie down, put on some headphones and an eye mask and the idea is to let your mind wander as the sounds of nature and the rays of sunlight overwhelm you. It’s like being plugged into a recharging station. You wake up half an hour later full of energy. But this time, the next thing I knew, I was standing over Aslan’s body holding a knife … I killed him.’

As Julia was saying this, she lifted her bloodied hand and looked at it as if she couldn’t understand how it was attached to her body.

Richard noticed that Julia was holding up her left hand.

‘Tell me,’ he said, as though it wasn’t of much consequence, ‘are you left-handed?’

‘That’s right,’ Julia said, puzzled by the question. ‘Why?’

Richard smiled blandly. ‘No reason.’

‘It was like an out of body experience. I could see myself with the knife … but if I’m honest, I don’t actually remember the moment. You know … I was just standing there, the knife in my hand. And that poor man was at my feet … not moving …!’

Julia was overwhelmed by her memories and started to weep. Richard flashed a panicked look at Dwayne. What was he supposed to do now?

Dwayne stepped in.

‘Hey. We don’t have to do this now. We can take you in, get you a lawyer. Take your statement later.’

Julia turned to Dwayne with a look of gratitude, and she wiped her tears from her cheek.

‘No,’ Julia said, after a moment’s thought. ‘You have to know what happened. I owe that to Aslan.’

Richard was frankly baffled. Since when did self-confessed killers feel they owed anything to the corpse they’d just created? Dwayne looked over at his boss and shrugged that maybe they should carry on.

‘Okay,’ Richard said. ‘But don’t worry. Only a couple of questions, then we’ll be done.’

In short order, Richard got the remaining details. Julia was able to explain how she had no particular grudge against Aslan. In fact she liked him. Which was why she was stunned to discover that she’d just killed him. What’s more, she not only hated knives, she had no idea where the knife came from that she’d just used to kill Aslan, or how she’d managed to smuggle it into the Meditation Space.

In fact, Richard had to conclude, Julia seemed no less baffled by the murder than he was.

‘So, to sum up,’ Richard said checking over the notes he’d taken. ‘You say you have no motive—you have no idea where the knife came from—you don’t know how you got it into the Meditation Space with you—you have no clear memory of actually killing the victim—but you’d noneth-less like to confess to his murder?’

Julia looked at Richard.

‘But I have to. It was me. I killed him.’

Richard looked at Dwayne. Dwayne looked at Richard. Oh well, a confession was a confession. Dwayne got out his handcuffs and started to bind them to Julia’s wrists. As he did this, he cautioned her.

‘Julia Higgins, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

‘But before you go, can I ask you one last question?’ Richard said.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you know why there’s a drawing pin on the floor of the Meditation Space?’

Julia didn’t really understand the question.

‘What drawing pin?’

So that was the end of that.

As Dwayne led Julia off, Richard took a moment to look about himself. The old plantation owner’s house that was now the main hotel building sat in a sea of manicured lawns, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was all wrought-iron balconies and horizontal planks of white-painted wood. But Richard also noted the other structures that were dotted around the hotel’s grounds. There was what looked like a red and gold Shinto shrine off in one clearing; a colonnade of vine-entwined Corinthian pillars straight out of Ancient Greece in another; and, up on a bluff that overlooked the sparkling sea, there appeared to be a Thai temple, with sharply sloped roofs in copper green.

It was all very strange and incongruous to Richard’s mind. As for the hotel’s guests, Richard could see that they’d apparently all vanished into thin air, although—now he was looking—he could see a clump of them down on the beach looking back at him.

Camille came over from the house and Richard went to meet her.

‘Okay,’ Camille said. ‘I’ve sent Rianka—the wife—to her room and I’ve said I’ll go to her as soon as I can. As for the other witnesses, they’re off getting changed into their normal clothes. I’ve then told them to meet by the ambulance so we can take samples.’

‘Good work. Thank you.’

‘But what did Julia say? Is she the murderer?’

‘Oh yes. She’s made a full confession.’

Camille looked at Richard and shifted her weight onto one hip, a suspicious look slipping into her eyes.

‘And yet …?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just she didn’t really make a very good fist at explaining the murder.’

‘She didn’t?’

‘No. For example, she didn’t say she had any reason to want to kill the deceased. In fact, she said how much she liked him. And she claimed she not only hadn’t seen the knife before that she used to kill him, but she had no idea where it even came from.’

‘But she’s the murderer, of course she’d say that. She’s lying.’

‘I know. But seeing as she’s already confessed to killing him, why bother to lie that she doesn’t know what her motive was, what her means were or what her opportunity was?’

Camille could see the logic of what Richard was saying.

‘And she’s also left-handed,’ Richard said.

‘She is?’

‘Or so she says.’

‘Maybe she’s trying to trick you.’

‘Maybe.’

Camille knew her boss well. ‘You don’t think she did it, do you?’

‘I don’t know what I think—but it’s definitely not stacking up. Not yet. Not if she can’t provide us with a decent means, motive and opportunity. And there’s something else as well.’ Richard paused a moment, and then turned back to face the Japanese tea house. ‘It’s this tea house. Because Julia also said Aslan locked her and the others inside it before they started their meditation.’

‘So?’

Richard looked at his partner. ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

Camille refused to be drawn, so Richard explained for her.

‘Because who in their right mind would allow themselves to be locked inside a room with four other potential witnesses before committing murder?’

Camille considered this a moment and then said, ‘Oh. I see what you mean.’

‘Precisely. Why not kill him in the dead of night? Or when he’s on his own?’

Richard looked over at the Meditation Space again.

‘If you ask me, there’s something about that tea house that’s important. Something we haven’t realised yet. Either because of how it’s made—or where it’s located—but the victim had to be killed inside it in broad daylight in front of a load of other potential witnesses. Why?’