‘Concentrate, Ishmael,’ Penny said sharply. ‘What do we do? Where do we go from here?’
‘Our choice of suspects is shrinking,’ I said slowly. ‘We know it isn’t us, and Doyle was in the library with us when all this was happening. So who does that leave? Mackay … and Martin.’
‘Unless there is someone else in the house with us,’ said Penny. ‘Martin saw someone on his screens. Remember?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember.’
‘MacKay’s been missing for some time,’ said Penny. ‘More than enough to do something like this. And he was going to meet Redd.’
‘Although Martin is supposed to have been in the security centre all this time,’ I said, ‘he could have left while we were in the library …’
‘But both MacKay and Martin have alibis for Parker’s murder,’ said Penny.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Annoying, that. But then I’ve never had much time for alibis. Far too easy to fake, for any number of reasons.’
‘What if Parker really has come back from the dead and is walking around the Lodge looking for revenge?’ Penny said stubbornly. ‘Maybe that’s why he insisted on being brought here. For a chance to kill all of us. We have to consider the possibility, Ishmael, after everything we’ve experienced …’
‘It is a possibility,’ I said. ‘But not a good one. No, Penny, keep it simple. Someone in this house killed Parker for their own personal reasons. And they’re still here, even though they could have got out at any time through the unguarded window in the lounge. So our killer must have stayed on for a reason. Because he has unfinished business …’
‘Such as?’ said Penny.
‘He wants us all dead,’ I said. ‘So that when the reinforcements finally arrive there will be no surviving witnesses left to point the finger. He wants to vanish, leaving a mystery behind.’
Penny shuddered briefly, remembering. ‘How much longer is it till the reinforcements get here?’
I checked my watch, and frowned. ‘It’s been well over an hour since Martin placed his emergency call. They should have been hammering on the door by now.’ I raised my voice. ‘Martin! Can you hear me?’
We waited, but there was no reply.
‘His systems must be down again,’ I said. ‘We’d better go brace him in his hidey-hole and have him contact Headquarters again. See what’s happening.’
‘No one’s attacked us yet,’ said Penny. ‘If it should turn out to be the unkillable Parker, could you take him? I mean, I know you’re good, but …’
‘It’s not him,’ I said. ‘But if it was … I’m better than good. I’d rip his head off his shoulders and bounce it up and down the hall like a basket ball. See how he’d manage then. But it seems to me there’s something distinctly sneaky about our killer. An undead, unkillable Parker wouldn’t need to hide, would he? The real killer has been taking down people who didn’t even try to defend themselves. Because they saw no reason to, until it was too late. And let us remember, these were all naturally suspicious people.’
‘So what do you think is going on?’ said Penny. ‘I mean, really going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I hate being in situations I don’t understand. And I’m no nearer understanding why people are dying in Ringstone Lodge than when all this started.’
I stepped forward to look at the severed heads more closely. Penny came round the other side of the quietly crying Doyle, so she could look too. We weren’t being heartless, just focused.
‘Where are the bodies?’ I said finally. ‘Redd and Hayley weren’t killed here, or there’d be blood all over the place. And I would have heard or smelled something while that was happening.’
‘Not in front of Doyle,’ murmured Penny.
‘I don’t think he’s hearing anything much at the moment,’ I said.
And then Penny and I both looked up sharply, as we heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Heading straight for us. We stumbled back and looked up the stairs, and there was MacKay. Descending the steps with a cold, grim face and a gun in his hand. The gun was aimed unwaveringly at me. I stood very still, watching him carefully. MacKay finally came to a halt just a few steps above the two severed heads, and fixed me with a gaze as assured and implacable as a hanging judge’s.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘You’re the killer, Mr Jones. And I will see you dead for what you have done here.’
