CHAPTER 25 #2
‘We thought you might want to help out of the goodness of your heart.’ Prichard beamed from one woman to the other, a terrible frisson of panic growing inside him. It felt as if they might come to blows at any point. He loathed confrontation.
‘Are you sure I have a heart?’ asked Dorna, topping up her own glass and pulling up a chair.
Prichard laughed lightly. ‘Of course you do, Dorna. A huge one pumping away in there.’
‘If not for kindness,’ said Pat mildly, ‘then maybe because it’s good sense.
Murder isn’t great PR, and refusing to cooperate when something’s unresolved tends to create a vacuum.
And vacuums attract suspicion. Eventually the police will have to reopen the case.
Money is missing. The narrative isn’t closed.
And other stories might resurface, like the man who died on your Cairngorms site.
It only takes one journalist with a long memory.
And with your new Downs project already as unpopular as it is, well, it wouldn’t take much to tip it further off course. ’
‘Except,’ Dorna said with a flat smile, ‘there is no development.’
‘Oh?’ said Pat, and sat back in her seat.
‘No development?’ queried Prichard. Had he heard her correctly?
‘No.’ Dorna sighed. ‘It’s too bloody windy.’
‘It is?’ Pat asked. ‘It is,’ she agreed with herself quickly. ‘Not a great place to play golf.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ agreed Dorna, taking a gulp of fizz.
‘In fact, it’s a terrible place to play golf.
We’ve had some professionals come and have a look, and while, you know, they like a hazard, a bunker and some open water – all very entertaining – if you can’t control your shots eighty-five per cent of the time, then apparently it’s too frustrating. ’
‘So there’s no development?’ Pat asked again, just to make sure. ‘No sewage works and pump room right by my house?’
‘No,’ said Dorna with a shrug. ‘Sorry about that. It must have been a bit of a shock.’
‘A shock? It’s kept me awake ever since I saw your model.’
‘I was never a great fan of that model. It wasn’t very sympathetic to the environment.
And weirdly, having lived down here for a bit, I think I’ve fallen in love with the place.
I like the wind, I like the fact that the weather can change in a heartbeat, I like that pub where the barman takes twenty-five minutes to warm up a sausage roll.
Turns out I even quite like being shouted at by madwomen, banshees who patrol the Downs looking for hapless fools who don’t have their dogs on a lead. ’ She smiled.
‘To be fair, I suspect there is only one proper banshee,’ Pat acknowledged.
‘And she’ll scare the living daylights out of anyone. Even hard-nosed property developers from London.’ Dorna drained her glass again. ‘Now, what do you need me to do?’
Pat sat next to Dorna as they worked their way efficiently through the second bottle of champagne, even more efficiently served by Prichard, who stuck to his usual poison and was quietly nursing what he claimed was his finest damson vintage yet.
Pat found that Dorna made her laugh. She was sharp, funny, self-deprecating, with a keen eye for the ridiculous.
As Dorna scrolled through her phone and laptop, hunting down every possible glimpse of Henry on the cliff, Pat found herself softening, and gently checked her own earlier reaction.
The narcissism of small differences, that was the term.
Freud, of course. How easy it was to resent in others the very qualities we didn’t like to acknowledge in ourselves.
That prickle of dislike, often reserved for people most like us.
She smiled. It was entirely possible that the person she’d initially written off might turn out to be a real friend.
Pride and prejudice getting in the way again, she thought.
After a while, Prichard excused himself and retired to the sitting room to snore, quite loudly. Dorna and Pat stayed hunched together at the table, drinking their champagne and trying to find any more photographs of Henry on that fated afternoon. But there was nothing.
‘I’m not sure we’re thinking out of the box enough,’ announced Dorna eventually.
‘The tourists might have edited their photos before uploading them on Instagram. Facetuned people out and all that. And the South Koreans are more tech-savvy than most. So Henry may very well have been removed from most of these.’
‘Like my painting?’
‘Exactly like your painting.’ Dorna sat back in her chair and looked up at the noticeboard. ‘I see you have my injured hand down as a clue.’
‘Well …’ Pat raised an eyebrow and looked down at the now healed hand. ‘How’s the RSI?’
‘I can tell you it wasn’t attempted murder!’ Dorna’s voice had increased in decibels with every glass she’d drunk.
