She giggled a bit and gave Rick a look. ‘I wish… I wish that we get away with it.’
‘With what?’ Jo said.
Rick’s eyes had narrowed menacingly.
Gemma said to him, ‘Are you going to tell her, or shall I?’
He gave an impatient sigh and looked away.
‘It is my birthday.’
Rick said, ‘This is between you and me.’
‘How can it be? We all discussed it.’ She turned to Jo. ‘Rick’s too modest. He did the business.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ Jo said.
‘He did away with Denis Cartwright. Totalled him.’
‘Your boss?’ Jo felt the blood draining from her veins.
‘But the beauty part is-go on, Rick, tell her what you did.’
He was silent.
‘Tell her.’
With distinct reluctance, Rick said, ‘This mustn’t go any further. Cartwright is no more. Literally. After I’d bashed him I took the body to a paper mill in Kent. I know it because I once did a survey there. He went into the pulping mechanism. There’s nothing left of him. No clues. Nothing.’
Gemma added, ‘Which is why it was so comical in the Slug last night when Rick said he was tomorrow’s news. Geddit? Mr Cartwright’s in the paper.’ She shook with laughter.
Jo didn’t laugh. She’d just heard a confession of murder and she was appalled. She couldn’t believe Gemma found it funny. A man was dead.
‘As a matter of fact, he’d only just told me when you came along. Well, shortly before Jake arrived. He’d been holding out all this time. I wouldn’t play poker with him if I were you. Lighten up, darling,’ Gemma told her. ‘Drink up and have a good laugh.’
‘How can you say that?’ Jo said. ‘You must be out of your mind.’
Rick turned to Gemma and said, ‘Didn’t I warn you?’
Gemma said, ‘Don’t make an issue out of this, Jo.’
‘Don’t make an issue!’ Jo hurled the words back as her shock found an outlet in anger. ‘Have a good laugh? I don’t think so!’
‘You knew it was being talked about. You joined in. We’re the Headhunters, the three of us and Jake.’
‘Don’t involve me in this,’ Jo said. ‘Or Jake. We were joking when we said those things. It was never serious.’
‘It was for me, ducky. I had to put up with sodding Cartwright every day. You didn’t even meet him, so you don’t have to feel sorry for him.’
‘Feel sorry! What I feel isn’t important. This is cold-blooded murder, Gem. It’s a crime, the worst of all crimes, taking someone’s life. I don’t care who he was, you can’t do that.’
‘It’s a bit bloody late to be saying so.’
‘I’d have said the same thing when we first discussed it if I’d believed you had the slightest intention of carrying it out.’
‘I was serious,’ Rick said. ‘Did anyone see me laughing at the time?’
Gemma took him by the arm and looked admiringly into his face. ‘He said he could carry out the perfect murder, and now he’s proved it.’
‘Just as long as nobody shops us,’ Rick said.
Jo was getting the shakes. She put her glass on the ledge. ‘I can’t stay and listen to you two. I’m leaving.’
‘You want to ruin everything?’ Gemma said, red-faced.
‘It wasn’t me who ruined it.’
Rick said, ‘Keep this to yourself, Jo.’
She felt like spitting in his murderous face. Without another word she turned and walked off, out of the dance area, across the foyer, and towards the fresh air. She needed some.
Rick shouted after her, ‘Remember what I said. Keep your bloody mouth shut.’
She ran to the nearest taxi and got in. At this time of the evening the last hovercraft had left. The only way back to the mainland was by the ferry a couple of miles west of Ryde. That had always been their intended route home. The steamships sailed into the small hours.
Grateful that the driver wasn’t the talkative sort, Jo huddled in the back, gripping her arms, and tried to get control of her thoughts. The way Gemma and Rick had spoken about the killing and disposal of Denis Cartwright-as if it was something to be proud of-was chilling. To be strictly truthful, it was Gemma who’d wanted to crow about the murder. She’d had to force the admission from Rick. Yet it was obvious from the way he’d spoken that he, too, thought of it as some sort of achievement, the so-called perfect murder.
They’d been expecting congratulations.
How do you get into a mindset like that? Horrible as it was to contemplate, the killing must have been kindled out of their relationship. Rick had done it to please Gemma. He must have. He had nothing personal against Mr Cartwright. Like Jo herself, Rick didn’t know the man when they’d all talked in that ludicrous way about methods of disposing of him.
Gemma had said more than once that she hadn’t yet slept with Rick. Had she offered sex as the reward for killing her boss? The thought was grotesque, but what else could have motivated Rick? Arrogant as he was, he hadn’t stooped to murder just to prove a point.
Gemma was triumphant. That was why she’d found it impossible to keep the knowledge to the two of them. She wanted it known that this guy was so in thrall that he’d killed for her.
They couldn’t call it a perfect murder any more.
‘We’re there, love.’
It was the driver breaking into her thoughts. She paid him and walked over to the ferry and bought her ticket. This would be the last crossing tonight, the man told her. The sea was “churning up a bit” and there was a storm coming in.
Rick and Gemma would be stuck on the Island for the night. Not a problem for those two, Jo thought. They’d share a bed somewhere and wallow in their cleverness.
She was so glad she’d left when she had.
FOURTEEN
Sometimes a night in custody softens up a suspect.
‘Have you thought about what I was asking you last night?’ Hen asked Francisco.
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘And I’m saying sod all without a lawyer.’
Sometimes not.
The problem, as Hen well knew, was that he would say sod all with a lawyer. Trying not to show annoyance, she asked if he had one.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m a good boy, ain’t I? Never needed one till you came along.’
She sent Gary to fetch the list.
The fallout from Rick’s confession of murder had troubled Jo all night long. ‘Confession’ wasn’t the word; there was no contrition in it. He’d explained what he’d done in that spine-chilling matter-of-fact manner that left Jo in no doubt it was true.
What now? Her moral duty was to report him, but this wasn’t so simple. Her dealings with the police over the body on Selsey beach had left her feeling more of a hindrance than a help. Without any evidence that Rick had killed
