by Alex Thomson
I’m filled with a sudden glow of pride for my clever sister. Someone thought they could silence her by ripping off her hood, but she was too canny for them. She hid these things where they couldn’t be found, and left me a message, from the grave.
I’m not an idiot. I know that going down this path, following in her footsteps, could put me in the same danger. But I’d rather be on that path than the one where I shrug, idly wonder who killed my sister, and return to not stirring the pot on Hell.
I HEAR THE footsteps in the spine tunnel when Andrew’s party returns from their shift. I rise from Lily’s bunk, and when the clatter has died down, I go the Ays’ cabin. Ashton is asleep in there, and I gesture to Andrew. He frowns, and comes out to the synthetic tunnel. I haven’t spoken to him since looking for Lily’s body together.
“What’s the matter?” he says.
“I need to speak with you, Andrew. How about we go to the airlock?”
He doesn’t move. “What about?”
“I need to know what Lily was pestering you lot about. You remember, you told me to tell her to back off from the Ays’ business?”
“Oh, that.” We are standing in the tunnel, and I’m conscious of our conversation echoing down into the spine. “Look, Leila, if you want my advice, don’t—”
“If you tell me not to stir the pot,” I say, “I swear I’ll take a fork and stab you in the eye. I get it—no pot-stirring. If you help me, I might be able to stop the person who is stirring.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” he says, looking hurt (but I think he was).
“Oh.”
“The Ays have always respected the Ells,” he says. “The Bees are our girls, but we respect the Ells. We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s not,” he snaps. “Look, Lily was asking everyone questions, not just us. If you must know, she was asking about Avery, and how he died; she was asking about Ashton and whether we trusted him, for goodness’ sake!”
“Okay.”
“Our own brother! Anyway, she was doing the same thing to the Bees and the Jays—my advice was that she back off before she asked someone the wrong question.”
“Or the right one,” I said. “Do you know what was making her suspicious of Ashton?”
“I do not. If she was suspicious of him, she should have been suspicious of me too. Of all of us. But the Ays ain’t got nothing to hide.”
“Two last questions, Andrew. Remind me, who’s your girl?”
“It’s Becci.”
“And the cycle Lily died, you were on East 3, weren’t you? It was the same time you spoke to me about Lily.”
“If you say so.”
“Do you remember seeing anything strange—anyone acting unusually?”
He pauses for a moment. “Only that I saw an Overseer walking down by the tunnels, away from East 3. Grey stripe on his suit. Couldn’t tell who at that distance.”
“Why was that unusual?”
“Just that no Overseer had any business down by the tunnels right then. Mr Reynolds was the only one in the East zone, but he was supposed to be up on the ridge, with the Bees. Strange.”
I’VE FINISHED MY interviews, and already I know what my next step is. The photograph in Lily’s stash has been nagging at me. Logically, the only place it could have come from is one of the Overseers’ cabins. Since they are locked, all I could think was that she’d seen it in Mr Lee’s cabin, and distracted him while she took it. But after speaking to the Ays, a far more likely scenario presents itself—that she was the one who stole Mr Reynolds’ key, and had a hunt around his cabin. Only… it wouldn’t be her, would it? I couldn’t imagine myself picking his pocket, so Lily couldn’t either. But the Jays… I could picture those nimble-fingered scamps doing it without so much as breaking a sweat. And if Lily had been sleeping with a Jay, there’s your explanation for why they might have given the key to her.
When I get to their cabin, a Jay is sitting on his bunk, fiddling with his hair. Another is asleep on his bunk. I raise a questioning eyebrow, and the Jay says, “Jeremy.” He cocks his head at his sleeping brother. “Jupiter.”
“Jeremy,” I say in a low voice, and close the door. “We need to talk.”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Before she died, Lily made a reference to finding something in Mr Reynolds’ cabin.” (She hadn’t, of course. But I wasn’t about to reveal the clues she left me, even if the Jays were on my side.) “I didn’t understand at the time, but then earlier I heard about Mr Reynolds’ key going missing for two cycles. One of you stole it, and gave it to her, didn’t you?”
