Chapter 7
I unpacked my essential equipment: voice recorder, sound recorders, camera, hidden camera, bugging devices, lock picks – the kind of things that someone like me needed.
Then it was time to do a little reconnaissance.
Whenever I landed in a new place, the first thing I did was make sure I familiarised myself with my surroundings.
There was nothing worse than being caught off guard somewhere you didn’t know, especially if you needed to make a speedy escape, which was often the case in my line of work.
I grabbed one of the sundresses from my suitcase, choosing the one with the least offensive print and eye-blinding colour. When I slipped it on, it felt uncomfortable on my skin, like I was wearing something totally foreign. Well, I was.
I never wore dresses. Ever. In fact the last time I could remember wearing one was at my father’s wedding to ‘the mistress’, as my mother always called her.
I don’t think she’d ever called her anything else, despite the fact that the affair had been ten years ago.
My father had wanted to leave a respectable amount of time between the divorce and the marriage, he’d said.
I was in my late teens then, and to be honest, I didn’t really care who my father was marrying, I barely cared about my father after what he’d done anyway. But my mother cared. A lot. She’d never got over the divorce.
Prior to it, she’d built her entire existence around the marriage; stay-at-home mom, homemaker, baker, that was all she’d ever wanted to be, she’d told me once.
So it wasn’t just cheating, it was something that stripped her of her identity as a woman.
And then there’d been the subsequent fallout: the embarrassment, the fact that the affair had been with my teacher, the gossip.
The whole town knew, and everyone was talking about it.
For years afterwards, she veered between feelings of utter sadness and pure anger.
She’d always been a bit ‘up and down’, as my dad used to say; apparently ‘it ran in the family’ – her mother was the same.
The divorce was the tipping point, and from that moment onward, she was always more down and never really up.
So yes, I’d seen first-hand how devastating divorce could be, especially one that came after an affair.
Just another reason why I wouldn’t ever be putting myself through that.
I looked at myself in the mirror, and I will say, the colour of the dress did look good against my skin tone. I was usually tanned, so the pale blue really stood out. Complementary colours or something? Wasn’t that a thing?
Dress straightened, hair vaguely wrangled into something acceptable, and strange polka-dot sandals on my feet, I stepped out of the villa.
It was so hot, it felt like the sun had slapped me in the face.
I looked up at the perfect cloudless sky, a dazzling blue that matched the colour of the sea perfectly.
It was the kind of day that made the Seychelles look like a postcard come to life.
As if the scenery itself was posing for the card right now.
All you needed was a dolphin to dive through the shot, preferably with its baby.
Perhaps a yacht on the horizon, some more pink hibiscus in the foreground.
As I walked along the wooden walkway, to my absolute delight I found a giant koi pond. I knelt beside it and gazed into the water.
I’d always loved fish. It started when I was young and someone, I can’t remember who, had given me a goldfish.
Back then, the house had always been so loud, too loud.
My parents fighting, my mother slamming doors, pots and pans falling in the kitchen when she threw away the food she’d cooked when he didn’t come home.
I used to sit cross-legged in front of the tank, block my ears and just watch the fish move.
I loved its slow, fluid motions; it always seemed totally unbothered by the chaos.
There was something hypnotic about the way it glided through the water, as if nothing could touch it.
And for those moments that I watched it, I felt like nothing could touch me either.
The koi in this pond were amazing – broad, elegant things, scales so bright that in this light they looked like they’d been gold-plated. If I didn’t live in an apartment, I’d have a koi pond of my own. And then a small fish in the far corner of the pond caught my eye.
It was floating near the bottom, its fin drooping at a strange angle. I could tell it was sick and made a mental note to keep a close eye on it while I was here. I stood up, brushed the dust off my knees, and kept walking.
I heard the main pool area before I saw it.
The sound of laughter and splashing. The clinking of cocktail glasses probably with bobbing bits of pineapple and colourful umbrellas in them.
Then I rounded the corner and came face to face with it.
It was stunning, with an infinity edge that seemed to spill over into the ocean, surrounded by red loungers and tall palm trees and full of honeymooners basking in the sun and getting tipsy.
