There wasn’t much chance of sleep considering there wasn’t enough space for them all to kip. In Olive’s room there was only her single bed, the reading chair for sleeping upright and a small sofa not long enough for anyone to lie on. Instead they decided they wouldn’t sleep, and if anyone ended up needing to catch some shut-eye, they would take it in turns.
The other reason they didn’t want to sleep was because they’d come up with a plan for trying to get into Matron’s office. Randy was convinced it would help them in their investigations. Olive thought it was going to get them in trouble, but she preferred to be doing something proactive rather than sitting around not sleeping.
‘Why do you want to know her surname?’ Veronica asked as the three of them prepared to leave.
They looked as daft as three brushes in their pyjamas, dressing gowns and slippers. Each of them had a small bag and were packing the essentials like they were the Famous Five off on a picnic. Olive did wonder if Randy packing a Stanley knife and torch was a step too far, but those things were always good to have on hand, so she tried not to question quite why they might need them to get the information they were after.
‘I might be wrong, but I think Matron and Melanie are related.’ Randy zipped up his washbag. He was opting for that as his survival-kit disguise. ‘I’ve been trying to get my head round why Melanie might have sabotaged the toilet, but when I thought about it, I wondered why she was the only other member of staff who resided here permanently. She’s always said it was one of the perks of the activities coordinator role. It just made me think there’s a possibility they’re related. It would make sense.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Olive had never even considered the possibility. It seemed like a bit of a random line of thought.
‘I’ve always considered it odd that Matron insists on everyone calling her Matron. I mean, it’s not even her proper job title. It’s care-home manager or something like that.’
‘Not as catchy, though, is it?’
Randy laughed. ‘No, but my point is, I think it’s deliberate. She only ever uses her first name because she doesn’t want people knowing she’s related to one of the staff.’
‘Her first name is Helen. That’s all that’s on her name badge, but she hardly ever wears it,’ Veronica said, looking rather funny in her fluffy pink dressing gown.
‘I found a letter to Melanie in the bin in the library. I didn’t think much about it at first – it’s only to do with ordering some equipment. But it had her full name. Melanie Helen Lotte-Jones. It made me think there might be a connection.’
‘Because her middle name is Helen?’
‘I said it was a loose link, but at the moment it’s all we’ve got.’
‘Possibly not.’ Olive hadn’t told them about the bottles she’d discovered in the recycling bins at the beach hut. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with the loo blockage, but I do think Matron isn’t as innocent as she wants the police to think. My entire gin stash from the ottoman has gone and I found some of the bottles empty in the glass recycling. I got them out and stored them back in the ottoman. I didn’t think returning with an empty bottle in each hand was the best idea, especially if Matron caught me at it. I thought we could go back in the morning and collect them along with the ottoman.’
‘We might have something on her then?’ Veronica said. It was bad that they already thought of her as a criminal even though she might be perfectly innocent. They were breaking some of the first rules of policing, so it was a good job they were as far from that occupation as they could be.
‘I’ll talk to Richard to see what he says. She might not have committed an offence, seeing as the keys had been handed over to her, but if she has, then maybe the police could check the bottle for fingerprints. Even if it’s not a crime, it’s extremely bad manners.’
It still didn’t bring them any closer to knowing why someone was trying to sabotage The Gin Shack, but it would prove Olive wasn’t wrong in thinking Matron wasn’t the do-gooding woman she liked to make out she was.
When they were all ready with everything they thought they might need (and, yes, there were snacks packed), they left one by one to head to Matron’s office. They were spacing the timing out as well as taking different routes. That way, if they did bump into anyone in the hallways, they could claim they were having problems with the water in their room. And as that could be a systemic problem, it might not look quite so suspicious if they were all out at the same time.
Randy left first, with Olive next and Veronica ten minutes after that. Olive’s route was down the staircase towards where Veronica used to make her Tuesday-morning exits. Then she would need to loop round towards Matron’s office where hopefully Randy would already be inside making progress.
