‘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.
Perhaps Nikki hadn’t intended to kill Ned, but she had nonetheless done so.
To get to the jetty you walked to the end of the rear lawn of The Manor, passed through a gate in the hedge into a rose garden, through yet another gate （this one marked Private） and made your way carefully down a long stepped stone path to the beach. Often over the past few weeks, Ned would retire down here at the end of the night, to admire the yacht he’d bought and restored at great expense, to pace the jetty, stare out across the waves. He often called her to demand she join him – even if she was already in bed. Coat on, Nikki – I’ve got some notes for you to take down. So she had known where he’d be heading, when he left the party on Friday night. For one last drink, a cigar to round the evening off. To reflect on his triumph. She had known too that he’d do so alone.
Hearing her footsteps approaching across the wooden boards, he’d looked up with a frown of irritation. Nor did this dissipate immediately when he saw who it was. ‘Had enough of the party, Nikki?’