At a lane between two buildings we rested against a wall waiting for the killer, who was predicted to arrive by Marple, and he stood puffing away at his pipe, now tired of it, predicting the killer’s arrival, and I wondered how he knew he would arrive, and at that time, but he would not tell me, and I gasped when I saw someone pass a house window going somewhere, and thought of hiding, but Marple ignored it.
Although, a few minutes later, he jumped upright, as he spotted something, fully alert, and scrambling movements and panic-stricken curses came from the house we were monitoring, a house across a road at the end of the lane, and in the darkness of the lane we watched a dark figure rush out the building, and enter another lane beside the house, and the police came racing out of their cars and started chasing him.
As we ran after them, keen to catch and discover the identity of the killer, a man rushed out the house he had been in, shaken and holding a handgun, and saw he was gone and put it away inside.
I could not believe how accurate Marple had predicted the killer’s attack at the house, and I realized the killer might be getting away, and that we might not get the chance to catch him again, and I watched Marple and the others realize it and run after him, and I ran with them, as more and more police cars came racing in everywhere, with their sirens blaring at full blast.
The police clearly believed that they were chasing the killer, and I realized where he was heading, and towards a nearby cemetery, and I saw his dark shape in the distance rushing there, as other figures shifted towards him.
At another street Marple told a policeman getting out a police car that the killer was going to arrive a the other side of the cemetery, and he rushed back in his vehicle, and we rushed up to the vehicle and he let us in the back seat, and it raced away.
At the other side of the cemetery there were blue lights flashing everywhere and it was lighting the cemetery up, and we looked everywhere for him, and for who had been chasing him, and the vehicles that had arrived there first, and saw that they did not know where he had gone.
He surely had not entered the cemetery and had taken another route beside it, where nobody would have seen where he had gone, and their faces started to look frantic and worried, and they decided to search all the buildings, and as I followed Marple to a nearby building I suddenly recognized it, and it was the back of the Home Guard building where I was a soldier at, where I had joined up, and I was surprised to spot a light flash on inside, and I realized it was from a torch, and I knew the killer had a torch, and I told Marple.
It was worse than I had imagined, as I knew we would be confronting him indoors, instead of the police making a quick outside arrest, and I watched Marple get the police, and they all started silently rushing about outside, getting into hiding places, and two were in the cars, contacting the rest of the police.
I wondered what the motive was, and if it was valuable jewels or he had been doing something else.
My eyes stayed on the place the light had appeared, searching for him, waiting for him, to take a quick look out, or attempt to attack us or escape, and I realized that the police had entirely surrounded the building and that we had him, and I guessed he never knew where we were.
When a policeman started going to a door I decided to join him, as I knew the layout of the inside of the building, and as I approached him Marple followed me there, and I considered all the options open to us. I then realized that the policeman had something to unlock the door, and silently opened it up, and we slowly climbed in, and heard him inside a room.
The policeman removed a handgun, and we waited for the others to appear, and we stood listening to someone inside the room breathing heavily.
By their reactions I was sure that they did not have a clue what they were dealing with, and that they had not seen the place before. They were in a dark hallway, just outside the room, at night, within the grounds of an army base, and they were chasing a vicious serial killer.
At the side of my eyes I spotted traces of shoe marks from him, and his shoes were wet, and I traced them going into the room and I stood amazed as the policeman silently pushed open the door and crept in, and my face turned pale as I waited for bullets to go smashing into his body, and I looked in and the other police moved in beside me, and stood beside me with their loaded guns facing inside, into its dark interior.
I slowly faced the blackness at the corner of the room, where there was someone rolled up in ball in the corner, and we waited for him to do something, as we searched for his gun.
The policeman that had opened the door stood frozen, holding his gun out at the faintly visible black figure.
My heart rate exploded, beating faster than I had felt it beat in a long time, and I was still standing doing it when Marple removed his gun and pointed it at him, and turned the light on.
As seconds passed I watched the figure lifelessly remain there, rolled up in ball in the corner, and I was sure he had done something to himself, and he could be dead.
I spotted a trail of blood across the floor, in drips, going straight up to him.
We strolled up, not shining their torches directly at the killer, wondering who the hell it could be, and who could have had the entire police force after him for so long.
When he turned I was dumbstruck, and even wondered where the real killer had gone, and I recognized the room, and Captain Godfrey’s main office, and realized I had not noticed it because we had entered through the back of the Home Guard office, and at night, where I had not been before, and had been so obsessed with what was happening to recognize it.
It was Captain Godfrey’s office and it was Captain Godfrey on the floor in the corner, and I realized that it was not the killer, and I realized I had blown it again, and I should not have directed them over to the army base, and realized that he must have been tired after working there late and had gone to sleep in the corner, with an old blanket wrapped about his waist.
He stared at me in horror and started getting up, and shouted furiously, “You again! You’re fired! I kicked you out the army!”
All the policemen stopped pointing their guns at him, realizing that it was the wrong person, and I watched him almost fall over, and gasped, as he was holding an injury he had received from something, which he had recently received, and he attempted to grab his gun off the ground below him, and the police all pointed their guns at him, and one grabbed his gun.
Chapter 28
What astonished me was after everything that had happened I had not really solved anything of what had happened to me at Craigmillar Road or in the hospital shaft, and what the black sphere was below the hospital, or what the powers I had were, and I could not grasp what would happen next, as every unsolved puzzle and mystery that had happened seemed to emerge at the one time, and Marple, who had forced me into going there, had not answered anything and had denied the existence of anything, and had phoned me and ordered me to carry out his mission.
I sensed that there was something there in the Craigmillar Road house the minute I reached the door, and it had not been anywhere as powerful as it, even at the hospital, and I was now certain of it, and I sensed that all the exploration association scientists and paranormal scientists that accompanied me there were not saying something, and it was something powerful, and something deep.
I knew I would have to wait for them to give it to me, and I kept wondering if we were in great danger, and which I had felt chasing the killer, and I allowed the scientists to set up their equipment there again, but this time with the equipment from in the hospital shaft, which had found the tunnel, and would scan below the building, as Marple had insisted, and I gasped at what the metal detector had done, and even started thinking of ways to protect myself from the forces it could generate.