A Meditation On Murder

‘So can you tell me? Where were you at 6pm yesterday?’

Paul had to think for a moment before he answered. ‘I was down at the beach. Wasn’t I, darling?’

Ann looked at her husband, uncomprehending. ‘You were?’

‘Of course I was!’ Paul said, exasperated. ‘I was with you.’

It took Ann a moment to register this fact. ‘Oh, of course!’ she eventually said. ‘That’s right. We were both down on the beach, weren’t we?’

Richard found himself briefly wondering why it took Ann so long to remember that she and Paul had been on the beach together. Had she really forgotten?

Richard turned to Ben and waited for his answer.

‘Alright,’ Ben said, ‘I was in my room. On my own.’

‘So you’re saying that no one can alibi you for about 6pm yesterday evening?’

Ben looked at Richard with the first hint of irritation.

‘That’s right. I went to my room at about five for a bit of a lie down. I’d had too much sun. I then didn’t leave my room until seven when I came down for dinner. But I don’t need an alibi, I didn’t kill Aslan Kennedy.’

‘I see,’ Richard said, making a note of this fact.

Richard decided he’d got enough from the witnesses for the moment. At the very least, he needed to corroborate what they’d so far said with Aslan’s wife, so he thanked the witnesses for their time, told them that an officer would be asking them to write out their formal statements later on, and then he went off to find Camille.

She was upstairs comforting the grieving widow in her bedroom.

Richard felt himself relax as soon as he entered Rianka and Aslan’s bedroom. The shuttered windows let in only the thinnest stripes of sunlight, the dark floorboards were polished and cool, and a ceiling fan ticked lazily overhead. There was even an aspidistra in a pot in the corner of the room, Richard noted with a sigh of quiet approval.

Camille and Rianka looked up as he entered.

‘Mrs Kennedy?’ Richard asked.

‘Please … it’s Rianka.’

Richard took a moment to consider Rianka. She was slender, her hands were elegant and long-fingered, her grey hair was fixed behind her head with two chopsticks, and while her clothes were colourful and ethnic, she herself appeared quiet and demure. Prim, even. Even so, it was easy to see the beautiful young woman who had turned into this beautiful sixty-something-year-old woman.

A woman who was now experiencing the shock of sudden grief, her cheeks tear-stained, her eyes wet with pain.

‘I’m sorry to intrude, but I do have a few questions.’

‘No … of course.’

‘I’ll be as brief as I can.’

Rianka nodded.

‘Starting maybe with last night. You see, we’ve got a witness who says that she heard a man arguing with your husband in his office yesterday at about 6pm. Do you happen to know anything about that?’

‘An argument?’

‘Apparently so. At about 6pm.’

Rianka had a good think, sorting through her confused thoughts. ‘I’m sorry. I was in the kitchens then, I don’t know anything about that.’

‘Then perhaps your husband mentioned an argument to you later on?’

‘No. Aslan didn’t argue with people. He wasn’t like that. And he definitely didn’t mention any kind of argument to me yesterday.’

Now that was interesting, Richard thought to himself. Saskia said she overheard Aslan having an argument. So why hadn’t he mentioned this fact to his wife later on?

‘Then can I ask,’ Richard continued, ‘whether or not there was a man in your husband’s study shouting at him yesterday, did anyone have any grievances against him?’

‘No, of course not. Aslan was wonderful. Everyone loved him …’

Rianka trailed off and Richard could see that something was on her mind.

‘Although?’ he prompted.

‘Well, it’s maybe nothing, but he and Dominic haven’t been getting on for a while.’

‘And who’s Dominic?’

‘The handyman. It was Dominic who brought you to the Meditation Space.’

‘Oh, him?’ Richard said, surprised.

‘Although Dominic was outside the Meditation Space when it was opened up, so I don’t see how he could be involved.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Richard said. ‘We’ll look into it. But if we come on to the events of this morning. Can I just start by asking, when did your husband get up?’

‘At sunrise. That’s when he gets up.’

‘I see. And you?’

