Stone Cold (2/2)

Adrian Fisher sat on a black chair in the lobby of the National Museum of Antiquities handling a Rubik’s cube with legerdemain. Click, click, click--everything fell into place.

“That’s amazing!” said the security guard, a very tall thin youth who’d been looking on with wide eyes. “How’d’ya learn to do that?”

She shrugged despondently.

“Practice.”

Despite the guard’s marvelling eyes, she wore a pensive expression. Her heart was heavy.

The museum murder was a tricky proposition. Someone had been careful to cover their tracks. Someone had succeeded very well…

She mentally reviewed the conversation she’d had with Gillian Harper on the Tube coming here. The museum director had been in an absolute state. It was all Adrian could do to channel calm compassion; it was imperative she keep a clear head in preparation for her night’s sojourn in the Mesopotamian hall.

“Well,” Gillian had said. “The security guard on duty that night has gone missing. No one can get a hold of him. His phone’s not being answered—he disappeared without a trace. So that’s that. There’s not really any point in you staying over there, is there?”

“What do you mean?” Adrian asked.

“Well, it means he’s guilty! The police just have to hunt him down.”

“I don’t think we can leap to conclusions yet.”

“No? How about the fact that the museum’s security cameras had all been disabled at nine o’clock in the evening. Who was manning the cameras? The guard.”

“Interesting,” Adrian said. “The guard had keys to the outer gate then?”

“Of course,” said Gillian. “But that’s hardly relevant is it?”

“I’m afraid it might be veryrelevant,” said Adrian.

“There’s just one thing I can’t get my head around,” Gillian said. “The chauffeur who was assigned to pick the couple up…According to him, they met him at the gate right on time. And he says he knew who they were because he was a fan of their TV shows. I suggested he’d made a mistake but he got really angry about it. Presumably he wasn’t blind because you can’t get your driver’s license renewed without passing an eye test, can you? He insists that the couple got into the taxi and he dropped them off at King’s Cross station.”

“That was a mistake,” said Adrian.

“What do you mean ‘a mistake’?”

“I mean the murderer was sloppy. It’s too clever.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gillian said. “It’s impossible.”

“Exactly,” said Adrian, annoying Gillian even more. They spent most of the rest of the journey in silence. Arriving at the museum gates, Gillian had unlocked it and let Adrian in.

“The new security guard will keep an eye on you but call me if you need anything. I won’t be sleeping anyway.”

Now, sitting on the chair in the lobby, Adrian was engrossed in her thoughts.

“So. You’re a detective, eh?” said the young security guard who’d been staring at her for five minutes.

“Sort of,” said Adrian.

“No offense,” he said, “But you look thirteen.”

“Fifteen,” she replied glumly. “But I’m a phenom. I study astrophysics and have a side-hustle doing detective work. Plus I do weekend courses in falconry.”

“Bloody hell!” He murmured.

“Yup. What’s your name anyway?”

“Rupert.”

“Pleased to meet you. You don’t look so decrepit yourself.”

He grinned. “This is my first job to be honest. First day on my first job.”

“Congratulations. Tell me, Rupert, how would you have done the murders?”

“What, me?” He looked alarmed. “I wasn’t here. I was watching the match, innit.”

“Hypothetically. Treat it as a thought experiment. If it were up to you, what would you have done? Would you have used a knife like that and gone to all the trouble of, you know, arrangingthe bodies, extracting the hearts and all that business? Or would you have brought in a firearm and shot them quickly? I, for example,” she said, noticing that he was frowning and still slow to catch her drift, “Would probably have chosen to sneak up behind them and push them down the stairs.”

“Oh. I get you now. Well, let’s see now…” He pursed his lips in thought and rocked back and forth on his feet. “If you wanted to get the two of them at once, I suppose you couldn’t do better than a car bomb. Course, that’s not always practical. Hard to get your hands on explosive these days, innit. House fire while they’re sleeping? Something like that. Otherwise, just come up behind the person and whack them well on the head wiv’ a brick.”

Adrian nodded with approval.

“You have potential Rupert. Creative, practical, sneaky. I am in agreement, completely. This business was done by someone who thinks differently from us.”

“By a nutter, you mean,” he said knowingly.

“In a sense, very much so. There is a level of emotional involvement and overweening pride that exceeds mere functional butchery. He or she felt that their repulsive act had a kind of special significance. An utterly twisted sense of entitlement, if you ask me.”

