“Let’s hear him out, Mandy.” Ryan. “At least then he might shut up.”
“That man has the power of the Devil behind his eyes.” Constance. Impossible to tell who she was talking about.
“Shut up.” Alan.
He could see shadows of them. Could picture them all standing around talking about him. Alan. Mandy. Ryan. Constance. Maybe even Headphones.
When the cat’s away...
“Are you hearing what I said?” Alan said. “That man cannot be trusted.”
“He’s trying to help,” Mandy said.
“Help who? He’s trying to help himself. Why do you think we’re all still here and he’s off gallivanting around in the vents? We don’t even know if he’ll come back.”
“Of course he’s going to come back. You’re not making any sense.”
“How’s this then—we’re not going to pretend we didn’t hear everyone else’s story, right? Everyone has a connection to either Simon Winter or this horse mask guy, everyone except him. Why hasn’t he told us anything about that?”
“We don’t know it’s the horse mask guy. And why would Sheppard need to tell us? We already know who he is.”
“Yes, Mandy,” Ryan said, “but how much do we know, really? Maybe Alan has a point. An incredibly labored point, but a point. Anything could be going on here. This could be all some kind of weird setup.”
“This man is not a detective. Not in any real sense of the word. He’s a TV phony. They crave attention. Especially him. And I’m quite sure he’d do anything to stay in the limelight.” Alan’s voice.
A sigh. Sounded like Mandy. “Will you two listen to yourselves, please? Mr. Sheppard is stuck here just like the rest of us. Right now, he’s trying to get us out of here. Why would he kill anyone? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Sheppard’s stomach turned over. What? That was what they were talking about? How in the hell could they think... Alan. Alan was turning them against him. And it seemed like it had already worked on Ryan.
“Why is him killing Winter any weirder than one of us killing him? I know for a fact that I didn’t, and I’m not sure anyone else here right now did. What did you say before—misdirection?”
No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. Not Ryan. “Exactly,” Alan said, not bothering to hide the triumph in his voice. “What if this isn’t his game at all? What if it’s ours?”
Sheppard didn’t want to hear any more. He had to get back in the room as quickly as possible. The vents were a washout—a dead end before they’d even started. And if he didn’t get back, things could get a whole lot worse. He shrugged off the itching feeling and carried on, moving faster than he thought he could. Mandy could only fight his corner for so long.
Alan did it. He had to have done. This was his plan all along. Convince everyone else that Sheppard killed Winter. But why? What was in it for him?
And there it was. Another wrinkle in the plan. One so obvious he didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before. Why was the murderer even going along with this? Why had no one just owned up to it? Because surely they were going to die too if Sheppard got it wrong. Unless he/she had been promised safety. But how would that work?
Alan killed Winter. The why didn’t matter. Probably something to do with his precious case. Or maybe not even that. If he had been in on the plan from the start, it could have just been to set up the game. He would get back to the room, and declare Alan the murderer.
Before he knew it, he came to another turn. His head awash with theories.
Down or left? This layout made no sense—down would put him back to where he started and left would have him retreading the east wall albeit from higher up. He didn’t know for sure, but he didn’t think this was how vents worked. Why were there none going to any of the other rooms? It was almost as if this was all there was to the vent system. Did every room have their own system? But he knew better than that. The dead ends. C, the evil man, had done something to the vents. He had foreseen Sheppard’s little expedition and planned it all out.
He probably rigged it all—the discovery of the phones, finding something to unscrew the grate. Maybe he even hoped it would happen. To waste time.
Oh God, time. How long had he been in here?
Ahead there was some kind of widening. He could see the vent turn but also carry on. As he got closer, he saw that it was a wide junction. He pushed himself into it and immediately stretched out. The phone light flailed and caught on something in the center of the junction.
A flicker of white.
He focused on it, crawling forward. Something else was there—something reflective, bouncing back the light. And then, as he moved forward arcing the flashlight, he saw it. The red—the blood that had dulled and dried on it. It was a knife, a wide knife—sharp, one that looked like it was to flake fish or something. The moment he saw it, he had no doubt that this was the knife that had killed Simon Winter. It had to be. And it had been hidden in the vents because that was always where Sheppard was going to go. This was just another part of the plan.
An unreasonable sadness burrowed into him. The knife sat in a pool of blood, which had dried and clotted and now looked more like jelly than something that came out of a human. Next to the knife, slightly stained in scarlet, was a message on another piece of paper.
THIS IS THE MURDER WEAPON C
That smiley face again. That signature—C. This was the knife that had killed his psychologist—the knife that had been thrust into his gut, pulled out and thrust in again. Who had put it here? The murderer or C himself? Maybe the murderer was C? Making his way through all the vents just to leave the knife here. C was guiding him—had been all this time. And time was ticking away.
C wants you to fail. The murderer wants you to fail. The masked man wants you to fail. He wants you to die. And he wants you to kill them all.
He had to get the knife back to the room. There could be a clue to it, but there was no way he could see well enough to notice it here. This wasn’t over. With no exit, all he could do was carry on. With any luck, he hadn’t been in the vents as long as it felt.
