The Murder Game by Abbott Rachel

Author:Abbott, Rachel [Abbott, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

46

More food has been brought out from the kitchen by the housekeeper and the girl helping her, although no one seems interested in it. Even Lucas is pushing it around with his fork, and Nina is staring at her plate.

I can’t stand the silence, and eventually I feel I have no option but to speak.

‘I have two things I’d like to say, Lucas.’ I see Matt raise a shocked face, but I ignore him. ‘First, you’re insisting that Alex was murdered, and yet you haven’t told us how you think she died, given that she clearly drowned and there were no marks on her. Second, you think her death may be related to what happened to her twelve – no, it’s thirteen years ago now. But as far as I can tell, no one knows what really did happen to her, other than the fact – bad enough in itself – that she was abducted. You want us to be honest with you. Why can’t you be straight with us?’

Lucas puts the palms of his hands flat on the table and pushes himself to his feet, leaning forward to loom over the rest of us.

‘Fair comment, Jemma. I know exactly how Alex died, but I need to keep that information to myself for now, until I’m certain who the killer is. To give too much away would provide an opportunity for the truth to be concealed. But I will tell you about Alex.’

Lucas moves to the side of the room where I can see he has a laptop set up. He clicks a few keys, and the TV on the wall springs to life. I twist round to get a better view, my back to the others. I wish I could watch them and the screen at the same time.

‘In recent years Alex wasn’t a fan of having her photo taken,’ Lucas begins, ‘although I did manage to grab one or two last summer when she was still with us. But first you need to see Alex as a child – how some of you might remember her.’

There’s a bitter edge to his voice as if this should be significant to one or more of the people in the room, but he says no more, hitting the space bar. The screen is filled with the image of a young girl. I hear a breath sharply drawn in, quickly stifled by a hand.

‘Alex, on her thirteenth birthday.’ Lucas’s voice isn’t entirely steady, and I understand why.

She looks little more than a child, with her long dark hair in a ponytail, white teeth that still look slightly too large for her head and those beautiful green eyes that I remember. There are still the remnants of a layer of puppy fat on her cheeks, and her smile is wide. She was beautiful.

‘What one or two of you don’t know is that her mother – my mother too, sadly – was a drunk. Alex’s father died when she was five, and she lived with this awful woman who did nothing but make demands on her.

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