At the time, I had assumed that Mark had committed the last two murders. There had been a shot, then a thud, then the opening and closing of a door. But a few seconds later, Mark had himself been killed. And what about the leaves that I had seen lying next to his body? How had they got there?
I thought back to the other murders. Rory first. We had all been on the island and we had all separated. Any one of us could have attacked him and, immediately afterwards, left the chocolate on the bed for Sylvie to find. That was the night I had seen the face at the window. A face that had appeared and disappeared – impossibly – in seconds. And then we had found Janet. I remembered her lying in her bed, stabbed by a model of the Eiffel Tower. Her room had been shabby. There had been a tear in the canopy … I had remarked on it at the time. Why had it caught my eye?
Libby Goldman next. The television presenter had been knocked down with a model globe. There was something strange about that, too. Someone must have carried it up to the roof and dropped it on her when she came out of the front door. But now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen the globe in any of the rooms when we had been searching the house. And that could only mean one thing. It had been on the roof from the very start, waiting for her…
Maybe you know how it is when you’ve been given a particularly nasty piece of homework – an impossible equation or a fiendish bit of physics or something. You stare at it and stare at it, but it’s all just ink on paper and you’re about to give up when you notice something and suddenly you realize it’s not so difficult after all. Well, that was what was happening to me now.
I remembered the search party, slowly criss-crossing the island. We had seen security cameras everywhere and from the day I had arrived, I had felt that I was being watched. There was a security camera in the kitchen. I looked up. It was watching me even now. Were there cameras in other rooms, too?
At the same time, I remembered something Mark had said, when we had found the old photograph of St Egbert’s. And in that second, as quickly as that, I suddenly knew everything.
“I’ve got it, Tim!” I said.
“So have I, Nick!” Tim cried.
I’d been so wrapped up in my own thoughts, that I hadn’t noticed Tim had been thinking too. Now he was staring at me with the sort of look you see on a fish when it’s spent too long out of water.
“You know who did it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Go on!”
“It’s simple!” Tim explained. “First there were eight of us on the island, then seven, then six, then five…”
“I know,” I interrupted. “I can count backwards.”
“Well, now there are only two of us left. I know it wasn’t me who committed the murders.” He reached forward and snatched up a spoon. Then he realized what he’d done, put it down and snatched up a knife. He waved it at me. “So the killer must be you!” he exclaimed.
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“There’s only us left. You and me. I know it wasn’t me so it must have been you.”
“But why would I want to kill everyone?” I demanded.
“You tell me!”
“I wouldn’t! And I didn’t! Don’t be ridiculous, Tim.”
I stood up. That was a mistake.
“Don’t come near me!” Tim yelled, and suddenly he sprang out of his chair and jumped out of the window. This was an impressive feat. The window wasn’t even open.
I couldn’t believe what had happened. I knew Tim was stupid but this was remarkable even by his standards. Maybe sleeping in a suit of armour had done something to that tiny organism he called his brain. At the same time, I was suddenly worried. I knew who the killer was now and I knew who was lined up to be the next victim. Tim was outside the house, on his own. He had made himself into a perfect target.
I had no choice. I went after him, jumping through the shattered window. I could see Tim a short distance away, running towards the tail of Crocodile Island. I had no idea where he was going. But nor of course did he. He was panicking – just trying to put as much distance between the two of us as he could. Not easy considering he was trapped on a small island.
“Tim!” I called.
He didn’t stop. I ran after him, following the path as it began to climb steeply up towards the cliffs. This was where the island tapered to a point. I slowed down. Tim had already reached the far end. He had nowhere else to go.
The wind blew his hair around his head as he turned to face me. He was still holding the knife. I noticed now that it was a butter knife. If he stabbed me with all his strength he might just manage to give me a small bruise. His face was pale and his eyes were wide open and staring. The last time I had seen him like this was when they had shown Jurassic Park on TV.
“Get back, Nick!” he yelled. It was hard to hear him above the crash of the waves.
“You’re crazy, Tim!” I called back. “Why would I want to hurt you? I’m your brother. Think about all the adventures we’ve had together! I’ve saved your life lots of times.” I thought of telling him that I loved him but he’d have known that wasn’t true. “I quite like you!” I said. “You’ve looked after me ever since Mum and Dad emigrated to Australia. We’ve had fun together!”
Tim hesitated. I could see the doubt in his eyes. He lowered the butter knife. A huge wave rolled in and crashed against the rocks, spraying us both with freezing, salt water. I looked past Tim at the rocks, an idea forming in my mind. There were six iron grey rocks, jutting out of the sea. I had noticed them the day we had searched the island. And of course, rocks like that have a name. Long and slender with pointed tops, standing upright in the water…
They’re called needles.
I’m not exactly sure what happened next but I do know that it all happened at the same time.
There was a soft explosion, just where Tim was standing. The earth underneath his feet seemed to separate, falling away.
Tim screamed and his arm jerked. The butter knife spun in the air, the sun glinting off the blade.
I yelled out and threw myself forward. Somehow my hands managed to grab hold of Tim’s shirt.
