‘Wait! Whatever he’s told you, you must trust me, we—’
‘Look,’ I said, managing to jerk my arm free. ‘I’m getting off this island, so don’t try and stop me.’
‘No, no. I won’t. Is . . . is Mather dead?’ I detected a note of hope in his enquiry.
‘I don’t know. I pushed him into the pit. He may have broken something, but—’
‘Oh,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘Well, please, you must come with me if you want to get away.’ He turned and made to walk off into the trees.
I just stood where I was, looking up and down the path, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. ‘Why should I trust you? How do I know you’re not as twisted as he is?’
‘No, no, no,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘Ignore what he’s told you about me. He’s – he’s cleverer than you can possibly imagine. Now come on, before it’s too . . . too late.’
Soames’s behaviour was odd, but with only my instincts to rely on, I felt he was a far lesser evil than the one I’d left behind in the research centre. I had to get away from the path though, of that I was sure. I felt too exposed.
‘You go where you want,’ I said. ‘I’m heading for the beach. Mather’s boat is the only way off this island.’
‘No, no, no,’ Soames said again, shaking his head. ‘It isn’t. It’s no way off at all!’
‘What?’
‘You can get off the island, but not with the boat in the boathouse. It’s a joke of his. No bottom. Real boat’s hidden away on another beach. I know how to get there, but Mather carries the ignition key with him. Now come on. You must come with me to my caravan, we can’t linger on the path. He won’t think of looking for you there, not to begin with. And there are things I must tell you.’
‘But—’
‘Come on, there’s no time to argue!’
‘All right,’ I said. Knowing it could be a bad idea, I followed him into the trees. What he’d said about Mather and the boathouse sounded only too plausible.
We pushed through branches and leaves, putting distance between ourselves and the path. There were no discernible trails to follow, but Soames knew where he was going. The ground sloped upwards after a while, and I slipped a couple of times, Soames stopping to wait but with obvious impatience. At length the ground levelled out and I saw what looked like a caravan, though the paint had long faded from its exterior, to be replaced by an angry coating of rust. Not a very welcoming sight, but for Soames it was home.
He climbed the small set of steps to the door in the caravan, opened it and ushered me in. He followed and closed the door behind him, indicating a stool for me by a curtained window. I sat, finding the seat somewhat lopsided. Soames drew the curtains across the other windows and sat on a more comfortable-looking chair by a small table littered with journals, papers and sticks of charcoal. I could just make out that the surface of the table itself had been written on, like a school desk.
‘Do you like the dark?’ I wasn’t too comfortable with Soames shutting out the daylight.
‘It’s a habit, you see. The only way I can get some privacy,’ he replied. ‘I can never tell if Mather is watching me at any time – this is the only way I can be alone.’
‘I see.’
‘I hope he’s dead. Much better for us if he is.’ He looked me in the eye and nervously scratched the back of his right hand. ‘If he is still alive, he’ll go to the boathouse first, and when he sees you’re not there, he’ll guess you’ve gone back to the house.’
Now that we were able to rest, I could see how different Soames was to Mather. He had intelligence, but it was nothing like Mather’s. My instinct told me that Soames wasn’t the one I should be worried about. He carried none of the malice present in his colleague. He was too frail to be any kind of threat. I still kept my wits about me, but now listened more closely to what he said, realizing he might indeed be trying to help me.
‘And what will he do when he realizes I’m not there?’ I asked him.
‘He’ll search the whole island! Oh yes. But he might not suspect that I’ve helped you at first.’
‘You will help me then?’ I asked, relieved. ‘Please, I’ve got to get away from here. We both have.’
‘Yes, I’ll help you – but I don’t care what happens to me now. As long as he is finished . . .’ His eyes met mine.
‘How many people have died here?’
‘You saw the bodies in the pit?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not even half.’
‘There are more?’
‘Mather – he used to just weight the bodies and dump them in the lake. That was until I convinced him that sooner or later they’d be found by fishermen – or tourists.’
‘How many though?’
‘You wouldn’t believe it, Ashley.’
‘How do you know my name?’
‘It was me who found you.’
‘Found me?’
‘Yes. In
Missing Link
. That’s how we bring people here. When Mather needed bodies for his experiments, he figured he could use the mosquito to lure people. He paid Derringher to—’
‘Derringher?’
‘The harbour master.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘He paid him to bring magazines and papers from the newsagent’s in town twice a month. I would go through them and select people who might have an interest in the Ganges Red. Scientists, entomologists . . . journalists.’ He looked at me, then turned away. Pulling a curtain aside carefully, he peered out. ‘We would send out a letter to get their interest and just wait for them to show up. Some came, some didn’t. We’ve had lots of visitors,’ he said, with a distant, regretful look in his eyes. ‘I never thought we’d get away with it for so long.’
‘But these people must be missed. What do you do when friends and relatives come looking for them?’
‘Mather says that scientific magazines like yours aren’t written by people who have much of a social life. They’re loners mostly. And in his letters he always tells people not to mention where they’re going. They think it’s because the story is secret, but it’s so they can’t be traced here.’
‘But you’re still taking a big risk.’
‘Yes, but that’s where Derringher comes in. As well as getting us the magazines and stuff, he also puts people off the scent. If people start snooping around, he just tells them he’s never seen anyone. They believe him.’
‘Mather pays Derringher to do that too?’
‘Yes. He pays him well, I think.’
‘But what about the train station? What if someone there remembered seeing someone?’