‘I lay in bed for half an hour or so longer and then I got up as well. I had some breakfast, and then I remembered there was some sewing I could be getting on with. So I went out onto the verandah to do it.’ Rianka gathered her courage as she forced herself to remember. ‘I saw Aslan and the others go into the Meditation Space. They closed the door. And that was the last time I saw him …’

‘And do you know what time this was?’

‘I have no idea. Not really. Maybe half past seven? Or just after?’

‘Then can I ask, did you stay on the verandah the whole time your husband and the other guests were inside the Meditation Space?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you perhaps see anyone enter or leave the Meditation Space during that time?’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘Are you sure?’

Rianka seemed to piece together her memories as she spoke. ‘I could see the whole lawn. The Meditation Space is in the middle of it. The only people I saw go inside it the whole time I was on the verandah were Aslan and the five guests. And once the door was shut, it didn’t open again. Not until later on, after I heard a woman scream. And that’s when I ran …’ Rianka trailed off as the pain of her memories overwhelmed her.

‘Thank you,’ Camille said. ‘We won’t be asking anything else.’

‘Just one more question, though, if that’s alright,’ Richard said.

Camille flashed a look at Richard that might have killed a lesser man, but Richard was impervious. He had a killer to catch. And Camille should have known by now that he wouldn’t be wasting Rianka’s time unless it was important.

‘Do you have any idea how a drawing pin ended up on the floor of the Meditation Space?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Richard was surprised to see that Rianka had apparently said this without moving her mouth. And then he realised it had been his partner who’d spoken.

Ignoring the look of fire in Camille’s eyes, Richard turned back to Rianka.

‘You see, we found a drawing pin on the floor of the Meditation Space, and it could be important. After all, why would there be something as dangerous as a drawing pin left on a floor where people are walking around barefoot?’

‘I don’t understand. Are you asking me how a drawing pin got into the Meditation Space?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Then I’m sorry. I don’t know.’

‘Very well then, thank you very much for your time.’ Richard turned to his partner. ‘Camille, if Rianka’s up to it, I’d like you to take her formal statement—and then I’d like you to take the statements of the other witnesses who were in the Meditation Space.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Camille said.

Richard could tell that Camille was irritated that he’d asked the grieving widow about a drawing pin, but he refused to apologise for what he felt was a valid line of inquiry, and that was that.

Outside again in the glaring sunlight, Richard tried to make sense of what he’d learnt so far, but it was hard to get a handle on everything. After all, they’d already arrested the self-confessed killer. Surely that made it an open and shut case?

But Richard wasn’t so sure. There was a long and ignoble history of weak-minded people admitting to murders they hadn’t committed. And there was no getting away from it, Julia hadn’t behaved like any kind of murderer he’d ever met before. After all, who’d confess to a murder and then be unable to explain to the police why they did it, how they did it or where the murder weapon came from? It also didn’t help her case that the wounds to the right side of the victim’s neck and back strongly suggested that the killer had been right-handed, and Julia said she was left-handed.

And then there was the mystery of the drawing pin. Richard didn’t care that Camille thought it was irrelevant. He’d learnt long ago that the most important object at a crime scene was sometimes something entirely humdrum that wouldn’t be of interest except for the fact that it was in the wrong place. And a drawing pin that was loose on the floor in a room where people went around barefoot was definitely a humdrum object in the wrong place.

He also couldn’t shake the feeling that the location of the murder itself was important. Aslan was killed inside a locked room that was only made of paper—and in front of a load of potential witnesses—but why was he killed there?

Richard looked through a heat haze at the Meditation Space as it sat shimmering in the middle of the lawn.

What had happened in there while it was locked down?

Richard considered that maybe Julia was their killer. Maybe she wasn’t. But if she wasn’t, then that meant that one of Saskia Filbee, Paul Sellars, Ann Sellars or Ben Jenkins had in fact done it.

But why on earth would any of them want to get a carving knife and viciously slay the owner of a hotel none of them had ever visited before?

Chapter Three

‘Right then,’ Richard said when he and Camille had rejoined Dwayne back in the police station. ‘We have a killer to catch. Let’s get this up on the board.’

Richard dragged the ancient whiteboard on its juddering legs across to the centre of the room and took a moment to marvel—not for the first time—at how rudimentary the Honoré Police Station was.

