by Gary Gibson
By some unconscious agreement, we followed the scent of brine and seaweed towards the harbour, a short walk from Wallace’s home. ‘All I know concerning my predecessor’s death is that it was some kind of stupid accident,’ I said. ‘Except later, of course, Nadia started wondering if maybe it wasn’t some stupid accident after all, but deliberate. There must have been at least some kind of investigation into what happened to the other Jerry when he died, right?’
She nodded. ‘There was a short inquiry, yes.’
‘So what do you know about the circumstances of his death? Was he alone, or was there anyone else with him at the time?’
‘The way I heard it,’ said Rozalia, ‘he’d headed off to explore some ruins on an alternate, and climbed up high inside the remains of some building. He lost his footing and fell.’
‘But there’s always at least a two-man team, isn’t there? So who was the other guy?’
‘Haden,’ she said. She nodded as if remembering something. ‘He was first on the scene. But by the time he got there, well . . . your other self was already dead.’
‘Could Haden have . . . ?’
She shook her head. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but no. They had a couple of wheeled drones with them at the time, and Haden was visible in the camera of one of them when your predecessor died. He was nowhere near Jerry and didn’t manage to get to him for some minutes. By the time he did, it was too late.’
‘Wallace Deans is supposed to be some kind of computer wizard,’ I said. ‘Given what I just found in his house, isn’t it at least possible he had something to do with it?’
She nodded. ‘It’s possible, in theory at least. As a matter of fact, I was on that expedition along with Wallace as well – but we were both back at the staging area, maybe a hundred kilometres from where your predecessor was when he had his fatal fall. I’d say that puts Wallace in the clear.’ She frowned. ‘Or at least, I think it does.’
‘Nadia told me once that Wallace has a reputation for sticky fingers.’
Rozalia chuckled. ‘Yeah. The man’s a full-blooded kleptomaniac, which gives credence to the idea he maybe stole it from your predecessor.’
‘Except it still doesn’t explain how the hell the damn thing wound up in his bedroom drawer, if he was a hundred kilometres away. Could Wallace have stolen the coin from the other Jerry’s body after they brought it back?’
Rozalia glanced back towards Wallace’s place. ‘I guess it’s possible. But if you want to be sure one way or the other, your only real course of action is just to go back there and ask him while you have the chance.’
‘No.’ I shook my head.
‘Why not?’
I glanced at her.
‘Because of Casey?’ she asked.
‘He started acting weird from the moment he walked into the bar. Didn’t you notice how he was trying to get rid of us the whole time?’
‘Under any other circumstances, I’d have said that was just Casey being an asshole. He’s antediluvian enough to think looking weak in front of a woman is about the worst thing that could happen to him. He’s always strutting around with that damn gun strapped to his leg like he’s the fucking Lone Ranger.’
I’m sorry, Wallace had said. He might just have been apologizing for nearly throwing up on my shoes, but I felt sure it was because of the coin he’d seen in my hand. Sorry for what?
I came to a decision. ‘I’m going to tell you something,’ I said to Rozalia.
She listened while I detailed everything I had learned about my predecessor’s final diary entries, and why I was beginning to suspect they had been deliberately fabricated.
‘I’ll have to be honest,’ Rozalia said drily once I’d finished, ‘Chloe’s not the kind of girl who’d ever put up with that kind of shit. Anyone who did try something like that, I guarantee they’d find themselves relieved of their balls in a second flat.’
‘There has to be some reason,’ I said, ‘for him to have fabricated those entries.’ I pounded one fist into the other. ‘It’s a message of some kind, and it has to do with those statues, I’m sure of it.’
‘Well?’ asked Rozalia, leaning against the sea wall by the harbour and studying me, ‘what’s stopping you?’
‘I tried to get Chloe to go and take a look at them with me, but she was insistent about getting some rest. She’s just back from a mission and, to be fair, she was asleep on her feet.’
Rozalia shook her head. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said, ‘but why’s it so important to have her along?’
