Circle of Lies Read online

  Although she wanted to pounce on Barry and guide him out the moment he’d signed his last book, she gave him a wide berth, allowing him to go through some pleasantries with the organisers and hotel staff first. Somebody had left a copy of Barry’s book on one of the chairs, so she absentmindedly began to flick through the pages, scanning for the scene which Isla had mentioned earlier.

  When she looked up, Barry had gone. She placed the book back as she’d found it and looked around the room. As she stood up, she realised Barry had gone outside; she could see him through the windows of the dining area. He was on his phone, obviously shouting at somebody. He’d been cool, calm and collected since the moment he checked into the guest house. Charlotte wondered what could possibly perturb a man in his position.

  Then she thought of the attitude and outbursts they’d had from Lucia over the past few weeks. Barry was probably suffering at the hands of hormone-fuelled teenagers, just like any other parent. Being an author didn’t give him a Get out of jail free card.

  White-faced and agitated, Barry stepped back inside. There were only a few people left in the room, most of them waiting staff, so he homed in on Charlotte immediately. The worried look changed to a professional smile, and he strode up to her, apologising for keeping her back so long.

  ‘It’s no problem. I’m just pleased that your event went so well.’

  Barry McMillan seemed distracted as they walked along the illuminated promenade back to the guest house, accompanied only by the sound of the waves swishing gently on the sand and the cries of seagulls nesting on nearby roofs. Charlotte attempted several conversational topics, but each time Barry let the embers fade and die.

  He was probably exhausted, keen for some quiet time. It was the same for her when they were hosting a wedding or birthday party. It was great fun at the time, but once the room was clear of guests, she just wanted to crash.

  As they walked through the front doorway of the guest house, Charlotte could see that Olli had got caught with a late arrival. Barry made his excuses and headed up the stairs to his room, and Charlotte moved into work mode, keen to release Olli who had probably been disturbed from his studies. Not that it took much to distract him.

  ‘Hello, Mr Norris, I assume?’ she asked. Charlotte gave Olli a small nod, and he wished the customer well and ran up the stairs back to the family accommodation.

  Mr Norris explained at great length how his train had been delayed due to either a cow on the line or an excess of leaves; he hadn’t managed to determine which. Charlotte let him speak, then encouraged him up the stairs, eager to see him to his room and then lock up for the night.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said quietly, aware that many of the guests would already be asleep. ‘You’re staying next to Morecambe’s famous author, Barry McMillan.’

  ‘The history guy?’ Mr Norris replied. Charlotte nodded.

  ‘I’m a big fan. His attention to historical detail and local authenticity is astounding. I’ll look forward to catching his attention.’

  From the few words Charlotte had caught as she flicked through the book whilst killing time at the Midland Hotel, she was looking forward to enjoying the other aspects of Barry’s writing. She walked ahead of Mr Norris, opened up his room with her pass key and showed him inside. Once she’d given him the tour—TV, WiFi, breakfast timings and checkout time—she moved towards the door, eager to get away.

  There was a thud from the room next door.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Charlotte asked, looking at Mr Norris. ‘It sounded like something heavy being dropped.’

  ‘I didn’t hear it,’ Mr Norris said. He listened. ‘No, I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Well, have a good sleep, and we’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow.’

  She closed the door, stepping out onto the landing. She could hear something in Barry McMillan’s room, a movement, but not footsteps. There was a creaking too, like woodwork under duress. Just as she started to move towards the stairs, there was a grunt that made her creep up to the door and listen. She didn’t want to disturb him; for all she knew he was watching pornography, and he had every right to his privacy, after all. But something made her linger.

  Charlotte tapped at the door quietly.

  ‘Mr McMillan. Are you still awake? Is everything okay?’

  She could hear Mr Norris busying himself in the room next door.

  ‘Mr McMillan, it’s Charlotte. Are you okay in there?’

  Still no reply. She began to walk away, ever mindful of the importance of online reviews. All she needed was a one-star review from a famous author revealing that he couldn’t even take a midnight toilet visit at the guest house without the SAS busting the door down to find out what he was up to. Yet something made her stay.

  She waited another five minutes, perfectly still outside his door. Then she tapped one last time.

  ‘Mr McMillan, it’s Charlotte. I’m coming into your room to check you’re okay. I’m opening up your door now…’

  She inserted her pass key and opened up the door. The main lights were off, but with the curtains still open, the room was lit by the glare from the street lamps along the road. She sensed him before she realised what had happened.

  Barry McMillan was hanging from a curtain cord looped around the structural beam which ran across his room. His body was perfectly still, except for a small twitch in his right foot.

  Chapter Two

  The moment she realised what had happened, Charlotte switched on the main light and cried for help. McMillan must have stood on a wooden chair to raise himself to a reasonable height, then kicked it away from underneath him. Charlotte picked up the chair, stood on it and tried to take his weight, but it was impossible for her to lift him or do anything that might reduce the tightness of the ligature.

  ‘Will! Olli! Help me!’

