The Murder No One Saw

Mere-Evelyn Tavakaturaga-Sinclair realised she’d just watched a man die halfway through her second piña colada.

One moment, she was floating in the infinity pool, the warm Bali evening wrapped around her like a damp shawl. The next, she was staring, transfixed, at the villa across the ravine.

A man in a white shirt stood on the balcony of the neighbouring cliffside villa, his silhouette cut out against the orange smear of sunset. Another figure moved in the shadows behind him—a woman, slim, dark hair pinned up, wearing something pale that shimmered in the last of the light.

The man turned, said something she couldn’t hear.

The woman stepped closer.

Steel flashed. The man jerked, hands flying to his chest. For an absurd second, Evelyn thought he’d dropped his phone.

Then the blood came. Dark against white. He staggered, hit the balcony rail, and tumbled backwards into the plunge pool below with a splash she heard even from across the gorge.

Evelyn swallowed pool water. She surfaced, choking. “Did you see that?”

Her three friends lounged on the sunbeds, lit only by fairy lights and the soft, smug glow of other people’s holiday content on Instagram.

Tess didn’t look up from her phone. “See what?”

“Someone—” Evelyn shoved wet hair out of her face. “Someone just got stabbed.”

That got their attention. Three heads turned toward her, then to the villa across the ravine: Villa Naga, a twin to their own rented Villa Surya—same infinity edge, same thatched roof, same illusion of idyllic seclusion.

On the balcony of Villa Naga, there was nothing. Empty railing. Calm pool. No white shirt. No woman. No sign anything at all had happened.

Heat prickled the back of Evelyn’s neck; not the tropical kind. The other one. The one that whispered, You’re your mother’s daughter, remember?

“I’m not drunk,” she muttered, dragging herself out of the pool. The stone tiles were warm against her bare feet, the air thick with frangipani and clove smoke from some distant cigarette. “I saw it. I’m going over there.”

“Evie, wait—” Tess began, but Evelyn was already gone, grabbing the villa key and a towel and sprinting down the stone steps toward the lane.

If she was imagining things, she’d at least like to know promptly. If someone was actually dying… well. Her father hadn’t spent her entire childhood drilling emergency response procedures into her for nothing.

THE BODY THAT WASN’T

By the time she and the villa’s night security guard reached Villa Naga, Evelyn was drenched in sweat as well as pool water. The guard, a wiry man named Wayan with an easy smile, jogged ahead and rang the brass bell at the carved wooden gate.

No answer.

He tried the handle. It opened with a creak.

Inside, the villa was dark except for low garden lights. The pool lay like a sheet of black glass. The balcony above was empty. No white shirt drifting in the water. No red bloom. No splash-marked tiles.

“Hello?” Evelyn called. “Is anyone—”

Her voice bounced back off stone and glass and shadow. Somewhere a gecko clicked.

Wayan flicked on the terrace lights.

Villa Naga woke up all at once: soft warm glow, neat furniture, perfectly aligned sun loungers. The pool was pristine, reflecting the sky. No ripple. No body. No blood.

Evelyn stood there, towel dripping, heart thudding so hard it made her ears ring.

“He was there,” she said quietly. “He fell in.”

Wayan looked politely unconvinced. “Maybe other villa? Sometimes tourists mix up. They all look same.” He smiled. “Like foreigners say about us.”

“It was this balcony.” Evie pointed. “Man, white shirt. Woman behind him. Knife. You don’t forget a thing like that. Unless I’ve had a stroke.”

“Villa Naga is empty today,” Wayan said. “No check-in until tomorrow. I have list.” He tapped his temple. “And key log.”

He moved confidently through the villa, turning on more lights. It was immaculate. No suitcases, no clutter, no stray flip-flops. The fridge hummed, empty. A faint floral cleaning-product smell lingered.

Evelyn paced to the edge of the pool and stared down. Her reflection stared back, brown skin shining with chlorinated water, dark hair frizzing, eyes wide and—annoyingly—frantic.

“You see?” Wayan said gently. “No one here. Maybe shadow. Or dream.”

She was about to snap something defensive and very British when her eye caught a glint in the hedge.

She crouched, pushed aside glossy leaves, and plucked out a small plastic charm on a cheap chain: a tiny golden dragon with chipped enamel, snapped from something larger. A zip pull, maybe. Or a phone charm.

Not much. But it didn’t look like it belonged to an “empty” villa.

She slipped it into her damp palm. “Dreams don’t drop souvenirs,” she muttered.

CONSULTANT, SORT OF

The police came quicker than Evelyn expected, and with more paperwork.

Inspector Bayu Agung arrived at Villa Surya the next morning, while the sun was still low and the cicadas had not yet committed to their full demonic chorus. His uniform was immaculate; his expression was not unlike the one her father used when she claimed she hadn’t touched the biscuit tin.

