“Did Lina know all this?” I ask.
“Not all of it, because Carl didn’t want to put her in an awkward position. She knew that I was going to work for Ned, but Carl told her he was doing me a favor because I wanted a job for a few months before leaving for New Zealand.” I hear the scuff of him adjusting his position. “One morning, Ned called me early and told me to have the car ready because he needed to go to Las Vegas urgently. He said that you were going with him, and I was to go and pick you up, then return to Wentworth for him. It was only a few days later, when Lina arrived back from seeing friends in Scotland, that she heard from your friend Carolyn about Ned sexually assaulting Justine. Lina told Carl, and Carl told me.” There’s another pause. “I was immediately worried for you, so I tried to find out which hotel you were staying in. But nobody seemed to know, and Ned wasn’t answering his phone to anyone. The following day, Carl called me again. Lina was worried because neither she nor Carolyn had been able to get in touch with Justine. She also said that Carolyn hadn’t been able to reach you either.”
“Ned took my phone. He made me think I’d left it on the plane. And my computer wouldn’t work; I thought I’d broken it when I dropped my bag. But that was down to him too. He obviously wanted to make sure that I didn’t hear about his assault on Justine. I only found out when Carolyn called me at the hotel, the morning we were leaving.”
“And by then you were married to him.”
“It wasn’t what you think.”
“I know that now. But I didn’t know it then.”
I trace a circle on the ground with my finger. “How did you find out about our marriage?”
“Ned called me on Thursday evening. He told me the good news, then asked me to collect your belongings from your apartment. I asked him how I could do that without keys, and he told me to use my imagination, that it had to be done by the time I picked you up at the airport the following morning.”
“How did you get into my apartment?”
“I found the owner, told him of your surprise wedding to Mr. Hawthorpe and said that Mr. Hawthorpe would appreciate it if he could let me into the apartment so that I could move your things into Mr. Hawthorpe’s house. Believe me, the Hawthorpe name mentioned three times in one sentence has an amazing effect on people.” His voice becomes serious again. “But there was still no sign of Justine, and although Ned told everyone that she’d gone back to France, we were suspicious. Then Lina came to the house.”
A silence descends on us.
“Carl told me,” he says, his voice quiet. “He told me that when he saw you at the memorial service, you said that you saw Ned kill Lina.”
My eyes blur. I want to say something but I’m afraid I might start crying.
“Amelie, if I pass you the key, will you open the door?” he asks, after a moment.
I swallow down my tears. “No. Carry on.”
I hear him sigh. “Lina’s death changed everything. For Carl especially, but also for me.”
“How did you know that Lina and Justine were dead?” I ask. “And that Ned had killed them?”
“We didn’t, not really, not until their bodies were found. We suspected, but we couldn’t prove anything. The day Lina came to Ned’s house, I tried to persuade her to leave. I knew that she was going to accuse Ned of lying about Justine being in France and I didn’t want Ned to know that anyone suspected him of actually murdering Justine, in case he decided to hide any traces he might have left behind. I wasn’t particularly worried for Lina’s safety, I never thought Ned would be capable of murdering someone in broad daylight, with people around. I phoned Carl to tell him Lina was at the house, and he asked me to let him know as soon as she’d left. But then Ned asked me to go to London to collect a file from the office, and on my way back—it must have been about two hours later, because the traffic was bad—Carl called to ask if Lina was still at the house, as they’d arranged to meet that evening and she hadn’t turned up. He’d tried to call her, but he couldn’t get ahold of her.
“When I got back to the house with the file Ned had said he needed, I asked him if Lina had stayed long. He seemed surprised that I’d asked him, but told me she’d been upset because he had fired her and that she’d left, telling him that there was nothing left for her in England and that she was going to go back to Lithuania.” He gives a dry laugh. “I can’t tell you how loud those alarm bells started ringing. I phoned Carl, he went to the office and checked the security cameras. He could see Lina arriving at the house, hurrying through the gates behind Ned’s car, but no sign of her walking out through the gates. What he did see though, was a black van driving through them around half an hour after I’d left for London. Carl gave me the registration number. It wasn’t hard to trace who it belonged to, despite him using an alias.”