BooksBarbecue
Back The Last Guests
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART ONE
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. DEADLY SAS RAID IN AFGHANISTAN UNDER SCRUTINY
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. PART TWO
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. DANIEL MOORE: ‘A SINGLE BLOKE, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, A BIT OF A DUNCE BUT WITH A GOOD HEART,’ BEST FRIEND SAYS.
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. THIRTY-TWO
  41. THIRTY-THREE
  42. THIRTY-FOUR
  43. THIRTY-FIVE
  44. BREAKING: POLICE CONFIRM DANIEL MOORE ACTED ALONE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. SECOND ARREST MADE IN WESTAY HIDDEN CAMERAS CASE
  50. EPILOGUE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  52. Discover More
  53. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  54. Also by J. P. Pomare

‘Axel and Claire were pretty keen to see it,’ Cain says. ‘They’ve never been. Who knows, we might be able to convince them to buy it.’ He laughs.

‘Do you think you could stay there again?’

‘I think so,’ he says. ‘I mean, yeah. But could you?’

I nod. ‘Yeah, I might be a little scared but I think I can manage. I’ll text Claire, see if they’re busy.’

•

I think about those posts from the last guests. The ones they took in the house. Cain said there was almost no power usage for their stay. They’re easy enough to track down again on Facebook, and sure enough the photos are still there but there’s been no new posts since that night. No doubt Rata and his team have viewed them, but it’s only now I realise that you can’t see their faces. The photo of the man in bed simply shows dark hair on a pillow but whoever it is, they’re facing away. And in the photo in the mirror, the flash blocks the face so you only see blonde hair. And finally that photo before the fire, the glasses clinking together – again, there’s no faces, no evidence of who they are. I pause, staring at it, then zoom in.

‘Cain,’ I say. ‘Look at this.’

‘What is it?’ he says coming closer.

On one of the glasses, you can see the windows reflected. It’s just a silhouette.

‘This is from the last guests, the account that had booked both the properties with cameras.’

‘I can’t see a face,’ he says. ‘It’s just a shape.’

‘A,’ I say. ‘Singular.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The photo is staged to make it look like two people are holding glasses but look, you can tell one of the glasses is resting on the table and in the reflection someone is holding the other glass. It’s just one person.’

‘People stage photos all the time,’ he says. ‘But why go to the trouble when someone else could just hold the glass?’

‘Exactly,’ I say. So if there was only one person staging the photos, then maybe there isn’t a second man. So who the hell has Daniel’s phone? Who sent the photo of us in the house in Auckland, and released the footage from Tarawera?

‘There was only one man,’ he says. ‘I knew it all along.’

The threat that accompanied the photograph of Daniel and me was clear, so I know I must leave this theory behind. ‘There was only one,’ I say. ‘There was always only one. Daniel Moore.’

THIRTY-FIVE

WE’RE IN CAIN’S car. Me and Claire in the back, Cain driving with Axel beside him up front. Taking that familiar route out of Auckland. We stop in at the Bombay Hills BP and Cain fills us up.

‘Snacks for the road?’ he asks.