“So, Miss Mere-Evelyn…” He glanced at his notebook. “Tava…ka…”

“Tavakaturaga-Sinclair,” she supplied. “My mother was Fijian, couldn’t resist a good syllable. My dad’s British and believed in double-barrels and discipline. It’s a compromise.”

He huffed a laugh despite himself. “You reported a stabbing.”

“Yes. Man on balcony. White shirt. A woman behind him, with long dark hair and a pale dress. Knife. He went over the edge into the plunge pool.”

“You are sure?”

“If this is my imagination, it’s getting uncomfortably specific.”

They sat at the outdoor table under the shaded pergola. Tess and the others were out on a snorkelling trip, having made sympathetic noises, and then left her with what one might call supportive haste.

Inspector Agung flipped a page. “We checked Villa Naga. No sign of struggle. Security cameras show no one entering or leaving after the cleaning staff left at four p.m. It is locked. No booking until tonight.”

“You have camera footage of the balcony?” Evelyn asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Would you like to see?”

He produced a tablet, swiped, and turned it to her. Grainy black-and-white footage appeared, timestamped 18:34. Her chest tightened.

The balcony. The same angle she’d had from the pool. The rooftops. A sliver of ocean.

At 18:35, a gecko wandered into view, froze dramatically, and departed.

That was it.

No man in a white shirt. No woman. No struggle. No splash.

Evelyn stared. Her scalp prickled. “Is there… another camera? Different angle?”

“We checked all. Nothing.” Agung watched her face carefully. “You have been in Bali how many days?”

“Three.”

“Drinking?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Moderately. I’m not hallucinating rum, Inspector.”

“Any medication? History of… mental stress?” he added delicately.

Her jaw tightened. Images flickered through her mind: her mother, painting feverishly at three in the morning, muttering about spirits and patterns and connections. The hospital. The diagnoses.

“I’m not my mother,” Evelyn said evenly.

His gaze softened for a fraction of a second. “I am not saying you are. But right now, officially, there is no evidence a crime occurred.”

“Except for a hysterical tourist,” she said, dry. “Lucky you.”

He closed the notebook. “Unofficially… you noticed the camera angle.”

“Yes.”

“You noticed there is a five-minute gap in the recording before you say you saw the stabbing.” He tapped the tablet. “System glitch, perhaps. Or perhaps someone deleted something. Only someone with access to the security centre may do that.”

She looked up sharply. “So you do think something happened.”

He smiled thinly. “I think you are interesting, Miss Tavakaturaga-Sinclair. And sometimes, interesting witnesses are more useful than reliable ones.” He stood. “For now, you will consider yourself… how do you say in your TV shows…” His eyes twinkled. “A consultant.”

“Oh good,” she said. “Do I get a badge?”

“Absolutely not.”

THE WOMAN IN WHITE

Evelyn didn’t sleep well that night.

It wasn’t just the phantom murder. Or the way the ocean seemed to breathe in the dark, steady and indifferent. It was the nagging thought that she might be wrong—either about what she’d seen or about herself.

Her phone buzzed past midnight. A text from her father in Surrey popped up:

Dad:

How’s Bali? Not fallen off any cliffs, I hope.

Remember: Situational awareness, kiddo. And drink water.

She stared at the message, the familiar tug in her chest equal parts warmth and irritation.

Evelyn:

Witnessed a possible murder. No one believes me. Standard holiday, x

His reply took longer.

Dad:

Stay alert, but don’t go charging in like you did with that Year 9 fight.

Let the professionals do their job.

She considered replying that the professionals had essentially patted her on the head and filed her under “unlikely but entertaining”. Instead, she drank some warm bottled water and went out onto the balcony.

Villa Naga was a dark hulk across the ravine. No lights. Just the suggestion of geometry against the stars.

Then a glow flicked on.

She froze.

A single warm rectangle: the upstairs bedroom of Villa Naga. A figure moved inside. A woman, backlit. Hair loose around her shoulders. White dress.

She stepped out onto the balcony and turned her head slowly toward Evelyn, as if she’d felt the weight of being watched.

Even at that distance, Evelyn could swear their eyes met.

Her breath caught.

The woman raised one hand, almost in greeting.

Then the light snapped off.

Evelyn stood there, heart pounding, fingers gripping the railing so hard they hurt.

The villa, according to everyone official and paid to know, was still empty.

“Brilliant,” she whispered. “Now we’ve added ghosts to the mix.”

SUSPECTS IN SARONGS

The next morning, Villa Naga was suddenly not empty at all.

A black SUV inched up the narrow lane. Evelyn, nursing her coffee at the edge of the pool, watched as a woman climbed out: tall, immaculate, in a linen jumpsuit that probably cost more than Evelyn’s flight.

