Guess Who

by Chris McGeorge

  And Morgan smiled. He always smiled.

  Years later, in this room, and Sheppard thought he might never smile again. Fame? Wash it all away. Be done with it. The show, the book, the newspaper articles. Just never let me end up here. Because now he would be famous for a whole new reason. For killing people.

  A sharp beeping noise pulled him out of his self-pity. Beeping somewhere in the room. Sheppard got off the bed and looked around, locating the noise—the bedside table. The cylindrical digital clock had started counting down. 03:00:00 had turned to 02:59:54. Six seconds. More—already gone. Slipping away in front of his eyes. The beeping stopped. The countdown didn’t.

  Three hours to solve a murder.

  Sheppard looked around. Ryan was watching him intently, a dangerous look of hope in his eyes. He was probably thinking that Sheppard looked like this a lot on his TV show, but Ryan was mistaking blankness (reading the autocue) for thoughtfulness. The autocue was always Sheppard’s best friend—behind the little black box was a team of people, the real brains. That’s all television was. Smoke and mirrors.

  “You can do it, right?” Ryan said. “You can get us out?” All that was behind Ryan was the others. And he could see that hope was infecting them all. Even Alan looked slightly less furious. Mandy was worst of all—she looked almost certain.

  I can’t get anyone out. There is no way out.

  The murderer—in this room.

  None of them looked capable of murder—but one was.

  Sheppard looked down at his hands, unable to look at the others anymore. His hands were ever so slightly shaking—his body and his mind aching for a drink and some pills. His shoulders ached in response. But that wasn’t his biggest problem, was it?

  You can’t do it.

  His one real victory was twenty-five years ago. A lot could happen in twenty-five years, and a lot had. But as he thought back, not a lot happened of much consequence. Was his really a wasted life—only half lived? Maybe this was to be a fitting end.

  He thought back to all the rookie books he’d read—books on how to be a detective. Most information gleamed from TV dramas and novels. A murder investigation was a big thing. Not for one person. There was such a thing as a Sherlock Holmes, a Miss Marple, a Hercule Poirot, but that wasn’t the real world.

  The hero saves the day. Every single time. Rubbish. But then—What if he could actually do it? The odds weren’t in his favor but—three hours. Five people. One dead man. That couldn’t be impossible, right? Unlikely, but not impossible.

  That’s what I like about you, Morgan. You’re a bastard. Douglas had said that once, and he had never truly understood it until now. The masked man was giving him a chance to become more than he ever could on his own. The chance to truly be a hero.

  Sheppard looked up. The hope wasn’t rotting people’s faces anymore because he felt it too. He remembered a quote from some book he had read long ago: “Murder isn’t the greatest crime anyone can ever commit. But at least it gives you a good place to start.” He had laughed at it at the time—but it was true. He had to do it—go into the bathroom and confront what he knew was in there.

  He pushed past Ryan and rounded the corner into the alcove. He paused in front of the bathroom door. He put his hand on the door handle and took a deep breath.

  “What are you doing?” Mandy said.

  Time was escaping from the room. They were standing in an hourglass, with hands out trying to catch the sand. “I’m going to solve a murder,” he said, and found that he had one last smile in him.

  12

  The bathroom was dazzlingly bright compared to the murky bedroom. Sheppard put up an arm to shield his eyes as he shut the door behind him and glimpsed under his elbow. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the marble sink, the pristine toilet, the towels hanging on the heated rail, with more stacked up above it. He had been here before, many times, all over the world. He didn’t have to look to his right to see the bath that could double as a shower, with containers of shower gel and shampoo clasped to the wall. But he didn’t see any of that—the transparent cream shower curtain was pulled across it.

  He didn’t want to think about what was in the bath yet, so he found himself staring at his own reflection in the mirror above the sink. He stepped forward, reaching up to his face to confirm what he saw. He looked older than the last time he had seen himself. He had deep black bags under his eyes like shadows. His hair looked duller and his patchy stubble shrouded half his face. There were a lot more wrinkles, around his eyes, his mouth, his brow. A stranger wearing his face.

