Oh god, whimpered a voice in her head. Because she recognised the route they were travelling from last night — the path, the block, the numbers — Lucas skidded to a halt outside Talia’s chalet. Talia shouldn’t be here! She should be with the others, not alone. But everything about Lucas’s face told her that Talia was in there.
‘TALIA!’ she screamed, wrenching at the door. It didn’t move, but she thought she saw movement behind the net curtain. ‘TALIA!’ she screamed again, fumbling her metal pick into the lock and working it open with trembling hands. It seemed to take forever but at last she heard the click, over the pulsing of her own blood through her ears, and felt Lucas grab the handle and pull it open.
A gust blew out the curtain and she fought past it and ran into the room. At first, she saw nothing and for a second she tried to believe that Lucas had been wrong, and Talia was safe with Craig and Nikki. But then she saw a foot extending from behind the sofa.
Her friend lay on her back, eyes closed. She was wearing an ugly yellow dress; some kind of nylon monstrosity with white daisy flowers stitched down the front. The words ‘I’m sorry” were scrawled across it in red felt tip, and the 1980s bow at the neckline was pulled tightly around her throat, cutting viciously into the flesh. Kate abandoned her fears of crime scene contamination and ripped at the bow, sobbing her friend’s name and pressing for a pulse at the side of her bruised neck.
‘She’s alive,’ said Lucas, his hand on her shoulder but his eyes fixed on the back end of the chalet. ‘Call an ambulance. I have to go after whoever did this. We’ve just scared the killer away through the back window.’
‘Talia!’ called Kate, patting her friend’s cool cheek. ‘C’mon, baby, wake up!’
Lucas left at speed and she didn’t try to stop him as she fumbled for her phone and dialled 999. ‘Ambulance! Right away! My friend’s been strangled… she’s only barely breathing. Please hurry.’
She sounded, in her own head, like so many taped distress calls she’d heard over the years — on the edge of screaming panic. She had to get a grip. She put the phone down, on speaker, and continued to give her location while she shifted Talia’s limp body into the recovery position, keeping a palm to her mouth to feel for warm breath. There was some. Talia was breathing… but how much damage had been done to her? How long had her brain been starved of oxygen?
She sat back on her heels, holding on to Talia’s hand and trying to work out what to do. Her professional brain seemed to have deserted her. The police would be here any minute, because the emergency dispatcher would have automatically alerted them, and some were already on site. She had promised she would stay here until the ambulance arrived but, as Lucas had said, the moment the police got here, she would be grounded. They would check in on Bill and find him dead and she would have to decide whether to confess that she’d been into that crime scene too and not reported it… and all the convoluted reasons why. She would have to involve Lucas again and it was going to take hours and hours, if not days. She might even get arrested.
And meanwhile, Craig and Nikki were at terrible risk. She should call them right now. Warn them. Except she didn’t have their mobile numbers. They just hadn’t stayed in touch that way. They were friends on social media and used that to message each other. She was just about to resort to Facebook Messenger when she heard the static beep of a two-way radio and was brought sharply into focus. What was she going to do now? In the distance, she could hear the muted whoop of an ambulance siren.
‘Police!’ called out a young female voice — not DS Stuart’s, Kate was certain.
‘In here!’ she called, and two uniformed officers arrived at the open patio door. They entered at speed, kneeling next to Talia and firing questions at her.
‘Her name’s Talia,’ Kate said. ‘She’s still breathing. Look…’ She put her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m going to be sick. I have to…’
She got up and stumbled to the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her while the two officers dealt with the casualty. The paramedics were probably just seconds away, now, and the PCs would guard Talia until they arrived.
Kate made retching noises and ran the taps. Then she eyed the high, narrow letterbox of a window already wide open above the bath and took a deep breath. This was one of those times when being small and lean was going to be a blessing. Thirty seconds later, leaving the taps running full blast to cover the noise, she wriggled across the window sill, over the frame, and squeezed through the tight gap, dropping into the cover of some rhododendron shrubs.
And now what? Where the hell had Lucas gone? She didn’t have the benefit of instant dowser satnav, so she had to find Craig and Nikki right now. She crept away through the rhododendrons, urgently thumbing a message to them both. Where are you? Really URGENT! Tell me where you are!
She edged deeper into the boundary shrubs and worked her way down the site, in the direction of the pavilion, guessing they might be there or maybe back in the restaurant.
A minute passed with no reply and then, from Craig, a recorded audio message popped up: ‘We’re doing the Famous Five thing again!’ he said, puffing slightly as if he was walking fast. ‘Talia’s meeting us down at the bunkers when she’s
