by steve higgs
‘I’ve got him.’ Tempest’s dad moved in to keep an eye on his son, Mary just behind him and some of the witches started to shuffle into the elevator car. Anne, not part of the group until now and already being treated as an outsider, shuffled to the side to make room. I passed the academics as I headed back to the library where we left Lily, Narcissus, Patience, and Frank with Dr Parrish and the killer.
On my way in, I called out, ‘Hey, Alexander.’ The big man tied to the table snapped his head around upon hearing his name. He hadn’t wanted to tell me his name, but now he knew that withholding it hadn’t achieved anything. ‘How’s the patient?’ I asked Lily.
Lily looked up. ‘He’s getting weaker. Is it really Tempest? Is he okay?’
‘He’s mostly okay. He had Anne with him.’ Her face went quizzical. ‘Lady Emily the vampire – her real name is Anne Richman. Anyway, he could do with some medical treatment too. The elevator is working so it’s time to go.’ Big Ben gently scooped the unconscious Dr Parrish into the air and started back to the door, edging around the greasy bit of the floor as he went. Lily and Narcissus followed, then Frank and Patience.
‘What about me?’ asked Alexander the murderer.
Patience paused. ‘I read you your rights. You remain under arrest. I’ll be back for you later. Until then, I left a light on for you.’ That seemed to cover it. I felt sure he was safe enough though the lamp we left him was going to go out at some point and leave him in total darkness. Patience would come back later with a whole team of officers to escort the homicidal manic out in cuffs. Attempting to do anything else now was pure folly.
As I started toward the door, something caught my eye and I stopped. ‘Hey, Frank. Can you give me a hand with this?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He had to come back a few yards to help me lift it. Not that it was heavy, just a little bulky. ‘What do you want it for?’
I gave him a tight-lipped grin. ‘I have a feeling it might come in handy.’
Control Room Raid. Sunday, December 11th 0313hrs
We bypassed the ground floor to ride the elevator to the first floor, where those nearest the doors, Lily and Frank, peered out carefully to check the coast was clear. They each gave a silent nod, their indication that we were safe to exit. There were a lot of us squeezed into a tight space, but I also think we felt safer that way because no one wanted to wait in the sub-basement. What if the elevator got called by someone else?
It didn’t matter where we went from here, but our rooms weren’t all that far away, so we headed there, reaching Mary and Michael’s room first. Tempest was ambulant and coherent. Mostly. I wasn’t content to involve him in whatever activities were to follow though, so once inside, I reversed him into a chair and made sure he was comfortable. Dr Parrish went onto the bed, Big Ben gently lowering him down before stepping away so Lily could check him again.
Mary pulled a bag onto the bed and started rummaging in it. ‘I have snacks,’ she announced, producing a Tupperware tub full of cookies. ‘Help yourself.’ Seeing a stampede coming, she snagged two for herself and got out of the way.
Leaving them to it, I watched Lily, so I saw it when fear flashed across her face. I thought for a second that Dr Parrish was dead; that we had waited too long, but she found his pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. Patience leaned in close to her ear to ask a question quietly enough that no one else would hear it, nodded her head and stepped away.
She flashed her eyes at me and motioned across the room with her head. I followed. ‘He’s not going to make it,’ Patience told me quietly. ‘It’s a fourth murder but you said it was a knight that stabbed him?’
‘Yes, an animatronic one that came to life by itself. A load of them did.’
Patience gave me a single raised eyebrow. ‘I doubt they came to life by themselves. Someone pressed a button somewhere which might not technically be murder, but it’s something close to it.’
I thought about that. ‘Anne said Lord Hale was giving orders to the men downstairs.’
‘Do you think we can trust her?’ Patience had a point. She hadn’t been part of tonight’s proceedings and she could have caused Tempest’s injury on purpose. We didn’t know anything about her.
‘Let’s just keep a close eye on her. We should run through what we do know.’ Patience and I distanced ourselves from the rest of the dinner guests by going over to the window. It was the coldest point in the room so no one else was there.
