The Islanders

by S. V. Leonard

‘Three of you have killed before?’ roars Mo, springing to his feet and creating distance between himself and the others. ‘Three? No, no it can’t be.’ His head swings from face to face; his eyes are manic. ‘Shit. SHIT. More deaths, more murders.’

  I eye him suspiciously. Mo is a man on the edge; the question has touched a nerve. Is he over-egging his anger to compensate for something? Plus, he specifically said ‘three of you’, not ‘three of us’. But Mo, like the Judge, is met with silence by the group.

  Nine minutes are left on the clock. The time is slipping through my fingers quicker than I thought possible.

  I close my eyes and retreat inside my mind. I should be firing questions at the others; it’s in all of our best interests that I do, but I’m paralysed.

  If the Judge is right and three of them have killed before then the Judge knows more about us than I could ever have imagined. He knows intimate details about our lives, the most secret details. My stomach clenches. Oh my God, what does he know about me?

  Eight minutes on the clock.

  Anger, red and hot, surges through my body. I stand and grab Mo by the arm. I point him towards the seating area.

  ‘Mo, sit your arse down,’ I instruct in as brisk a tone as possible.

  My gaze travels from face to face, locking eyes with each in turn. I look at every single one of them, trying to divine which of them is guilty and staying silent.

  Who is stopping us receiving an extra fifteen minutes of reprieve?

  ‘I asked you all for honesty,’ I say, placing my hands on my hips. ‘Now really isn’t the time to keep things quiet. The Judge isn’t messing around. Clearly he knows things.’ The Islanders stare back at me and I feel my cheeks grow warm. Their reluctance confuses me. ‘We need more time. Why are you denying us more time?’

  I don’t even know who to direct my you to, so I do my best to scatter my looks across them all.

  All sit motionless, waiting for me to question them. Well, all of them except Mo. Mo is blinking a little more than is natural and his knuckles are white from the effort of keeping his shaking legs still. Mo displays all the signs of hiding something.

  ‘Mo,’ I say. But before I can continue, my words are cut off. Mo emits a whimper like a dying dog and he digs his fingers so hard into his legs he’s in danger of drawing blood.

  I’ve been trained to notice even the smallest indicators of body language, but Mo might as well have a megaphone and be shouting ‘I’m hiding something.’ I bite my lip; despite myself I feel sorry for him. I have him cornered.

  ‘Mo,’ I repeat, more gently this time. ‘Did Jack Peaks recognise you?’ Remembering Carly’s words from earlier.

  ‘He said he did,’ replies Mo, still not looking at me. ‘But I’m not in his mind, so I don’t know if he really did or didn’t.’ He licks dry lips and shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘Did you know one another?’

  ‘No,’ blurts Mo. ‘Before yesterday, I’d never seen him before in my life. Honestly. I hadn’t. I don’t know the guy.’

  ‘Four minutes on the clock,’ says the Judge. I glance up at the screen and narrow my eyes at him. What I wouldn’t give to punch the Judge in his hidden face so that his wig falls off. I turn back to Mo. I need to crack this, get at least one name right. We don’t have the time on the clock to get more than one wrong.

  ‘Jack knew you, though. He was sure of it. So, if I were to believe you when you say you’ve never met him before in your life, tell me then how he might have known you or recognised you.’

  Mo’s eyes dart from me to the floor, from the floor to me. I give him a moment to gather himself and, to stop myself from screaming at him, work through the possible answers in my head.

  How might a person be recognisable? Mo is a chef and restaurant owner; maybe he appeared in a marketing campaign. I don’t wait for him to answer my previous question – there isn’t time. I press on with my newly discovered line of enquiry.

  ‘Have you ever appeared in the papers or online? Maybe advertising your restaurant?’ At this he flushes red.

  The media. Being in the media is a sensitive topic for him.

  For a second time, I press on without waiting for him to answer. My fingers tingle. I’m closing in on the truth, I can feel it. ‘Why does the thought of being in the paper make you nervous, Mo?’

  Mo sighs and again flops his head into his hands. He murmurs. But he’s so quiet I don’t catch it.

