That pirate’s smile was back where it ought not to be and just before I fainted, he said, ‘Adventure, Felicity. That’s what you and I have ahead of us.’
When I came to, I was in a side room of the restaurant. Not that I knew where I was instantly; I had to figure it out from the clues.
Feeling groggy, I levered myself into a sitting position. I was in a small room, stretched out on a couch – a staff breakroom I guessed.
‘She’s awake, sir,’ a voice said. I looked up to find one of the male police officers sitting on a plastic chair from where he had been keeping an eye on me.
Other noises drifted in through the door, a murmur of conversation from the restaurant, the squawk and bleep of police radios and the voice of Chief Inspector Quinn as he issued an order to someone before reappearing in the doorway.
‘Get her up then, Constable Hayes. Let’s go.’ He didn’t bother to spare me a look.
The young officer rose from his chair, coming toward me as he reached behind his back to produce a set of cuffs.
I waved a horrified arm at him. ‘What? What is going on? You said murder!’ I squeaked at the chief inspector where he hovered still just outside the door.
He swung his gaze to meet my eyes. ‘Yes, Mrs Philips. You were very sloppy. The carpark is littered with CCTV cameras, so too the street outside. It took minutes to find footage showing you tampering with John Ramsey’s car and no longer to track your casual stroll to this restaurant to get dinner. I have met plenty of stone-cold killers in my time, but none that managed to portray such innocence as you.’
‘But I am innocent!’ I protested instantly. ‘Hold on,’ what he had said finally dawned on me. ‘Has something happened to John Ramsey?’
The chief inspector narrowed his eyes at me, then looked up at his constable with an impatient glare. ‘To the station, Hayes. I will interview her myself.’
He turned and walked away, leaving me behind with the young constable who put cold steel handcuffs on my delicate wrists. I kept hoping I might wake up from what had to be a nightmare. Perhaps Amber was lying across my face and my brain was being starved of oxygen.
‘Where’s Vince Slater?’ I asked, my voice barely a whisper as the police officer led me through the restaurant.
Somehow, waiting at the door, the chief inspector heard my question. ‘Your accomplice is already on his way to the station, Mrs Philips.’ He added nothing further, the accusations ringing in my head enough to clamour out all noise but the rushing of blood to my head and the thumping beat in my chest.
I was mortified to have been arrested, terrified that I might be found guilty because I had been near John Ramsey’s car, and just about bright enough to keep my mouth shut.
On the way to the station, all manner of questions and thoughts whirled around like a maelstrom in my mind. Secured in the back of a police car and trying hard to stop myself hyperventilating, I focused on what I might need to say, on what I had actually done, and who I could call.
I didn’t have a lawyer at my beck and call. Who does? There were legal firms in my contacts list but that was for ensuring contracts were legally binding when I took on my clients. Securing some of the biggest wedding venues, ordering dresses that cost the same as a car … all these things are managed by me or rather, by my firm, and when spending that kind of cash in an environment where one in ten engagements never make it to the ceremony, both parties need protection.
Anyway, they were not the right people, but I suspected they would know someone who was. I hadn’t killed John Ramsey. I hadn’t even wanted him dead. Not since we were kids anyway. Any decent criminal defence lawyer would be able to clear this up in a few hours. That’s what I told myself in the dark shadows of that police car and whether it was a lie for my own benefit or not, it made me feel a little better.
At the station, I was processed, my fingerprints taken, and my personal belongings removed. It was when they got to my handbag that a fresh spike of panic shot through me. In my handbag were the pages of numbers I’d lifted from John’s car. It served as evidence of wrong doing, though if the chief inspector’s claim to have CCTV footage of me was true I doubted the pages would be any more damning, but perhaps they would show that all I did was steal something.
It was hardly a demonstration of innocence, but it was a long way from murder too.
The pages weren’t in my handbag though. The sergeant behind the desk, a flat-chested woman with a stern face and short hair cropped in a man’s style went through the contents of my handbag one item at a time. The pages were not there.
Perplexed, and wondering what to make of it, I kept quiet, believing the fewer words I said the better off I might be.
Vince was nowhere in sight, but when a constable – another woman – this one in her twenties but bearing the same professional disinterest in me, took me to the row of cells, I could hear his voice echoing out. He was singing. It was Jail Guitar Doors by The Clash, a song I hadn’t heard in more than thirty years. That I could