‘My predecessor didn’t write those entries and draw those pictures for my benefit. He did them for Chloe’s, and he must have believed she could work something out from clues he left. Unless she comes with me, I can’t be sure I can work out whatever it is he intended.’
‘Well,’ said Rozalia, looking around the deserted harbour. ‘The night’s still young. I knew him, though certainly not as well as Chloe. How about I go out there with you and we can take a look ourselves first? And if we don’t find anything, we head out again in the morning with Chloe.’
‘That,’ I said, with feverish excitement, ‘sounds like a damn good idea.’
SEVENTEEN
Not long after I had got home and grabbed up the notebook and stuffed it in a satchel, I saw headlights pull up outside. I slung the satchel over my shoulders and stepped back outside to find Rozalia waiting there for me behind the wheel of an open-top jeep. To my surprise, Chloe was sitting behind her.
‘I hate you,’ Chloe said tonelessly, as I climbed in the front beside Rozalia.
I stared over my shoulder at her in bafflement. ‘What the hell did I do?’
She glared at me. ‘Not you. Queen Bitch there in the driver’s seat.’
‘Now, now,’ said Rozalia.
‘I need to sleep,’ Chloe moaned.
‘So sleep,’ said Rozalia testily. ‘I’m the one who’s driving.’
‘Maybe Chloe’s right,’ I said. ‘She needs to get some rest. You and me can handle this just fine.’
Rozalia gave me a withering look. ‘The sooner we get out there and try and figure this out,’ she said, ‘the more chance I have of working out whether there’s any connection with what happened to Nadia. And I’m not waiting one damn minute more than I absolutely have to. So I say we’re going now. Got that?’
Chloe stared at her blearily, then let her head sink back against her seat until she stared up at the stars.
‘Here,’ said Rozalia, grabbing a plastic tin from the dashboard and handing it back to Chloe, who stared dully at it in her hand.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘Mother’s little helper,’ said Rozalia with a grin. ‘Couple of those and you’ll be scaling mountains in no time.’
Chloe shook her head wearily, shaking a couple of the amphetamine tablets into her palm and dry-swallowing them. I pulled the notebook back out of my satchel, riffling through the pages until I found the entry I wanted.
‘Did you tell Chloe about what just happened at Wallace’s place?’ I asked Rozalia.
‘She told me,’ Chloe muttered from behind me. ‘And I know all about the half-coin you and the other Jerry always wore. He’d never walk out of the house without it.’
‘You sound like you resented it,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I did. But I couldn’t blame him either.’ She sighed. ‘We compromised, and he just carried it in his pocket.’
I smoothed down the notebook pages, then passed it back to Chloe. ‘Look at the drawing,’ I said.
The picture covered the top half of two pages and showed a row of Easter Island statues – the very same ones, in fact, that I had happened upon during my earlier trip north. My predecessor had seen fit to depict one of the central moai clutching a handbag.
‘The entry’s about one of those picnics that never happened,’ I explained. ‘Now turn to the next page.’
Chloe dutifully turned the page, which featured another large illustration, again
taking up half the page. This time the illustration was of that same central statue, but this time minus the handbag.
Chloe looked up at me, befuddled and exhausted, from the rear seat. ‘What about it?’
‘What is it about that statue,’ I asked, ‘that he’s so determined to draw your attention to it?’
She gave me a look. ‘Are you sure you’re not reading too much into all this?’
‘I know how his mind worked,’ I said, ‘because we have the same mind. Why that statue? Why draw it at all, or even make up any of these entries?’
Chloe passed the notebook back to me and I looked at Rozalia. ‘Aren’t you worried someone might ask where we’re going at this time of night?’
She shrugged and started the engine. ‘I figure we can just tell them we’re going on a picnic.’
We reached our destination a little under half an hour later, the wind sharp and cool against our faces. The statues were easy to spot, being silhouetted by moonlight that made the whole scene somehow eerie and primordial. Rozalia cut the engine, and I looked back at Chloe.
