“So why did you kill him at Moa Bay?”
“He always go there, don’t he? On nice sunny days he go there to eat his lunch and look at the sea. Lion and me, we knew he’d be there that day.”
“But Lion let you down. Where was he that day? Did he go to the mainland and upset the plan. Did he tell you he was going?”
“He musta got called urgently, isn’t it? He loved me a real lot, don’t he? He tol’ me to brung a small knife to cut Roscoe’s throat wiv. Then I has to change my clothes afterwards, isn’t it? Lion said to put on men’s clothes and wear a beanie after he had despatched Roscoe.”
“So you did what Lion said.”
“Yeah, but Lion said he would do it, don’t he? I was jus’ wearin’ a disguise after to help me get away, Lion say.”
“And when Lion didn’t come, then you had to do it.”
“Yeah, but he don’ suspect nothin, Roscoe. He very trustin’. I like Roscoe.”
“You mean liked. He’s dead now. You killed him, Mistle.”
“But Lion was goin’ to do it, so I was only like doin’ it for him, isn’t it?”
“And for yourself and your husband, so you say. How long had you planned the killing?”
“About three months ago Lion and me started talking about it. Lion was scared the Master might find out we was gunna have a baby. Lion was scared of the Master. He knew the Master could get rid of him any time and no one would even know. He tol’ me we had to plan carefully, don’t it?”
“Did your husband also say he wanted Roscoe dead?”
“No, but he told me lotsa times that the survival of our race was the most important thing in our lives and that nothing was to stand in the way of its success, don’t he?”
“But you didn’t know that Roscoe was his half-brother, did you?”
“No one tol’ me that. Even Lion didn’t know.”
“Are you sure he didn’t know?”
“Lion’s dead. The Master and his servant Baxy, they tol’ me that Lion was dead, so I broke the window and escaped, don’t I? Lion was kind to me. He tol’ me that once I was pregnant we were goin’ to go away, isn’t it?”
Curtis and Mistle stayed on the beach for two hours, talking about what had happened. She told him her life story. He knew that sooner or later they would come for her, and they did. There was Sly Onyx, Baxy and Ferdy Xyle. Without saying anything, the three men stood and waited, as if for the inevitable to happen.
Finally Mistle stood up and the four of them walked away up the beach together.
CHAPTER 31
“I need to see you,” Curtis telepathised to Janux. “Can I come to your place?”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she sent back.
He didn’t remember getting there. All he could think of was that it was over. His first case was solved. All that remained was for the unfortunate Mistle to be tried by the Ryxin committee, which was to be appointed before the week was over. The sentence, if she was found guilty, would be given that same day and carried out at sunrise the next morning. That was the way Ryxin justice worked. They didn’t believe in long-term imprisonment as a punishment. But the hearing itself was never rushed. They would always begin early in the morning, break for lunch, and continue until the sun went down. Once the sun had set the sentence was given, and the prisoner was kept tied up and isolated from everyone throughout the night.
Curtis was now almost a fully qualified PI. His tutor had instructed him to write a full report on the case and send it to the Ryxin PI Academy on the mainland. The report would then be scrutinised by a panel of three tutors to see if the case had been solved without any doubt remaining. If it was deemed sound Curtis would receive his Ryxin PI medal in the post and become fully registered.
“Sly Onyx was true to his word,” she said. Curtis followed her into the bach and they sat facing each other at the kitchen table.
“Really?” Curtis was unsure of what she meant.
“No one has bothered me since I came back here. It’s almost as if nothing ever happened here. Except for Roscoe - that will never change.”
Curtis thought about Lion’s body inside the jeep at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Over the next half hour he told her everything Mistle had said.
Janux sat in stony silence. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “My poor darling,” she said. “He was a very tall man, you know. Mistle Onyx is not, yet it made no difference. She took him by surprise because he trusted her. Roscoe couldn’t fight that.”
“Are you going to stay here?” he said as they both stood looking out to sea.
“Yes, of course. But before I do anything else I’m going to visit my parents in Ireland. I promised them I would, so I’ll be leaving next week and staying about four weeks. I’ve hired a woman to look after the bees while I’m gone. Will you come with me?”
Curtis was filled with a shocked, warm kind of elation. He loved this woman and he hoped she was going to continue working with him. He felt as if his mind and body were charged with electricity as he stood there looking at her. Finally he took her in his arms. “I’d love to, but are you sure that’s really what you want?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “Just one other small thing. Do you still want me as a partner in your business?”
“I think you’ve got what it takes but I wasn’t sure if you’d still be keen. Now that I know you are we can make plans for more training for you. How would you like that?”
“That’s what I want more than anything. I knew when you’d solved the case you’d come here and I planned to tell you then about wanting to carry on. But I was wrong about who’d done it. I thought it was the pig - you know who I mean.”
“Oh, yes, but instead it was the one who needed saving the most. I guess she couldn’t take the barrenness and slavery any longer. Being born a number isn’t the way anyone should start life in this world.”