SEVEN
Nothing Stays Hidden
For a moment that stretched, we all stood our ground and looked at each other. A tableau of the living and the dead. The accused and his accuser, two wide-eyed witnesses, and two severed heads that weren’t interested in anything any longer. MacKay looked at me with death on his mind, waiting for me to answer him, but I just looked right back at him. I could feel Penny trembling at my side, not with fear but with anger. Wanting to say something, do something, but not daring to as long as MacKay had his gun trained on me. Because she knew that whatever my origins might be, I was still human enough to die from a bullet to the head. MacKay’s gaze never wavered, but in the end his expression turned sour and he snarled at the still sobbing Doyle.
‘Hush your crying, Doctor Doyle! She cannot hear you.’
Doyle stopped. His tears didn’t slow or die away, they just stopped as though he’d been slapped across the face. I glanced at him. His face was pale but his eyes were suddenly hot, full of an anger that needed to go somewhere. He looked at MacKay and then at me, and then at the gun in MacKay’s hand. Doyle fell back a step, and then another, and MacKay let him. He kept his cold gaze fixed on me, and the gun in his hand never wavered once.
‘I don’t think you should be pointing that gun at Ishmael, Mr Mackay,’ Penny said steadily. ‘It’s not safe. For you.’
‘Don’t interfere, Miss Belcourt,’ said MacKay. ‘This man is a murderer.’
‘Of course he isn’t a murderer!’ said Penny. ‘We were sent here to protect Parker. Remember?’
‘What better cover?’ said MacKay.
‘Where have you been all this time?’ I said. Keeping my voice carefully calm and reasonable, with just a touch of ‘Let’s not do anything either of us might regret.’
‘What happened when you went upstairs to talk to Redd?’
‘You do not get to ask the questions, murderer!’ MacKay’s voice shook with barely controlled emotions. ‘I should have known it was you. Everything was going just fine until you arrived. You’d not been in the Lodge a few hours before people started dying. I should have known … Only another field agent could have brought down someone as experienced as the infamous Frank Parker.’
‘Who put these ideas into your head?’ I said.
‘Stop talking!’ MacKay said loudly. ‘It doesn’t matter who. I have you now, and I will see justice done for the horrors you have perpetrated under my roof.’
There was a scuffle of movement behind me, and Penny cried out. I’d been concentrating so hard on MacKay I’d lost track of everything else. I’d just started to turn when Doyle plunged a hypodermic needle into my neck. The needle stung fiercely as it sank in, and Doyle slammed the plunger all the way home. He jerked the needle out of my neck and stepped back, smiling triumphantly. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were dangerously bright.
‘Alice isn’t the only one who likes to keep sedatives handy for emergencies,’ said Doyle. ‘For suspects who turn dangerous, to themselves or to others. The dose I’ve just given you would knock out an elephant. More than enough to keep you quiet until the reinforcements arrive.’ He laughed softly. A dark, unpleasant sound. ‘And when you wake up, I’ll be waiting for you. To begin your interrogation.’
Penny made a soft, horrified sound.
‘Well done, Doctor Doyle,’ said MacKay.
He lowered his gun a little, and then he and Doyle looked at me expectantly. Waiting for the drug to kick in and for me to fall to my knees. Penny started towards me, and then stopped as I smiled at her reassuringly. I turned my smile on MacKay, and felt it
become something different. Something dangerous. MacKay raised his gun to cover me again, but I didn’t even look at it, holding his gaze with my own.
‘I’m a field agent for the Organization,’ I said. ‘And we’re protected against all kinds of attack. Including poisons, drugs and overexcited doctors.’
In fact, Doyle’s sedative was useless against me because of my alien heritage. I might have been made over into a man, but there were other things hiding inside me. Protections against anything my new world might throw at me. I’m like a Russian doll with another face hidden inside another face: the wolf in the fold and the snake in the grass, and everything else you never see coming until it’s far too late. I am human, but I’m other things too.
Penny laughed shakily, relieved. MacKay and Doyle looked at each other, and the certainty went out of them. I’d just changed the rules of the game, and they could tell. Doyle looked at the hypodermic in his hand as though it was an empty gun. He started to scrabble in his jacket pocket for something, perhaps a stronger dose, and Penny decided she’d had enough. She stepped quickly forward and slapped the hypo right out of Doyle’s hand. It made delicate fragile noises as it skidded across the floor and hid itself in the shadows. Doyle looked after it and then looked back at Penny. His face turned ugly. He raised a hand to hit her, and I winced. On his behalf, not hers.
