A Meditation on Murder

by Robert Thorogood

  As for Ben, he was in his room and he tried to stop Richard and Camille from searching it.

  ‘You can’t come in here without a warrant.’

  Richard could see how worried Ben was, but he knew he had the law on his side. As the police had the hotel owner Rianka with them, all they needed was her permission to search the room and then they wouldn’t need a warrant. Seeing how Ben was so reluctant to let the police in, Rianka was happy to give her permission, but although Richard and Camille spent over an hour searching—their every move watched over by Ben like a hawk—they weren’t able to find anything incriminating in Ben’s room, either.

  Richard hadn’t necessarily expected to find the missing notebook in Ben’s room—if Ben was their killer, he would have destroyed it by now—but Ben’s manner still puzzled Richard. If Ben had nothing to hide, then why was he now so on edge about the investigation?

  Even though the police couldn’t find the missing notebook in any of the four suspects’ rooms, Richard then wondered if the killer had maybe removed it from the board and hidden it somewhere much nearer. After all, the hallway was stuffed with any number of oriental ornaments, bookcases and other nooks and crannies a notebook could have been hidden behind—or inside.

  This time, Richard and Camille were joined in their hunt for the notebook by Fidel—although Richard was cross to discover that Dwayne was refusing to leave the station to help with their search. He apparently had a lead he wanted to pursue, but Richard imagined he just didn’t want to leave his desk. So Richard asked if Rianka would help Fidel identify places to look in the kitchen—the nearest room to the noticeboard—while he and Camille tried to find the notebook in the hallway.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Camille asked her boss quietly, as she went through a pile of old flyers in a little oak dresser underneath the noticeboard. ‘Could Saskia be our killer?’

  This gave Richard pause as he looked through a shelf of well-thumbed travel books and guides to Saint-Marie.

  ‘She’s certainly got a motive,’ he said. ‘Aslan stole half a million quid from her. And she definitely tried to hide that motive from us. So, normally I’d say yes, she could be our killer …’

  ‘But?’

  Richard sighed.

  ‘But everything about this murder is preplanned, isn’t it? The knife being placed in the Meditation Space beforehand. The fact that the killer must have got hold of the GHB drugs beforehand—and known there was a tea ritual that allowed the GHB to be administered. I don’t see how Saskia could have carried out such a site-specific murder less than twenty-four hours after touching down on the island for the first time in her life.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Camille said as she went back to looking for the notebook.

  ‘Because if she’s our killer,’ Richard continued, ‘she also managed to doctor the list for the Sunrise Healing before she could possibly have known such a list even existed.’

  ‘You’re right. Everything suggests that Saskia was manipulated into being in that room just as much as everyone else was. So if we’re ruling Julia out because she is left-handed —and I agree with you when you say Ann’s too slapdash to have carried out a murder this organised—then maybe we should now rule Saskia out because there’s no way she could have written out the list of names before she’d even touched down at the airport.’

  ‘I tend to agree,’ Richard said.

  In truth, although Richard agreed with everything Camille was saying, it didn’t mean that he even remotely ruled any of the witnesses out. This was because of the peculiar way he had trained himself to think about all of his cases.

  When Richard had been at Cambridge University, he’d studied History—mainly because he felt it was his patriotic duty to learn everything about the history, culture and peoples of the British Isles—but it had been a toss-up at the time as to whether or not he should have studied Science. And, although he hadn’t read a single history book since leaving University, Richard had continued to be an avid reader of science books.

  In particular, he had long been fascinated by the infinitely strange world of quantum mechanics—where the impossible-to-believe was often entirely routine. And he’d found one experiment—Scrödinger’s Cat—that was even useful in his criminal investigations.

  Back in the 1930s, Schrödinger had invented a thought experiment to illustrate the inherent absurdity at the heart of much of quantum mechanics. In it, he said that you could put a cat inside a locked box with a vial of cyanide that had either killed the creature or not, but—according to the rules of quantum mechanics—the cat was, in fact, neither dead nor alive until the box was opened and the cat was observed.

  Although the experiment was purposefully supposed to be a paradox, this was exactly the intellectual position that Richard always tried to take with every clue, every fact, every lead—and every witness—he encountered when he was running a case. Everything was true and not true both at the same time; and every witness was always both innocent and guilty—again, both at the same time, until proven otherwise. In effect, Richard was sceptical of everything he was told, and tried to keep all possible outcomes open at all times.

  So he was happy—as Camille was suggesting to him now—to rule Julia, Ann and Saskia out as possible murderers, but that didn’t mean he’d actually ruled them out. Not definitively.

  ‘Which means,’ Camille continued, ‘we’re left with only Paul Sellars or Ben Jenkins as our possible killer. Aren’t we, sir?’

  ‘It would seem so,’ Richard agreed, while also keeping the option in his mind open that he wasn’t in fact agreeing.

  ‘And it’s interesting that they’re both men, seeing as Saskia overheard a man in Aslan’s office the night before shouting at him “you’re not going to get away with it”. Isn’t it, sir? But which of those two is our most likely killer?’

