Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

"Coffees all round." The administrator assigned to Century was unusually bubbly amongst her colleagues. All of the others tended to heed their instructions to be silent, unless clarifying an instruction, stepping over assorted toys, origami shapes and sketchbooks as unobtrusively as possible. The young woman clattering in now, pushing a trolley, made her presense felt to everyone. "Keep yourselves awake for a bit longer, eh?" No-one responded, except for the polite thank yous as she deposited mugs beside each of the Wammy\'s House investigators. She was undaunted though. Leaving Century until last, her voice carried across the room. "What else would you like me to do?"



Deontic answered for him. "Shutting up would be nice."



The pale Celt quietly handed her a list. "These were significant in the \'48. Can you see how many of them survive now please?"



"It would be a pleasure." She gushed and returned to the lift. There was an audible sigh of relief from those around the room.



Mello rose from his chair and leaned over Century\'s shoulder. "She so fancies you." He crossed to where Linda was turning all of their theories, conjectures and even the maybe-it-could-have-happened-like-this scenarios into representative art. She was currently sketching all that they knew about the meeting between Hollow and Matt in Winchester Cathedral. He stared at it. "No, it was hot. He wouldn\'t have had his jacket on. I\'m guessing one gun in the back of his jeans, in the waistband with his t-shirt over it, and the other in his boot. Probably his left boot. He\'d have been driving, so the mobility is better on just the clutch."



The lift door opened again. It was Rester. "Near, one bomb found in the attic of the orphanage." He still had his \'phone in his hand. "It was set up, but the wires weren\'t connected."



"Essential personnel only in there. Send the pictures through please." Near sounded bored. Rester conveyed the orders into his \'phone and they all waited to view the scene on the monitors. It came through as a webcam link. "The attic is a stupid place to put it. The basement would have been better to destabilise the foundations."



Luigi turned. "I\'ve been thinking about this. If the object of the murderer is to get rid of all of us, isn\'t it a little stupid for us all to be in the same place?" He shrugged. "One bomb would wipe out nearly a whole generation of us. Our only hope would be Fenian." He snorted with gallows humour. He and Fenian had fought over rankings for years; Luigi didn\'t like to consider how close their final positioning, with himself just ahead, had been. "Which means we\'d all be in trouble."



Lamond sighed, "Don\'t be ridiculous, Lu, this is Near\'s little fortress. No-one could get in far enough to set up bombs with all of these police officers around."



There was a short silence, then Salvo replied, "I think I know how I\'d do it."



"Yes, me too." Deontic commented mildly.



"It would be easy." Mello snarled. "But totally beside the issue. Luigi, you concentrate on the bomb that does exist and see what you can glean from it." He stood over Near, but people had ceased to become so nervous about it. "So who\'s had access to Wammy\'s House? Staff, kids, Linda, Lamond, me, Matt, Salvo... who else?"



Deontic rose. "Slow down, Mello. Something is bothering me here." She loitered in front of the large white board that had been brought in at her behest. A dry-ink marker hovered over it in her hand. "Right..." She began writing her formulas. They all began reading \'4 = O [A|B\' She moved her pen to the line below \'4 = P[C|\', then back to the line above to add a \'D|\'. "Will you all stop watching me until I\'ve finished please? You are really putting me off."



"Is that standard or Dyadic?" Mello enquired.



"It\'s clearly Dyadic." Deontic glared. "Get from behind me."



Salvo called out. "Finally! I have Hollow\'s full post-mortem results. It\'s only been twelve hours."



"What are the truth values of A, B, C, D and E?"



Deontic hissed. "Mello, just go and eat chocolate or something somewhere out of my light." She added irritably. "Please."



"Oh for God\'s sake!" Chrissie yelled. "Will you all just be quiet, please? I\'m trying to concentrate with what feels like a cannonball squashing all of my internal organs!" She slapped Salvo\'s comforting hand away. "Shit, I need the toilet again. How am I supposed to keep my train of thought? Arggggh!" She struggled to her feet and stormed out.



Linda whispered something to Lamond, who quickly suppressed a giggle. Salvo sighed. "She\'s nine month\'s pregnant. I think we can forgive the occasional outburst." The two women found it very amusing. Salvo glared at them and concentrated on his new files. A few minutes of relative silence passed. He peered closely at the screen. "I\'ve got it. Hollow died of an air embolism. It\'s consistent with a puncture wound on her jugular. Syringe?"



