Murder in the Dark, page 14
‘Yes,’ she said, looking at the hole. ‘I’m cold and I’m tired. So very tired.’
I looked down at Ellie’s body. What did happen here? Did Ellie stick her head into the hole, to see for herself what was happening inside it, and something took her head? Or could someone have brought her here in order to push her against the edge of the hole? Was there a cold-blooded murderer in the camp, picking off the members of the team one by one, using the hole as a murder weapon and a distraction?
Or was something coming up out of the hole and killing people for its own unknowable reasons?
So many theories, so many questions. And I couldn’t choose between them, because I had no clues and no evidence to work with. Anyone could be guilty. Or nobody.
‘You have to solve this,’ said the Professor.
‘I know,’ I said, not looking around.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I mean, you have to solve this as a matter of urgency. Because I’ve noticed that every time one of us dies, the hole gets just a little bit bigger.’
FOUR
Some People Have a Beast in Them and Vice Versa
I looked at the Professor for a long moment. ‘It’s bigger? Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure!’
‘How much bigger?’
‘Not much,’ the Professor said steadily. ‘But a measurable amount.’
‘And you think that’s connected with the people who have died here?’
‘I can’t prove it. But if it isn’t, that would be a hell of a coincidence. I have to wonder if perhaps we’re feeding the hole. Paying it tribute, in blood and death.’
‘How would that work?’ I said.
‘I don’t know!’ the Professor said loudly. ‘I don’t feel like I understand anything about the hole any more. Except that it scares the crap out of me.’
I nodded slowly.
‘For now, keep this to yourself, Professor. We can’t prove anything, and people are scared enough as it is.’
She shrugged, and then made herself look at the headless body again. ‘What are you going to do with Ellie?’
‘Put her somewhere safe,’ I said.
I knelt down beside Ellie again. It had been a long time since I’d felt this helpless on a case. I’d had such good intentions when I came here. This was going to be the case where I protected everyone so well that no one had to die. You’d think I’d know better than to make such promises to myself.
I cradled Ellie’s body in my arms and got to my feet. Not a single drop of blood fell from the severed neck, as though the hole’s gravity had sucked all the blood out of her. Just like when Robert lost his arm. So if there was a killer, it was no wonder I hadn’t seen any incriminating bloodstains on anyone’s clothing. Yet another clue I didn’t have to work with. But was the blood loss down to gravity, or because the hole was hungry?
Ellie’s body felt oddly unbalanced in my arms, without a head. I held her close to me, even though it was too late to protect her from anything. I walked back down the hillside into the camp, and the Professor trudged along behind me. Not weeping, not saying a word. I could still feel her presence at my back, like a silent reproach.
When I got to the camp fire, Penny, Mike and Paul all looked up as I walked past, carrying my burden. Penny looked at me steadily, making it clear she didn’t judge me. Paul looked at Ellie, not at me. Mike looked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t know what. His angry eyes burned holes in my back as I headed for the tents. The Professor sat down beside the fire with the others, still not saying anything.
I stopped outside the tent where I’d put Terry and Robert. I held Ellie’s body to me with one arm while I opened the flaps with the other. Then I paused for a moment, half-convinced that when I went in I’d find the other two bodies were gone. That someone had taken advantage of the situation to remove them while I was preoccupied. Or even worse, I would step inside the tent to find Terry and Robert were no longer in their sleeping bag. But just standing there waiting for me …
Smiling.
I’d seen stranger things, on other cases. Death isn’t always as final as most people think.
I shouldered my way in past the tent flaps. Ready to drop Ellie in a moment if I had to defend myself. But even in the deep gloom of the tent’s interior, I could still make out the two bodies filling the sleeping bag. Stuffed in together, back to back, just as I’d left them. That had seemed more respectful than face to face. I laid Ellie down beside the sleeping bag, and then gave the zipper a good hard tug, just to make sure it was still firmly jammed. It didn’t budge an inch. No one was going to get that bag open in a hurry. Not even Terry and Robert.
I looked around the tent, straining my eyes against the shadows. There was nothing else I could use to stop Ellie from getting up and going for a walk, if she felt so inclined. And no way I could force a third body into the sleeping bag. So I just left her lying on the tent floor. At least without a head, she’d have a hard time finding any victims, since she wouldn’t be able to see where she was going. I allowed myself a small smile. Sometimes graveyard humour is all we have to help us cope. I went to leave, and then hesitated and looked back. At the three people I couldn’t keep from being killed. There wasn’t anything I could say, so I just nodded to them and left the tent.
I tucked the flaps back into place, and then stood outside the tent, looking up and down the hillside and all around the brightly illuminated campsite. There was no sign of life or movement anywhere, apart from the four people sitting round the fire. It infuriated me that after everything that had happened I still hadn’t caught even a glimpse of our mystery killer, whether it was a man or a Beast. There was never any warning, no sign of imminent danger, nothing to suggest anyone was at risk. The killer just came and went, and killed, and no one ever saw anything. So either I was dealing with a real professional, or a real monster. Either way, I was missing something.
