One by One (3 page)

‘Shit,' said Marla. ‘Do you think he left here without us and went back to the mainland?'

‘Why would he do that?' said Luke.

‘Because, apart from you, the rest of us wanted to call the police after what happened to Louise. If he leaves us here without any way of communicating with the outside world, we can't talk to them.'

‘But we'll be able to talk to them eventually. He can't leave us on here for ever.'

‘Why not? If the inflatable's not here we've got no way of getting off.' Marla's voice had risen an octave and, like me, she looked panicked at the prospect of being stuck on the island.

‘Look, let's all stay calm,' said Crispin. ‘Charlie might just be taking a walk, or sitting on the beach contemplating the world and thinking about how his island retreat's just been destroyed by a murder. We don't know. So let's just get all our stuff together and head down to the boathouse together. If we can't find Charlie, then we'll go without him.' He looked at the three of us. ‘Agreed?'

Everyone nodded.

*

Twenty minutes later – and with still no sign of Charlie – the four of us left the house through the back door, leaving it unlocked so we could get back in.

I have to admit I was getting more and more nervous by this point. Charlie had been gone more than two hours now and, whether he'd been taking the time to contemplate the world or not, he should have been back before now. Which left three alternatives. One, he'd left the island, as Marla had first suggested. Two, something bad had happened to him, although God knows what it could be. Or three – and I liked the thought of this the least – he was hiding somewhere, planning to murder us one by one, thereby getting rid of all the people who could incriminate him for the murder of Rachel Skinner.

As we walked the two hundred yards or so along the narrow path that wound through the pine wood down to the jetty, we all called his name and looked about us, but there was no answer, nor any sign of any other human presence. All was silent, bar the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, and the odd snippet of birdsong. It was as if this dark, rocky island had swallowed Charlie up altogether.

The jetty was empty, the speedboat that had brought us here nowhere to be seen. Thirty yards further along the beach, and partly obscured by a large weeping willow that looked out of place among the pines, was the boathouse, a single-storey wooden structure with double doors.

We stopped in front of it, standing in a row on the narrow strip of sand and pebbles.

‘It doesn't look like he's left the island,' said Crispin. ‘The doors are shut and there are no drag marks from the boat.'

‘They're unlocked, though,' said Luke, gently pulling on one of the handles. The door opened with a long whining creak to a curtain of darkness beyond. ‘Has anyone got a torch?'

‘I have,' said Crispin, pulling one free from his backpack.

Luke opened the door as far as it would go then did the same with the other one, revealing an empty room that smelled vaguely of engine oil. ‘There it is. On the wall there.'

Crispin shone his torch up to where Luke was pointing. The inflatable boat was little more than a dinghy and didn't look like it would hold six people. There was no engine attached and it didn't even appear to have been properly inflated.

Then the torch picked up the deep slash marks running symmetrically down each section.

‘Oh, Christ, what's going on now?' said Marla, staring up at the damage.

‘This is getting bad,' said Luke quietly. He no longer seemed big and strong. Now he looked pale and scared and the expression in his eyes – that of a man frozen in the path of an oncoming locomotive – was exactly the same as I remembered it being immediately after Rachel's murder. ‘What the fuck are we meant to do now?'

It was Crispin who answered him. ‘We don't panic. That's essential. We stay calm and we work out what to do next.'

Marla frowned. ‘Who did this? Surely it wouldn't have been Charlie. Because that means he's trapped himself on the island. What about that man I saw at the window last night? Could it have been him?'

‘But Charlie thought that was Pat,' I said, ‘and his boat's gone.'

‘Maybe he waited here overnight and took Charlie back,' said Crispin, shining his torch round the floor space, its beam picking up a couple of boxes in one corner.

I shook my head. ‘No. That doesn't make any sense. He's…'

‘Jesus Christ!' Crispin's words reverberated through the gloom like gunshots.

We all looked where his torch was pointing.

Marla made a long moaning sound that seemed to come from deep within her. Luke let out an almost childlike cry and began to retch.

