A plan began to form in her mind, foolhardy but necessary. She could not just sit back and wait for the body to be discovered.
‘I’m going up there to bury him,’ she announced, sitting back on her heels.
Her father murmured something without opening his eyes while she outlined her plan. His eyes remained stubbornly closed but she noticed his expression change, his lips pressed tightly together, his eyebrows lowered. She reached the end of her proposal and paused.
‘Well?’ she prompted him impatiently. ‘What do you think? Be honest with me.’
‘Honest?’
‘Yes.’
He did not answer.
‘Well?’
He raised himself up on one elbow and flicked sand at the ruins of her fortification. ‘Do you really want to know? Honestly?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I really want to know.’
‘I think it’s one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s stupid on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.’
Lucy pouted and prodded his leg with her toe. ‘Are you going to come with me or not?’
‘Of course I’m not going up there, and neither are you. Listen,’ he leaned forward and lowered his voice, ‘all you have to do is hold your nerve and do nothing. It’s over, Lucy. He’s gone. No one will ever find him. A small heap of bones in a vast forest. Who’s going to notice? You only discovered your mother because you followed him. If you hadn’t, no one would ever have found her. The hut itself’s going to fall down soon. It can’t stay up for long without any maintenance. It sounds like the whole thing was on the verge of collapsing already. But once you start going back, digging around, you’re going to risk drawing attention to the place. For all we know, the police are already keeping an eye on us. So please, don’t be a fool. Let it go. It’s over.’
Lucy opened her mouth to deliver an angry riposte but thought better of it. ‘Yes, OK, you’re right.’
He shrugged and lay down again, closing his eyes. ‘I know it’s hard, but you just have to try and forget about it and move on.’
Hearing that advice many times over the past few weeks, she had done her best to overcome her preoccupation with Darren. She had never anticipated his place in her thoughts would be replaced by a gnarled and withered old man with a curved spine.
42
LUCY WAS WOKEN FROM a deep sleep by a loud knocking at her door. Initially startled, she was relieved to hear her father’s voice calling her.
‘Lucy! Are you up yet? I’m going down for breakfast. Are you all right?’
Sleepily she told him to go ahead. She would join him soon. Resisting the temptation to turn over and go back to sleep, she rolled out of bed.
‘I just spoke to the hospital,’ her father beamed as she sat down. Although his nose was still swollen it was no longer red. With his sunglasses on, his injuries were barely evident. ‘The doctor has done his rounds and it sounds like we’ll be able to bring her back to the hotel with us today, all being well.’
After a late breakfast, they set off for the hospital. Lucy was relieved her father was in such high spirits that he did not remark on her being so quiet.
‘I can’t believe she’s coming out,’ he kept saying. ‘I just can’t believe this whole nightmare is over.’
Lucy felt anxious when she saw a policeman leaning on the counter chatting in Creole to the receptionist, and was shocked when the woman nodded in their direction.
‘Here’s the husband now,’ the receptionist said in English, as though she had just been talking about them.
The policeman straightened up and smiled politely at them. ‘Good morning, Mr Hall, sir. The inspector has been here making enquiries in person, and he would like to question you and your daughter again, and also to offer you his congratulations on the safe return of your wife who went missing. They told us at the hotel that you were on your way. I am stationed here to look out for you.’ He smiled complacently, his eyes flicking sideways to gauge the receptionist’s reaction to his officious speech. ‘The inspector asks that you go and see him at your earliest convenience,’ he continued, his air of self-importance escalating.
Her father thanked the policeman and assured him they would go and see the inspector before the end of the day. But first, they had to attend to Angela.
‘I will tell him,’ the policeman said, before turning back to flirt with the receptionist.
Keeping very quiet, Lucy stood behind her father. It was silly to worry that her face would betray her guilt, but she could feel her legs shaking as she followed her father along the corridor to the ward. In the doorway, they were accosted by an eager young man clutching a camera.
‘Mr George Hall? And Miss Lucy Hall?’ he enquired, blocking their access to the door.
He introduced himself as a reporter for the online news channel, Seychelles Live.
‘I know the BBC want to interview you,’ he said, ‘but as the number one Seychellois site for ex-pats we would like to be first to post the real story behind your wife’s disappearance. We understand the police conducted a massive search, after she was taken hostage by a drunken tourist. Can we kick off with how you’re feeling right now?’ He grinned first at George, then Lucy, then back at George again. ‘You must be very relieved?’
Her father looked slightly bemused as he shook his head and answered that he had no comment.
‘Now, if you’ll let us pass—’
‘Yes, of course, but first can you just spare a moment to tell the public—’
‘I said no comment,’ her father repeated, irritated by the journalist’s persistence. ‘We’re busy.’
‘How about you?’
The reporter turned to Lucy. Itching to tell him exactly where he could stuff his expensive camera, she repeated her father’s statement.
‘So you’re not relieved?’
‘No comment,’ she snapped, insulted that he judged her stupid enough to rise to his pathetic attempt to goad her into giving a response.
‘Can I take a picture of you and your wife, reunited?’ he asked.
