Chapter 33 Kate

33 KATE

NOW

Kate watches Camilla dart into the kitchen and vomit loudly into the sink. Her own reaction to Darcy’s land mine is less explosive—she feels her entire body grow numb, a creeping paralysis. She feels herself grow tiny, a speck on the armchair in which she sits, shrinking, shrinking. She can’t speak, can’t move.

Camilla returns, weeping into her hand, but instead of sitting down again she heads toward the door. Darcy lunges for her, firmly steering her back toward the sofa.

“Whoa there,” Darcy says. “Let’s not be too hasty….”

“I’ll kill him!” Camilla shrieks in her face. “Rob Marlowe from villa three killed my brother!”

Kate slowly feels herself return to her body, moving her fingers to check that the paralysis has left. Rob Marlowe, the brute who attacked Antoni in the restaurant. He’s the man in the photograph. The man Adrian suspects as the second killer in the guesthouse.

She remembers what the psychologist taught her. Focus on your breaths . They feel very faint, her lungs like small balloons. Gradually, she is able to speak.

“When did Adrian send this to you?” she asks Darcy, her voice thin, high-pitched.

“Two and a half weeks ago,” Darcy says, visibly rattled by Camilla’s reaction.

“Two and a half weeks?” Camilla yells, and Kate reaches out to take her hand. Camilla pulls away as though she’s been burned, but she manages to gather herself a little.

“Please,” Darcy begs. “Let me explain. There’s a good reason for it, I promise.”

Camilla sits slowly, perched on the edge of the seat as though about to spring up again at any moment. Kate is still as a stone, her mind working hard to stay present. She can feel the fear nudging at her, her body aching to stiffen, lock her safely away from harm.

“Adrian sent this to me at the end of August,” Darcy says, her tone earnest. “My reaction was like yours, Camilla. I wanted to go after him, hunt him down. Adrian talked me down. He said he still had information to gather and I needed to wait. But what he did know was that Rob was going on honeymoon to the Maldives. And I had wanted to book a divorce trip anyway, with the two of you. So when I heard he was coming here, I just… booked it. Just in case.”

“In case of what?” Kate asks.

Darcy contemplates that. “When I saw the photo, I just knew,” she says. “Adrian warned me not to do anything until he’d completed his investigation, but I just had this gut instinct that Rob Marlowe was the second killer. The missing piece of the puzzle.”

“You didn’t send it straight to the police?” Camilla asks, wiping tears away. Her face is streaked with mascara.

“After the mess they made of the investigation first time round?” Darcy says. “Obviously not.”

“Let me get this straight,” Camilla says, anger swelling in her voice. “You find the person who slaughtered my brother in cold blood, and then instead of—oh, I don’t know— ringing me and Kate or calling the police, you book a holiday for the three of us to the same island he’ll be on for his honeymoon.”

Darcy holds her gaze, then looks away. Kate’s anger subsides. She knows what a complicated emotion grief is. Oh, how she knows.

“Do you see what I’m struggling with?” Camilla asks no one in particular, gesticulating wildly. A vein pulses in the center of her forehead.

“I thought it was… an opportunity,” Darcy says, bowing her head. “Or fate, even. We’re here, on a tiny island, away from our families. He’s on his honeymoon. The last thing he’ll be expecting is the three of us.”

“Hold on,” Kate says. “Expecting? The three of us?”

“I thought we could speak to him,” Darcy whispers. “Look, OK. I misjudged this. But I knew if I told you this back in the UK you’d either want to wait for more evidence, or want to drive to his house and cut his balls off.”

Camilla throws her head back and gives a wicked, unhinged laugh.

“At least here,” Darcy continues, “he has nowhere to hide. We’ve got him cornered.”

“When you say ‘speak to him,’?” Kate asks Darcy, “what exactly did you have in mind?”

Darcy sighs and presses her hands to her cheeks. “I don’t know. Find out the truth? This isn’t exactly a normal situation, is it?”

“We could confront him,” Camilla says, the wheels of her mind visibly turning. “The three of us.”

Kate can’t believe what she’s hearing. “Have you failed to notice that the man is a tank?” she says. “And we’re potentially talking about someone capable of killing six people.”

“His guard is down,” Darcy repeats. “He’s on his honeymoon. That’s the beauty of all of this.”

Kate feels sickened by this choice of words. “The beauty ?” she says, her mind turning to Jade. This is terrible for Jade, too.

Darcy sighs. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I’m going to be honest with you, Darcy,” Camilla says, wiping mascara off her face. “I’m so pissed off with you right now.”

“I am, too,” Kate says. “Disappointed, really. Overwhelmed. I thought this was just a lovely trip to celebrate your new chapter. But that wasn’t really the case, was it?”

“And today’s the anniversary!” Camilla says, fresh tears brimming in her eyes. “The fucking anniversary! And now you tell us that we’re really here to confront someone who may have killed my twin brother!”

She rises and starts to pace, exhaling loudly and shaking out her hands.

“I’m sorry,” Darcy says, chastened. “I thought… God, I don’t know what I was thinking. It made sense in the moment….”

“Bullshit,” Camilla says, turning. “You don’t drop fifty grand on a trip to the Maldives without an idea of what you’re doing.”

Darcy sinks into her chair, presses her face into her hands, and sobs. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“What’s done is done,” Kate says quietly, resigning herself to it.

The silence in the room is thick as steel. Kate keeps a close eye on Camilla, aware that she’s about a minute away from heading out to find Rob.

“Adrian’s going to talk to us?” Kate asks Darcy. “Via Zoom, I take it? Or is he here, too?”

“Yeah, who else is on the island?” Camilla rejoins bitterly. “My ex-husbands? You going to tell me my mother-in-law is sipping a Manhattan in the Jacuzzi?”

“We’re meeting Adrian on Zoom,” Darcy says quietly. “And… if you like, I can book us a transfer to a different resort. Or a flight home, whichever you prefer.”

Camilla gives a loud scoff, still on her feet.

“I think it would be best if we hear what Adrian has to say,” Kate says. “For all we know, Rob is completely innocent!”

There’s enough emotion swirling in the air just now. She thinks of Jade, of how an innocent newlywed could get caught in the crossfire of all this. But perhaps Kate’s being naive, too trusting. Darcy had a point about the scene in the restaurant—Jade had approached Antoni, knowing that Rob was already riled.

Camilla turns and heads for the door.

“Camilla,” Kate calls after her, a note of warning in her voice.

“I’m not going to kill Rob bloody Marlowe!” Camilla calls back. “I just need to clear my head.”