Page 32 of When You're Alone

Amelia leaned back in her chair, allowing herself a moment’s relief. “If anyone can handle this, it's Finn.”

She adjusted her posture, pushing away thoughts of potential danger. “And we’ll handle it, too, Chief. So much is riding on getting answers. And if the killer is part of what's going on there tonight, Finn might be the only one who can find out who they are.”

Rob nodded. “So what’re you working on now?” he asked, gesturing at her laptop screen. “Looks like bank statements?”

“Yes,” Amelia said, clicking on a separate tab. “Earlier, we found a suspicious pattern in Geoffrey Wardlow’s debts—he cleared two hundred thousand pounds in one day, back in March of 2003. That’s huge. Now I’m checking Sir Richard Doyle’s financials to see if there’s anything matching that unusual spike or drop.”

Leaning forward, Rob scanned the screen from across the table. The overhead fluorescent hummed as it cast a bright glare on the rows of data, but Amelia had grown used to it. “So you think the motive is just money, plain and simple?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not exactly plain and simple. The presence of poker chips suggests the killer is making a statement about gambling. But yes, I do think money is central—maybe apersonal vendetta. Someone lost big, or someone won big, and grudges formed.”

Rob’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Or it could be a symbolic warning, telling others not to take unnecessary risks or cross some invisible line. You know how criminal circles like to instill fear. Could be a demonstration kill—‘Look what happened to them when they didn’t follow the rules.’”

Amelia nodded, adjusting the scroll bar on her spreadsheet so she could examine Sir Richard’s transactions from years past. “It's possible... So, you’re thinking a possible warning to others within an organized crime ring? That means the killer might be higher up the chain than we assumed. The Monarch’s membership includes plenty of shady businessmen. We’d be naive to imagine none of them had dealings with money laundering or illegal gambling. Maybe one of them is behind these murders.”

Rob let out a low whistle. “The deeper we dig, the more it feels like we might uncover something massive—some illegal network operating straight out of one of the country's most prestigious private clubs.”

Before she could respond, Amelia’s eyes narrowed at a fresh figure on the screen. Her heart gave a small leap. “I knew it,” she said under her breath, a note of satisfaction creeping in.

Rob straightened in his seat. “What have you found?”

She highlighted a specific entry in the spreadsheet. “Geoffrey Wardlow had that two hundred thousand pound debt magically disappear on March 11th, 2003. He’d racked it up through various ups and downs, presumably from gambling. Thenpuff—all of it gone overnight.”

Rob nodded, “I recall you mentioning that.”

Amelia tapped the keyboard to bring up another window. This one displayed a set of bank transactions belonging to Sir Richard Doyle. “Now look at Sir Richard’s records. Two daysafter Wardlow’s big windfall, on March 13th, 2003, Sir Richard also cleared a significant debt—over ninety thousand pounds. Paid off in full, abruptly.”

Rob leaned in, reading the amounts. “So both men, within two days of each other, spontaneously paid off large debts?”

“That’s right.” Amelia pointed at the sequence of transactions on screen. “It’s too much to be coincidence. Sir Richard was also known to frequent card tables, though officially the Monarch Club forbids gambling. Privately, though, we know there are high-stakes games from what the waiter, Frederick, told us. Put that together with Wardlow’s gambling habits, and you’ve got two men who might have walked away from an extraordinary poker table with pockets full of money on the same night.”

Rob rubbed his jaw. “So maybe they both scored big in the same game. If it was hush-hush, it wouldn’t appear in any official record except as a sudden deposit or a ‘mysterious payoff.’ And that game took place right before March 11th, presumably. Could even have been on the 10th or 9th.”

Amelia steepled her fingers, her mind racing. “Yes. The thing is, we haven’t seen any other instance in their records matching that time frame—no other sudden influx for both men at the same time. So this event stands out as special. If it were just normal gambling, you’d expect fluctuation. But these numbers are huge, and they came in a single lump sum.”

“That means it was more than a typical night at the tables. Maybe it was a legendary high-stakes game,” Rob theorized. “One that only certain privileged players were invited to.”

Amelia thought of how Finn had spoken about a rumored secret card room behind an ornate library door at The Monarch. “Finn might find more clues about it. If the killer was also a participant, maybe they lost big, or got cheated. That could spawn a grudge that lasted years.”

Rob let out a long breath. “Exactly. A big loss can lead to big resentment.”

A slight beeping noise from the corridor made Amelia glance at the clock on the wall. Nearly half past ten. She realized that Finn would likely arrive at the club in about an hour or so, giving himself time to blend in before midnight. The notion of him walking into that environment, where a killer might still roam the halls, made her chest tighten. She sat straighter, determined to keep her professional cool.

Rob set the pen down. “We should check if any other Monarch Club regulars had a similar spike or paid off a big chunk around the same date, right?”

Amelia turned to her laptop again, opening a new search field. “I’ll reach out to a contact at the Financial Crimes division. See if we can discreetly request records of a few more key members—James Rutherford, Lady Pembroke, others from the membership list. We won’t name them as suspects yet, just see if any pattern emerges around March 2003.”

She typed rapidly, drafting an email. The computer’s fan whirred as it processed multiple windows of data. The hush of the station enveloped them again. A phone rang two offices down, followed by muffled voices, reminding Amelia how quiet her own space was.

Amelia allowed a small flicker of optimism. “Finn’s good at coaxing secrets out of people without them realizing. He’ll ask the right questions, make it sound casual. If that game was as monumental as these numbers suggest, it wouldn’t have disappeared from memory. We should let him know about this as a lead.”

“Agreed,” Rob said. “And once we verify the who and how, we can piece together who might hold a grudge for two decades. The motive might revolve around more than money—maybe there was betrayal, blackmail, or an accusation of cheating.”

Amelia tapped her pen on the keyboard, feeling the swirl of possibilities. “Still, the two murders we’ve seen so far are so personal, so violent. It’s not just a bullet to the head or a poisoning—it’s multiple stab wounds, a twisted wrist motion in the cuts, and a poker chip stuffed in or near the mouth. That kind of brutality suggests a personal vendetta.”

Rob gave a grave nod. “That or someone wanting to instill maximum terror in their victims.”

A brief silence settled over them. Amelia’s eyes flicked to the photos pinned on the board: Sir Richard, austere in his club portrait, and Geoffrey Wardlow, smiling in a typical corporate head shot. The addition of bright red texts reading “MURDER VICTIM” in bold letters made a jarring contrast. They’d both ended their lives in gruesome circumstances for reasons not yet fully understood.

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