Chapter 30
I pick up the cracked phone and bloodied bow tie, unzip my empty suitcase and hurl them inside. I move mechanically, motivated in the moment by nothing but the need to put these things as far from me as possible.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I should get rid of them properly, put them somewhere they can never be found – they can only lead to more questions being asked.
Questions I’m asking myself.
As I slide my shaking hand into my suitcase, my fingers encounter damp fabric.
I recoil, then open the case fully and fling the lid back.
Inside what should be the empty shell of my case, an item of clothing is balled up.
Not folded neatly the way I carefully arranged my clothes to travel here – the way I always arrange them.
I even have a travel wash bag for my dirty washing.
I unroll the material and find I’m holding a pair of my old black leggings – I only brought these to wear under waterproof trousers, or if I decided to practise stretching and moving through forms in preparation for getting back on the mat at the gym back home.
I haven’t worn them this week – they should be folded up in the drawer I decanted my stuff into when I unpacked on the first night.
Instead they’re creased, damp, screwed up in the bottom of my case.
I sit back on my heels, ball up the leggings and drop them back into the shell case, closing it over, banishing them along with Alex’s damaged phone and the bloodstained bow tie. I have a case full of evidence that places me outside, probably with Alex, on the night he died.
And a mind that can no longer be relied upon to show me what’s real.
Numb, I rise and go into the bathroom where I start by rinsing out the shower, removing all traces of the mud smeared there.
Then I use the hand towel from the bathroom, soaked in soapy water, to try to erase the muddy boot prints on the pale carpet.
Thankfully, the towel is navy, so any marks it absorbs don’t show.
I rinse out the towel and hang it over the heated rail to dry.
The sheets are more problematic; I make do with making the bed carefully, smoothing down the duvet and plumping the pillows.
Hiding more evidence.
I have a pounding headache by the time I’m done, and search my bag for painkillers. I dry swallow two tablets and examine my wan appearance in the mirror. I wonder if the others will be able to see in my eyes that the horror of my past twenty-four hours goes beyond grief for Alex.
And slips instead into fear – of what I might have done. Who I might have become.
Don’t think about that.
I tidy my hair, and leave my bedroom, closing the door carefully behind me.
I’d like to lock it, but I don’t have a key.
Fear swirls, souring my stomach. My thoughts go into overdrive, as I conjecture a scenario where I somehow convinced Alex – his judgement impaired by the cocktail of chemicals he’d consumed – to take a walk with me, through the forest and up the river to the lip of the falls, where … what next?
The blood on the bow tie suggests that he was hurt before he fell. Euan told us very little about the state he found Alex in at the bottom of that ravine, but he did tell us that he’d suffered a head injury, that there was blood in his hair and on his face.
We assumed that was from the fall.
But what if he was hit over the head before he fell … a rock maybe? Blood trickling down his face, soaking the borrowed bow tie. Perhaps the tie was loose and it dropped into the snow. Perhaps he took out his phone to call for help, and I sent it spinning out of his hands to shatter at our feet.
Maybe he stooped and groped for his phone, and I took advantage of his drugged state and distraction to give him the push that sent him toppling off the top of the falls, down into the ravine.
But I have no memory of any of it – save the vague fragments of my dreams – and nothing resonates with me from the constructed scenario either.
If it’s true, I can’t imagine what would have possessed me to pick up the tie and phone and put them in my pocket to bring back with me.
Regret? Realisation of what I’d done, and some strange, twisted attachment to the boy I’d sent to his death?
Maybe I meant to dispose of them later—
This is crazy. I might be actually losing my mind here.
I’m a criminal psychologist; I know what the human mind is capable of. I understand the depths to which people can sink …
Jittery, I head back to the kitchen. I’ve been away long enough and don’t want to draw more suspicion.
Plus, if I’m around people, I’m not stuck in my own head – a frightening place to be now.
Leo, Becca and Kimmy form an unholy trinity at the table.
I wonder what they’ve talked about while I’ve been upstairs.
I wonder if they’ve somehow managed to avoid the elephant in the room that is Becca and Leo’s infidelity.
Becca looks relieved at my arrival. She tries again to offer me a glass of wine, and this time I accept, down a third of the glass in one gulp.
Getting drunk won’t help anything, will only make the whole mess worse, but it’s so tempting. I just want to escape these thoughts, the terrible fear. Becca frowns at me. ‘I thought you were going to take a shower, Eilish.’
