Chapter 24 Camilla

24 CAMILLA

SIX MONTHS AGO

She waited until the front door clicked shut behind Bernie before opening the lid of her laptop. Meeting with friends for a drink, my arse , she thought. Camilla wished he’d just be honest about it. Just say, Look, I’m having an affair with Lucia. I still like you, and I like living here together, but I want to shag Lucia sometimes.

She was of a mind these days that maybe some relationships worked better when they were open. She and Bernie had been married for almost two decades, and it worked well, apart from the sex bit. They weren’t interested in each other that way, hadn’t been for years. Fond of each other, but not in love.

She hadn’t told Bernie about Darcy and Kate, about the Zoom meetings they’d been having. She had told him about Cameron, that he was murdered in a massacre back in 2001. Like everyone else, Bernie was astonished he’d never heard of it.

“A massacre ? Here, in England?”

Camilla had shown him the newspaper reports. There were many of them, but she explained that the day after the guesthouse killings, two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan. Social media, smartphones… they didn’t exist. The massacre went under the radar.

It had its benefits: the families of the victims were spared some of the intrusions that tend to accompany highly publicized trials. The police had their man, a fifty-eight-year-old pedophile named Hugh Fraser, and he was dead after serving just a month of his sentence.

Natasha knew a little more about Cameron’s death. When Natasha was born, Camilla decided she didn’t want her to grow up not knowing Cameron. It was unthinkable to her; he was Natasha’s uncle, and she would know him every bit as well as if he were still alive.

So Camilla told Natasha about Motsi, and about setting up the Facebook group. She told her that she had become friends with Kate, the sole survivor, and Darcy, who was as grief-stricken as Camilla and felt so passionately about the Facebook page that she’d asked to be an admin. But Camilla didn’t want her daughter to know that they were going back over the case, that they suspected someone was still out there who might have been involved in the killings. And she didn’t tell her about Adrian. This omission was more out of protection than anything else. Camilla knew they were drifting toward potentially dangerous territory. They were searching for someone who had played a part in the violent murders of six people. Was she up for it? She didn’t quite know.

But then her mind turned to that terrible night, her phone ringing, her brother’s voice. The terror in it…

The guy next door… he’s… he’s been stabbed…. I don’t know what to do….

Camilla opened her Zoom app and joined the meeting. In a moment, Kate and Darcy appeared on her screen, both in their usual spots: Kate at her dining table, a picture of an old ruin behind her; Darcy in her study, a floor-to-ceiling oak bookcase in the background. Very cultured. Camilla owned a single shelf of books, all of them about Pilates. She much preferred exercise to reading.

“Evening, all,” Kate said. One of her cats, the white Persian named Agatha, cruised across the screen. Hitchcock, the small black one, spread along the top of Kate’s chair.

“Evening,” Darcy said.

“Darcy, how you feeling, love?” Camilla asked.

Darcy gave an uncertain nod of her head. “I’ve definitely had better weeks.”

“You’re near the end, now,” Kate said encouragingly. She and Camilla had both received WhatsApp updates about Darcy’s divorce. Jacob would only communicate with her now through his solicitor, even over minor things.

“He’s contesting spousal support again,” Darcy said weakly. “I’m thinking of selling the house.”

“God, no,” Camilla said.

“Didn’t he want you to sell the house originally?” Kate asked, and Darcy nodded. She reached for a tissue, growing upset.

“I told him it was unfair to the boys,” she said. “This is hard enough on them without losing the place they grew up in. Ben and Ed were born in the front room, for God’s sake. Jacob relented, but now he’s giving me no choice. The solicitor’s fees are astronomical….”

“Darcy…,” Camilla said, soothingly.

Darcy recovered and braved a smile. “Anyway, that’s not why we’re meeting, is it? Sorry…”

“No need to apologize,” Camilla said. “He’s putting you through the mill.”

“Are you sure you want to do this today, Darcy?” Kate asked, and Camilla rolled her eyes.

“Yes, definitely,” Darcy said. “I told Adrian to log on at ten past, just to give us time to chat beforehand.

“Oh, here he is now,” she said then. In the fourth square, a man’s face came into view. He was sitting in an office with a black filing cabinet behind him, a wall unit filled with plants and books. Adrian wore glasses and was bald, and his nose appeared to have been broken. She could see the collar of a navy polo shirt, white stubble, and ear hair. He struck Camilla as being in his mid-to-late sixties. Retired. A shaving cut below his jaw. Single, then.

“Hello,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

“We can, Adrian,” Kate said. “Lovely to meet you at last.”

“So, we have Kate, Camilla, and Darcy,” he said, reading the names on the screen. A London accent , Camilla thought, though he could be dialing in from anywhere. “How are you all doing?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Camilla said.

“Well, this is quite a different kind of investigation,” Adrian said. “Quite… traumatic, I’m assuming.”

“Very,” Camilla said sharply. “Darcy tells us you used to be a detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police?”

Adrian nodded. “Thirty years. I served as an IO—that’s an investigating officer—a homicide family liaison officer, and a case officer during twelve years on the Met’s Specialist Crime and Operations Command, dealing with high-profile murders in London.”

“Impressive,” Kate said.

“And you’ve been doing private investigating for twelve years?” Camilla asked tentatively.

“Yes,” Adrian said with a proud grin. “Your case is quite unusual, but it has similar elements to other cases I’ve worked on in the past.”

Camilla felt a weight lift from her shoulders. She had worried that the case had too many moving parts, that it was too long ago for anyone to tackle. But Adrian sounded confident, and capable.

“I’ve started making inquiries into the original canvassing operation,” he said. “I can see it was quite thin on the ground.”

“It was pathetic,” Camilla said, and he chuckled.

“The main thing I want to focus on in the first phase of this investigation is who was in the area that night. What CCTV footage was gathered. And I’d really like to find a way to look into the forensic analysis.”

“How easy will that be?” Kate asked. She sounded skeptical.

Adrian weighed it up, pursing his lips. “Under the Freedom of Information Act, I should be able to get most of it.”

“Most of it?” Camilla asked. “What do you mean?”

“If they lock certain files, it’ll take a bit more work. But leave it with me. I think your main goal is to gather enough evidence to persuade the police to open the case, correct?”

“Correct,” the three of them said in unison. Camilla felt her heart pound. The thought that this might be possible, that the light of truth might finally fall on her brother’s murder… it made her well up.

“You know, Adrian,” she found herself saying, “even if it turns out that Fraser was the only killer, I’ll be fine with it.”

He nodded. “I see.”

“For my part, I just want to know what really happened. I want to know that the investigation has been done thoroughly, with care.”

“You didn’t get the sense that the original investigation was comprehensive, I take it?”

She shook her head, noticing that Darcy and Kate were doing the same.

“No. Absolutely not,” Kate said.

“Well, the timing is a bit unfortunate,” Adrian said. “I’ll bet that 9/11 resulted in most of the uniformed officers in Dover being sent to patrol the ports. Counterterrorism was a priority, as you can imagine. So if the police already had someone confessing to the murders…”

He trailed off, but Camilla understood. She blew out her cheeks, frustrated all over again.

“But not to worry,” Adrian said. “I think I have everything I need. It will take about six to eight months, I believe.”

“Six to eight months!” Camilla exclaimed.

“This is a big case,” he said. “I promise to get in touch if anything comes up sooner.”

“Thank you,” Camilla said before logging off. She leaned her forehead to the desk, feeling her body shake with adrenaline. So many emotions still buried under the skin.

But, for the first time in a long while, there was something else stirring there.

A fragment of hope.