Richard turned and looked at Rianka. ‘In effect, these two verticals and cross beam—set, as they are, just in from the end of the room—are perfect for hanging a false wall from. All you’d need is a roll of paper and a load of drawing pins so you could pin the paper to the far side of the wood.’
Everyone in the Meditation Space finally understood the truth of what Richard was saying. If a paper wall had been hung towards the end of the room—attached to the pillar and cross beam—would anyone have noticed that the room was a couple of feet shorter than it should have been? Or that there were now only eleven vertical pillars visible along each side of the paper box when there should have been twelve? And while the cavity that Rianka would have created would have been only a couple of feet deep, it would have been just enough for her to hide inside.
‘And now everything begins to make sense,’ Richard said, turning to Ben. ‘It was indeed your initial email to Aslan that started the clock ticking. But it wasn’t Julia who intercepted it as we’d originally thought. It was Rianka. After all, it’s her office as much as it’s her husband’s, it’s no surprise she picked up the email through The Retreat’s website.
‘It was Rianka who then sent back the email to you, telling you not to contact Aslan again—and who then set up the spam filter that meant that none of your emails would get through to Aslan’s computer ever again. And, having done that, Rianka must have hoped she’d dealt with the danger. She’d got rid of you. She was safe again.
‘But then, a few weeks later, Rianka discovered that you’d booked a holiday at The Retreat, and this was when she realised how much trouble she was in. As to why she was in trouble, I’ll come to that in a moment, but, suffice to say, Rianka knew that if you got to speak to Aslan, the game would be up for her. She had to start preparing for the worst. And that’s when I think she realised. She was so desperate to keep her secret, she was even prepared to kill.
‘And here I have to apologise. Because the apparent narrative of the murder was so compelling that when I was trying to work out who among the suspects might have known Aslan’s true identity, I never properly considered that there was one other person on the island who’d known his real identity the longest—for the last fifteen years, in fact—and that was his wife, Rianka. And who’d always been best placed to convince Aslan to start inviting multiple Ponzi victims out to the Caribbean? Again, that was Rianka. And I didn’t consider her because she had an alibi for the time of the murder: she’d apparently been outside the room at the time.
‘And all along I’ve been trying to work out why the killer had been happy to commit murder inside a locked room in front of a load of potential witnesses. Why hadn’t the killer sorted themselves out with an alibi? Well, they did: Rianka made sure that her husband was killed inside a locked room that contained a load of people all of whom would swear on oath that she wasn’t inside the room with them at the time of the murder. And let’s be honest, you don’t get many better alibis than that.’
Here, Richard paused to revel in the moment. His dark suit was broiling him, his face was streaming in sweat—the food on the island was too spicy—he hated living in a tinroofed hovel—he’d recently had to catch a lizard in a biscuit tin, for heaven’s sakes!—but this was what made it all worthwhile. Why he was a policeman. Not because he got to deliver justice—although it was, of course, partly because of that. It was more that Richard was offended by the mess and barbarism of a murder. The way it left lives broken and destroyed. The way it upset the acceptable order of things. When he solved a murder, then, most of Richard’s satisfaction came from the fact that he was reimposing order on a world that, without him, would otherwise be full of chaos.
‘So now,’ Richard said, ‘we come to the night before Aslan was killed, and the argument that Saskia overheard in his office.’ Richard looked at Saskia. ‘And here, I think you made a mistake, Saskia.’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I heard a man shouting “you’re not going to get away with it”.’
‘Oh no, I know that’s what you heard, but tell me, how did you know it was two men in the office having the argument?’
‘Well,’ Saskia said, puzzled. ‘It was Aslan’s office. I heard a man shouting, and then, a few seconds later, Aslan came out—and he was looking upset.’