“Don’t kill me!” Tim whimpered.
“I’m not killing you, you idiot!” I yelled. “I’m saving you!”
We rolled back together, away from the edge of the cliff … an edge that was now several centimetres closer to us than it had been seconds before. I was dazed and there was grass in my mouth, but I realized that the killer had struck again. There had been a small explosive charge buried in the ground at the end of the cliff. Someone had detonated it and if I hadn’t managed to grab hold of Tim, he would have fallen down towards to the sea, only to crash onto the needles fifty metres below.
We lay on the grass, panting. The sun was beating down on us. It was difficult to see. But then I became aware of a shadow moving towards us. I rolled over and looked up at the figure, limping towards us, a radio transmitter in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “It looks as if my little plan has finally come unstuck. And just when everything was going so well, too!”
Tim stared at the man. At his single eye, his single leg, his huge beard. “It’s… it’s…” he began.
“It’s Horatio Randle,” I said. “Captain of the Silver Medal, the boat that brought us here.”
“You got it in one, young lad!” he said.
“But that’s not his real name,” I went on. “Randle is an anagram. If you switch around the letters, you get…”
“Endral!” Tim exclaimed.
“Nadler,” I said. “I think this must be Johnny Nadler. Your old school friend from St Egbert’s.”
The captain put down the radio transmitter. He had used it, of course, to set off the explosive charge a few moments before. He didn’t let go of the gun. With his free hand, he reached up and pulled off the fake beard, the wig and the eye patch. At the same time, he twisted round and released the leg that he’d had tied up
behind his back. It only took a few seconds but at once I recognized the thin-faced teenager I had seen in the photograph.
“It seems you’ve worked it all out,” he muttered. His accent had changed too. He was no longer the jolly captain. He was a killer. And he was mad.
“Yes,” I said.
“But it’s impossible!” Tim burbled. “He couldn’t have killed all the others. We looked! There was nobody else on the island!”
“It was Nadler all along,” I said. I glanced at him. The wind raced past and the waves crashed down.
He smiled. “Do go on,” he snarled.
“I know what you did,” I said. “Last Wednesday, you met us all at the quay, disguised as a captain. You’d sent everyone invitations to this reunion on the island and you even offered to pay a thousand pounds to make sure that they’d all come. Rory McDougal had nothing to do with it, of course. You’d killed him before we even set sail.”
“That’s right,” Nadler said. He was smiling now. There was something horrible about that smile. He was sure this was one story I wouldn’t be telling anyone else.
“You killed Rory and you left the poisoned chocolate for Sylvie. Then you dropped us on the island and sailed away again. There was no need for you to stay. Everything was already prepared.”
“Are you saying … he wasn’t here when he killed everyone?” Tim asked. He was still lying on the grass. There was a buttercup lodged behind his ear.
“That’s right. Don’t you remember what Mark told us when we were looking at the picture? He said that Johnny Nadler wanted to be an inventor when he left school. He said he was always playing with planes and cars.” I glanced at the transmitter lying on the ground just a few feet away. “I assume they were radio-controlled planes and cars,” I said.
“That’s right!” Tim said. “He was brilliant, Nick! He once landed a helicopter on the science teacher’s head!”
“Well, that’s how he killed everyone on the island – after he’d finished with Rory McDougal and Sylvie Binns.” I took a deep breath, wondering if there was anything I could do. Tim was right next to the edge of the cliff. I was a couple of metres in front of him. We were both lying down. Nadler was standing over us, aiming with the gun. If we so much as moved, he could shoot us both. I had to keep talking and hope that I might somehow find a way to distract him.
“Janet Rhodes was stabbed with an Eiffel Tower,” I went on. “But I noticed that there was a tear in the canopy above her bed. I should have put two and two together and realized that the Eiffel Tower was always there, above the bed. It must have been mounted on some sort of spring mechanism. Nadler knew that was where she’d be sleeping. All he had to do was press a button and send the model plunging down. He was probably miles away when he killed her.”
“That’s right!” Nadler giggled. “I was back on the mainland. I was nowhere near!”
“But what about the face you saw?” Tim asked. “The skull at the window! Brenda saw it too!”
“You’ve already answered that one, Tim,” I said. “A remote control helicopter or something with a mask hanging underneath. Nadler controlled that too. It was easy!”
“But how could he see us?”
I glanced at Nadler and he nodded. He was happy for me to explain how it had been done.
“The whole island is covered in cameras,” I said. “That was Rory’s security system. We’ve been watched from the moment we arrived. Nadler knew where we were every minute of the day.”
“Right again!” Nadler grinned. He was pleased with himself, I could see that. “It was easy to hack into McDougal’s security system and redirect the pictures to my own TV monitor. I was even able to watch you in the bath!”
“That’s outrageous!” Tim was blushing. He knew that Nadler would have seen him playing with his plastic duck.