  ‘Could you repeat that? I didn’t hear what you said,’ I say.

  ‘It was an accident,’ says Mo, louder this time but still directed at his feet. Rosalind inhales sharply and Valentina turns to look at him, her eyes wide.

  Oh my God, he’s killed someone. He’s actually killed someone and he’s about to admit it live on television.

  I squat down so that my face is level with Mo’s.

  ‘What was an accident?’ I whisper; I’m so close to the truth that I don’t want to scare him.

  ‘Her,’ he gulps, his words catching in his throat. The others are silent. The only sound is the click, click, click as the seconds tick away on the countdown clock. Mo clears his throat and speaks again.

  ‘Her death. But I didn’t kill her,’ he stammers. ‘It wasn’t my fault, it was an accident.’ Mo sniffs and wipes the back of his hand across his nose. I shiver; deeply buried secrets are rising to the surface, whether we want them to or not. I feel another wave of anger against the Judge and his vendetta. ‘That will be how Jack knew me. There was an inquiry, after she died. I was acquitted, though, no wrongdoing. But I was on the news and it was online too. Jack must have seen me there but I didn’t kill him, not to hide this.’

  I nod. I believe him. ‘Thank you for being so brave. It can’t have been easy to admit that.’

  One down, two to go.

  There are two and a half minutes on the clock. That leaves Carly, Valentina, Rosalind and Daniel.

  ‘There are four of you here. I need two of you to be as brave as Mo has been.’

  ‘There are five of us,’ snaps Carly, her face like thunder. ‘Five of us remain.’ My brow furrows.

  ‘Five?’ I ask, looking around the garden.

  ‘Yes. Five. Why is no one asking if you’ve killed anyone? You used to be a police officer. Surely you’d have access to weapons. It’s on the news every day, police officers killing criminals and innocent people alike. Have you stopped to consider yourself?’

  Carly might as well have slapped me. I hadn’t thought of myself but now that I do I realise that I’m as good a candidate as the rest of them.

  The image of a body flashes, unwelcome, in my mind’s eye.

  I know what I did. I’ve killed before. I killed her.

  ‘Kim. Kim!’ shouts Rosalind. ‘We don’t have time, you might as well guess.’

  ‘We can’t guess. We’ll lose time if we get it wrong,’ says Valentina.

  ‘But there is also the right guess to cancel it out,’ says Rosalind.

  Two minutes to go.

  ‘Do any of you four have anything to add?’

  ‘I haven’t killed anyone,’ says Valentina defiantly.

  ‘Me neither,’ says Carly, folding her arms across her chest.

  ‘Nor have I,’ says Rosalind, looking at her hands.

  At least one of them is lying but I don’t have the heart, energy or the time to press them.

  ‘Mo Khan has accidentally killed someone before.’

  ‘Any other names to give me?’ says the Judge.

  I look from Valentina to Rosalind. From Carly to Daniel.

  ‘Just guess!’ Rosalind implores. My mind whirrs with what I’ve seen and heard. What my instinct tells me about these people. I bite my lip so hard I’m in danger of splitting it.

  One minute to go.

  ‘Guess, Kim. Just guess.’

  ‘Mo Khan, Carly Chu, and me, Kimberley King, have all killed before,’ I say. Carly gives a loud huff.

  Three. Two. One. Beep, beep, beep.

/>   ‘Thank you, Kimberley. Let’s see how many right answers you got.’ The Judge sounds like a tacky game show host now. ‘Mo Khan,’ says the Judge and Mo looks up at the screen, his eyes rimmed with red.

  Ding. My shoulders drop as the sound associated with correct answers sounds in the garden.

  ‘Correct. Mo Khan has killed someone. Fifteen minutes added to the clock. Next, you said Carly Chu…’

  Nuh-uh. The two-beat sound that follows tells me I’m wrong. ‘Sadly not. Carly was not the answer I was looking for. Carly has been a naughty girl but not that naughty.’

  I glance over at Carly. A smile, tight and thin, crosses her lips.

  One right. One wrong. Final answer was myself. Something tells me I’m right. The Judge knows about all of us and if he knows things about me he knows what I did.

