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‘Sasha’s here?’ Tom asks. He can’t see her. Is that her standing in front of the Barn? Now, he sees two of her. He looks up at Olly and sees two of him, too.
‘Do it,’ Sasha says. It is her.
Tom starts to say, ‘Hi, Sasha,’ but doesn’t get the words out. Olly shoves him hard, in the back, and he falls forward, into the pool. His mouth fills with water.
He flails underwater, his arms thrashing until he feels a hand on his head, and he reaches upwards to cling onto the arm it belongs to, but instead of helping him up, to where he can breathe, to where he can live, he feels only downward pressure.
Looking up, he sees Olly’s face through the water, distorted and determined.
The last breath to leave his lips carries a word, ‘Nicole’, but it never reaches anyone’s ears. It becomes a cascade of bubbles that drift upwards until they burst at the surface, watched impassively by Olly and Sasha.
75
FRIDAY
Sasha
‘What?’ Olly says.
Sasha turns to him and smiles. ‘When we were interviewed previously, we forgot to tell the detectives that you went around to see Tom on the morning he was murdered. Didn’t you?’
He stares at her, and his expression says it all, speaking to his shock and to his anger with her which is nascent, but will grow fast and furiously until it consumes him. Sasha is taking a risk, she knows, but she’s willing to.
She almost wants to laugh as the cogs turn behind his eyes and outrage and betrayal play out across his expression first, soon to be replaced by a tense calm that she knows is costing him every effort to maintain. He’s making calculations. Olly hates to be wrongfooted so much that, in spite of the danger she’s put herself in, the fact that he might say that she was at the Barn that morning, too, she also feels glee. Andsome curiosity. What’s he going to say? How’s he going to play this?
She’s amazed to find that she feels no regret at throwing him under the bus. Instead, she feels liberated.
All eyes are on him. She sees he’s come to a decision. It’d better be a good one, boyo, she thinks. She tries to keep a smirk off her face.
‘I don’t recollect that at all,’ he says.
‘What time was that?’ Jen asks.
‘I think it was about an hour before Nicole Booth appeared in our drive here,’ Sasha says.
Olly coughs. He stands up. ‘Sorry. I need a glass of water.’ He stands at the sink and fills a large glass. He drinks with his back to them. To Sasha, it feels as if it’s happening in slow motion.
‘Do you recall this, Mr Palmer?’ Jen asks him.
He pivots slowly to face them. Sasha watches him closely. He’ll try to talk himself out of this. She expects him to turn the tables on her.
‘No, I don’t recall it. I think Sasha must have made a mistake. I was here all morning.’
‘I didn’t make a mistake,’ she says. ‘I’m absolutely certain of it.’
His eyes narrow. She sees hatred in them and stares back, letting him know that she’s not afraid, that this is it.
He starts to walk back to the table, but just as she expects him to sit, he ducks out of the room. They hear his footsteps quickening as he goes down the hall.
Jen’s chair scrapes on the floor as she stands. ‘Mr Palmer? I have a few more questions.’
He doesn’t answer. Sasha jumps up and runs after him. The detectives follow. There’s no sign of him. They look outside, though none of them heard the front door.
‘Did he go upstairs?’ Jen asks.
Sasha pictures all the hidden places in the Manor. ‘I think he’s hiding inside the walls,’ she says.
76
