Each time Kelly watched it, she scanned people’s feet for large CAT boots, and their necks for pretty scarves. But she hadn’t spotted them yet. Then she saw Sandy and registered the scream she’d heard and seen dozens of times. The woman’s face was etched in horror. She saw Lee trying to give Jamie reassurance and witnessed him slip in the blood and fall on the victim. It was desperately shocking even though she’d seen it dozens of times now. Jamie’s body twitched and jerked. She watched as pairs of feet ran away, stopped dead, or shuffled around. Nobody knew what to do. Disasters were uncommon for most people.
Then she saw Hank look to the side and she started the audio alongside. This was what she was looking for. From the position of the camera and the direction of Tilda’s face, Kelly knew that she was nodding towards Hank. Then he said it.
The words chilled her soul.
He’d said,‘I told you this would happen.’
It was resolute. There was no mistaking the words.
She moved past the frame and allowed the film to finish.
The YouTuber panned out to the rest of the foyer and Kelly got a glimpse of Hank. He was about three feet away from the phone, which made him about four feet away from Tilda.
As the footage took in a 360° Kelly let it run to the end. In total it was five minutes long and it was their best piece of evidence so far. It was rare to be in possession of real-time footage of a homicide and Kelly experienced a weird sensation of privilege. She turned to her notes on the two siblings.
Neither was on the police national computer system. Nor were they on any databases flagging up deviant behaviours, including minor ones. Fin had found contact details for foster parents who’d looked after the pair when they were teenagers, but apart from that, they seemed to have zero links to family.
The camera zoomed in on Jamie’s face and Kelly shut her eyes. She was staggered at the macabre desire to do such a thing to a dying man. She fought the urge to allow tears to fall from her eyes and she caught them in a tissue just in time. The moment of somebody’s death, especially such a violently dramatic one, was something so intimate that being a witness to it was something Kelly didn’t get to see very often.
It was repulsive.
She forced herself to watch again to the very end.
Emotion did curious things to memory and several people had been through the same footage since Tuesday night. But coppers weren’t machines. And video couldn’t be analysed by robots, yet. Things were missed. Shock and personal bias dictated what the human brain focused on.
And that’s when she saw somebody in the background who wasn’t there before. A man wearing a hoodie with casual shorts and his hands in his pockets. He’d also turned away from the camera.
Chapter 38
Tilda’s grand room overlooked the seven acres of private land leading down to a woodland. She breathed easier than she had all week. The place was deserted, just how she liked it. It had been Hank’s idea. He could have easily disappeared off back to Dallas and hidden. Some backwater UK detective had no jurisdiction where they came from. But they had unfinished business here. The colour of dollars and old-school political allegiances were the best currency in the world when it came to protection from legal complications. They must stay close to the source of their stress, for now. Hank had explained they couldn’t leave their patient. Paul was a big enough liability without the added complication of another asset they’d neglected for too long. There was too much cleaning up to do and Hank insisted they do it.
Hank had never been one to shy away from getting his hands dirty, Tilda recalled affectionately. She didn’t know what compelled her to limit her sexual experiences to colleagues; she guessed it had something to do with opportunity. She did little else but work, and men were readily available, and none of them said no, because she was the boss.
But Hank was old news. It had been exciting a decade ago, when the oil and cattle tycoon had yielded his company to hers. The triumph turned her on. Conquering him in the boardroom and the bedroom had been deliciously hot. But now she sought young blood.
She stood in front of the window and peered out at a sizeable hill which guarded the road in the distance. England was so quaint, she mused. Her home in Boston would cover this entire house and gardens and probably take in the little mountaintoo. English people didn’t appreciate space. They lived on top of one another like ants in a tunnel. But certain things were cute. It had been Jamie’s idea to hold the conference here. She didn’t even know where the English Lake District was until this weekend. She’d just read about it in documents, and been told how beautiful Dow Bank House was, and she simply must visit. It kept UNESCO happy, as Jamie had explained, and it gave them cover. Plus, they were close to the asset. And only Sandy understood the science.
‘How far from London is it?’ she’d asked Jamie. He’d laughed, his beautiful open chuckle, and said in his perfectly small voice, ‘Boston to Brooklyn.’
She sighed and spotted two runners making their way up the rocky slope in the distance. Their bright jackets stood out and Tilda thought English people were crazy for lots of reasons. Their obsession with fresh air was one of them. Their love of dogs was another. Their reticence when faced with change was another. She could go on.
Terrible food, the stiff-upper-lip thingy that she didn’t really understand, lack of imaginative sexual prowess…
‘We have to move with the times,’she’d said to Jamie.
In his standard stuffy English way, he’d screwed up his face and told her that they didn’t have to follow the field like sheep.
Jamie was one man she’d never conquered and now never would, and the fact irritated her.
The science was solid, according to Sandy, the market was ripe for a new health product, and the funding was there for them on a plate. They’d be stupid not to jump at the opportunity. But Jamie still had reservations.
He wasn’t yet part of the inner circle. He wasn’t old money, and he had no family name.
It was that simple.
Jamie had been a decent player. He told her that when you’re brought up in foster homes you become an expert in reinvention and dissociation. He’d had years of therapy, but Tilda never would have guessed. He came across as a confident and sturdy character. Intelligent, passionate and clever. She’d never met anyone like him who was so good at making money but such fun with it. The two were usually exclusive qualities in her experience. But not Jamie. In the end, he allowed emotion to cloud his judgement. As it turned out, Hank wanted young blood too but he coveted the wrong woman and everything changed.
She folded her arms and forced herself to hold back her own emotion. She’d kept it hidden for so many years that another couple weren’t going to hurt. She must stick to the programme and ride the storm. As long as Jamie’s death didn’t cause a ripple effect in the market, they’d be home and dry within days.
