‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Marie from somewhere behind the wall. I realised she wasn’t a captive at all, it was her who’d locked me out.
‘Where’s Alice?’ I asked.
‘I’m here—’ she started.
‘Start explaining,’ said Dash.
Keeping the gun up I reached behind me to slide the window shut. ‘Marie? Why did you lock me out?’
She directed her answer at the others. ‘He knew the code for the door at Camp Vollum. And he has a window key.’
‘And a gun,’ Hurley said again.
‘Of course,’ said Greenbow. ‘I knew something was off when we went up to Vollum earlier, but it didn’t click.’
Dash tensed. ‘You were grilling me about the windows earlier,’ he said. ‘All makes sense now.’
Greenbow shifted slightly as he put two and two together and made thirteen.
‘This is crazy, Demeter killed Gambetta and Ingrid,’ said Alice, finally finding her voice, peering round him. ‘And he’s still missing.’
‘No, he’s not missing any more. John knew exactly where to find him,’ Marie said. ‘Demeter’s dead,’ she added to collective gasps. Dash shuffled back.
Greenbow’s eyes narrowed. I tensed my hand, finger oh-so slowly squeezing the trigger. Twenty-pound trigger, single action.
The collective gasps had meant this was news to them, which in turn meant the killer was still hidden. The rest of them were innocent, this wasn’t a conspiracy of everyone against me otherwise they’d have jumped me. And they certainly wouldn’t be acting like this, this was nothing more than paranoid group mentality.
‘Everyone out into the corridor,’ I said. ‘Nice and slow.’
Greenbow and Hurley shuffled almost imperceptibly.
‘Just tell them, John,’ Alice shouted.
‘You killed them,’ Greenbow said through gritted teeth. ‘You’ll kill us all too.’
I shook my head. ‘Let’s not have any accidents. Gun down, now.’
‘John!’ Alice screamed.
‘Shut her up,’ said Greenbow, pointing behind him, presumably at Alice. ‘You know the code to the secure door at Camp Vollum, despite not being part of the team. You stole a window key. Two of our colleagues have been shot and you’re the only other person on the island with a gun, despite not being authorised to carry one, and now you’re pointing that gun at us. We’ve clearly found our rotten apple.’
Stalemate, I’d no idea what my next move would be but I needed to come up with one before they realised they could easily rush me. I took up about 15lbs of that 20lb trigger, slowly bringing the gun in closer, still aimed at the middle of the three torsos. All I was thinking was, how many shots can I get off before Greenbow pulls that trigger?
Things had taken a dangerous turn, this tight-knit bunch was on a knife-edge. The longer this went on, the more brain cells would be lost to this group mentality. These were the kind of high-pressure situations you read about, that lead to lynchings, or cannibalism, the kind of situations where mistakes are made.
Which is exactly what I was counting on, the reason I hadn’t wanted the Marines to evacuate us.
The rain pelted. The strip lights buzzed. The fridge hummed and ticked. The stalemate was finally broken by Alice, who evidently had not been shut up.
‘Oh, just tell them,’ she shouted. ‘He’s no more a killer than I am! He’s a spy, sent by MI5.’
I hadn’t expected this, I was momentarily on the back foot, though in blurting it out, Alice had implicated herself in a conspiracy. There were more gasps, growls, and I’m not sure whether it was because my duplicity had been revealed, or because of Alice’s knowledge of it.
‘Is that true?’ asked Greenbow.
‘I work for the government, just like everyone on this island.’
‘MI5?’ asked Dash.
Greenbow looked nervous. Faced with this new knowledge, he was torn on loyalties and priorities. ‘So that’s why you’re here.’
‘It’s why I’m still here, despite your best efforts. The storm wasn’t that bad earlier, the ship could have sent a launch to come get me. But, you see, my boss is a funny bugger. When Clay and then you both requested me to be relieved, he sorta thought it’d be worth me sticking around.’
‘And a fat lot of good you’ve done so far,’ spat Alice.
