Page 16 of A Murder is Going Down

Patrick crouches down to look at the patch of dirt. He snaps a few more photos. ‘There are a few broken branches here and we passed some on the way up, too. Maybe he did grab on to them.’

‘Or it could have been the weight of his body snapping off branches,’ I say. I run a couple of scenarios in my head: a) Felix feeling himself slip and reaching out for a bush; b) Felix suffering from a secret misery and throwing himselfdramatically from the cliff’s highest point; c) Felix in the muscular arms of the Hulk, trying to stop himself from being thrown down the …

‘It could have been the cops as well,’ I say. ‘They might have snapped off some branches while looking around. Or maybe if Elena and Felix’s friends came up here when they were looking for him, they did it.’

‘Can you tell me everything you know about that night?’ Patrick asks, snapping a photo of my face when I turn to look at him.

‘Hey. Delete that.’

‘Shut up, you look great. Windswept chic is in. Now, come on: you only told me the bare bones. I want to know everything.’

I give him the spiel, the best I can put together from that first phone call with Aunty Sam, the subsequent texts back and forth, and the long conversation we had on the drive home from the airport when she seemed so calm and I was the one with the questions.

‘Felix and Elena were having a party the night that he died,’ I say. ‘Not a proper party, just like some friends over for pizza. They’d finished dinner, I guess – there were loads of plates in the sink, so they must have. Although who uses plates for pizza when you can just eat out of the box? Was there dessert? I don’t know. Nobody mentioned dessert, but then maybe they were having a little break …’

‘When I said tell meeverything,’ Patrick interrupts, ‘you know that’s a turn of phrase, right?’

‘Anyway, Felix wasn’t feeling great. He wanted some fresh air – that’s what Elena said. Something like that.’

‘Elena didn’t go with him?’ Patrick asks.

‘No.’

‘Because it’d be hard to get her wheelchair up the path?’ he says.

‘You know she can use a stick too?’

He gives me a look. ‘She’s my sister.’

‘Then don’t ask silly questions. I assume she didn’t go with him because they were in the middle of a party and it would have been weird if they both wandered off and left their guests on their own. Or maybe it was because she had to go upstairs. That’s why she was in the lift when it got stuck.’

‘And while she was stuck in there, one of their friends found Felix?’ Patrick asks.

‘Yeah, they must have gone looking for him at some point. They found his body in the water. The police said he probably hit his head during the fall and would have been unconscious when he landed.’ It’s a moment I try not to think about too much.

A breeze is ruffling my hair and t-shirt, and out on the water little white boats, which are probably not so little up close, draw lines of whitecaps in the surf. It really is quitepicturesque if you can forget why we’re here. I look over at Patrick, who hasn’t forgotten why we are here.

‘If Felix didn’t jump and he didn’t fall, then who pushed him – hypothetically?’ Patrick asks. ‘Can you think of anyone other than my sister who would have had a motive?’

I’m surprised. ‘Elena? For the life insurance, you mean?’

Elena, who spent every Christmas Day serving food to the homeless (before she got married and Felix kicked up a stink about it)? Elena, who spends her days teaching kids with intellectual disabilities? Even when she was raking it in for being photogenic in athleisure, I never got the impression that Elena cared much about money.

Now Patrick looks surprised – we’re taking turns, apparently. ‘I meant more because your brother put her in that wheelchair,’ he says.

Now

‘I need to ask a question,’ Marianne says. ‘Do you know what my job is?’

It’s not what I’m expecting. Not when I’ve just dropped theElena in a wheelchairbombshell. It derails me.

‘Um, no. Why?’

Marianne looks at me for longer than is entirely comfortable. If a stranger looked at me like this in public I’d be crossing to the other side of the street.

‘No reason,’ she says, which is not a proper answer.

Since I’m not sure I want to hear the real one, I keep talking.