The Last Murder at the end of the World

FORTY-FIVE

Bringing the boat into the shallows, Seth leaps into the surf, landing awkwardly on his injured ankle. The flesh around the circular gouge is black and purple, and starting to swell, sending spikes of pain up his leg whenever he puts weight on it.

Grimacing, he drags the boat up the pebbles.

‘Dad!’

Emory’s waiting for him with her hands on her hips.

‘Emory?’ he asks, tossing the oars onto a pile on the beach, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Abi told me what you’re about to do.’

‘Abi shouldn’t be sharing my private thoughts,’ he replies. ‘Where’s Hossein? We need the cart. I found a body on the rocks near the lighthouse.’

Emory approaches the boat. There’s a woman inside, or what’s left of one. Every limb is shattered, her face is crushed, and her chest is broken open. She’s wearing a grey jumpsuit similar to the one they found in the infirmary. It’s tattered, but the threads are acting like a net, holding the pieces together.

Bile rises into Emory’s throat, but she swallows it back down, refusing to look away.

This is what today is, she thinks. Forget this was a life. Forget this person breathed, and cried, and had dreams. None of that helps. Something here might be able to help me save the island.

The only thing that’s immediately evident is that this broken collection of body parts was once a human, like those they found in the infirmary. Emory can see her organs through her exploded stomach, and they’re in entirely the wrong place. This has to be the woman Niema was experimenting on.

‘‘What happened to her?’ asks Emory.

‘Somebody carried her to the cliffs and dropped her over the edge,’ Seth says, working the stiffness from his shoulders.

‘Did you see who?’

‘No.’

‘Was she dead when …’ The sentence is so horrible she can’t finish it.

‘Of course she was,’ he replies, narrowing his eyes. ‘Why would anybody drop her over the side if she wasn’t?’

Emory doesn’t answer that. She doesn’t have the heart, though she’s surprised by how quickly she’s stopped thinking about death like a villager.

Hossein emerges through the gate, pulling the wheelbarrow we now have to use to transport the dead. Seth lifts the body out of the boat, dropping it unceremoniously inside. The pieces land with a stomach-churning squelch.

‘Can you take her to the furnace?’ asks Seth.

‘The lab,’ corrects Emory. ‘Thea will want to see her.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Niema’s dead, and everything’s connected,’ she says, setting Hossein on his way with a nod.

Seth’s about to follow the wheelbarrow into the village when Emory catches his arm, her look conspiratorial.

‘You can’t tell Thea where you woke up this morning,’ she says. ‘Hephaestus found a memory extractor in the lighthouse. He’s planning to strap it to anybody who might know something about Niema’s murder.’

Seth regards her, before shaking his head in disappointment.

‘Abi told me everything that’s been happening,’ he says, hobbling away on his injured ankle. ‘I know the barrier’s down, and the fog is coming. I know that somebody purposely killed Niema, and I was the last person who saw her.’ He tugs at his T-shirt, the material cracking unpleasantly. ‘I have blood on my clothes I didn’t have last night. I’m involved somehow and if the elders think my death is what’s required to help the island then that’s what’s right.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what happened instead,’ she says. ‘I’ve been asked to investigate the murder.’

‘I’d rather tell the elders,’ he insists stubbornly.

‘Dad!’

‘Enough, Emory,’ he says, his anger giving way to shock as he enters the exercise yard, newly decorated for the funerals tonight.

It was only a few days ago that he said goodbye to his father, and it feels like only a few months since he was grieving Judith. Now the lanterns are up for Niema. The losses are coming too fast for him to handle.

Sucking in a deep breath, he limps forward.

People look up as he passes, their eyes widening. He’s breathing heavily, and grimacing in pain from the wound on his ankle. His shirt is soaked in sweat and blood, and he’s moving with an urgency that’s uncommon in the village.

He looks like a late arrival from the apocalypse.

‘How did you hurt yourself?’ asks Emory, trying to see the circular gouge above his ankle. The wound could have been made with the end of a jagged pipe, but she can’t immediately recall where one would be.

‘No idea,’ he says gruffly. He nods to the bruised faces in the exercise yard. ‘Doesn’t look like I was the only one, though.’

She waits for more, but it’s like hoping to find an ember in two-day-old ashes.

‘Abi told me you woke up with a drawing,’ she says, trying a different avenue. ‘Can I see it?’

His hand clenches around his pocket protectively. ‘That’s for the elders to decide,’ he grunts.

They’ve reached the lane between the barracks and the outer wall, the vaulted roof of the school coming into view. The warehouse looms behind it, the brick stained black with soot from the fire. It’s the only obvious damage from this angle, as the flames never got much beyond the rear wall.

‘You need to slow your father down,’ I say, in her thoughts. ‘I’m trying to get Thea and Hephaestus out of the lab, but if they’re still there when he arrives, they’ll kill him.’

Emory leaps in front of her father, planting a palm firmly against his chest.

‘Dad, listen to me,’ she says, lowering her voice as villagers walk past carrying instruments. ‘I can work this out, if you give me a chance. There’s no reason for you to die.’

Seth meets his daughter’s pleading eyes.

‘I don’t trust you, Emory,’ he says coolly. ‘The fog will be here in less than two days, and I don’t believe you can save us from it.’

Her face crumples with hurt.

‘Now, please, stand aside so I can talk to somebody who can,’ he says.