I simply stood stock-still, unable to react in any way at all.

Perched up on an otherwise empty shelf that ran the length of a far wall, like a grisly trophy, was Louise's freshly severed head.

Her eyes were open and staring vacantly into space, her long, wavy blonde hair flowing down on either side of the pale, lifeless face. When we'd wrapped her body in the sheet, her hair had been tied in a ponytail, which meant that the killer must have untied it in yet another act of defilement. There was something in her mouth too. A rolled-up piece of paper sticking out like an oversized cigarette.

Marla ran out of the boathouse sobbing while Luke fell to his knees with his head in his hands. It sounded like he was crying too.

I could feel myself shaking as I tried to compute the full ramifications of what I was seeing. Someone on this island had not only murdered Louise but had deliberately and carefully chopped the head from the corpse and left it in a place that we would see it. To be the target of such hatred is a terrifying prospect at the best of times. But when you know you're trapped and that it could be your murder next, it's a thousand times worse.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Crispin watching me with something like sympathy in his eyes. He said something but it sounded faint and far away and I couldn't make out the words.

Finally, he moved the torch light away from Louise's head then, as I watched, he walked slowly over and gently removed the rolled up piece of paper from her mouth. Turning away, he put an arm on my shoulder and I didn't resist as he led me outside, telling Luke to follow.

When we were all back on the beach and Luke had shut the doors, Crispin unrolled the paper and flattened it with his hands. I watched him carefully. He looked scared but nothing like as scared as the rest of us, and I was surprised by his ability to stay calm under such pressure. I'd always had him down as the most sensitive and vulnerable of all of us, yet he was now undoubtedly the man in charge.

‘What does it say?' I asked, speaking for the first time since I'd seen what had been done to Louise, my voice weak and close to cracking.

Crispin didn't answer so I asked the question again, louder this time.

Marla, who'd been pacing up and down a few yards away, stopped and glared at him. ‘Come on, Cris,' she said. ‘Tell us.'

He swallowed audibly, and for a moment he looked like he might lose it. But then he seemed to compose himself. ‘I don't think you want to read it.'

‘Give it to me,' I said, knowing I had to see what was written there, however grim it was. He handed it over.

It was a simple, made-up poem typed out in block capitals.

Six devastating lines that sounded like my worst nightmare.

JUSTICE EVENTUALLY COMES TO ALL,

AND NOW ONE BY ONE THEY FALL.

LEAVING THE VERY WORST TILL LAST,

AS THEY PAY FOR THE SINS OF A DISTANT PAST.

MY KNIFE IS SHARP, BLOODY AND TRUE,

AND VERY SOON IT WILL COME FOR YOU.

The page shook violently in my hand and it was Marla who took it from me. I heard her curse as she read it too but I was already turning away and walking rapidly down the beach, ignoring the shouts of the others.

I broke into a run, sobbing as all the emotions that had been swirling round me these past hours – these past weeks, indeed these past years – suddenly erupted within me. As I reached the empty jetty, I jumped on to it and sprinted right to the end, thinking for a moment of throwing myself into the sea, going under, and never surfacing again.

But I stopped myself, the need for self-preservation still too strong to let go entirely, and stared down at the eddying grey water. In front of me the mainland was close enough to make out clearly – a mile, maybe two miles away, but no more. The sea was choppy and there were no boats out there today. No one who could help me. I wasn't a strong swimmer. I'd never make the distance. I probably wouldn't make a hundred yards.

I was trapped.

I heard footsteps behind me and swung round as a sudden wave of panic hit me.

It was Crispin. He approached gingerly. ‘Are you OK, Karen? We've got to hold things together.'

He looked so lean and handsome, standing there in the wind, that my panic was replaced with a deep sadness. ‘Why did it all have to go wrong, Crispin?' I sobbed, refusing to call him Cris like all the others did. ‘Why did we ever have to meet that bitch, Rachel?'

‘Whoa, hold on. This isn't about her.'

