The Prisoner(75)

A silence descends on us.

“Carl told me,” he says, his voice quiet. “He told me that when he saw you at the memorial service, you said that you saw Ned kill Lina.”

My eyes blur. I want to say something but I’m afraid I might start crying.

“Amelie, if I pass you the key, will you open the door?” he asks, after a moment.

I swallow down my tears. “No. Carry on.”

I hear him sigh. “Lina’s death changed everything. For Carl especially, but also for me.”

“How did you know that Lina and Justine were dead?” I ask. “And that Ned had killed them?”

“We didn’t, not really, not until their bodies were found. We suspected, but we couldn’t prove anything. The day Lina came to Ned’s house, I tried to persuade her to leave. I knew that she was going to accuse Ned of lying about Justine being in France and I didn’t want Ned to know that anyone suspected him of actually murdering Justine, in case he decided to hide any traces he might have left behind. I wasn’t particularly worried for Lina’s safety, I never thought Ned would be capable of murdering someone in broad daylight, with people around. I phoned Carl to tell him Lina was at the house, and he asked me to let him know as soon as she’d left. But then Ned asked me to go to London to collect a file from the office, and on my way back—it must have been about two hours later, because the traffic was bad—Carl called to ask if Lina was still at the house, as they’d arranged to meet that evening and she hadn’t turned up. He’d tried to call her, but he couldn’t get ahold of her.

“When I got back to the house with the file Ned had said he needed, I asked him if Lina had stayed long. He seemed surprised that I’d asked him, but told me she’d been upset because he had fired her and that she’d left, telling him that there was nothing left for her in England and that she was going to go back to Lithuania.” He gives a dry laugh. “I can’t tell you how loud those alarm bells started ringing. I phoned Carl, he went to the office and checked the security cameras. He could see Lina arriving at the house, hurrying through the gates behind Ned’s car, but no sign of her walking out through the gates. What he did see though, was a black van driving through them around half an hour after I’d left for London. Carl gave me the registration number. It wasn’t hard to trace who it belonged to, despite him using an alias.”

“Amos Kerrigan,” I say quietly. “I heard Ned on the phone to him.”

“I knew the name from my time in the police, and knew it meant that Lina was probably dead. Amos Kerrigan had a reputation as a hitman, so I thought Ned had gotten him to kill her. Then Vicky received a message, supposedly from Lina, saying that she was back in Lithuania. Carl wanted to believe it so much, even if, in his heart, he knew that Lina would never have left without telling him. But we needed to check it out, in case it was genuine.”

“I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Carl, having that tiny glimmer of hope,” I say.

“Incredibly hard. What helped was that he had a possible contact, someone who might be able to get to the truth. Friends of his had moved to Dubai and he was looking after their house in England for them, renting it out for short stays.”

“The house in Haven Cliffs,” I murmur.

“Yes. One of the regular renters was a Lithuanian named Lukas Andris. Carl had begun to get to know him; he knew that Lukas was a big shot back in his own country, so he asked him if he could find out if Lina had arrived in Lithuania. Lukas made some inquiries and discovered that Lina had passed through Immigration at Vilnius the day after she had gone to see Ned. Carl was elated, so it was hard telling him that Ned might have gotten someone who looked like Lina to travel on her passport, because I knew that kind of thing happened. I also reminded him that there’d been no sign of her leaving Ned’s house that day and, coupled with Amos Kerrigan’s presence at the house while I was in London—plus Lina’s failure to contact him—well, everything pointed to her being dead.”

He falls silent, and I realize that he would have known Lina well, if she’d been in a relationship with his brother.

“When Carl realized the truth of it, he went crazy with grief,” Hunter says. “And if Lina’s disappearance confirmed one thing, it was that Ned was also responsible for Justine’s disappearance. We couldn’t have him arrested, because we had no actual proof. And it wasn’t our call. The point of me being there, as Ned’s security guard, was to report back to Carl, who then reported to Mr. Smith. If Ned had been arrested for possible murder, that would have been the end of the Hawthorpe Foundation.

“By that time, I wanted out, so when Carl suggested taking my place as Ned’s security guard, I didn’t try too hard to dissuade him. All I wanted was to get on a plane and start my new life in New Zealand, and all Carl wanted was to get as close to Ned as he possibly could, so it was a win-win for both of us. Ned didn’t know Carl, they’d only ever spoken on the phone, so Carl only had to adopt his Kiwi accent when he presented himself for the job. But I couldn’t just leave Ned’s employ from one day to the next. First, I had a month’s notice to give and if I suddenly didn’t turn up for work, Ned might have been suspicious, because I had questioned him about Lina. So Carl persuaded Lukas to contact Ned, posing as someone who could get him interviews with the rich and famous for his magazine, and invite him to lunch. And during that lunch, Ned would be set up to believe that Lukas knew Lina well, and that Lukas knew that he—Ned—had had something to do with her disappearance. Then I would be ‘murdered’ on the way back to Wentworth, putting the fear of God into Ned, and Carl would take my place as his security guard. What we didn’t expect was that Ned would frame me for Lina’s disappearance by insinuating that I was the last person to see her alive. But it worked in our favor. Before, my ‘murder’ would have been a warning. Because of Ned pointing the finger at me, it became a retaliation.”