  As he rested on the sink, his hand crunched something. He looked down to the little bars of soap and tubes of toothpaste, but those weren’t what he felt. He lifted his hand to find a pair of glasses.

  His stomach dropped as he picked them up and turned them over in his hands. From any angle it was unmistakable—these glasses were his. He was shortsighted, and he didn’t wear them nearly as much as he should. He never wore them in public. Never. No one knew he needed glasses, not even Douglas.

  He looked up to meet his own eyes.

  Who is doing this?

  He shook off the thought. Not now. He had a job to do. Just be grateful he had them. He put the glasses on. He always thought he looked stupid in them. Never mind that now.

  He rolled up his shirt sleeves, revealing the real damage the handcuffs had done. It looked like he was wearing two jagged scarlet bracelets.

  He turned the tap on and put his left wrist under the stream of cold water.

  An “ah” escaped him. It stung. He put his right wrist under.

  When he was finished, he reached down to the toilet paper. The end was folded into a triangle, just as he knew it would be. He dabbed at his wrists and the paper came away red.

  He turned to the bath. He took a deep breath—there was really no escaping it now. It was large and the base was pure white, except there was a small line trickling down to the floor. It had only got halfway before drying up. It was red, a color to match his wrists. Blood.

  There was no blood on the shower curtain at least, but as Sheppard stepped toward it, he saw an ominous shape through it—a black mass, distorted by the curtain.

  His nose picked up the unmistakable smell—dark and metallic.

  Before he could stop himself, he reached up and grabbed the curtain. Counting in his head—one, two, three. One quick motion, and he drew it across the bath.

  The smell intensified as he forced his eyes down into the bath—and he saw. God, he saw. And he knew why Mandy screamed as he stifled one himself.

  A man in a brown suit, lying face down in the drained bath. He looked uncomfortable, but you could be forgiven for thinking he was sleeping—if not for the blood. All the blood. It was pooling around his torso, snaking out from underneath him—frozen as the liquid hit the cool air. There was so much—too much. It seemed to have made its way around the length of the tub, giving the illusion that this man was bathing in scarlet.

  All that blood. Focus on something else.

  The man was gray-haired and balding—clumps of gray and white stuck out of his head at odd angles and Sheppard could see the scalp beneath. The man’s hands were by his sides, flecked with blood and wrinkled. Sheppard tried not to think about what he had to do next—he bent down and reached into the bath, slowly, trying to stay as far away from the blood as possible. He pressed a finger to the old man’s ice-cold wrist. He waited thirty seconds. No pulse. Had he really expected anything?

  An old man. Dead. But how?

  The wound was in the front—Sheppard had to turn him over. He felt sick just thinking it but it had to be done. He awkwardly got to his knees using the side of the bath to steady himself. As he reached the floor, he lost his balance and his hand slid into the bath. He lurched forward and felt the cold thickness of blood.

  He withdrew his hand in disgust. Before
he could stop himself, he wiped his hand on his shirt, a smear of red down his chest, regretting it instantly as the smell traveled up from the smear, promising to stay with him.

  He recovered. How was he going to do this? He reached both hands into the bath, one gripping the man’s nearest side, the other reaching over to the farthest. Do it quickly. Do it quickly. Do it quickly.

  In one quick motion, he pushed with his knees, lifting the man. Then pulled with his hands. He used the slope of the bath to leverage the weight. And the man slid down, resting faceup.

  Don’t look at the face. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. The half-congealed blood squelched as the body came to rest on the bottom of the tub.

  He focused on the man’s torso, thinking back to all the crime scene photographs he had seen on the show. Always still images. Taken in the past. Taken a long way away. Never right in front of him. Never there to smell and touch.