Jeremy doesn’t say anything, but there is a half-smile creeping on the corner of his lips, and I know he wants to admit to it. “What makes you say that?” he says eventually.
“Please, Jeremy. I’m right, aren’t I? Come on, whatever obligation you had to Lily should carry over to me—I am her sister. I just want to see what she saw—take a look around his cabin.”
Jeremy tuts and shakes his head. “Naughty, little sister. That would be very naughty. You trying to stir the pot?”
A movement makes me glance to my right, and I see that Jupiter is now awake, studying me, his head resting on upturned palms.
“I said it was a mistake,” he says to Jeremy. “All along, I said it.”
“You admit it, then? You let Lily into his cabin?”
“Maybe. But we don’t have to make the same mistake again. Look what happened to Lily—we don’t want that to happen to you, do we?”
“I’m ready this time. Damn it, you have to do this. You owe it to Lily. Please!”
“Even if, as you say, we helped Lily,” Jupiter says, “what makes you think we could help you out now? Mr Reynolds found the key in his suit, didn’t he?”
“But if I know you Jays right,” I say, “the only reason you would have returned the key is if it was a bluff to make him think the cabin was safe again.”
“Meaning?”
“You made a copy, didn’t you?”
Jeremy shrugs and laughs at his brother. “She’s got it all figured out, hasn’t she?” They look at each other, and a silent conversation seems to be taking place.
“We should let her,” Jeremy says. “It might be a catalyst for further developments. We can keep an eye out for her.”
“You’re making a mistake, brother,” Jupiter says, climbing down from his bunk. “I won’t join you in it, and neither will our brothers.”
Disagreement amongst the Jays. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
“We’ve become complacent,” Jeremy says. “How do we get anywhere unless we take some risks? We’re blind men right now, none of us daring to leave the safety of what we know.”
“Blind, but alive,” Jupiter says.
“I don’t see why you won’t just help me,” I say. “We’re all in this together.”
Jupiter turns to me, comes up close, and gives me the deadest stare you can imagine. “You talk of blind men,” he says to Jeremy, still staring at me. “But we’ve allowed ourselves to be blinded by these Ells. Sure, they look like pretty, harmless things. But they’re dangerous. Her sister, she could have brought us all down with her. This one, she’ll do the same.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I say.
But he turns on his heel and walks out, insolently slow.
“This is on you,” is his parting shot to his brother. “You show her, it’s on you.”
“What’s his problem?” I say.
“Not all my brothers are as enlightened as me,” he replies, but he sounds distracted.
“What’s the deal, then? Are you going to show me, or are you going to let him tell you what to do?”
Jeremy smiles. “Nice try. But there’s no need. Come on, let’s check on the Rota for Mr Reynolds’ whereabouts, then we’ll do this.”
MR REYNOLDS, IT turns out, is sitting in the Community cabin as we walk in�
�sprawled by the windows, dully staring out at space. I freeze, but Jeremy greets him, cool as you like, and walks up to the Rota. He scans it, nods, smiles at Barbara who is sat on the opposite side of the cabin to Mr Reynolds, and walks out with me.
“Great,” he says. “He’s off in just over two hours. An eight-hour shift in the South sector. Mr Lee’s out too.”
“So where’s the key?” I say.
“Patience.”
“You can tell me how this all happened with Lily, at least.”
“I was hardly involved. Some of my brothers handled it. But I know she came to us, asking if it was possible to break into the Overseers’ cabins. Jolly had spotted that Mr Reynolds was pretty careless with his key, so we gave it a shot. Jolly picked his pocket with no problems, then Juan made a thin duplicate using a sheet of aluminium—took a few tries to cut the teeth right, but it worked eventually. They let Lily in while Mr Reynolds was out, and locked her in, while they kept an eye on the spine. Then after half an hour, they let her out. She seemed satisfied.”
“Did she say anything?”
“As I say, I wasn’t there myself.”
“Which of you was?”
