Guess Who

by Chris McGeorge

  The show would probably go on without him. It would be stupid not to use the publicity to their advantage. A fresh face would be ushered in. Hell, maybe even Eren himself or someone like him. Someone who deserved it. There would be a memorial episode before handing over—a changing of the guard—to a random, a nonentity. The entertainment business stopped for no one—cash the checks and move on. He’d be forgotten in a week.

  He didn’t have many friends. Couldn’t think of a single person he would call one. There was Douglas, but that was different. It was in Douglas’s best interests to get along with him—he was getting paid through the nose for it after all. There were a few people at the television studio he talked to. He didn’t know them well enough to put a name to them. And as he thought more about it, he didn’t know if he hadn’t made those names up as well.

  There were a few ex-girlfriends. Michelle, from university, was a plucky young English student. Sheppard had dumped her the minute he signed the TV. Last time he’d Googled her, she was happily married and pregnant. Her Facebook photos were bright and airy and she wore a smile that he’d never seen on her. He pictured her at a breakfast table with her husband, and a baby in a high chair, reading the paper. “Huh, I used to go out with him.” And that would be it. Next came Suzie, a woman who didn’t respect anything, least of all herself. She wasn’t interested in the world, and the world wasn’t particularly interested in her. She was a celebrity chaser, which Sheppard found out when he found her in bed with a boy band—all five of them. Sheppard dumped her and she took what little self-respect she had left with her. He fell down a hole of unnamed rendezvous, the ones of which he could remember being particularly sordid and fueled by drink or drugs or both. There were so many, it was a blinkandyoumissit type of life. All of them had names like Crystal, Saffron, Rouge—things that could be adjectives. None would mourn him, unless it garnered them some attention.

  No, the person who would probably miss him most was his dealer. He had plunged a lot of capital into the ventures of a certain young druggie (who just so happened to be a bad medical student) with an eye for business etiquette. When the prescriptions ran out, he had had to rethink. He didn’t know how many pills he had bought over the years—probably enough to kill a small army—but he was sure he was the reason that that dealer had kept afloat. What was his name? Sheppard could remember his face, but his name escaped him. He was always hyperactive, his medical degree very obviously in the toilet, and wanted Sheppard to stay and play Call of Duty with him. Sheppard always appreciated that he had never just upped and sold him out to a newspaper. That’s what he would have done.

  Sheppard looked up to see that he had covered a lot of ground. The man in front of him was wearing a suit, with a red tie. When Sheppard saw this, he knew it was impossible that he could have been wearing anything else. The elusive man with the red tie from Constance’s story. The evil man.

  The man was holding a pair of black, shiny, pointed shoes—his feet were buried in the sand. He wasn’t looking at Sheppard but out to sea, with a glazed expression of wonder on his face. Sheppard had seen that expression many times on him when he was younger. It was a look of excitement.

  Sheppard walked up to him, keeping his slow and plodding pace, and only when he was directly beside him did the man turn his head.

  Kace Carver smiled, not horribly or wickedly, but genuinely as if he was indeed happy to see his old friend. “Hello, Morgan,” he said.

  57

  He said it as if nothing had happened—as if they’d bumped into each other on the street years later.

  “Eren,” Sheppard said, feeling the fresh air gush down his throat, drying it up. The name came out as a small rasping sound.

  He didn’t respond—not at first, but his smile dipped slightly. His eyes became less kind. He broke eye contact and looked back out to sea. “No one’s called me that in a long time. I’d really prefer it if you didn’t either. It’s Kace now.”

  “Why?” Sheppard said.

  “Because the boy you knew is gone. This is the new me. The Carver that you created. So, what do you think?” Carver held his hands up and spun around, like someone trying on clothes in a shop, primed for inspection.

  Sheppard wanted to punch him, smash his handsome face in, mash it into something unrecognizable. “You’re a monster,” he settled on instead.

  Carver chuckled. “Well, you’ve looked better as well.” Carver looked him up and down. “You really are a state. I didn’t think you’d look this bad. I mean, Jesus. You’re pathetic.”

  “You locked me in a bunker to die,” Sheppard said, resenting himself at how much it sounded like an excuse.

  “Yes I did, but here you are. Isn’t it a marvel—the human being’s resilience, the need to survive? Or, of course, maybe this was all part of the plan.” Carver winked.

  Sheppard looked out to sea. He couldn’t bring himself to look at that face anymore. “Where are we?”

  Carver looked around. “We’re on Luskentyre, a beach in the Outer Hebrides. You’re in Scotland, Morgan.”

  “How is that possible? How was I in Paris and now I’m in Scotland? How was everyone else in London and now they’re here?”

  “Nothing supernatural, Morgan. No magic. Just a matter of science. Science and a private jet.”

  Sheppard genuinely laughed at this, looking back at Carver, but quickly saw that Carver was not joking. “A private jet?”

  Carver cleared his throat. “Seeing as you are going to ask me all these questions, I might as well just tell you. I think I owe you an explanation before you leave.”

  Before you leave.

  Sheppard had no fight left in him. He had no will to run away screaming. He just nodded. He wanted to know. “Okay.”