“Dara Wirasari,” Tess said, appearing with a bowl of watermelon. “I asked reception. She owns half the villas on this coast. Eco-developer. TED Talk person. Very ‘sustainable luxury, but make it Instagram’.”

Dara moved like someone who expected space to be made around her: efficient, patient, faintly bored. A young man followed, carrying a laptop bag. Her assistant, by the look of it.

“Field trip,” Evelyn decided. “Come on.”

Tess groaned. “Evie, this is how people die in crime novels.”

“I’ve already seen one murder. I’m ahead on my quota.”

They met Dara at the gate of Villa Naga as she was instructing staff.

“You’re in the wrong villa,” she said, in English as smooth as polished teak. “This one is not for guests.”

“We’re not guests,” Evelyn said. “We’re neighbours. I’m Evelyn. This is Tess. I watched a man get stabbed on your balcony last night.”

Tess choked on her watermelon. Dara’s assistant blinked.

Dara… smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“I see the British press have not exaggerated your sense of humour,” she said. “I was informed about your… concern. Inspector Agung showed me the footage. There was no one here.”

“Except your ghost tenant,” Evelyn said. “Woman, white dress, last night after midnight. Upstairs bedroom.”

Dara’s gaze flicked, just once, to the upper floor. “Empty,” she repeated. “Security confirmed. Still, if it will make you feel better, you may look.”

Villa Naga, in daylight, was aggressively innocent. No blood, no signs of a late-night haunting. If there had ever been a body in that plunge pool, housekeeping deserved awards.

Evelyn scanned the balcony, the tiles, the rail, looking for something—anything.

Her fingers brushed a tiny rough patch on the smooth stone by the rail. She bent. A thin crescent-shaped scratch. As if something metal had scraped there, recently. Like a belt buckle. Or a watch. Or a button on a white shirt as someone toppled over the edge—

“Find something?” Dara asked lightly at her shoulder.

“Just admiring the view,” Evelyn said, standing.

The assistant was hovering in the doorway, pretending not to be listening. He fiddled with his phone, which sported a familiar dangling chain.

A golden dragon charm.

Evelyn’s fingers curled around the identical charm in her pocket, heart ticking faster.

“Well,” Dara said. “Unless my villa is possessed, there’s nothing more to see. Please enjoy the rest of your stay. And do try the spa. It’s very… grounding.”

Her eyes lingered on Evelyn a fraction too long.

It didn’t feel like an invitation. It felt like a warning.

THE BODY IN THE NETS

Three days later, a fisherman found a body tangled in his nets.

Evelyn heard about it from Wayan, who brought the news with her breakfast like a particularly grim room-service treat.

“Police say tourist fell from cliffs,” he said. “Very sad.”

Her stomach dropped. “Where?”

He pointed vaguely south. “Near Temple Rock. Current strong there. Sometimes, body travel.”

Current strong. Bodies travel. The words slid together in her head, clicking into place.

She grabbed her sandals.

At the tiny dock below the village, Inspector Agung was already there, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up. The air smelled like diesel and salt and something sour. Children had been shooed away a minute before; the curious still clustered at the top of the path.

A shape lay on the wooden planks, half-covered with a tarp. Bare feet stuck out: pale, wrinkled by the sea.

“Absolutely not,” Tess said, catching up and grabbing Evelyn’s arm. “Evie, don’t. You don’t need to see this.”

“I already saw her die,” Evelyn said softly. “I’d quite like to meet her properly.”

Agung looked up, saw her, and sighed. “Consultant Sinclair. You are on holiday, yes? This is not part of tour.”

“Who is she?” Evelyn asked.

“No ID,” he said. “No room key. Nothing. Hotel search ongoing.”

He hesitated, then lifted the tarp.

She was younger than Evelyn had expected. Late twenties, maybe. Freckles, pale lashes clumped with salt. Dark hair, long, tangling over her shoulders. White cotton dress torn at one shoulder.

Something in Evelyn’s chest gave a strange, disobedient lurch.

“It’s her,” she whispered. “The woman on the balcony.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.” The bone structure, the hair, the delicate notch in one eyebrow where an old scar had healed.

Agung’s mouth compressed. “Cause of death appears to be drowning. There is some bruising. Cliffs, maybe. We will know more later.”

Evelyn’s gaze caught on a faint crescent-shaped wound just under the ribs. Small. Shallow. Almost hidden amongst the mottled tones of skin that had spent too long in the water.

“Is that—” She pointed.

“Could be rocks,” he said quickly. “We will see.”

He wasn’t looking at it. In fact, he very carefully wasn’t looking at it.

“Do you often get tourists in white dresses floating off cliffs?” she asked.

“Sometimes people fall,” he said tiredly. “Sometimes they jump. Sometimes they drink and forget there is an edge.”

