I Know What You Did Last Wednesday (4 page)

It only took us an hour to cover the island. There really wasn’t very much there. Most of it was covered in gorse that only came up to the knee, which no killer could have hidden behind – unless, of course, he happened to be extremely small. There were a few trees but we checked the branches and Tim even climbed one to see if anyone was hiding at the top. Then I climbed up to help Tim down again and we moved on. We came to a couple of ruined outbuildings. I went inside. There was nobody there – but I did see something. Another security camera, fixed to the brickwork. Of course, a rich man like Rory would have had to be careful about security. I remembered the camera I had noticed in the kitchen. He had probably covered the whole island. Was that why I had felt we were being watched?

We went past the house and continued towards the crocodile’s tail. The ground rose steeply up, finally arriving at a narrow point at least twenty metres above the sea. This was what I had seen from the boat. Six great rocks, steel grey and needle-sharp, rose out of the water far below. Looking down made my head spin. I wondered briefly if there might be a cave somewhere, perhaps tucked underneath the lip where we were standing. But then a wave rolled in, crashing against the cliff face. If there was a killer down there, he’d be soaking wet. And anyway, as far as I could see, there was no way down.

We moved away, retracing our steps. There was nobody outside the house, but how about inside? Starting in the hall, we went from room to room: the library, the dining-room, the conservatory, the hall and so on. We looked behind curtains, under tables, in the fireplaces and up the chimneys. Tim even looked in the grandfather clocks. Maybe he thought he’d find somebody’s grandfather. We covered the ground floor and then went up to the first. Here were the bedrooms, with our names still attached to the doors. We went into every one of them. There was nobody there … apart from the three very dead bodies. It wasn’t easy searching those particular rooms, but we made ourselves … although I think Tim was wasting his time doing it with his eyes tightly shut.

Nobody in the rooms. Nobody in the corridors. We found the attic but all that was there was a water tank. Tim dipped his head in and I made a mental note not to drink any more water. Not with his dandruff. Eventually, we gave up. We had been everywhere. There was nowhere else to look.

We started to go back down to the kitchen but had only got halfway there when Libby let out a little gasp.

“What is it?” Eric demanded.

“There.” She pointed at the wall at the end of the corridor. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before!”

What she had seen was a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame. It was hanging right in the middle of the wall with enough space around it to make it stand out. The question was – had Rory hung it there? Or had it been someone else? Was this something we were meant to see?

The photograph showed nine teenagers, all of them wearing the same uniform. It’s funny how people change in ten years – but I recognized them at once: Eric Draper, Janet Rhodes, Mark Tyler, Brenda Blake, Sylvie Binns, Libby Goldman, Rory McDougal and Tim. Tim looked the weirdest of them all. He’d had long hair then, and spots. Lots of spots. Of course, I wouldn’t have looked too great myself when the picture had been taken – but then I would only have been four years old.

There was one face, however, that I didn’t know. He was standing at the edge of the group, slightly apart; a thin, gangly teenager with curly hair and glasses. He was wearing an anorak and had the sort of face you’d expect to see on a train-spotter. “Who’s he?” I asked.

“That’s Johnny!” Brenda replied. “Johnny Nadler. He was one of my best friends…”

“And mine,” Libby agreed. “Everyone liked Johnny. We used to hang out with him in the yard.” She walked closer to the photograph. “I remember when this was taken. It was prize-giving day. He came second in geography. I came first.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Everyone in this photograph is here on Crocodile Island. Everyone except Johnny Nadler!”

“You’re right!” Mark agreed. “Why wasn’t he invited?”

“Because he’s the killer!” Eric snapped. “He’s got to be!”

“But why would Johnny want to kill Rory?” Brenda asked. “The two of them were friends. And every day after school he used to catch the bus with Sylvie – even though it took him eight miles in the wrong direction. That’s how much he liked her.”

“He let Janet cut his hair,” Libby went on. “She accidentally cut a chunk out of his ear, but he didn’t mind. In fact he laughed all the way to the hospital. Johnny wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“What else can you tell me about him?” I asked.

