The Last Murder at the end of the World

SIXTY-ONE

No sooner has Emory gone back inside than Clara grabs her arm, dragging her towards one of the rooms off the lab.

‘You have to see this,’ she says excitedly.

She opens a narrow door, leading Emory into a cosy sitting room with wooden floorboards, a couch with broken springs and a coffee table. The walls are covered in paintings, their frames pressed close together. There are oils and watercolours, portraits and landscapes. The skill of their composition indicates that they were created before the apocalypse.

‘Look at this,’ says Clara, pointing to a small painting by Piero della Francesca, depicting the resurrection of Christ. ‘Look at the shadows, and the texture.’

Nobody in the village has ever had the ability to create something like this, and Clara’s in awe. The only person who’s ever displayed this sort of skill at anything is Hui.

For all of its beauty, Emory can barely look at it. She feels such resentment towards humanity, she can’t bring herself to celebrate anything about them. This must be how Adil feels, she thinks. It’s a corruption of the soul.

Unsettled, she goes to find her father who’s nosing around in a small kitchen with a clay oven and a humming refrigerator, every shelf empty. There’s a knife block on the counter along with baskets for onions and garlic, and a jug of olive oil with a wonky handle. Unlike everything else in here, this was handcrafted by somebody with absolutely no skill whatsoever.

A thick layer of dust coats the kitchen, suggesting Niema hasn’t used it for a long time.

‘Dad,’ says Emory, from behind him. ‘You okay?’

‘I made that for her,’ he says, gesturing to the jug. ‘She told me she loved it, but I thought she was being polite. I honestly thought she’d thrown it away.’

His voice is dead. Clearly, she’s not the only person struggling with conflicting emotions.

She retreats into the sitting room.

There are two more doors off it. One of them is metal with a small window at head height, darkness on the other side. There’s a button with an arrow on it, but nothing happens when she presses it.

The other door leads into a bedroom that’s arranged identically to Niema’s dorm room. It has a single bed in between a wardrobe and a tall bookshelf, with most of the books missing. They’re probably in the village, thinks Emory, remembering the shelf full of detective stories.

There’s a Bible open on a writing desk. The thin pages are dog-eared and worn-through, baffling Emory with their archaic language and strange numbering system.

She remembers seeing this same book in Hephaestus’s bunker, and Niema had another copy in her dorm room. It must be important to them, but she can’t make sense of it.

Putting it down, she opens the drawers, finding some pens, paper and a photo album, filled with pictures of Niema and Seth at various scenic spots around the island. Her father ages about twenty years as they go along, his posture softening, his frown turning into a smile, then, eventually, laughter.

‘He looks happy,’ she murmurs, going back to the first picture.

There he is with Niema climbing the volcano. There he is wearing a gigantic leaf as a hat, laughing at something. There they are in a forest. Page after page. Happy memory after happy memory.

She’s never seen her father like this. She wishes she had. After her mother died, unhappiness poisoned him, then it poisoned her.

Emory keeps flipping, surprised by how thoroughly her father has explored the island. She’s only travelled it through the memories of others, but she knows it well enough to place most of the pictures. This one’s taken in an overgrown olive grove to the south. This one is a bay to the east and this one … she frowns. Removing the photo from its sleeve, she holds it up to the light, trying to make sense of it.

‘It can’t be,’ she says.

Her eyes linger on it for a minute, her suspicions solidifying.

She takes the photo into the kitchen, slapping it down on the counter in front of Seth.

‘What do you see?’ she asks.

He passes a confused stare from Emory to the photograph, smiling slightly in recognition of his younger self.

‘That’s me, twenty years ago,’ he says, tapping it with his finger.

‘Do you know where it was taken?’

He studies it again. He’s standing in a field, making one of those ‘here I am’ faces. There’s a lake behind him, a cluster of trees on his left.

‘I would have been an apprentice, so it could have been anywhere,’ he says, fingering the picture. ‘Thea used to make us take that awful camera of hers everywhere we went. We spent half of our time putting it back together after it had fallen apart.’

‘So, you don’t know where this was taken,’ persists Emory, grimly.

‘Emory, I don’t even remember when this photograph was taken.’

‘You’re certain, Dad? It’s really important.’

‘Emory,’ he growls, close to losing his temper. ‘I don’t know where the photograph was taken. What’s this all about?’

‘It’s about that,’ says Emory, prodding the lake in the background.

‘It’s water, so what?’

‘It’s a lake, Dad. You can see the banks. How many lakes do we have on this island?’

His brow furrows, then his eyes widen in shock. Finally, he understands.

‘None,’ he says, astonished.

‘None,’ she repeats. ‘This photo wasn’t taken on our island, and there’s a good chance that fact’s going to get you killed.’