The scream seemed to be coming from one of the treatment rooms that sat in the middle of The Retreat’s largest lawn: a timber and paper Japanese tea house that Aslan and Rianka had christened the ‘Meditation Space’.

When a second scream joined the first, Rianka found herself running across the grass towards the Meditation Space. It was a good hundred yards away and, when Rianka had covered about half the distance, Dominic De Vere, The Retreat’s tanned and taut handyman, appeared as if by magic from around the side of a clump of bougainvillea. As usual he was wearing only cut-off jeans, flip-flops and a utility belt full of various tools.

‘What’s that racket?’ he asked somewhat redundantly as Rianka flashed past him. After a moment, he turned and trotted after her.

Rianka got to the door of the Meditation Space, and, as there was no handle on the outside of it, tried to jam her fingers into the gap between the door and the frame with no success. It wouldn’t budge—it was locked from the inside.

‘What’s going on?’ she called out over the sound of screams.

Dominic finally flapped over on his flip-flops and caught up with Rianka, if not the situation.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘Dominic, get that door open!’

‘I can’t. There’s no door handle.’

‘Use your knife! Just cut through the paper!’

‘Oh! Of course!’

Dominic grabbed the Stanley knife from the pouch at his belt and clicked the triangular blade out. He was about to slash through the paper of the tea house’s wall when they both saw it: a bloody hand pressed up against the inside.

They then heard a man’s voice, thick with fear: ‘Help!’

And then a different female voice: ‘Oh god! Oh god!’

There was a scrabbling while someone wrestled with the lock on the inside of the door. A few moments later, the door was yanked inwards by Ben Jenkins, who then just stood there in lumpen horror.

Ignoring Ben, Rianka stepped into the Meditation Space and saw that Paul Sellars was lying on his back on a prayer mat, having difficulty waking up. Ann, his wife, was kneeling at his side shaking his shoulders. Rianka could see that both of them had spots of blood on their white cotton robes. As for Saskia Filbee, she was standing off to one side, her hands over her mouth, stifling another scream. There was blood on her sleeve as well.

But it was the woman standing in the centre of the room that drew Rianka’s attention. Her name was Julia Higgins. She was in her early twenties, she’d been working at The Retreat for the last six months, and in her left hand she was holding a bloody carving knife.

At Julia’s feet a man was lying quite still, his once white robes, beard and hair now drenched in blood, a number of vicious knife wounds in his back.

Aslan Kennedy—hotel-owner, yoga instructor and self-styled Spiritual Guru—had clearly just been viciously stabbed to death.