Chapter 57 Fenna – Day 11
Fenna perches on the edge of an uncomfortable leather sofa.
It’s the only item of furniture in the small room.
She’s never been in a police station before.
She can’t stop shaking. Everything happened so quickly after she raised the alarm.
It’s as if she is out of her body. Floating above the chaos and confusion.
She spotted Rosie through the window, waiting in the reception area, when she arrived. But how is that possible?
A female officer sits opposite and explains they need to take some details.
A box of tissues is handed to her; she didn’t realise she’d started crying again.
The past hour or so replays on a loop in her mind.
Fenna takes a shaky breath and explains how she went looking for Theo in the lake house and found him on the kitchen floor.
Murdered.
The nightmare she’s experienced comes in fragments as she tries to recount it. There was so much blood. She clenches her eyes shut to wash away the image of the inside of her brother-in-law’s skull.
She doesn’t remember staggering outside but she must have done.
She fell on a bench, Raffi’s pushchair beside her, waiting for the nausea to pass.
She’s not sure how long she sat there before someone called her name, followed by the jingle of change in Gerry’s pocket that clanged with every bouncy step he took.
‘Fenna? Have you seen Theo and Rosie? Marianne is desperate to talk with him.’
Hearing Theo’s name made her throw up into a bush. She quickly wiped her face with one of Raffi’s muslins.
Gerry’s eyes widened. ‘Fenna? Are you ok? I hope it wasn’t the seafood canapés. Wait . . . what’s happened?’ He stared at the blood on her hands. ‘Are you hurt?’
Whilst waiting for her to answer, Marianne appeared.
‘Why is there blood all over your arms, Fenna?’ Marianne gasped, looking at Gerry for answers.
Fenna managed to point at the cottage. The front door left wide open. ‘I took his pulse. I had to check if he was alive.’
Moments later, her mother-in-law let out an animalistic roar. The sound will haunt her forever. Marianne collapsed at the sight of her son murdered in the kitchen.
The police arrived and Theo was taken away in an unmarked ambulance, a white sheet covering his bloodied body.
Marianne was being given oxygen in another.
Gerry went with his wife to the nearest hospital.
The lake house was quickly sealed off as a crime scene.
Fenna, as a key witness, was brought to the police station.
Luke will go home with the children, once the police have spoken to him and all the guests.
‘Respirare.’ The officer hands her another tissue once she’s recounted everything. Breathe.
Fenna wipes her eyes, catching sight of the dried blood that’s transferred onto her trembling hand.
They’ve taken samples as evidence. This isn’t some exhausted, out-of-body experience she is having, a sort of psychosis brought on by lack of sleep.
The door to the sweltering interview room opens and Giovanni appears. Gone is his usual relaxed demeanour.
‘Any news?’ Fenna asks, leaping to her feet at the sombre look on his handsome face.
‘I’ve heard from the hospital. I’m afraid Marianne Fraser is not in a great way. They think she’s had a heart attack. She has been rushed into surgery, I’ve asked that we’re kept updated on her condition but it’s not sounding great.’
Fenna’s stomach swoops. This is all too much to take in. Theo is dead. Marianne could die from the shock.
‘We need to get to the bottom of what’s happened tonight.’
‘I told your colleagues all I know,’ Fenna explains. ‘I saw Theo run down the garden, and Rosie followed him soon after. I didn’t see where they went. It must have been around twenty minutes later when I made my way to the lake house. I was hoping to talk to Theo about something.’
She was furious that Theo could ignore his big brother’s pleas for help. It all feels pointless now, getting fired up about him not lending them money.
‘Rosie’s shoes were by the door but I didn’t see her. Then I found his body . . .’ She swallows.
The officers at the scene spoke animatedly about something they’d found in one of the bedrooms, but quickly stopped talking when they realised Fenna understood Italian. There was no sign of Rosie at the lake house.
‘Have you arrested her?’ she asks. ‘Is that why she’s here?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Giovanni says apologetically.
‘Is there anything that’s happened on your holiday that we need to know about?’ the female officer asks. ‘Anything that might give us a clue as to why your brother-in-law was killed?’
Fenna picks up the room-temperature glass of water.
Her hand is still trembling. ‘Rosie told me a few days ago that her father was the school teacher in charge of the trip when Danielle Dixon went missing. Her dad thought one of the Frasers knew what happened. She came here to try to hunt for clues that her dad’s theory was right. ’
Giovanni stays silent. He’s heard all of this before.
‘So Rosie discovered Theo was involved and killed him?’ the female officer suggests, flicking her gaze at Giovanni. He gives nothing away.
Fenna wraps her arms around herself. Has Rosie played them all? Was her intention all along to commit murder?
‘Theo wasn’t in Laprezia that summer.’ Fenna blinks. ‘None of this makes sense.’
‘She has means, a motive, and an opportunity,’ the female officer says, putting her pen down on the table. Case closed. ‘There is one suspect in my mind. His fiancée looks guilty as hell.’
‘Could someone else have gone into the lake house and killed Theo?’ Giovanni asks Fenna, ignoring his colleague. ‘There were plenty of people at the party.’
She remembers the feeling of being watched. Was someone else lurking nearby? Someone capable of murder?
‘It’s possible . . .’ Her voice is barely more than a painful croak. ‘But who would want Theo dead?’