“And sometimes,” Evelyn said, “they get stabbed, thrown in a plunge pool, fished out, and tossed back in the sea later, so everyone thinks they died somewhere else.”

Silence settled like another tarp over the pier.

Finally, Agung said, too mildly, “You have interesting theories, Miss Tavakaturaga-Sinclair.”

“And you have an interesting reluctance to consider them, Inspector.”

His expression flickered—there and gone. “You may not like what happens if we pull at every thread. This is a small community. People depend on tourism. On reputation. On certain villas being… full.”

“Ah,” Evelyn said. “And some of those people might be friends with Dara Wirasari.”

He didn’t reply. Which was, really, as good as a yes.

Behind them, Tess shifted her weight, the bangles at her wrist chiming softly. “Evie,” she murmured. “Maybe let this go. You saw something, yes, but… you don’t know what it was.”

Evelyn stared at the dead woman’s face, feeling a strange stubbornness settle into her bones. It looked, uncomfortably, like the way her father squared his shoulders before walking into a mess no sane person wanted.

“I know she deserves someone to at least try to find out,” she said quietly. “And I’m here. And I’m annoyingly observant. So I nominate myself.”

Agung pinched the bridge of his nose. “God help us,” he muttered. Then, louder: “Fine. You want to help? You find out who she is. Discreetly. No more bursting into people’s villas, please. And if I say stop, you stop.”

“Of course,” Evelyn said.

She had absolutely no intention of stopping.

GHOSTS, REAL AND OTHERWISE

The dead woman’s name, it turned out, was Amelia Sharp.

“Travel blogger,” Tess said, sliding her phone across the breakfast table. “Hundreds of thousands of followers. ‘Amelia Abroad’. Cute dog, adorable freckles, bucket list longer than the M1. Her last Instagram post is from Ubud. Four days ago. Hashtag ‘#blessed #solotravel #balilife’.”

Evelyn scrolled through smiling photos: Amelia on a scooter, Amelia with a coconut, Amelia in a jungle pool. In one shot, Amelia stood on a cliff edge, ocean behind her. The caption read:

Sometimes you have to jump to see if you can fly.

No mention of knives. Or suspicious neighbours.

“Any sign she was depressed?” Evelyn asked quietly.

“Not publicly,” Tess said. “But, you know. Social media. People curate. Some of my happiest posts were during my most existentially miserable period.”

She said it with a lightness that didn’t quite hide the shadow in her eyes. Evelyn stored that away, the way she did with all small things.

Down at the reception desk, the resort manager confirmed that Amelia had checked into a different villa complex up the coast, two nights before she died. She’d left with a small backpack, alone. Pleasant, quiet, no complaints.

“Did she ever visit here?” Evelyn asked. “To see this stretch of coast?”

The manager shook his head. “We do not think so. But guests often go for walks on cliffs.”

In the gift shop, while pretending to examine soap shaped like frangipani flowers, Evelyn spotted a display of cheap phone charms.

Tiny golden dragons.

“Popular?” she asked the clerk.

“Very,” the woman said. “Influencers like. We are sold in many villa shops now. Owner of Emerald Bay Resorts, Ibu Dara, order special.”

Of course she did.

That afternoon, Evelyn walked the cliff path between the resort and the village. The ocean roared below, throwing white spray against black rock. Lava stone shrines clung to the edge, draped in checkered cloth, bearing offering baskets of flowers and biscuits.

She tried to imagine Amelia here. Alone. Wind whipping her dress. Phone in hand.

Did she meet someone? Was she pushed? Did she jump?

Halfway along, a narrow, almost hidden set of steps led downward, carved into the rock and partly overgrown. The stone was slick with algae. A hand-painted sign, half-faded, read: PRIVATE - NO ACCESS.

She stood at the top and inhaled. The air was cooler down there, damp and secretive. Somewhere below, she heard the soft slap of water against stone.

She recognised that sound.

The same muted splash she’d heard when the man in the white shirt had hit the plunge pool.

“Of course,” she murmured. “There’s always a bloody secret staircase.”

WATCHING THE WATCHER

The secret stairs did not appear on any of the resort maps.

Wayan denied knowing anything about them, which would have been more convincing if his left eye hadn’t twitched.

“You are going to get in trouble,” he told her, when she caught him by the staff entrance, sidelines of his mouth turning down. “Some things, maybe better not to know.”

“Here’s the thing about me,” Evelyn said. “I’m pathologically bad at ‘better not to know’.”

He sighed. “You are like my grandmother. She always go to temple back room where only priests should go. Spirits follow her home. Very noisy.”

“You have no idea how much I relate to that sentence.”

That night, when everyone else had drifted off to bars and beach clubs, Evelyn slipped out with a torch and her stubbornness. The moon was thin, the path uneven. The ocean breathed below, restless and indifferent.