  ‘And finally, you said yourself, Kimberley King. Very interesting for you to say that, considering you’re here investigating what other people may or may not have done.’ The correct-answer ding sounds again. I let out a sigh and press my hands to my face; so it’s true, I’m here because of Emily. ‘Two right answers adds half an hour, one wrong deducts fifteen minutes. So you’re fifteen minutes up over all. But before I let you go and get back to the fun, shall I give you the right answers?’

  ‘No,’ shouts Rosalind. ‘Stop it. Stop this.’ Her face is pale, but her cheeks are flushed as she shouts at the screen. Does she think he is going to say her name?

  ‘One more of you has killed before. Haven’t you, Valentina?’

  The silence which surrounds us presses in on me as the Judge’s words hang in the air.

  ‘Great,’ he continues, breaking the silence. ‘Glad that’s sorted. You have thirty-seven minutes remaining on the clock before another one of you dies. It is now exactly 2PM, restart the clock.’

  The Judge switches himself off from the television screen and the ten-minute challenge timer leaves the screen to be replaced by the red lines of the killing clock. Silence hangs in the garden. Carly, Daniel and Rosalind edge to one side away from us, from Mo, Valentina and me – the murderers. I stand still, my chest rising and falling; my mind is a mess of thoughts. Before the challenge I thought that maybe our captivity was the sick action of a psychopath but now I realise I was wrong: the Judge knows our secrets; he knows about the death I caused.

  I flop down on the bench, too shellshocked to speak to the others. The Judge isn’t working alone. How could he be? There is no way he could have so much information at his disposal, not without help.

  What does the Judge want? To expose us? Humiliate us in front of the world? But why?

  What about Jack? Someone was planted here to kill him but what had Jack done that meant he deserved to die?

  Oh my God.

  ‘What?’ says Daniel, sliding towards me as if noticing the change in my body language. ‘What is it, Kim?’ He takes my hand and squeezes it.

  ‘I’ve been so stupid. How could I have missed this? I was wrong, I’ve been looking in the wrong place, asking the wrong questions. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong,’ I say, my lip quivering.

  ‘No,’ he says, giving me a tight smile. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong. He is the one in the wrong.’ Daniel jabs his finger towards the television screen, the home of the Judge. ‘Did you hear that? You’re the one in the wrong.’

  ‘I knew this wasn’t random from the beginning, but I didn’t know what connected us. I made the wrong assumption.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Carly, interested now.

  ‘I kept thinking the Judge wanted to expose us. Expose our secrets, our pasts, to the people watching this show. But I didn’t really understand why. I thought maybe for fun or to humiliate us, but it wasn’t that.’

  ‘So, what connects us then?’ snaps Carly. ‘Just tell us.’ Her voice rises.

  ‘We’re all connected because… no, we’re all here because someone wants to punish us.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Contact Me form

  Type your message in the box below. I read every piece of correspondence that comes to me and I will aim to get back to you as soon as I can.

  Your Name: Sammy Knight

  Your Email Address: sammyknight@blueskyblue.com

  Your Message:

  Hi, whoever you are.

  I don’t know how else to start this, so I’ll launch straight in.

  I was attacked several years ago by a man, a very drunk man. It was days before Christmas and I was out with my colleagues from the accountancy firm that I worked at, at the time. We’d decided we were going to have a big night, you know: dress up, go to a club, partying until dawn kind of thing. Most of us were all trainee accountants and we’d complained all year about how everyone thinks accountants are boring. Well, we were determined we’d have our Christmas night out to prove we weren’t boring. So, we’d all agreed on dressing as slutty Santas, we’d gone to an Italian restaurant for dinner where we’d drunk copious amount of wine, and then we danced for hours and sang Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ at the top of our lungs. Multiple times I thought I should probably go home but I remember every time the thought entered my head the song would change, and it would drag me back to the dance floor.

  I don’t know when he and I started chatting. The man who attacked me, I mean. But I remember that he was on a night out with his football club, they had a shit name, the Essex Eagles they were called. I mean who calls their football team the Essex Eagles, pisses me off even thinking about it now.