“He came second in history as well as geography,” Eric said. “He was really clever.”

“He was always playing with model planes and cars,” Mark added. “He used to build them himself. We always said he’d be an inventor when he left school but in fact he ended up working at Boots. I saw him there once, when I went in to get some ointment.” He blushed. “I had athlete’s foot.”

“Did any of the rest of you ever see him again?” I asked.

Everyone shook their heads. I looked at the photograph again. It did seem strange that he was the only one in the picture who hadn’t been invited to Crocodile Island. But did that make him the killer? And if so, where on earth was he? We had searched the entire island and we were certain now that we were the only ones who were there.

Eric looked at his watch. It was half past twelve. “I suggest we continue this meeting downstairs,” he said.

“I need to change,” Brenda said.

“Me too,” Libby agreed.

Everyone started to move in different directions.

“Hold on a minute!” I said. “I thought we were all going to stick together. I think we should all stay in this room.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Eric snapped. “We have to eat something. It’s lunch-time. And anyway, we’ve just searched the island. We know there’s nobody else here.”

“Well, I’m staying with Tim,” I said.

“How do you know I’m not the killer?” Tim demanded.

Because whoever killed Rory and the others is brilliant and fiendish and you still have trouble tying your shoelaces.
That was what I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I just shrugged.

“I don’t want to be near anyone,” Libby said. “I feel safer on my own.”

“Me too.” Brenda nodded. “And I’m certainly not having anyone in the room with me while I’m changing.”

“We can meet in ten minutes,” Eric said. “We’re inside the house. We know there’s nobody else on the island. We’ll meet in the dining-room at twenty to one.”

He was wrong of course. This was one little group that was never going to meet again. But how could we know that? We were scared and we weren’t thinking straight.

Tim and I went back to our room. Tim scratched his head, which was still damp from the water tank. “Johnny could be hiding on the island,” he said. “What if there’s a secret room?”

The same thought had already occurred to me, but I’d tapped every wall and every wooden panel and nothing had sounded hollow. “I don’t think there are any secret rooms, Tim,” I said.

“But you can’t be sure…” Tim began to tap his way along the wall, his eyes half-closed, listening for a hollow sound. A few moments later, he straightened up, excited. “There’s definitely something on the other side here!” he cried.

“I know, Tim,” I said. “That’s the window.”

I left him in the bedroom, drying his hair, and went back downstairs. I was going to join the others in the dining-room. But I never got that far. I was about halfway down when I heard it. A short, sudden scream. Then a crashing sound. It had come from somewhere outside.

I ran down the rest of the way, through the hall and out the front door. Mark Tyler appeared, running round the side of the house.

“What was it…?” he demanded. He was trying not to sound scared but it wasn’t working.

“Round the back?”

We went there together, moving more slowly now, knowing what we were going to find, not wanting to find it. The kitchen door opened and Brenda Blake came out. I noticed she was breathing heavily.

This time it was Libby Goldman. I’m afraid she had recorded her last episode of
Libby’s Lounge
and for her the final credits were already rolling. Why had she gone outside? Maybe she’d decided to light up one of her cigarettes – in which case, this was one time when smoking certainly had been bad for her health. Fatal, in fact. But it hadn’t been the tobacco that had killed her. Something had hit her hard on the head: something that had been dropped from above. I looked up, working out the angles. We were directly underneath the battlements. Behind them, the roof was flat. It would have been easy enough for someone to hide up there, to wait for any one of us to step outside. Libby must have come out to get a breath of fresh air before the meeting. Air wasn’t something she’d be needing again.

There were footsteps on the gravel. Eric and Tim had arrived. They stared in silence. Mark stretched out a finger and pointed. It took me a minute to work out what he was pointing at. That was how much his finger was trembling.

And there it was, lying in the grass. At first I didn’t recognize the object that had been dropped from the roof and which had fallen right onto Libby Goldman. I mean, I knew what it was – but I couldn’t believe that that was what had been used.

It was a big round ball: a globe. The sort of thing you find in a library. Maybe it had been in Rory’s library before the killer had carried it up to the roof. The United States of America was facing up. It was stained red.