I looked at the people sitting silently round the fire. It was always possible the killer was hiding in plain sight, and I was looking right at the killer. But how could I point the finger at anyone, when there was no clear motive, never mind hard evidence? Mike could have attacked Robert so that he could have Ellie for himself. But she’d already said she was thinking of leaving Robert for Mike. And why would Mike kill his beloved Ellie in such an appalling fashion after doing so much to win her? Unless she told him she didn’t want him after all. After everything he’d done. I could see him striking out at her then in a fit of blind fury.
But what about Terry? I might have been ready to accept his death as happenstance, if he’d been the only one. But not now there were two more deaths associated with the hole. At the very least, someone must have secretly encouraged Terry to go into the hole. And why would Mike want to hurt Terry? He’d never even met the man before he came here. Unless the killing wasn’t about the man, but about the hole. What if Terry’s death really had been a terrible accident, and Mike had taken advantage of it to draw attention away from his own murders?
I shook my head. I was having a hard time seeing Mike as a cold-blooded murderer. A hot-blooded one, in the heat of the moment, maybe … But Robert would never have let Mike get close enough to push him against the hole’s edge. At the very least there would have been a struggle, and I hadn’t seen any signs of that in the grass near the hole.
I frowned, as a new thought occurred to me. The use of the hole’s razor-sharp edges suggested a weapon of opportunity. If the killings had been planned in advance, the killer would have found some way to smuggle in a weapon. It seemed far more likely that something happened here, at the camp, to turn one of the scientists into a killer. But what could be so important, so overwhelming, that one of these people had been driven to kill so horribly again and again? Did the choice of the hole as a weapon say something about the killer? Only that whoever it was had to be very determined. Any of the scientists could have used the hole as a weapon; it wouldn’t have taken any special strength or skill.
Even the Professor could have done it. But why would she want to? She needed her team to do the work, to get the discoveries she needed to restart her career. And she didn’t know any of them well enough to have a personal grudge. Unless the hole had affected her mind. I was certain it was messing with me, damping my senses back to an almost human level. But then why wasn’t the hole driving all of them crazy?
I thought about Paul. The quiet-spoken one, who only seemed to care about his work. In my line of work, it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. They always turn out to have the mostly deeply hidden motives, and emotions that blaze up out of control when they finally break loose. But I couldn’t see any reason why Paul would want to kill anyone. Unless he wanted the hole for himself, so he would get sole credit when he finally unlocked its mysteries …
I’d been standing outside the tent for quite a while, lost in my own thoughts, and I suddenly realized the others were looking at me curiously, even suspiciously. I smiled easily at them, as though I’d just been wool-gathering, walked over to the fire and sat down beside Penny.
The surviving members of the scientific team all looked shocked, in their various ways. The Professor was wringing her hands together, perhaps to keep them from shaking. The lines in her face looked deeper than ever, and her eyes were full of a quiet desperation. She stared into the quietly crackling flames, intent on something only she could see, ignoring everything else.
Paul seemed almost relaxed by comparison, ignoring the fire and the people sitting around it, staring out across the empty campsite at the darkness beyond the perimeter lights. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, and I couldn’t read any of them in his blank impassive face. Perhaps he just didn’t know what to do.
Mike had moved beyond grief and shock and into anger. He scowled openly at me, and I had no trouble recognizing the look in his eyes. He needed someone to blame, someone to take out his pain on; and in the absence of the murderer, he’d settle for me. I would have to be careful around Mike from now on, because he was just looking for an excuse to lash out. Because he thought that would make him feel better. Of all those left in the camp, Mike was the most obviously dangerous. In an entirely hot-blooded kind of way.
I looked at Penny, and found she was looking anxiously at me. It took me a moment to realize it was because I was thinking so much and saying nothing. I smiled at her reassuringly, and then cleared my throat loudly. Everyone looked at me, silently demanding answers. Or at the very least, some kind of comfort or reassurance. I sighed internally. I’d never been any good at faking that kind of thing.
‘Do I really need to tell you that the hole is off limits to everyone, from now on?’ I said steadily. ‘It’s simply too dangerous.’
‘The hole?’ said Paul. ‘Or whoever is using it to kill us?’
‘Let’s just say the hole, for now,’ I said. ‘No one is to go off on their own, for any reason. Stick together, and stay in sight of each other at all times. It should be dawn in a few more hours.’
Mike leaned forward the moment I stopped speaking, glad for a chance to challenge me over something.
‘What if we need to get something from our tents?’ he said sharply. ‘Something we have to have?’
‘Do without,’ said Penny.
‘What if one of us needs to use the toilet?’ said the Professor.
‘If anyone needs to go, we’ll all go with them,’ said Penny. ‘And stand around outside till they’ve finished.’
‘I can’t do it if anybody’s listening,’ said the Professor.
‘Then you’ll just have to whistle loudly and think of something else,’ I said.
‘Why did you spend so long standing outside the tent?’ said Paul. ‘What were you thinking about?’
‘What to do for the best,’ I said.
Mike’s anger flared up again. ‘You should have let me carry Ellie down the hill. You had no right! Not after you failed to protect her.’
‘You were in the tent right next to her,’ I said steadily. ‘Didn’t you hear her leave and go off on her own?’