‘What do we know?’ asked Patience.
I chuckled darkly. ‘Not much. We know… No, that’s wrong. We believe that we were expected here for dinner tonight to be the test run for a fancy, swanky new escape room slash murder mystery event, but that part of the invitation got changed so we had no idea that it was all fake.’
Patience made notes on a pad she found by the bed. ‘So someone messed with the invitation you received weeks ago which suggests this was all planned.’
‘Meticulously planned,’ I agreed. ‘But Alexander the crazy killer in the monster suit turned up and killed the guy they hired for the role.’
Tempest’s dad came towards us, causing us both to pause our conversation. ‘Mind if I join you ladies?’
‘Where’s Mary?’ I asked.
‘Getting showered and changed. You know what she’s like,’ he said by way of explanation.
I didn’t, though I was beginning to form a picture. ‘We’re just talking through what we might know before we try to do anything else.’ He sat on the edge of the windowsill to listen. ‘He also killed the magician.’
‘Wizard,’ Patience corrected me.
‘Yes, wizard. Kevin something. He killed him and Ronald and wanted to kill Dr Parrish and Lord Hale for their part in not hiring him. He is most likely also responsible for killing Brian.’
‘That’s nuts,’ said Tempest’s dad.
I couldn’t disagree. ‘I don’t think Alexander has anything to do with what is going on downstairs though. I think he caught Lord Hale by surprise. His whole attitude shifted when we found Kevin dead.’
‘Yeah,’ said Patience. ‘It was as if he had a plan but now the plan was in question.’
‘Didn’t he escape right after that?’ asked Michael. ‘Like at the very first chance he got?’
‘That’s how it felt,’ I replied. I was half listening to what Michael and Patience were saying and half trying to work the problem in my head. ‘Who’s in the tower?’ I asked. Patience and Michael both shot me a look.
‘What tower?’ asked Patience.
I squeezed my eyes shut as if doing that would help the memory form. ‘When we were approaching the house last night, there were lights on all across the ground floor but then no lights anywhere else except one right at the top of a tower.’
Patience remembered. ‘You said it was really spooky and then scared the bejezzus out of me by saying someone just walked in front of the window.’
‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘So who’s in the tower?’ I couldn’t come up with a reason to put someone in a tower unless they were: A. a princess, B. a prisoner. My money was on answer B.
Lightning flashed outside, making me jump. Michael jumped too but now he was staring out of the window, squinting at something in the grounds outside. ‘Why would the catering vans still be here?’
I got up to join him, staring down into the murky black where I could see the sum total of absolutely nothing. Then lightning flashed again, and I saw them; half a dozen catering vans all lined up. It was gone midnight, the dinner for the party would have ended hours ago but the caterers were still here. If there were armed men downstairs doing something, then this was how they arrived.
Patience’s voice was nervous when she spoke again. ‘Amanda, what are we dealing with here? Armed men in the middle of nowhere, someone in a tower, multiple dead bodies and our host appears to be in on whatever is happening. If he is behind it and wanted us locked out of the way, why bother to bring us here? Are we supposed to be hostages?’
I
frowned with doubt and worry. I just didn’t know the answer. I could work out some of the bits of the puzzle but none of it made sense if Lord Hale was in on it. Why would he bring us here? I didn’t think we were hostages; if that was always their intention, they made the task too complicated. They could have just snatched us and stashed us when we arrived. No. It was something else.
Lily caught my eye, ‘He doesn’t have much longer. All I need is an IV kit and some plasma. He’s got a temperature coming too though; the wound probably did puncture his bowel. The longer we leave him, the less his chances of recovery are.’
From his chair across the room, Tempest said, ‘There’s a full first aid kit in the control room. It had a defibrillator, so it ought to have an IV kit with plasma too.’
Lily wasted no time. ‘We have to get that kit now.’ She was already on her feet and heading for the door.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ I got in front of her. ‘You can’t just go rushing off to get it. You don’t even know where the control room is.’