“I… don’t know, Leila. What I suggest is we do the same for you—let you in, then let you out after you’ve had a chance to rummage around.”
I agree before he has a chance to change his mind or speak to the other Jays. He guides me back to my cabin and shows me an old drill that has been abandoned there for a while. He unscrews the back, and removes the casing to show the thin duplicate key—jagged and rough, but a key nonetheless.
“Meet me at Reynolds’ cabin, an hour after he leaves.”
The wait is intolerable. All I can think about is what I’m going to find in Mr Reynolds cabin. I mean, I know what Lily found, but there’s got to be more to it than that, or why would Lily have taken it? I cannot daydream, or relax, or go to the Community cabin where Mr Reynolds is. I cannot face the stares and chatter that will be found in the Leisure cabin. I sit on my bunk and fume.
TWO HOURS LATER, I walk briskly up the spine and soon hear Jeremy’s footsteps a few paces behind me. Of course, if this were a double-cross, now would be a perfect opportunity to kill me and dump my body in Mr Reynolds’ cabin. There’s a thought. But I’ve read too many hammy thrillers. There is not going to be a double-cross.
We reach Mr Reynolds’ door. I glance around, and Jeremy has his finger on his lips. Mr Ortiz could easily be just twenty metres away in his cabin. Jeremy slots the makeshift key into the lock, turns the pins with a scree, and pushes open the door for me. In I go, and he closes the door behind me with a gentle click.
I’ve seen in here before, but never been in. It is more or less the same as Mr Lee’s cabin, if a bit messier. The cabinet is next to his cot, and its key dangles from the lock. I don’t have much time, so I get straight to work. As in the depot, I am methodical and systematic; I work through the pile of papers in his cabinet, one by one. Most of it is related to the administration of Mizushima-00109, or instructions relating to different operations and machinery on the base. I would have loved to read more, but it is clearly not relevant, so I crack on.
Then I open the bottom drawer, and immediately know I’ve found what I’m looking for. A thin blue folder, no writing, anonymous, looking much more worn and ragged than the other pristine documents—which are clearly unread by Mr Reynolds. I remove it from the cabinet, and take out the contents.
Twenty, maybe twenty-five photographs. All women. I spread them out over Mr Reynolds’ cot. A quick check of the folder shows that there is nothing else in there, no written document to go with the photographs. None of the women seem to be aware they are being photographed. Like the one Lily took, they are all looking elsewhere, engaged in an activity—sitting, walking, or talking to someone else. Mostly white, though a few are dark-skinned. Quite a lot with blonde hair, which I’ve never seen before, and is a lot more murky than the bright yellow I had imagined when reading about it.
I count them up, one by one. Twenty-four. Twenty-four women from Earth, that Mr Reynolds had brought with him to Hell. And none of them even knew it.
8
REFLECTIONS ON A MURDER
I AM SEATED on a bed of swag in the depot. My channel seems to have a fault, and there is a constant, low-level whine. There is a lot of work to do, but I am not working.
I am on strike.
Mr Ortiz came to my cabin to check I was going on shift, so I went, to avoid a fuss. But I am not sorting swag, I am cogitating on the circumstances of my sister’s foul murder, and the possible motives of my chief suspects.
The Ays, the Ays… my problem with suspecting the Ays is that they lack both imagination and malice. They might have acted, if there was a danger of Lily stirring their sacred pot, but it would have to be a real threat to their status quo, and I simply don’t buy that Lily’s snooping was capable of that. On the other hand, I can picture it happening in a sudden flash of anger. And there is a lot of mystery surrounding the Ays. Ashton’s glasses, for one—Lily must have taken them for a reason. Avery’s death: I never thought of it as suspicious, but I do now. And their whole relationship with the six Bees—there’s something fishy going on there, I just can’t figure it out.
Then you have the Jays—or specifically, the Jay who had some sort of relationship with Lily. A crime passionel, as Mr Ortiz would have it. And you can’t forget how divided the Jays were by Lily. She had managed to split them in a way I’d never seen before with a Family. Look at the Ays—they might have their bust-ups, but they’re a tight, single-minded unit, really. The Bees have differences of opinion, but never in public.
