Page 97 of Deep Blue Lies
“I told you that Mandy was simple. What I didn’t say was that Jason was so busy, he had barely had time to spend five minutes with their child.” He pauses. “Either way, it was Karen’s idea.”
“What was the idea?”
“They wanted to swap the babies,” I say.
Surprised by the interruption, Duncan nods at me.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“But that would never have worked?” I see the objections at once. “There’s no way a woman wouldn’t recognise her own child? Would accept a newborn child instead of a four-week-old, that’s insane…”
“Obviously. But you have to appreciate the stress both women were under. Karen, presumably still with a significant amount of drugs running through her veins. Imogen who had just given birth, quite unexpectedly, and without any kind of pain medication I should add. The sense of pressure, the disorientation of it all…” He shakes his head. “It would have been immense.”
I don’t answer.
“So what happened?”
“As I understand it, Karen was the one who tried to return the baby. She waited until Mandy had returned to her room, and then she attempted to ‘return’ Mandy’s baby, but really gave her Imogen’s child.”
“Oh my God. What happened?”
“It went badly. As you foresaw, Mandy realised at once that the child wasn’t hers, and she became hysterical. You can perhaps understand her reasoning. And this panicked Karen. There was only one thing she could do at this point. There was a lamp in the room, heavy, it was made from the local rock…”
I shake my head, not believing that he’s including this detail, but knowing now exactly where this is going.
“She took the lamp, and she hit Mandy over the head with it. I accept she only meant to render her unconscious, but as I say, it was a heavy lamp. She killed her. Karen struck Mandy too hard and killed her outright.”
EIGHTY-FOUR
“We’d all heard the rumour.” Duncan sniffs as he continues. “That Jason had a gun. I don’t know where he got it from – the man who was selling the drugs, I suppose.”
It’s as if he’s forgotten that Sophia and I are here. His words are painting a story so horrible, so obvious now, that it’s all we can do to sit dumbstruck and let him finish this.
“If you’d asked me then, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. He was alright, Jason was. He was tough, that part is true, but if you worked hard, if you turned up on time, he didn’t mind if you had a drink every now or then…” He shakes his head.
“They said he kept it under his bed. I guess it must have been true.”
I feel myself swallowing. I’m not able to say anything. I feel my eyelids blinking at the unreal world that’s just replaced the one I thought I knew.
“Imogen didn’t say, in her video file,” Duncan explains. Suddenly he seems to remember where he is. “But they must have found it somewhere in his room.”
“What exactly happened next?” Sophia manages to ask. She sounds totally shaken, I’ve never seen her like this. Duncan puffs outhis cheeks.
“I don’t know the details exactly. Now that she’s…” – he shakes his head again – “Now she’s dead, we’ll maybe never know. But Karen returned to her and Imogen’s room. They weren’t that far apart, both up towards the mountain, behind where the guests stayed.”
“And?”
“Well, she told Imogen what had happened.”
“And then what?”
He puffs his cheeks a second time. “Imogen says it was Karen’s idea. After that. And I believe her, I do.”
I wait.
“They went back to Mandy and Jason’s room. Obviously Mandy was still there, dead on the floor, and they had the gun…
“We had these walkie-talkies. Around the hotel. Jason was never without his, always on duty. And there was one in reception, of course. This is before people had mobile phones you understand.”