‘If I remember rightly, you lot were sitting in this room getting sozzled on cheap fizz while Ingrid and Gambetta were murdered. Your colleagues are dropping like flies and you didn’t need my help for that. So let’s all calm down and have a proper discussion without pointing guns at each other.’
Greenbow lowered his arm slightly. The two others lowered their chair-leg bats. I slowly moved my gun away to the side, other hand up in surrender. Everybody breathed.
‘Now, someone help me out of these boots,’ I said.
Chapter Fifty-one
The hour or so that Marie and I had been gone had not been kind to the others, it was no wonder they’d pounced. Cooped up with their imaginations and with the storm raging, nerves had frayed to the point that sanity clung by the thinnest of threads. To say everyone was on edge is an understatement; they’d dropped over the edge, dangling by their fingernails – though for one of them it was for a very different reason.
To avoid an unpleasant conversation, I told Greenbow I’d found the window key, realised its importance, and pocketed it. No point revealing I’d broken into his office, it wouldn’t do me any favours. His attitude towards me had changed now he realised he was allied with the other authority in the base and that, since we’d been together at the time Ingrid had been killed, in my eyes he was the only person who could be exempted from her death.
Marie had apologised profusely for locking me outside, even though I assured her I’d have done the same. She’d made up for it by helping me clean up before we went along into the HADU to decontaminate properly, paying attention to the areas where I’d ripped my suit. She also made me chuck away my favourite jumper.
Now we were all once again facing each other uneasily in the lounge as I brought them up to speed on the evac plan.
Away from the island, an outsider looking in would find it impossible to decipher fact from fiction. One of these people wanted to remain hidden among us, to make it off the island as soon as possible, when any evidence would disintegrate. Without understanding the exact time frames, the looks on peoples’ faces, the inflection in their voices; without simply being here, no one would have a hope of proving what had happened. The powers that be would rule it was a spree killing by Demeter to cover his own defection, double-crossed by his contacts, and that would be the end of it. Away from the island it would be the simplest solution that made the most sense.
I had to prevent that, and to do so I had to prevent everyone leaving for as long as possible.
‘So we won’t be picked up until tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘Can’t send the chopper up in this, and too rough for the boat.’
‘We can’t stay here all night,’ said Alice.
‘That generator shed’s not going to take much more abuse,’ Dash added. ‘Any more of this wind and it’s gonna take off.’
‘It’ll bloody well have to take it.’
‘We’ve tried to secure the sheds, but they’re really getting a beating,’ said Hurley.
‘Which is why they can’t evacuate us – can you imagine trying to land a helicopter?’
‘If they won’t come to us, we’ll have to go to them,’ said Greenbow. ‘We’ve got no choice, we must take the boat.’
‘They strongly advised against it. That boat we’ve got is for emergencies only…’
Marie shot me a look.
‘Then I’d love to know your definition of an emergency,’ muttered Hurley.
‘…and like I said before, in these seas it’d be swamped. And if we somehow got out to the Dauntless, we’d be smashed against her hull.’
‘We’ll make for the mainland, then.’
&nb
sp; ‘And be torn apart on the rocks. Look, just a few hours and we’ll be off the island.’
‘What time did they say?’
‘Storm should clear early doors, they’re meeting us on the beach at ten.’
The knowledge of an exact time and place calmed them, gave them something to focus on. They knew it was the only sensible option; I’m sure none of them actually relished the idea of taking the tiny boat out there.
After a little more discussion, it was settled; we’d leave the base together at nine thirty the next morning, to be collected at ten. And if my plan worked, one of them wouldn’t get that far.
‘So what do you think then, Tyler?’ Greenbow was still leaning forward in his chair.
‘I think we should get some sleep.’
‘I mean, about how and why Demeter killed them?’ Greenbow asked.
‘I’m not sure he did.’
‘No one else could have.’
‘Jesus, this is Sak,’ I said – to myself, I thought, though evidently not.