Veronica had the hardest route, going down in the lift. It was the one where they would most likely be spotted, but they’d figured it would be the best route to use last. That way, if anyone was about ready to catch them, Veronica could divert them back to her bedroom and supposed water issues.
The stairwell was eerily quiet and much darker without the early-morning light. Olive took her time and stepped cautiously as she made her way downstairs. They were living in hope the door to the office would be open, but Randy was going to have a go at picking the lock if it was shut. With any luck he would have cracked it by the time she got there, so they weren’t congregated in a communal area.
When Olive reached the correct hallway, Randy wasn’t there tampering with the door so she figured he must have managed to open it. Before heading in, she gave a sweeping glance to check there was no one about and then, as quietly as possible, turned the handle and slipped into Matron’s office.
What she hadn’t expected was for the room to be empty. No Randy. No Matron. No sign that anyone had been there in the quarter of an hour since Randy had departed.
‘Hello,’ Olive whispered, hoping it would encourage Randy to pop out from somewhere.
No response. Not even a rustle in any quarter of the room to indicate he was there.
Crap. This was not good. And Olive had no idea what to do. They had a plan and it was a simple one at that. They were coming in here to find out what Matron’s surname was and, as it seemed to be the done thing at the moment, have a good old sniff in the bins. But that was it. In. Get what info they could. Out.
It was plain. Simple. People were not supposed to disappear. Especially not Randy, who was essentially the brains of tonight’s operation and, out of all of them, the least likely to get lost.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he’d come out at the wrong floor or taken an incorrect turning and was trying to break into a storage cupboard while Olive had managed to sail through an unlocked door. It had to be something like that. Some rational kind of explanation. She mustn’t panic. She wasn’t panicking. It was just, what the hell was she supposed to do? Other than panic, that is.
It was then that the door handle behind Olive started to turn and she was near to a heart attack with the shock it gave her. What should she do? As things stood, she didn’t have time to hide even if she’d had wanted to.
‘Randy?’ Olive said it before the door fully opened, the panic rising to the point she wasn’t able to stop the hope forming on her lips.
It was Veronica. Of course it was Veronica. It was roughly ten minutes since Olive had left the relative safety of her room, and she was due to join the staggered party. Only not all of their number had arrived.
‘Why are you calling me Randy?’ Even the vision of Veronica in her pink fluffy dressing gown didn’t ease the thumping in Olive’s chest.
Olive signalled for Veronica to close the door. The last thing they needed was to be found when she had no idea how to explain what was going on.
‘Randy isn’t here.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘I don’t know. He wasn’t here when I got here.’ Olive wasn’t explaining herself very well, the distress beginning to show. There was probably some rational reason for him not being here. Perhaps he’d stopped off for a big poo. The men she knew liked to spend three days in the loo when they were having a dump. But it didn’t seem like the kind of move a military man in charge of an operation would make.
‘How did you get in then?’ Veronica’s eyebrows knitted into a shape of perfect perplexity.
‘It was open. With no sign of Randy anywhere.’
‘He would have left a note or something if he went for some reason. Have you checked the desk?’
To be fair, Olive hadn’t moved from the spot she was standing on. She was still trying to work out what to do. It was a good job Veronica was there with helpful suggestions. ‘Not yet.’
Veronica went over and browsed the desk. ‘No notes from Randy, but there are letters here. Maybe we can find out what Matron’s name is seeing as that’s why we’re here.’
‘But where is he?’ Olive wasn’t so worried about finding out about surnames now one of them was missing.
‘He’ll turn up.’
How was Veronica not worried? ‘But what if he got caught? What if he did open the door, but then Matron discovered him? What if he’s in a police cell already and it’ll be us next? We should go. He might have had to make a move back to the room.’
‘Jones.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Matron’s name. It’s Helen Jones.’
‘Great. But where’s Randy?’ If finding out Matron’s full name had been that easy, then surely one of them shouldn’t be missing.