He reached forward and touched the knife. He ran a finger slowly down the blade. It was definitely sharp. Sharp enough to pierce skin, muscle, organs. Sharp enough to end a life. He grasped the knife’s wooden handle with his thumb and forefinger and pulled it out of the mess of congealed blood. He tried to ignore the ripping squelch that accompanied it. He put the knife down now it was free of its trappings and wiped some Simon Winter on the breast of his shirt. He instantly regretted it.
As the situation seemed too much, he remembered the minute bottle of bourbon in his trouser pocket. As good a time as any, he thought. With some difficulty, he reached a hand into his pocket and brought out the bottle. It was even smaller than he remembered. He unscrewed the top and looked down at the knife. He gulped the liquid down and it was gone in less than a second.
The feeling of salvation was so fleeting that he had to question if he had felt it at all. It subsided the pain a little at least. But it couldn’t touch the dejection. He had come into the vents with thoughts of escape.
But now he knew that this was far from over. C was nowhere near finished with him.
Silently, he placed the bottle down and picked up the knife instead. With one last look at the pool of blood and his bourbon bottle sitting next to it, he shuffled back toward the room.
32
Sheppard felt sunlight on his face as he stuck his head back into the room. He tried to climb out of the grate as gracefully as possible but ended up falling face first onto the bed. The knife fell down next to him, dangerously close to his eyes.
He scrabbled around and sat up. Alan was staring at him, arms crossed and face stern with focused rage. Next to him, on either side, were Ryan and Constance. Mandy stood off to the side, next to Headphones who was looking worried. Both of t
hem were looking nervously at the knife, while the others seemed not to have noticed it.
“The Good Sheppard returns,” Alan said, with all the triumph still in his voice.
Sheppard quickly got off the bed—the left side. The bed between him and everyone else.
Ryan looked down at the knife. “What is that?”
Sheppard spluttered. “It’s the murder weapon. I found it in the vents.”
“What about a way out?” Mandy said.
“There is no way out. He knew someone was going to go in there. He blocked it off.”
Sheppard went to pick up the knife, but Ryan jumped forward.
Sheppard suppressed a groan. “Are you serious?”
“No sudden moves, Detective,” Alan said.
He threw his hands up in disgust. “Are you hearing what I’m saying? There’s no escape. You have to let me do what I can to get us out of here. The knife is the next clue. I’m closer to solving this thing.”
“And how did you know where to find it?” Alan said.
There was a murmur from Constance, who seemed to be hiding behind Alan now.
“I didn’t know where to find it. I was in the vents trying to get us all out of here. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since we woke up here.”
Alan smiled. “You were being reckless—endangering everyone in this room. And you were so adamant that it had to be you, weren’t you? You had to be the one who went into the vents. See, we’ve decided something while you were gone. Because from the very beginning this was always about you—the big shot television man stroking his ego just a little bit more. Well maybe this was more about you than I cared to admit.”
“No. No,” Sheppard said, “it’s you. I know it’s you. And I’m going to prove it.”
“Ramblings of a drunk and a drug addict and a piece of human waste. Don’t try and confuse things now. Go out with a little dignity, huh?”
“You’re insane,” Sheppard said. Panicking. “This is insane. I’m trying to...” But he trailed off. Not knowing what else to say. He shot a look at Mandy. She looked away. Not her too. If she believed it, then that was it. It was over. Headphones’s, Rhona’s, eyes were shut, her face screwed up.
“Why did you go and get the knife?” Alan continued. “So you could off another one of us. Stab us in the back.”
“If you just listened to yourself, you’d see that this makes no sense.”
They were advancing now. Closing the gap between them and him.
“I think this actually makes perfect sense,” Alan said. “You killed Simon Winter, didn’t you? What secrets would he have told us if he were still alive?”
Ryan stepped around the bed. Sheppard looked at him pleadingly. “Ryan, please. We don’t have time for this.”
Ryan looked guilty, but not for long. “It does make sense. You being all secretive, keeping things from us. We don’t even know anything about you. Not really.”
“I’m being the detective,” Sheppard said, in the same voice as a child playing dress-up. “I can’t tell everyone everything. That’s not how it works. And besides, the murderer is here with us.”
“Yes,” Alan said definitively. “He is.”
Ryan put his hand around Sheppard’s back and before he realized what he was doing, he felt something cold lock around his wrist.
Not again. No, not again.
Ryan forced Sheppard’s other arm around and cuffed the other wrist. There was no point in struggling. There was nowhere to go.
“You’re making a terrible mistake,” Sheppard said, to anyone who’d meet his gaze. “I have to solve this murder or we’re all going to die.”
Ryan brought him around—still weak from the vent crawling—and pushed him in the back. Forcing him forward.
“Don’t worry about that, Morgan,” Alan said. “I’ve just solved this murder.”
Morgan.
Sheppard looked into Alan’s smug face. “What did you just call me, you bastard?”
Ryan pushed him again. Toward the bathroom.
