“Five more minutes,” Oliver said, making a show of checking his watch. “Then we drag her out of there.”
“And what?” The whisky lingered on Lorna’s tongue. “Beat her up?”
“If it comes to that.”
“Are you forgetting it’s your fists that got us into this mess in the first place?”
He slammed his glass onto the bar, making Ellie jump. “That had nothing to do with it. And are you forgetting that your poor little Maeve killed Callum?”
“She’s not my Maeve.” Lorna downed the rest of her drink, then grabbed a handful of crisps. “And we don’t know she killed Callum.”
“We know she killed MacLeod.”
“Yes, but . . . Never mind.”
“No, go on. Do tell, Lorna. Clearly something’s on your mind.” Oliver leaned on the bar. “Share with the class. You were happy enough earlier to lock her up. What makes you so quick to defend her now?”
“You want to interrogate Maeve? Want to go beat it all out of her? Fine. Come on, let’s go now.” She poured herself another whisky, drank it in one, and slammed the glass down beside Oliver’s. “You think I won’t do it? That I can’t? That maybe I’m having reservations because I know Maeve is innocent? And I know she’s innocent because I’m the real killer? That’s what you and Ellie were talking about while I was gone, wasn’t it? Thought you could press my buttons. See if I’d confess to something? As if I haven’t been thinking the same about both of you. You said it yourself, Oliver. There’s no evidence of what happened that night. It could have been Maeve. It could even have been Hollis after all. It could’ve been any of us. Callum. Or MacLeod. So if we’re going to do what I think you want to do, then I want more proof than a piece of string.”
A flash of lightning was followed by a crack of thunder, loud as a tree bursting to pieces. Oliver held up his hands and licked the liquor from his lips, and Lorna knew what he was going to say. It was all happening again. A remake rehashing the plot of the original. As if by being together they could never stop this endless cycle.
“What I think is that we’ll all trust each other a little more,” he said, “if the three of us stick together.”
The lights shut off. The room dimmed like a cinema, spared total darkness by the benefit of the sun hidden somewhere by the storm clouds in noon sky.
“Seriously? Seriously?” Oliver said. Ellie was on the verge of crying again.
“Maybe there’s a generator somewhere,” Lorna said.
“Yeah, probably outside where we can’t get to it. Unless we had the keys.”
An electronic chime interrupted Lorna’s answer. Ellie pulled out her phone.
“I have a signal!” Ellie squeaked. “One bar . . . oh, it’s gone.”
Lorna and Oliver’s phones followed suit, beeping and buzzing like they’d been switched on after a long flight.
“I have one bar. Two. Now one,” Oliver said.
“The signal jammer,” Lorna said. “With the electricity out, that means the jammer’s lost power, too.”
“Oh.” Ellie took a long drink from her glass. “I suppose Maeve hadn’t thought of that.”
A faint glow shone from underneath the sofa. Without a word, Lorna crossed the room, crouching down on all fours to retrieve it. She sat back on her knees as she stared at the screen until Ellie asked what she had found.
“Hollis’s phone. This is him with I guess his daughter on the lock screen.” Lorna looked toward the window, then back to the phone. “Hollis was wearing his jacket. Which means he probably went outside before he was killed. Maybe he was trying to get a signal.”
“Do you think he contacted the police? Are they on their way?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know. It’s locked, so I can’t check the call log. He’s had some emails since he last unlocked it, though, and a few missed calls from Linda. Whoever Linda is,” she added.
“It’s an iPhone, right?” Oliver asked. “What model?”
She turned it over, running her fingers over the Manchester United case. “I don’t know. Not the newest, I don’t think. The screen doesn’t go all the way to the edges.”
“It’s new enough to have fingerprint ID,” he said.
“But how do we unlock it if—” Ellie’s eyes went wide. “Oh.” She finished her whisky in a single drink.
“What’s the point, though?” Lorna asked. “Our phones are working now.”
“Because then we can check the call log,” Oliver said. “Check his texts. See if Hollis did manage to reach one of his detective mates. He said Manchester CID, right? Say they left last night, they’d reach us by the end of the day. And we could check his emails, too. Maybe he has it synched to his work account. I don’t think Hollis was trying to run out on us, either. I think he was piecing this together, and I want to see what he came up with. Then we can ring the police from our phones if he hasn’t already.”
“But I don’t understand,” Ellie said. “Why don’t we ring them now?”
“Because,” Lorna answered, seeing where Oliver was heading. “If Hollis has—had—a theory that Maeve was responsible, then that backs up why we threw her in the cellar. But also, if he decided to pass on any new information about what happened to Callum that night, anything that doesn’t back up our original story, or point to Maeve, then we’ll know about that, too.”
“After all,” Oliver said. “What’s the point of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, eh?”
Ellie
Very little light penetrated the windowless halls upstairs. Ellie and Lorna held up their phones for light as they turned the corner that led to the guest rooms, while Oliver carried the whisky bottle. The alcohol and crisps had smoothed the rough edges of their anxiety, but it was no easier entering this room knowing what to expect than it had been before. Ellie waited to see if what they had witnessed earlier had been an illusion. But the recreation of Hollis’s Caldwell Street bedroom remained, along with his body.
Oliver nudged Lorna toward the sofa. “Go on then.”
The room didn’t smell. It was too soon—and too cold—for that, but Ellie imagined it did, and that was enough to churn her stomach.
“Ellie, give me your jumper.”
She toyed with the top button. “It’s quite chilly in the house. And with the power off—”
“Give her your jumper, Ellie.”
Ellie took her time peeling the pale blue jumper off her shoulders and handing it to Lorna, who cast it over Hollis’s face.
“Was he right- or left-handed?” she asked.
“Right, I think,” said Oliver.
Lorna dropped his hand the first time she touched it, and Ellie jumped, thinking Hollis had moved.
“Come on, Lorna. Don’t be so squeamish.” But Oliver spoke the words to the floor, unable to look at the body.
Lorna slipped the phone into Hollis’s crooked hand and pressed his thumb down. As soon as the phone unlocked, she pulled back.
“Well? Did he ring anyone?” Oliver asked.