  She was so desperate to get help that it didn’t even occur to her that she didn’t want Olli to see this, until it was too late. Will and Olli came running down the stairs, Olli in his boxers and T-shirt, and Will in pyjama bottoms. Between them, they tried to take McMillan’s feet and lift him up so that his body weight couldn’t pull down onto the noose. After a couple of minutes, they gave up.

  ‘It’s useless,’ Will said, ‘He’s dead, he has to be.’

  Several guests had gathered at the door, some of them backing off immediately when they saw what had happened, and a couple of more hardy souls standing and watching, offering words of advice from the sidelines.

  ‘Do we have any doctors or medical people in?’ Charlotte asked. It sounded corny asking that question, like someone had just had a heart attack on a plane, but she had to ask it.

  ‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ one of the female guests said.

  ‘Will one of you please help us cut him down?’ Will said impatiently. ‘Get a kitchen knife or something. We can’t hold him up here much longer.’

  Eventually, McMillan was cut down and lowered to the floor. The ambulance team arrived first, followed by the police. There was apparently some small chance that he might make it, probably with brain damage, but the fall that Charlotte had heard through the wall was heavy and final; it looked like it had broken his neck. The only consolation, if there was one, was that he hadn’t been thrashing around fighting for his final breaths while Charlotte had been listening through the door, wondering if an intervention might result in a poor online review.

  The emergency services performed their jobs with calm efficiency while Charlotte, Will and Olli retreated to the downstairs lounge, ready to face the barrage of questions from the police.

  A woman arrived, clearly holding the respect of the officers the moment she walked into the guest house. After exchanging words with two of them, she headed directly for Charlotte.

  ‘Charlotte Grayson?’ she asked.

  Charlotte nodded. She knew this woman already. She’d been in charge at the holiday camp, after the security guard had been attacked.

  Charlotte was still tryi
ng to process what she’d just seen. For some reason, it hadn’t shocked her. She was trembling, and her heart was beating fast, but she wasn’t as startled as she felt she ought to be. She simply couldn’t figure out why a man like McMillan, having just experienced all that adoration, could possibly go straight back to his room and hang himself; it made no sense. If anything, her overwhelming feeling was one of sadness. She’d spent much of the evening with the man, yet hadn’t an inkling that he intended to end his life.

  ‘I’m DCI Kate Summers,’ the lady said, extending her hand. ‘I think we’ve met once before?’

  She was pleasant, though clearly a no-nonsense sort of person. The partly washed away splashes of brightly coloured paint on her hands gave the game away. Charlotte knew the signs, as any mother would. She was a working woman who’d managed to get home in time to squeeze in some painting with her kids before they went to bed. And now, before she’d had the opportunity to clean up properly and settle down for the night, she’d got a call-out to their guest house. Talk about the stuff of nightmares.

  ‘So, walk me through it,’ DCI Summers said.

  Charlotte took her through what had happened, step-by-step. Something in her felt daring, as if she was playing with fire, imagining the DCI was questioning her about the disappearance of Bruce Craven. What if his body had been found while they were digging out the foundations on the site of the old holiday camp? Would she feel as calm then?

  She knew she wouldn’t, but as she spoke to DCI Summers, Charlotte imagined that she was in the interview room, resisting the question and giving nothing away.

  Only this interview was easy. She was guilt-free and had nothing to hide. Barry McMillan, for whatever reason, had decided to end his life that night. It was tragic, definitely an inconvenience to the business, and it had shaken her a little. But all in all, Charlotte was doing better than expected. Perhaps she was finally getting over the events of the past months: the mystery threats, the kidnapping of Lucia, the fear of being attacked by Jenna’s horrible boyfriend.

  DCI Summers didn’t dwell long on her questioning of Charlotte, and there was no suggestion of foul play. The police seemed puzzled by the question of motive. DCI Summers moved around the building, checking McMillan’s room, asking questions of the officers in attendance and getting a sense of what had happened. Eventually, she started to make signals that she was about to leave.

  ‘Just one thing,’ she said to Charlotte as she headed for the door. ‘Did you see him use a phone?’

  ‘What, a landline or a mobile phone?’

  ‘A mobile phone,’ DCI Summers replied.

  ‘I can’t remember… oh, yes, he did, at the Midland Hotel. I saw him calling someone outside while I was waiting for him.’

  ‘He couldn’t have left it anywhere, could he? You don’t have a safe or anything like that?’

  ‘No, it should be in his room. Or in his pocket maybe?’

  ‘We’ve looked, and we can’t find anything,’ DCI Summers replied. ‘It’s unusual that he wasn’t carrying a phone.’

  At that moment, a face appeared at the glass in the front door.

  ‘Late night arrival?’ DCI Summers asked.

  Charlotte hadn’t even thought about Lucia’s whereabouts in among all the drama. But now here she was, on a school night, arriving back home at almost one o’clock in the morning. As she came in, Charlotte saw she was heavily made up and wearing a very revealing, short dress. That most definitely had not been a topic for discussion at the breakfast table that morning.