This was all happening too fast. Ryan jabbed him again and Sheppard stumbled forward. He glanced around to the bedside before it disappeared from view.
The timer. 01:02:43. Ticking down and down.
“No, you can’t do this,” he shouted. “He’s playing games with you.” He couldn’t fight it—too exhausted, too thirsty, too wanting. It was all he could do not to crumple in a heap. It was over. It was all over. Alan had brainwashed them all, and there was barely an hour left.
Ryan went around him and opened the bathroom door.
He nodded inside. “Make it easy, yeah.”
“Ryan.” A harsh whisper. “It’s Alan. Alan killed him. I know he did. You have to trust me.”
“I can’t trust anything anymore,” Ryan said. And he grabbed Sheppard by the wrists and shoved him into the bathroom. He tripped on the first tile and went barreling into the room, crashing into the sink. He turned to see Ryan staring dumbly at him.
“For what it’s worth,” Ryan said. “I didn’t think it would be you.”
He shut the door.
33
Before...
He was sitting on his hands—didn’t know what else to do with them. He looked around the room. Winter was staring at him like a bespectacled praying mantis and he tried not to meet his eyes. There was only twenty minutes left on the clock and this meeting was cutting into his valuable drinking time. He was currently in the throes of a managed addiction—a day without drinking seemed like a wasted opportunity although he could hold off if he needed to.
Winter cleared his throat. Sheppard just tried to focus on the items on Winter’s desk. In the twenty years he had been coming to this room he didn’t think anything on the desk had ever moved—not even a millimeter—even down to the pile of papers and pen positioned neatly in the center.
Winter cleared his throat again. Sheppard finally gave in and looked at the old man sitting in the red armchair he always did for his sessions. “We’re twenty-five minutes into the session, Morgan, and you don’t seem to be as open as usual.”
Not a question, a statement. Just putting it out there.
Nothing to really respond to—apart from calling him Morgan when he had very kindly asked Winter not to. Everyone called him Sheppard—to the point where when someone called him by his first name it took him a second to remember they were addressing him.
“How’s work?” Winter said.
“Fine,” Sheppard said. It was fine. The show had been picked up for another two series, which would see it run for at least another two years—another 120 episodes. If life were measured in content, he would have won a long time ago.
“I watch you on television when I don’t have a session. There was a rather interesting one on yesterday.”
“What do you think?” Sheppard said.
“It’s...good.”
He was lying. Sheppard didn’t need a psych degree to tell that. “What do you like about it?” he said, just to have a little fun.
Winter seemed to visibly squirm for a second (bluff called) but then realized what Sheppard was doing and snapped out of it, straightening his glasses. “You’ve been doing a lot of work.”
“Twelve hours a day. I have to be at the station in the morning for any live cuts to Morning Coffee...”
“Wait, your show is called Resident Detective, is it not?”
Sheppard sighed. “Yes, but it’s on after Morning Coffee. Sometimes the presenters of Morning Coffee throw it over to me to do a ‘Today on the show...’ kind of thing.”
“Why do you have to do that live? Could you not just record them?”
“I’ve been fighting the bosses over that one. Their response is they want to do it live so that it feels genuine. Like if Morning Coffee had just had a news story or a feature o
n socks for cats, I could comment on it.” I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. Sheppard hated Morning Coffee. He hated the smug presenters. He hated his stupid live links. And what was worse, it meant he had to get up two hours earlier than he would have to normally. “We start filming the actual show at half ten. We usually run till about eight at night, four days a week and shoot about four, maybe five episodes in a day.”
Winter looked visibly impressed, but then that could just be a trick. Over the years Sheppard had become wary of the old man. Winter understood human behavior very well and mimicking it for a cheap revelation was not above him. “That is a lot of work. How do you keep going?”
I pop pills like a lunatic and I wash them down with liquid only a few rungs down from paint thinner. “A positive attitude.”
Winter laughed and then grew silent. He put his pen down on the notebook he always had in his lap—a sure sign that things were about to get serious. “I cannot lie—I am slightly concerned about you, Morgan.”
Sheppard suppressed a sigh.
“Throwing yourself into your work is good, but you must achieve a balance between work and leisure time. You look like you haven’t slept since our last session.”
I have slept—if fragmented drunken dozing can be called sleep. Sheppard remembered a conversation with Douglas—ironically, over beers—where Douglas said that heavy drinkers pretty much forget what normal sleep is like, and what feeling truly awake is like. He could now confirm that. Sheppard drifted through life constantly half unconscious, just going from one scene to the next because there was nothing else—it was something to do.
“I just want to make sure that you are not doing yourself any harm by taking too much on. You have to stop sometime, Morgan. Why don’t you take some time for yourself?”
It was Sheppard’s turn to laugh. “Do you have any idea how television works? Hmm? You can’t just take time off whenever you want. I’m at the forefront of one of the biggest morning shows in the country. I’m making money out my ass. And if nothing else, I’m contracted for two years. I can’t drop everything for some spirit journey.”
Guess Who Page 14