‘Message him. He’ll soon tell us.’
‘If he can.’ Olive wasn’t prepared to adopt Veronica’s cool attitude just yet.
Where are you, Randy?
Olive managed to type out the message on her phone while Veronica worked her way through the paperwork and paraphernalia on the desk.
Like an obsessed teenager eagerly waiting to hear back from her beloved, Olive stared at the phone screen with an unnatural intensity. Bing. When the tiny circle became solid it was the first triumph. It meant his phone had received the message. He, or at least his phone, was alive and able to receive messages.
The thought made Olive shudder. Was there really any chance they were in that much trouble? Could loo blockers really escalate to murder quite so quickly? She stared at the small circle, willing Randy’s Facebook photo to fill the circle so she’d know he’d at least read the message. He would know they were here panicking. Well, at least one of them was.
Veronica started going through the litter bin. ‘Have a look round the rest of the room. See if you can spot anything. We don’t want to be in here any longer than necessary.’
Olive didn’t want to stop staring at her phone, but willing Randy to answer the message wasn’t working. Mooching round the room to look for clues would stop her from worrying.
But as Olive checked bookshelves and peeked under pot plants, she was no closer to being any less anxious about Randy’s disappearance. She even said his name when trying out a locked cupboard just in case he was stuck inside there. No such luck.
‘Found anything?’ Veronica was straightening the desk up. It appeared she’d had the good sense to take a picture on her phone before moving every item on there.
‘I don’t think so.’ Considering Olive had no idea what she really needed to find to connect Matron to The Gin Shack loo crime it was hard to put a finger on if she had found anything or not. At the very least, she hadn’t found anything obviously incriminating. Apart from Randy being MISSING. That seemed to be a pretty big clue to the fact something wasn’t right.
‘We better head back then. Randy might be there waiting for us already.’
Leaving without him seemed wrong somehow. They were a man down and they shouldn’t return without doing everything in their power to all return together. If there was some kind of soldier code in such scenarios, they were definitely breaking it and ruining whatever honour they had. But even with that thought, there was nothing more they could do here. There was no evidence Matron was linked to The Gin Shack vandalism and none to suggest Randy had even been here. Staying would be pointless and the longer they were here, the more likely it was they would get caught.
‘Okay. We should head back, but we’ll go together. I don’t want to risk any more of us vanishing into thin air.’ Olive checked her phone one more time before they left. Nothing like being overzealous. ‘He’s seen the message,’ Olive said, way more jubilant than she ever normally would be over the intrusions technology provided.
‘Let me see.’
Olive passed the phone over, knowing Veronica was far more tech savvy than she could ever hope to be.
‘He’s typing a reply.’
‘Thank fuck for that. I was beginning to think he’d got himself killed.’ Olive didn’t want to admit that she’d imagined finding him at the bottom of a stairwell with her son’s fear of broken hips coming true. Although the fact he could type didn’t rule that out.
Get back to the room, girls, pronto. Message me when you’ve returned safely.
‘But where is he? Is he okay?’ The message they’d received didn’t do much to comfort Olive. Not after the stuck-at-the-bottom-of-a-stairwell-with-a-broken-hip image had entered her mind.
‘No idea, but wherever he is he wants us to go back. And it sounds like we should be getting out of here, like, ten minutes ago.’
Olive wanted to type a message back. To get more clarification on where exactly Randy was and what he was up to, but there was no option other than to leave in light of the fact it sounded like a warning. Maybe he’d opened the door and was playing lookout on their behalf. Someone might be coming this way any second now, although this seemed reasonably unlikely given it was now two in the morning. Still, there was no point risking it when they’d gone to so much trouble to discover Matron’s surname. Jones. What an effort for a surname that ranked in the top five most common surnames in the UK.
So, in their fluffy dressing gowns and slippers, Olive and Veronica returned to Olive’s room in the quietest way they knew how: skating along like no one was watching.