  Carver nodded too. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment. I have been harboring a special kind of resentment for you, Morgan Sheppard, and if you have to ask why, then you really haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been watching you, watching all your feeble relationships, your vapid television program, all your enigmatic substance abuse. Sometimes I have been right behind you, so much so I could whisper in your ear—but you never noticed me. I’d been content being the observer, but something changed.

  “Three years ago, my father died in prison. I visited him every week, ever since my aunt let me. I never missed a visit—and then one day I went and he wasn’t there. He was never built for prison. In some ways, I’m shocked he lasted as long as he did. Two guys blinded him with sharpened plastic cutlery, cut his throat. When the guards found him, half of him was spread out on the floor. Some people say the guards were in on it. You see, I think my father was killed because he was too nice.

  “That’s the first time I really knew the extent of my hatred. That was when it was over and when it had just begun. I knew the one man who had ruined my life was out there, popping pills like Tic Tacs and barreling through lives like they’re nothing. I knew I had to stop you. I knew it was my duty.

  “My father left behind not an unreasonable estate. But it wouldn’t have been enough to support me. I sold everything. Even...no, especially...the family house. It gave me enough to start anew. I bought a small flat in Milton Keynes. Not very grand, but enough.

  “I used the rest of the money to invest in stocks. A risky venture, you might say. But it was easy enough for me. As you remember, or don’t, as the case may be, I’ve always been gifted with a rather special mind. I treated the stock market like I would, say, a murder. I analyzed every inch, every eventuality, every outcome. It was almost fun. But it was also too easy. I still do it—but I’ve lost interest.

  “Once you have so much money—well, even that seems boring.

  “So I needed a new venture. And that is when I got the idea. To finally find you. And make you see what you’d done. I had the capital, all I needed was the plan.”

  “What about
the others? Mandy and Winter,” Sheppard said.

  “I knew very quickly that I would need help on this venture of mine. It was a lot of work. I found one of my helpers at one of your God-awful parties. She had snuck in to try and get you to confess to killing her brother. Not directly killing, of course. You never do anything that could actually get you in trouble, do you? You prefer the indirect route.

  “Amanda Phillips seemed keen—she was almost as eager for revenge as me. You have probably seen it—that fire behind her eyes. Did you know that you could do that to people? Anyway, Amanda was on board almost immediately, but I couldn’t let there be a slight chance that she would disappear. So I let her fall in love with me. It was pretty easy—she was vulnerable, and I’ve always been blessed with a certain charisma. We bonded over you. Soon enough, she would do anything for me. Even kill, and even die. Of course, she never actually thought I would let her die down there. Even when we were planting the explosives, she thought I would somehow swoop in to save her, in the event of us blowing the place sky-high. She was so clever, but what is it they say? Ah yes—love makes fools of us all. I didn’t ever believe that, but it turns out it’s true.

  “Dr. Winter was a little harder to bewitch. Even though you messed up his daughter and he knew the truth...”

  “It was you,” Sheppard said, “it was you who told him. That’s what he was talking about that night.”

  “I’ll let you into a little secret, Morgan,” Carver said. “I was there that night.” He laughed. “In the kitchen. It was quite a show.”

  Sheppard felt a shiver go down his spine. Eren had been there—had really only been one step behind him.

  “Anyway, even after all that, Winter was still reluctant. The old man had a code. The terrible thing about codes though—the wording’s always terrible, no one really knows how far they can go before they get to their breaking point, so how is one to know when to stop? Winter was a fragile soul. Eventually, he snapped. It was that night—you remember it. He was very useful in providing information about drugs that could knock someone out for long periods of time, for instance. And he was good at doing the things I didn’t want to do. Like going to the hotel and buying the land on which the bunker is based. It’s always nice to have a partner after all. Well half partner, half scapegoat.

  “See, I had to make sure that things went how I wanted. So we had to make sure anyone who could possibly rumble us was taken care of. Luckily we needed people inside the room so that worked out well. We didn’t have to choose random people. In a way, they chose themselves. And Mandy fit in perfectly as one of them—and after all, she could easily play the pretty young thing. The girl that just so happened to be entirely your type. It was perfect—almost like it was destined to be.

  “There was one person who was never in my plan though. One person who was never meant to be in the room. Alan Hughes. Dr. Winter went off script, used my plans for himself. So I changed mine.

  “See, we knew Mandy was going to be in the room as your temptress, but the body was never meant to be Dr. Winter. I wanted him with me, watching everything, providing his professional opinion. But he decided to get personal, do things he didn’t tell us about. He got very angry toward the end—not just toward you but toward the world. It was about his daughter—he found out I had Mandy take a job where she worked, just to check on her. I knew that he might lash out again at a point I couldn’t predetermine. So I knew we had to get rid of him—and we did need a body for the bathtub. Of course he didn’t know—the old fool.”

  No, Sheppard thought, Winter was worth more than you gave him credit for. He worked it out straight away. He knew he was going to his death—and decided to tell me exactly who killed him. This was what he thought, but he found he still couldn’t speak.