  The man’s suit lay open to reveal a light green shirt and a blue tie. At least he thought. The colors were all stained with red. The suit ruined. Hard to tell where the blood was actually coming from. Too much of it. But it seemed to be most around the lower area of the torso.

  Looking closer, the shirt was ripped, lower left. Peering into the tub, as close as he dared, he could see the wound. Two wounds, two deep wounds above the waistband of the man’s trousers. Gashes, so deep they probably hit some internal organ. Intestines, maybe? Sheppard didn’t know. Straight gashes. Narrow. Stab wounds. Maybe a knife?

  Two. Someone had buried a knife in this man, pulled it out, and buried it again. Schup. Schup. Once for safety. Probably aiming for the same place. A hell of a strong attack for so much blood.

  That was it. That was all he could assume. A knife attack. Would a better person know? Know from this exactly who killed him? Who, out there, had the right MO? As he thought, he found his eyes drifting up the man’s chest. His old dusty suit. Clashing tie and shirt. To his face. His white stubble. His eyes shut. His—Sheppard jumped back from the bath, slamming into the heated towel rail and falling on his ass with a great thwack. It was a pain he didn’t even feel. He scrabbled with his limbs and found his way to the corner, squashing himself next to the toilet. He let out a long, drawn-out gasp.

  No...

  13

  Before...

  He was dropped off at the foot of the drive. They got out of there as quick as they could, speeding away as though they’d just dumped a broken washing machine. They didn’t even look him in the eye anymore like he was possessed by something.

  The house looked nice—big. The nice side of London. Not what he wanted when he grew up, but nice. A quiet neighborhood.

  He made his way up the gravel drive, making sure to crunch all the way. The front door opened before he even got there. Like the man on the other side was waiting.

  He was old—wrinkly. He looked like he dyed his hair as some gray was creeping through the brown. His eyes were kind and green and framed by a round pair of glasses. He looked like the kind of man who read the paper every morning, grumbled at the weather and saw doing his taxes as an adventure. But he looked nice enough. A nice man, for a nice house, for a nice place. How boring.

  “You must be Morgan,” he said, as Morgan came to a stop on the doorstep.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Was that your parents in the car? I had hoped to talk to them.”

  He was welcome to them.

  “No matter, I’ll catch them some other time.” The man looked down at him.

  “You’re a quack?” he said.

  The man laughed. “I am a therapist, yes.”

  “They said I needed to see a quack. That was the deal.”

  “Well, sometimes we all need to talk through our problems. But I won’t push you to talk about anything you don’t want to. When you’ve been through something like you have, sometimes it’s good to have an avenue to explore it.”

  Morgan just looked at him.

  The man seemed to visibly convulse. “Silly me, I haven’t introduced myself.” He held out a wrinkled hand. “I’m Simon Winter.”

  Morgan took it. The texture of a used tea bag. But he shook it nonetheless. And when he was asked inside, he went.

  14

  No...

  How long had it been? Five years? Six? Simon Winter lay in the bath tub—dead.

  How was this possible? How was this happening?

  Sheppard couldn’t breathe. It couldn’t be him. It just couldn’t. He crawled over to the bath, fighting instinct all the way. He peered over the edge. Simon Winter. Unmistakable. Lying there, his life streaming out his gut.

  Sheppard’s vision blurred as tears gushed down his face. He gave out a sound that could easily be a dying animal. No. No. No. Not him. How did this happen—how was Winter here, in this room?

  Questions—too many questions—but in front of his eyes, there was a constant fact. Simon Winter, his old psychologist, was dead. This had to be more than just a body—this had to be a message. The man in the horse mask knew him and knew what Winter had meant to him.

  Sheppard covered his mouth with his trembling hand as a fresh whimper came out. Winter must have been so scared—dying all alone. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

  He looked at Winter again. A message—a message that the horse mask didn’t just know Sheppard. He knew him well—almost too well. The speech, the glasses no one knew he had and now Simon Winter, served up for him. The tears just kept coming. No one knew he had seen Simon Winter for the better part of his life. But here the old man was. And Winter had almost certainly died because of Sheppard. When was the last time he had seen Winter alive? What were the last words they had said to each other? All he could remember was that they weren’t kind.