‘And that’s where you made your mistake,’ Richard said. ‘You presumed that Aslan was fleeing from the man who’d been shouting at him. In truth, it was Aslan who had been doing the shouting—and the person who he’d been shouting at was Rianka. Again, I’ll tell you why in due course, but—for the moment—all you need to know is that it was Aslan who was telling his wife that she wouldn’t get away with it. But with those words, Aslan was inadvertently signing his own death warrant.’
Richard turned to address Rianka.
‘Not that your husband knew at that point, of course. And I bet you made all sorts of promises to him later on that night to buy yourself time. Knowing you as I do now, I bet you even promised to make a full confession in the morning.’
As Richard said this, he was pleased to see the tiniest flicker of guilt flash into Rianka’s eyes.
Got you, he thought to himself.
‘Thought so,’ he said to her, knowing that Rianka now knew that she’d shown the first chink in her armour. ‘But all that mattered to you that night was that you bought yourself time until the following morning. Which you self-evidently did. And that allowed you to put your plan into action. Because you’d already lined up your chess pieces, hadn’t you? That’s what you were doing when you convinced Aslan that it would be fine to invite out a few more Ponzi victims—and all at the same time. You were making sure you had an insurance policy. And once you knew that the game was up for you, you decided it was time to put it into action.
‘So, following your argument with Aslan, you got hold of Julia and asked her to write out a new list of names for the Sunrise Healing session. A list of names that you’d chosen. And I’m sure Julia was only too glad to help. Partly because she was a trusting soul—partly because I bet she was thrilled when you told her she could add her name to the list—but mostly, if I’m honest, because it was her job to offer you secretarial support. That was the condition of her staying at the hotel for free. Wasn’t it? And what could be more secretarial than writing out a list of names for one of your bosses?
‘As for how Rianka got hold of the murder weapon, I don’t think that was hard, either. Ann?’ Here Richard turned to Ann. ‘Was Rianka one of the people doing the washing up with you the night before Aslan was killed?’
Ann looked at Rianka, her memory slowly coalescing as she thought back to the night in question.
‘You know what?’ Ann eventually said. ‘She was! In fact, it was Rianka who suggested I come and help with the washing up in the first place. I remember now!’
‘Which we should have realised sooner,’ Richard agreed. ‘Because, after you told us you’d done the washing up, we rang Rianka to find out if it was true—and it was Rianka who confirmed that you had indeed been doing the washing up the night before her husband’s death. And, when you think about it, how could she have confirmed that piece of information unless she herself had also been doing the washing up at the same time?
‘So,’ Richard said, ‘Rianka was standing at a sink that night, wearing Marigold gloves and washing carving knives that she then handed to you to dry and get your fingerprints all over. Am I right?’
Ann didn’t need to say anything, it was obvious that what Richard had said was true.
‘As I’ve been saying all along,’ Richard continued, ‘our killer was an arch-manipulator. She managed to get Julia implicated when she wrote out the replacement list of names. And she managed to implicate you, Ann, when she got you to dry the kitchen’s carving knives.
‘As for implicating Paul, that was even easier. Because when you stay at any kind of spa or health farm, you have to fill in a form saying what sort of medicine you’re on. It wouldn’t have b
een hard for Rianka to discover that the Xyrax that Paul listed was a brand name for gamma-hydroxybutyric acid and a sedative. And nor would it have been hard for her to use the hotel’s pass key to liberate some of the Xyrax from Paul’s bottle of pills. And it would have been easy for her to then leave out the teapot and cups on a tray all ready for her husband to pour water into the following morning. An act of kindness, or so it appeared on her part. But Aslan wasn’t to know that his wife had crushed up a load of Paul’s Xyrax pills and mixed them in with the tea leaves at the bottom of the teapot. All ready for him to activate when he poured in the boiling water the following day.
‘So that was Paul also implicated in advance. As for Saskia and Ben, you weren’t able to pin anything directly to them, but you weren’t too worried about that. Saskia was already the person who’d lost the most money to Aslan’s con twenty years ago, surely that was implication enough? And Ben was an ex-convict who’d shared a prison cell with her husband. No one could appear more like the murderer than someone who’d already done time for actual bodily harm.’