‘And there was I thinking you’d beaten Henry up and hurled him over the cliff, hurting your hand as you did so.’ Pat smiled briefly.
‘You’re not far off,’ replied Dorna. ‘There was a fight at the cliff edge, except it was between me, Trigger and a poor terrified sheep.’
‘The dog was off the lead again, wasn’t he?’
‘’Fraid so,’ she sighed. ‘It happened about twenty minutes after you told me off. I was keeping him off the lead because I didn’t want to do as you said.
’ She looked up at Pat and smirked. ‘I had to hurl myself between him and the sheep, and my hand got in the way. He didn’t mean to bite it.
I didn’t want to admit it, because, you know, you’d already reprimanded me.
In this case, RSI stands for rabid, stupid, imbecilic. ’
‘Glad to have cleared up that mystery,’ said Pat.
‘Trigger has gone to live with my sister in London,’ said Dorna. ‘Fewer sheep there.’
‘I would pay good money to see a video of the fight, though,’ said Pat.
Dorna laughed, then turned to the murder board and stared at it for a few seconds, to the accompaniment of Prichard’s snores.
‘Wait …’ she said slowly.
‘What?’
‘Oh my gosh. Maybe someone filmed it!’ There was victory in her eyes when they met Pat’s.
‘What, Henry falling?’
‘No, that would’ve gone viral. I mean vlogging. That’s where we need to look. The vlogs!’
‘Vlogging?’
‘Reels, vlogs, whatever you call them. People film videos of themselves while on holiday and put them up on the internet.’ While Pat was trying to decipher these tech terms, Dorna was already bent back over the computer, furiously tapping at the keys.
‘YouTube. All that sort of stuff. You can’t tamper with videos as easily as you can with photos.
If someone was filming the day Henry died and posted a vlog of it, they probably couldn’t edit him out of the footage. ’
She typed and clicked, and typed and clicked, as various fresh-faced tourists appeared on the screen, chatting away and pointing animatedly to the white cliffs behind them.
Neither woman could understand a word, but the enthusiasm was contagious.
Pat stood up to get her old, scratched Brita jug from the fridge.
She needed to sober up. Her eyelids felt heavy, but her body was buzzing with anticipation.
‘There!’ Dorna shouted, ignoring the glass of water in front of her, and pointing at the screen. ‘Right there!’
Pat sat down and they both stared. There he was. Henry. The whole of Henry. Walking in the background of some influencer’s vlog.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Pat. ‘How did you find that?’
‘Methodology and luck,’ said Dorna. ‘So that’s the suit. That’s him.’
‘Absolutely, that’s correct. Play on.’
They watched the screen, brows furrowing in concentration. As Henry walked past the vlogger, he was smiling. The wind caught his hair. He was beautiful and young and alive.
Someone else entered the frame. A man with dark hair and the hint of a gold earring.
Pat’s heart dropped.
‘Well,’ said Dorna, folding her arms. ‘Do you have any idea who that might be?’
‘No … it can’t be,’ Pat whispered.
‘Do you know him?!’ Dorna sounded astonished.
‘It’s Marcus. Oh my God, it’s Marcus.’
‘Wait. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Shall we look for more?’ said Dorna, barely able to hide the excitement in her voice.
Henry and Marcus appeared again in the background. Henry wasn’t smiling any more. He was walking backwards, his arms crossed in front of him as Marcus got closer. And that was it. Another tourist moved into the frame, fully covering the scene behind her. Dorna replayed the clip again and again.
‘It seems like Marcus is trying to get something. His arms are extended. It’s like he wants to touch him or grab something off him,’ Pat said.
‘His phone? Wallet?’ There was a deep line between Dorna’s eyebrows as she peered at the screen.
‘Could be.’ Pat paused. ‘Wait, stop the video. Do you see that?’ she asked, pointing at the two figures as they left the frame.
‘Can you tell what direction he’s gone in?’ Dorna sounded rather thrilled now.
‘Well, judging by the background, the picnic tables and the car park … towards the lighthouse. Where the tide is strong and there’s a rip,’ said Pat.
‘Strong enough for the body to travel a few hundred yards back towards Birling Gap?’
‘Certainly. Do you think that’s enough evidence to take to the police?’
‘Yes, but maybe we need more. Should I look into Marcus properly?’ Dorna suggested.
