Journey to Death

by Leigh Russell

  ‘We need to catch the killer of this poor girl,’ the policeman repeated. ‘Like you, she was staying in Beau Vallon. Her identity has not yet been confirmed, but we suspect she was an Australian girl . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Her family are on their way now to identify the body. She was the same age as Lucy.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Lucy’s father burst out.

  ‘Yes, it is a terrible tragedy. And you see, there is much to do. So you must excuse me.’

  The inspector rose to his feet, indicating the interview was over. There seemed little more to say beyond thanking him and exhorting him to step up his enquiries into Angela’s disappearance. As they were leaving, her father made a final attempt to convince the policeman it was inconceivable his wife would have left voluntarily, without a word of explanation.

  ‘She’d know how worried we’d be,’ he insisted.

  The policeman shrugged. ‘Ah, who can tell what is in the mind of a woman?’

  ‘Another woman,’ Lucy suggested sharply.

  Still smiling sadly, the inspector ignored her remark.

  ‘Well, he was a fat lot of help,’ Lucy grumbled as they reached the street. ‘What now?’

  Her father suggested they visit the British High Commission. The Vice Consul had been to the hotel to see them every day, but while they were in Victoria it made sense to go and speak to her. As they took the lift to the third floor, Lucy tried to feel pleased that the dead girl had been Australian. At least the British High Commission would not be focusing all their attention on a dead foreigner. But it was a mistake to think about Judy. As the lift doors opened, Lucy wiped away tears for the girl who had been washed up on a deserted beach, far from home, her face eaten away by scavenging fish. Her father assumed she was crying for her mother, and in a way she was.

  As usual, Maggie was sympathetic and supportive, and she assured them everything possible was being done to assist the police enquiry into Angela’s whereabouts. But when George complained that the police did not appear to be doing very much, Maggie just shrugged. It was all very frustrating.

  ‘I’m sure they’re doing everything they can,’ she replied. ‘The High Commissioner is in regular contact with the station commander, and we have his assurance that the police have by no means closed the case. They’ve already devoted an unprecedented level of man power to the search. Believe me, everyone is taking this case seriously.’

  George nodded. ‘Yes, and of course we know about this dead girl who’s turned up, but that doesn’t make any difference to the fact that my wife has disappeared.’

  ‘It’s shocking.’ Maggie agreed. ‘The victim was the same age as Lucy. I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but it’s a very sad case.’

  ‘We heard she was murdered,’ Lucy’s father said. ‘But if anything, knowing there may be a killer around makes it even more important that we find Angela. We need to keep up the pressure on them to look for her.’

  ‘Of course, and I’m sure they’re doing everything they can. In the meantime, if you can think of anything that might assist them—’

  ‘We think there’s someone out to get us,’ Lucy piped up and immediately regretted having spoken.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Maggie asked.

  Lucy hesitated. Although Inspector Henri himself had told them the police suspected foul play, Lucy and her father had not yet been told the identity of the dead girl. There was no way either of them could know that she resembled Lucy.

  ‘She’s talking about the intruder who broke into my room,’ her father interposed.

  With a silent sigh of relief, Lucy sat back and listened to her father and Maggie discuss the intruder.

  ‘Do you know yet how he got into your room?’

  ‘Lucy thinks he might have got hold of Angela’s key, but the likelihood is he entered the room the same way he left it, up onto the flat roof below my window, and in and out through the balcony. I mean, I keep the balcony doors closed, of course, because of the air conditioning, and I’m pretty sure I would have locked it before I went to bed, but—’

  ‘It’s understandable you might have forgotten to lock it, with all the trauma you’ve been experiencing,’ Maggie said.

  She went on to express her regret that they were having such a dreadful holiday on Mahé. With a helpless shrug she offered George another biscuit.