There were four wooden desks for each of the station’s police officers—each with a computer on—and that was about it. Everything else that was piled around, and there was a lot of everything else, was generally broken or defunct somehow. The office noticeboard carried rotas for officers who’d long since left the station; the Wanted poster on the wall was for a man who’d apparently long since died; and there were ancient metal filing cabinets propped up around the walls like drunks at a party, their files spilling out of their drawers. And under all the mess of paperwork that littered everywhere, there were whole sedimentary layers of ancient office equipment that hadn’t been discontinued so much as abandoned in place.

Richard had come to the island of Saint-Marie just over a year ago when he’d been sent out to solve the murder of the incumbent Detective Inspector, a man called Charlie Hulme. Richard had hated the tropics from the moment he’d stepped off the plane, but he’d consoled himself at the time with the knowledge that he’d be able to go home just as soon as he’d solved the case.

But Richard hadn’t been counting on the political manoeuvrings of the island’s Commissioner of Police, Selwyn Hamilton, and by the time that Charlie Hulme’s killer had been caught, Richard was astounded to learn that he’d been invited to stay on as the island’s Detective Inspector.

Richard had been horrified, not least because it finally confirmed a suspicion he’d held for many years that his Superintendent back in Croydon had been trying to get rid of him. But now that Richard had had this fact confirmed, he decided that he was too proud to ask for his old job back. As far as Richard was concerned, no one should ever be made to beg to go back to Croydon. So, instead, he accepted the job on Saint-Marie as a stop-gap and spent every subsequent spare moment he had applying for jobs that would allow him to go back to a different station in the UK.

But a strange thing happened as the months passed, not that Richard was anything more than dimly aware of it. Because, separated from a Metropolitan Police hierarchy that he’d never quite fitted into—and now surrounded by a talented team who seemed to forgive him his idiosyncrasies while championing his strengths—Richard had finally started to find the sort of success that had proved so elusive in the UK.

He still hated the tropics of course: the climate, the spicy food, the shack he had to live in—the sand that got everywhere—and the fact that even though Saint-Marie was larger even than the Isle of Wight, it wasn’t possible to get a decent pint of beer anywhere. But while Richard told himself that he was still hell-bent on getting posted back to the UK, he hadn’t noticed—although his team had—that he hadn’t actually applied for any jobs back in the UK for the last few months.

This didn’t mean that he was happy, of course. Someone like Richard could never be happy—but his levels of unhappiness had perhaps bottomed out.

On this occasion, though, Richard was having a typically frustrating time trying to find even a single whiteboard marker with enough ink in it to work. Once he’d finally found one that would just about do, he turned to face his team.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Five guests at a fancy health-spa-cum-hotel get up at dawn and go for a morning swim. Saskia Filbee, Ann Sellars, Paul Sellars, Ben Jenkins and Julia Higgins.’ Richard wrote the names on the board, leaving plenty of space between the names so they could later annotate the board with evidence as they collected it.

Richard carried on making notes on the board as he recounted how the witnesses all went swimming that morning, and how one of their number—Paul Sellars—handed out fresh cotton robes to them all, Julia Higgins included, before they all went with Aslan to the Mediation Space, and how all of the witnesses agreed that Julia couldn’t have hidden a knife about her person before the room was locked down.

He then went on to explain that once inside, it was Aslan who locked the door from the inside. All five guests and Aslan then drank from the same pot of tea and all turned their cups over. They then all put on their wireless headphones and eye masks and lay down on their prayer mats.

And then there was a ten to fifteen minute window in which Aslan was brutally slain, somehow without any of the witnesses hearing or seeing anything until Julia started screaming, which was when everyone inside the Meditation Space woke up and saw Julia standing over the body holding a carving knife in her left hand.

‘Even though the wounds in the victim’s neck and back look like they were delivered by a right-handed person,’ Camille said.

‘Precisely.’

‘And you should know,’ Camille said, ‘when I watched Julia write out her witness statement, she used her left hand to do the whole thing.’

‘So what do we think? Is she really our killer?’

‘She’s confessed to the murder,’ Dwayne pointed out.

