In retrospect, perhaps any tragedy seems to acquire a sense of inevitability.
‘The final event of the launch, Sunday morning’s brunch, was meant to be the surprise highlight of the entire weekend,’ reports Josh Macdonald, one of six successive head architects to have worked on the Island Home project over the course of its eight-year gestation. ‘Ned was in an expensive arms race with himself – each new Home club had to outdo the last, with at least one extraordinary feature that made it unique: the Perspex-bottomed rooftop pool in Shanghai, the glass cube bar inside the ruined chapel at Highland Home. This time it was the underwater restaurant, Poseidon.’
The idea, says Macdonald, was inspired by a place where Ned had dined in the Maldives: ‘There’s a bar and an entrance at beach level with a view out across the water, over towards the mainland. When it’s time to eat, you cross a polished concrete bridge and then walk through a tunnel and down some steps and find yourself emerging into this vast room, like a giant fish bowl. In the middle of the room is the kitchen and bar, surrounded by tables and chairs, and out through the windows all you can see is the sea,’ Macdonald explains. ‘Shoals of mackerel. Clouds of blue jellyfish. The undersides of boats. The sunlight playing on the waves overhead. Ned wanted all that to be the last thing that guests saw before leaving the party, to ensure a truly lasting impression of Island Home, which everyone would be talking about for weeks to come.’
He certainly achieved that.
According to those who were there, the question most members were asking as they filed into breakfast on that final morning of the three-day party, nursing their hangovers, was: where was Ned? Usually at a launch like this he was omnipresent, telling jokes, making sure everybody was having a good time. Six foot four and solidly built, a former rugby player, a qualified barrister, he had a booming voice and a raucous laugh you could hear wherever you were standing in the room. Now, remarking on his absence, guests found themselves wondering aloud about the last time they had spoken to him. Speculating where Ned might be, gossiping about the events of the night before and the night before that, tucking into their egg-white omelettes, green juices and turmeric lattes, on the lookout for familiar faces, it was some time before anyone noticed anything peculiar out there in the water, beyond the curved plate-glass windows.
It was the sun breaking through the clouds for the first time that grey autumn morning that did it, sending a shaft of light into the gloom of the seabed, illuminating what had previously looked like a cluster of rocks, an indistinct shape in the water.
‘That was when diners began leaving their tables, started wandering over to the window, pointing at it,’ recalls one Home member and party guest, who has asked not to be named. ‘People were laughing and joking. We thought it was a Land Rover publicity stunt and people were impressed, especially as the car was upside down, and about twenty feet underwater, wedged against a big rock. What a way to get us to sit up and take notice! Everyone was asking how they had got it down there, how long it had been submerged.’ Then, she says, people started to realize what was inside the car. Then, she says, someone started sobbing.
Shortly afterwards it was announced that a body had been found on the island.
And that was when the party of the year turned into the murder mystery of the decade.
Chapter One
Thursday Afternoon
Jess
She had made it.
That was what Jess kept catching herself thinking.
Head of Housekeeping, Island Home. Her name was Jess Wilson and she was the new Head of Housekeeping for Island Home.
She still couldn’t quite believe it.
It had all been a bit like a dream, the past week. First the phone call from Home’s head office, offering her an interview – after all those years of applying. All those years of hoping. All those years of being told they would keep her CV on file.
Then the interview itself, down in London, with Adam Groom, Home Group’s Director of Special Projects, the second most important person in the whole company. Her sudden panic about what to wear, what to say.