  22

  HAVING LOST ALL SENSE of time passing, Angela had no idea if she had been crouching in the dark for hours or days. Either way, it made no difference. She could not make sense of her situation, could not remember where she was, or what she was doing in this rough prison. The wooden slats of the wall pressed against her shoulder bones. From the blackness, a dark angel stared at her. Although it was invisible, she could see it clearly when she shut her eyes. Through closed eyelids she examined its huge dark eyes. It was the only living creature she had seen since she had been blindfolded and imprisoned in the hut. She stared at its lidless black eyes and it gazed solemnly back at her as though it understood her plight, before it dissolved into thousands of tiny dots of light, shimmering against a black sky.

  She was dimly aware that she was starving. For a while she had thought of nothing but food: bunches of bananas growing in the shelter of wide leaves, large avocados, giant king prawns, fish curry, and earlier memories of muesli with cold milk, cheese on toast, hot chocolate. But she had stopped fantasising about food. Now, the thought of eating made her nauseous. Her guts were held in the grip of a vice that was squeezing the life out of her. Lightheaded and dizzy, she understood that she was dying. She hoped it would not take long.

  Bright sparks of light flashed in her head. There was a crashing in her ears, the sound of a door slamming shut. Knowing Veronique had not come to kill her, she wept. She had given up thinking about George and Lucy. They existed in a world beyond her prison. That life seemed like a distant dream, agonising to recall, knowing it was lost to her. All she wanted was for her degradation to end.

  A voice filled her ears. ‘Eat.’

  Grains of rice in her throat made her retch.

  ‘You have to eat,’ the voice said. ‘If you do not eat you will die. It is not the time to die now.’

  With a spurt of rage she thrust her chin forward and pushed the bowl of rice aside, biting at her tormentor’s hand in a frantic attempt to draw blood. She was too weak to pierce the leathery flesh. When the spoon was shoved into her mouth for a second time she could not resist her body’s compulsion to survive. Salty tears slithered down her cheeks. The rice tasted good.

  ‘That is better.’

  The voice was right. She felt a resurgence of strength coursing through her body, like a rebirth. The pressure in her head lifted. Behind her eyes the bright lights stopped their insane flickering.

  ‘Water,’ she murmured.

  Her own voice sounded unreal, like an echo in her ears, but there was nothing insubstantial about the cold water splashing against her lips. She drank, cautiously at first, then with greedy gulps. She considered kicking her captor again, but doubted she could lash out with enough force to inflict any pain. In any case, if she succeeded in injuring Veronique, that would not help. No one else knew where she was. Without Veronique to keep her alive, she would certainly perish alone in this dismal place.

  She no longer wanted to die. She wanted to live and look up at the sky, breathing in air that was not foul with the stench of excrement and vomit. With a profound ache that was almost physical, she yearned for her husband. She thought of the daughter who still needed her, although she was a grown woman, and felt guilty that she had longed for death.

  ‘You loved George, didn’t you?’ she cried out in desperation. ‘Please try to understand that I love him too, and he loves me. Maybe he loved you in the past, but that was a long time ago. He’s been my husband for twenty-five years. If you let me die he’ll be devastated. You wouldn’t want George to suffer like that, would you? My husband is a good man. He doesn’t deserve to suffer.’

  The
re was no answer.

  ‘I have a daughter,’ she went on, increasingly frantic. ‘You can’t take me away from her. She needs me.’

  Still there was no response.

  She tried again. ‘Why do you want me to die? I’m nothing to you. We’re just tourists, we came here on holiday. If you don’t let me go, you’ll be a murderer. You wouldn’t want to live with that guilt, would you? And for what? My death won’t help you. If it’s money you want, my husband will pay you. Just ask him. He’ll pay.’

  Still Veronique did not speak.

  ‘I can see that you loved him very much. I love him too.’

  The door slammed shut. Alone again, she sank to the floor, exhausted. Her pleading had made no difference. All she had achieved was to tire herself out.

  ‘What do you want with me?’ she called out. ‘What have I ever done to you?’

  But she knew the answer. She had married the man for whom Veronique had been waiting for thirty years.