  ‘Of those two?’ Richard thought for a moment. ‘I’d say Ben, wouldn’t you? He’s definitely worried about something. If we could just discover what it was. And I’m sorry, it’s too convenient for him that of the five possible murderers, he’s the only one of them who doesn’t appear to have a link to the victim at all.’

  There was a creak from a floorboard at the top of the staircase and Richard and Camille whipped their heads around. Someone was upstairs eavesdropping on their conversation.

  ‘Hello?’ Richard called out. ‘Who’s that?’

  There was a clatter from above as the person who had been listening made a run for it, and, before Richard could react, Camille was already taking the stairs two at a time and vanishing onto the upstairs landing.

  Richard didn’t know what to do. Should he also give chase? Or wait here? In the end, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour and he’d guard the bottom of the stairs in case whoever had been listening in to them tried to make a bolt for it back down the stairs.

  A minute later, Camille returned, out of breath.

  ‘Whoever it was got away,’ she said.

  ‘But there was definitely someone up there?’

  ‘Definitely. The door to the corridor was closing when I got up onto the landing—but when I got through to the corridor, there was no one to be seen.’

  ‘So you didn’t see who it was?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. Whoever it was was too quick.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Richard said, frustrated.

  Richard went into the kitchen where Rianka was still helping Fidel look for the notebook.

  ‘Rianka, is the staircase out here the only one up to the floors above?’

  Rianka looked up from where she’d been searching under a sink. ‘No. There’s an old servants’ staircase at the back of the house. And the door to the fire escape’s normally left ajar as well. For the through draught.’

  ‘So there’s two other ways someone could get down from upstairs. Apart from the staircase here. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘That’s right. Why?’

  Richard and Camille exchange
d a glance, both thinking the same thing. Whoever had been listening in on their conversation could easily have got out of the building by now.

  There was a slapping of bare feet on wood and they all looked around as Dominic came down the main staircase of the hallway whistling tunelessly to himself, a pile of clean laundry in a basket in his hands.

  Chapter Nine

  Richard, Camille and Fidel all exchanged glances. Was it a coincidence that Dominic should appear at this precise moment?

  Dominic slowed to a stop, a frown creasing his face.

  ‘Hey. Why are you all looking at me like that?’

  ‘Just wondering how long you’ve been upstairs?’

  ‘What are you talking about? I’ve been doing my laundry.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yeah. The washing machines are all on the first floor. Rianka lets me use them. Tell them, Rianka.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Rianka said. ‘Everyone who works here uses the laundry facilities.’

  ‘But how long have you been up there for?’ Richard asked.

  ‘I don’t know. An hour?’

  ‘And you were in the laundry room the whole time?’

  ‘Yeah. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to get past. I want to get all this home.’

  Dominic lifted up his basket of clean washing to indicate his bona fides before carrying on down the stairs and heading for the main door.

  It was only once he’d reached the door that Richard had a sudden feeling that he’d just missed something important.

  ‘Hold on a second there, Dominic.’

  Dominic paused by the door, and Richard looked at him. What was it? There was something about Dominic that had just spiked his interest, if he could just work it out. Was it something he’d said? Or was wearing? Richard tried to chase the thought down, but he knew—from bitter experience—that the harder he pursued it, the more elusive the thought would remain.

  ‘What?’ Dominic eventually asked.

  Richard realised he had to say something.

  ‘Tell me, if you had to get rid of a notebook—and get rid of it fast—how would you go about doing it?’

  Dominic looked at Richard, puzzled for a moment, and then his face cleared.

  ‘That’s easy. I’d burn it in the furnace.’

  ‘The furnace?’ Richard asked.

  Dominic looked at the policeman as though he were stupid.

  ‘Under the house there’s a bloody great furnace for heating the hot water for The Retreat.’

  ‘There is?’ Richard asked, turning to Rianka.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Can I go now?’ Dominic asked.

  ‘Of course. Thank you.’

  As Dominic left, Richard turned to Rianka. ‘Would you mind showing us the hotel’s furnace?’

  ‘If you want to see it,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

  Rianka led Richard, Camille and Fidel out of the front door and around to the side of the house where there were worn stone steps that led down to an open archway under the house. Going down the stairs, the police soon found themselves in a huge store room. And unlike the rest of the pristine, gloss-white building, it was dark and cobwebby and stuffed full of clobber piled pell-mell as it had accumulated over the years.

  There was old furniture, posters from a trade fair advertising something called ‘Wellness’, large cellophane bags of round pebbles, boxes of incense, flat-packed parts for a Swedish sauna, old rowing machines, and, by the far wall, an ancient furnace with hot water pipes running from and to it, a floor-to-ceiling pile of chopped wood to its side.

  Rianka led them over to it.

  ‘This is the original furnace for the house. We use it to heat the water for the guests.’

  Richard inspected the old cast-iron machine and was impressed with what he saw. This was more like it. Proper levers and valves. Proper engineering.

