Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Tom’s gaze travels over to the crossbow, but he’s in no state to grab it from me. He may be strong, but he lacks the composure to challenge anyone.
“Tell me, Ade!” He scans the room like he needs to check where the exits are. “You brought us here because you were jealous of what Sasha and I had. Is that it? You thought you could break us up, like you failed to all those years ago.”
Ade is silent and won’t respond. All Tom has is his bravado, but if he can’t force an answer from us, what’s left?
“Tell me the truth. Tell me why you killed them.” His words have no resonance. They’re absorbed by the paisley-patterned carpet and soon forgotten.
“We all did silly things when we were kids,” Clara tries to reason with him, her button nose scrunching up compassionately. “That doesn’t make Ade a killer.”
I’m torn between pursuing the idea that the hit singer of “Stardawn” and “Love Goes On” really is a psychopath and trying to calm everyone back down. When I can’t think of an explanation for why Ade would have faked Mick’s overdose or wanted to hurt Bridget, the anger that had driven me recedes.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I finally say. “Why would the two of them hooking up way back then make Ade want to kill Sasha?”
With this easy solution denied to him, Tom turns on the rest of us. “You all knew about it! My supposed friends knew that the woman I loved was cheating on me, and you said nothing.”
“We were never your friends.” Ade’s response may be honest, but it’s far from wise. “We put up with your presence because we liked Sasha. I could never understand why she went out with you.”
Tom closes his eyes, and I can hear his laboured breathing. “I know you’re trying to get under my skin. You’re desperate to show everyone what a maniac I am so that you can push all this onto me, but it won’t work.”
I’m still holding on to the idea that he really is to blame.
I want the one truly unlikable person on board the Tanis to be guilty, because the alternative is too painful.
Sadly, I doubt that Thomas Ledger would be able to invent any of this.
I read some of his creative writing from the seminar he had with Bridget, and his dialogue sounded like it had been lifted from a poorly dubbed advert.
He sits in the middle of the room, still swaying slightly as he recalls the life he shared with the woman he loved. I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to say that he’s either a far better actor than Sasha was, or he’s telling the truth.
“Tell us the rest,” Tom says in little more than a breathy murmur as he looks back up at our host. “Tell us what you did to Jake all that time ago.”
Ade is unmoved by the performance. He crosses his legs at the ankles and leans back against the wall. “How has what went on between Jake and me got anything to do with today?”
Tom swallows slowly, and I can see that he’s trying to piece everything together as best he can. “I don’t know. I’m just some drunk who couldn’t even keep the job that my dad pulled a bunch of strings to get me.”
Ade’s about to offer a no doubt pithy reply when Tom keeps talking.
“But I have an idea.” His eyes glimmer, as though someone’s just turned on a light.
“You dragged us all out here because we’d moved on with our lives and you couldn’t stand to be forgotten.
You killed Sasha because you threw yourself at her, and she didn’t want to be with you.
” He leans forward but will go no closer.
“This whole thing isn’t about forgiveness. You hated us for forgetting about you.”
“You’re talking absolute rubbish.” Ade has to force himself to control his temper. “If I wanted to kill someone, do you think I’d bring them to my own property to do so?”
A great smile carves up Tom’s face. “You feed off adoration just like your dead buddy hoovered up heroin. It wasn’t enough to have every idiot teen in the world listening to your music. You needed us to love you too.”
Ade puffs out his lips in exhaustion. “You’ve got me, Tom. You’ve summed me up perfectly. I’m an addict for fame. My reputation is more important to me than any of you are. But don’t you reckon that, with all my resources, I might be able to find a cleaner way to murder my friends?”
Tom is beginning to enjoy his role. “You’ll have some way of worming out of it when the police arrive. Oh, officer! This unfortunate drunk man lost his mind and murdered everyone. I only survived because he was such a mess that he never caught me.”
It’s not an obvious impression of Ade. If anything, it sounds like a bad Keith Richards.
Ade shakes his head, and his tightly knotted locks flick out in all directions. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Tom. I really don’t.”
“I want you to answer my question. Why did Jake leave the band?”
I’m already tired of this. I’m tired of everything that the two of them are saying.
I’m so tired that I end up telling the truth.
“He made out with Bridget over a year after we broke up. They were drunk at a party and, from what I know, it didn’t go any further.
I very much doubt he’d kill me because of it. ”
It’s obvious just how confusing this is to Tom, but he won’t let it go. “There must be more. You wouldn’t pass up the chance to be rich and famous just for that.” There’s desperation in every word he utters. He needs me to help him, but I can’t.
