Sergeant Sorensen gets a call saying that the detective has been delayed. For now, she is still in charge. She watches the techs as they work, quickly and efficiently. No matter how careful someone is, she knows, it’s very hard these days to get away without leaving a trace of evidence of what they’ve done.
She follows the technicians around the hotel as they put out their careful little markers and take their laborious photographs. She hovers over them while they study the bodies, one after the other, and mutter to each other as they work. It will be a while yet before the bodies can be moved, although they are working as quickly as they can.
Now she’s outside, watching them pore over the area in the snow where Bradley died. Bright floodlights have been set up in the late afternoon; the effect is almost blinding.
‘Looks like he was hit once, on the back of the head,’ one of the techs says. ‘The blow was strong enough, and heavy enough, to kill him.’
Now one of the other techs waves her closer. ‘Look at this,’ he says.
She looks closely as he bends over and points at something in the snow. But she can’t see anything. She adjusts her glasses upwards a bit, to get the full effect of her trifocals. ‘I don’t see anything,’ she says.
The tech bends forward again, and using a pair of tweezers, removes something tiny from deeper in the snow and holds it up for her. It’s a small diamond earring. No wonder she couldn’t see it.
‘Are you telling me that that was underneath the body?’ she says.
The technician nods. ‘It was frozen into the snow, so it can’t have been here long. Only since the snowfall on Friday night. And it’s a pierced earring. Ought to be able to get some satisfactory DNA off of that.’
‘So it’s a woman,’ Sorensen says, unable to hide her surprise.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Good work.’
Back inside, Sorensen asks Ian Beeton to come with her into the dining room to answer some more questions. She doesn’t look at him when she asks for him. She notices the others stir in expectation.
Ian, pale and shaken, lurches his way into the dining room.
She asks him to sit, reminds him that he is still under caution, and he drops as if his knees have buckled beneath him.
‘I’ve got a couple of more questions for you, Ian,’ she says.
He looks at her, his eyes wide with fear.
She holds up a little clear plastic evidence bag and places it on the white linen of the dining table. ‘Have you ever seen this earring before?’
He looks down at it, as if struck dumb. Whatever he was expecting, it obviously wasn’t this.
‘Do you recognize it?’ she asks.
He nods slowly. ‘It’s Lauren’s. I mean, it looks like the ones she was wearing …’
‘When was the last time you saw her wearing it?’
He sits back in his chair, aware now of what is being asked of him. ‘Where did you find it?’
She doesn’t answer; she waits.
‘She was wearing that pair yesterday, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘She was wearing them yesterday.’
‘Okay.’ Sorensen made a point of noticing when she came through the lobby that Lauren isn’t wearing any earrings now. But Beverly and Gwen both are. She knows that none of them would have had the opportunity to go back up to their rooms to get another pair, if they’d lost one. ‘Did you happen to notice when she stopped wearing them?’
He shakes his head and whispers, ‘No.’
They all watch warily as Sergeant Sorensen returns to the lobby. They’ve been on tenterhooks since Ian returned, white and silent, to the lobby and sat down, clearly shaken.
Lachlan stands beside Sorensen, ready with a pair of handcuffs.
David notices how still everyone is, how alert. He feels his heartbeat escalate as they come to stand in front of Lauren.
‘Please stand,’ the sergeant says to Lauren.
Lauren rises, visibly trembling.
The sergeant says in a firm voice, ‘Lauren Day, you are under arrest for the murder of Bradley Harwood …’
David tunes out the rest; as they read Lauren her rights, he’s watching her. She opens her mouth to protest but it looks as if she can barely breathe. She throws a panicked glance at Ian, but he’s unresponsive; he seems too shocked to react.
Then Lauren turns to David, her eyes full of panic. She needs someone in her corner; she needs an attorney. But when she looks at him, he meets her eyes only briefly, then turns away. He sees the others’ faces, stunned at the turn of events.
When Ian hears the handcuffs click as they lock around Lauren’s wrists, he feels physically sick.
This can’t be right, Ian thinks, his heart pounding in his chest. He can’t believe it. This can’t be happening. He runs his hands agitatedly through his hair.
She seems so normal.
He thought it was Matthew who had killed everyone – born with a silver spoon in his mouth, maybe he’d killed his fiancée after an argument and then tried to cover it up with the natural arrogance of the born rich. Maybe Candice and Bradley knew something, and he’d had to keep them quiet. But it hadn’t been Matthew at all. Matthew is a victim; he has lost the woman he loves. Ian looks at him now and feels terrible for him; he will never be the same.
Ian will never be the same either. None of them will ever be the same.
He has a sudden bout of dizziness, fights another wave of nausea. Maybe the police have made a mistake. Surely Lauren did not kill all these people. What possible reason could she have?
He looks at her again, her lips now pressed in a tight line, her eyes closed. And suddenly he knows it’s true. He can’t stop staring at her, wondering what’s going on behind those closed eyelids. He realizes that he does not know her at all.
He tells himself that he has made a very narrow escape. He shudders. They have spent months together. He’d thought he was falling in love with her.
Matthew watches the police arrest Lauren. He doesn’t know what evidence they have, but he trusts the police. They must have good reason for arresting her. He is filled with inexpressible grief and rage, but also relief. Relief that he is no longer suspected of killing his fiancée. He takes one instinctive step towards Lauren and stops. She’s the one who murdered Dana! It was her. He can hardly believe it. She’s the one who pushed Dana down the stairs and hit her head at the bottom to make sure she was dead. And then, for a time, she allowed everyone to believe that he had probably done it. He’d almost wanted to kill himself out of despair and fear.
‘Why did you kill her?’ he demands, his voice loud with anguish.
‘Please step back, sir,’ the sergeant says.
Lauren’s eyes fly open and she looks back at Matthew with desperation. ‘I didn’t kill her!’ she cries. ‘I didn’t kill anyone! They’ve got it wrong. This is all a mistake. It wasn’t me!’ She turns frantically to Ian. Surely he will help her. ‘Ian, tell them! Tell them it’s not me!’
But he looks back at her strangely, as if he’s afraid of her. What did he say to the police just a few minutes ago, when he was in the dining room? What does he know? He can’t know anything!
David steps forward and cautions her. ‘Don’t say anything. Not a word.’
Chapter Thirty-six
Sunday, 5:45 PM
LAUREN LOOKS INTO David’s eyes – and they aren’t the eyes of someone who believes her, someone who will protect her. She collapses to the floor, handcuffed, and closes her eyes again. They let her stay there on the floor, leaning against the sofa; she hears them talking in low voices in the background.
She’s not going to tell them anything. She has the right to remain silent and she’s going to use it.
When Ian invited her up here for a naughty weekend, she had no idea what was going to happen. None of it was planned.