‘I know, but I don’t want us to rule anything in or out for the moment. Not until we know more about what we’re dealing with. And you should know, all the witnesses said they felt groggy when they woke up. Camille, did we manage to get samples of the tea they were drinking off to the labs in Guadeloupe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And samples of the witnesses’ blood and urine?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Richard looked at the board and realised something.

‘Because there’s something you should all know,’ Richard said. ‘Paul Sellars’s registration card for the hotel had his profession down as a pharmacist. If the tea was doctored in any way, he’s the person on this list who’d have had the easiest access to any kind of mind-altering drug.’

Richard recorded this fact by Paul’s name on the whiteboard.

‘And two more things,’ Richard said. ‘Firstly, why was Aslan killed inside a house made of paper and wood? It’s such a strange place to commit murder. Don’t you think? And secondly—and just as important—why did we find a drawing pin loose at the scene?’

As Richard finished writing his notes up, it was fortunate that he couldn’t see the sceptical looks that passed between Dwayne and Camille behind his back.

‘Very good,’ Richard finally said, looking at the board. ‘Yes. That’s a start. Have you got the witness statements?’ he asked Camille.

‘Of course, sir,’ she said.

As Camille hunted for the statements among the slick of other casework on her desk, Richard marvelled once again at how he managed to work so effectively with a partner who was so very disorganised. Her desk alone was enough to send him into conniptions with its mess of paperwork, files, bits of old orange peel and desiccated tubs of make-up that she’d leave the lids off and then lose interest in entirely. Richard’s desk, on the other hand, was of course neat and tidy; his in tray empty, his out tray just as empty. There was no pending tray. As far as Richard was concerned, pending trays were for wimps.

‘Got them!’

Camille triumphantly held up a manila folder containing the witness statements.

‘Yes. Well done, Camille.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Camille asked, picking up on her boss’s tone.

‘Only that it shouldn’t be such an achievement to find the witness statements to a murder case.’

‘I knew where they were.’

‘Self-evidently you didn’t.’

Camille pointedly opened the buff folder by way of a reply, and, as she gave her verbal report, Richard wrote up his version of what Camille was saying on the whiteboard.

‘Okay … as for witnesses, first we’ve got Rianka Kennedy of course. And it’s basically what she’d already told us: she sat down on the verandah to do some sewing at about 7.30am, and no one other than Aslan and the five known witnesses went into the Meditation Space before 8am. She then saw no one else enter or leave the building, and the only person who was even remotely nearby was Dominic De Vere, the handyman. But Rianka said that although Dominic had a history of arguments with the deceased, he was definitely outside the Meditation Space when the screaming started.’

Dwayne said, ‘And if he was outside, he can’t be our killer.’

‘Quite so,’ Richard agreed. ‘Then what about our actual suspects? The people who were inside the locked room with the victim. What did you make of them all, Camille?’

Camille fanned out the witness statements so she could see them all. ‘So first we’ve got Saskia Filbee,’ she said. ‘I thought she was the classic innocent bystander. Shocked, but willing to help.’

‘I’d agree. That’s what I thought of her, too.’

‘And then we’ve got the husband and wife, Paul and Ann Sellars. And they’re an odd couple, aren’t they?’

‘Go on,’ Richard said.

‘Because she’s kind of crazy. I had an aunt like that. You know, larger than life. Talked too much. But it was because she never married and she had to keep noisy or she’d notice there wasn’t much going on in her life.’

‘You think Ann’s unhappy?’ Dwayne asked.

‘I don’t know. But she definitely talked too much. You know?’

‘Maybe she’s feeling guilty?’ Dwayne offered.

‘Maybe,’ Camille conceded, though she wasn’t too sure.

‘Then what about Paul?’ Richard asked.

‘He’s so sure of himself. And in control. Isn’t he?’ Camille said, and Richard couldn’t help but smile as this tallied with his impression of Paul as well. ‘And patronising. I got the distinct impression he didn’t take me seriously because I was a woman.’

‘Then what of Ben Jenkins?’

‘I don’t know,’ Camille said. ‘He was happy to give his statement, but there was something about him I couldn’t quite pin down.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He was helpful enough, but I felt he was being careful. Like he’d had a brush with the law in the past.’