  Chapter Three

  Day Two: Wednesday

  Breakfast was tense the next day, as the guests held hushed conversations, stunned and shocked by what had happened the night before. What would make a man so celebrated and successful do something terrible like that?

  Will had left the local radio station playing in the background, and every time the news programme returned to the topic in a news bulletin or interview, the lounge would fall silent as the guests listened to hear the latest update. There was a sense of crisis in the guest house, as if they’d all gone through something terrible together.

  Not for the first time, Charlotte was grateful for Isla’s calm efficiency in the kitchen. In the cold light of a new day, she discovered that she had been shaken by the events of the previous night. She was so exhausted by her late night and early start that she was functioning on auto-pilot, going through the motions but not really taking things in. Having supported a man’s dead body while her husband cut him down seemed more important to her than getting Mrs Hartley’s poached eggs not too soft and not too hard.

  All she could think of was Barry McMillan’s bloated face and bulging eyes. If anybody thought hanging was a peaceful way to kill yourself, Charlotte now knew otherwise. It was troubling how he’d managed to get to that dark place in such a short time; he hadn’t given any impression of a man who was contemplating suicide. But she didn’t even know what that would look like.

  ‘Thanks for coming in to help, George; you have the knack of knowing when to step in,’ Charlotte said as she came into the kitchen, balancing a pile of carefully stacked plates which had been wiped clean of their full English breakfasts.

  ‘No problem. Isla and I are always up at the crack of dawn. Besides, Una likes her early walk along the promenade, and it’s always so lovely looking out across the bay at that time of day. I heard it on the radio on the five o’clock news, and I suspected things might be a little tense around here.’

  It was not just the suicide that had caused Charlotte to be distracted; there was another showdown brewing with Lucia. What had she been thinking of, sneaking out like that and coming back home so late at night? She hadn’t had the energy for a row about it there and then. Besides, the guests were up and alert, and it wouldn’t have been the best time. But Charlotte was furious.

  If there was one downside to running a guest house with teenagers in the house, it was that she was frequently distracted by guests and the usual routines. And with people coming and going at all times of night, it made it easier for Lucia to avoid detection if she stayed out a little later than she should.

  After a shaky start, her daughter seemed to have settled in school and found some new friends. Now it was looking like she’d picked up some bad influences. Charlotte was walking that precarious tightrope of trying to give her daughter more freedom as a young adult while looking through the rose-tinted glasses of a parent who still remembered in glorious Technicolour her first day at primary school.

  ‘Go upstairs and have breakfast with your family,’ George said, shaking her out of her distracted state. ‘Isla and I have got this. We’ll serve the late diners and clear everything up.’

  Charlotte gave him a peck on the cheek and thanked Isla for her help. Nobody could beat her poached eggs, anyway. She did something that made them come out perfect every time. Charlotte could only dream of Isla’s prowess in the kitchen.

  She removed her pinafore, now splashed with fried egg, and threw it into the washing bin. Then she checked in with the guests and made her exit, walking up the flights of stairs towards their family accommodation on the top level.

  The sight of the police tape across the door of Barry McMillan’s room gave her a jolt as she stepped up onto the landing. DCI Summers had reassured her that they probably wouldn’t need to access the room again as there were no suspicious circumstances to Barry’s death, but until they’d located his phone and accounted for his last movements, they’d need to keep their options open. With it being a Wednesday, they had flexibility with the allocation of the rooms, so she and Will had already worked out that it wouldn’t be a problem until Friday.

  Charlotte took a breath before she walked into the family accommodation on the top floor. She could hear Will and Olli chatting; Will was always more relaxed with the kids and never seemed to worry as much as she did. She wished she shared his laid-back attitude.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ Olli said as she walked in and joined them at th
e breakfast table.

  ‘No sign of Lucia?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘Haven’t you see her?’ Will replied. ‘She left for school early this morning. Didn’t she say goodbye?’

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ Charlotte said, the anger of the previous night beginning to rise again. ‘Did she say anything to you?’

  ‘Just that she’d got talking at her friend’s house and she’d lost track of time.’

  ‘What, dressed like that?’ Charlotte interrupted. ‘She looked like she’d just rolled in from a night club.’

  ‘She said she was just dressing up to see what her friends thought of her new gear. We have to let her off the leash, Charlotte; she’s not long turned seventeen. If we keep restricting her every movement, she’ll grow to resent us.’

  ‘You know why I’m like this!’ Charlotte shouted at him, more aggressively than she meant to. ‘She was abducted, for God’s sake. Whatever you say about her being an adult, nobody should have to live with that experience at her age.’

  ‘She told us she didn’t need to speak to the psychologist,’ Will said, his voice calm and reasonable.

  It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. But Charlotte just couldn’t shake off the fear that Lucia might disappear again; what had happened to her was every mother’s nightmare.

  ‘I blame it on her taking that job in the arcade; she’s mixing with boys from the town there, rather than her school chums. We should have insisted she only work here.’

  ‘We can’t do that to her,’ Will protested. ‘She’s allowed to get a job of her own choosing and make her own friends. Besides, she lives in the guest house, and she’s entitled to want to get out of here from time to time.’