Page 112 of A Murder is Going Down

‘You killed him?’ I ask, to be clear, since nobody’s spelling it out for me and if theyareabout to murder me, too, I’d quite like to know exactly what I’m dying for.

‘Ikilled him,’ Michael clarifies quickly, but Elena shakes her head.

‘It was my plan. I was supposed to do it,’ Elena says. ‘Michael was my back-up in case it went wrong.’

‘You never askedme,’ Patrick says. Is it possible he sounds hurt?

‘You’re a kid,’ Elena says.

‘You won’t even kill a spider,’ Michael points out.

‘They keep the bugs away!’

‘It wasmyplan,’ Elena says again. ‘I knew if Felix died suspiciously, the police would suspect me. It’s always the spouse, right? I started thinking about how I could givemyself an alibi. Then a couple of weeks before Felix … died, the lift broke down – some electrical fault. I was stuck in there for not even five minutes, but it got me thinking that if I could figure out a way to be stuck in the lift when Felix died, I’d have a perfect alibi.’

‘But you needed witnesses,’ I say, keen to show how close I came to figuring it all out. ‘I guess if the witness was your brother, the cops might have thought he was covering for you. So, you invited your friends from work.’

‘All I’m saying is that I would have covered for you too,’ Patrick adds.

Elena gives him a look with big-sister vibes. ‘Shut up, Patrick,’ she says sweetly. And to me, ‘Exactly. I had the idea of inviting work friends: people I knew and liked, but not the kind of people who would cover up a murder for me.’ It’s the first time she’s used the m-word, and I feel it.

‘When Elena told me what she was planning, I wanted to help,’ Michael says. ‘Easiest acting job I’ve ever done, if I’m honest.’ He grins like he’s being interviewed on a chat show. Then, maybe, he remembers who he’s talking to. ‘I sent Patrick to stay with a friend, telling him the show had another week to run, then flew to Perth.’

‘How did you convince Felix to have your friends over, if he hated you having friends?’ I ask Elena.

‘I never told him,’ she says simply.

‘You killed him before the party so you didn’t have to,’I say slowly. ‘It can’t have been too early or the forensics team would have noticed the difference in the body.’

Michael nods, taking over from Elena. ‘Less than an hour before the guests arrived,’ he says. ‘Elena and Felix went out for some fresh air. He loved to drag Elena up to that lookout spot because it was so hard for her to make it. She had a rock hidden up there and was going to use it as soon as he turned his back.’

‘Michael beat me to it,’ Elena says. ‘He was waiting there and he already had the rock.’

‘I’m the big brother,’ he says, which nearly makes me laugh. ‘I never wanted you to do it, Elena. As it happened, Felix’s phone rang as he got close and he was distracted. I hit him over the head with the rock, as hard as I could, then I pushed him down the cliff.’

That phone call must have been Ben, presumably trying to convince Felix not to tell Lilia what he’d been up to. It’s a nice puzzle piece to slide into place, but now doesn’t seem the time to mention it.

‘Why a rock?’ Patrick asks and I realise he’s hearing some of the details for the first time, too. ‘Seems a bit Neanderthal.’

I’m a step ahead of him. It’s a good feeling. ‘Because then it would be conceivable that Felix might have hit his head on one of the rocks on the way down. There’d be rock particles in the wound.’

‘Exactly,’ Michael says.

‘What about forensics?’ I ask. ‘Wouldn’t it have been suspicious if they found Michael’s fingerprints all over the house and none of Felix’s?’

‘Michael tried to avoid touching anything,’ Elena says. ‘We wiped down everything we could think of before the guests got here.’

‘I washed my plate before heading out,’ Michael says.

‘You forgot the glass you’d been drinking from,’ Elena says, sounding only mildly reproving. ‘But I smashed that before the paramedics got here.’

‘Besides,’ Michael says, ‘my fingerprints aren’t on any police file. They would have been dismissed as belonging to someone else who’d passed through, unless the police had a reason to fingerprint me.’

It’s nothing better or worse than I’ve imagined. It’s also a ridiculous plan, because so many things could have gone wrong. What if Felix didn’t go up to the lookout spot? What if he’d spotted Michael? What if the rock and the fall and the water hadn’t killed him?

I ask a different question. ‘What were you and Elena fighting about the night of the party?’

‘What?’ Michael asks.