The Club(79)

The second time she’d watched the footage on Jackson Crane’s memory stick, once she had realized exactly what it was she was seeing, she had begun to film it on her mobile – holding the phone as steadily as she could, using her other arm for additional support, walkie-talkie turned off, terrified any minute that footsteps would come crunching up the drive to the cabin, someone would start knocking on the door.

Once she had finished she had removed the memory stick from the side of the TV, wiped it down and placed it on Jackson Crane’s bedside table. Let the police make of that what they would, she thought. The proof at last that what she had been saying all those years ago had been the truth. The proof that Jackson Crane was a murderer and his wife had gone along with it.

Or was it?

It is bizarre, the relationship between our eyes and our brain.

Now that she had been told the dark-haired woman was not Georgia Crane, it was amazing that she had ever believed it was. For one thing, this was a much taller woman than Jackson’s slight wife. And her hair was much longer than she had ever seen Georgia Crane wear her hair – it went all the way down her back. She didn’t walk like Georgia, move like Georgia, had none of the delicate, fluttering hand gestures Georgia used for emphasis. Her chin, when her face was briefly visible in profile, was even at a distance far more prominent.

Jess paused the footage with her thumb. She peered at it more closely. She pressed play again.

Even on her phone, even in this footage in which the woman was so often so frustratingly just out of shot or visible only so fleetingly, it was all the ways that this woman was clearly not Jackson Crane’s wife that kept leaping out at her. Georgia Crane was an outspoken supporter of PETA. This woman was wearing what looked very much like a real fur coat. Nor would Georgia Crane ever have worn a pair of big hoop earrings like that, unless for some film role. Georgia Crane’s stunt double this woman might have been. Georgia Crane she was not.

Which meant all this time Jess had been directing her hate at the wrong woman.

A type, Georgia had said. My husband has a type.

The footage came to an end. Jess pressed play again. Again the couple burst into the room, Jackson first, the woman following. Again Jackson made his way straight to the liquor cabinet, made a drink for himself, and didn’t offer to make a drink for her. Again Jess watched her pace, toss her hair, ignore Jackson as he ranted and burbled and snarled, slumping ever deeper in his armchair, spilling ever more drink down his chin.

‘Who are you?’ Jess muttered aloud, under her breath.

There was still, Jess’s brain kept telling her, something familiar about the way this woman was behaving, something familiar in the way that, as she talked to him, she gathered up her thick hair in one hand and turned it and then let it fall against her back. Her nods. Her shakes of the head. The peculiar combination of subservience and arrogance in her manner. These were not Georgia Crane’s gestures, but they were gestures Jess did recognize from somewhere. She wracked her brains. She was also tall, this woman, strikingly tall. A model? Some kind of athlete? Another actress? Was it on TV she’d seen these gestures, this person, before? That didn’t feel quite right. She paused the footage. She turned the volume up. She scrolled it back a few seconds. She pressed play again. Jackson Crane said something over his shoulder. The woman emitted a familiar, mirthless, single-note laugh.

My God. Of course. How had Jess not seen it before? She had watched and rewound, watched and rewound this footage, strained her ears to catch each muffled comment, obsessively paused and restarted it, rewound and replayed it once more. But she had seen just what she had expected to see, wanted to see. Over and over again her brain had refused to process the evidence of her eyes and ears, refused to acknowledge what was now so glaring, now so obvious.

The woman in the footage, the woman who had been in the car that night, who was in the room with Jackson Crane, was Annie Spark.





Nikki

It was now almost twenty-four hours since Ned had disappeared into the water, the waves tonight just as rough as they’d been when Nikki had stood in this same spot that short time ago – was it really only a day? – and watched as Ned Groom flailed helplessly around in them.

It is quite a difficult thing to process, watching someone die.

Having stood back passively as a man you knew could not swim tumbled backwards into the darkness. Having observed as the phone he’d been holding in his hand hit the wooden deck, watched coolly as his cigar spiralled separately to extinction in the waves. Heard his grunt as he hit the water. Waited for him to resurface. Wondered briefly if he was going to resurface. Jumped a little as his spluttering head broke the water. Briefly wavered, wondering why he was not shouting for help – could he tell you wouldn’t give it? Watched as he huffed and floundered and swore, down there in the water below you, trying to get his arms around one of the slick wet piles, scratching at them, getting pulled away by the rising and falling of the waves, getting slammed into them. Going under. Resurfacing. Going Under. Cursing you. Going under. Spitting and swearing. Staying under. Staying under.

Had Nikki intended to kill Ned, when she set out to talk to him that night? She had not. Had she meant to push him into the waves? She didn’t think so. Yet her mind had been sharp enough – perhaps the cocaine helped? – to pick up the phone that had fallen from his hand before the screen locked, click on the little envelope icon. Three words, sent to his PA – sent to herself – in the small hours of the morning could maybe buy her some time to think. Gone to London. It might put off questions she hadn’t yet worked out how to answer. To give her just a little time to come to terms with what she had done.