The secret steps were steeper than they’d looked. Halfway down, she nearly lost her footing on a slick patch and had to grab the rail, heart pounding.

The stairs terminated in a small stone platform tucked into the cliff, half cave, half balcony. Waves licked at the rocks below, sending up cool mist. Above and to her left, about eight feet higher, she recognised the underside of Villa Naga’s cliffside deck.

“Access for maintenance, maybe,” she whispered. “Or disposing of bodies. Sometimes one must multitask.”

Something glinted in the weak beam of her torch.

A camera.

Tiny, tucked into a crevice in the rock, its lens trained not at the sea, but upward—toward the underside of Villa Naga. Toward the plunge pool drain.

“Interesting,” she breathed, reaching up.

Her fingers brushed metal. The camera was taped in place. Not official resort equipment. More… DIY surveillance chic.

Someone had been watching the space where she believed a body had briefly been.

Her heart thudded louder.

She was reaching for it, nails catching the edge of the tape, when a voice behind her said, very calmly,

“You really are everywhere, aren’t you, Miss Tavakaturaga-Sinclair?”

She spun so fast she nearly went over the edge.

Inspector Agung stood halfway down the stairs, torch turned off, hands in his pockets. His silhouette was all angles against the slice of sky.

“Jesus,” she wheezed. “Do you practice appearing ominously, or is it natural talent?”

“You should not be here alone,” he said. “The rocks are slippery.”

“That’s the least of my health concerns right now.”

He descended the last few steps, looked past her at the camera.

“I didn’t put it there,” she said quickly. “In case that’s your next question.”

“I know,” he said. “This is not our equipment.”

“Whose is it?”

He studied the lens, the tape, the angle. “Someone who wanted to see what goes out with the tide,” he murmured. “Or who wanted to check if something they threw away stayed thrown away.”

“Like a body,” Evelyn said.

“Like a body,” he agreed.

Their eyes met in the half-dark. For the first time, he looked less like a sceptical civil servant and more like someone properly uneasy.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

He hesitated. “The gaps in the villa CCTV,” he said. “The ones around the time you say you saw the stabbing. We traced the access. Someone with admin rights tampered with the system from the security office. Used an override code. My override code.”

“Convenient,” she said.

“Too convenient,” he replied. “It was not me.”

“Someone framing you,” she said slowly. “Or borrowing your authority. How many people have your code?”

“In theory? Only me,” he said. “In practice… the resort owner could request it. For ‘emergencies’.”

“Dara.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“Why not arrest her?” Evelyn demanded.

Because she owns half the island, the unspoken answer hung in the salt air.

“Because,” he said instead, “so far, we have a dead tourist who may have fallen. A witness no one else can corroborate. A scratched balcony, a cheap charm, and a camera we cannot prove belongs to anyone. It is not enough to accuse very powerful people. Not here. Not if I want to keep my badge.”

“And your badge is more important than the truth?”

“My badge is how I get to the truth, Miss Sinclair,” he said sharply. “If I lose it, I can do nothing. You go home to London. I stay here.”

Evelyn took a breath. Cool, damp air filled her lungs, steadied her.

“Then we get you something you can’t ignore,” she said. “We catch whoever is watching this place. In the act.”

THE WRONG SOLUTION

The plan, in hindsight, was flawed.

This did not occur to Evelyn until about ten minutes into it.

She and Tess sat at the resort bar that overlooked the ravine, nursing mocktails for the sake of credible cover. Below, the cliffside and secret stairs lay in shadow.

“Explain again why I’m here,” Tess said, picking at the sugar rim of her glass.

“Because you’re my alibi,” Evelyn said. “When whoever owns that little spy-cam comes to check it, I sneak down, steal it, and return like a ninja. If anything goes wrong, you tell the nice inspector I was with you until precisely 11:15 p.m., at which point I went to bed like a sensible, law-abiding citizen.”

“Oh, is that all,” Tess said. “And what if whoever it is pushes you into the sea?”

“Then I haunt their TripAdvisor reviews,” Evelyn said. “Bad press is worse than ghosts, these days.”

Tess snorted, despite herself.

At 11:10, Evelyn slipped away, heart beating rather faster than she enjoyed. The path was darker tonight, clouds smothering the moon. She descended the secret stairs more carefully this time, torch off, hand flat against damp rock.

The platform was empty. The waves hissed.

She waited.

Footsteps, after perhaps five minutes. Light, cautious ones.

She pressed back into the shadow of the cave mouth, breath shallow.

A figure descended into view. Hoodie. Baseball cap. Headlamp casting a narrow cone of light.

They reached up, fingers brushing the camera.

“Got you,” Evelyn whispered, stepping forward. “Don’t move.”

The figure yelped, swung around. The headlamp flared in her eyes. She flung up a hand, blinking away spots.

“Evelyn?” a familiar voice squeaked. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Her vision cleared.