‘Coming?’ I asked her.
‘Sure,’ she said, climbing out. ‘Not that I have one damn idea what’s so special about these statues.’
Rozalia was next out of the jeep, then myself. The three of us made our way in silence across the grass towards the row of statues. I had forgotten just how huge the things were. Once again I extracted the notebook from my satchel and opened it as we drew closer to the statues.
‘So what exactly do you think we’re looking for here?’ asked Rozalia, staring up at the towering forms.
‘No bloody idea,’ I replied, then stepped up close to the stone platform supporting the statues. Rozalia watched me with a perplexed expression.
I trailed my hand along the edge of the Cyclopean platform as I walked along its length, until I came to a point where a few sea-rounded boulders had been pushed up against its side. On a whim, I hoisted myself up on top of them and found that with a little work I could just about get a handhold on the platform’s upper surface.
It took a few tries, but I finally managed to hoist myself up on top of the platform. I leaned against the foot of one of the statues, breathing hard from my effort. Even though I knew these moai had stood here for centuries, surviving hurricanes and storms and gales, some part of me couldn’t shake the conviction that I might end up toppling them over like dominoes, were I to lean against them too hard.
I got back up and carefully made my way along the platform to the statue illustrated in the diary. Rozalia kept pace with me on the ground, and I waved down at her. She waved back half-heartedly, and with a look that implied she thought I should be locked up. Chloe had been staring out to sea, lost in her own thoughts, but then she turned round to look up at me.
‘See anything?’ she called up.
I leaned back, staring up the height of the statue until I felt a twinge of vertigo. ‘Not a damn thing,’ I called back down. Suddenly I felt ridiculous; I had no idea what I was doing or what I was looking for. For all I knew, I was just wasting time.
I was just about to give up and climb back down again when I thought I saw something, wedged into a crevice between the foot of the statue and the platform on which it stood.
‘Are you coming down yet?’ Rozalia called up.
‘Hang on,’ I said, lowering myself on to my hands and knees by the bottom of the statue.
The moonlight was just bright enough that I could see that something had indeed been pushed into a crevice at the base of one of the statues. It looked as if it had been wrapped in something wrinkled and shiny. I wriggled my fingers into the crack, just catching the edge of the package. It felt slippery, like plastic. I tried to get a grip on it, but succeeded only in pushing it deeper into the crevice.
‘Damn it,’ I said, then looked back down at the two women. ‘Have either of you got something I can use to prise something out of here? I think I see something wedged in there, but I can’t reach it.’
‘What is it?’ Chloe called up.
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Hang on,’ said Rozalia. I glanced down and saw she was holding up a penknife. ‘Will this do?’
‘Sure,’ I called down. ‘Better than nothing.’
Rozalia tossed it up, and I caught it in my cupped hands.
‘Thanks.’ I turned back to the crevice, pushing the thin blade inside the crevice, working it in slowly until its tip caught the edge of the package.
It took a lot more work and time than I would have preferred. I swore and struggled until, finally, I was able to shift the concealed package from side to side, slowly sliding it closer and closer. Eventually, I could get enough of a grip on it to pull it out altogether. I found myself holding something wrapped in oilskins and secured with plastic twine, and felt a burst of savage triumph.
At last, perhaps, I could have some answers.
Two minutes later I was back on the ground. I knelt by the platform for shelter against the wind and used Rozalia’s knife to slice through the twine before unwrapping what proved to be a single large sheet of oilskin containing a few dozen pages ripped from a notebook, and covered in handwriting I instantly recognized as my own.
‘How did you know?’ Chloe exclaimed, staring at the pages in my hand. The wind pulled at my hair, and I felt a few small spits of rain land on my face. I had a feeling a storm was on its way.
I pressed the pages against my chest before they had a chance to blow away. ‘We should get out of here before it really starts pelting down,’ I said.
Rozalia and Chloe looked at each other, then both nodded. ‘Agreed.’
