Then #2
Jade and Haruto don’t mention a fight between Elena and Felix or seeing Aunty Sam lurking in the shadows.
There isn’t anything noteworthy in what they say about the pizza (‘a little greasy’), the conversation (‘Sarah did go on a bit about her house renovations – how excited are we supposed to be about doorhandles?’) or my brother (‘Felix was a sweetheart’).
Finally, they get to the moment that Felix went outside.
‘He didn’t look well,’ Jade says, and I glance over at Patrick because this is new information.
‘How so?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know.’ Jade screws up her face a bit, although I can’t tell if she’s trying to replicate the grimace of pain she last saw on my brother, or just thinking hard. ‘The whole night he’d been so nice and charming, but when he said he wanted to go outside, he looked off. Pale maybe.’
‘Did he say why he wanted to go outside?’ Patrick asks.
‘I think he wanted some fresh air,’ Jade says. ‘But I can’t remember if I heard him say that or someone else told me later. Witness testimony is notoriously unreliable, you know.’
‘Jade is a lawyer,’ Haruto says.
‘Commercial property,’ Jade says quickly, as though she’s scared I’m about to ask her to get me off a shoplifting charge.
‘Did anyone else go outside with Felix?’ I ask.
The pair look at each other.
‘I was upstairs in the bathroom then,’ Haruto says. In the bathroom being code for snogging my secret boyfriend, apparently.
‘And I don’t remember, but I don’t think so,’ Jade says. ‘It was pretty chaotic soon after because Elena got stuck in the lift.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Farnoosh went out to look for Felix,’ Haruto says. ‘I’m handy with electronics, so I thought I might be able to help with the lift. But Sarah got the lift tech on the phone, so I left her to it. Then Farnoosh came in and asked me to go outside with her. She’d seen something in the water.’
The rest of the story is a similar version of what we’ve heard from Adam and Sarah, with a few personalised tweaks, like how Haruto knew one of the paramedics and that Elena had smashed a wine glass in her hurry to get to the door to let them in.
When the story is done, Jade stands up.
‘Is there anything else you need to know?’ she asks.
There is, but it’s not something I can ask in front of her, so I just shake my head.
‘Nothing comes to mind,’ I lie.
‘I need to dash to the bathroom,’ she says. ‘Then I’m afraid I do have to get into the office. But, please, take your time with your tea and biscuits.’
We wait until her footsteps have become inaudible. Patrick and I pretend to sip our tea, Lilia munches on a Tim Tam and Haruto has an expression like he knows what’s coming.
‘You said you went upstairs that night to use the bathroom,’ I say.
‘That’s right,’ Haruto says.
‘Why wouldn’t you use the bathroom on the ground floor?’
‘It was occupied,’ he says easily. What a great liar.
‘There isn’t a bathroom upstairs,’ I say. This is a total lie – of course there’s a bloody bathroom upstairs. Elena is in a wheelchair. But Haruto falls for it.
Is it bad that I’m having fun?
‘Uh,’ is the best Haruto can come up with. Maybe forget what I said before about him being a great liar, because this is embarrassing.
‘Haruto,’ Patrick says gently, giving me a look that says I might have gone a bit too far (too far for Patrick?). ‘Adam told us about you and him. We know you were together upstairs.’
Haruto’s face instantly relaxes.
‘That makes things easy,’ he says. ‘Jade doesn’t know. Of course.’
‘It’s okay,’ Patrick says, still uncharacteristically gentle.
‘But why are you asking about that?’
I give him a closed-lipped smile. ‘Like I said on the phone, I guess I’m searching for closure.’
Haruto gives me a look that makes me think he’s not such an amiable buffoon. ‘Adam told me he’d spoken to you,’ he says. ‘I don’t know why I tried to lie. Habit, maybe. He thinks you guys are looking into how Felix died. But the police have said it was an accident, right?’
‘There hasn’t been an official cause of death confirmed,’ I say carefully.
‘But you think it was suspicious?’
‘Yes,’ I say, not giving Patrick a chance to say the opposite.
‘I’m only telling you this in case it matters, although I can’t really see how it would,’ Haruto says. An electric charge zings down my spine, but I keep my face impassive. At least, I hope so.
‘When I was in the bedroom with Adam, I thought I saw something through the window that faces out the side of the house,’ Haruto says.
‘I was looking that way and for a second, I thought I saw someone going up the cliff towards the road that runs behind their property. I was pretty freaked out because, you know, what if they saw us? But they were gone so fast, I thought maybe I imagined it. It was dark, too. It could have been a cat.’ But Haruto’s tone says he doesn’t think it was a cat.
‘Did you see what they looked like?’ Patrick asks, not sounding like a guy who thinks Felix’s death was an accident.
‘No.’
‘Adam didn’t say anything about this,’ Patrick says.
‘He had his back to the window. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t want to worry him about the possibility that someone might be watching us. Felix had already walked in on us, so we were still kind of freaked out about that.’
‘You definitely didn’t see who it was?’
‘I couldn’t even say if it was a man or a woman. Or human.’
‘Could it have been someone from the party?’ Lilia asks.
Haruto shakes his head slowly, but like he’s thinking about it. ‘Afterwards, I thought maybe it could have been Felix. Maybe I saw something yellow? But the person I saw was heading away from the water. I can’t see how he could have fallen into the water from way up next to the house.’
The sound of heels on floorboards bring us back.
‘I’m afraid I’d better head into work,’ Jade says, reappearing. ‘Did you get everything you need or do you want to stay and chat to Haruto?’
I look at Patrick, who gives me a tiny shake of his head, and Lilia, who shrugs.
‘I don’t think we have any more questions,’ I say.
‘Great.’ Jade gives her husband a big smile he doesn’t really deserve. ‘Honey, do you mind feeding the cat? I completely forgot and she’s starving, but now I’m late. I can walk the kids out.’
I see Patrick bristle a little at the word kids.
‘Okay,’ Haruto says, looking surprised. He offers goodbyes, then heads off to find his hungry cat.
We follow the clip clop of Jade’s shoes out the front door and down the path to her car. She opens the door, then hesitates.
‘You don’t need to worry about being careful around me,’ she says to me, like the others aren’t here.
‘I know about Haruto and Adam. I assume he told you?’ When I nod she continues, ‘I don’t know why you’re asking so many questions about what happened to Felix, but I hope you’ve got everything you need.
’ She touches my shoulder lightly before saying, ‘I know I only met Felix that night, but he seemed lovely.’
Then she gets in the car and drives off, leaving Patrick, Lilia and me to discuss What. The. Hell! all the way home.