Mike scowled, and looked down at his hands. He didn’t seem to know what to do with them. ‘I was asleep the moment I lay down. I was just so tired … I should have sat on guard outside her tent, like I wanted.’
‘You’d only have nodded off anyway,’ Penny said kindly.
‘Just my being there might have been enough,’ he said. ‘At least I could have stopped her going to the hole. Why would she do that?’
‘I’m convinced someone persuaded Ellie to go with them to the hole,’ I said. ‘If you had been there, they might have taken you instead.’
‘I would have gone,’ said Mike. ‘If that would have saved Ellie … I would have gone.’
‘Don’t think so much about death,’ I said. ‘You need to concentrate on staying alive. As long as we stick together …’
Mike flared up again, seizing on something else he could be angry about. ‘You really expect us to stay here? After everything that’s happened? Terry and Robert and Ellie are dead, and that archaeologist! We have to get out of here while we still can.’
Paul and the Professor looked at each other, considering the idea, then the Professor shook her head.
‘If we leave, we lose everything,’ she said quietly. ‘No more access to the hole, none of the grant money we were promised, and no boost to our careers. All our work will be lost. No one will ever know we were here.’
‘We’ll be giving up our only opportunity to understand the mystery of the hole,’ said Paul.
‘I don’t care!’ Mike said loudly. ‘It killed Ellie. It’ll kill us all, if we stay.’
The Professor looked up the hillside, to the hole. We all followed her gaze. Sitting placidly on the side of the hill, the hole seemed such a small thing to be so dangerous.
‘This is our only chance to understand what that thing really is,’ the Professor said stubbornly. ‘One of the great undiscovered wonders of the world, and it’s ours. We have to grab hold of it with both hands, and wring the truth out of it while we can. Because the hole won’t be here much longer. It’ll vanish soon, just like all the others.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Paul.
We all turned to look at him. It wasn’t like him to be so blunt, so certain.
‘What makes you think the hole won’t disappear?’ said the Professor. She sounded honestly curious.
‘You proceed from false logic,’ Paul said calmly. ‘How do we know this hole is like any of the other holes that appeared before? I believe whoever has been sending these holes into our world has been working on improving them, until they could finally establish a permanent connection between their world and ours. Like Ellie said, a tunnel and an invasion point.’
‘That’s a lot of maybes,’ I said. ‘There’s no evidence this hole is any different to the others.’
‘There’s no evidence it’s the same,’ said Paul.
‘What kind of argument is that?’ said Penny.
Mike snorted loudly. ‘Wishful thinking. And in pretty bad taste, all things considered.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘since there isn’t any evidence, let’s go with Occam’s Razor and assume we’re dealing with the same kind of hole. And hope this one will disappear like all the others.’
‘Hope?’ said Paul. ‘That’s what you’re going with?’
‘Don’t you believe in hope?’ said Penny.
‘Of course not,’ said Paul. ‘I’m a scientist. I don’t hope things will happen, I make them happen.’
‘OK,’ said Penny. ‘A statement like that should really be accompanied by a dramatic crash of thunder and some lightning.’
‘If we just sit around and wait for the hole to vanish, we’ll all be dead before morning,’ said Mike.
‘I won’t let that happen,’ I said.
He just sneered at me. ‘Yeah, right. Because you’ve done such a great job protecting us so far.’
I gave him a hard look, but he didn’t back down. He was too angry to be intimidated. So I looked away, rather than give him an excuse to start something. I didn’t want to have to hurt Mike, he’d been hurt enough already.
‘What if something from inside the hole has been killing people?’ said Paul. ‘Could you defend us from something like that?’
‘Do you have a gun?’ the Professor said bluntly.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think I’d need one.’
‘Wonderful!’ said Mike.
‘So you can’t defend us,’ said Paul. ‘Not from what we might be facing here.’
‘Could you defend yourselves?’ said Penny.
That stopped them. The scientists looked at each other uncertainly, as they considered the question.
Mike frowned. ‘There must be something in the camp we could make into weapons.’
‘All we have is what Black Heir provided,’ said the Professor. She looked at Paul. ‘You know the equipment best. Is there anything that could be adapted?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Paul. ‘Most of what we’ve got in the centre is pretty delicate stuff.’
‘Yeah, but a lot of it comes in some pretty heavy housing,’ said Mike. ‘We could always bash someone over the head.’
‘You really want to let the killer get that close?’ said Paul.
I remembered my earlier thought, that the killer was only using the hole’s edges as a weapon because there wasn’t anything else.
Penny looked at Mike. ‘You said you were ready to defend Ellie. What were you planning to use?’
He looked back at her with a certain dignity. ‘I planned to stand in the way of anything that came for her. And then do my best to beat the living crap out of it.’ He looked down at his hands, clenched into fists so tight the knuckles showed white. ‘But I never got the chance to find out if I really was that brave.’
The Professor turned to me. ‘Mike’s not a fighter. He’s a scientist, like all of us. Can you fight?’
‘When I have to,’ I said. ‘That’s part of the job.’
‘Yes, Mister Big Secret Security Man,’ said Mike. ‘But what else are you?’