George pushed past him. The reporter hovered on the threshold but did not follow them into the ward. Lucy suspected he had already tried his luck in there and had been banned from making a further nuisance of himself. She closed the door firmly behind her.
Her mother was sitting up in bed, pale and drawn, but alert. She smiled when she saw them and they had yet another emotional reunion. Lucy could not help crying. Even her father had tears in his eyes again.
‘Stop it,’ her mother scolded them with a hint of her customary bossiness.
She told them the doctor had seen her and she was free to leave. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ she said, ‘so you can stop fussing.’
Lucy could see that was far from true. She hoped a few days of rest and good food would restore her mother’s strength. For now, she struggled to get out of bed unaided and Lucy looked away as her father assisted her in dressing.
‘I’m not an invalid,’ her mother grumbled.
‘Just put your other leg in,’ her father replied patiently, and Lucy felt like crying again.
Lucy walked slowly to the car with her mother while her father had a word with the policeman in the entrance hall. He caught them up as they made their way past a row of parked cars.
‘I told him we’re leaving,’ he explained quietly to Lucy. ‘He said we can go along the station later on this afternoon. They’re just going through the motions,’ he added. ‘All they want to do is tick the boxes and close the case. I’m sure it’s all fine,’ he reassured her, too elated at his wife’s return to consider how Lucy might be feeling. ‘Don’t worry, Lucy,’ he added, catching sight of her expression, ‘everything’s going to be all right from now on.’
She hoped he was right. It made her feel sick that her paranoia was stronger than her guilt over taking the life of another human being, but she could barely control her terror at the pro
spect of being arrested on a murder charge. She would feel better once the interview at the police station was over. The sight of anyone in uniform scared her. She avoided the eye of the security guard at the hotel. He did not appear to be paying her any attention. A waitress stopped to chat to him and they shared a joke before she sauntered away. The guard watched the girl appraisingly, her hips swinging as she walked. Before Lucy and her parents reached the lift, the same reporter who had accosted them at the hospital approached them, camera flashing. Her mother covered her face in her hands and Lucy leapt at the reporter, and grabbed his camera out of his hand. The security guard came hurrying over.
‘What is the problem here?’
‘This man has been harassing us,’ Lucy announced. ‘He’s a reporter on a local newspaper and he’s trying to get a story.’
She turned to the journalist who was glowering at her, red-faced.
‘Give me my camera!’
‘Leave us alone!’
‘Just give him back his camera and let’s go up to the room,’ her father said wearily. ‘He’s only doing his job.’
Lucy handed the camera back. As she scurried after her parents she was aware of the camera flashing behind her and moved to screen her mother from the lens.
‘It won’t be much of a picture,’ she said.
A hotel-guest relations manager sat with Angela while Lucy and her father went to the Central Police Station in Victoria to speak to Inspector Henri.
‘Here we are again,’ her father said cheerfully as they parked the car. ‘Off to the police station for the last time.’
When Lucy did not answer, he turned in his seat and placed his hand gently on hers. ‘Come on, Lucy, this is nearly over. Just stick to the story. We found her on the beach.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘And don’t look so worried. Your mother’s back, she’s going to be fine, and it’s all over, a nasty worrying incident that we can go home and forget about. That’s all it was. Nothing else happened. OK? Nothing.’
She glared at him. Her voice shook. ‘How can you say what I did was nothing?’
‘Lucy, you have to get it into your head that you had no choice. Now, are you ready for this? Say if you’re not, and we can go and get a coffee or something and go over our story again. We don’t want to say anything that might upset the apple cart, do we?’
Her father was right. Whatever happened in the interview, she could not afford to betray her true feelings. The inspector was a detective, trained to know when people were lying. Somehow she had to convince him they were telling the truth. In a way, they were. They had found her mother. It was only the details they were fudging, and that was more a question of keeping quiet than actually telling lies.
She nodded miserably and climbed out of the car. ‘I’m ready.’
Inspector Henri greeted them like old friends. Nothing in his demeanour hinted at even the slightest suspicion that anything was amiss. He was almost overbearing in his congratulations.
‘We scoured the beaches around the island,’ he told them, as they all sat down. ‘We would have scoured them again. We had not stopped looking, I assure you. It was only a matter of time before a patrol discovered your missing wife, but it is a happy coincidence that you found her first.’
‘We were looking everywhere,’ George said.
‘As indeed were we, only not in the right place, it seems.’ The inspector smiled broadly.
Lucy wondered if he was making a barbed point, suspicious that she and her father had succeeded where the police search team had failed. But the inspector was showing no signs of hostility towards them. On the contrary, he was being really friendly.
‘So we can now close this case, as the drunk tourist who attacked your wife has presumably left the island.’ The inspector shrugged, still smiling. ‘Regrettably, there is nothing we can do to apprehend him now.’
Lucy felt as though a cloud had lifted from her mind as they left the police station.
