The Club(36)
Only as the last spinning crystalline crumbs in the bottom of the decanter vanished and her vision began going spotty did Jess realize she had been holding her breath.
Oh God, she found herself thinking, her mood suddenly wilting, this is not going to work, this is never going to work. Not in real life. Not a chance. Even with all the research she had done, the trouble she had gone to, getting hold of everything, all this planning. Jackson would notice something off, the first sip he tasted. He might be in the mood tonight for the rum or the champagne. Would it be too obvious to set out a whiskey glass next to the decanter? To put both on a little tray next to the bed?
At the sound of footsteps on the cabin porch, Jess started with such force that her feet literally jumped in her shoes. He was back. Jackson Crane was here, scratching at the door of the cabin with his key, mumbling and muttering to himself as he did so, breathing so heavily through his nose that she could hear it all the way from where she was standing.
Finally, after several minutes, he managed to get his key into the lock and turn it – and, apparently surprised at how easily the door swung open, advanced into the room with a three-step stumble. If he was shocked to find his cabin restored to its former pristine condition, he did not show it. If he was surprised to find one of the housekeeping team standing with a weird nervous smile on their face in the corner of his room, he gave no sign.
The first thing Jackson Crane did was to try to turn the lights on despite the fact they were already on. Only as he was looking for the light switch did he realize he had left the front door open with the key still hanging from it. Only after he had managed to slam the door – on his second attempt, after experiencing considerable difficulty extricating the key – and missed by about three feet when endeavouring to toss the key into a bowl on the table, and stumbled on the lip of the carpet, and bashed the coffee table out of the way with his shin without even noticing, did he finally acknowledge Jess’s presence.
‘Hnnh,’ he said.
Even from here Jess could smell his breath.
It was him. It was him. It was him.
Jackson Crane squinted at her, attempted a smile, took a couple of sudden unexpected steps sideways, then steadied himself. And for a second, the years dropped away and Jess found herself staring into his eyes, and he was staring into her eyes, and his brow furrowed, and for a moment she found herself wondering if he had recognized her.
Looking down at her hands, which seemed somehow a long way away, Jess realized she was still holding a glass and the whiskey. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said, her gaze abruptly lowered, her voice husky in her ears. ‘May I offer you . . . ?’
It was the decanter he took, grabbing it and twisting the stopper and chucking it onto the sofa and necking at least a fifth of the liquid before he even paused for breath. Then he wiped his lips with his fingers, a sort of pinching gesture.
And for a moment, just a moment, as he passed her, Jess could feel his appraising gaze sweep over her, his eyes pausing fleetingly on her chest, his interest briefly flickering – and then switching off again as his brain ruled the possibility out, as she stopped being a potential person of interest and reverted to being something else, like furniture.
Still holding the whiskey, with a slightly stagey flourish of his free hand, Jackson Crane allowed himself to fall backwards onto the bed. Jess put the glass down and headed for the door. Having reached it she paused, turned to look back at him.
Sitting up against the head of the bed, still wearing his shoes, although his jacket was now in a tangle on the floor, several shirt buttons were undone and the bottom of his shirt untucked on one side, Jackson Crane glowered at her, and then with an air of somewhat vague defiance lifted the decanter to his lips.
Glug glug glug. Glug glug glug.
By the time he lowered it this time, it was almost half empty.
As she was closing the door behind her she could hear him grumbling something to himself about fucking. Whether it was addressed to her, whether it was addressed to himself, whether it was addressed to anyone at all, it was hard to say.
Glug glug glug.
She had already added a note to the cabin ten cleaning rota, making it emphatically clear that Jackson Crane was not to be disturbed until further notice, under any circumstances. That had not felt like murdering someone. But in a way it was. In a way, ticking that box had been as much an act of murder as grinding up those pills, as putting them in that whiskey, as handing it to him.
She hoped the producers of whatever film Jackson Crane was working on at the moment were paid up on their insurance.
Probably the sleeping pills alone would have done for him, the number she had ground up, the amount he had just ingested. Given what else there had been in that plastic sachet, though – all the stuff she had brought with her, everything she had helped herself to from the other cabins – half the contents of that decanter would have been enough to kill an elephant. Just a decent-sized glass of it would have been enough for a human being.
She had done it. She had actually done it. Even now she could not quite believe it.
It was not until she was halfway back to the staff block that she realized she still had Jackson Crane’s memory stick in her pocket.
Nikki
The giant fire pit on the back lawn had been non-negotiable, another one of those ideas Ned was determined to make happen even if everyone else told him it was crazy, or impossible, or actively dangerous. Even Annie, whose enthusiasm for Ned’s plans was usually immediate and absolute, had tried to steer him away from this one. ‘Hmmm,’ was the way she had put it, when he had first floated the thought. ‘Is that wise? Do we really want an enormous permanent bonfire, in a giant metal bowl on legs, spewing three-foot-high flames, within stumbling distance of the bar? Best-case scenario, a member will try to light a fag off it and lose their eyebrows.’