CHAPTER TEN

 

 

SHE WAS PLEASANTLY surprised when campus security said they could help, and amazed when they offered two plainclothes officers to accompany her to the refectory.

She should have known it was too good to be true. They were waiting for her in the carpark. Neither man looked much older than twenty, and they dressed like students, but they probably wouldn’t have stood out much more if they’d been wearing uniforms and carrying truncheons. They just didn’t seem at ease, and didn’t look too bright either. She sighed and tried to look on the bright side. They were better than nothing, and besides, she probably was just being paranoid about Luke Tully.

She left them outside the refectory, after first taking the senior officer’s mobile number.

It looked like everyone who was planning to attend the demo had decided to fill up on fish fingers and chips first. She had to fight her way through a thicket of wild elbows. To say nothing of the placards; she saw more than one student almost lose their head as someone forgot they were carrying a sign and turned too fast.

Despite the crowds she spotted him almost immediately.

Not Luke Tully.

Isaac Ziegler.

He was sat alone. He seemed to have an air that deterred anyone from sitting at his end of the table. Even from a distance, Helen could see what Trinity had seen in him. He was well-put-together, but it wasn’t only that. She’d never liked pretty boys, especially ones who knew it; but he seemed to radiate... something.

She was halfway to him before she thought to send the emergency text. Part of her wanted to leave, to go outside and get reinforcements, better to take him quietly when he eventually left than try and arrest him in the middle of a probably hostile crowd.

It was the crowd that made up her mind. So many people, and maybe that was why Isaac was here, maybe he was planning on opening up a vein and going out in a blaze of undead glory. If so, she needed to get close so she could put a bullet in his brain before he could come back and start a riot.

Someone had finally decided to take the plunge and sit opposite Isaac: a young woman with green streaks through her strawberry blonde hair. She’d pulled the chair out moments before Helen got there, but she got a withering look and decided discretion was the better part of valour. Pouting she turned and stalked away; Helen was pretty sure she heard her mutter something about an ‘old bat’ as she went.

Helen sat down. Isaac Ziegler didn’t look up. He was too busy gathering peas onto his fork from a vivid red splotch of ketchup that reminded Helen far too much of a bloodstain.

“Hello, Isaac.” She’d slipped the phone into her side pocket, and now rested her left hand on the table; her right, hidden from view, unsnapped the restraining loop on her Beretta and eased the gun a few millimetres out of its holster.

He had a knife in his right hand which he was using to shepherd the peas. It didn’t look too sharp, but it bothered her nonetheless.

Isaac let the peas fall from his fork and looked up. He kept hold of his cutlery. He was smiling, and the look on his face was identical to how he’d looked in the photo in Trinity’s flat. It was unsettling; he looked like he should have Trinity beside him. After all those selfies, it was ironic that the best picture of him had been taken with someone else.

He had curly dark hair and the aquiline nose of a Roman emperor. His eyes were wide and round and the colour of chocolate. His smile was broad, with more than a hint of arrogance. He was a good-looking boy, and boy, did he know it. “You’ll be the policewoman. WPC Ogilvy is it?” He actually winked. If he knew her name, he damn well knew her rank.

Where the hell were campus security?

She ignored the jibe. “Why don’t you put the knife and fork down, Isaac? Then put your hands on the table, palms down so I can keep an eye on them.”

He cocked his head to one side and frowned. “Why would I do that, inspector?”

She smiled sweetly. “Because I have a gun, and I also have more than a sneaking suspicion than you’re planning on doing something stupid. You’re a bright boy, you know how many coppers have been exonerated after shooting someone they perceived to be on the verge of killing themselves. The press will jeer but I’ll get off with a slapped wrist.”

He sneered, but he dropped his knife and fork. The cutlery clanged as they hit the plate. Helen silently rebuked herself for starting at the noise, even if all it amounted to was pulling her gun another few millimetres out of the holster. When he slapped his palms down on the table she didn’t react.

“That’s better. Now we can talk.”

“What makes you think I want to talk?”

“Because I think you like the sound of your own voice.” He bristled, but didn’t say anything. “And because talking is all you can do now, so why not let it all out, starting with Trinity?”

His eyes flickered, but it wasn’t guilt, wasn’t even regret; it was sadness. The moment passed and the arrogance returned, but she’d seen a smidgen of humanity behind the blandly beautiful façade. Maybe there was hope for him, maybe he could be de-radicalised. The success rates were pretty good; not perfect, but at least he’d have a chance.

He stayed silent. “Okay then,” said Helen. “Maybe you don’t like the sound of your voice as much as I thought you did, but you must have some reason for getting me down here, unless it’s a huge coincidence and Luke doesn’t know you’re here. Did he really have new information?”

“Doesn’t seem likely, does it?” Isaac glanced down, there was a glass of apple juice in front of him. “Can I have a drink?” He smirked. “It’s a plastic cup.”

