Blood Evidence Page 12

  “Yeah. One girl twisted her ankle, putting her heels askew on the tiles out by the cocktail bar. Around nine or something like that, when people had properly started getting drunk.”

  “You must notice a lot, with your line of work,” Ram said.

  “Yeah,” Jude said.

  I could feel the effort it took Ram to avoid rolling his eyes as he was forced to make the obvious question. “So, what did you notice that night?”

  “Johnny almost banging that girl in the bar. Winter coming in, seeing him, and scarpering. That weird freak looking out of place. Stacey and Lina were having a hard time keeping up at the bar. Some lairy lads – they were off home before anything else kicked off. I saw her – Isabelle – out front with Winter after one, when the party was winding down. She asked me for a light but he offered her one.”

  “You definitely saw them together?” Ram pressed. “Did she leave after that?”

  “I don’t know, I just saw him give her the lighter and then I headed back inside. When I came around again the next time, they were both gone.”

  “And was there anyone else left in the bar at that time?”

  I knew what he was getting at. Johnny.

  “Yeah. A few people in the bar. Johnny was the only guest who hadn’t gone up. Lina had already gone home but Stacey and Bev were just finishing up. I continued checking until Stacey had cleaned up and gone, and then finished my rounds and went home. That was about quarter past two.”

  Ram looked at me for a lead. I checked my notes, and couldn’t see any gaps – anything that required more questions. “Anything else to add?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Jude said. “Except for what I said earlier.”

  “Which was?” Ram prompted.

  “Goodbye.”

  17 – Ram

  “Two left to go,” I say.

  “Three, if you count Cameron,” Will reminds me.

  “Let’s just see whether Fairlight will let us have a crack at him first. We should be able to catch them both at dinner.”

  I am sure that Will is appalled at the suggestion of yet another restaurant meal – high on the calories and low on the nutrition – but I’m getting mighty used to it. I could do with this kind of service every day at home.

  There’s not a whole lot of afternoon left, so we head back to the Inn and settle in at a snug area beside the bar. Furnished with cushions and decorated with blankets, it looks comfortable enough.

  I’m about to sit down when one of the cushions moves, opens a single baleful green eye in my direction, then stretches in a leisurely fashion and walks away, tail held aloft.

  I think twice about sitting down on a pile of white cat hair, and switch to a chair set aside. Will gives me a knowing and irritated look before taking the seat I had eschewed.

  “It’s not looking great so far,” he muses aloud.

  “For Cameron, you mean?”

  “He was the last one to see her. He’d been caught stealing earlier in the day, and seems to have some kind of rivalry going with Johnny. He’d had enough champagne to get him drunk, and to top it all off, he got up in the morning and confessed.”

  “But there’s still the blood,” I insist. “Your instincts are right. Why wasn’t it all over the sheets? All over his clothes? The whole room? How did he manage to carry out that kind of attack and stumble to bed drunk, too drunk to remember what he had done, but make no mess?”

  We are considering this question in silence when Beverley and Richard, talking animatedly to one another, walk past us. Beverley slides behind the bar before we have the chance to react, and we just manage to jump up and stop Richard before he totters off towards the dancefloor area.

  “I wonder if we could have a word?” I say, quietly and calmly. Richard’s already had enough of a shock this week. The last thing he needs is added pressure.

  “Oh, well, I…” he says, looking around for Beverley.

  “Beverley, too,” I add. “It will just take a minute.”

  “Come on, Richard,” Beverley says, taking him by the arm and leading him back to where we were sat. They take the sofa, and I lean against the bar while Will takes my chair.

  “I’d heard you were asking some questions for the police,” Beverley says. “I was wondering when you would get around to us.”

  I smile. “You’re the last on our list,” I say.

  “We’ll help if we can, but we already told them everything we know,” Richard says, shrugging his shoulders up and down in a movement that is exaggerated by the shake of his elderly body.