  23

  AFTER THEIR DISPIRITING VISIT to the police, Lucy and her father agreed to stop at the neighbouring hotel for a drink before returning to the Garden of Eden. Neither of them felt inclined to go straight back to their own hotel. With uncharacteristic extravagance, her father came back from the bar with two cocktails the colour of cranberry. He grinned down at her, doing his best to appear cheerful, and she tried to smile back. He sat down with a quiet grunt and held up his glass. She clinked hers against it and they sipped in silence, gazing at the sea.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’ he asked, holding up his glass and inspecting the ruby coloured liquid.

  ‘Mmm, it’s nice. What is it?’

  ‘Oh hell, the girl did tell me, but I’ve forgotten. Some local cocktail that was allegedly invented by one of the barmen here, and twice the price of other cocktails as a result.’

  She laughed. ‘It’s nice.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  He sounded surprised, as though he no longer believed anything good could happen ever again. Worried about him, Lucy resolved to make more of an effort to appear positive. Tasting like tangy lemonade, the cocktail was deceptively strong and they both relaxed.

  ‘We could have lunch here, if you like,’ her father suggested as they finished their drinks.

  She nodded gratefully. She had eaten little at breakfast, and her head was spinning.

  ‘That would be great. I’m really hungry.’

  She felt better after eating. When they finished they went back to the Garden of Eden where they went straight out onto the patio and sat in a corner beneath a large parasol, with a clear view of the sea.

  ‘Can’t hide in bed for ever,’ her father said and sighed.

  Five minutes later he was fast asleep and snoring softly. Lucy closed her eyes but she was not tired. After fidgeting in her chair for a while, she went for a wander around the gardens. It was too hot to move quickly. She tried to enjoy the delicate scented flowers with their exotic names: frangipani, hibiscus, bougainvillea, while unconsciously scouring the ground for signs of her mother. As she searched, she thought about her father’s intruder, wondering if he had used her mother’s key and whether she had relinquished it willingly. Once she thought she spotted a pair of sunglasses hidden under a bush, sunlight glinting off the lenses. When she stooped down to take a closer look, she found an empty beer bottle.

  It was too hot to go down to the beach so she followed the path to the hotel. In one direction it led to the car park. She turned and followed it the other way round the main hotel block to what looked like the rear of the kitchens. A couple of waiters were standing by the bins, smoking. They glanced at her incuriously as she passed. There was nothing of interest there so she turned and made her way back towards the gardens along the dusty path that ran alongside the hotel.

  She was about to turn back when she felt a hand slapped across her mouth. A smell of stale beer wafted past her as a strong arm seized her around the waist, lifting her right off her feet. Recovering from her shock she kicked out in ferocious panic. One of her sandals fell off and she stubbed her toe painfully against the side of a rusty white van, its paintwork pitted and scratched. The door was open. One of her arms was twisted so sharply up behind her back she thought her shoulder would be dislocated. Her shorts ripped and she scraped her knee on a jagged edge of metal as she was propelled forwards.

  The floor of the van shook as the door slammed behind her. She was lying on her front, head turned to one side, trembling and groaning. The pain in her toe was excruciating. She was afraid it was broken. For a few seconds she was too stunned to move or cry out. The engine revved noisily and, with a violent jolt, the van began to move. It swung around a corner and she slid across the floor, whacking her head. She felt dizzy. The van gathered speed. She called out as loudly as she could until her throat felt sore, bruising her fist as she punched the side of the van. Her commotion was drowned out by the roar of the engine. Realising she was wasting her energy, she slumped against the side of the van. Doing her best to ignore the throbbing in her head, and the pain in her toe, she tried to think clearly.

  It was dark inside the van. The floor was slippery, covered with what felt like petals, and there was an overpowering scent of frangipani. Groping her way around the walls, she felt the crack between the doors, but couldn’t find a handle. Fumbling in her pocket she pulled out her phone and shone the screen light around the interior of the van. The door was locked with no means of opening from inside. There were no windows in the back of the van which was blocked off from the driver’s cabin. She punched in her father’s number but there was no signal. She tried again, and again, but it was no use. Disappointed, she put the phone away in her pocket. She was trapped.