“For real.” Rupert nodded.

“If you were going to brain someone with a brick, Rupert,” said Adrian thoughtfully, “And you knew you might be seen by a third party, for example an authority figure, what would you do in that case?”

“Brain them too,” he shrugged.

Adrian snapped her fingers.

“Yes! You’re brilliant”

“Huh?”

Adrian sprang to her feet.

“Come on, gizza hand.”

“What with?”

“Finding a body.”

After an exhaustive search of the museum, the two stood, defeated, in the ‘Roman Britain’ hall.

“Are you sure about this?” Rupert said. “What makes you think the security guard copped it?”

“Well, I mean, it’s possiblehe was an evil mastermind and planned everything before effectuating a disappearance. It’s also possible that he wasn’t.”

The two lapsed into silence.

“What are these things anyway,” Rupert gestured at the big stone blocks surrounding them.

“Sarcophagi. Tombs. The word literally means ‘flesh eaters’…Oh! For god’s sake, how could I have missed it! Help me, Rupert.”

She sprang up and looked at the lid of a tomb that was imperfectly secured. Together they shifted it, enough to see inside.

“There!” Adrian exclaimed triumphantly. “What did I tell you?”

But Rupert was already making his way quickly to the bathrooms.

***

Detective Inspector Yvonne Battle was finding it hard to focus on taking Adrian’s statement. She kept spacing out and staring at the teen. The smell of popcorn pervaded the museum lobby, coming from a small portable popcorn maker plugged into a wall socket. Something didn’t compute.

“I’m sorry, what were you doing on the premises did you say again?” Battle frowned.

“I’m a private detective. Gillian Harper hired me to find a murderer. I suspected spending the night here would yield valuable information of one kind or another. I’m pleased to say that this suspicion has borne fruit.”

“Are you and he friends or something?” Yvonne Battle pointed at Rupert, who was still looking a bit sick.

“No, I only met him tonight, in a professional capacity. I was glad of his company, otherwise it might have been a little somber. You know, with all these funerary ruins. Ordinarily things of that nature don’t bother me but, well, in this place there is something of an antediluvian chill. Do you believe in ghosts?”

“No.”

“I am not so sure.”

“Mind telling me why exactly were you looking in the tomb?”

“I told you, I’m a detective. I thought that the poor security guard may have been killed by the murderer. Rupert and I searched for his body. As I implied earlier, we were successful.”

“Right. Hang around will you? I think we’ll need to talk to you down at the station,” Battle walked as if in a trance towards where the forensics team was tending to the body in the Roman Britain hall.

“Certainly.”

Adrian took a pew and started munching on popcorn. She was chewing her nails when Angela flew in the side entrance, looking frowsy and frazzled. She was wrapped up in a trenchcoat and her shock of wooly hair had been hastily pulled back into a ponytail.

“There you are, Adrian. I told Gillian I’d come. She had to come yesterday. Only fair that I shoulder some of this nightmare.”

“I’m just waiting for them to remove the body then they want to talk to me at the station,” Adrian said cheerfully.

“How on earth did you know he was in there?”

“After chatting to Rupert I realized it was a convenient place to stow an corpse.”

“So that security guard didn’tdo it after all, poor guy,” Gillian sighed.

“Oh no, that was never very likely,” said Adrian. “Tell me Angela, you met the guests on that tour the other night, right?”

“Yes, of course. I arranged everything and met them before the tour began.”

“What are the people who were there like. Any likely serial killers in the bunch?”

Angela touched her palm to her forehead.

“Well, I’ve been thinking it over and over…really it seems extremelyunlikely. In the first place they’re all such public figures. But apart from that, none of them seem to have the what-do-you-call-it—the capacity. Rita Davies is so tiny, I don’t think she’d have the capacity to drag people around. Sir Omar al-Zamir is so posh and uptight I can’t imagine him even making a breakfast decision without second-guessing himself, let alone staging a horrific murder like this—he’s always thinking of optics and how things will affect his political career. Bowie Jangles – never. They’re too gentle. Have you ever listened to their songs? They sound like they’d burst into tears at the sight of an upside-down ladybird. Titi Bajo is fit enough and he’s done some rough stuff on the pitch, but he’s such a lovely guy. If you meet him, his smile is so sincere. He volunteered to wheel Marie Laurent around the museum. Of all of them, Marie has the bitterest personality but—for god’s sake! She’s in her eighties and confined to a wheelchair…It’s all very difficult.”