Here Richard took out his hankie and mopped his brow. He could see that Ben and Paul were looking impressed with him—as though they were both finally acknowledging that maybe Richard wasn’t such a waste of space after all. As for Ann and Saskia, Ann was watching events unfold with slack-jawed wonder—and Saskia was clearly just as astonished, but she didn’t need to bob her head around to follow proceedings, as Ann did.
As for Rianka, Richard noted that she’d taken to staring straight ahead in silent horror. She was guilty as hell and she knew that Richard knew it.
‘So now we come to the day of the murder,’ Richard said, ‘and now I’m going to tell you how Rianka killed her husband.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Aslan got up with the sun,’ Richard said. ‘We know he didn’t like alarm clocks. He then went down to the kitchen where he found a teapot and cups had already been set out for him on a tray. He maybe thought it was a peace offering from his wife following their argument the night before—or maybe he thought it had been laid out for him by the ever-thoughtful Julia—but it hardly matters. He put the necessary boiling water in, never knowing that he was inadvertently making a drink that was laced with a sedative.
‘Now, I imagine that Rianka had already got the spare roll of paper wall into the Meditation Space before that morning. But whether she’d already started to hang it the night before—or did it all that morning while Aslan was making the tea and the unsuspecting guests were on the beach stretching and swimming—Rianka slipped into the Meditation Space and finished pinning up the paper wall so no one would know she was hiding behind it. Fidel, if you would?’
As Richard went over to the end wall, Fidel stood the roll of paper up by the vertical wooden pillar that Camille had found the second drawing pin pushed into. As he did this, Fidel made sure that the trailing flap of paper was running flush up against the vertical post. The roll fitted the height of the building perfectly. Of course it did. It had been designed for the building. Fidel then got out a little box of drawing pins from his pocket and started to push a few drawing pins through the edge of the paper and into the vertical beam. As he did this, Richard continued speaking.
‘And here I have to admit to a failing, because I should have realised that a roll of paper had been used in the murder of Aslan Kennedy much sooner. When Camille found the spare rolls of paper in the hotel’s cellar, it was Rianka who told us that they were all present and correct, but she said this even though there were only four rolls. Because—think about it—the Meditation Space doesn’t just have four walls, it actually has four walls and one roof. There should have been five rolls in the cellar that day, but Rianka’s quick thinking distracted us from the truth that it was her who’d used the fifth roll of paper in the murder of her husband. Thank you, Fidel. If you’d now brick me up.’
Having secured the roll of paper to the pillar, Fidel was able to unroll it across the room—just inches in front of Richard’s nose—rather like someone unrolling a twelve-foot tall tube of cling film—until he reached the opposite pillar, which is where the paper naturally ran out. Of course it did. It was designed to fit the width of the room just as it was designed to fit the room’s height.
From everyone else’s viewpoint, Richard and Fidel were now hidden behind the fake wall at the end of the room. And, because Fidel had pinned the paper on the ‘far’ side of the wooden posts, it wasn’t even possible for anyone inside the Meditation Space to see any of the drawing pins. In fact, from everyone else’s point of view, the end of the room looked entirely normal. It was just the usual wooden frame with a paper wall attached to the further side of it.
But there was now a narrow cavity at the end of the room that Richard and Fidel were hiding inside, although their bodies could still be seen as dim shadows through the translucent paper.
Richard called out from behind the paper, ‘And while you can no doubt see our shadows on the fake paper wall, that’s because this is the westernmost wall of the room and the sun is beginning to set behind us. But think about it. When the murder was carried out, the sun was still only just rising in the east. Whatever shadow Rianka cast that morning would have gone behind her and wouldn’t have shown up on the internal wall at all. In fact, all Rianka had to do was wait silently in here until the room was locked down and everyone was lying down and drifting off. Then she removed the drawing pins that were holding the paper up.’