Helen nodded. “So why did you want me here? Hoping I’d be caught up in your little theatre of blood?”

He took a gulp of apple juice. “Why, detective inspector,” he said with faux innocence, “what exactly do you think I have planned?” He put the glass back, down then make a big play of resting his palms on the table once more.

Helen smiled. “Had planned,” she said. “I think you were going to kill yourself, in here amongst all these people. I’ve read your file, trawled through your internet history, so I know you have an unhealthy interest in zombarchy.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Zombarchy... It’s just a label, a brand dreamed up by the media that they can stamp over something pure, turning art into ratings.”

She resisted the urge to laugh. He sounded so serious, so sincere. “What use is art if no one sees it? You can spout bullshit all you want about the media, but most people like you want an audience, you want that label, even if it’s only posthumously.”

He scowled at her for a moment, but then the sly smile returned. “No flies on you... yet. But there will be eventually. All gotta die someday. Why wait. Live fast, die young and...”

“...leave a good-looking corpse. Yes, I know the line. James Dean.”

He looked down his nose at her. “Actually he didn’t say that.”

“Do I look like I care?” She took a deep breath. She wanted to look for the security guards—maybe they were having trouble finding her in this crowd—but to do that she’d have to take her eyes off Isaac, and she really didn’t want to do that, because there was something unsettling about how calm he was. “Trinity,” she said. “Did you kill her?”

“No.” He said it simply, sincerely, although she’d already seen just how sincere he could appear when he wanted to. Still there was something in his eyes at mention of her name, that fleeting sadness once more.

“I don’t believe you.” Actually she did, but she needed to keep him talking, needed to keep the situation calm as long as she could, especially given Luke might be planning something as well. He was a follower, not a leader, though. She doubted he’d try anything without his master’s permission.

“I have no reason to lie,” said Isaac.

“No? How about twenty-five-to-life?”

He shook his head. “I have no reason to lie,” he repeated. “I love Trinity, believe what you want about me, but that’s the truth.” Again the sincerity, though he ruined it with a mock salute. “Scout’s honour.”

Helen pressed on. Was she really buying time, or was she reluctant to rule him out completely? Because if he hadn’t killed Trinity, then just who the fuck had? “Did she find out about your plans, or had she been in on them all along? Did she get cold feet, threaten to call the police?”

Isaac let out the long-suffering sigh of someone much older. “Trinity knew what I was planning, she knew right from the start, and yeah, for a while she was in on it, but she didn’t get cold feet, she just got a better offer.”

Helen frowned. “A better offer?”

Isaac nodded. His smile was warm and friendly. “I know what you think, detective inspector. I’m just self-absorbed, a gloomy goth who looks like everyone else but harbours a deep desire for self-destruction because of the sheer hopelessness of life.” He laughed, shrugged. “And maybe you’re right, but believe me when I say that Trinity’s egomania was on a whole other level. She wanted to die, wanted her moment in the sun, but that wasn’t enough for her, she wanted to be special. Me, I’ll be forgotten a few months or years down the line, but Trinity? I don’t know what she had planned, but she said she was going to be spectacular. She said no one would ever forget her.”

Helen thought back to Trinity’s flat, to that motivational poster on the wall, which she thought Trinity’s parents had bought her.

Be someone!

She was no longer wondering where the security guards were.

She was seeing a much bigger picture: perhaps someone, some organisation, had synthesised an antidote for the zombie outbreak, and Trinity had volunteered to be their guinea pig, their patient zero. That was more fame than she could get as a second-rate economist or political researcher. After all, people still remembered Typhoid Mary, even after all these years, and there was Alex Gordon, too, the Canadian orthodontist and first recorded zombie. “Who made her a better offer?”

Isaac ignored her question. “What do you think of the name, by the way? ‘Rampage in the Refectory’!” As he spoke he swept his right hand dramatically through the air.

“Put your hand down.”

He pursed his lips, the small child caught being naughty. “Oops.” He put his hand down.

“Trinity. Who made her a better offer?”

He shrugged again. “I know you won’t believe me, but I honestly don’t know.”

Helen stared at him. “Why did you want me here?” For a horrible, sickening moment, she wondered if any of this was real, wondered if she wasn’t still chained up at the pub, or maybe it was worse, maybe she was a corpse, maybe she was a rotting, slobbering zombie, and even as her body was abused by a succession of men for fifty quid a pop what remained of her mind had invented this fantasy of seeing out the case.

She caught the start of a sentence. “I just wanted someone to know that I didn’t kill Trinity, wanted to confess my innocence before...” The rest of his words were drowned out by the sudden sound of someone choking, someone retching, off to one side.

Someone else screamed, a couple of voices were raised in alarm, calling for help. Helen kept her eyes on Isaac, or rather on the plastic cup in front of him, and she remembered Luke pouring apple juice into the dispenser the day before and realised she’d been incredibly naïve.

“Bet you’re glad you didn’t get a drink,” said Isaac.