Adrian nodded.

“What about the film crew?”

“Well, they left early, after half an hour and they have a pretty solid alibi since they went straight to film a wedding. Two hundred witnesses can’t be wrong really.”

“I was wondering, how did you decide to run the tour in the first place?”

“Gillian thought we should try to promote the museum in a way that would be appealing to younger people. You know—actors, footballers, that sort of thing.”

“Was it hard to book the professors?”

“No, that was the great thing. See, my partner Sebastian went to university with Harry. They were great friends, both studied archeology. He’s devastated, obviously. We had Harry and Simone over for dinner a couple of times and they more or less volunteered to help out.”

“And the guests—how did you book them?”

“Well, I just happened to know Rita. She’s an old friend. The others we just emailed and asked if they’d like to participate. Harry and Simone were so well known that they have a kind of star appeal.”

“The scholar Marie Laurent?”

“Oh, well, she actually taught Harry and Sebastian at one point. She did it as a favour to them.”

“I see.”

Adrian fiddled with her Rubik’s cube.

“This museum isn’t haunted is it?”

Angela started.

“What?”

“Just a feeling. It has dark vibes. Like some of the artefacts are still invested with divinity and those divinities are not entirely happy to be here.”

“Well, admittedly this place gives me the creeps but I think that’s got more to do with the fact that some psycho is killing everyone than anything supernatural.”

“Maybe,” Adrian said. “I was wondering if the suggestive atmosphere might drive someone who was on the edge to, you know, end it all.”

“Suicide, you mean?” Angela said, surprised.

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Adrian said. “Popcorn?” she offered Angela a paper bag.

“Thanks, no,” Angela shuddered.

At the police station, Adrian smiled pleasantly at Yvonne Battle and waited for the interview to begin. Yvonne looked uncomfortable, as if her uniform were scratching her.

“What kind of detective credentials do you have?” she asked the teenager.

“Well, I solve crimes, so I suppose that’s the best kind of credential,” Adrian answered.

“That’s a bit of a pert answer,” Yvonne said, folding her arms.

“It’s the truth though. By the way, I’m happy to tell you who killed the people in the museum. Might save you lot some time.”

“Thanks, that’s kind,” said Yvonne sarcastically.

“Let me ask you this first,” said Adrian, “Did any of the tour guests mention a man in a suit who came to the museum?”

Yvonne stared.

“How did you know that?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense, really. Shall I tell you how things went down and you tell me if it fits what you have?”

“Okay,” said Yvonne against her better judgement. As annoyed and suspicious as she was, she was still genuinely curious about this odd urchin.

“OK. So here’s the thing. This is something that was planned out in insane detail by someone very manipulative who did not want to have any direct involvement until the very last minute. Who is this person in the shadows? Let’s see…It has to be someone who has a motive to kill these people so he or she has to know them somehow. Secondly, it has to be someone who knew where they’d be on this particular night, and who knew well ahead of time so he or she could plan. Thirdly, it has to be someone who could afford to hire body doubles.”

“Pardon?”

“Body doubles. I’m positive that that’s the only explanation that the taxi driver thought he was driving Harry and Simone—because they looked identical. Which must have been deliberate. They were actors paid and probably paid for silence too.”

“That’s outlandish!”

“Yes, which is why it would never occur to anyone. And then, the murderer would have to have access to the museum. So that limits the number of suspects considerably.”

“To the staff.”

“Yes. But the security guards had nothing to do with it. And the guests saw a man the night of the murders. So that leaves the household of staff. In this case, the partner of Angela: Sebastian. He knew Harry and Simone. He was the one who persuaded Angela to invite them to take the tour. He had the money to hire actors. He had access to Angela’s keys to the museum. He was also a member of the museum, I believe. I checked the entry of members on that day and he came in at 4pm but he never left. Angela believes he went to Manchester. Maybe he did, but much later on. You can check with the hotel he gives as an alibi.”

“This sounds…preposterous,” Yvonne exclaimed.

“Yes. But it’s true. It has to be,” said Adrian. “The only thing I don’t know is the why—the motive. I’m guessing some kind of professional jealousy, since they were both archeologists.”

Three days later, Adrian got a text from Yvonne.

“You were right. Motive was jealousy, he’d wanted to marry Simone himself but Harry got in ahead of time.”