One by One(57)

ERIN


Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

Listening to: Offline

Snoopers: 5

Snoopscribers: 10

It takes me painfully long to hobble along the corridor. My ankle has puffed up overnight and it hurts to put weight on it. As I round the corner the sound of voices swells into a panicked hubbub.

“What’s going on?” I ask, but no one’s listening, they’re crowding around Tiger and Ani’s door. Tiger is crouched in the corridor, her arms wrapped around her head, sobbing hysterically. Liz is standing over her looking terrified, and occasionally placing a hand gingerly on Tiger’s hair, like it’s about to burst into flames.

“What’s going on?” I say again, and this time Danny appears out of Tiger’s room, his face gray.

“Fucking hell,” he says. “They’ve got Ani.”

“They’ve got her? Who’s got her? What do you mean?” I can feel fear rising inside me.

“I mean, I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”

Oh God. Dread twists at my guts as I push past the others and into the room.

Ani is lying on a mattress on the floor. She’s facedown, but when I pull her shoulder to turn her over, she comes all of a piece, like a mannequin, her joints locked with rigor mortis. I don’t need to feel her cold, waxen face to know that she’s very, very dead.

Suddenly my legs won’t hold me, and I stagger to Tiger’s bed, which is still warm and rumpled. The room swims in and out of focus and I put my head between my knees, trying to hold it together.

“That can’t have been Inigo,” Danny says hoarsely. I shake my head in agreement. That much is clear. Oh God, what is this living nightmare we’ve found ourselves in.

“And then we were six,” says a little voice from the doorway, and I look up to see Liz, her face a white mask of horror as she gazes at Ani’s prone form.

“What?” Danny says. He looks bewildered, as if he didn’t hear her right.

“Nothing,” Liz says. She gives a shaking, tremulous laugh. It sounds like she’s on the verge of hysterics. I know how she feels. And then she turns and disappears. I hear her door slam, and the lock grind into place. I don’t blame her. A strong part of me would like to do the same. But I can’t. I have to…

I stand, go over to the body, and very gently turn it again, this time forcing myself to look down at Ani’s dead face.

She looks almost like she died in her sleep. Almost. Not quite. There’s a tiny staining of blood on her lip where she must have bitten her tongue. And on her face, a few minute red dots. I know what they are, or rather, I know what they mean, but it takes a few minutes cudgeling my memory before my brain can come up with the medical term. Petechiae. First-year medical students don’t come across much homicide—but I’ve seen enough textbook photographs to recognize it.

There are no marks on her neck, and no other wounds that I can see, apart from the tiny specks of blood on her lips. When I bend to lower her gently back to the position I found her, facedown, I see it has flecked the pillow too. A line sings in my head: Lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow.

“I think she was smothered,” I say quietly to Danny. “Whoever did it either pressed her face down into the pillow, or they held something over her face and then turned her over afterwards. There’s not much bruising and no defensive marks that I can see—she was probably asleep.”

“Oh my God.” Danny’s face crumples into horror. He looks like a man decades older than his twenty-five years. “But, you’re not telling me—Tiger?”

I shake my head, but I’m not disagreeing with him—I just have no idea what to say. I can’t believe that gentle, zen-like Tiger could possibly have done this. But on the other hand—the door was locked. And could someone really have crept in and smothered Ani in her sleep without Tiger waking? I think back to her yoga-toned body, those slim, strong hands. The world seems to tilt and shift on its axis.



* * *



Out in the corridor, the others are waiting, pale and worried. Tiger has sobbed herself silent and is still crouched against the wall, Miranda’s arm protectively around her. Liz is still locked in her room. Carl and Rik are standing with grim, drawn faces either side of the door like sentries. Topher is pacing, and he looks like a man possessed by demons. There is an expression on his face that frightens me.

“What. The. Fuck,” he spits as Danny and I leave the room, closing the door behind us.

“Oi, mate,” Danny puts up his hands, but I shush him. Five of these people are scared and grieving. One… But I can’t think about that. It’s too surreal, too horrible.

“Come down to the living room,” I say. “I think we all need a drink.”

It’s barely 9:00 a.m., but downstairs I pour us all stiff whiskeys, and everyone drinks them without a murmur, except for Tiger, who is lying on the sofa, shivering, in a state of what I can only call near-catatonic shock.

“So,” Rik says, as he puts down his glass. “What happened?”

“Just a second,” Miranda says. “Where’s Liz?”

I feel a wash of panic, followed by a wave of rationality. There is no way anyone can have killed Liz while we were all standing out in the corridor.