  Anyway, he was far too sleazy for me to be interested so I gave him the slip and headed outside for a cigarette. I remember slipping out the door underneath the emergency exit sign. It wasn’t the official smoking area, but the club had opened those doors in an attempt to cut through the sweaty fog that hung in the air because of the hundreds of sweaty bodies packed in. I remember how cold it was outside, how it hit me like a ton of bricks and set my teeth chattering. I remember how my ears rang at their freedom from the noise inside.

  My hands were shaking as I lifted the lighter to the end of the cigarette and I was so busy concentrating on lighting it that I nearly dropped it when he spoke to me.

  ‘Lucky cigarette.’ That was what he said to me, his smile was crooked, and his eyes glazed over. They said I was too drunk to possibly be able remember the details as well as I do but I will never forget his glassy eyes.

  ‘Want one?’ I asked. Now, that was another thing I got in trouble for, offering the cigarette. But I wasn’t really, I was just a bit confused, I thought he was saying Lucky Strike, the brand, and this was his way of asking for one.

  ‘No, lucky cigarette,’ he repeated. ‘Your cigarette, it’s lucky, because it gets to rest between your lips.’ I crossed my arms across my chest at that point. I didn’t like that he’d said that. I stubbed my cigarette out and turned to head back inside. He grabbed my wrist and kissed me forcibly. His hands went where they had no permission to be. I was frozen to the spot and terrified. It could have been minutes later, it couldn’t have been hours but one of the bouncers came around the corner for his own cigarette and he stepped away from me. I went to the police and to give them their due they did take me seriously, treated me respectfully. I pressed charges, but it was quite apparent that I didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of it going anywhere. I was drunk that night too and I was wearing a fancy-dress outfit, a provocative fancy dress. Drunk and provocative, that was who they painted me out to be. But that wasn’t a true reflection of me, and even if it was it shouldn’t matter, being drunk and provocative isn’t a crime. Assault is and he broke the law.

  That was about three years ago and since then my life has fallen apart. My boyfriend was supportive at first, but it was hard on him too. Eventually, he broke up with me because I couldn’t stand him touching me. I’ve had multiple jobs in the last two years, I can’t seem to keep them, nobody wants to employ someone who regularly and randomly breaks down in tears.

  I feel like the only thing I
can control in my life is my weight which I do by starving myself. The people who knew me before are quite horrified by what I’ve become and they’ve all fallen away, they don’t understand that I can’t just get over it.

  I hate myself and my body no longer feels like my own. I’m a shell of the woman I once was, and it is all his fault.

  I wanted to let you know how much you’ve helped me. You helped me see that what I need is for him to know exactly what he has done to me and for him to feel the pain I have. I think I will only get peace once he knows that. From one victim to another, please help me…

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Kimberley

  Sunday 27th July, 14:00

  37 Minutes Until Next Murder

  When I realise that we were all chosen for LoveWrecked because we have something for which we needed to be punished, I feel a moment of acceptance. I should be punished; I want to be punished. I’ve been punishing myself for long enough. A calm settles over me. I won’t fight it any more; I won’t run away from it; I will do what is asked of me because that is my punishment.

  I get to my feet and stand on the wooden seating. ‘Everyone, we may have been granted some extra time but there are still only thirty-seven minutes left before the next killing and I’m no closer to finding out what happened to Jack. Mo, we haven’t spoken yet; will you come and have a chat with me? In private.’

  Mo gives a hollow bark of disbelief. ‘Private?’ he says, folding his arms across his chest. ‘There is nothing private here. There’s no effing way I’m talking to you. You’ve seen what they’ve done to me. Look at what they’re saying about me, about Valentina, about you. You’ve killed someone, so why should I talk to you.’ Mo points his arm towards the outdoor television screen.

  I scrunch my eyes to read some of the messages and my muscles tense at the inhumanity of it. The words that can come from people shielded by the protection of their computers. People are telling Mo, Valentina and me that we deserve to die like the people we’ve killed. That they hope one of us is the next victim.

  Someone even go so far as to ask if they can vote for who they want to die, because if they could vote, we’d be the first to go.