He thought about 17, and knew that if he didn’t do something soon their baby too would be numbered and catalogued just as Mistle had been.
That evening Curtis found a photo of himself and Marzy, taken at a village fair on the island. He looked at it for a long time, and finally ripped it into tiny pieces and burnt it in the fireplace. He was going to look forward now. He and Marzy, the first love of his life, were finished and there would be no going back. His love for both 17 and Janux now filled him with a steely resolve. He was going to be there for both of them, and the baby, when it was born.
By the end of the week Curtis knew via a telepathic message from Sly Onyx that Mistle had been tried by a Ryxin committee, made up of three men and three women from the mainland. They had never met Mistle before, but it was their job to decide her fate. They found her guilty. Then they had to decide what her sentence should be.
It was inevitable. She was to be vanished at sunrise the following morning off the coast at Seal Bay near the ferry terminal. There would be two boats pushed out into the sea. One would hold Mistle, and the other the three male members of the committee. Their duty was to be judge and jury, then both hand down the sentence and carry it out.
Curtis felt cold all over and went straight to his drinks cabinet. He poured himself a full glass of whiskey and began to gulp it down.
“Mistle wants you to be there in the morning,” Sly messaged to him later that evening. “Our law allows the prisoner to have only one request. That was it, brother.”
“Tell her I’ll be there,” he sent back.
After a third glass of whiskey, which he drank outside as he watched the moonlit sea, he tried to settle down for the night. It was difficult. He thought about Sly and how he fitted a sociopathic personality so well. Curtis had to keep telling himself it was because Sly was soulless, but couldn’t quite convince himself this was entirely true. The man certainly had no obvious remorse or shame for what he’d done to Mistle over the years but Curtis wanted to confront him nonetheless. Something he was sure no one else had ever done.
Planning how he might do this
kept him awake even longer.
At 4 a.m. his alarm beeped continuously and he dragged himself up. He felt hollow and drained as if the world was suddenly empty of love and laughter and any sort of compassion. How could it be that Mistle’s tormenters were the very ones who still had their freedom? Janux called them pigs, but Curtis knew that pigs weren’t so vile.
When he arrived at Seal Bay there was a small group of Ryxins standing by the shore. Mistle was sitting on a bench nearby, her wrists tied together. Curtis went straight over and sat next to her. “Here I am,” he said. “Did you manage to get some sleep?”
“It’s all over, don’t it?” she said. “When they told me I was glad, isn’t it? I don’ want to live on this planet any more.”
Curtis reached over and took her hands. “You were honest,” he said. “You told me the truth. That’s worth a lot, and I’m proud of you.”
She smiled at him. “You the only person who’s ever said that to me, isn’t it?”
He smiled back at her. “Just remember that,” he said. “You were brave enough to be honest.”
“When I was at Xlesky Street I met a number called 17. She was your breeding mate, isn’t it? She told me she was pregnant just before... you know, I ran away. Then they gave her a new name, don’t she?”
Curtis held his breath. “Can you tell me her name? I don’t know it, you see.”
‘They’se called her Luxinda, don’t it? That’s what she say it is. Luxinda.”
He smiled at her again and held her hands until it was time for her to go.
Mistle was taken to a dinghy and helped into it, alone. There was a rope fastened to her boat so it could be towed out behind the larger one, which held the three committee members. One of the judges began to row, and they heard the soft splash as the oars dipped into the calm sea water. The clank of the rowlocks was the only other sound.
Curtis turned away. He knew they would row a long way out so that they were almost out of sight. Then they would stop and sit quietly until their levitation powers had lifted Mistle out of the boat and sent her far away to her watery grave.
The other Ryxins were unusually quiet and no one said anything to him as he walked towards them. Then he saw Sly standing by the terminal building smoking a cigarette. Baxy was nearby.
“She looked after you for how many years?” Curtis said to Sly. “She served you day and night. You forced her to obey you in everything. And this is her reward, to be drowned by the people who owned her?”
“She’s a murderer. I never taught her that. You half-bloods have too many emotions - you don’t see the truth.” He crushed out the butt of his cigarette and immediately lit another.
“Don’t you even care that your wife is right now being taken to her death because of you?”
“Whaddya mean? She committed murder without my help, man. You’ve gone soft.”
“The Ryxin breeding programme is all about fodder for your race. That’s why you won’t allow them to become educated. You and your kind want them to be your slaves for life, sexually and in every other way. Well, don’t be surprised when they begin to turn on you. They can still think, and you should be very afraid of what they think about. You can’t control that.”
Sly didn’t reply. Instead he took a silver flask out of his back pocket, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig.
Curtis walked back to his car, started the engine and began the drive back to Tahatika Road. He thought about what Mistle had told him. 17’s new name was Luxinda and he was going to find her.
THE END
Aliens in Godzone Page 17
