The Sanatorium(61)

Cecile picks up the tablet, gives a short laugh. “Anyway, Lucas probably wouldn’t appreciate my speaking about his private life.” She flushes, embarrassed. Elin’s touched. Not only by her protectiveness of her brother, but by her awkwardness. Something else of herself she recognizes in Cecile—the struggle to verbalize difficult topics, to emote.

Cecile ducks away from her gaze, and there’s a flurry of movement as she taps the screen of the tablet, inputting a code. “Our security system is state of the art. A commercial IP system. It means you can livestream to any of our devices.” The overhead lights catch the faint smear of fingerprints along the bottom of the screen. “This home screen shows each camera, its feed. All you do is select one, then find the relevant time slot. There’s sound too.”

“Okay.” Elin drops her arm to the table. “You do the first one, show me how it’s done.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“What about the spa? Is there one outside?”

Cecile grimaces. “There is, but I’m not sure how good the picture’s going to be with the steam, the storm . . .” Starting to scroll, she abruptly stops, selecting one from farther down the screen. “Here. This is it in real time.”

She’s right, Elin thinks with dismay, looking at the image. The camera shows the rough outline of the pool area, but the steam and snow scudding past the lens is obscuring most of the scene. The picture has a liquid, ethereal feel.

“It’s not ideal,” Cecile says, “but the picture might be better earlier in the day. When exactly are we looking for?”

“Everything from this morning until Axel found the body.”

Cecile scrolls back, the image remaining visible on the screen as she rewinds.

“Okay, back to nine a.m.” But before she can finish her sentence, the screen goes black, just before five p.m. “There must be a mistake,” she murmurs. Frowning, she repeats the action. “It’s blank. The entire morning, afternoon, it’s gone.”

“Are you sure?” A ripple of disquiet rolls through Elin.

Cecile tries again, more slowly this time, but the result is the same: the footage is gone. She catches Elin’s eye. “Someone’s wiped it.”

“Wiped it, or made sure it never filmed in the first place,” Elin says, with the gut-propelling realization that this is part of a plan.

It isn’t a coincidence, is it?

Someone knew they had to wipe this so they couldn’t be identified.

They’re one step ahead, she thinks, looking out the window into the darkness. Her theory, that this is an organized killer—it’s holding up, and that scares her.

Elin moves forward in her chair. “Is it possible to wipe it without the system sending notifications?”

“It’s possible, I’m sure. Most things can be hacked, can’t they?”

“Who has access to the system?”

“The security director, a few staff who work under him . . .”

All of whom have alibis, Elin thinks, disconcerted, mentally running through her notes. “Let’s try another camera. Is there one for the entrance to the spa?”

“Yes. It’s in the corridor, I think.” Cecile jabs at the screen again, her hands making a nervy, panicked movement. “This is it.”

The camera is positioned facing straight down the corridor. All of it is in shot—polished concrete floor, the stark white of the walls.

This time, Elin skims through the recording—slowly rewinding from the present toward midday. But once again, just before five p.m., the screen goes black.

The next piece of recorded footage is from the day before. Sitting in silence for a moment, a seed of an idea unfurls in her mind. “Can I check the footage from another day?”

“Of course.”

Elin scrolls backward, easily finds the right day, the approximate time. It takes only a few minutes before she finds herself in the footage; walking down the corridor toward the spa to find Will in the pool.

Continuing to scroll, she tries to work it out: how long did she take in there?

Five, ten minutes speaking to Margot? The same with Will?

She works through the footage until she leaves the spa, heading back up the corridor toward the lobby. Scanning the screen, she realizes that Margot was right—no one had entered the spa until she came out. If someone had been in the changing rooms with her, they must have gone out another way.

Elin turns to Cecile. “Is there another way into the spa? Through the changing rooms?”

“Yes. There’s a door at the back. It’s used to access the maintenance area, the generators, pumps. It does open out into the changing area, but it’s only used by maintenance staff.” She hesitates. “You need the right access pass.”

“Does CCTV cover that door?”

Biting her lip, Cecile flushes again, heat chasing up her neck, cheeks. “There’s a camera, outside, on the roof opposite the door. The staff . . . they don’t know it’s there.” She falters. “Look, there are cameras all over. Lucas had thefts among the staff at one of his hotels in Zurich.”

“Can you find the feed?” Elin interrupts. She doesn’t care about the morals of hidden cameras. She simply wants to see the footage.

“Only a few of us have access, so it’s on a different system.” Taking the tablet, Cecile moves off the home screen and opens another one, tapping in a passcode. She hands it back to Elin. “Here.”