Page 48 of Murder Most Actual

Hanna, in the Bedroom, with a Lot of Paper

Sunday afternoon

“Do you think,” Hanna asked when they were safely—insofar as it was safely—back in their room, “that maybe we should be thinking about trying to find a way to get out of here? Instead of working out information that, while interesting, won’t actually stop a criminal mastermind from killing us?”

“I don’t think”—Liza was typing up the day’s notes into her laptop and cursing the inability to back them up to the cloud—”that he wants to kill us. If he wants to kill anybody. If he even exists.” She flopped back and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, this is useless. Let’s just lock ourselves in and forget the whole thing.”

Perching on the end of the bed like a starling, Hanna smiled down. “You don’t want to forget the whole thing. You want to work out what’s going on.”

She did. She didn’t especially want to want that, but she wanted it whether she wanted to want it or not. “I’m sorry. Does being married to me totally suck?”

“No.” Hanna seemed oddly serious. “At least, it doesn’t suck any more than being married to anybody sucks. Marriage is tough.”

“But worth it?” Liza asked, sounding just a tiny bit needier than she’d intended.

“Yes.”

Picking herself up off the floor, Liza wandered over to the desk, which along with its complimentary tea and coffee also included a small amount of hotel stationery. She picked up a pad of branded notepaper and strolled back. “Good, because I’m about to do something extremely analogue, and slightly extra.”

Liza began scribbling down names and known details, each on a separate sheet, and spreading them around the floor in a way that she hoped roughly corresponded to a visual representation of the case.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any red string?” she asked.

“Are you making a conspiracy board?”

Liza gave a sheepish nod. “Trying to. But then I realised I have nothing to stick my bits up with and nothing to use to connect them.”

“To think we came all the way to Scotland without drawing pins and thread.” Hanna arched an eyebrow. “Although I’m not sure the hotel would thank you for sticking pins in their wall either.”

“True.”

“And maybe it’s just me,”—Hanna had her well, actually face on, the one she got when something struck her as silly or impractical, which things often did—”but while I get that they’re a striking visual on TV, I’ve never quite worked out what those big boards of red string were actually supposed to tell anybody. Apart from, ‘The person who made this has lost it.’”

“I think they’re meant to help you organise your thoughts?”

Hanna slipped off the bed and sat cross-legged opposite Liza. “Tell you what, use me.”

“I know you’re jealous of the podcast.” Liza chanced a smile. “But I don’t think you can seduce me by letting me use your body as a murder board.”

“No, I mean—you know, bounce ideas off me, talk things through. I can be your Dr Watson and say stuff like, ‘But that’s remarkable,’ and, ‘However did you work it out?’” Hanna’s tone was lighter now than it had been in a while, and Liza found herself missing the days when it had been like that more often.

“You’re being silly.”

Hanna was not a pouty person, so she didn’t pout, but she gave a distinct impression of wanting to. “I’m being a good partner who has your back. You just don’t recognise it because, I’ll admit, sidekick isn’t my usual style.”

She was right, Liza hadn’t recognised it. Or hadn’t wanted to. Because part of her still felt that diving headfirst into her girl-detective fantasy was selfish and there was something … not quite shaming, but perhaps at least grounding, about how quickly—relatively speaking, given the real risk of death—Hanna had got onside with it. Just like she’d got onside, insofar as time and her work commitments allowed, with Actual, and with every other weird, artsy project Liza had jumped into before that. Just like she’d always got onside, in her own, slightly heavy-handed, occasionally frustrating, know-it-all kind of way. “All right. How do you want to do this?”

“Well, it’s your investigation. But I’d either go by murder or by suspect?”

For a moment, instead of thinking about crimes, Liza just sat there and looked at Hanna. Really looked at her in a way she hadn’t realised she hadn’t been. And for a moment she saw again the young woman she’d not quite met in that kitchen all those years ago; the woman she’d looked at and said, “If I don’t speak to her this evening, I’ll hate myself for the rest of my life.”

“By murder?” Liza said. She’d wanted to say something else, something about them and who they were to each other, but it felt fleeting, and she was worried that if she turned and looked at it before they made it out of the dark, it would vanish like Eurydice. “That seems best.” Turning her attention back to her notes, she dug out the sheet on which she’d written Malcom Ackroyd. “So … died at around 1 a.m. Saturday morning. Fell or was pushed off the balcony of the tower suite.” She diligently scribbled the facts, as they were, onto the back of the scrap of paper. “Found by Emmeline White.”

Hanna located Emmeline’s sheet and settled it neatly next to Mr Ackroyd’s.

“Who would have begun closing up the kitchen around ten, but says she went back to her room to call her sister. Which wouldn’t have worked because the phone lines were down in the storm.”

Hanna added the appropriate details. “And she seems to have had some kind of disagreement with Colonel Coleman.” Shuffling through the papers, she pulled out Colonel Coleman’s page and added it above Emmeline White’s. “Or so he says. And Colonel Coleman had also argued with Mr Ackroyd. You know, I can see why you like doing this. It makes you feel in control.”

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