‘Well, he was busy covering his arse,’ her father commented as they reached the car.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was very keen to point out they had not stopped looking for her. He was worried we were going to complain. After all, if we were able to find her, just lying on a beach, how the hell did their massive search team miss her? He thought we were going to kick up a fuss. That’s why he was so busy telling us they were still looking. That’s why he wanted to see us, I think. Plus he was genuinely pleased that she’s safe. He seems like a nice guy.’
‘You don’t think he was at all suspicious that we managed to find her when they didn’t?’
‘No, not in the slightest. He just wanted to close the case without any bother. If there’s one thing they want to avoid here, it’s bad publicity. It’s fair enough. Their economy depends on tourism and they’re terrified of disasters that might put foreigners off holidaying here. He’s on a strict agenda to hush up any unnecessary bad press. Privately, I’ve no doubt he thinks we’re too embarrassed to admit she went off and came back of her own accord. Now stop fretting, Lucy. You heard what the inspector said. The case is closed.’
Her parents ate in their room, and Lucy accepted an invitation to have dinner with Adrian. He drove her inland from Beau Vallon to a restaurant on a hill overlooking the sea, which he claimed served the best fish on Mahé. Sitting outside, they watched the sun set over the ocean as they stuffed themselves: smoked sail fish tasting like smoked salmon, soft red snapper cooked in an exquisite sauce, tuna steaks, and other fish Lucy could not identify, followed by more fruit than she could possibly eat. Adrian seemed to have no trouble, and willingly helped her out when he had finished his own.
‘Where do you put it all?’ she asked, smiling.
They held hands across the table and after dinner drove down to the beach to walk hand in hand on the sand. Swept up in the romance of the moment, lightheaded at the return of her mother, and more than a little inebriated, Lucy allowed herself to forget they were not involved in a relationship. She would be returning to England in a few days’ time, after which they would probably never see each other again. As they kissed, Lucy struggled to suppress an overwhelming sense of regret for what might have been. She did not want anything to spoil this beautiful evening.
‘Adrian,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything, really.’
‘Are you sorry about this?’ he asked as he leaned down to kiss her again.
43
TIRED AND AGREEABLY TIPSY, Lucy thought about Adrian’s kiss when she went to bed that night. The touch of his lips on hers had been so light, she almost doubted if their lips had touched at all. Romantic rather than rousing, it was a demonstration of an underlying intimacy, a recognition that if she had not been leaving in a couple of days, their relationship might have developed into something deeper than friendship. She was going to miss turning to him when she had a problem. They had discussed no long term plans, although he had promised to look her up when he next visited England. She hoped he would. They already shared a closeness she had rarely experienced with anyone other than her parents, and she could genuinely claim to trust him with her life. Her relationship with Darren had been constructed around future plans. They had talked a lot about what they were going to do with their lives, without ever actually doing anything. On reflection she realised that their plans had focused entirely on his ambitions. They had never really discussed her role in the life they were planning together.
Opening her window, she stood listening to the sea washing up on the shore. In little more than two weeks, she had grown to love that sound. It seemed to be a part of her, as though resonating with some primeval memory passed into her genes from when life first began. She wondered how her father had been able to tear himself away from the island. It had taken her only a few days to fall in love with the place. Despite the distraction of her mother’s abduction and all the dangers she had faced on sea and
land, she had succumbed to the allure of the island, surely the most beautiful place on earth. She wondered about Veronique, whose beauty had driven Baptiste wild, and wished she could have seen her, just once. Thinking about Veronique, she drifted into sleep.
It might have been the smell that disturbed her, or perhaps a faint noise, a soft breath carried on the still night air. The instant she opened her eyes she was fully alert, aware that someone else was in the room with her. She bit her lip, listening. Silence. But she knew there was an intruder in her room. She could smell him. Her mind raced, turning over possibilities. They had been so convinced that it was Baptiste who had broken into her father’s room, they had not even considered the possibility that there might be a thief targeting the hotel. She tried to recall what had happened regarding her father’s intruder, but she could not remember the hotel security taking any action. It had been dismissed as a random incident. Her father had been too preoccupied to press the hotel to take any further action.
Now Lucy was alone in her room with a stranger, and she was helpless. She had no rape alarm, not so much as a cricket bat for protection. All she had within reach was a pillow, hardly a powerful weapon for a slight girl to wield against a man. She strained to see him, but she slept with the curtains closed and the room was completely dark. One minute sliver of light pierced a paper thin gap between the curtains, insufficient to illuminate the blackness. She turned her head, trying to sniff silently so she could pick up the smell of beer and work out the direction it came from. It was no use. She had a horrible feeling he was circling the bed, like shark.
The wait was unbearable. With a sudden burst of energy, she sprang from the bed and made a dash for the door. The intruder was too fast. Strong hands gripped her wrists and she was flung face down on the bed, her head forced forward into the covers to mask her screams. She thought he was going to suffocate her. She imagined her parents coming into her room and seeing her laid out on the bed, dead. She pictured Adrian’s sombre face as he viewed her body. Mustering all her strength, she kicked at her assailant’s legs, making contact with sinewy flesh. He did not flinch. Without warning he yanked her backwards until she was almost upright, one of his hands firmly over her mouth.
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