‘What’s going on? I don’t understand.’
She turned to him then and tutted.
‘You already knew about the caves, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘What?’ Her voice was bored now, which was even worse than simply being rejected.
‘That night, when we found Paul and took him down the hill and found shelter in the caves, which I suggested, you were already familiar with them, even though you said you weren’t. What’s really going on? Now his partner is dead, and you’re involved somehow, aren’t you? I saw you.’
‘What do you mean, you saw me?’ Now she was interested.
‘I saw you come from outside, when Jamie fell. Or at least they’re saying he fell, or jumped, but he didn’t jump, did he?’
‘Get the fuck out of my space,’ she seethed.
‘I don’t think the police believe it now either.’
She backed away.
‘I showed the detective the corridors behind the hotel. She knows how somebody can slip around them unnoticed.’
Sandy’s eyes flared and her skin turned pink. Lee backed away further.
‘You came from outside and rushed to him as if you expected him to be there, lying on the floor in agony, dying, like a stuck cold fish on the end of a line, pinned there and caught by your hand.’
‘How dare you!’ She took one step towards him and struck his face. It stung like hell. He stood his ground, and she did it again. He didn’t flinch.
‘There’s CCTV in those corridors that I didn’t tell her about.’
She paused with her hand mid-air as she went for another blow, but she lowered it. ‘Where?’
‘What do I get?’
Sandy looked up to the hotel and back to him. ‘They’ll pay you thousands.’
‘How many thousands? I want to get out of this game forever and leave. That’ll take a good few thousand.’
She smiled. ‘Bargaining now? I knew there was something about you.’
‘Everybody has something about them; you just have to find it.’
‘I’ll get back to you, but how do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘How do I know you are?’
She walked away, throwing her second cigarette onto the grass. Lee tutted and jogged after her, picking it up.
‘I’ll upload a taster onto my phone and send it to you, then you can take it to your masters, and they can pay me what I want. I’ve watched it already and I think it should go for a high price.’
He glared at her and walked away towards the back of the hotel. His heart was racing, and he wished the meeting had gone in a different way. What he really wanted was to keep her on side, impress her, make her see that he was more than a temporary lover. Yes, he was younger than her, but he didn’t care. She’d got under his skin.
He didn’t care much for her speech, really. It had been loud, borderline arrogant, and patronising too. He’d thought that scientists weighed up all sides and produced analysis based upon facts. Sandy wasn’t like that at all. She spoke like a dictator, a despot forcing home their point, regardless of the truth.
But from what he’d pieced together so far, that was the whole point.
Chapter 28
It wasn’t difficult for Kelly to relocate Melvin Stone.
