Lydia tried to smile. ‘I don’t think I’d believe it either, if my husband said he was going to try and murder my sister and her husband. It’s just lucky you were recording at the time.’
‘As I said, I was just mucking about with that little gadget I’d picked up at a trade fair. I wasn’t even convinced it would work. I left it on the hall table to see what it would pick up. I never imagined it would record something like that, or that it would end up being real . . .’ She let her sentence trail off. Don’t overdo it, Cat. Stay strong, she told herself.
Lydia opened the door of the hotel. ‘Go on then. Get sorted and I’ll see you back here. I’ll try and grab a coffee from the restaurant.’
‘Thank you,’ Cat said. ‘The restaurant is down there.’ She pointed Lydia towards the place where they’d all sat for breakfast yesterday, planning their day, and the lump in her throat grew bigger. She swallowed hard.
The woman at reception appeared unmoved by Cat’s dishevelled appearance, and the fact that she was supposed to have checked out several hours ago. The woman handed Cat a replacement key card and told her that an extra night had already been charged to her card. For both rooms. She’d made the booking, after all. The woman turned away and continued to talk to someone sitting out of sight in a back office.
Cat glanced down towards the restaurant and saw that Lydia had seated herself at one of the tables and was gazing out at the view.
Perfect.
She hurried to her room and opened the door. Thankfully, she was a well-practised hotel traveller, and the room was neat and tidy, with only the minimal amount of items removed from her case. Paul’s stuff was hanging in the wardrobe and she contemplated pulling it all off the hangers and tossing it into his wheely-bag, but, on balance, she couldn’t be arsed. She collected her toiletries from the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror.
Fuck. She looked rough. But did she really have time for a shower? She stuck her head back around the door to check the bedside clock. She’d already been five minutes. She didn’t want Lydia coming down to check on her.
She quickly washed her face, then pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She yanked off her shorts and put on a pair of black leggings, then replaced her t-shirt with a soft, pale-blue hooded top. Her boots were filthy, but they would be fine. She threw the ruined shorts and t-shirt into the bin, then stuck on her plain grey baseball cap and pulled her ponytail through the hole at the back.
Better.
She grabbed her travel bag, then did a final sweep of the room. Nothing lying around – nothing of hers, anyway. No phones, iPads or laptops. She hadn’t even brought her laptop with her this weekend, but the story of the recording had rolled off her tongue and made perfect sense. The only questionable part was why the ‘recording’ wasn’t in the Cloud, but that was easily explained by the fact that she’d told them she plugged in a new device, which had stored the files on a local drive. If only she did have a recording. It would have made everything a lot easier.
She was glad she’d managed to transfer the money in the morning, using her and Tristan’s phones. Otherwise she’d have to go back to the car now, and she wasn’t sure she could risk any more delays. She was already much later than she’d planned to be.
She lifted her bag, hooking the straps over her shoulders. The multi-functional travel bag had turned out to be a godsend – multiple compartments, expandable, wheels and straps. It could literally carry anything and go anywhere. And it had a rain cover, too, which changed its colour from red to blue. There was nothing she was wearing or carrying now that anyone from this hotel, or the police station, had seen.
Not that they’d notice. The distracted reception staff wouldn’t bat an eyelid if she walked out past them now. But she wasn’t taking any chances.
She closed the door of her room quietly and headed in the opposite direction to the one she’d come from; away from reception, away from the restaurant. She’d chosen this hotel carefully, requesting a room on this floor specifically. She pushed open the door at the end of the corridor, and of course no alarm went off. They always said that fire doors were alarmed, but she’d stayed in many hotels in many places, and she’d never been caught out yet. Of course, there was always the chance that one door, somewhere, might actually be alarmed – but even if it was, she wouldn’t be hanging around for a reaction from the staff.
She hurried down the metal stairs of the fire escape, out to the side of the hotel. Away from the main street, and the police station. She walked quickly, wincing slightly, as a stabbing pain in her ankle started up. Bump on her head aside, she thought she’d got away with that tumble down the mountain, but perhaps she had broken a little bone. Or maybe it was just a sprain. She’d experienced pain like this before. She could walk through it.