Anne joined me. ‘But I do. I can take you there,’ she said quietly like she knew she ought to volunteer but really didn’t want to.
This was good but we only had one axe as a weapon between the lot of us against men armed with assault rifles if Anne could be believed. I wasn’t sure who I believed, truth be told. The one person whose word I would accept without question had his head scrambled. What I needed then, was to see it for myself. ‘I have to go. I need to see what we are up against but our priority for now is to get the kit we need to help Dr Parrish.’
‘I’m coming,’ volunteered Big Ben as he moved toward the door. He rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck as if limbering up for a fight.
‘If Lily is going, so am I,’ announced Narcissus. They took to arguing about whether either of them should go, but Lily’s training as a paramedic meant she had to go. Only she would know what kit Dr Parrish needed.
An explosion of swearing lit the room and drew our attention to Tempest’s mother. She was on her knees in front of a cabinet. ‘Everything alright, dear?’ asked Michael.
She swung a vicious gaze his way. ‘The Minibar. Is. Empty!’ Around the room, dinner guests quickly hid the cans and miniature bottles they were holding.
Michael looked at me, his eyes imploring. ‘I’m coming too.
Less than a minute later, six of us slipped out of the room, Anne leading as we crept back to the elevator. It was still on our floor, which surprised me; I expected it to be more frequently used. We could hear the guys downstairs moving things about, talking at normal volume and clunking things around. It sounded like someone moving house, with boxes and bits of furniture going back and forth. I heard the sound of a pallet trolley being pumped up to drag a pallet somewhere and then the noise you get from one of those tape dispenser machines they use when they have lots of boxes to seal.
As I waited for the elevator doors to close, I spotted something on the wall opposite and stuck my hand between the doors before they could close. As they swung open again, I stepped out for a better look.
‘What is it, Amanda?’ asked Michael, keeping his voice to a whisper.
I pointed. ‘See the shadow on the wall.’ Everyone stared. ‘There was something hanging there until recently.’ Now that I looked, there were lots of shadows along the wall opposite the elevator and, when I stepped out to take a look, on the wall the elevator was set into as well. I wanted to investigate further, sensing that I was onto something, but Dr Parrish’s needs were greater. I backed into the elevator and this time I let the doors close.
We all kept quiet, waiting for the car to arrive on basement level one where, Anna assured us, we would find the control room. We all got ready to leap out and attack, just in case there was a person or persons outside the doors when they opened.
The lights were on, but the basement looked abandoned; no sound or sign of life. It was as I had hoped but it still felt odd to get a lucky break tonight.
‘It’s to the right,’ said Anne, pointing a finger but not leading the way. Playing the man as ever, Big Ben took off first, assuming the role of protector with his giant axe in his right hand still. Nothing opposed us, no one walked out of a room with their colleagues behind them to spoil our plan and we reached the control room after just a few strides.
Going in, the first aid kit and the defibrillator were easy to spot, the giant red cross above them a big giveaway. Anne cursed herself for not thinking about them when we first announced we had an injured man, but a quick check by Lily confirmed it contained everything she needed to keep him alive. She started to look around for a bag or a box to pack things into, but my attention was drawn to Narcissus, who was now sitting in one of the two big chairs in front of the wide expanse of monitor screens.
She was pressing buttons and checking screens, toggling between cameras and then reading labels on switches. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ I warned, but she ignored me. As I crossed the room to quietly insist she desist before she pressed something that would identify us or draw attention where we did not want it, she turned to face me.
‘I can operate this,’ she announced. I stared at her for a moment. She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m a producer for the BBC. I’ve worked all kinds of jobs in the broadcasting industry. This is an old system, probably bought when a television studio upgraded theirs, its easy to use though.’ I looked down at the array of buttons, keyboards, switches and sliding things. I wouldn’t even know how to turn it on. I could just as easily pilot the Millennium Falcon. I was about to tell her to forget it when she said, ‘I can shut or open all the doors from here. And the windows. See this one?’ she pointed. ‘It says, ground floor mist.’ I stared at the button. ‘This one says, ground floor trapdoors.’