"No." Luigi replied. "Common misapprehension. You can\'t get enough air in a small syringe to cause the heart to fail. Maybe a central venuous catheter." He grew reflective, making searches through favoured sites. "Did Matt own a central venuous catheter, Mello?"



"Not to my knowledge." Mello snapped back. "Haven\'t we already proved that Matt didn\'t kill Hollow?"



"Probability is about 5%." Near contributed calmly.



Linda rose to gain a reference for the catheter in a search engine. "Right side or left?"



"Right."



Near shrugged. "Probability of Matt killing Hollow now 2%." He still sounded bored. "He was sitting on her left side, because he put the ring on her left hand."



Mello left the room. They all heard him punching the wall in the corridor. A tense silence descended, each concentrating on their own research. After a couple of minutes, Chrissie returned and sat down, yawning. She squeezed Salvo\'s hand and began studying her documents again. A few more minutes passed and Deontic surveyed her filled whiteboard, her pen tracing the air in front of each line of Dyadic deontic logic representations. She waved away the question that she saw forming on Near\'s lips and walked into the corridor. Mello was sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall, and his head in his hands. "Are you counting to ten to avoid hitting someone or crying again?" There was no response, though his slim shoulders tensed even more. "I\'ve worked out some conditional probabilities which might be of interest."



He rose, but kept his head bowed, shielding his face from view under a mass of blond hair. His voice was low and rasping. "Show me."



Deontic led the way back into the main room. "Ok, remember that this is theoretical. I\'ve been considering what Mello told us about there having been five generations of students in Wammy\'s House. I hope you will forgive me for despensing with the first generation, as none of them have survived. I have grouped two and three together, as none of the evidence differentiates between them. The first section therefore refers to generation two and three; the second is generation four, ie us; and the third is generation five, ie the current intake." She expounded at length about the obligatory and permissable links between each generation and their knowledge or access in each of the murder scenes, the kidnapping and the placement of the bomb. "As you can see, it is extremely unlikely that one generation alone could have produced our target."



Lamond sighed. "Sorry, De, it\'s three o\'clock in the morning and I\'ve been stretching my mind since six. Everyone\'s exhausted. I\'m going to make the radical suggestion that we all go into the other room, sit down and recap the overview. It would do us all good to have a change of scenery and it might through something up that we\'re overlooking." It took ten minutes and a lecture on the physical effects on the brain of prolonged concentration levels for all involved to move into the dining room. Several whiteboards were carried in too, including Deontic\'s, and four administrators were co-opted to make notes. "At the risk of being shot, can I also suggest that Mello presents the overview? No disrespect to Near or to any of us, but he can\'t sit still for thirty seconds and he\'s only going to be pacing anyway. He might as well be the one to do it up the front."



Mello blinked at her, staring with an unreadable expression. With an exasperated sigh and the encouragement of his peers, he whipped up a drymaker and wrote a date on the board. "Linda\'s launch party. Afterwards some of us went back to Nathalie\'s house. Matt smoked some Croatian duty-free cigarettes, but left the butts in an ashtray there." Mello wrote another date. "Next day, Jonny is shot dead. Matt\'s cigarette butts, from Nathalie\'s house, turned up at the scene, alongside a smaller version of my favourite chocolate." He lifted the bar in his hand. "Everyone thinks that I did it. Matt gives me an alibi; Near argues that it\'s not in my style to kill like this..."



"No, I didn\'t." Near frowned. "I said you wouldn\'t deny it."



"Right." Mello shrugged. "Roger says that it\'s his professional opinion that I didn\'t do it either. Matt made a case based on the way I eat chocolate. Near showed how those cigarettes weren\'t smoked in that room. Trust me, if Matt\'s in a room, cigarettes are being smoked." He swallowed, hard, and turned back to the board. "Next day, Mairoo is also shot dead, but isn\'t found for several days. Origami figures are found in his room. No-one accuses Deontic of anything, because we all jumped to the conclusion that the killer was trying to set us all up individually. Me and Matt had already been framed, now it was Deontic\'s turn." He paused and surveyed the Malaysian woman. "Deontic, tell me why it isn\'t you? Jonny and Nathalie would have opened a door to you, because you were all in contact and friends. You had access to those cigarette butts and your origami was found at Mairoo\'s house. You discovered Nathalie, so...?"