‘It is. She's infected everything. If she'd never been part of our group, you and I would still have been together, don't you understand? We'd have travelled the world, got married. Had kids… Had a fucking life!' The words were pouring out of me now. I no longer had any control over them. Over anything. ‘But instead it all went to shit. Someone killed her and it was never the same again, and I've been punished ever since. I lost you, and I married a man I didn't love, and then, when I finally did have something beautiful in my life, I lost her too.' I pictured Lily, with her round soft cheeks and infectious little laugh – only five months old when she died. ‘I lost my little girl, Crispin. My child. Haven't I been punished enough already without all this?'

As the knife I'd been holding all this time clattered to the decking, he took me in his arms and held me tight. ‘It's OK, Karen,' he whispered. ‘It's going to be OK.'

I wished he hadn't called me Karen. I wished he'd called me ‘little chick' or ‘baby' or any of the other pet names he'd used when we were seeing each other. Karen seemed so formal. But I tried not to think about that and held him back just as tightly, my head buried in his shoulder, taking in his scent, soaking up our memories, allowing his presence to calm me.

My sobbing stopped as the grief temporarily subsided. ‘What are we going to do, Crispin? We've got to find a way off this place.'

He nodded. ‘I know, and we will. But first things first, we need to get back to the house. It's dangerous out here.' He looked around.

‘It might be dangerous back there too. We left the back door open, didn't we?'

‘We've still got knives.' He pulled his from his backpack. ‘And there are four of us and one of him, so the odds are in our favour.'

‘What do you think's happened to Charlie? Surely he can't have done this?' It was impossible to imagine a man like Charlie – out of shape from too much good living, and looking like Bertie Wooster in his silk pyjamas and slippers – deliberately severing the head of a woman who'd once been his friend, and using it to taunt us.

Crispin took a deep breath. ‘God alone knows. Nothing would surprise me after what we've just seen. Come on, let's go back to the house.'

I could see the other two waiting on the beach, and I picked up my knife and walked back along the jetty with Crispin, pulling out my cigarettes and lighter from the sleeve of my hoodie and lighting up. Right now, I didn't care who saw me smoking.

‘I didn't know you smoked as well,' said Marla as we reached the other two. ‘Can I have one?'

I didn't know
you
smoked either,' said Crispin, with a half-smile, aiming the comment at Marla, and once again I was uncomfortably aware of an intimacy between them. ‘All right,' he continued, ‘back to the house, everyone, keep your eyes peeled and your knives out. As soon as we're back we'll lock the place up and work out our next move, and remember: whoever's doing this can't touch us if we all stick together.'

The wind was picking up now and the earlier blue sky was all but gone, replaced by a swathe of grey-white cloud. I looked up at the ominous wall of pine trees that led back to the house, and I felt the fear kick in again. Somewhere in those trees was a man waiting for his opportunity to pick us off one by one. Right now, we were still four and, as Crispin had pointed out, there was comfort in numbers.

But if we started losing more…

We walked two abreast along the narrow path, each person no more than a yard from the trees that rose up on either side of us, shutting out the sky. Although they'd been planted in careful rows, tangled bushes and clumps of ferns and heathers had grown up in the gaps, offering numerous places to hide, and we all scoured the surroundings with an intensity born of fear, keeping close together. Marla had somehow managed to make sure she was the one leading the way with Crispin, while Luke and I brought up the rear.

I asked Luke if he was all right. He was still very quiet, although thankfully he seemed to have shaken himself out of his earlier catatonic state.

‘I'm fine,' he whispered tightly, without taking his eyes off the wood. ‘Concentrate on keeping watch. He could be right on us.'

I narrowed my eyes, keeping focused, my hand gripping the knife so tightly it felt numb, wondering if, even now, we were being watched by an unseen killer. I prayed that we'd make it back to the house safely. That whoever it was had decided against killing the rest of us, and had already left the island.

Something moved.

Behind one of the trees, maybe twenty yards in, partly obscured by a thick holly bush.