One of them killed Jack Peaks, but who? And why?
Chapter Fourteen
Sunday 27th July, 9:47
‘Rosalind, have you called the police?’ I demand. It’s frustrating to not be able to call them myself but Rosalind took our phones off us when we arrived yesterday, a part of the contract that is hugely problematic right now.
Jack Peaks is dead and if I’m judging the evidence correctly, dead at the hands of one of the others. The police need to get here as soon as possible because the longer it takes the police to arrive, the more contaminated their crime scene will become. Crime scenes are delicate things that need to be protected, though I fear this particular crime scene is already a lost cause. All of us, me more than most, have interfered in some way: stepping on the grass, touching the body, leaving our DNA all over the place.
I rub my temples, trying not to dwell on how alive my brain is. It feels like it’s gleefully kicking off the dust that has settled on it over the last five years. I decide it’s best not to think too deeply about how the death of this young man makes me feel more excited than I have in a long time.
‘I’m trying my best,’ says Rosalind, punching trembling fingers against the screen of her phone. ‘But I can’t seem to get a signal.’ Her voice increases in pitch the longer she tries.
The rest of the group seem to vibrate with fear and anticipation as they watch Rosalind. They glance at one another, their faces blank and confused and I realise that they need me, they need to be guided through the next steps.
‘What will happen now? To us?’ asks Valentina to no one in particular. She crosses her arms across the top of her pink bikini; her short-cropped hair sticks out at all angles.
‘Once we’ve spoken with the police and answered their questions,’ I reply, ‘we’ll probably be sent home.’
‘Why do we have to speak with the police?’ asks Mo, his voice sounding more on edge than I suspect he wanted it to. ‘I don’t really want to speak with them. Especially not foreign police.’
‘No, I don’t particularly want to speak to the police, either,’ says Carly, placing her hands on her hips. My nostrils flare.
‘Given that a man is dead, and we were the last people to see him alive, it does seem like the logical next step that the police would want to speak with us,’ I reply, hearing the sarcasm hanging on my words. My words come out ruder than I intended but I don’t care.
Out of nowhere, Valentina takes a step towards Rosalind and starts shouting, flailing her arms about her. ‘Why aren’t you calling the police? Why aren’t they on their way? We need them to come. Jack is dead and we might be in danger.’ Her eyes dart about in all directions but, I notice, never landing on Jack’s body. With every movement she makes, she inches further from it, desperate to get away.
‘I can’t get a signal,’ cries Rosalind, jabbing the mobile frantically into the air. ‘I’m trying, but I can’t, I can’t…’ Her voice trails off as she dissolves into tears. The woman is ill-equipped to handle this situation. All of them are.
Valentina’s cool I’m-a-DJ mask slithers to the floor and Mo is sweating in a way that seems to have nothing to do with the heat of the day.
But Carly is calm, eerily calm; her arms are folded across her chest now and her hip juts out to the side in a relaxed stance. She looks as if she is waiting for a bus and she has none of the intensity or jitteriness that’s consuming the others.
‘Rosalind,’ I say, my voice low in an attempt to soothe, ‘we all brought mobile phones with us when we arrived, didn’t we?’
Rosalind nods and wipes her sodden cheeks with the material of her pyjama top. I doubt she will look back on this moment as her finest hour.
‘Great,’ I say instead. ‘Where are they?’
‘In the safe,’ murmurs Rosalind.
‘Perfect, could you take me there?’
I speak in the way one would speak to a particularly shy child; it’s a voice I’ve used in many distressing situations before. Often people gripped in the throes of panic just need clear direction, gently delivered, and it seems that Rosalind is no different. She whispers in assent and shakes herself as if attempting to shake off her current state of being.
‘I’m coming too,’ says Valentina, starting forward to follow us. I sigh; as much as I find interfering annoying I don’t have the energy to tell Valentina she can’t come with us. Nobody put me in charge and I need to be careful about putting myself at the front and centre of all of this. I don’t want people asking questions.