I blink at her. ‘What?’
‘Your hair is dry.’
‘Oh. I decided … not to.’ Shit! I cleaned the shower, but forgot to actually take one. I down another third of the wine, and walk over to look out of the French doors, the glass clasped tightly in my hand. Come on, Jameson.
I want him back … and I don’t—
Jameson and Euan arriving back will signal events moving into a new phase, picking up pace. It won’t just be us anymore; the police will be coming, an investigation unfolding, everything we’ve done and said will be pulled apart, picked over.
I lick my dry lips, and think again about the suitcase upstairs. I have to get rid of that could-be evidence. I drain my wineglass.
‘Blimey,’ says Becca, materialising at my elbow with the bottle. ‘You needed that.’
I tilt my glass and let her pour me another, even though I know it is a bad idea. ‘They should be back soon, surely,’ Becca says, glancing at her wristwatch. ‘They’ve been gone about forty minutes.’
I stare out into inky darkness, the snow-covered patio is shiny with frost. ‘It’s beautiful out there.’
‘Yeah … it’s bloody freezing though. Don’t you even think about going out, Eils.’
‘I’m not,’ I lie.
If I tipped the suitcase into the icy waters of the loch, the contents would be gone for good.
I need to get rid of that phone and bow tie.
Everything else is circumstantial – wet clothing will dry, and muddy bedsheets are hardly enough to convict someone of murder … But the phone and bow tie will lead to questions I can’t answer. Whichever way you look at it, I shouldn’t have them.
I imagine watching them sink to the bottom of that huge, black expanse of water. But what excuse can I make for going out alone?
None. There’s no way the others will just let me waltz off into the night.
Becca sips her wine, standing by my side looking out the window. The silence is strangely companionable, and I wish I could enjoy it. I wish Alex was still alive, and we had nothing more to worry about than what type of wine to open from Becca’s father’s impressive range of vintages.
Becca glances at me. ‘You know, I meant what I said earlier. I really am sorry about all that unpleasantness—’
Unpleasantness.
She’s the master of understatement.
But she seems genuine. Remorseful. When I don’t respond she reaches out and touches my arm. I force myself to smile, and take another swig of wine. I haven’t eaten enough today, and the alcohol slides into my bloodstream.
‘Why don’t we play a board game,’ Becca suggests, her eyes lighting up. ‘We need to do something to take our minds off this …’
Thankfully she doesn’t finish her sentence so I’m not sure what word she meant to say.
Not unpleasantness again, surely – Alex’s death is catastrophic, horrible.
Way, way more than unpleasant. I feel so hollow when I picture him, smiling in my stairwell on Hogmanay, sitting on my sofa telling me about his job, his fresh start – wishful thinking, as it happened.
He’s gone now, not coming back.
Kimmy wrinkles her nose. ‘A board game …?’
‘Come on, it’ll be fun,’ Becca wheedles. ‘Leo, you’re in, right?’
‘Don’t talk to him,’ Kimmy spits, her demeanour shifting in a heartbeat.
Stuck in the middle, Leo looks queasy, helpless. I step into the breach. ‘A board game is a good idea,’ I say, pasting on a smile. It’s not.
She brings an ancient copy of Monopoly down from some forgotten cupboard upstairs.
I settle in, listening to Becca’s explanations – somehow, Kimmy has never played this before – and starting to relax.
If the others no longer think me guilty of killing Gen – and by extension Alex – then there might be no suggestion of foul play when the police get here.
No need for an investigation. Just another horrible accident …
I might get away with it.
I shake my head. I can’t keep doing this to myself. There’s nothing to get away from. I didn’t do it.
I look up and catch Kimmy watching me from across the table. She’s paying no attention to Becca or the board, but staring at me as though she’s trying to work me out. There’s something sly and calculating in her eyes. I look away.
Come on, Jameson.
He alone believes in me.
Makes me feel safe.
*
We’re deep into the game when the kitchen door flies open and Euan and Jameson burst in, still fully attired in their outdoor gear.
Jameson’s face is drawn with worry, and Euan is flushed.
‘What is this bullshit!’ he shouts, chucking Leo’s phone on the table where it lands on the corner of the game board and displaces playing pieces.
We look up in surprise, and Leo scrabbles to rescue his phone. ‘What …?’