Thunder rolled across the landscape as we climbed back inside the jeep, and it soon began to rain heavily. There was more thunder, closer this time, and preceded by a flash.
‘I don’t want to drive all the way back south through this,’ said Rozalia, reaching hurriedly for the ignition as the rain came down. ‘There’s a fisherman’s hut just half a mile from here. We can wait the storm out there and take a look at whatever the hell it is you found.’
The ‘hut’ turned out to be slightly more substantial than the name suggested. It was big enough to hold a cot bed and a small wood-burning stove, beside which someone had left a pile of ready-chopped wood. There was even a small basin, a plastic canister full of water sitting next to it.
‘How did you know about this place?’ I asked Rozalia. She was busy brushing the rainwater out of her hair.
‘Came this way a couple of times with Nadia,’ she explained.
‘Romantic getaway?’ I asked.
She grinned. ‘Guilty as charged. It’s kind of cosy, if you don’t mind cobwebs.’ I watched as she pushed some of the chopped wood inside the stove, before setting it alight with the help of a box of firelighters sitting on a nearby shelf.
I had shoved the oilskin-wrapped papers inside my satchel along with the notebook as we drove for shelter. I lifted the bundle back out, carrying it over to a small wooden table in one corner. Lastly I took off my soaked jacket, hanging it on a nail.
Outside, the rain began to come down in earnest, hammering at the roof.
‘Still here,’ said Rozalia, pulling a cardboard box out from beneath the basin. She lifted a can of instant coffee out of the box, and then a small saucepan and a couple of tin mugs. ‘How’s that fire going?’ she asked, looking over at Chloe.
‘Swell,’ said Chloe, hunkered down by the stove and peering intently at the flames. ‘Is that coffee?’
‘Sure is.’ Rozalia looked over at me. ‘How about you, Jerry? You like your coffee black, I seem to recall.’
‘Unless you’ve got a cow stashed somewhere around here, I figure I don’t really have a choice.’
Rozalia tipped some of the water in the canister into the saucepan and placed it on top of the stove. ‘I guess you don’t. So how about telling us just what it is we’ve got?’
I caught Chloe’s eye. ‘Want to take a look through this
with me?’
‘Sort of yes, and sort of hell no,’ she muttered, and shook her head. ‘I still don’t feel ready for all this.’
‘Sure.’ I nodded. ‘I understand.’ I looked at Rozalia, but she just gave me a shrug.
My predecessor had done a good job of wrapping up the pages so that they were watertight. I leafed through them, then started reading. I barely even noticed when Rozalia put a mug of hot coffee down next to me some minutes later.
‘So, don’t keep us in suspense any longer,’ she said.
I put the pages down and looked at her. ‘I’m not sure you’re going to believe this.’
‘Try me.’
I looked at her, and then at Chloe, still squatting by the stove, and held up a page. ‘According to this, my predecessor was carrying out his investigation on Mort Bramnik’s behalf, and at his specific request.’
Both women’s jaws flopped open. ‘What?’ exclaimed Rozalia.
‘Specifically, Bramnik charged him to try and find out if all the equipment failures and other problems might indeed be sabotage. But he was required to carry out his investigation under the strictest secrecy.’ I put the page down heavily. ‘It’s all here,’ I said, waving my hand across the rest of the oilskin’s contents.
‘A secret investigation?’ asked Chloe. ‘Why?’
‘And why go to the effort of hiding all this stuff under a statue?’ asked Rozalia.
‘He wrote a letter to Chloe,’ I said, picking another page up and holding it out towards her. ‘Here.’
Chloe stared at the sheet of paper in my hand, then got up and took it from me and started to read.
Rozalia looked between us. ‘So? What does it say?’
‘He hid all this because he was trying to protect Chloe,’ I explained. ‘He was afraid to tell her the truth about his investigation, in case the Patriots found out about it. He thought if that happened, they’d interrogate her the way they did Wallace. He wrote up everything he knew because he was convinced something might happen to him, and he left clues in his diary that would lead her to the statues if that day ever came.’