‘OK, we three will go. Carly, Mo and Daniel, stay here. Whatever you do, do not touch anything. The police are going to need this area as undisturbed as possible.’
Carly, Mo and, to my relief, Daniel nod. I smile, relieved they didn’t protest. But why would they? They are all in shock. Well, Mo is at least. I don’t know what Carly and Daniel are. I turn my back on them and follow behind Rosalind and Valentina, in search of some way to escape this place.
We walk past the table where we congregated last night. When we first arrived. When all five of us Islanders were alive. I shiver and pull my eyes away from it. We enter the main body of the villa and walk down the corridor. We walk in silence. I have nothing to say. Neither, it seems, do the other two.
Someone killed Jack. One of our group killed Jack.
We are on an uninhabited island sealed in a walled complex. It has to have been one of them; who else could it be? This isn’t your problem, I tell myself.
And it’s true, it isn’t my problem. I will do what I can to get the police to the scene and keep everyone calm but once the police arrive it is their problem, their investigation. I’ll answer their questions and do my best to help them catch the killer and then I’ll disappear.
Rosalind stops in the corridor facing a part of the wall that I wouldn’t have noticed had my attention not been drawn directly to it. There are small slits cut into the wall and Rosalind pushes; the part of the wall she touches swings inwards. It’s a door revealing another corridor behind. Though part of the villa complex, the producer’s room would have been impossible to find without Rosalind’s guidance. A secret corridor for a secret world. The world of off-camera.
‘Wow,’ says Valentina as we enter what I can only assume is the production room Rosalind mentioned last night. The room isn’t small but the number of screens and vastness of the IT system dwarfs it; the sheer complexity of everything boggles my mind. There’s a wide, black desk laden with keypads and buttons, above which two rows of screens run the full length of the wall, about twenty screens all representing different cameras dotted around the villa. It looks like most of them are outside: two overlook the gym; two more the kitchen; about six show various shots of the garden and seating areas; and another two of the screens seem to be placed inside the pool itself. This homage to Big Brother will surely make the police’s life easier as Jack’s demise will probably have been caught on camera.
Not your problem, I remind myself for the second time.
Rosalind heads straight for the far corner of the room and punches in the code. The safe’s buttons light up at her touch and she presses the green arrow. I hold my breath; Rosalind’s stress seems to radiate from her. It infects me, wrapping itself around my heart and squeezing until I feel it beat faster. I lean forward, ready to grab my phone as soon as the safe door swings open, I’m desperate to make a call to the police and then remove myself from the nervous energy that’s in danger of consuming me. The safe makes a noise that says, Wrong answer, try again. I blow out air through my lips. This is painful.
‘For fuck’s sake, hurry up,’ curses Valentina. The DJ’s body vibrates as she too leans over Rosalind.
‘Sorry, I must have— Let me— Sorry.’ Rosalind trips over her words, her cheeks pink with fluster. She tries again but this time the safe beeps at her aggressively; she didn’t wait the allotted time after a wrong attempt.
‘Why this is so fucking hard for you?’ spits Valentina through gritted teeth. Th
e temperature in the room is rising rapidly.
‘Valentina, this attitude isn’t helping anyone,’ I snap. ‘Why don’t you stand outside and wait for us? We will bring you your phone as soon as possible.’
Valentina scowls and rolls her eyes. ‘I want my phone. Soon as I have my phone I can start arranging tickets out of this place. And I want to leave as quick as fucking possible,’ she replies, placing emphasis on every word; it makes me want to slap her. Doesn’t she realise that’s what we all want to do? To get away from this moment and escape the horror of Jack’s death.
Of course she doesn’t. I narrow my eyes at Valentina but hold back my retort. I take a slow breath in through my nose and out through my mouth; I learned this once in a meditation class. The meditation classes that I’d reluctantly agreed to on my mum’s instance, the meditation classes that failed to help ease my dreams and relax my days.
I don’t want to snap at Valentina; the short-tempered DJ is stressed, that much is obvious.
Ding.
