The Hike(67)

‘Ready?’ Lydia stepped out of the building and on to the street. She glanced up at the sky, frowning. ‘Looks like rain.’

Cat nodded. She started walking across the wide road towards the hotel that sat on the bend, the front not much to look at, but the other side was where it drew in its guests, with the magnificent views of the snow-capped mountains. The hot tub was on that side. Something else she hadn’t managed to make use of this weekend. Ginny, again, in her head. She balled her hands into fists, letting her ragged nails cut into the flesh of her palms.

‘I’m so sorry that all of this has happened to you,’ Lydia said, walking by her side. ‘I think the police failed you . . . with Paul’s case.’

‘I feel partly to blame,’ Cat said. ‘If I’d taken the photographs to the police instead of keeping them for myself.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not even sure what I was going to do with them. I mean, I would have left him, of course. After this weekend . . . I guess I just thought maybe I needed to give him a final chance to tell me the truth.’ The lies came thick and fast now. Cat was fully immersed in this latest depiction of events.

‘And he didn’t . . . but you can’t blame yourself for what he did to Ginny. Or to Tristan.’

Cat swallowed. The air mixed with saliva had formed a hard lump in her throat, trying to choke her. She coughed. Lydia placed a gentle hand on her back, and Cat wanted to cry, then, but she held back. She’d done enough of that today. She needed to keep it together now.

‘It’s really quite incredible that he planned all this, Cat. You can’t blame yourself. People get hoodwinked by charming psychopaths all the time. They walk among us, you know. Until they snap and do something like this, it’s usually impossible to tell.’

Cat said nothing.

They stopped outside the doors of the hotel. ‘Do you think you can give me twenty minutes? I just want to freshen up a bit. Chuck some stuff into my case and put it at reception. I hate to think of them having to pack up our room.’

Lydia frowned. She glanced back at the police station, then to the hotel, as if she was calculating the distance. Working out the risk. ‘Sure, OK. Remember to bring your laptop with you though! Don’t chuck that in your case.’

‘Of course.’ Cat cast her eyes down, then back up to Lydia’s face. ‘I need you to hear the recording. I wish I’d put it on the Cloud, like those bloody photographs. But, to be honest, I thought it was a joke . . .’

Lydia tried to smile. ‘I don’t think I’d believe it either, if my husband said he was going to try and murder my sister and her husband. It’s just lucky you were recording at the time.’

‘As I said, I was just mucking about with that little gadget I’d picked up at a trade fair. I wasn’t even convinced it would work. I left it on the hall table to see what it would pick up. I never imagined it would record something like that, or that it would end up being real . . .’ She let her sentence trail off. Don’t overdo it, Cat. Stay strong, she told herself.

Lydia opened the door of the hotel. ‘Go on then. Get sorted and I’ll see you back here. I’ll try and grab a coffee from the restaurant.’

‘Thank you,’ Cat said. ‘The restaurant is down there.’ She pointed Lydia towards the place where they’d all sat for breakfast yesterday, planning their day, and the lump in her throat grew bigger. She swallowed hard.

The woman at reception appeared unmoved by Cat’s dishevelled appearance, and the fact that she was supposed to have checked out several hours ago. The woman handed Cat a replacement key card and told her that an extra night had already been charged to her card. For both rooms. She’d made the booking, after all. The woman turned away and continued to talk to someone sitting out of sight in a back office.

Cat glanced down towards the restaurant and saw that Lydia had seated herself at one of the tables and was gazing out at the view.

Perfect.

She hurried to her room and opened the door. Thankfully, she was a well-practised hotel traveller, and the room was neat and tidy, with only the minimal amount of items removed from her case. Paul’s stuff was hanging in the wardrobe and she contemplated pulling it all off the hangers and tossing it into his wheely-bag, but, on balance, she couldn’t be arsed. She collected her toiletries from the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.

Fuck. She looked rough. But did she really have time for a shower? She stuck her head back around the door to check the bedside clock. She’d already been five minutes. She didn’t want Lydia coming down to check on her.

She quickly washed her face, then pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She yanked off her shorts and put on a pair of black leggings, then replaced her t-shirt with a soft, pale-blue hooded top. Her boots were filthy, but they would be fine. She threw the ruined shorts and t-shirt into the bin, then stuck on her plain grey baseball cap and pulled her ponytail through the hole at the back.

Better.

She grabbed her travel bag, then did a final sweep of the room. Nothing lying around – nothing of hers, anyway. No phones, iPads or laptops. She hadn’t even brought her laptop with her this weekend, but the story of the recording had rolled off her tongue and made perfect sense. The only questionable part was why the ‘recording’ wasn’t in the Cloud, but that was easily explained by the fact that she’d told them she plugged in a new device, which had stored the files on a local drive. If only she did have a recording. It would have made everything a lot easier.