Lillicrap briskly crossed the empty area, making for the far side and a door whose locking mechanism was controlled by a handprint scanner. Sam had been beginning to wonder if perhaps she and Ramsay were the victims of some grand, elaborate hoax and there was no more to this dingy subterranean place than met the eye. The handprint scanner put paid to that. There was, self-evidently, a great deal more.
A broad corridor led them past a series of closed doors. Rock music thumped from behind one. Living quarters, she guessed. At the end lay a staircase, down which they went, Sam with a deepening sense of trepidation. What was she getting herself into? There was the feeling that she was descending into something inescapable, irrevocable. She could be about to disappear off the face of the earth. No one knew she had gone to this island. There were no witnesses to her travelling here except for Captain Fuller, and he was in the employ of whoever had organised this whole enterprise. If she vanished, who would notice? Nobody. That was the sad truth of her existence. She had no family, no close friends, not any more.
Tragic though this was, it was also perversely comforting. Whatever fate awaited her, it would affect her alone. Sam Akehurst would not be missed. Her absence would not leave a hole in anyone's life.
Rick Ramsay's presence was likewise comforting. If this situation was all some elaborate trap, a snare for the curious and unwary, she didn't think he would hesitate to fight his way out of it. And neither would she.
Lillicrap ushered them into a cramped, cluttered room that was mostly taken up by a large table. Seated around it were ten men and women, all in various stages of boredom and disaffection. Refreshments — sandwiches, pastries, dips — were heaped on the tabletop, largely untouched. Coffee and tea making facilities perched on a trolley in one corner.
"Make yourselves at home," Lillicrap said to Sam and Ramsay. "And the rest of you — it won't be much longer now, I promise."
"No worries," said a sunburned man, in a sardonic Australian drawl. "Tell your boss to take his time. I've got nothing else to do but sit around all day with my thumb up my freckle."
Lillicrap sniffed and withdrew, leaving Sam and Ramsay as the focus of ten scrutinising gazes. Sam tried a disarming smile, put on more than felt. Ramsay got a result simply by saying, "The coffee in that pot better not be the watered-down piss it looks like." Someone chuckled and the atmosphere lightened a little.
Sam sat down in the last remaining chair but one, between a sharp-nosed blonde woman and an Asian man. The latter, in almost entirely unaccented English, introduced himself as Fred Tsang. The blonde favoured Sam with nothing more than a reserved nod.
Ramsay placed a coffee in front of Sam, which she was grateful for even though she hadn't asked for it. He then took the final seat, sipped from his own cup, wrinkled his nose and confirmed aloud that it was indeed watered-down piss.
"So," he said, having drained the cup anyway, "which one of us gets murdered first?"
"You, you Yankee bastard," said the Australian cheerily.
"It's just, I'm getting a whole Agatha Christie vibe from this," Ramsay continued, pointedly disregarding the other man's comment. "Twelve folks gathered in a room together. Cut off from the mainland. Brought here by a complete stranger. Where's Miss Marple when you need her?"
"Not cut off," said a woman, another American, lighter-skinned than Ramsay, most likely mixed-race. She held up a mobile phone. "Not as long as we've got our cells."
"Reception?"
The woman checked. "Oh. Nuh-uh."
"Didn't think so, underground. Cut off, then. N'awlins?"
"Just outside. Chalmette. Chicago?"
"South Side born and raised."
"Kayla," said the woman. "Kayla Sparks."
"I'm Rick," said Ramsay. "And the lovely redhead with me is Sam. She's English, so she doesn't talk much."
"Prefers not to," said Sam.
"Same difference," said Ramsay. "But seeing as the two of us are the newcomers, and even though the rest of you have been here a whiles and probably already know a bit about one another, would you mind filling us in about yourselves? So we're up to speed? Then we can maybe figure out what the twelve of us have in common, other than being invited here, and try and make sense of this thing. How about that?"
"Did I miss the voting?" challenged the Australian. "Did you just put yourself in charge, septic?"
"No, Crocodile Dundee, I haven't put myself in charge of anything. But if you'd like me to…?"
"No way, mate. Spent thirteen years of my life taking orders. I'm done with it now."
"I doubt you ever did take orders, not really."
"Too right!"
"No, all I was doing was making a straightforward request, not a leadership bid," said Ramsay. "Like I said, to get Sam and me up to speed. Would that be OK?"
The Australian deliberated. "Can't see the harm."
"Good. Then let's start with you. Who are you and why have you come all the way from the Lucky Country to this godforsaken spot?"
3. THE BARRACUDA
Dez "The Barracuda" Barrington was his name, and the why of it was simple. He was a man with a grudge, a man seeking payback, and that was what the invitation in its ponced-up, wowsery way had promised.
"Payback for…?"
"It's not something I like to talk about."
"I'd say, 'Relax, you're among friends,'" said Ramsay, "except you're not, so I won't. I could save you the trouble of having to reveal all, though, by making an educated guess."
Barrington spread two beefy pink hands, palms up. "Go ahead, smartarse. Be my guest."
"The Olympians. Something the Olympians did to you."
The word Olympians sent a frisson round the table, bringing a stiffening of backs, a compressing of lips. Sam felt herself bristle along with everyone else. Couldn't help it. She couldn't hear the Olympians mentioned, couldn't read about them in a newspaper, couldn't catch a glimpse of them on television, without her whole body starting to tense up, often to the point of trembling. For her it was as much of an instinctive reaction as dread of a shark or revulsion at a snake. She was not alone in that — certainly not in this room.
"You knew already," said Barrington, both a question and an accusation.
"How?"
"I don't know, maybe you're the bloke that brought us all here. You act like you are."
"I'm as much in the dark as any of you," Ramsay said. "Just trying to fumble my way towards the light. The Olympians hurt someone you care about. Maybe did worse than hurt. Correct?"
Barrington crumpled and gave a sullen nod. "Malc. My brother. Older brother. Only member of my family worth a tinker's fart. Couldn't have been my vicious bastard of a father who got killed, could it? Couldn't have been my drunk of a mother or my slag of a sister who'll drop her grundies for every root rat that comes sniffing round. Had to be Malcolm. The only person in the world I've ever had any respect for."
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Me bloody too, mate."
"Was it… intentional?"
"Nah, Malc just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hercules was having one his hissy fits, storming through downtown Sydney flinging cars around and punching holes in buildings. His latest bumboy had given him the elbow, that's what I heard; ended their affair, so off Herc the Jerk goes, taking it out on property like he does, the great arse. Malc was working on the third floor of an office block on George Street, fixing a water cooler for a legal firm. A fucking Toyota ute came flying through the window. Killed him stone dead."
Barrington's face had gone a deeper, fiercer shade of red. His voice was a balled fist.