A jolt of realisation sparked in my head just as Michael joined us. ‘We can turn the tables on them,’ he murmured, echoing my thoughts.
‘I can’t find a box to put this stuff in,’ wailed Lily from behind us.
‘Just take it all?’ I suggested, trying to stop myself from sounding like I was talking down to her.
‘Oh, yeah. I hadn’t thought of that,’ she giggled to herself. ‘Big Ben can you carry this for me, it’s very heavy.’
‘Babe,’ he growled at her in a playful tiger voice, ‘I can carry you too.’
I slapped Narcissus on her shoulder. ‘We need to get the gear back to Dr Parrish. Do you want to stay here and familiarise yourself with the equipment?’
She nodded, her eyes never leaving the console. ‘If you want to send an email to someone, I can do that from here too.’
This time I gasped. ‘I don’t have my phone with me, I need my contacts list. Ben,’ I called as I turned around. ‘Let’s go. I need my phone and I need Patience.’
We ran from the room this time, the first aid gear shared between us as we rushed to the elevator. The chance to make contact with the outside world meant we could contact the emergency services. Anne’s report that the guys downstairs were armed meant I had to warn the police as well and have them turn up first with an armed response unit. We didn’t know what they were doing, though the missing artwork gave me a pretty big clue. Why would Lord Hale be stealing his own art though? If this was an insurance fraud or a way to make money, then why invest so much in the escape room plan? Or had he overstretched and was now scrambling for any way he could find to pay off debts or complete the project.
Running through scenarios in my head, I found myself stuck in a cycle. I had to get help here quickly to save Dr Parrish. The plasma and drugs from the first aid kit would stabilise him but if his intestines were punctured, he was going to die without treatment. As I understood it, every minute counted. So we had to rush to get the police and medics here, but the house made for an excellent fortified position from which to defend. The thieves, if that was what they were, could use their weapons to keep the police at bay for hours, maybe even days. Worse yet, if I brought emergency services here in my attempt to save Dr Parrish, I invited
the death of former fellow police officers as they exposed themselves to hostile fire.
I could only come to one conclusion about what course of action I needed to follow. I didn’t get to follow that line of thought though because the elevator arrived on the first floor and as the doors swished open my heart sunk.
‘Hello again, Miss Harper,’ said Lord Hale. His bony arms were folded in front of his chest and a dozen armed men were pointing weapons in our faces.
Busted. Sunday, December 11th 0346hrs
‘Put the axe down,’ growled the nearest armed man, a short fellow with a Heckler and Koch MP5. He wore caterer’s clothes, the emblem on his right breast matching that of the vans outside. Each of the men looked to have put in a hard day’s work, the uniforms were smudged with dirt and grime and they were visibly sweating from the effort of moving and carrying.
‘David? Derek?’ Anne had taken a step forward until the guns all twitched in her direction. ‘Guys, what are you doing with these men?’
‘Shuddup,’ one of them growled in response. She did, closing her mouth but continuing to stare. I would confirm it later, but they had to be the David and Derek from the control room. Now that I looked closer, one of them looked familiar – he was Mortimer Crouch, the paranormal detective that the monster snatched at the start of the evening. It proved to me that whatever they were up to had been in planning for some time because he was a mole they hired some time ago.
Ignoring them, the short man repeated his instruction, ‘I said; put it down. I will not tell you again.’ There was no trace of nervousness in the man’s voice, he wasn’t new to this. His steel blue eyes stared at Big Ben, looking up inevitably and looking unhappy about the height difference. His buzz-cut hair and lean shape suggested military. Whoever he was, he wasn’t making idle threats.
Slowly, and without breaking eye contact, Big Ben lowered the axe to the floor. The rest of us waited nervously for the next instruction. As Big Ben stood up again, he jerked his head toward the defibrillator over his left shoulder. ‘We have an injured man. He’s close to death.’ Shifting his eyes to Lord Hale, he said, ‘It’s Dr Parrish.’