  Rianka got up an old metal rod and opened the hatch so Richard could look inside. There was a thick layer of white ash inside, and quite a few remaining slivers of logs, their edges glowing into flame as the extra oxygen that now filled the furnace briefly revived them.

  ‘Dominic loads it up with wood every morning and afternoon,’ Rianka said. ‘It’s one of his jobs.’

  Camille called over from the far side of the room.

  ‘Sir, I think you should see this.’

  Richard and Fidel went over to join Camille and she showed them how she’d found four rolls of white paper leaning against the wall. Each one was about twelve feet tall—the height of the Meditation Space—but, rolled up as they were, they were only about a hand’s width across, and they were secured with thick rubber bands at the top and bottom of each roll to stop them unravelling.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Richard asked. ‘These are the spare rolls of paper for the Meditation Space?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Rianka said, coming over to join Richard, Fidel and Camille. ‘If we lose any of the walls of the Meditation Space in a storm, we can repaper the building from our stock here.’

  Richard picked up one of the unwieldy rolls and inspected it. It was surprisingly light to hold—although, Richard realised, the rolls were of course only waxy paper, it was perhaps no surprise they weren’t all that heavy.

  ‘And are they all present and correct?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Rianka said. ‘We only keep four rolls spare. One for each of the four walls of the Meditation Space.’

  ‘And how often do you replace them?’

  Rianka thought for a moment. ‘It’s unlikely that we get through a whole hurricane season without having to replace the walls at least once. But we’ve had those here for some time. At least ten months I’d say.’

  ‘Dominic said the same thing,’ Camille said, turning to Richard.

  Before Richard could comment, his eye was caught by a tiny green light on a shelf nearby.

  It puzzled Richard because his subconscious was telling him that the light was important. But what could be important about a little green light? Richard went over to it and found himself looking at a shelf with an LCD monitor on it, various routers, and a whole spaghetti junction of cables going into a cabinet with server racks stuffed full of computing equipment. And there were also charging stations for at least twenty WiFi headphones. There were only a couple of headphones currently on their stands, a little LED in the earpiece suggesting that they were fully charged.

  ‘Sorry, can I ask? What’s all this?’

  ‘Oh, that’s the AV suite,’ Rianka said.

  ‘The AV …?’

  ‘Audio Visual. It’s where we broadcast The Retreat’s music from.’

  It took Richard a moment, and then he got it. ‘Of course! The whale music the witnesses were listening to when they all lay down.’

  Now Richard was looking at the cabinet of electrical equipment, he could see dozens of little green lights that were all winking at him and his subconscious continued to scream at him. There was something important about the lights, but what was it?

  Richard decided there was only one way to track the thought down, and that was if he ignored it entirely. He turned to Rianka.

  ‘Can you tell me how all this works?’

  Rianka was a little puzzled by the question, but was happy to answer.

  ‘Sure. Well, we’ve got WiFi routers placed over the whole Retreat and we broadcast meditation music twenty-four hours a day on them so that if anyone wants help in losing themselves—you know, when they’re having a massage—or whatever—all they have to do is pick up a set of WiFi headphones and they can listen in without disturbing anyone else’s peace.’

  ‘Seems a bit hi-tech,’ Richard said, somewhat disapprovingly as he picked up one of the WiFi headphones.

  ‘We try to move with the times.’

  Now that he was looking more closely at one of the headphones, Richard could see that there was a little dial above the right earpiece. It was set to 3.

  ‘Are these the various channe
ls?’ Richard asked as he put the headphones on.

  ‘We broadcast on six different channels—and each one has a different emotional colour.’

  ‘Emotional colour?’ Richard listened for a bit. ‘I see that channel three appears to be waves lapping on a beach.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Richard looked at Rianka, dumbfounded. ‘You broadcast the sound of waves lapping against a beach to people who might well already be on a beach listening to waves lapping against a beach?’

  ‘I know,’ Rianka said, tolerantly. ‘But people seem to like it, and we’re here to serve their needs.’

  Richard turned the dial, listened a moment, and then visibly shuddered.

  ‘Oh god,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ Camille asked.

  Richard looked at Camille, but in reality he was staring into a bottomless pit of despair.

  ‘It’s pan pipes, Camille.’

  Camille reached up and clicked Richard’s headphones to another channel before he could cause any more offence.

  ‘Oh. Now hang on. This is better. What is it?’

  ‘It’s channel five,’ Camille said.

  ‘What’s on channel five?’ Richard asked Rianka.

  Rianka smiled. ‘Nothing. We’re not broadcasting anything on channel five at the moment.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘We used to have a human heartbeat, but a few guests said they found it a bit creepy, so Dominic turned the channel off entirely a few days ago.’

  Richard took a moment to consider the WiFi set-up. Was it important? And then there were the rolls of spare paper for the Meditation Space. They, too, might have been important—but if all of the rolls were present and correct then it was hard to see how. If anything, they just confirmed once again that the walls of the Meditation Space hadn’t been tampered with because here were the replacements, unused.

  Richard took a moment longer to see if his hunch about the green light would reveal itself to him, but the mystery remained just that, a mystery. So he set off for the furnace again.