‘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.
Keith’s cabin was her next stop. She knocked, received no answer, hammered on the door, still received no answer. She looked around. Nobody. She turned her master key, reached for the handle – and discovered it sticky to the touch.
‘Fuck,’ said Annie.
She turned the handle, pushed the door open, wiped the handle with a tissue, then did the same to her hand.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Not only had he arrived here before her, from the looks of it he was long gone too. The room? It looked like a murder scene. There was a bloody handprint on the mirror over the bed, blood all over the sheets, blood smeared over the towels bundled on the bed. There was blood on the mask on the floor, blood coating the strap at the back where he’d pulled it off. One of the bathroom sinks was a mess.