“Nadler had positioned the globe up on the roof,” I went on. “If we’d gone up and looked we’d probably have found some sort of ramp with a simple switch. He waited until Libby Goldman came out of the front door and then he pressed the button that released the globe. It rolled forward and that was that. She never had a chance. He killed Eric and Brenda the same way. First he turned out the lights. Then he fired a bullet and brought down an organ pipe … both by remote control.” I paused. “How about Mark Tyler?” I asked.
“The javelin was hidden in the branches of a tree,” Nadler explained. “It was on a giant elastic band. Remote control again. It was just like a crossbow.” He giggled for a second time. “Only bigger.”
Well that explained the leaves. Some of them must have travelled with the javelin when it was fired.
“And that just left you, Tim,” I said. “Nadler had to wait until you came out here. Then he was going to blow the ground out from beneath your feet and watch you fall onto the needles below. And with you dead, his revenge would be complete.”
“Revenge?” Tim was genuinely puzzled. “But why did he want revenge? We never did anything to him!”
“I think it was because he came second,” I said. I turned to Nadler. “You came second in every subject at school. And the boat you picked us up in. It was called the Silver Medal. I guess you chose the name on purpose. Because that’s what you’re given when you come second.”
“That’s right.” Nadler nodded and now his face had darkened and his lips were twisted into an expression of pain. His finger tightened on the trigger and he looked at me with hatred in his eyes. “I came second in maths, second in chemistry, second in French, second in geography, second in history, second in music and second in sport. I even came second in needlework, even though my embroidered tea towel was much more beautiful than your brother’s stupid handkerchief!”
“It was a lovely handkerchief!” Tim said.
“Shut up!” Nadler screamed and for a moment I was afraid he was going to shoot Tim then and there. “Do you have any idea how horrible it is coming second?” he went on. Saliva flecked at his lips. The hand with the gun never moved. “Coming last doesn’t matter. Coming fifth or sixth … who cares? But when you come second, everyone knows. You’ve just missed! You’ve missed getting the prize by just a few marks. And everyone feels sorry for you. Poor old Johnny! He couldn’t quite make it. He wasn’t quite good enough.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve been coming second all my life. I go for jobs and I get down to the last two in the interviews but it’s always the other person who gets it. I went out with a girl but then she decided to marry someone else because as far as she was concerned, I was Number Two. When I’ve tried to sell my inventions, I’ve discovered that someone else has always got there first. Number Two! Number Two! Number Two! I hate being Number Two…!
“And it’s all your fault!” He pointed the gun at Tim and now the fury was back in his eyes. “It all started at St Egbert’s! That hateful school! That was where I started coming second and that was why I decided to have my revenge. You all thought you were clever beating me at everything. Well, I’ve showed you! I’ve killed the whole lot of you and I’ve done it in exactly the way you deserve!”
“You haven’t killed me!” Tim exclaimed.
I didn’t think it was a good idea to point this out. Nadler steadied the gun. “I’m going to do that now,” he said. “Your body will still end up smashing into the needles so everything will have worked out the way it was meant to.” He nodded at me. “I’ll have to kill you too, of course,” he continued. “You weren’t meant to be here, but I don’t mind. You sound too clever for your own good. I’m going to enjoy killing you too!”
He took aim.
“No!” I shouted.
He fired at Tim.
“Missed!” Tim laughed and rolled to one side. He was still laughing when he rolled over the side of the cliff.
“Tim!” I yelled.
“Now it’s your turn,” Nadler said.
I closed my eyes. There was nothing I could do.
There was a long pause. I opened them again.
N
adler was still standing, but even as I watched he crumpled to the ground. Eric Draper, the fat solicitor, was standing behind him. There was blood all over his shirt and he was deathly pale. But he was still alive. He was holding the blunderbuss, which he must have taken from the bear. He hadn’t fired it. He had used it like a club and knocked Nadler out.
“He only wounded me…” he gasped. “I woke up this morning. I came to find you…”
But I wasn’t interested in Eric Draper, even if he had just saved my life. I crawled over to the cliff edge and looked down, expecting to see Tim, smashed to pieces, on the rocks below.
“Hello, Nick!” Tim said.
There was a gorse bush growing out of the side of the cliff. He had fallen right onto it. I held out a hand. Tim took it. I pulled him to safety and we both lay there in the sun, exhausted, glad to be alive.
We found the Silver Medal moored at the jetty and I steered it back towards the mainland. Eric was slumped on the deck. Johnny Nadler was down below, tied up with so much rope that only his head was showing. We weren’t taking any chances after what had happened. We had already radioed ahead to the police. They would be waiting when we got to the mainland. Tim was standing next to me. We had left six dead bodies behind us on Crocodile Island. Well, I warned you that it was going to be a horror story.
“I’m sorry I thought you were the killer,” Tim said. He was looking even more sheepish than … well, a sheep.
“It’s all right, Tim,” I said. “It’s a mistake anyone could have made.” He swayed on his feet and suddenly I felt sorry for him. “Do you want to sit down?” I asked. “It’s going to take us a while to get back.”
Tim shook his head. “No.” He blushed. “I can’t!”
“Why not?”
“That bush I fell into. It was very prickly. My bottom’s full of…”