Shak didn’t seem surprised. ‘Number One,’ he said. ‘What a wanker.’ He gestured at her laptop. ‘Make a note of what he talks about. We’re keeping an eye on that guy.’
Allie finally got the earphones plugged in. Gabe’s voice filled her head.
She hated that voice. She’d heard it the day before, but only for a second. Now it made her skin crawl.
His face she didn’t have to imagine. She knew it all too well. He was beautiful – with blond hair and perfectly even white teeth. He had a chiselled jaw and warm brown eyes. The kind of boy any girl would fall for.
He was Jo’s murderer.
His voice was a little deeper than she remembered; the corners had been shaved off his plummy accent, but it was definitely him.
‘Do it now, Six,’ his voice crackled through her headset. ‘I don’t have time for this.’
‘Copy that. En route.’ Six sounded sullen but he didn’t argue.
‘Too late,’ Gabe muttered. ‘Again.’
For a while after that, the other guards seemed subdued, using the radio more carefully. Soon, though, they slid back into their old ways, talking too much and wasting time.
There was nothing useful in what they said – quite a bit of disgusting talk about women. A bit of gabbing about football. Then, late in the afternoon, Six reappeared. Whatever had happened with Gabe, he hadn’t been fired. He seemed relatively jolly.
The others teased him about getting in trouble and he brushed it off.
Then Nine said something that made Allie sit up straight.
‘So… the boss. He still holed up in there with his pictures?’
She made a note: Nathaniel = boss? Pictures?
Six replied. ‘Yep. One says he hasn’t eaten anything in twenty-four hours.’
There was a pause. Then Nine responded. ‘In all seriousness, mate, is the guy losing it? Ever since that old lady got shot no one sees him.’
‘One says he’ll be fine.’ But even to Allie’s ears, Six didn’t sound convinced.
‘Yeah, One gets paid to think that. What’s it feel like to you?’
There was a pause.
‘Too early to tell.’ Six’s tone was terse.
‘Mate, this whole thing’s getting strange. We’ve done nothing since London. We should be moving in on them. Finishing this. I didn’t sign up to be a wet nurse in a loony bin.’ Frustration was clear in Nine’s gravelly voice.
All the other guards had fallen silent. Allie got the feeling they were listening to this conversation – hanging on every word. She willed Six to say something useful.
But when Six replied it wasn’t at all what she was hoping for.
‘I got a break in twenty. Meet at the usual place? We need to take this off the air. One’s on the rag again.’
As the others returned to normal chatter, Allie wrote feverishly: Ever since Lucinda died Nathaniel has been locked away. No one sees him. Guards are restless.
She paused to consider how to explain what she’d heard. Then she wrote it straight.
They think he’s going mad.
All through dinner that night the students chatted excitedly about working with Dom, finding Carter. There was a tangible sense of hope in the air.
But Allie was distracted. Unable to join in. The conversation she’d heard that afternoon was still bothering her. The idea that Nathaniel was locking himself away and mourning his dead stepmother – who he’d helped to kill – had really thrown her.
It brought too many images of that night. Images she’d tried to forget.
Lucinda’s hand, slick with blood, clutching her wrist.
Red blood soaking through a crisp, Burberry raincoat.
She didn’t want to think about that. She’d tried really hard not to think of it.
Rachel must have seen how distracted she was, because as soon as dinner ended, she pulled her to one side.
‘Hey, are you OK? You look so sad.’ Her warm brown eyes searched Allie’s face.
They stood in the wide hallway, out of the way of the bustling crowd pouring out of the dining hall. Everyone was talking and laughing. Allie felt utterly cut off from that world.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, dodging Rachel’s gaze. ‘I don’t know, Rachel. I guess I’m just not looking forward to this whole funeral thing.’
‘Oh honey,’ Rachel put her arm around her shoulders. ‘Do you want to talk about it? My grandmother died a few years ago…’ She paused, before adding hastily, ‘Of course, it’s not the same as what happened with Lucinda. This must be much worse for you than it was for me. But I was really sad. It was hard to imagine life without her.’
Allie thought for a second about not telling her the truth, but then she couldn’t seem to lie.
‘Here’s the weird thing, Rach,’ she said. ‘I know I should be sad, but I can’t seem to feel very much right now. It’s like I’m numb.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I feel like such a monster. I mean… Lucinda’s dead. Dead forever. But whenever I think about it, it’s like I’m kind of… I don’t know. Empty.’