The safe clicks open and Valentina springs forward, pushing Rosalind aside to snatch her phone.
The scream that follows forces me to stuff my fingers in my ears.
‘Who did this?’ shouts Valentina. ‘Was this you? Why would you do this?’
Valentina whirls round to face us; the DJ’s cheeks are flushed with anger and her chest heaves up and down with heavy breaths. My stomach squeezes at what she presents. Valentina holds in her hand her mobile, or at least what was once a mobile phone. The screen is shattered, and the back hangs off it.
I lunge forward to reach my own hand into the safe. A sharp prick stabs my finger and I pull back with a yelp. What the hell was that? Droplets of fresh, red blood appear on the tip of my finger; a small shard of glass is wedged in my skin. Gritting my teeth, I pull out the glass. Shit. Valentina’s phone isn’t the only one destroyed: every phone in the safe has been smashed to pieces.
Dread slides down my throat like an ice cube. The instinct that I cultivated during my years in the police force awakens from its slumber and rings the alarm of danger. A dead body and five smashed mobile phones? This is no coincidence.
‘Rosalind,’ I bark. ‘Give me your phone.’ She hands it to me without question. I pull off the cover and unclip the back. ‘Shit.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘There’s no signal because there’s no SIM card. Who apart from you has access to this safe?’
Rosalind pulls herself up into the producer’s chair and tilts her gaze to meet mine. Her lips quiver and her cheeks have drained of colour.
‘Err…’ She sniffs, picking at a loose piece of skin around her fingernail. ‘Me, I have access.’
‘Apart from you.’ This is important; doesn’t she understand how important this is? I work to keep my voice calm now – I can’t lose my cool.
‘In my team, Sophia is the only person who’d have access.’ Rosalind’s brow furrows. ‘But it can’t have been Sophia. Why would she do this? Why would she smash our phones? Unless, unless…’
The dread travelling through my body hits my stomach with a clunk.
‘Unless she gave Jack the shot that killed him and has smashed our phones and taken all our SIM cards to stop us contacting anyone,’ I say, finishing her sentence.
Chapter Fifteen
Sunday 27th July, 10:23
I rub my forehead, as if trying to rub out the furrow of confusion that knots my brow.
One of the first rules of being a good detective is to never let your own emotions be visible and I’m teetering on the edge of breaking that rule; thoughts swirl in my head.
Did Sophia really kill Jack and smash our phones to allow herself more time to get away? That’s what the evidence is loosely pointing to right now. But no, I can’t think that; there’s still so much that’s unknown.
Why would Sophia poison Jack? Why would she do it here at the villa? Surely that would put herself too much at risk. I do wish I knew where she was; her absence certainly looks suspicious, but maybe she isn’t absent. Maybe she is still here on the island, with us.
I feel as if someone is hugging me so tightly that I can’t breathe, like they’ve wrapped their arms around my chest and are squeezing tighter and tighter. My chest rises and falls raggedly as I try to fight against the imaginary grip. My body grows hot; I need to get out of this villa, I need to get away from whatever the hell is going on here.
‘We need to get back to the others,’ I bark.
Valentina, who is staring wide-eyed at her smashed phone, jumps backwards at the sharpness of my words. I don’t have time for this. I storm out of the producer’s room and gesture for them to follow me. The villa’s corridors are as empty as they were before so if Sophia is hiding somewhere in here she’s doing an excellent job.
Outside, Mo, Carly and Daniel sit on the tiered decking that encircles the unlit Fire Pit. The sun blazes down from the clear blue sky, fiery and merciless but, despite the sun’s cruel heat, the three of them seem to have barely moved a muscle since we left them. They sit stock still, all staring in different directions with glazed expressions; they’re like waxworks of their former selves. They’re as calm as the water in the swimming pool now that it no longer houses a dead body. And until I know for certain what’s going on, I’m not about to disturb that. Quickly, I decide to make up some excuse for the phones, maybe say that Rosalind couldn’t remember the code.
