Death at the Voyager Hotel (8 page)

Jost Miedema welcomed them into his chalet, cordially shaking
hands with Paula as Edward introduced her. He was a tall, tanned, lean white man
with a bony face and a rugged nose that might have been broken at some point in
his life. His brown hair, styled with gel, had strands of gray.

“Please, do sit
down and make yourselves comfortable,” he said, a slight Ghanaian lilt to his
underlying Dutch accent. “Can I offer you anything? A soft drink or water?”

His visitors politely
declined as they took their seats. The sitting room, carpeted lushly and furnished
with soft leather armchairs and dark mahogany side tables, was deliciously
chilled by a whisper-quiet air conditioner. The compact, gleaming kitchen was
visible on the other side of a small dining section. Paula assumed the bedroom
was at the end of a short hallway on the other side of the sitting room.

“This is really
lovely,” she said to Miedema. “Much more spacious than it looks from outside.”

“Thank you.” He
patted Edward on the back. “I’m grateful to my dear friend here. He takes good
care of me.”

“You deserve
it,” Edward said. “You and your company have been our faithful customers for
years.”

Miedema looked
soberly at Paula. “I know Heather worked with you at the High Street Academy, so
I want to say a special sorry for your loss.”

“That means a
lot to me,” Paula said. “I owe you special thanks as well for trying so
valiantly to save her.”

“If only,” he
said with obvious regret. “I’ve been reliving that morning with nightmares. I
felt so futile and despairing as I was trying to bring her back to life,
because in my heart, I knew I couldn’t. And all the time I was asking myself
how this could have happened.”

Paula saw his
eyes cloud up and she felt moved. “It must have been a terrible feeling.”

“It was,” he
said softly. “You know, Heather and I met soon after she had arrived in Ghana. I
saw her swimming laps in the pool and I complimented her. We chatted for a
while, and when she found out that I’d been a triathlete and swimming trainer,
she asked if I would help her work on her stamina and speed. Of course, I said
yes.”

This was new
information for Paula. “You swam together?”

“Most of the
time I’d stand at the side of the pool and time her,” Miedema said, miming the
use of a stopwatch, “or use a camera to take shots that we could analyze later—not
that she had a lot to improve on. She was very good, but she was getting even
better. We did race every once in a while for the fun of it.”

“When did you find
the time to do all this?” Paula asked. “I imagine you’re very busy.”

“In the
evenings, mostly. I swim regularly in the mornings, but Heather said that would
be too much of a rush for her.”

“The papers
reported that you found Heather naked,” Paula said, finding it awkward to bring
this up with a man she had only just met.

He nodded,
looking almost as uncomfortable.

“Forgive me for
asking so many questions,” she said hastily, trying to put him at ease, “but
you see, Heather was very dear to us at the Academy. We’re all trying to
understand what could have happened. The nakedness alone…well, it’s just
incomprehensible.”

He met her eyes
squarely. “I’m with you. I’ve been going over that question in my mind and
thinking back on the events on Monday. I woke up at five forty, my usual time. As
I got to the pool, I saw her body at the bottom near the deep end. I dived in
and within a few seconds I brought her up and out onto the side, where I
started to do CPR. But she was cold and stiff, so I knew I was too late.”

“Did you notice
if her clothing was anywhere around the pool?”

“I could have
missed it in the excitement, but I didn’t see anything.” Miedema let out a long
sigh. “I don’t know how to make any sense of it. Why was she naked in the pool
without any sign of clothing around? Even if she was drunk or tipsy, I can’t
imagine her leaving her room
naked.
That wasn’t like her.”

Paula paused
before phrasing her next question. “Mr. Miedema, I know this may sound a little
strange, but were you aware of anyone who might have wanted to harm Heather? Or
even kill her?”

He
contemplatively chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Look, I’m not making any
accusations, but I think she was having trouble with the gentleman she was
seeing. I’m aware he works at your school, Paula, so I don’t want to offend
anyone.”

“You won’t,”
she replied easily. “When you say ‘having trouble,’ what do you mean?”

“I don’t know how
bad it was,” Miedema said, “but I can tell you that on Sunday evening, when I
was coming back to the chalet from dinner at the hotel restaurant, I saw Heather
arguing with him near the hibiscus bushes over by the pool—what’s his name
again?”

“Oliver,” Paula
said. “Did you hear what they were saying?”

“Not all of it,
but at one point Heather said something like, ‘I don’t want to do this
anymore.’ ”

“Oliver
didn’t…hit her or anything violent like that?” Paula asked, almost wincing with
the fear that the answer might be ‘yes.’

Miedema shook
his head. “No—not that I saw, at least.”

She felt
relieved. “Did you hear any commotion or disturbance much later that night, by
any chance? Maybe by the pool?”

“I wish I had,”
he said regretfully, “but the way the chalets are built, the two bedrooms are located
to the rear, so there could be a pool party going on and I would hear little or
nothing.”

Lost in their
individual thoughts, they were all quiet for a moment until Paula thought of
something. “Those solar lights around the pool—are they on all night?”

“Yes,” Edward
said. “They’re set to turn off at six in the morning.”

“I understand
you installed them,” she said to Miedema with a smile.