I looked at Eric Draper. His mouth had dropped open. He looked genuinely shocked. Mark Tyler was standing opposite him, staring. Brenda Blake was to one side. She was crying.

One of them had to be faking it. I was certain of it. One of them had to have climbed down from the room after watching Libby fall. There was nobody else here. One of them had to be the killer.

But which one?

Eric Draper? Brenda Blake? Or Mark Tyler?

It was early evening and Tim and I had gone for a walk – supposedly to clear our heads. But the truth was, I wanted to be alone with him and somehow I felt safer away from the house. It struck me that all the deaths had taken place inside or near the building. And if we stayed too close to the house something else might strike me – a falling piano or a model of the Taj Mahal, for example.

I glanced down at the piece of paper I was holding in my hand. I had made a few notes just before we left:

RORY M
C
DOUGAL – Killed with a sword.
SYLVIE BINNS – Poisoned.
JANET RHODES – Stabbed with an Eiffel Tower!
LIBBY GOLDMAN – Knocked down with a globe.

There was a pattern in there somewhere but I just couldn’t see it. Maybe some fresh air would help after all.

“I’ve got an idea!” Tim said.

“Go ahead, Tim,” I said.

“Maybe I could swim back over to the coast and get some help.”

We were sitting on the jetty. Today the sea was flat, the waves caught as if in a photograph. I could just make out the mainland, a vague ribbon lying on the horizon. The sun was setting fast. How many of us would see it rise again?

I shook my head. “No, Tim. It’s too far.”

“It can’t be more than five miles.”

“And you can’t swim.”

“Oh yes. I’d forgotten.” He glanced at me. “But you can.”

“I can’t swim five miles!” I said. “The water’s too cold. And there’s too much of it. No. Our only hope is to solve this before the killer strikes again.”

“You’re right, Nick.” Tim closed his eyes and sat in silence for a minute. Then he opened them again. “Maybe we could get one of the others to swim…”

“One of the others
is
the killer!” I said. “I saw someone out on the terrace, wearing a skeleton mask. I don’t know how they managed to disappear so quickly – but I wasn’t imagining it. Brenda saw them too.”

“Maybe it was Mark! He’s a fast mover.”

“And just now … when Libby Goldman was killed. Someone must have climbed up onto the roof.” I thought back. “Brenda was out of breath when she came into the garden…”

“She could have been singing!”

“I doubt it. But she could have been running. She drops the globe, then runs all the way downstairs…”

A seagull flew overhead, crying mournfully. I knew how it felt. I almost wanted to cry myself.

“What’s missing is the motive,” I went on. “Think back, Tim. You were at school with these people. There are only three of them left – Brenda, Mark and Eric. Would any of them have any reason to kill the rest of you?”

Tim sighed. “The only people who ever threatened to kill me,” he said, “were the teachers. My French teacher once threw a piece of chalk at me. And when that missed, he threw the blackboard.”

“How did you get on with Mark Tyler?”

“We were friends. We used to play conkers together.” He scratched his head. “I did once miss his conker and break three of his fingers, but I don’t think he minded too much.”

“How about Brenda Blake?”

Tim thought back. “She was in the school choir,” he said. “She was also in the rugby team. She used to sing in the scrum.” He scratched his head. “We used to tease her a bit but it was never serious.”

“Maybe she didn’t agree.”

The waves rolled in towards us. I looked out at the mainland, hoping to catch sight of Horatio Randle and his boat, the
Silver Medal
. But the sea was empty, darkening as the sun dipped behind it. What had the old fisherman said when he’d dropped us?
“I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
It had been Wednesday when we arrived. He might not return until the weekend. How many passengers would there be left waiting for him?

“How about Eric Draper?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“He could be the killer. It would have to be someone strong to carry the globe up to the roof in the first place. Can you remember anything about him?”

Tim laughed. “He was a great sport. I’ll never forget the last day of term when the seven of us pulled off his trousers and threw him in the canal!”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You pulled off his trousers and threw him in the canal? Why?”