there, he had let Gemma take charge.
John took a deep breath. That had been just three weeks earlier. He had relived that memory on those nights when Gemma wasn’t there, and he had waited for it to happen again. And it had, whenever Henry allowed it.
‘You’re daydreaming again.’
‘Uh-huh?’ John said, and then he realised that Gemma was talking to him. He laughed and splashed some water towards her. She giggled and squeezed on the hose, sending a jet of water towards the stains on the floor from whatever had been in the van, before flicking it upwards, laughing with him, sending an arc of water towards him. John threw some more water at her, dunking his cloth and splashing her, her pink skin visible through the wet cloth.
Gemma jumped down from the van and put her hand on her hips, as she mocked up a stern look. John flicked some more water towards her, making her shriek out, laughing.
She must have heard the voices first, because her laughter disappeared, and as she turned around, John followed her gaze, and then he heard them too, excited laughter and shouts. There were other people in the house. They must have arrived when they were at the shop.
There were people coming out of the house, shaking hands with Arni and walking towards two old cars parked further along the farm track. John hadn’t noticed them before. John counted nine of them, and they looked like the type of people in the photographs that adorned the walls. Mohican haircuts, long scruffy jumpers, hobnailed boots. White boys in dreadlocks and small wispy beards.
‘What’s going on?’ John said.
‘Probably a planning meeting,’ Gemma said.
‘What for?’
Gemma looked at him and blushed. She glanced over at Arni and then shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because not everyone knows,’ she said, and then smiled. ‘It’s going to be a big surprise when it happens though.’
John looked back towards the group. As they got nearer to their cars, Arni turned towards him.
John waved. Arni stared back, and even though he was a distance away, the coldness of his eyes made John lower his hand and turn away.
Chapter Fourteen
Sheldon cricked his neck as he got closer to the Incident Room. He had left Christina, Billy’s housekeeper, with Tracey. A woman-to-woman talk might elicit more information.
He had spoken to Jim Kelly to try and get him to delay the story, but Kelly hadn’t been interested. He had a failing paper to keep in business, and so the sensitivities around Billy Privett’s death didn’t matter to him.
Billy Privett’s story was inextricably mixed up with Alice Kenyon’s, and her murder hung around the local police like a stain on the uniform. Now that Billy was dead, all the mystery surrounding Alice Kenyon’s murder would burst to the fore again, and with Jim Kelly ready to write his story for the paper, he expected it to be on the front page.
For Sheldon, though, it had never gone away.
He saw Alice’s dead body when he least expected it, during his quieter moments and when he thought he was a long way from his job. Reading the newspaper, sitting in the park. And it wasn’t just Alice. He remembered all of them. Young women murdered by random strangers. Men punched and stamped to death outside nightclubs, just because they looked at someone the wrong way. Victims of domestic abuse who endured years of beatings until finally he went too far, and all those lost chances to get away came to nothing. Or old men battered in their homes for the contents of their dead wives’ jewellery boxes. Lives ended by violence, all leaving extra victims. The grieving mothers, and husbands and wives, or children who grow up never knowing their mother or father. The injustices stayed with Sheldon, and his memories seemed like a film on fast forward, speeding glimpses of limp flesh or blood-soaked clothing, except that with every year, with every new case, the film just got faster, so that he couldn’t make out the faces anymore. It was just a stream of images, like a flicker book. Pink. Brown. Fat. Thin. But at the end of all of it was Alice Kenyon.
He looked up and realised that he had stopped walking. He was standing in the corridor, his fists clenched so hard that his fingernails dug into his palms, making small crescent cuts in the skin.
He scrambled in his pocket for his pills, his blue saviours. He popped one into his mouth and swallowed. It seemed to catch in his throat, but he kept on gulping to force it down. Tugging at his cuffs, he told himself that he was ready to do this, and then walked into the Incident Room.
People watched him as he went in. The corpse had been confirmed as Billy Privett by fingerprints, and the mood seemed different to earlier in the day, as if everyone had felt the spotlight turn on them, making them more earnest.
Duncan Lowther was at the other end of the room.
‘CCTV?’ Sheldon shouted.
Lowther looked up and then pointed towards his computer monitor. ‘I’m going through the footage now. I’ve got it on here, if you want to see it.’
Sheldon nodded that he did and went to stand behind Lowther’s shoulder, other detectives crowding round.
‘The hotel only records the lobby,’ Lowther said. ‘It gets used a lot for conferences, and not many people will want to stay in a hotel that might film them room hopping.’ He moved the footage back quickly, so that the woman behind the reception desk seemed to vibrate. ‘This is Billy checking in,’ and he let it play at normal speed.
Sheldon watched as Billy moved into shot. He looked like he was trying to hide his appearance. He was wearing a baseball cap low onto his brow and sunglasses, so that he just drew attention to himself in the opulent surroundings of the lobby.
‘Why were you there, Billy?’ Sheldon said to the screen.
‘It’s more about why he was keeping it such a secret,’ Lowther said.
‘What about later on, nearer the time when he was murdered? Is there anyone unusual coming into the hotel?’
‘I haven’t gone through all of it. I’ve got a list of every guest and their checking-in time, and so I’m looking at that to get a description. Every time someone appears on the screen, I work out who it is, and note down what they are doing. By the time I’ve finished, I should have accounted for every guest and worked out if there is anyone in the hotel who isn’t a paying guest.’
‘And once you’ve done that?’
‘I check out each one, and look for someone giving false details.’ Lowther smiled. ‘That’s the fun part, because I can bet that we’ll drag at least a couple of people in who gave false addresses to keep their stay secret. You can’t beat the twitch of a cheating spouse to brighten your afternoon.’ When Sheldon scowled a rebuke, Lowther added, ‘We’ve been getting plenty of calls from the press.’
‘Speak to the Press Officer and make it official then,’ Sheldon said. ‘Have we had any fresh information about Billy since the news broke?’
‘Just a few calls about his lifestyle, but nothing we didn’t know. We’ve
