Chapter 42

42

This is ours." Jo hovers in the doorway of the room, as if reluctant to go inside.

Elin can see why. Seth's stuff is everywhere—shoes, sportswear, a pair of swim shorts slung over one of the chairs. She glances down at the large case on the bed, a smaller bag on the floor beside it.

"My bag." Jo follows her gaze. "I started packing. We were planning to leave once you'd taken our statements." She glances around. "Seth hadn't got any of his things together. Always waits until the last minute." Another strangled cry emerges and this time she can't control it.

"We'll be as quick as we can." Awkwardly, Elin walks over to the desk, acutely aware of Jo quietly crying behind her, the sound muffled against her tissue. It's the only part of the room that's neat, with a water bottle, a glass, and a notepad on top of a white folder containing information about the hotel. To the left of the folder there's an open laptop, the screen dark.

"The laptop's mine." Jo steps into the room. "Seth doesn't use it."

"Did he bring one?"

She shakes her head. "He was trying to have a week off work."

"And his phone? Did he have it with him this morning?"

"I think so. Goes everywhere with him. We're as bad as each other." She gestures at the cable dangling from the wall. "It'd be here if it were anywhere."

Wandering toward the bathroom, Elin puts her head around the door. The tangy citrus scent of the LUMEN toiletries lingers in the air, bubbles of foam still sticking to the floor of the shower. On the unit around the sink there's a toiletry bag, and Elin quickly rummages through. Nothing controversial—aftershave, razor, spare blades.

Back in the room, Steed's rooting through the wardrobe. Elin joins him, finding the hanging section half stripped of clothes. The ones left are clearly Seth's—smarter shirts for evening, a few T-shirts.

Steed gestures to the top shelf. Two black holdalls, an expensive Finnish brand—a good, solid stainless-steel zipper, rip-proof fabric.

"Those are Seth's," Jo affirms, watching Steed pull them down. She's still talking about him in the present tense and it rubs, a strange friction against how they saw him last: lying lifeless on the tarpaulin in the shack.

Placing the bags on the bed, Steed unzips the smaller one. "Only a few receipts."

Elin picks up the larger one, immediately noticing something strange—the bag feels unbalanced, the right-hand side sagging slightly.

Searching through the interior and side pockets, Elin finds nothing until her eyes alight on the front two pockets; a larger, zippered one and a smaller Velcro one on top. With a growing sense of unease, she checks them—empty as expected; an optical illusion, designed to draw the gaze away from the additional width on this side of the bag.

"Oldest trick in the book reinvented," Steed murmurs.

She nods, pulse picking up. Not a concealed base, but a side.

Jo's watching her anxiously. "Have you found something?"

"Possibly." Elin runs her hand along the bottom side seam, feeling the panel beneath give ever so slightly. Hooking her finger up, she lifts the panel to find a zipper hidden underneath. She tugs it backward and slides her hand into the side pocket.

Her fingertips touch plastic—a thin bag, the contents solid inside.

Tugging it down, she slides the bag out through the narrow opening. It's transparent, so she can see what's inside: three large rolls of cash, held together with an elastic band.

A picture is building. Slowly but surely .

"Do you know why Seth would have this much cash on him?" Elin holds up the bag.

"No." Jo fiddles with one of the friendship bands looping her wrist. "He carries cash, but not like that." On the last word, her voice trembles.

Elin turns to Steed. "Can you bag it and then take another look to make sure we haven't missed anything?"

Nodding, he moves closer to the bag, pushes his hand inside the pocket, right up into the corner seam. A frown. "There's something here, flush with the seam."

He withdraws his hand. A glimmer of metal beneath the spotlights overhead.

Elin knows what it is even before he fully pulls it out.

A carabiner.

Why would Seth go out of his way to hide a carabiner?

Steed passes it to her. As she traces the loop of metal with her fingers, the hazy outline of a thought rises up and out of her subconscious.

"Was Seth planning on climbing while he was here?"

Jo shakes her head. "Not as far as I know."

The back of Elin's neck prickles as the thought fleshes out. Briefly closing her eyes, she's suddenly back there, on the rocks, sun scorching her face as she'd stepped sideways...

That's it , she thinks.

But the idea renders her mute.

Impossible. A leap of her imagination, surely?

Yet her mind starts putting other, disparate strands together—what Hana told her about someone leaving the lodge, her niggles about the CCTV...

She replays the image in her mind; what she'd seen and the assumption she'd made from that. Possibly the wrong assumption.

"Thanks for this," she says to Jo, slipping the carabiner into an evidence bag. "I know it's hard, us asking questions when you haven't even had time to process the news."

Jo nods, her eyes on the carabiner. "You're finished?"

"Yes, but in light of what's happened, I'm afraid I'm going to need you all to stay a little longer."

"Of course. I—" Jo stops.

"What is it?" Elin's thrown by the stricken expression on her face. Not only grief, but confusion.

"There is something, about Seth. What you asked before, if he'd behaved differently. Well, he had, but only because of what's been happening. The past six months or so, he's been getting emails. Nasty stuff."

Steed glances at her, raising an eyebrow. "What about?" he asks.

"He wouldn't show me, but I got the gist. Spoiled rich kid. Walking over people . Things about his father too. How he was a bully, had ruined people's lives, stopped them moving on... random stuff. Seth didn't make much of it, he's had his fair share of people having a go, but even so, I could tell it had gotten to him."

"Any idea who might have been sending them?"

A hesitation, as Elin knew there would be: there had to be a reason that Jo didn't tell her this from the beginning.

"Please," Elin says gently. "You need to be honest. It's the only way we're going to be able to find out what's happened to Seth."

Jo nods. "Part of me wondered... ," she begins. "Part of me wondered if it might be Maya." A flush has appeared on her neck and begun creeping up her cheeks.

"Maya?"

"Yes. Seth turned her down for a job a few months ago. It's been messy. To be honest, it was a bad idea to suggest it, I shouldn't have got involved."

"But why would Maya feel so strongly about it?"

"Because of what happened. Maya got offered the job by one of the junior managers. We're friends, so I went to him directly rather than to Seth. I knew what he'd say. Seth found out, pulled the whole thing, said it wasn't a good idea to mix work and family. Maya... well, she lost her flat a few months later. Couldn't make the rent."

"So you think Maya may have done this out of spite?" Steed asks, dropping his voice a notch.

"I don't know." Jo shrugs. "I feel stupid now, saying it. Maya's probably got nothing to do with it. I mean, there was stuff about his dad, too, and Maya doesn't even know him. Please don't say anything."

Elin looks at Steed, her first thought: So why mention it? Why even contemplate the possibility if you didn't think there was a chance it might be true?

"I won't, but we'll need to speak to both Maya and Hana before we go."

"Okay," Jo replies, but Elin's not sure if she's even heard her, her eyes fixed on Steed as he picks up the money and the carabiner, slips them into his bag.

—

Once they've left the villa, Steed shakes his head. "What do you make of that?"

"Interesting. The cash we found starts to make the drugs angle look pretty spot-on."

"And the carabiner?" He gives her a sideways glance. "You've got a theory, haven't you?"

Elin nods, wary about voicing it yet, bursting the bubble before she's had a chance to ascertain whether it's even a possibility. "It's to do with where we found Bea Leger's body. If it's all right, I'm going to check it out while you speak to Hana, Maya, and Caleb."

Steed nods, but Elin senses his unease, the unanswered questions in his eyes.