Penny kicked him square between the legs, with such vicious force I half expected something to break loose and go rolling across the floor. All the breath shot out of Doyle’s mouth. His eyes squeezed shut from the horrid pain, tears streaming down his cheeks. He turned slowly and hobbled away, one painful step at a time, making small pitiful sounds. I almost felt sorry for him. Penny glared after him, and then turned her glare on MacKay, standing shocked and somewhat bemused on the stairs. He still had his gun aimed at me. Penny started towards him with a worryingly speculative look on her face, and I quickly raised a hand to stop her.
‘That’s enough, Penny,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the support, but I think I can take it from here.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Penny, still glaring coldly at MacKay. ‘That gun doesn’t frighten me.’
‘That’s because it isn’t pointed at you,’ I said. ‘Let me talk to the man. I’m sure reason and common sense can prevail.’
‘First time for anything, I suppose,’ she said, unwillingly. ‘But you listen to me, MacKay. If you shoot Ishmael, you’d better be really fast with your second shot. Because if you’re not, I will beat you to death with my bare hands.’
MacKay just nodded. He was an old soldier and, while he recognized the cold intent in her words, he wouldn’t let it move him one inch from what he intended to do. I took a step forward to draw his attention back to me. The gun rose just a little, to aim squarely at my heart. I fixed MacKay with my best commanding stare.
‘What happened up there, on the top floor?’ I said. ‘What happened between you and Redd so that he ended up down here, like this?’ I gestured at the severed head on the bottom step, but MacKay didn’t look away from me for a moment. I pressed him, raising my voice. ‘Was there an argument? A fight? What did he want to say that he could only say to you? And what did you do with his body?’
I hit him with one question after another, like a boxer throwing combination punches, but MacKay didn’t so much as rock on his feet. And yet I could tell that some of it was getting through to him, though he answered me in a cool and distant voice.
‘I did nothing to Mr Redd. I never even met him. When I arrived at the top of the stairs, he was nowhere to be seen. I walked all the way down the corridor to your room, and I didn’t see anyone. The door was closed; and when I tried it, it was locked. Even though it had been open on Mr Martin’s screen. Didn’t you watch all of this?’
‘No,’ said Penny. ‘All the screens went down the moment you got to the upper floor. No vision, no sound. I don’t know where you people got this surveillance equipment, but I think you should ask for your money back. It’s a disgrace.’
I smiled inwardly. I knew she was trying to distract him. I kept my voice calm and steady, and unyielding.
‘What happened up there, MacKay?’
‘I called out to Mr Redd,’ said MacKay. ‘He didn’t answer. I used my master key to unlock the door to your room and went inside, but he was not there.’
‘Our door was open before you went up,’ said Penny. ‘As though Redd had been inside.’
‘Indeed,’ said MacKay. ‘But there was no sign to indicate he had ever been in there. I considered the situation. If he was not in the room and not in the corridor, where could he be? The answer came to me in a moment. I have always believed that a house this old must have secret passages in it somewhere. It is in the nature of a building like this. And it was the only way in which Mr Redd could have disappeared so quickly. The only way the murderer could be moving around and be sure of remaining unnoticed by any of the security cameras.
‘So I went back out into the corridor, locked your door again, and started tapping the walls. Once I was sure what I was looking for, I found the hidden panel quite easily. Cunningly concealed in the woodwork of the wall at the far end of the corridor. Right next to your room. I soon found the trick of opening it, and uncovered the hidden passageway beyond.
‘I went inside, closing the panel behind me, because I did not wish to be found or disturbed until I had fathomed its secrets and had some idea of who might have been using it. The tunnel led to other tunnels and secret rooms, and hidden passageways deep beneath the Lodge. I have been walking up and down in them for some time, seeing what there was to see and thinking about many things.’