  She scrabbled in her pockets and all over the juddering floor for something she could use to try and prise the door open, but drew a blank. There was nothing at all in the back of the van apart from masses of petals covering the floor. Beneath a layer of soft petals her fingers found older ones, brittle and shrivelled. Their scent filled the van. But petals were not going to help her escape. Her only hope was to burst from the van as soon as the door opened and barge the driver out of the way. To succeed, she would have to take him by surprise.

  They seemed to travel for miles before the van finally slowed down and came to a halt. Disregarding the pain in her foot as well as she could, she crouched down, poised to leap at the driver when he opened the door. Nothing happened. Minutes passed. Her tensed muscles began to ache. Resigned to the fact that the door was not going to open, she shouted and banged on the partition behind the driver’s seat. She was making so much noise that she did not hear the door open behind her. Once again a hand pressed hard against her mouth. Another hand gripped her by the throat and squeezed, dragging her backwards out of the van. Darkness clouded her mind. As she fought to remain conscious, she thought she heard a hoarse whisper: ‘Very unique.’

  She struggled to ward off the darkness. ‘What do you mean?’ Her lips struggled to repeat the question. ‘What?’

  ‘Tell George she is waiting,’ the voice rasped in her ear. ‘He knows her. She is very unique.’

  The voice echoed in her head, the words reverberating in her mind until ‘Very unique’ changed to ‘On the beach’, repeating in her mind like waves breaking on the sand. Her vision clouded over and she felt herself falling into a deep pit of darkness.

  24

  GEORGE OPENED HIS EYES and glanced lazily around. There was no sign of Angela or Lucy. With a start he remembered what had happened. He groaned and glanced at his watch. He had been asleep for over an hour. He stood up, stretched and wandered to the edge of the patio to look down at the beach where a few holidaymakers were lying beneath parasols. He could not see Lucy. He pressed her number on his phone.

  ‘Hello, this is Lucy. Please leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.’

  He knew he was foolish to worry about his daughter. He understood she could not just sit around the hotel,
waiting for him. She needed to take her mind off the awful events that had been happening. She was probably with Adrian, who knew all the secluded coves and beauty spots along the coast and obviously enjoyed showing her around. George could hardly blame him. Lucy was a very attractive young woman. In any case, whatever George thought of Adrian, it had been a relief to see Lucy looking cheerful again, until Angela had disappeared.

  While he was fretting, Maggie arrived.

  ‘I’ve just popped in to see if there’s anything you need.’

  He did not tell her that he needed Angela, and decided not to mention Lucy. She would be back soon. Maggie stayed and chatted for a while. George found her positivity reassuring. After reiterating that the police were continuing to search, and were bound to find his wife soon, Maggie left.

  By now over half an hour had passed since George had woken up, and Lucy still had not returned. He fought to quell his anxiety. He closed his eyes, willing himself not to think about anything, but was unable to sit still, not knowing where Lucy was. With a sickening sense of déjà vu he went up to her room and knocked on the door, in case she had returned without him knowing. There was no response. He tried her phone, holding his breath as it rang. It went to voicemail. He showered and changed but she had still not returned to her room by the time he had finished. Telling himself she must have gone out with Adrian, he went to the bar area to sit at a corner table and watch the sunset. Contemplating the natural beauty of the island helped him believe his wife would return to him unharmed. He did not believe in God, but watching the glory of the sun as it set over the ocean gave him a comfort that was almost spiritual.

  When Adrian strolled through the door and went to sit at the bar and share a joke with the barman, George felt the ground sway beneath his feet. He stared at their two heads, one blond, the other dark, willing the fair head to be Lucy. It was crazy because, thinking rationally, he knew Adrian was talking to the barman. Adrian looked up and smiled when George greeted him. Struggling to keep his voice steady, George asked if Lucy was with him.