As Richard said this, Fidel magically reappeared as he started to roll the paper back across the end of the room, turning the flat sheet of paper back into a tall roll. Half way across, Richard was revealed.
‘And with the others in the room already sedated, lying down and listening to the sounds of the deep on headphones whilst their eyes were shut behind eye masks, Rianka was able to roll the wall back up and get it ready to remove from the scene of the crime.
‘And this is the other advantage a house constructed from paper has over a house constructed from brick or stone. Because not only can you hang a fake internal wall in two seconds flat, you can also fold it up when you’re done with it and carry it out of the room with you.’
As Richard said this, Fidel finished rolling the paper up and detached the drawing pins from where they’d been holding it to the pillar. He then folded the roll of paper over so that the tube became flat and half the length it had previously been. He then folded it over one more time so that although it was now thick—maybe about the thickness of a shoe box—it was only three feet long. And throughout the whole process, Fidel had managed to be almost entirely silent. As long as the others kept their eye masks and headphones on, they’d have failed to realise there was someone else in the room with them.
‘After the murder,’ Richard said, ‘when Aslan’s body was found and the Meditation Space was opened up, Rianka was sitting on the verandah with her sewing basket, entirely innocently. Or so it looked. But I think she had her sewing basket with her that morning because it’s what she’d used to smuggle the murder weapon and a pair of gloves into the Meditation Space. In my imagination, the gloves she wore that morning were the same Marigolds she’d used to do the washing up the night before. But the sewing basket also allowed her to smuggle the fake wall out of the room once the murder was done. And it was also the perfect receptacle for the drawing pins as she removed them from the wooden pillars. Although we now know that one of the drawing pins had got stuck so far into the pillar that Rianka was unable to remove it. And another two drawing pins rolled away and got lost entirely. But then, they were only drawing pins. I’m sure Rianka presumed the police wouldn’t be able to make much of them.’ Richard smiled at this.
‘But what if one of us had woken up?’ Ben asked.
‘That would have been unfortunate,’ Richard said, ‘but remember: while she was removing the paper wall, she’d not committed any crime yet. And I’m sure Rianka would have just laughed off her hiding behind a fake wall as a silly prank
she was about to play on her husband.
‘But the key point is this: no one did wake up. Or hear her. Or see her. Not in their sedated states. So, still wearing her gloves, Rianka got the knife from her sewing basket. Right-handed. Of course she did. She’s right-handed. She then approached her husband as he sat directly in front of her in a lotus position on the floor, his back already turned to her—his headphones on, his eyes hidden behind a mask.
‘And only now that she’s sure that no one’s even realised she’s in the room, does she commit her crime. She stabs her husband five times in the neck and back—another piece of circumstantial evidence she knew might later point the finger of suspicion at the five other people who’d been in the room when he was killed.
‘She then puts the knife down, and this was Rianka’s final stroke of genius. Because although the room was locked down from the inside, it was only a latch lock—a common-or-garden Yale lock such as you’d find on any front door anywhere in the world—and she knew that although no one could get in from outside while it was locked down, there was nothing stopping her from unlocking it from the inside. And, once she’d slipped out of the Meditation Space and closed the door behind herself, the lock would lock itself behind her again.
‘And here, Rianka displayed nerves of steel: she had to leave the Meditation Space as though she were entirely innocent. But then, if anyone saw her, what in fact would they have seen? The owner of the hotel calmly leaving one of the treatment rooms with her sewing basket under her arm. Would they really recognise the significance of the wodge of white paper in the basket? Or know if this was before or after Aslan had gone inside? Or before or after Aslan was slain? Because I think Rianka presumed that the sedative she’d put in the tea would knock everyone out inside the Meditation Space for long enough that it would later on prove almost impossible to pin down the exact time when Aslan had been killed.
A Meditation on Murder Page 27