‘How can you do that?’
‘Easily.’
For the next few minutes, Dorna silently clicked away on the computer, while Pat tiptoed next door to see exactly where Prichard was.
The lights were off and the room was dark, and both the sofas appeared to be empty, yet the snoring continued, deeply in and gravelly out.
Pat stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, confused.
Finally she realised where the noise was coming from, and walking softly around one of the sofas, she found Prichard curled up fast asleep in Dave’s bed, with Dave cosily curled up on top of him.
Pat returned to the kitchen. ‘You won’t believe—’ she began with a broad smile.
‘Found him,’ interrupted Dorna. ‘Here he is. His full name is Marcus Ellis. He’s thirty-three years old and he says he lives in London.’
‘Well that’s a lie. He lives in Westlinke, next door to the Green Lion.’
‘This is his Instagram page. He definitely lived in London up until very recently.’
‘How did you manage that?’ Pat sat back down at the table.
‘I’m surprised you don’t know how to do any of this.
It’s basic internet sleuthing. I should teach you one day.
’ Dorna drained her glass. ‘I simply followed Henry Clayton on Instagram, and then Derek, then I found a photo where he had tagged Marcus, and boom! Got his profile. It wasn’t hard.
But look at him. He looks like a murderer to me, with his smug face and his smug smile and his smug little earring.
Look at him in Ibiza with a smug cocktail.
You’d be amazed what sort of information people let slip on these platforms. All it takes is a few clicks and you can find almost anything. Where did you say the money had gone?’
‘The Channel Islands.’ Pat couldn’t control the thoughts rushing through her head.
So when she had seen Marcus and Derek at the Green Lion, that hadn’t been a first date.
They knew each other from somewhere else, and somehow Marcus knew Henry too.
Henry had never mentioned him to her, though.
Pat was certain Marcus had something to do with his death, but the full picture wasn’t clear yet.
‘Look at this one. The background and the geotag at the top.’ It was a photo of Marcus, pint in hand, at a beachfront restaurant. ‘Our dear friend Marcus has certainly been to Guernsey!’
The realisation hit Pat like a ton of bricks.
‘It’s got to be him,’ she said. ‘God.’ She paused.
She felt oddly upset and relieved at the same time.
It was a strange feeling looking at this Marcus, the likely-to-be-a-killer version of Marcus.
Her mouth was dry. She’d thought she might feel more euphoric than this.
Elated. In tears. The idea of closure would smell sweeter, and it would certainly sound better than the incessant snoring from next door.
‘Shall we send him a message!’ Dorna raised her eyebrows conspiratorially. ‘Put the wind up him a bit!’ She grinned. ‘Tell him we’re on to him!’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Pat heard herself saying.
‘We need to flush him out.’
‘Why do we need to do that?’
‘What’s your account?’ asked Dorna, ignoring her.
Pat logged into her Instagram account, surprised that she even remembered her password.
With Sofia’s encouragement, she had posted a photo of Dave a few years ago, when he was a bit slimmer.
It was only slightly out of focus. She only followed four accounts, which she never remembered to look at: two that posted cat content, one about open-water swimming and, of course, Sofia’s.
Dorna took over. ‘OK, so I’m sending him a direct message. He probably won’t get it, but I’ve written: “We know what you did.” Is that OK to send?’
‘We shouldn’t send him anything. He’s potentially dangerous,’ suggested Pat, who had drunk rather less than Dorna and seemed to be the only person in the room who realised that texting a killer wasn’t a great idea.
‘Too late!’ Dorna said with a wide grin. ‘That’ll teach him to mess around with middle-aged ladies!’
‘Except he hasn’t messed around with middle-aged ladies; he’s probably murdered a young man!’ The stressful knot in Pat’s gut was growing by the minute now. ‘Can we delete it? Get rid of it? How do we do that?’
‘Sure. You just scroll through here and then press … Oh shit, that was quick,’ declared Dorna, and looked at Pat, her mouth slightly open and her hand covering her chin. ‘Oh shit, shit, SHIT!’
‘What shit?’
‘Look,’ she said, turning the laptop to face Pat. ‘He’s seen it.’
‘Shit,’ said Pat.
‘Shit,’ agreed Dorna.
And they both just stared at each other.