  “Of course, with Winter being in the bathtub, I knew the whole structure of your investigation would change. People would recognize Winter and you would start to piece together some kind of truth. I thought about it for a long time, but in the end I knew you wouldn’t have enough of the facts to get to me, and even if you did figure it out, you couldn’t do anything. In a way, having Winter there was better. I could see the look in your eyes when you saw him.”

  Carver smiled. Sheppard felt sick. An old man died and the only way his friend could think of it was as a cog in his machine.

  “I was planning to pick the corpse at random so it would be more difficult. So really, you were playing my game on Easy mode. And you still couldn’t do it.”

  A gust of wind threatened to blow him over. Carver stood steadfast.

  “Far less easy was actually getting everyone into the room. The stage was set, but we needed the players. We extracted most people without incident—we used the gas to knock a person out and then got them into a van where we gave a general anesthetic that could be applied at regular intervals on the trip. We used my private jet to get here, transferring you first and then all the London people. Mandy stayed with you to make sure you didn’t wake up while we got everyone else. You think that it has only been a matter of hours since you fell asleep in Paris. But in truth it’s been two days.”

  “Two days,” Sheppard said. “How is that possible?”

  Carver smiled. “People seem so astounded at this, but hospitals keep patients asleep for hours upon hours, sometimes days. You know that the longest surgery ever was four whole days. The human body is a wonderful thing, Morgan. You should know that. How much alcohol have you poured into that liver of yours? And you’re still standing. The body adapts, repairs itself, forgives and forgets.”

  They were quiet for a moment. Sheppard didn’t know what to say—there was nothing left.

  Carver seemed to agree. “I think that’s it,” he said. “I know it’s probably not what you had dreamed up in that head of yours, but there it is. The cruel hard truth I have found over the last three years is that money really can buy anything. But anything isn’t enough for me. No, I just want one little thing in particular.” Carver put his hand into the waistband of his suit trousers and brought out a small compact pistol. Sheppard had never seen a gun in real life before, but even the sight of it sent him into uncontrollable shivers. “Do you have any more questions?” He clicked the safety off, and held the gun at his side. “Or shall we begin?”

  He had to force the words out. “Begin? What have we been doing up to this point?”

  “Playing.”

  “Playing? People died, Eren.” Fear in his voice, impossible to mask. “What else do you want? You wanted to hear me say it? I said it. You deserve everything that I have. I admit it. I am nothing. I never was—not without you.”

  Carver’s face suddenly turned a shade of red. However, when he spoke, his voice was still calm. “You know you’re only here because of yourself. You have waded through life without even the slightest sniff of consequences. I am the man at the end of the road. This is the path that you set us on twenty-five years ago, Morgan. And you have to be held accountable for that.”

  Sheppard opened his mouth and found that he could talk again, or that he was allowed. “I was a child. I was eleven years old.”

  “And it seems like you still are. I guess I have to give you a bit of credit. Not many eleven-year-olds manage to deceive the world. All these years, you could have owned up, come clean, but you never did. You’re pathetic. You just wrapped yourself up in all your rubbish and started to believe it yourself. You—a detective? You can’t even save yourself. How are you meant to protect other people?”

  “I’ve saved people...”

  Carver laughed. “You’re talking about those people down in the bunker? Ahearn and Quinn and Michel. You saved them from what exactly? You?”

  “No. I saved them from you.”

  “You didn’t save Hughes. You didn’t save Winter. Ahearn is going to prison now, for the rest of her life. So will my little helper, Amanda. And Quinn—he’s down there dyi
ng right now. Because you couldn’t protect them.”

  “How could I have stopped it? I was locked in...”

  “Oh shut up. Hughes and Winter are dead because of you. Ahearn and Amanda are killers because of you. What part of that don’t you understand? This was all because of you.”

  Sheppard’s strength was low, and Eren’s accusations hit him harder than the gusts of wind. He found himself looking down. Because of him—that was undeniable. But this had all happened because of Eren too, and somehow his old friend was blind to that fact.

  “So this is the end of your plan? The ending of your story? You’re going to kill me?” Sheppard said, meeting Eren’s eyes.

  Carver looked at the gun in his hand and waved it at him. “Yeah. Kind of poetic. I was thinking about drowning you, but even I have limits.”

  For some reason, this made Sheppard smile. Was this even happening? The delirium, the withdrawal, the exhaustion. It was all making it seem like a dream. Maybe he was still stuck down in the bunker, gasping for air as the timer ticked down to zero. Was this just all the final brain gasp of a dying man? He wasn’t sure which prospect was better, but it seemed that the outcome was going to be the same.

  Maybe it was for the best.

  People had died. Alan Hughes. Simon Winter. Mandy’s brother. He’d messed up Winter’s daughter. He just took from the world—take and take and take. Maybe it was time to give back—a debt repaid.

  “So,” Carver said, “are you ready, old friend?” He held the pistol to Sheppard’s head.

  58

  “Get on your knees,” he said, placing his shoes down on the sand, so he could hold the gun up with both hands.

  Sheppard did what he was told.