  The old man had his part to play. Every murder mystery needed a corpse. And every corpse was a fresh mystery. Would Winter still be alive if...?

  No. Can’t think like that, Morgan. Almost like Winter was speaking to him. Think like that, and you’re as dead as I am.

  Sheppard brushed his eyes, and reached down to check Winter’s pockets, forcing himself to remember the time limit. He reached into the left pocket, which was soaked in blood. It felt like he was pressing his hand into the wound itself.

  He felt sick.

  There was nothing in the pocket, so he pulled his hand free, trying to ignore the resistance from the sticky, congealed blood.

  Right pocket. Wallet. He took it out, looked through it. The usual cards—Oyster card, bank card, some reward card for a bookstore. Nothing to tell him what he didn’t know already. Dr. Simon Winter, sixty-five years old.

  He put the wallet back and then paused, remembering something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Instinctively, he took two fingers and clutched at the left side of the suit, lifting it up. The inside pocket. He reached inside with his free hand, to find what he had thought would be there.

  He pulled out a small pocket notebook. After all these years, he still kept it in the same place. During their sessions, Winter would reach into his jacket to pull out the notebook, write a few words, and then replace it. It became a quirk that delighted and frustrated Sheppard in equal measure—why didn’t Winter just keep it out if he was going to write in it every few minutes?

  The notebook was relatively untouched with blood, although it did seem very shabby and old. Without a second thought, he opened it up and flicked through it expecting to find brand-new notes. Instead, he found faded writing that looked years old. He flicked through notes on various patients, until he turned a page to find his name.

  Morgan Sheppard. Wait, what? He hadn’t seen Simon Winter in years, but he was carrying a notebook with notes from one of his sessions. The notebook had to be years old.

  Sheppard glanced down at the notes—feeling as though he was violating some kind of privacy. The note
s were dated 06/06/1997 and they detailed one session with him. Winter seemed to have written down standard things—Sheppard’s mood, temperament, what he said. But somehow, in stronger pen strokes, certain words were underlined—dotted all over the page. “Aggressive. Muddled. A new dream about...”

  The words seemed to be underlined with no real purpose. Why underline “A new dream about—” and then not underline what the dream was about? He was asking questions that were decades old. What was more important was why Winter had this notebook with him now? Was it another message from the man in the horse mask? Had he already tampered with the body. How could Sheppard trust anything in this room? How could he trust anything at all?

  Sheppard slipped the notebook into his pocket, not being able to think straight while his dead therapist was staring at him. Winter had been more than that though—Winter had been his friend. A friend when he couldn’t rely on anyone else, not even his parents. Did Winter remember Sheppard fondly? Or did all that happened cloud his perception? Because after all, Sheppard had taken him for granted. Just as he always did. Winter didn’t look in pain—at least there was that.

  “I’m sorry,” Sheppard said, choking on a fresh bout of tears.

  15

  Sheppard crashed out of the bathroom, losing his balance and almost going tumbling into the closet. The image of Simon Winter lying in that bath was imprinted on his vision—a photo negative seared into a life.

  Sheppard. This puzzle was all based around Sheppard, and all he could think of were impossible questions with impossible answers. Winter, blood, sunlight, London, Paris, handcuffs, glasses and a horse mask—all swirling around in his head. A mess. And he had three hours to straighten it out—no, less than three.

  Sheppard remembered something the French woman had said in the red room. She had called him a good man, and she had meant it.

  A good man. But she hadn’t known him—not even slightly.

  Had she been in on it? Had she been tasked to get him into that room? What he’d felt for her had been real—or as real as he could manage nowadays—but was she stringing him along? He had made it easy for her—falling for it hook, line and arsehole.