Cal heard himself hit Gideon before he saw the picture.
A short flat sound, followed by the cry from beside the bar. The workroom door was open. A young man stood outside it with his phone held out to the person behind him, who was trying to see over his shoulder.
“That's him,” the man said.
He hadn't meant Cal to hear. That made it worse.
Cal got up and crossed the room. The young man drew the phone toward his chest, too late. Cal had seen his own white shirt, the glass on the bar, Gideon touching his mouth. The little picture kept moving while all three of them stood still.
“Where did you get that?” Cal asked.
The man glanced behind him. The woman there shook her head slightly, telling him not to get involved in whatever was about to happen.
“It came through,” he said.
“From who?”
“The wedding thing. The films.”
Cal took out his own phone. A new delivery notification waited beneath the messages to Juno. He had ignored it because it looked like work.
He opened the page. The little shoe film was still there. Beside it, a new picture: Adrian at the edge of the dance floor, his hand on Cal's arm.
Cal pressed it.
It began with guests moving back toward their chairs. The camera turned, found him and Adrian, drifted for a moment toward the lights. Juno's breath sounded near the microphone.
He's taking Gideon upstairs. I asked him to.
The whole instruction. Ten thousand. Put it on the bill. Then Cal himself, telling her to keep filming.
He dragged the little progress marker forward. His fist caught Gideon's mouth. He watched the bartender step between them, Gideon refuse help, Adrian arrive. He went farther. His arm across the other man's chest. The dragging step, the jacket pulling tight at the throat. His own voice, too close, saying keep rolling.
For a moment he could not feel the phone properly. It seemed to have become somebody else's object placed in his hand.
Adrian had done this. He had paid for the removal, then shown the part where the man he'd paid was violent. Cal saw the empty sofa in 604 and thought of the room being made ready for him to take the blame.
He went back to the beginning, looking for what had been taken out.
Nothing had. Juno's question about the hotel staff was there. Gideon's talk about owning Cal in the morning was there. Her two attempts to say his name. The camera kept moving through the whole miserable event until the elevator doors closed.
Under the player, beneath a title he hadn't bothered to read, was a name.
A film by Juno Blake.
He stood looking at it. Then he went into the workroom and called her again.
No answer.
He wrote: Did Adrian ask you to do this?
The mark beside it changed. She had seen it.
Her reply came after a pause.
No.
He started another message, stopped, pressed the call button. Still no answer. He put the phone against the table, making a sound that brought the two guests away from the open door.
On the laptop the company delivery page had his own name in the corner. Juno had the access she'd always had, the passwords he'd let her save, the work she usually finished while he talked to people who might be useful. He opened the administration page and looked for a way to remove the film.
His phone rang before he found it.
Rafi.
“Where are you?” the man asked.
“Where's Juno?”
“I thought she was with you.”
“Did you put this out?”
“Did I put it out?” Rafi sounded genuinely offended. “I was buying it. We had a figure. I had people ready.”
“What figure?”
“Twenty-five for an exclusive. Then we make something properly. I said I'd put it through today.”
Cal sat down.
“She said no?”
“She sent the link instead. To everyone. How am I meant to buy an exclusive of that?”
He was breathing too close to the microphone. In the background Cal could hear a porter asking where a suitcase should go.
“She wanted her name,” Rafi said. “I told her she would have it. In the credits, obviously. There would have to be a company—”
“Where is she?”
“She wouldn't tell me. Listen, there has to be a way to take it down. It's on your thing.”
Cal looked at the open administration page.
“I can remove the link.”
“Do it.”
“Has anybody saved it?”
There was a short silence.
“I've got it,” Rafi said. “Of course I saved it. I was buying it.”
Cal put his hand flat on the table. The phone screen had dimmed. He touched it, and the film woke again on the frame where Gideon looked directly into Juno's lens.
“Don't send it anywhere,” he said.
“People have already—”
He ended the call.
At the door, the hotel manager was speaking to someone Cal couldn't see. He stepped aside and a uniformed officer came in. The young guests had gone. Another member of staff stood near the table where the coffee had been put out, preventing people from stopping there.
“Mr. Mercer. Leave the equipment here for now.”
“There's nothing in it. The cards are gone.”
“We've spoken to Detective Quinn. She needs to account for what's here.”
Cal looked at A's case. His camera was downstairs with everything else because he'd brought it for the morning. He had a sudden physical wish to get it onto his shoulder, to put something familiar between his face and the room.
He reached for the handle.
The officer put a hand on the table, not on him. “Leave it there.”
Cal let go.
The manager said the room would no longer be available to the production. Staff would hold the key. If anything had to be collected, it would be arranged with them. He spoke as if a room booking had changed, but when Cal took a step toward the laptop, the officer stayed beside it.
“My phone?” Cal said.
“Keep your phone. The detective wants to speak with you again.”
Of course she did. She had asked where his hands were, how long Gideon resisted. Now she could watch.
He took his charger because it was lying in the open and no one stopped him taking it. He left the coffee, the laptop, the empty wallet pouch. In the passage the manager closed the door behind him and tried the handle before putting the key away.
Cal stood outside his own work.
A guest coming down the corridor saw him, slowed, then changed direction. Cal could have followed her out to the lobby. Instead he went toward the lounge, where voices were gathering.
Adrian stood beside the wide palm, facing a guest who held a phone almost as close as Juno had held the camera. Pam was behind him, talking to the hotel manager's colleague. Lena sat on a chair near the window. She looked at Cal when he came in but didn't rise.
“I asked him to take Gideon upstairs,” Adrian was saying.
The guest said something Cal couldn't hear.
“You can see me ask. That's me. I paid him to do a job.”
“Did you ask him to hit him?”
Adrian looked at the phone, then at the person holding it.
“No.”
Cal stopped behind the palm. Here it was. The sensible separation. He'd been hired for a favor; the rest was the contractor getting carried away.
“But don't stand there saying he killed him,” Adrian went on. “You don't know that.”
The guest lowered the phone a little. “They're saying—”
“You can say what you saw. I saw it too. I don't believe Cal murdered anyone.”
He had seen Cal. He came toward him before the guest could ask another question.
Cal stayed where he was. He couldn't make his face ready in time.
“They won't let me get the kit,” he said.
“I know. They'll sort out what's there.”
“The media's with Juno.”
“She's put this out?”
Cal nodded.
Adrian looked back at Lena. She was watching them, hands folded together in her lap.
“I won't have them throw all of this at you,” he said. “I asked you.”
He touched Cal's shoulder, in front of the phones. Cal could see the little old watch beneath the cuff. He had straightened that cuff for him hours ago.
“I didn't kill him,” Cal said.
“I know.”
He said it as though Cal had told him he hadn't stolen the towels. A thing so unnecessary to deny that there was something wrong with the asking.
Cal wanted to stay beside him. He wanted to take the hand on his shoulder and make it visible from every angle in the room. He could feel people changing what they were willing to do in front of him; one person hadn't stepped back.
“Where is she?” Adrian asked.
“I don't know yet.”
“Find her. We need the work back.”
The words could have meant the wedding film. Cal looked at Lena, then at the guest still holding the phone, and wasn't sure what they meant anymore.
Pam came over and asked Adrian for a moment. She didn't look at Cal. He moved away because the family needed something he hadn't been invited to provide.
His own phone lit.
Juno had sent a location at the marina, followed by a short message.
I'm working down here. You can come and talk. Don't bring anyone.
He opened the public film once more. Her name sat under it, with no company above her, no promise that somebody would be thanked later. His own voice continued inside the little picture.
He went out through the garden doors without going back for a camera.