  “If you could start just by running us through your day,” Will suggests.

  “I was up for six,” Richard begins, giving us the gentle kind of smile that leaves you unsure whether you are looking at a happy man or an imbecile. “I like to go down into the garden, feed Cookie and Princess.”

  “That’s our cat,” Beverley puts in.

  “We’ve met,” I say.

  “Then I go and check on breakfast, make sure everything is laid out nicely. Lina was on, she did a good job. She always does a good job.”

  “I got up at seven,” Beverley says. “I try to sleep in but I’m not much good at it. I knew I would be up late.”

  “Then we went back upstairs for a while. We had a call with our daughter, who lives in Australia. On that face-screen-thing. She wanted to show us a drawing our granddaughter had done for us.”

  “So wonderful,” Beverley puts in, her eyes shining above her smile.

  “Then we sort of potter about. We’re here to greet guests, aren’t we, Bev?”

  “Well, I am, Richard. You’re always off tidying vases or fiddling with the curtains when someone comes in,” she chides him with a laugh.

  “Well, I checked in those two – Reed David and Johnny Blackburn. That was around lunchtime.”

  “Yes, I was already checking on the lunch service,” Beverley says. “After I was sure everything was fine, I came back through and checked in that lovely young couple – Mike and Rosie. Next after that was the older couple. We had a couple of quiet hours in-between. Stacey started her shift and I was chatting to her about the party, and then I helped her setting it up.”

  “I had an early dinner,” Richard adds. “I didn’t want to be about when the party was in full swing. It gets a bit tough to eat, you know? You want to go through and see all the fuss. Besides, the staff are all in the bar.”

  “I was supposed to be finding Jude to brief him on the party when you two arrived,” Beverley remembers. “Richard was supposed to be manning the front door, but I suppose he had wandered off to eat by then. You were the last to check in that day.”

  “Then I went to bed,” Richard says. “Just after eight, when Bev had started at the bar. No sense in waiting up, really. We can’t hear much of the music from our wing. I like to read a short while, then go to sleep. I didn’t hear anything at all until the morning. I was already awake and coming downstairs when Lina screamed.”

  “What about you, Bev?” I ask, hoping she’ll find my appropriation of her nickname charming rather than presumptuous. “Did you notice anything while you were at the bar?”

  “I was so busy,” Bev sighs. “Oh, it’s just a flurry, those nights. So many people, the lights, the music. It’s so noisy you can barely hear yourself think. I have to concentrate on the orders.”

  “Did you see the victim at all?”

  “Not really,” Bev says. “I think I might have seen her once or twice in passing. I don’t think she even came to the bar. If she did, someone else served her. A pretty little thing like that can usually find someone else to get the drinks.”

  “Thank you,” I say, as Will shuts his notebook with a decisive snap. “You’ve both been very helpful.”

  As they slowly potter away, Will leans in close to my ear. “No, they haven’t,” he murmurs.

  “Shush,” I tell him, checking to see if they are out of earshot. “I’m just being fucking polite.”

  Eighteen – W
ill

  “Alright, time for dinner,” I sighed.

  “No need to act so upset by the concept,” Ram told me. “This place is practically famous from what we’ve heard – everyone raves about the food. I’m excited to try it.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I said, shaking my head. Truth be told, a little weight had lifted off me the further we got in our investigation. It was true that everything seemed to point in Cameron’s direction. But, even though I couldn’t put my finger on it, there was something about the whole picture that made me inclined to agree with Ram.

  The man was innocent. We just had to find a way to prove that.

  We sat down and browsed the menus, waiting for Stacey come over and take our order.

  “I’ll have the lasagne with garlic bread,” Ram said, when she finally appeared.

  “I’ll take the pasta,” I said. And I meant it. Why not? A little indulgence here and there wouldn’t hurt, would it? I needed the sustenance if I was going to put my mind to the test and work through this case.