Tess.

She stared. “I could ask you the same question.”

Tess looked guilty enough to be framed and hung in a gallery. “Okay, I know how this looks—”

“Like you’re tampering with crime-scene-adjacent evidence, on a cliff, in the dark,” Evelyn said. “This is not how I thought the evening would go.”

“It’s not what you think,” Tess said, a phrase which had, in Evelyn’s experience, never been followed by anything reassuring.

“You knew about the camera,” Evelyn pressed. “You came straight to it. How?”

Tess sagged. “Because I put it there.”

The ocean seemed to fall away beneath Evelyn’s feet.

“Come again?” she said, voice very calm, in the way of people about to unravel.

“I thought you were losing it,” Tess blurted. “You’ve been… off, Evie. Since we got here. Seeing things. Not sleeping. And with your mum, and everything… I got scared. I thought maybe you were spiralling and no one was noticing.”

“So you… what? Installed surveillance in case I started dancing naked on the cliffs?”

“I wanted to see if there was anything actually going on,” Tess said, words tumbling. “If there was, I had proof to back you up. If there wasn’t, I had proof to get you some help. The good kind. Not the… British stiff-upper-lip ‘pull yourself together’ kind.”

There was a horrible, awful tenderness in that. The kind that made Evelyn want simultaneously to hug her and shove her into the sea.

“You could have talked to me,” she said.

Tess made a helpless gesture. “You weaponise jokes, babe. You deflect. You’d have laughed it off. So I thought… this. Logically, empirically. Like we did at uni, remember? Evidence-based.”

“And?” Evelyn asked. “Your little experiment turn anything up?”

Tess bit her lip. “Yes,” she said. “That’s why I came to get the camera. I was going to show you. Somewhere that’s not a cliff.”

She pulled a tiny SD card from the side of the device and held it up.

“Last night,” she said, “it recorded someone dragging something heavy from the direction of Villa Naga. Over the platform. Into the water.”

Evelyn’s skin went cold.

“Show me,” she demanded.

THE REAL MURDER

They watched the footage back in the safety of their villa, Tess’s laptop casting its cold light across the room.

Timestamp: 02:13.

The camera’s angle was limited; it caught only a slice of the platform above, boots, the edge of a bundle wrapped in dark plastic. The vague outline of a human shape inside it was unmistakable.

“It could be a mannequin,” Tess said weakly.

“Or Dara’s conscience,” Evelyn said. Her throat felt tight. “But given Amelia turned up shortly after this, I’m betting person.”

The figure on the recording grunted as they manoeuvred the bundle to the edge. The audio picked up the harsh rush of breath, the scrape of weight on stone. Then, with a final heave, the bundle tipped out of frame.

A splash.

The person straightened. For a second, their head and shoulders tilted into the camera’s view as they turned.

Evelyn hit pause.

The face was blurred, the angle bad. A peak of a cap. Jawline. Mouth. It could have been anyone—

Tess inhaled sharply. “Is that…?”

Evelyn zoomed in as far as pixelation allowed.

Dara? No. Wrong bone structure. The assistant? Maybe. Inspector Agung? The thought skittered in, unwanted.

But then her gaze caught on one clear detail the blur couldn’t hide.

The bracelet.

On the wrist that brushed the lens as the figure pushed the bundle, a bracelet of irregular beads flashed: dark wood, pale shell, one bright turquoise stone.

Evelyn stared.

She’d seen that bracelet every day for a week.

On Wayan’s wrist, as he carried their bags. As he brought breakfast. As he’d stood beside her at the empty plunge pool of Villa Naga and told her gently that nothing had happened.

“Well,” she said, voice oddly flat. “It appears the friendly security guard wins today’s ‘least comforting person’ award.”

THE LAST TWIST

Inspector Agung agreed to Evelyn’s plan with the weary resignation of a man who had long suspected the universe hated him and now had proof.

“We cannot confront him with just this,” he said, tapping the laptop. “He will say someone borrowed his bracelet. Or he was moving rubbish. Or… something. We need more.”

“Then we get more,” Evelyn said. “We invite him to a little gathering. Make him comfortable. Let him talk.”

“And if he does not?”

“Then I improvise,” she said. “It’s what I did in my Oxford viva. It worked then.”

“That does not reassure me,” he muttered.

They gathered in Villa Naga at sunset: Wayan, summoned under the pretext of checking the new guests’ security preferences; Dara, invited by the Inspector as the villa’s owner; Tess, because she refused to be left out; and Evelyn, who had insisted on standing where she’d first seen the “imaginary” murder.

The villa felt different, now that she knew how thin its walls were. How easy it was to move from balcony to secret stairs to sea.

Agung cleared his throat. “We are here because new information has come to light regarding the death of Amelia Sharp,” he said. “And a possible related crime. Miss Tavakaturaga-Sinclair has… a theory.”

