With a quick nod of his head, Richard indicated that Dwayne should ghost over to Julia and make sure she didn’t make a run for it. As Dwayne started to move, Richard turned back to Ben.
‘And where’s the body?’
‘In there.’ Ben pointed at the Meditation Space.
Richard turned to the group. ‘Then if you’d all just wait here, please. The Detective Sergeant and I will only be a moment. Camille?’
Richard headed over to the Meditation Space, Camille coming over to join him, but Richard found himself stopping at the threshold to the building.
‘One moment,’ Richard said as he held his hand up for Camille to pause, because it was only now as Richard approached that he saw that the walls to the building were made of paper. In fact, as he looked closer, he could see that the paper was waxy, clearly very strong, and was even somewhat translucent. Richard put his hand on the other side of the door and noticed that he could still dimly see his hand’s shape through the paper.
‘What are you doing?’ Camille asked.
Richard ignored Camille as he took a moment to inspect the door to the building. He saw that there was no handle on the outside, but there was a Yale-style latch lock on the inside of the door that was screwed deep into the wooden frame—and that there was a corresponding housing on the door frame that it slotted into when the room was locked.
But without a keyhole on the outside, it appeared as though the door could only be locked and unlocked from the inside. Richard filed this information away for later consideration.
Stepping into the room, Richard immediately understood why the walls and roof were made of translucent paper, because every inch of the walls glowed with brilliant sunshine. And not only was it brighter inside the room than it was outside, it was significantly hotter too, like being at the heart of a supernova. Which was just bloody typical, Richard thought to himself.
Camille joined Richard inside and looked at her boss as he prickled in his suit.
‘Hot, isn’t it?’ she said, helpfully.
Richard decided to ignore his partner and instead, squinting against the light, saw that the body of a man lay sticky with blood in the middle of the floor. His hair, beard and white robes were now thick with blood. And there was a bloody knife on the floor by the body.
Richard gave the room a quick once-over, but there wasn’t much to see. The floor was polished hardwood planks; there were six woven prayer mats arranged in a circle around a tray of tea things. Six pairs of fabric eye masks and six wireless headphones were also lying here and there, but other than that the room was empty. No furniture—no cupboards, tables, chairs, statues or other ornaments—to hide behind or conceal murder weapons in.
To all intents and purposes the room was entirely bare.
Richard bent down and picked up one of the wireless headsets. He put it to his ear and frowned.
‘What is it?’ Camille asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Richard said, listening, but unable to work out what the noise was.
It was a strange keening.
He listened a bit longer, but, as far as he could tell, it was just more of the same yawling noise. And then dread filled his heart as he realised what it was.
With a shudder, he said, ‘It’s whales singing.’
Richard lowered the headphones, sharpish, and put them back down on the floor, before he joined Camille at the centre of the room to inspect the victim.
Crouching down, Richard could see that the murder weapon to the side of the body was a carving knife of some sort. Utterly vicious. The blade was covered in blood, although the handle seemed to be clean.
‘We’re going to need to get this bagged and tested for prints,’ Richard said.
Camille was inspecting the body.
‘There are no signs of a struggle … no fabric or skin caught under the victim’s fingernails … and no cuts to the hands, wrists or arms. It doesn’t look like he tried to defend himself from the attack.’
Richard looked at the tray of tea things on the floor by the pool of blood that had spread from the body. The teapot was willow pattern and there were six bone china cups that had all been turned upside down on the floor, one cup in front of each prayer mat. Richard tried to work out what had happened.
If the mats and cups were to be believed, there’d been six people in here. They’d all been sitting on the prayer mats around the tray of tea things. They’d all then had a cup of tea and turned their cup over and placed it down on the floor in front of them to show that they’d finished their drink.
But how did the eye masks and headphones fit into this? And how exactly had the victim been killed?
Camille inspected the stab wounds in the victim’s back.
‘There appear to be five separate sharp force injuries in the victim’s neck, shoulder and back,’ she said. ‘Two wounds on the right side of the neck, and three wounds on the right side of his shoulder and back. I’d say the assailant was standing behind the victim—and was almost certainly right-handed.’
Richard came over and could see the sense of what Camille was saying. The pattern of wounds suggested that the victim could only have been killed by someone who was standing behind him and striking into his neck and back holding a knife right-handed.
Richard made himself look at the face of Aslan as it lay in a pool of blood on the floor. Who was this man? What had he done to warrant such a violent death?
Richard exhaled. This was his job. To start with the end of the story: the body; the murder. And then he had to uncover the evidence that would allow him to wind time back until he could prove—categorically prove—who’d been standing above the body when the victim was killed; who it was that had wielded the knife.
Richard always made a silent promise to the victims of murder, and he made it once again now: he’d catch their killer. Whatever it took. He wouldn’t rest until the killer was behind bars.
A flash of light caught Richard’s eye in the far corner of the room. He turned back to look, but the little flash of light had gone as soon as it appeared. So he moved his head a fraction. No, still nothing. He moved his head back. There it was again.
There was something shiny on the floorboards he hadn’t noticed before.
‘What are you doing?’ Camille asked as Richard went over to the wall at the end of the room and got down on his hands and knees to inspect the floor.
‘What’s this doing here?’ he asked.
‘What is it?’ Camille asked as she came over to join her boss.
Richard found himself looking at a shiny drawing pin. It was just sitting there loose on the floorboards.
‘It’s a drawing pin.’
‘And why’s that of interest?’
‘Didn’t you see all of the witnesses out there?’ Richard said.
‘Of course. What about them?’
Richard turned to his partner as though he was a magician about to reveal the end of a particularly impressive trick. ‘Because, I’m sure you noticed, Camille, that most of the witnesses were barefoot.’
Camille was utterly unimpressed. ‘So?’
‘So who would leave a drawing pin like this loose in a room where people were going about barefoot?’
Camille