In normal circumstances a Jay is cool, detached; I can’t imagine one of them weighing up the costs and benefits, and deciding on balance it was best to kill Lily. But against a backdrop of dissent and rivalry (that I had been oblivious to at the time)… and suddenly, I’m not so sure. Sometimes I see a touch of Mr Ortiz in them—his cold intelligence, but also that capacity for a spiteful, petulant gesture if his pride is threatened.
The key, I’ve decided, has to be working out which Jay was having a relationship with Lily. The more I think about it, the more I realise I can take an educated guess as to which one was weeping at my sister’s funeral. I can cross off Judas, who waylaid me in the airlock afterwards. And I’m 99% sure it wasn’t Jeremy, who was bantering and flirting with me just two cycles after she died—altogether too casual to have been Lily’s lover. Then you had Jupiter and Joseph—both on shift during Lily’s funeral. They could have swapped with a brother, I suppose—but as supplementary evidence, a check on the Rota revealed that in the twenty cycles or so before the murder, Joseph had barely ever been on a shift with Lily. And Jupiter—I only have to remember him grunting from his bunk: I said it was a mistake and they’re dangerous.
No, this is between Juan and Jolly—who, now I remember, were the pair in Banana, the cycle that Lily died. What was it one of them said? I’ve seen your sister on several occasions recently, but not you. So I’ve narrowed it down to a shortlist of two Jays. Now I just have to figure out which of them it is.
Meanwhile, Mr Reynolds has jumped up the suspect rankings after what might loosely be described as the photographs bombshell. I can’t say why exactly, other than Lily clearly thought it worthwhile stealing one of the photographs. What I can’t figure out is why a load of photographs from Earth is a big secret, or a threat to him. But something stinks. I may just be a pesky Ell, good for nothing but sorting swag, but I know fishy. And everything about that folder screamed ‘fishy.’
I mean, all the women looking away, not aware they’re being photographed? And the sheer volume—who needs twenty-four photographs of different women? I might not be au faitwith Earth trends and habits, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t normal.
When Jeremy let me out, I nearly told him what I had seen. But then, no, I figured: they’ve clearly had a good old rummage round his cabin themselves. They know a
ll about the photographs. All of which means that Mr Leewas right—the Jays are in it for the Jays, and playing their own game. There must be loads of information about Lily and about Hell that they could have shared with me, but have chosen not to. Despite their fine words, they’re only helping me out if it suits them. What was it Jeremy had said? She might be a catalyst for further developments.
And what does that mean, exactly? Presumably ‘bait’ would be a more accurate description. Maybe they suspect Mr Reynolds too, and want me to trigger the same reaction that—hypothetically—happened with Lily. Thanks, Jays!
In fact, I bumped into Mr Reynolds earlier, a few hours after sneaking out of his cabin. He was slumped on a sofa, in a grimy boiler suit. He looked weary. For the first time, I felt a measure of pity for the man. He had no Family either, and I knew he hated being on Hell. He glanced at me, eyes blank, and I saw he was a human, not just an Overseer; a human with all the same desires and motivations as other humans. I sat opposite him, and he raised an eyebrow. There was no point trying to interrogate him about the murder any further. I tried a different line of questioning:
“Mr Reynolds?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
His voice sounded a bit slurred, my first thought was that he’d been on the pills. Made life easy for me.
“If you found out a big secret about someone, what would you do?”
“No secrets here,” he mumbled. “Can’t keep any secrets on a rock this size.”
“Okay,” I said. “But hypothetically, what do you think? Best to thrash things out in the open, or brush them under the carpet?”
He gave me a sudden sly look. “What you getting at? Eh?”
“I mean, let’s say I found out Mr Lee had done something terrible in the past, what should I do?”
“Everyone’s made mistakes,” he said, slumping again. “But everyone deserves a second chance. Whatever you’ve found, I’d drop it, Ell.”