‘Tryst is small, but it does get a large number of visitors, even in the colder months. We get a lot of tourists and hikers. I doubt the guards at the train station would remember individuals.’
I was growing colder and colder the more I learned of their foul scheme. Mather, it seemed, had thought of everything and, judging by the number of bodies on or around the island, escape wasn’t often an option.
‘Look, we should both be getting off this bloody island in case Mather does manage to get out of that pit.’
‘First you must hear this. You must tell this story when you get back – I’ll . . . I’ll never . . . Just listen, please. It’s important. Mather is only part of the danger you’re in.’
Despite the tense situation, my curiosity was getting the better of me. ‘Mather told me a story about his days as a medical student. He wanted me to believe that it was you who had done all those horrible things.’
‘Of course he did! It’s all part of the trap, to make you feel sorry for him.’ There was something about Soames’s manner, his urgency, that I believed.
‘So what really happened?’
‘Mather was the one who came up with the idea. He made me help him. Said he’d ruin my chances of graduating if I didn’t help—’
‘He was using you.’
‘Mmm. He must have had the idea for a long time, and wanted to get me to like him before he told me about it all . . .’
‘He’s a real piece of work,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘But he’s – he’s the cleverest man I ever met,’ Soames said, with deep melancholy. ‘And the only real friend—’
‘Friend?’
‘Yes. He was the only one who ever listened to me, and I was honoured to be associated with him.’
‘You don’t really respect him, do you?’
‘Of course!’ He looked me in the eye with a shocked expression, as though I’d said something ridiculous. ‘He’s sick, but he’s . . . he’s a genius!’
‘A genius? How can you say that? He’s a monster.’
‘What he’s done over the years . . . the experiments . . . they’re appalling . . . horrific. I never imagined a human being could do things like that to another. But I can’t help but be in awe of his mind. He can do it all, over and over again . . . and his mind stays firm. Me, however – I didn’t think I’d be helping him with his work for so long . . . I’m not sure I know who I am any more. My mind is . . . different.’
‘I can’t believe you stayed here all this time. You have to stop being a part of what’s going on here.’
‘I haven’t helped him for a long time now. There came a point when I no longer wanted to. He kept threatening to set that monster on me, and the threat worked for a while, but soon not even that could make me help him do those things. In a way I think he was pleased to have the bodies to himself for a change. Now I just find the names for him. But even that has to end. I want to finish him and his work. I won’t pretend I’m any less guilty than he is. And I’m not helping you out of the goodness of my heart, I’m doing it because . . . it ends here.’
‘Forget about stopping him. Survival is more important. While he’s down in that pit we can get off—’
‘No, no, no. It’s not as easy as that. You’ve seen the Ganges Red?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without that creature, we wouldn’t be here right now. If the mosquito had never found Mather, he would never have come here.’
‘But he told me he found the Ganges Red
after
coming here.’
‘More lies.’
‘Did he lie about everything?’
‘No, not everything. It’s all part of the game to him. The mosquito, for instance. I’ll bet that whatever he told you about her is true. No legend, no myth, as ridiculous as it sounds. And
she
found Mather, not the other way round. She found him, and made him her slave.’
‘What?’
‘You see, the Ganges Red isn’t the one that’s trapped . . . we are.’ Soames looked down at the floor. He seemed swathed in hopelessness.
‘But it’s just an insect, surely?’
‘I wish.’ He looked up and shook his head. Suddenly we heard a branch snapping outside. A chill went through me. Had Mather escaped the research centre? Surely not.
Soames reached over carefully and parted the curtains a little. He looked this way and that, then breathed a deep sigh of relief. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s just Mr Hopkins.’
‘So . . .’ I tried to regain my composure, but my heart was still beating twice as fast as it should. ‘How did you get involved with Mather’s experiments in the first place?’
‘I had a hard time at medical school and Mather used to stand up for me. When he asked me to help him with his work I thought he genuinely wanted to do some good, to benefit mankind. And I felt privileged.’ Soames sat back again. ‘Of course, in time I realized he was a psychopath.’
‘It was only when I found the pit and the bodies that I realized there was something seriously wrong with him,’ I said. ‘He disguises it so well. What did you mean before, when you said the mosquito wasn’t just an insect?’
‘I can’t begin to understand everything. All I know is what I’ve seen and heard.’ Soames rubbed his brow. ‘For some reason that creature deliberately chose Mather. She chose him because he was capable of doing what had to be done. I think she was somehow aware of his experiments, and decided she could use him.’
‘Use him? What do you mean? It’s an insect!’
‘She’s not though. What you see is just a shell, just like our bodies are shells. It’s what’s inside that’s important. She wants blood, just like other mosquitoes. She satisfies her thirst with the victims Mather provides – but what she really wants is something else.’ Soames wrung his hands. He looked to me like a man confined to a prison cell. Mather must have really messed with his mind.
‘An insect has no intelligence.’
‘Oh, but this one does,’ he insisted. He was smiling now, though there was no humour there, merely dread.
I decided for the moment not to argue with him about the mosquito. With the little time that I had, I wanted to get as much solid information as possible. ‘So why come to this island? Was it because there was less chance of discovery?’
‘Yes, I think so. In the city Mather knew that he would be caught sooner or later.’
‘So how exactly did he find the mosquito? He told me a friend of his in Africa brought it to him.’
‘I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, but I can tell you what I remember. It would help if you knew a little more about the danger you’re in.’