“Yes,” he said,
looking pleased. “I work for a small solar power company called Greenlight,
based in Amsterdam. We offer cost-effective solar installations to sub-Saharan
Africa. I put in solar lighting around the pool last year for Edward. They’ll
recoup the upfront cost of the system in no time at all without the electricity
bills and the headache of the constant power failures you’ve been having here
in Ghana. Hydroelectric power is not the best thing for this country.”

“I think I was
only half paying attention when Edward was explaining the system,” Paula said.
“You have the solar panels, the battery, and what else?”

“The inverter,”
Miedema said, clearly relieved that they had moved to a happier topic. “The panels
convert the sun’s energy and charge the batteries. The batteries discharge to
the inverter, which switches the direct current to alternating. That’s what
powers the lights around the pool.”

“Got it,” Paula
said. “Maybe I didn’t notice, but are there lights
inside
the pool
itself?”

Edward shook his
head. “Not worth the trouble or expense. If the bulbs go out, we have to order
them specially and pay a technician to install them. In any case, they attract
insects toward the water. It’s better to have external lights that draw the insects
away from the pool.”

“Ah, I see,”
Paula said. “Very interesting. Learn something every day.”

“I’m trying to
get Edward to go a hundred percent solar for the whole hotel,” Miedema said,
grinning.

Edward cleared
his throat and feigned choking. “Em, that’s a little too hefty a bill for us
right now.”

Miedema
laughed. “I’m going to keep sweetening the terms until you can’t refuse, my
friend.”

Paula watched
the two men joking around and realized how much they liked each other.

“Do you stay in
Ghana for months at a time?” she asked Miedema.

“Two or three
weeks, normally. I’ll be back in Holland next week Wednesday to be with my kids
for a month or so.”

Paula noticed
he hadn’t said
wife
and kids. “Are home solar systems available? I’m interested.”

“Absolutely,”
he said eagerly. “Just call me when you’re ready and we can set up an
appointment at the office.”

They exchanged
phone numbers and she stood up. “Thank you very much for your help, Mr.
Miedema.”

“Oh, no, not at
all,” he said, standing as well. “And please, do call me Jost.”

“Okay—I will.”

As Paula got to
the door, she turned to him again. “I wonder—did you ever think Heather was
depressed?”

Jost thought
for a moment, and shook his head slowly. “Quite the contrary, she seemed
unfailingly upbeat. But as I told Chief Inspector Agyekum when he was here on
Tuesday, I can’t pretend that Heather confided in me to the extent that she
would have talked about anything troubling her deep down. We knew each other only
in the context of our training, and for a number of good reasons, I liked to
keep it that way and I believe she did too.”

Probably wise,
Paula thought, still wondering about Jost’s marital situation. Then an idea
struck her. “You said you took snapshots of Heather’s swimming technique—might you
have one or two photos you could share? One of my staff is putting together a
slideshow to honor her memory, so if you have something that shows her swimming
prowess, we’d love to have that.”

“But of course!
I’m happy to. Shall I send them to your phone?”

“Please do.
Thanks again.”

Before Paula left, she asked Edward if he would allow her to
see the room in which Heather had stayed. Not a problem, he said. The police
had released it and it was vacant for the moment.

“Jost seems
like a very nice man,” she said, as they returned to the hotel.

“He is.”

Paula tried to
think of a tactful way to put her next question. “You don’t think…I mean,
there’s no reason to believe he was involved with Heather beyond the swimming
training?”

They had
reached the rear entrance to his office and Edward swiped his card. “Absolutely
not,” he said firmly. “You heard what he said about not getting unduly involved
with her. He’s an honest guy.”

“I notice he mentioned
his children but not his wife.”

“Yes, he’s been
divorced for many years.”

He picked up a
key card from the front desk and they went upstairs to Room 216. A far cry from
Jost’s chalet, this accommodation had only the basics—one room with a bed, a
desk, and a chair. The adjoining bathroom was very small. Nevertheless,
everything was clean and neat. Most of Paula’s volunteers came to Ghana with
limited funds, and the Voyager, with its reputation for cleanliness and
affordability, was the perfect hotel for their needs. Edward ran a tight ship.

Paula went to
the window where she had a full view of the three chalets. However she noticed that
the trellis below obscured most of the swimming pool. It was possible, then,
that a hotel guest could have looked out of the window in the middle of the night
on Sunday and missed Heather’s body in the water.

“Nice room” she
said, turning back to smile at Edward as they came out. “I like it.”

“Thank you.” He
pulled the door shut. “Let’s go this way and I’ll show you something.”

She followed
him downstairs. At the bottom, two doors faced them at right angles to each
other.

“That one goes
to the lobby,” Edward said, pointing to the right. He bypassed it. “But if you
want to go for a swim, you go out this way.”

He pushed open
the second door and they exited onto a concrete walkway.

“Oh,” Paula
said, now comprehending. “It’s the same back area you have access to from your
office, just from a different exit.”

“Right, and
this path leads to the chalets and the pool. So, as I told you, Heather could
go directly from her room to the pool without being spotted, something I was
proud of before, because of the privacy it offered the guests. Now that’s all
changed, and we will have a CC camera that shows who goes in and out of this
door.”

Paula was
staring thoughtfully at the exit door. Perhaps Heather came outside that night
to meet someone at the pool without having any intention to swim, and then something
went terribly wrong.