‘I told you there had to be secret passages here, Ishmael!’ said Penny. ‘All old houses have them. It wouldn’t be fair if they didn’t.’
‘And then I found the awful evidence of what you had done, Mr Jones,’ said MacKay. ‘And I came down here to find you and put a stop to your madness.’
‘Hold it!’ I said. ‘It’s good to know what you’ve been up to all this time, but you make a far better suspect than me. You had all the time you needed to kill Redd and Hayley. You have a master key to unlock anything, including Parker’s cell and that window in the lounge. You know about the secret tunnels. And none of your victims would have seen any need to defend themselves against you, would they? The man who’s job it was to protect them? Finally, you have the best motive. You knew you were getting too old for your job. That the MoD would have to let you go soon, despite all your experience. So you reached out to the opposition for one last big payment, so you could at least live comfortably afterwards. How much did they offer you to silence Parker before he could speak? And are you on a bonus for the rest of us, or did you just get carried away?’
MacKay met my gaze squarely through all of this, still covering me with his gun. And despite all the accusations I’d hit him with, his confidence didn’t waver once.
‘You are the killer, Mr Jones. And you are not going to talk your way out of this.’
I saw his finger tighten on the trigger. Saw the decision to kill me, and to hell with the consequences, rise up in his eyes. I charged forward, crossing the distance between us in a moment, snatched the gun out of his hand before he could finish pulling the trigger, placed my other hand on his chest, and pushed hard. MacKay fell backwards on to the stairs, sitting down so heavily it knocked all the breath out of him. His eyes were still widening at how fast I’d moved as I stood over him, his gun aimed at his face, not even breathing hard. And then I stepped back, hefted the gun lightly in my hand, and grinned at Penny. She laughed out loud, and clapped her hands delightedly. I waggled the gun meaningfully at MacKay when he looked like moving, and he stayed where he was. He wanted to look furious, but he was too shocked and baffled at how quickly I’d turned the tables on him.
‘How did you do that?’ he asked shakily. ‘I never even saw you move …’
‘I’m a trained field agent. Remember?’ I said.
He glared at me
defiantly. ‘Go on then, Mr Jones. Do it. Kill me. I’ll not beg for my life.’
‘How many times do I have to say this?’ I said. ‘I’m not the killer. And to prove it …’
I turned the gun round and offered it to MacKay. He looked at me, unable to believe it, and then he snatched the gun out of my hand and shot me at point-blank range. My more than human reactions kicked in, and I was already moving to one side as he squeezed the trigger. The bullet shot through the space where my head had been just a moment before. I grabbed the gun away from him again, and hit him sharply on the point of the jaw. His head snapped back, and he was unconscious before he hit the stairs. I stepped back again, and looked at Penny.
‘Now that worked fine the last time I did it, at Belcourt Manor,’ I said. ‘Giving up the gun is supposed to win them over, as a sign of trust. Why did he try to shoot me?’
‘Because he’s an old soldier,’ said Penny. ‘And you don’t get to be an old soldier by missing out on a chance to kill your enemy.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Spoiled a perfectly good gesture, though. Hold it! What happened to Doyle?’
We both looked around, but there was no sign of the doctor anywhere. The wide open hall was empty and almost unnervingly quiet.
‘Oh hell!’ I said. ‘Not another unexpected disappearance while we were distracted! I’m starting to feel like I should search the floor for trapdoors. And I really don’t think I could cope with another murder.’ I looked at the gun in my hand, and then handed it to Penny.
‘Here. You probably need this more than I do. Would you have any problem using it?’
She looked at the two severed heads, still in place on the bottom step despite everything that had happened around them.
‘No,’ she said firmly.
‘Do you know how to use a gun?’
‘Yes,’ said Penny, hefting the gun in a familiar way. ‘I took some lessons at a private shooting club in London once I’d decided I was going to work alongside you as a spy girl. I thought one of us ought to know what to do with a gun.’