  Ram gave me an appreciative look, but I wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

  “Drinks?” Stacey asked.

  “Two lemonades,” I ordered, as quickly as I could, before he could get in there.

  I watched his face. Ram opened his mouth as if to correct me, then seemed to think better of it. I smiled, trying not to be smug about it. If I could eat like he wanted, then he could stop drinking like I wanted.

  “Let’s look at this from another direction,” I said. “Everyone says they’re innocent, because of course they do. So we need to figure out who could possibly have done it. Whose whereabouts were not corroborated?”

  Ram scratched his nose. “If you think about it, we can’t trust anyone except Lina and Stacey,” he said. “Everyone else was still on the premises, which means they had the opportunity. Even if someone else saw them going to bed, they could be lying to cover for them. Or they could have just got up later on.”

  “We knew the time of death had to be in the middle of the night,” I said. “She was alive when everyone reported seeing her last. So what happened after she was with Cameron? Where did she go?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question,” Ram said.

  “We just have to work on it.”

  Our food came, and we ate in mostly silence. After a few bites I started to feel that anxiety again, that thought that I was eating too much. I started talking to try to drown it out.

  “Let’s look at the things that don’t add up,” I said. “There’s the lack of blood on the sheets. The lack of mess in general, actually. Cameron having two glasses for his room service. The fact that he was drunk enough to black out.”

  “The sound system messing up and repeating songs,” Ram put in.

  “Right. Cameron not being able to remember what happened, yet convinced that he did it. The stolen necklace – that whole saga feels a bit off to me.”

  “Like, why bother bringing it back if you had stolen it?”

  “Exactly. And if Cameron didn’t steal it – if he really did just find it on the stairs – then how did it get there?”

  “The staff were in and out all over the place,” Ram said. “Lina working such a long shift, Jude appearing for lunch. Richard and Beverley coming and going all day without much of an aim.”

  “Johnny coming here to celebrate his birthday alone. Even if he doesn’t have family, why not just stay at home? Or invite friends over earlier in the day?” I asked. “Then we have an affair going on, as well as basically a paedophile.”

  “Is it paedophilia if she’s only just under the age of consent?” Ram asked, screwing his face up. “I can’t tell.”

  “Well, she’s legally a child,” I pointed out. “I suppose you could argue it’s right on the very boundary of decency. But even if she is nearly old enough, it’s still creepy that a man of his age would want to go out with a girl of hers. And they’re clearly having sex.”

  “So paedophilia, but one rung on the decency ladder above pre-teens. Got it.”

  My turn to make a face. “God forbid,” I said. “Kids should be innocent. Girls her age, too. I know there’s natural curiosity, but adults shouldn’t be the ones to fill in the blanks. Outside of an educational setting, anyway.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to have sex when you were underage?” Ram asked. He had finished his food, and he tipped himself back onto two legs of his chair, balancing expertly.

  “First of all, no,” I said. “And second of all, that’s different. When you’re the same age, it’s less of a predatory situation. Mike’s clearly taking advantage of Rosie.”

  “So you didn’t…?” Ram asked. “How old were you when you, you know?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Some kind of naivety in me thought he would drop it if I made him say it out loud. But this was Ram. That kind of thing didn’t embarrass him at all.

  “Lost your virginity?” he finished, in response.

  I could feel my cheeks reddening. “None of your business,” I said.

  “I was fifteen,” he declared. “Sammy Martins. What a guy. Rugby player from the school team. Of course, his parents found out and made him move schools.”

  “I’m not telling you just because you told me,” I said.

  Because there wasn’t anything to tell. But I wasn’t about to admit that.

  Nor did I particularly want to hear about yet another of his conquests.

  “Fine, fine. Back to this list,” Ram said, rolling his eyes and bringing his chair back down to earth with a thump.

  “I’m out of ideas. Let’s go through our suspects,” I suggested instead.