When I offer no answer, Ade finds his voice. “I stole his songs too. I used the guitar parts that Jake wrote, and I told the label he’d had nothing to do with them. I’ve waited far too long to apologise. He was my friend, and I betrayed him.”
“Then why didn’t you do something about it, Jake?” Clara asks, and I can see that, in her own quiet way, she’s trying to work out the same thing as Tom. “Why didn’t you take him to court or tell the press? Why do we let this stuff linger?”
I realise that this will be difficult to say, as I haven’t had to explain it to anyone for some time. “If it happened now, I’d fight back. But I was a total mess. I was an addict like Tom and Mick and probably Ade too in a way. Not so deep down, I still am one.”
I wish I didn’t have to explain myself, but just as Ade wanted us here to unburden the guilt he’s had for years, I feel the same urge.
“I understand how you’re feeling, Tom. I really do.
I know that everything keeps phasing between total clarity and total confusion, but I don’t think that Ade had any reason to bring me here other than the friendship we shared. I really don’t think he’s hurt anyone.”
Tom looks like a lost little boy in a supermarket at the moment he realises that his mother is missing. “That’s not enough. It’s not. One of you must have hurt my Sasha!”
Clara turns to Ade, but her usual sympathetic expression has vanished. Perhaps hearing that he’s more human than she previously realised has robbed him of his charm. Or perhaps she’s afraid that there are more revelations still to come.
“What about her?” It takes Tom another five seconds to find the energy to extend his arm in Clara’s direction, and her previously blank expression is replaced by a far more hesitant one.
“Didn’t you listen to me?” I ask to protect my friend. “Don’t you realise that none of this will do any good? We should just sit here until help comes and then let the police work it out.”
He doesn’t pay me the least attention. “Tell me why you flew this forgettable little girl halfway across the world when she barely said a word to anyone back at uni.”
There’s something that I couldn’t have predicted. For the first time this week, it looks like Tom has really got to Ade. The words penetrate not just his skin but deep within him.
“For goodness’ sake, Tom,” I butt in once more. “Would you go easy?”
Ade won’t answer him, so with uncharacteristic strength and a look of determination on her face, Clara rises to her feet and walks towards her interrogator.
“I’ll tell you all the reasons why I might have killed our friends.
” She’s so small standing before him that I’m worried what he’ll do.
“I had a crush on Ade the whole way through university. I was jealous of Bridget and Sasha because they could be fun and cheeky with him, while I was a shy little mouse who barely even squeaked.”
I imagine that Tom’s silent amazement is mirrored on my face.
“You don’t have to say anything more,” Ade tells her, but he offers no other solution.
Clara grits her teeth and keeps talking.
“I knew Sasha had slept with Ade. Perhaps I was the one who knocked on her door and then pushed her into the sea. After Mick’s supposed overdose, which I could have engineered, it would be difficult for the police to work out the motive for the first two killings.
I knew from Dawn that Bridget and Ade hooked up at that party, so she had to go too, and maybe I killed Ryan because he realised what I was doing. ”
The silence has held. Even Ade looks uncertain what to believe, and he sends a momentary glance in my direction before I realise something and the tension breaks.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would you kill the two girls just because they hooked up with Ade a decade ago?”
“Fine, but you can’t say for certain that I’m innocent.” She’s not trying to convince us of her guilt so much as the impossibility of our task. “We don’t know who the killer is, and I’m just as likely to have done it as one of you.”
“Did you?” Tom would love this to be true.
“No!” Clara’s voice jumps higher, and her amazement that he could be so simple-minded is clear. “There’s no easy solution for why someone would kill Mick, then Sasha and now Ryan and Bridget. None of it makes any sense.”
Even if Tom were twenty years sober, he’d struggle to solve this puzzle. As it is, he looks perfectly unhinged in his dining chair in the middle of the room, like he’s hallucinating a dinner party.
“So we’re back to my previous question,” he says, returning to his favourite suspect. “Why did you fly Clara out here, Ade? Why do you owe her an apology?”
“You don’t have to answer.” Clara must realise how little her intervention achieved. She returns to her position beside me and crashes down on the floor.
“I think I do.” Ade’s voice has changed again. There’s no arrogance left in him. No swank or swagger. He is calm, and I find that more frightening than Tom’s rage.
He wanders over to the bar and pulls a bottle down off the shelf without looking at what it is. He takes the top off and swigs from it. This would have looked cool if I hadn’t known that every drink there was either a syrup, a soda or a fruit juice.
As we’re watching him, waiting for another secret to fall from his lips, Tom makes his move. He’s far swifter than I’d imagined, and it catches me off guard. His chair tips back. Eyes wild, he lunges forward and grabs the crossbow in both hands before I can pull it away.