Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(98)

This was being a detective in London. Focused. Facing the cold. Alone.

“How long will they give us?” Stevie asked Izzy.

“I think as long as you need. They’re doing maintenance on one of the pods so they’re keeping it stationary. They’ll let us down when we text. They were very nice about it when I said it was for a memorial.”

That was how they had set it up and how they drew in the six remaining members of the Nine. Izzy had messaged them to say she had gotten a private pod on the Eye and they could hover over London in peace and pay tribute to Angela over the river in which she had been found. Julian and Sebastian were staying in London for Angela’s memorial and to be with their friends. Sooz’s understudy was playing her part, and Theo had taken a few days off. They were all together, so it was a relatively easy business to summon them as a group.

Stevie sniffed. Her nose was running in the cold. She felt dirty and scrappy in her well-worn travel clothes, and her red vinyl coat was too thin. It was good to be cold, though. It kept her sharp.

The six were already there when they arrived, sitting on the benches by the empty lines of the Eye. The last passengers disembarked.

“Thank you for coming,” Izzy said. “I know this is a bit unusual, but my aunt loved riding this, and since we have a family connection . . .”

“It’s a lovely gesture,” Theo said. She sounded congested, like she had been crying a lot.

“Stevie,” Sooz said. “I thought you were all leaving today.”

“I missed my flight,” Stevie answered. “Izzy gave me a place to stay, and I wanted to . . . you know.”

“It’s good of you,” Yash said.

“And we brought a hamper,” Peter said, holding up a small basket with some bottles and glasses. “Something for a toast.”

Izzy stepped up to the person manning the platform and explained who they were. After a moment’s discussion, they were all shown to a pod. The door was sealed, and the wheel began to rotate. Stevie looked at the massive spokes. The river fell away, dark and forbidding, and London gleamed around them. Peter and Julian opened the bottles and distributed glasses of whisky to those who wanted alcohol and sparkling elderflower drink to those who did not. Yash had brought a portable speaker and started to play music—some Britpop, of course. Some Blur. Stevie knew the sound of them by now. This was a slow, pensive song called “Best Days.”

As the wheel crested, the six put their arms around each other’s shoulders, even inviting Izzy and Stevie into the huddle. This was awkward, but Stevie slipped in between Sooz and Julian.

“We love you, Ange,” Sooz said. “We’re so sorry.”

“We love you,” Sebastian echoed.

It went around—Julian, Peter, Theo, Yash, Izzy. Stevie tucked her head down.

Just as the pod reached the peak, it slowed, then stopped completely. It wobbled when the wind hit it.

“To Ange,” Sebastian said, raising his glass. “A historian. A writer. A thinker. A drinker.”

“To Ange,” everyone echoed. Stevie lifted her fancy Sprite shyly.

Of course, the Nine, or the Six, had made this into an event. But as the quiet settled over the group and the wind knocked against the pod and Stevie realized just how high up they were inside a metal-and-glass bubble on a windy major river . . . she knew it was time. She looked to Izzy, who was wiping tears from her face with the back of her hand, smearing mascara and black eyeliner in all directions.

She cleared her throat.

“Actually,” Izzy said, which is a strange way to begin anything. “We wanted to bring everyone up here to have a chat. Because . . . Stevie has something she wanted to say. If you wouldn’t mind sitting down.”

In that moment, Stevie missed her friends so profoundly that she could have cried. Janelle, Vi, and Nate were in the sky, moving toward home. And David was here, but he might as well have been on Mars.

She couldn’t think about that now. This was the thing she had to do. She wished she could do it from the stability of the bench in the middle of the pod, but she had to stand at the head of it, where it shook the most, but where everyone could see her.

“I wanted to talk about the button,” Stevie said. “The one Angela mentioned in her text.”

“Yes,” Yash said, tucking himself inside his gray cashmere coat in the chill. “What was that all about?”

“It was a message,” Stevie replied. “A message to a friend. She was trying to tell one of you something. I could only figure out what the message meant because I happened to be there on the night she sent the message. People get ideas from things around them. They use examples they know, that make sense to them. And, you know, Angela knew history. She knew all about Henry the Eighth and his wives. When we visited her that night, Angela told us a story about the execution of Anne Boleyn. She was telling us in a lot of detail how Anne was set up to die, and how the king ordered a special, fancy executioner from France. This guy used a sword, not an axe . . .”

The word axe was the moment the mood in the pod shifted. Stevie could feel it. Everyone got a little more attentive, more brittle.

“. . . so the victim’s head had to be in a certain position to do the job in one blow. He used a trick. He would call out to an imaginary assistant to bring the sword, the victim would turn their head in that direction to listen for the sword coming—but the guy already had the sword. Now the neck was in the right position, and he would swing. She said, ‘A little bit of fakery does so much.’ She gave herself the idea. Make a little bit of fakery. Get someone to turn their head. Angela had grown tired of waiting, tired of not knowing what she knew. She’d just found out that she started talking about the murders when she was on painkillers . . .”