‘What’s Sak?’ Dash looked at me, then at Greenbow. ‘A military acronym?’
In turn Greenbow looked at me, the others followed.
I scratched at a black tattoo on my arm, which had suddenly started itching. Fuck it.
‘A job in southern Afghanistan.’ I drained someone’s flat prosecco and put the glass back on the floor, shuffling, eying them all. ‘Transport, working with locals. This was a few years ago, just before the withdrawal, dicey as fuck. Small Daesh squads would ambush vans on Highway One, hijack the gear, food, medical supplies, so we rode along as security.
‘Soban Ahmad Karzai was our translator, awesome guy. Five of the most amazing kids and a house on a big plot overlooking the stream on the edge of the village. He was the envy of his neighbours.
‘It was dangerous work, especially for him – working with us made him a target, he was probably one of the best-paid guys in the area but I think the real reason he did it was for all the seeds and gardening stuff I used to smuggle out with me.
‘Anyway, Soban called himself Sak because half the Americans couldn’t get his name right.’
‘And is Sak’s gardening relevant to our situation?’ asked Greenbow.
‘One day he didn’t turn up. We really needed him that day, so I drove out to his house. All quiet. The door was open. Blood in the hallway.
‘Four of those kids had been shot and killed together in the kitchen, clinging to each other in the middle of the floor. I found his wife upstairs stabbed to death. I spent ages searching the house, finally found Sak’s body at the bottom of an irrigation ditch he’d been digging for his grapes out back.’
‘I was in Afghanistan just after the invasion,’ said Hurley. ‘I’m not sure it’s comparable to Scotland.’
‘He and his family were Hazaras – Shiites – so straight away it was obvious it was a Daesh hit, confirmed when they claimed it on a website a couple of weeks later. They’d been abducting Hazaras in the region for months, as well as punishing anyone who worked with the government or Western forces. Sends a message. The police couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do anything. They’re overstretched and what are they going to do about a one-off targeted hit on one family, carried out by persons unknown probably from hundreds of miles away?
‘I quit straight after that. Just me and my truck, village to village, tracking down leads, trying to get to the bottom of which Daesh unit had been operating there that day.’ I took a swig from my hip flask. ‘I’d make a lousy copper, because after months I’d uncovered nothing but sand. It was only when I finally went back to work that I got to the truth.’
‘Which was?’ asked Dash.
‘I was freelancing again in that same village a year or so later. Not sure why, but I stopped off at his house. It was derelict, stripped and looted. I took a walk around the back. The ditches Soban had dug, the ones I’d found him in, had all filled in with mud. All the way to the boundary fence the veg plots were just dried-up weeds.
‘In contrast the land beyond the fence was rich, perfect irrigation ditches, onions, tomatoes, grapevines in rows all the way down to his neighbour’s house. Then I noticed the shiny Mercedes G-Wagon pulled up next to that house.
‘None of it had been there before. Jealousy and money, the two oldest motives for anything. Soban’s neighbour had got away with it for a year, he’d never even been considered or questioned because it had been so typical of the low-level hits for that region, the most probable reason for his murder. It was sealed when it was later claimed by Daesh, although turns out they’d just been claiming a freebie.’
‘What happened to the neighbour?’ asked Marie.
‘What do you think, I handed him over to the police and moved on. The point is, Demeter is such an obvious killer; he’s Russian, he’s an oddball, and we have a note confirming it. The Russian divers make the whole thing nicely open-ended. A likely but ultimately completely unprovable theory can stop you considering other possibilities, things you’d normally be all over.’ I’d toyed with the idea of maintaining the Demeter and the sub story, letting the killer think they’d got away with it, but sometimes in these situations I like to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, shake it up. When people are nervous and on the back foot they tend to mess up. Prod the fire a bit more, I was running out of options and time. ‘Demeter is the obvious killer, too obvious. He was framed. Someone in this room is the killer.’