‘That’s exactly it!’ Richard said, delighted. He’d been unable to place Ben’s manner himself, but Camille was right. When Richard talked to Ben it was as though Ben knew he had to be guarded around policemen.

Richard turned to Dwayne.

‘Dwayne? According to his registration document, Ben Jenkins lives in Portugal. When you do your background checks, see if he’s ever had a run-in with the authorities, would you? Not necessarily criminal. He’s a property developer there, it could be financial. Or legal. Or maybe he was investigated by the tax office. Or by the government’s Planning Department. But Camille’s right, the man was too canny for someone giving evidence for the first time.’

Dwayne looked puzzled.

‘Problem?’ Richard asked.

‘Sure. I’ll do all that, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Chief, but we’ve got the killer in our cells. She’s already confessed to the murder.’

‘I know, Dwayne, but it doesn’t mean we should believe her.’

Dwayne looked at his boss. ‘You don’t think we should believe criminals when they confess to their crimes?’

Before Richard could answer, there was the thump of footsteps on the verandah and everyone turned to see Fidel enter the station, his hands holding a manila file full of statements.

He was hot and he was very, very bothered.

‘Ah, Fidel. How were the other hotel guests?’

Fidel dumped the notes onto his desk before responding.

‘Confused. Panicked. Shocked. And all I got from them was a whole heap of nothing.’

‘Well, let’s see about that.’

‘I’m telling you, sir, I spoke to thirty-seven different guests and they’re all saying the same thing. Aslan was kind, quiet—a “man of peace” a few of them said.’ Fidel spread out his notes on his desk and read out a few choice quotations. ‘‘‘He was the person I aspire to be.” “He’s the reason I come to this Retreat year after year.” “He had a soul of pure gold.” I’m telling you, sir, they all think he was some kind of a saint.’

‘Then how come he ended up getting knifed to death?’

‘Not one of them has the first idea. But a couple of people did say something interesting.’

‘Oh?’

‘They said the only person at The Retreat who didn’t seem to like Aslan was Dominic, the handyman. Dominic would apparently make comments. He thought Aslan didn’t live in the real world.’

‘Which would be interesting,’ Richard said, ‘except for the fact that he wasn’t in the Meditation Space when the murder was carried out, so I don’t think we can consider him a suspect. Did you get anything that suggested that anyone inside the locked room with the victim at the time of the murder had a grievance with him at all?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I got nothing like that.’

‘Then what about the argument? Did any of the guests hear a man shouting at Aslan in his office at 6pm the night before?’

‘And nor could I find anyone who heard any kind of argument at 6pm yesterday—either in Aslan’s office or anywhere else.’

‘And is that likely?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘That the only person in the whole hotel who heard a man shouting “You’re not going to get away with it” to Aslan was Saskia Filbee?’

Fidel thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know. It was pretty hot yesterday, most people would have been outside at that sort of time, I reckon.’

Richard considered this a moment before continuing. ‘Then what did the hotel guests have to say about Julia Higgins?’

Fidel started checking through his notes again as he said, ‘And that’s just as much of a dead end, sir. I couldn’t find anyone who had a bad word to say about her. She helps out in the office and she’s always polite. Cheerful, that’s a word a few people used. As for her relationship with Aslan, everyone said she hero-worshipped him. I couldn’t find a single person who believed for a second that she could be our killer.’

Not for the first time, Richard felt as though he were looking at the case the wrong way round. After all, why would a woman no one had a bad word to say about, kill someone who, by all accounts, she adored? And why would she do it inside a house made of paper? And in broad daylight? In front of four other potential witnesses? And, having killed a man everyone said she hero-worshipped, why would she then confess to the murder—but then fail to provide the police with any of her means, motive or opportunity?

Well, Richard mused to himself, there was one way to find out. Julia was currently in their police cells. He could ask her.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Dwayne and Fidel, I want you to finish processing the evidence. And Fidel, I want you dusting the murder weapon for fingerprints, of course, but first I want you to lift whatever prints you can find on the drawing pin I asked you to bag at the scene.’