I slow my approach as I near them. ‘Everyone, I think we should—’
‘Look,’ screeches Valentina, holding forward the pieces of her broken mobile. I nearly kick her, then myself. Why didn’t I brief Rosalind and Valentina first?
Mo and Carly turn their heads towards Valentina. Their eyebrows raise as if united in a single question. Daniel’s face slips behind his camera, clearly deciding this is something he should capture. I can’t allow her to announce this, not yet. Telling Mo, Carly and Daniel that someone has smashed our phones will cause pandemonium. I step in front of Valentina and mutter under my breath for her to keep quiet. Valentina ought to understand that we need more information before sending the others into a frenzy. I don’t think they can handle Jack’s death coupled with this very evident sabotage.
‘Look at this,’ screeches Valentina again, wrenching her arm from my grip. I clench my fist, bracing myself for the reveal. ‘They’re smashed. Someone has smashed our phones. Sophia has smashed our phones.’
Mo jumps to his feet and peers into Valentina’s hands. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘In the safe. Someone opened the safe, smashed our phones, and then locked them in there.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Mo.
‘Sophia, the assistant, she has smashed our fucking phones,’ screams Valentina, shoving the phone in Mo’s face.
‘But why?’ Mo’s face crumples into confusion. Valentina’s response is to throw her phone across the garden; it separates into several pieces as it flies through the air. ‘But why?’ repeats Mo, directing his question towards me.
What am I meant to tell him? Telling him what I think would not only worry him but expose me as knowing more about death and murder than I want the Islanders to know. They’d ask me questions that I don’t want to answer.
‘Surely that’s obvious,’ says a curt voice. I turn to Carly as she speaks. ‘Our phones have been smashed because someone doesn’t want us to contact anyone.’
‘But why?’ repeats Mo. I grit my teeth; his idiocy threatens to turn him into somewhat of a broken record.
‘Because,’ I sigh, cutting in before Carly can deliver the blow more brutally than I would like, ‘because I think that Jack’s death wasn’t an accident. I think he was murdered with poison disguised as a shot. I think there’s a strong possibility that whoever gave him the shot pushed him in the pool to cover up what they did and make it look like he drowned. And I also suspect that whoever did this to Jack wants to delay us contacting the police.’
As I speak, I can almost s
ee my words whistling like a grenade; they shoot from my mouth and settle slowly on the grass. I can almost hear the explosion as the grenade blasts us all with the weight of the truth.
Silence follows my pronouncement. The type of silence that film and television directors use seconds after a bomb is detonated. When the scene keeps on moving but the sound is cut as the characters react to what has just happened to them.
It is no different here, in the LoveWrecked villa.
‘What?’ screeches Valentina, the first to break the oppressive quiet. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘No,’ says Mo, shaking his head at me as though I’m completely mad. ‘That’s not possible.’ He paces back and forth as he lets my words sink in. ‘He was murdered? So, someone killed him? On purpose?’
‘Yes, Mo. Someone killing someone else on purpose is the usual definition of “murdered”,’ snipes Carly. Mo turns to face her, his jaw set, his anger at her sarcasm oozing from him. ‘Oh my God, stop being so dramatic,’ she adds. The hand I’ve looped around Rosalind’s shoulders is shaken free as Rosalind drops her head into her hands and sobs. I replant my hand on this wreck of a woman, more tightly now for fear she might collapse. The air in the space between us all seems to tighten, their tempers rising in line with their fear. They need me to keep the peace, though I don’t relish the role of nanny.
‘Carly, please,’ I urge. ‘Mo is in shock.’
‘In shock? Of course I’m in fucking shock.’ Mo directs his attack at me but I don’t even flinch; there’s no real anger in his tone, just fear. ‘You’ve just told me Jack was murdered and whoever did it wants to stop us from getting help.’
‘I want to get out of here,’ wails Valentina. ‘Now!’
‘Everyone, please calm down and listen to me.’ I release Rosalind and step up onto the seating, raising my head above the others. I try to sound commanding, but it doesn’t matter; they all ignore me.
The Islanders Page 7