Alice and Hurley shuffled down the sofa with the effect that they were lined up with Greenbow and Dash like a jury. Only Marie was sitting on my side of the room. Alice leaned back, closing her eyes, shutting out the chaos. Marie picked up a coaster someone had dropped on the floor, fiddling with it, refusing to look up. No one spoke for a full minute, even through the insulation the rain hammering on the roof was overpowering. Dash’s leg had developed a twitch, drumming against the coffee table. Alice slapped it away irritably. Greenbow studied his gun intently. Thunder rolled, gusts howled, lightning exploded on the other side of the blinds. Somewhere under the floor the heating pipes groaned.
It was Hurley who finally broke the trance. ‘Demeter’s the only one who coulda killed them. We saw him enter the room. He musta been double-crossed.’
‘We saw the killer enter the room and shoot Gambetta,’ I said. ‘How do we know it was Demeter?’
‘I spoke to him,’ Hurley added.
‘You spoke to a muffled voice behind a gas mask. What if it was someone in this room?’
Greenbow leaned forward. ‘It was Demeter.’
We looked at each other. Chairs squeaked as bums shifted uneasily.
‘We can’t be sure it was Demeter in that suit,’ I said. ‘And whoever we passed in the corridor on the way to shooting Gambetta must have arrived after killing Ingrid.’
Dash turned on Hurley. ‘You kept disappearing, didn’t you?’
‘I told you, I haven’t been feeling well.’
‘So your alibi is that you’ve got the shits?’
‘I didn’t leave for more than a couple of minutes!’ Hurley was bright red.
‘That’s true, you didn’t. You couldn’t have killed Ingrid.’
‘And what about you, Chaudhary?’ asked Greenbow.
He shrugged. ‘Like I said, playing poker with Hurley in here most of the night, then I went in the kitchen.’
‘On your own?’
His eyebrows rose. ‘Me of all people, running there and back?’ He laughed nervously.
‘And, Marie, were you in here all that time?’ asked Alice.
‘No, I was in my room for a while, reading. But I couldn’t have done it, I wouldn’t have had time.’
‘Who else was in the base?’ I asked.
‘Other than the people in this room, just Clay,’ said Alice.
‘Clay couldn’t have killed Ingrid, he was stinking drunk,’ said Dash.
‘Was he really stinking drunk? And was someone with him at all times?’ I asked.
Each of us lo
oked at the others.
‘We know Ingrid and Gambetta were killed within a very short time window, because of the 7 p.m. radio check-in. Someone in this base slipped away during that time.’
‘There is another explanation,’ said Dash.
‘Go on.’
‘There’s someone else on the island. I don’t mean people from a sub, not necessarily. But someone hiding here.’
‘Where? It’s one big overgrown field.’
‘Caves, down by the sea? That old ruined cottage by the beach?’
‘Bollocks. It’s a tiny island, we’d know if there was someone else here.’
‘It all comes back to Demeter,’ said Greenbow.
Hurley got to his feet and stretched. ‘So aside from making us all paranoid and ensuring none of us are gonna sleep a wink tonight – what have you achieved?’
I’ll be honest, all it had achieved was to dent my faith in my own reasoning. No one in this room could have killed them. I could probably dig up a motive, but no one had the opportunity to get there and back in time, and everyone had been accounted for just after Gambetta’s murder – none of them could have been hidden under the floor. I’d gone full circle and found that logic once again supported Demeter being the prime suspect. Just as it always had. Why was I so bent on his innocence?
The note that implicated him, written in English. The improbable sub that had avoided the Navy and their world-beating radar, which only dead people had seen. Ingrid’s killer using the window instead of the door. The fact that Demeter himself was lying dead under a hut, washed in on the storm. But were these just circumstantial when compared to the real facts? There were six of us left, and none of the other five had had the opportunity.
I chewed on a nail and thought about Occam’s razor, isn’t the most likely explanation usually the correct one?
Surely the killer was either Demeter, or an unknown mystery person somewhere out there in the dark?
Chapter Fifty-two
Anthrax Island Page 19