Chapters (64)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Five Years Later
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
- Forty-nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-one
- Fifty-two
- Fifty-three
- Fifty-four
- Fifty-five
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- Canelo Crime
- About the Author
- Also by Sheila Bugler
‘I prefer to leave the views for our guests,’ Marcus said, when Rachel glanced out of the window. ‘Please, take a seat. Can I get you something to drink?’
Rachel shook her head, keen to get to business.
‘I’ll need you to tell me everything you can about the victim,’ she said, taking out her notebook and the Cross fountain pen that had been a birthday present from Grace. ‘Why he was staying here, who was with him, when he arrived and how long he was planning to stay. Let’s start there.’
‘You already know who he is I assume?’
‘Nick Gilbert, the celebrity chef. Who, from what I recall, now has two restaurants in East Sussex alongside the flagship one in Soho. He also had his own reality TV show, following the lives of ten young people from deprived backgrounds as they tried to make their way in the hospitality industry.’
Again, when she pictured his body, Rachel had the strange sense that none of this was real.
‘You’re a fan, then?’
‘My wife is. If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t have a clue who he was.’
‘Of course, his celebrity status isn’t the only reason people know him,’ Marcus said. ‘It seems impossible to think he survived that terrible plane crash only to end up dead five years later.’
Like everyone else working for Sussex Police, Rachel knew all about the crash of Air Euro 975. Officers from forces across the south-east had been called to the airport to help in the hours following the tragedy. Rachel had been on holiday when the crash happened. But in the days and weeks that followed, she’d got caught up in the aftermath. The horror of it would never leave her. Bodies stripped of clothes, many of them impossible to identify. The baggage handler who couldn’t be identified because the force of the crash had pushed his body through fencing like a grater, cutting him into small pieces of unrecognisable bits. The cargo scattered over the ground, reminders of all those lost lives. Worse than all of that, though, was the sight of those devastated families, shocked and grieving, as they tried to understand what had happened to their loved ones.
Only eight people had survived the crash. Nick Gilbert was one of them. In the years since, he had cleverly used his new-found notoriety to reinvent himself as a TV personality while, at the same time, expanding his restaurant business.
‘Some of the others are here too,’ Marcus said. ‘Four of them, in fact.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The lucky eight.’ He frowned. ‘Well, I suppose there’s only seven of them now.’
One week after the crash, a tabloid newspaper had gone with the headline ‘the lucky eight’ and the name had stuck. Although Rachel was pretty sure the people who’d survived such a terrible incident would rather their experience wasn’t summed up in such a trite and over-simplistic way.