Authors: Adrian McKinty
“Give me that!” Harry said.
Will pushed him backward and pointed the shaking gun at Harry's ribcage. “Now, my friend, we are going to get some answers.”
18
THE MURDER OF MAX LUTZOW
W
ill swayed forward and righted himself. He blinked slowly. The floor was swimming. Crabs, flower petals. A sea of indigo and vermillion. A perfume river.
He shook his head and called himself to attention. “Why did you kill him, Harry? Why did you kill Lutzow?” he demanded.
“Lutzow killed himself.”
“How?”
“He did not believe.”
“He talked himself to death,” the countess added from the doorway.
“He talked himself to death?”
“He said we were all going to die. He convinced himself, he had a big mouth,” Helena said.
“And, no doubt, a bigger pen,” Will said, with a sudden flash of insight.
Harry looked at the countess. The look explained everything.
“Christ! It was all of them, Klaus. They all killed him. They killed him because he wanted to leave. He wanted to write about what he had seen. He wanted to condemn them. They feared his words!” Will said, ecstatically.
“Utter nonsense,” Harry murmured.
Will pointed the Luger at the countess. “It was Engelhardt, wasn't it? He gave the order.”
“What about Fräulein Herzen?” Klaus asked.
“Who? Fräulein Herzen? Oh yes. Fräulein Herzen. He let her go because he knew she wouldn't talk. Won't talk. But had we not been here, they would have killed her too! Wouldn't you?”
“She is harmless,” Harry said.
“How is she harmless? She was more of a risk than Lutzow! Yes, more of a risk . . . she knew about the murder,” Will said. “Unless . . . unless she was compromised, somehow. What did you do to her?”
“You're raving, Will,” Harry said.
“What did you do to her? How do you know she will keep silent? There must be something . . . some hold over her. Blackmail. Yes! Something, a letter, a document . . . A photograph. Bradtke! Yes! That's it!”
Keeping the gun pointing at them, Will motioned Helena and Harry to Klaus's bed.
“Will, can you explain what is happening?” Klaus asked again.
“Bradtke took more photographs! The locked album!” Will said.
“What?”
“Keep them here, Klaus, don't let them leave. If they try to leave shoot them!” Will said, handing Klaus the Luger.
“Where are you going?” Kessler asked.
“The album, Klaus. That's why they let Fräulein Herzen go. They knew they could blackmail her. All of them did it. They all did it! Do you see? How many bullets in that thing?”
“Seven.”
“Plenty. Wait here, Klaus!” Will barked and hobbled outside.
Rain. Heavy rain. Cold, head-clearing rain.
He looked over at the diners at the long table but none of them were paying any attention to him. He darted to Bradtke's hut and started rummaging through his albums. He pulled them off the shelves, and out spilled photographs of frogs, trees, marsupials, and of course the Cocovores going about their daily business.
He found the locked album. No, not a photograph album.
A confession
. He knew what would be in there.
They would have taken Lutzow to one of the lava rock pools on the south shore. He would not have been bound because Bethman had dosed him heavily. His eyes would be rolled to the back of his head. The pictures would form a story. Each of the Sonnenorden looking solemnly at the camera. Each showing his hands, palms up. Lutzow lying on the ground in front of them. All of the Sonnenorden there lifting Lutzow to the rock pool, save Bradtke taking the photographs. All of them shoving him face first under the water. They would be expressionless. But they are not drugged. They know what they are doing. Each one of them a discreet entity murdering their fellow Cocovore.
We do not eat meat, we renounce the tyranny of the will, we do no violence
. Fräulein Schwab's hollow words echoed in Will's ears.
He banged at the lock on the album. It didn't break. He needed a knife to cut through the leather.
He looked out the window. Dawn was a long way off.
When did the
Delfin
come? When was the flood?
A knife, I need a knife.
He looked through the shelves and under the bed. Nothing. He had to see the photographs. He had to see the proof ! Finally he found a pair of scissors and began cutting and sawing through the hard leather.
He lifted the leather skin from the cover.