  “Beverley and Richard are obviously out. They can barely walk up the stairs, let alone wield a knife.”

  “Reed is just weird, but I don’t think he’s violent or criminal at all,” I said. “Lina’s altogether too nice.”

  “Stacey is too much of an airhead to get it done,” Ram added. “Mike and Rose, Andrew and Miranda… I think they were all too interested in each other. They were out for a naughty weekend. I can’t see it. Maybe some kind of crime of passion if the bloke was caught flirting with Isabelle and the woman went mad, but… no. That doesn’t seem to fit. There would have been shouting, mess. You don’t cover your tracks perfectly if you’re in a mad rage.”

  “Johnny was too drunk, by all accounts, and Stacey watched him go upstairs,” I said. “Jude was on duty, with multiple witnesses, and then likely went home before the stabbing.”

  “Which only leaves our boy, Cameron,” Ram said, with a heavy sigh. He ran his hands back through his hair, letting it spring back into perfect place as he leaned his chin on one arm with a sniff.

  I thought about it in silence, staring into the remnants of my pasta sauce. No matter which direction we went in, we kept going around and around to the same conclusion. No one could have done it but Cameron. No one seemed to have a motive but Cameron – even if anger towards Johnny wasn’t a particularly good motive.

  “This is stupid,” Ram said, getting up from the table abruptly. “I’m sorry I led you on this wild goose chase. We’ve got to stop. The case is solved, and that’s it.”

  I watched him walk away with my mouth hanging open, barely able to formulate a response in shock.

  19 – Ram

  It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid.

  Who was I trying to fool, by pretending that I could trust my own gut and my investigative skills to solve the case? That’s not how real life works. I might have had a hunch, but a hunch is just that. Not proof.

  And it’s not as though a chronic drunk with a sleep deprivation problem is always going to be known for having the sharpest hunches.

  Shit, I’ve been wrong before. I was about as wrong as any person could possibly be back in San Francisco. I made the biggest mistake of my life based on what I thought I knew, how clever I thought I was. So where the fuck did this unshakeable confidence come from?

  What an idiot I’ve been.


  We’re supposed to be looking for a missing person, not solving a murder to which the killer has already confessed. I’ve let Ray Riley down, I’ve let Adelaide Walters down, and I’ve fucking let Will down by dragging him into this stupidity with me.

  All we’ve done is waste time. Time is everything when people go missing. In cases like this, the first week is essential. The first twenty-four hours even more so. After a week, they’re more likely to turn up dead. And it had already been a week when we took the case. How could I have dragged my heels on this?

  I pace around our room upstairs in the Inn, trying to find some sort of conclusion. I don’t work well with this kind of restless frustration. I should throw myself back into the Ray Riley case. If there’s one good thing I can do now to mitigate the distraction, it has to be that.

  Will comes in, quietly, closing the door behind him without a sound. It’s like he thinks I’m sick or asleep. But I’m just mad.

  “I think we should keep looking into Cameron’s case,” he says. “Maybe if Fairlight lets us talk to him directly, we’ll get some more answers.”

  “It’s a waste of time,” I say. “I was wrong, Will. We’re just amateurs, remember? We don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve been an idiot.”

  “Fairlight thinks there’s something off, too,” he points out.

  “Yeah, and I’m sure Fairlight is working way out here in the middle of the countryside because he’s an ace fucking detective,” I sneer. “Not exactly the Met, is it?”

  “Just because you’ve always loved London, doesn’t mean everyone else does,” Will says, pouting slightly. “Some people actually choose to live and work out here because they like it.”

  “Just let it go, Will!” I explode, louder than I meant to. “I’m going through our files on Ray Riley. Tomorrow, we jump back into that case.”

  Will holds up his hands, taking a step back. I don’t like to see the flash of fear in his face. I feel like smashing things up, but I restrain myself. Besides, that’s more Will’s style, and I’m the one that has a go at him for it.