“Oh good,” Dara said smoothly. “I do enjoy a theory.”

Evelyn stepped forward. Her heart hammered, but her voice came out steady.

“I thought I saw someone killed here a week ago,” she began. “A man in a white shirt, stabbed by a woman, falling into that plunge pool. But there was no body. No blood. No victim on the list.”

She turned to Wayan. “You told me the villa was empty. That I’d imagined it.”

He swallowed. “I did not want you to be afraid. Villa Naga has… stories. Guests are—how you say—suggestible.”

“Except someone was hurt here,” Evelyn said. “Amelia Sharp. She came to Bali alone, but she wasn’t wandering cliffs randomly. She was meeting someone. Someone who told her about a development scam involving these villas. Someone local. Someone she trusted enough to come here at night.”

Dara’s face didn’t move, but her knuckles whitened on the back of the chair she held. “That’s a serious accusation.”

“Oh, I’m not accusing you,” Evelyn said. “Yet.”

Surprise flickered in Dara’s eyes.

“I think Amelia came here two nights before she died,” Evelyn continued. “Met a whistleblower. Maybe in this villa. Maybe she filmed something. Maybe she caught a conversation between you, Dara, and Inspector Agung about creative bookkeeping and land rights.”

Agung’s jaw tightened, but he held her gaze.

“You’re very free with your conjecture,” Dara said.

“Yes, but stay with me,” Evelyn said. “Because I was wrong about the first murder. There wasn’t one. Not here. Not that night.”

Tess blinked. “Evie—”

“Hear me out,” Evelyn said, raising a hand. “The stabbing I saw: the angle, the movement—it was theatrical. A bit too… tidy. Like a scene.”

She looked at Wayan. “You said the villa was empty. But what if it wasn’t? What if you were here, rehearsing something. With someone.”

Wayan’s throat bobbed. “I do not understand.”

“Amelia was a content creator,” Evelyn said. “She did brand deals. Sponsored stays. She could have partnered with the resort for some spooky ‘true crime’ package. ‘Come stay in the haunted cliff villa’. You bring in money, she gets clicks. You stage a fake murder video. The man in the white shirt—” She looked around. “One of your colleagues, maybe. Or a friend. Knife prop. Blood packet. Splash. All very viral.”

She paused. Let that land.

“But something went wrong,” she said softly. “Amelia saw or heard too much. Maybe it was about the land deal, maybe about someone skimming from Dara’s projects, maybe about certain police looking the other way.”

She glanced at Agung. He watched her, expression unreadable.

“And whoever that was,” she went on, “decided it would be simpler if Amelia never posted anything at all. They arranged to meet her again. Somewhere quiet. Private.” She looked at Wayan. “Somewhere only staff used. Like the secret stairs.”

“Stop,” Wayan said hoarsely.

Evelyn’s voice gentled, though her words did not. “You met her there, didn’t you? She trusted you. You helped her set up shots. Then… you pushed her. Or hit her. She went into the water. Maybe you panicked. Maybe you meant to scare her. Or maybe you were paid. Either way, you dragged her onto the platform and wrapped her up. Later, you came back and dumped her farther along the coast, where she’d look like just another tragic tourist.”

Dara shook her head, lips set. “This is absurd. Wayan is a security guard, not an assassin.”

“Security guards see everything,” Evelyn said. “Who comes, who goes, who pays, who asks questions. They’re also paid very little. Easier to buy than a CEO or an inspector.”

She turned to Agung. “Except here’s where my theory was wrong. Again.” She managed a brittle smile. “Very annoying.”

Everyone was very still.

“The footage from the cliff camera shows someone dumping a bundle,” she said. “And yes, Wayan’s bracelet is visible. But Wayan’s right-handed. He wears his bracelet on his right wrist. Always. Even this morning.”

She pointed. Wayan flinched, hand instinctively covering the beads.

“In the video,” she said, “the bracelet is on the left wrist.”

Silence dropped like a stone into the plunge pool.

Slowly, very slowly, Evelyn turned.

Inspector Agung’s left hand rested on the back of a chair. Around his wrist, half-hidden under his cuff, was a bracelet of dark wood, pale shell, and one bright turquoise bead.

“I only realised last night,” she said quietly. “When you wrote in your notebook with your left hand.”

Agung didn’t move. His gaze slid to Wayan, then to Dara.

“Wayan was your patsy,” Evelyn continued. “Your visible ‘friend’ at the resort. Your bracelet on his arm, easy to spot. If anything came up, you could nudge suspicion his way. Who would question the inspector pointing to the conveniently compromised guard?”

Tess’s hand flew to her mouth. Dara’s expression, for the first time, cracked.

“You were in on this?” Evelyn asked Dara, not really expecting an honest answer. “Or did he go freelance?”

