The Last Murder at the end of the World

FIFTY-FOUR

In the swaying cable car, Thea grips the jagged edge of the window frame so tightly it digs into her hands, drawing blood.

Niema lied, she thinks angrily.

The report that Clara showed her earlier, proved that the chemicals that destroyed the crops were the same ones used in the stasis pods in Blackheath. They’re immediately vented when the pods are opened, flowing out of exhaust pipes into the sea. One of those pipes runs under the farms, but it has fractured. The chemicals have leaked into the soil, killing the crops.

That means one of the pods was opened last night.

There are two explanations for that. Either there was a mechanical failure, causing the pod to spring open, or Niema went down there last night and purposefully woke one of the humans from a long sleep.

If it’s the latter – and Thea’s convinced it is – Blackheath was never lost to the fog. Alongside Hephaestus, she’s spent the last few hours hiking to Blackheath’s entrances, trying each one in turn, searching for a way in, but they’re all sealed shut.

How could I have been so stupid? she thinks, trying to recall exactly what happened the night of the evacuation. It was late, and she’d been sleeping. Hephaestus had appeared in her bedroom, obviously panicked. He’d told that the fog had crept inside and they had to leave.

She went blindly, dragged behind him.

It was chaos. The alarms were blaring, the blast doors thumping shut as people screamed in terror. She yelled for Ellie, desperate to get back and free her sister from stasis, but no matter how hard she fought Hephaestus kept tight hold of her.

She never actually saw the fog, though, did she? She saw everybody’s fear as they fled outside, trampling each other to reach safety. That was enough to make the story true. Sometimes the smoke is more useful than the fire.

‘Did you know?’ she asks out loud.

Hephaestus raises his head. He’s sprawled on a seat at the back of the cable-car carriage, intertwining his hands.

Thea hasn’t spoken to him in over two hours, a maelstrom of betrayal, suspicion and anger growing steadily in her breast. He’d hoped it would blow on by, or be derailed by some new detail.

He should have known better. Some storms follow you. Some storms make sure you’re always in their path.

‘No,’ he says flatly.

‘Don’t lie to me, Hephaestus.’

‘Don’t accuse me, Thea,’ he replies, growling. ‘If I knew about Blackheath, do you think I’d be up here? I’d be sleeping in a bed, and showering under hot water. I’d be visiting Ellie every day.’

Is he lying? She can’t tell. He sounds sincere enough, but she’s always been bad with people. She was a child when she came to work at Blackheath, still trained to accept whatever adults told her.

She never learned how to read people, how to pick up the corner of a sentence and peer underneath.

More than anything, she desperately wants to believe he’s telling the truth. That’s why she hasn’t turned around to face him. What if she sees it on his face? If he’s lying, what does she have left? She’d be alone on this island, surrounded by the crums. The loneliest woman on Earth.

The cable car thumps into the village station, and they walk through the adjoining door into Thea’s lab, wrapped in uneasy silence.

The memory extractor is smashed on a chair, its pieces carefully brushed into a pile by Seth.

‘No!’ yells Hephaestus, picking it up to inspect the damage. ‘No! No! What happened?’

‘Emory happened,’ I explain.

Thea’s noticed the dead woman on the gurney. Seth’s straightened her shattered bones so they fit on the narrow surface, making her look like some particularly grotesque puzzle.

Thea plucks at the tattered grey jumpsuit holding the body together.

‘She’s wearing a Blackheath uniform,’ she remarks. ‘This must be who Niema woke up the night she died, but why would she do that? If she had access to Blackheath, why not wake everybody up?’

Thea turns on her heel, confronting Hephaestus who’s picking broken shards of metal from the memory extractor.

‘How did you end up with Jack’s knife?’ she demands.

He looks up from the machine, genuinely puzzled. ‘Jack?’

‘Emory’s husband. My apprentice. Abi told me they all drowned five years ago. Adil was supposed to be the only survivor.’

He shrugs. ‘I needed a knife for something; my mother gave me that one. I have no idea where she got it from.’

Thea stares into his blank, scarred face. What would a lie look like on those features? She’s only ever seen him angry or placid. After one hundred and fifty-two years on this planet, every other emotion has burned away.

‘Is that the truth?’ she asks, desperate to believe him.

His face falls, his voice wounded. ‘I have no reason to lie to you.’

‘Except that I found a piece of Niema’s skull in that machine you built to check the cauldron garden for fissures,’ she says. ‘Somebody used it to cave her skull in, but it’s much too heavy for anybody else to use that way.’

Hephaestus flushes angrily, getting to his feet. She can see the rage stirring in him, pitiless and senseless. If she doesn’t quell it, everything in this lab, including herself, will be smashed to pieces.

‘You think I killed my mother?’ he asks, his tone deadly.

Thea stands aside, so he can better see the mangled body. ‘If you worked out she was killing the humans in Blackheath, you might have felt you had no choice.’

Hephaestus swallows uncertainly.

‘For the record, I don’t really care if you did it or not,’ she says, pressing her advantage. ‘But if you’re responsible, we should call off the investigation before Emory stirs up the villagers any further.’

‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘My mother gave me hope, Thea. She’s the only reason I could bear this island. She wanted to build a better future for us, and I believed in that mission.’ He swallows, unable to look directly at the body. ‘She wouldn’t have done this without a good reason, and I wouldn’t have killed her, not for anything.’

I would have. The thought flashes through Thea’s head before she can stop it. If I realised Niema had lied to me about Blackheath, I would have killed her. I would have marched straight to the village and caved her skull in. In fact, I’m almost certain that’s what happened.

She turns sharply towards the body, trying to hide the guilt burning her face.

Hearing Hephaestus shifting his weight behind her, she picks up a bone saw and switches it on, preventing them from having to speak any further.

‘Let’s see what Niema was doing to you,’ she says, lowering the saw to the skull of the dead woman.