Page 60 of Death on the Rocks

“Thank you,” she said to PC Grainger.

“No matter what happens next, there’s a good chance I’ll lose my job.” He removed his hand with a stern look that had Lily retreating from the fire alarm. “I only hope that I can at least catch a killer as my last task in the police force.” He set off across the room and Lily kept pace with him. “You’d better be right about this.”

“I’m almost certain I’m right,” she said.

“Almostcertain’” He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at her sharply. “You sounded much more confident at the station earlier.”

“I’m like 97 percent sure.” She winced. “Or maybe 95… There’s a very good chance, anyway.”

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “We should hurry before the odds dive even further.”

His long legs took the stairs two at a time with ease, while Lily’s legs worked double time to keep up.

“What’s the plan?” he asked when they reached the embarkation hall and he stopped a few metres from an open door which Mr and Mrs Miller had just walked through.

“The plan?” Her insides had turned to mush and her smile was just as watery. The more she thought about it, the less sure she was in her convictions. Her knees felt as though they might buckle and it occurred to her that might not be a bad thing. Could she pass out and wake up in a completely different reality? One where she wasn’t about to make a fool of herself and get a perfectly good police officer sacked.

Maybe he wasn’t perfectly good, though. He was probably incompetent and she was doing society a favour by forcing a career change on him. That’s what she’d tell herself if he lost his job.

“Lily,” he said, the gravity of his voice grounding her.

“Yeah?”

“What was your plan? Once you’d pulled the fire alarm?”

She winced. “I hadn’t got that far. I guess I was probably going to accuse people of murder and see what happened. But if you have a different plan – any other plan at all – I think we should go with yours.”

His gaze drifted over her shoulder, lingering somewhere in the middle distance. “It’s not actually a terrible plan.”

“Accusing people of murder?” She laughed. “It’s a really terrible plan.”

He shook his head. “Sometimes, in policing, we bluff… Pretend we know more than we do and see how people react.”

“So you want to pretend you know that one of them killed Vinny and ask the murderer to step forward?”

“No.” He smiled. “I don’t want to accuseallof them. I want to put pressure on the person who killed Vinny and see if they crack.”

“Small problem,” she pointed out. “We don’t know who did it.”

“Just give me your best guess…”

“I can’t,” she said wildly. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” He walked forward and put a hand on the door. “I’ll give you about three minutes to figure it out.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

From Lily’spoint of view, PC Grainger seemed to grow about a foot as he stepped into the windowless room with a large desk at one side and a small table with a few plastic chairs at the other.

“Sorry to disrupt your schedule,” he said to the captain in a tone that commanded the attention of everyone in the room. “Hopefully, I won’t keep you long.”

“Happy to help,” the captain said, while looking utterly torn, as though he wanted to be annoyed but was responding instinctively to PC Grainger’s manner. “Should I…?” He indicated the door.

“You can stay,” PC Grainger said, before briefly scrutinising each of the other people in the room.

“Is there a problem?” Alanna asked haughtily. “Because we’ve been wanting to get away from these islands for days and I’d appreciate you not messing things up now that the weather is cooperating.”

“I’ve no desire to hold anyone up,” PC Grainger said. “Unfortunately, we do have a problem, though.” A frown wrinkled his forehead, giving him an even sterner demeanour. “As you may guess, it’s concerning the death of Mr Vincent Roth. Sadly, what initially appeared to be a tragic accident maynot have been that at all.” He paused, seemingly observing the reactions in the room.

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