Dara closed her eyes briefly. “I told you,” she murmured to Agung. “It would not hold.”

Agung’s shoulders slumped, the fight going out of him in a single exhale.

“You don’t understand how things work here,” he said to Evelyn, voice suddenly tired. “Developers come. Land is stolen. People pushed out. If I resist, they replace me with someone who doesn’t. So I push back where I can. Take their money. Use it to help the ones they hurt. I… balance.”

“You killed a woman,” Evelyn said. “That’s not balance. That’s murder.”

“She would have ruined everything,” he snapped. “Years of careful work. Exposés don’t fix structures. They just bring different vultures. I was so close to buying land back in my village. Putting it in trust. One story, and the investors flee, the land goes to whichever corporation comes next. Nothing changes except the logo.”

He spread his hands. “So I made a choice. One life, weighed against thousands. That is the calculus your governments make all the time, Miss Tavakaturaga-Sinclair. I just did it without a committee.”

“That’s the worst justification I’ve ever heard,” she said. “And I’ve listened to Union Jacks explain colonialism.”

His laugh was short and humourless.

Wayan made a choked sound. “You used me,” he whispered. “I thought… we were helping. Keeping things quiet until villa sale finished. You said no one would get hurt.”

“Amelia was already hurt when I got there,” Agung said. “She slipped. Hit her head. I… finished it quickly. She would have drowned slowly otherwise.”

“Well,” Evelyn said, jaw clenched. “That’s all right then. Murder with a side of mercy.”

Sirens wailed faintly in the distance. Dara’s assistant, who had been conspicuously absent, had taken a very conspicuous walk just before the confrontation, phone in hand. Apparently, at least one powerful person had decided which side to fall on.

Agung looked at Evelyn, something almost like regret in his eyes. “You could have gone to the beach,” he said. “Had cocktails. Gone home. Forgotten this place, like so many others do.”

“I’m bad at letting things go,” she said. “Ask any of my exes.”

He smiled, very faintly. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “you are wasted in whatever job you do in London.”

“I’m a financial analyst,” she said. “And yes. Yes, I am.”

He put his hands behind his head as the officers arrived.

EPILOGUE:

EXIT, PURSUED BY GECKOS

A week later, Bali felt different.

The sun still beat down on the frangipani. The scooters still screamed past in loose swarms. Incense still curled up from temple shrines.

But Villa Naga stood empty, its booking calendar mysteriously frozen. Rumours trickled through staff corridors and beach bars: about corrupt deals and quiet arrests and a TED Talk heroine whose halo had slipped a little.

Evelyn sat on the sand with Tess, watching the sky soften into pastels.

“So,” Tess said, nudging her with one foot. “Witnesses who see things that aren’t supposed to exist. Inspectors who kill to save villages. Influencers who almost bring down empires. How’s your holiday been so far?”

“A bit murdery,” Evelyn said. “Serviceable breakfast buffet, though.”

Tess smiled, then sobered. “You know I only did the camera thing because I was worried.”

“I know,” Evelyn said. “It was deeply invasive, and ethically questionable, and I’ll be dining out on it for years. But… thanks.”

“For not being furious?”

“For being worried,” she said. “On balance, I prefer that to apathy.”

Her phone buzzed.

Dad:

Saw the news piece you sent. Only you could turn a beach break into a homicide inquiry.

Proud of you. Also: told you situational awareness matters. x

She smiled, throat tight.

“Thinking of a career change?” Tess asked. “Private detective? Consulting busybody?”

“God, no,” Evelyn said. “Do you know how much paperwork that involves?”

But even as she said it, some traitorous part of her moved the idea from “ridiculous” to “maybe” in the back of her mind.

Because for all the fear and ugliness and ethical contortions, there had been a moment—standing on that balcony, laying out the pieces, seeing them click—that felt like stepping into a version of herself that had always been waiting.

“You’ll be insufferable now,” Tess said, as if reading her mind. “Every small mystery, you’ll be like, ‘Well, in Bali—’.”

“In Bali,” Evelyn said gravely, “I solved a murder that didn’t officially happen, committed by a man whose job was not to commit it, against a woman who came here to tell the truth. I think I’ve earned a few anecdotes.”

Tess laughed. The tide crept in, cool around their ankles.

Behind them, a gecko clicked somewhere in the rafters of the beach bar. It sounded, unreasonably, like applause.

Evelyn raised her drink toward the darkening horizon.

“To Amelia,” she said softly. “Who deserved better witnesses than silence.”

Tess clinked her glass against Evelyn’s.

“And to you,” she said. “Who see what everyone else forgets to look at.”

Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Don’t get sentimental. It’s humid enough.”

But she didn’t look away from the sea for a long time.

Just in case it decided to give up any more secrets.

Disclaimer: This story was written with the help of AI.