A shadow on the book.
He looked up to see Bradtke standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing!” he yelled.
This was the moment. This was it. Why Will was here.
I am the vector of this story. I am justice. I am redeeming myself for my sins by bringing law to this island and justice for this one dead man.
“What have you got there?” Bradtke said, his face contorted with rage.
“Proof. Proof that you murdered Lutzow,” Will told him, his voice breaking into a triumphant higher register.
“What is your proof?” Bradtke demanded.
“These photographs,” Will said, shaking the book.
“You are deranged! No doubt it is the first flush of the malaria. Let Bethman take a look at you,” Bradtke replied calmly.
“Get back!” Will snarled, slobber drooling from the corners of his mouth.
“Herr Priorâ”
“Out!” Will said, grabbing a candlestick holder. “Out or I'll smash your murdering skull in!”
“Herr Prior, you are making aâ”
Will brought the candlestick holder down on Bradtke's head and he crumpled to the ground like a collapsing concertina.
“That'll teach you!” Will said and walked into the plaza with the book and the candlestick holder. He shuffled to his hut where Kessler was still keeping the gun pointed at Helena and Harry. Will took the Luger from him and handed him the sealed book of photographs.
“Please tell me what is going on, Will,” Kessler said.
“They murdered Lutzow. They took photographs of the actual crime. That's why they let Fräulein Herzen go. They knew she wouldn't say anything. She was implicated along with the rest of them,” Will said.
“You are hallucinating, Will. It is the heroin perhaps,” Harry said.
“You have taken leave of your senses,” the countess declared.
“Klaus and I are the only sane men here,” Will countered.
“What are you going to do, Will?” Harry asked.
“Klaus and Miss Pullen-Burry and I are going back to Herbertshöhe with this book and then we are going to come back with the navy and lift the lot of you.”
“You are such a fool,” Helena said, her eyes wide. “I knew you were an idiot from the moment I set eyes on you.”
“Shut up or I'll put a bullet in you,” Will said.
“What is going on in here?” Miss Pullen-Burry asked from the doorway.
“They murdered Lutzow,” Will replied. “They murdered him and took photographs of themselves doing it. It was a kind of initiation. The thing that bound them together. The proof is in this album.”
“Are you quite sure?” Miss Pullen-Burry asked.
“What should we do, Klaus?” Will asked. “We must not let them escape.”
“We must lock them in one of the huts until the pilot comes in the morning. I will send him back for a troop of soldiers.”
“I will not permit that,” Engelhardt said from behind Miss Pullen-Burry. There was an air of menace in his voice and a grim look on his face.
“Your days of permitting are over, Engelhardt. I saw your game with Miss Schwab. I know everything. Back up! All of you outside!”
“Put the gun down, Will,” Harry insisted.
“It's over, Harry. Finished. Do not move!”
Will forced them outside into the plaza.
“Nice and slowly I want you all to walk to Bradtke's hut where I'm going to lock you in.”
Fräulein Schwab offered Will her hand. “Give me the gun Will, you are beside yourself.”
“You don't think I won't shoot you? Watch me. Now, I want all of you to go over to the hut, I want everyone inside!”
No one moved.
Engelhardt reached over to the communal table where he had been cutting up bananas and grabbed a large steel machete. “Put down the gun, Herr Prior,” he said. “This has gone beyond a joke.”
“Do you want to lose the number of your mess? Understand me, Engelhardt, I am giving the orders! I've got a magazine full of bullets in here, more than enough to take care of the lot of you. Miss Pullen-Burry: escort the ladies to the hut if you please.”
“Stay where you are Miss Pullen-Burry!” Engelhardt said and began marching toward Will. “Put the pistol down, Herr Prior. Weapons from your world will not work here on Kabakon,” he insisted.
“Oh no?” Will replied, and to dispel any creeping doubt, pointed the gun in the air and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. He pointed the gun at Engelhardt's chest and pulled the trigger again.
Click.
Another click.
“What did you do?” he said, looking at the Luger in panic.