I scanned the area and found him immediately – the target, Victor Langdon.
He was sprawled on one of the loungers, looking every bit the kind of man who could only land a young, beautiful woman, thanks to the good-looking size of his very large bank account.
Because it certainly had nothing to do with him being good-looking in real life, or the size of anything else.
In fact, I suspected that for anything to happen at all in the size department, he’d probably – almost certainly; no, definitely – need to take a generous helping of little blue pills.
I glanced at the lounger next to him, expecting to see his stunning mistress, and if not, at the very least a towel, a bag, a pair of sunglasses, anything that might belong to her. But nope, nothing.
Was he really here alone? Not likely.
I strolled around the pool, making sure to keep a casual distance from it so it didn’t look like I was patrolling the perimeter, which I was.
I stopped by the beach and dipped my toes in, and at one point even bent down to pick up a shell or two.
Then back to patrolling, but an hour later there was still no sign of a partner anywhere.
I started to wonder if perhaps Sharaz had got this all wrong.
There was no one here with him, and right now he just looked like a lonely old man lying by himself on a lounger.
He’d clearly not slathered on enough SPF, because his skin was currently turning a very unfortunate shade of crimson, and the big bald patch on the top of his head looked dangerously burnt.
It contrasted nicely with what remained of his grey hair.
I needed to know which villa he was staying in, because I was going to need to get in and have a good poke around.
I walked off towards the reception area, fake-admiring some flowers as I went, giving myself time to decide on my next move.
But then as if answering my mental question, a small rustling in one of the nearby palm trees made me look.
And in that moment, a brilliant idea struck me.
‘Come here, little guy.’ I reached out and carefully took the small green tree frog off the branch; I obviously didn’t want to hurt him.
Then I took a slow and protracted stroll to the main reception area, where I looked around for the perfect target.
It wasn’t long before I found her. The Louis Vuitton luggage, pearl-studded designer glasses and gold high heels all screamed that she would be perfect for what I had planned.
It was a rather lame and cheap trick, but you’d be surprised how often something like this got the job done.
She was busy checking in and all I needed to do was drop my little friend on her luggage and let nature take its course.
I walked past as inconspicuously as possible, opened my hand and let the frog jump onto her suitcase.
Then I strolled nonchalantly over to the desk, picking up a brochure and pretending to get lost in it and all the marvellous activities this island had to offer.
Turtle-watching, helicopter tours, swimming with dolphins and something and something and something else.
It wasn’t long before it all happened. First the ear-splitting scream, then the sound of running feet, followed by something falling to the floor and breaking.
I dropped the pamphlet in dramatic mock horror and whipped around, just as something amazing happened.
I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried, because my new green friend had just gone above and beyond the call of duty.
He opened his mouth and what followed were a series of high-pitched whistling noises, which only fuelled the woman’s hysteria even more.
‘Aargh!’ she screeched, flinging her arms out wildly. Her screams were almost as loud as the frog’s.
‘What’s wrong, dear?’ asked the man with her, presumably her travel companion.
‘Frog!’ she screamed, as if she was having a limb amputated. That seemed to be the cue for the receptionist and several other staff members to rush towards her. I let out the best horrified gasp I could muster and dived behind the reception desk for ‘cover’.
Jackpot. There they were: spare villa keys hanging behind the counter, each one labelled with a number and a name.
How easy was that? But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Especially when the gift horse had just told me that Victor was staying in number 9 and I was in 11.
So convenient. I stayed crouched behind the counter, eyes squeezed shut, knees clutched to my chest, projecting as much terror as possible.
The commotion only died down when a staff member was able to whisk the frog away and calm the woman down with an offer of Moet.
You would have thought there was a snake on the loose, a crocodile or a tarantula.
All of this fuss over a small and rather cute tree frog.
Finally one of the receptionists came over to me, gracing me with her biggest, most apologetic smile.
‘It’s all over now, don’t worry. The frog has been taken care of. ’
‘Oh, thank God.’ I fanned myself dramatically and got to my feet, resisting the urge to laugh. ‘Glad to hear it.’ My little accomplice had done well.