The Club(82)

He was a big man, but he’d had a few drinks, and of course he wasn’t expecting it. Not from her: his pliant, stupid, naive PA. (She had surprised herself, too, when she turned and charged at him.) She had a ten or fifteen-foot run-up, to build momentum. Nikki could not remember now, when she looked back, whether she had said or shouted anything as she did it. But she would never forget the moment of impact, her hands against his back, the couple of surprised steps forward he had taken. The second push, with all her force, before he had quite regained his balance. His stumble. His trip – the heel of his shoe catching on something, perhaps. The long, long time – some trick of the brain, surely – he seemed to hang in the air, frozen, falling. The thump with which his body hit the water.

God forgive me, Nikki thought, looking down at the waves, replaying it all again in her head: the push, the fall, the desperate final scrabbling that followed. She had killed him.

She had killed him and she did not regret it at all.





Annie

‘Everything all right, Annie?’

That was what people kept asking, as they passed, as she hurried by. As she made her way – almost blindly, stumbling, on the brink of panic – through the woods, along the paths, back towards The Manor.

‘Having a wonderful time!’ she shouted back, hoping no one noticed the strain in her voice. Or just: ‘Fantastic!’ or ‘Brilliant, darling!’

Presumably she didn’t look all right, though, or people would not be asking.

Keith had killed the wrong man. And she had no idea where Ned Groom was.

Keith had killed the wrong man and now he was loose somewhere on the island with his hands all fucked up and Freddie Hunter was flying off alone in his helicopter. They would blame her, of course. If they got caught, if they got accused, they would both try to pin it all on her in a minute. Unless . . .

She reached the fire pit on the front lawn, from which two members were attempting to light a joint, their masks pushed back onto the tops of their heads.

‘How’s it going, Annie?’

‘Brilliant! Amazing! Don’t set yourselves on fire.’

Everyone laughed. A minute later she could hear one of the men behind her howling and jumping around and yelling about his scorched knuckles.

With any luck, she thought, they would burn the whole island down.

Annie forced herself to slow her pace as her feet crunched onto the gravel directly outside The Manor. She could hear the band who had struck up after the grand finale, the noise of dozens of simultaneous shouted conversations floating out through open windows. A waitress was working her way around the path, picking up empty glasses. She and Annie nodded at each other as they passed.

The Manor might have been in the direction Annie was heading, but it wasn’t her destination. She checked to see if anyone was watching, then took a sharp turn left, down the slope towards the cabins.

Practically the first cabin she passed was Freddie Hunter’s – and as she stepped up onto its deck she realized the door was ajar. Inside, all the signs of hasty packing. Annie checked each of the rooms in turn. On the floor of the bathroom was a tangle of towels and bathrobes. On the bed his mask and robe. No wash kit by the sink. No clothes anywhere. No suitcase. He had packed it all up and fucked off. She checked under the bed. She checked the side of all three of the flatscreen wall-mounted TVs in the cabin – lounge, bedroom, bathroom (an unlikely place, admittedly, to watch your own blackmail showreel). With her sleeves pulled down over her fingers she opened and closed every drawer in both the bedside tables, all of the slide-out drawers in the base of the wardrobe, even the drawers on the desk and the table in the corner with a lamp on it. The memory stick was gone too.

‘Fuck,’ said Annie.

Of course the memory stick had gone, Freddie Hunter was not an absolute fool. Still, it would be useless to him – he didn’t know it, but it self-erased in seventy-two hours. That was Ned’s insurance policy – he had handed them all their own blackmail tapes knowing they’d be blank by the time they set foot back on the mainland, so that even if they were desperate enough to involve the police (and they’d have to be desperate, of course), Ned could protest his innocence.

But if Keith hadn’t stashed the body properly – and the state he was in she wouldn’t have trusted the man to tie his own shoelaces – someone would surely sound the alarm. And if that happened soon, the police might arrive in time to view the footage. (Although perhaps, Annie speculated, that might work in her favour: it would certainly establish a motive for Keith extracting his revenge on the Grooms.) However, finding the memory sticks and copying the clips onto her laptop were Annie’s only chance of establishing a meaningful hold over either man.

Shit shit shit. They were all going to be questioned. Everyone on the island, probably. This was going to be a PR disaster for Home as well as everything else.

On the other hand, she thought, with an audible laugh that sounded a lot more hysterical than she had expected, she pitied the poor detective tasked with cross-referencing every party guest’s account of the weekend. If you asked them where they were and what they were doing even at this exact moment, half of them wouldn’t know – or they’d certainly need to have a little think about it first.

The wind slammed the cabin’s front door and Annie let out an actual scream. This was pointless – Freddie had obviously taken it with him.