“I told you that your weapons would not work here,” Engelhardt replied.
The others looked at Engelhardt wide eyed. Harry and Anna fell to their knees.
“It's a trick! He must have found the gun and filed the firing pin.”
But it was too late. Engelhardt had his machete. The big Russian had an iron skillet. Jürgen Schreckengost had an axe handle. Bethman had grabbed a knife. Even Christian was advancing on Will with an adze. Will raised a defensive arm.
The blows came. A crash into his ribs. Another one in his neck.
They knocked him to the ground. He curled into a ball.
Kicks, punches, hands tearing at his hair. Searing pain along his spine.
Blood in his mouth. A hard kick in his testicles that sent a screaming funnel of white-hot lead into his brain.
“The
coup de grâce
,” someone said, and the skillet came down on his head. And thenâ
Nothing at all.
19
BETHMAN AND ENGELHARDT
V
oid for an indeterminate time. Void. And slowly,
slowly
awareness of self.
Breathing.
Pain.
Voices.
He was being dragged by the hair.
His skin was alive with hurt.
He felt like he was being flayed.
The dragging stopped.
More voices.
An argument.
He opened his eyes.
Swarms of mosquitoes about his face. Ants of every phyla crawling over him. He had been tied hand and foot. He was next to Klaus in the center of the plaza. Tied to the Malagan. An argument was in progress between Bethman and Engelhardt.
“He is dead anyway of the malaria,” Bethman was saying. “It will be quicker and more merciful for him.”
“There are ways of solving this without further violence, Bethman!” Engelhardt said.
“We must act at once.”
“We must consider this!”
“We must act! They are a cancer that must be cut out if we are to live!”
“Bethman is right,” Harry agreed.
“No!” Engelhardt insisted.
Will saw the blade hover before his eyes.
“We must do it!”
“No!” Engelhardt yelled.
Fräulein Schwab screamed.
Engelhardt grabbed Bethman by the arm.
Will's head was throbbing.
His ears were ringing.
A knife flashed.
A machete blurred.
Will closed his eyes.
A thud of metal on bone.
A collective gasp of horror.
Bethman staggering backward, trying desperately to remove Engelhardt's machete from his neck.
Screams.
Bethman stood there for a moment and then fell sideways, blood pouring from an artery in a jet of frothing crimson.
He looked at Will in bafflement.
He looked at Will until his legs stop kicking.
Helena was yelling hysterically.
Anna slapped Will on the face.
“Look what you've done!” she screamed. “Look what you've done!”
More slaps.
Nails tearing at his cheek.
More voices.
More pain . . .
20
THE PEACE THAT PASSETH ALL UNDERSTANDING
A
n ellipsis of time. Engelhardt's face. “Speak to me, Will, unburden yourself.”
“I have nothing to unburden.”
He gave Will something to drink. He spoke of Doctor Freud.
Will listened, understood.
“Talk to me, Will, tell me why you are here.”
“I am here to put you in prison.”
“For what?”
“For murder.”
Engelhardt shook his head. “You were wrong, Will. Quite wrong.”
“I was right and you know it! I've got the proof !”
“What proof?”
“Bradtke's photograph album.”
“Herr Prior, here, let me show you.”
He showed Will the album. Opened it. Ladies in various states of undress. Ladies in bloomers on bicycles.
“Lies!”
“It is the truth.”
“Bradtke's a eunuch!”
“He is not.”
Will looked at the photographs, at the album. How could thisâ? But he was so sure . . . “Another trick!”
“No trick. You have deceived yourself.”
But that would mean. All this . . . Bethman's death . . . for nothing.
He shook his head. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Unburden yourself. Tell me everything. Talk. Everyone here talks to me. Everyone unburdens themselves. What is the evil that hounds you?”
Will thought about the evil.
The
great
evil. He named it.
“Louder.”
“Africa,” he said and sobbed.
“What about Africa?”
“I shot them. Dozens of them. Men, women, children. I shot them down.”
“Tell me, Will . . .”