"I was here, with Near and a lot of top-ranking officers, when Hollow was killed and Matt taken." Deontic responded calmly. "That origami was also taken from Nathalie\'s house, as it\'s one I did the night we were all there."



"But you just proved in here," Mello tapped her whiteboard, "that you believe more than one person to be involved."



"Then I\'m not in the clear."



They all stared at her, but she kept her expression neutral. Mello nodded, "That\'s honest." He crossed to another board and wrote down all fifteen names, crossing out those already killed. "These are the suspects. I\'ll cross them out when we\'re certain it\'s not that person. May I cross my name out please?"



There was a brief silence, then Near said, "Yes."



Chrissie added, "Yes, because it would be really fucked up for you to have done this to Matt and be here in the state you\'ve been in all day. You could easily be in it together, but I don\'t think you\'re this good an actor."



Mello awaited a consensus before he crossed his own name out. "I\'d also like to argue that it\'s not Chrissie. The shots have been fired by a right-handed person and she\'s left-handed. Also I find it hard to believe that she would be trapsing around three different houses in her condition. She just wants to sit down and survive until her labour starts." There were murmers of agreement.



Salvo added, "I can give an alibi for both Chrissie and Century, and they can provide one for me, for all of those dates. We all live in the same house; me and Chrissie haven\'t been going out much and Century lives in his room anyway." He smiled. "I\'m not going to describe our set up, save to say that if he left the house, he would be seen by us. We aren\'t close to London either."



Mello nodded. "You also have an alibi for Hollow\'s murder, as Roger saw you, Lamond and Linda on his monitors." He hovered over their names, but the consensus came back that they should be crossed through. It was further agreed that Chrissie and Century be exonerated. "But by the same token, I can give Matt an alibi. I was with him during all but Hollow\'s murder." When the consensus was returned that he could cross the redhead off the list, Mello bowed his head, his lips moving silently. He crossed Matt\'s name off and returned to the timeline to write another date. "Nathalie was shot." He paused. "Hal. May I try something please?" He marched across to smile at her. "Take the bullets out of your gun and give it to me."



"Hell no."



"For fuck\'s sake!" Mello glared. "All I want to do is..."



Near spoke up, "Will a toy gun do?"



"It will have to." Mello turned on his heels and stood over Near. "Where is it then?" An administrator fled the room and returned with a selection of the plastic firearms. Mello stared at them with distaste, then selected the closest in size to a semi-automatic. He pointed to it and turned to Century. "Fulfill your life ambition, shoot me."



"Huh?" Century flinched back.



"No!" Chrissie leaned across to slide an arm around Century\'s shoulders. "Not guns. Not with him. Thank you."



Near\'s head popped up and he stared at the dark-haired teenager. "Century has a gun phobia."



"We are not going to discuss it." Chrissie hissed. "In fact, if Mello is going to ask what I think he\'s going to ask, I\'m sending Century out of this room. He is not going to be here when guns are being pointed at people. Even Mello."



"I\'m ok." He whispered, slumping down into his seat. "Just carry on."



Somewhat awkwardly, they all, excepting Century, took the plastic gun and pointed it at Mello. Each in turn being prompted by the blond with comments like, \'how about two hands?\' or \'try your other hand.\' Mello picked up the toy and, without even looking, pointed it directly at Hal. "Ms Lidner, if this was a real gun, how many times do you think someone in this room could have just lost their life?"



"Twice." Hal responded. "Near\'s aim was textbook, if a little waivering. Your\'s isn\'t, but your aim is true and you could fire that without taking your hand off. Most of the poses I\'ve just seen, I would have been treating a lot of people for gunpowder tattooing and lost fingers. That is supposing that the gun is supposed to be a self-loader."



"Interesting." Mello lowered the plastic gun and surrendered it to Hal with a smirk. "Nathalie was shot dead. She hadn\'t tidied up since we\'d been there, so there were all kinds of \'set-up\' clues there, simply because we\'d left them there ourselves. However, there was also chewing gum in the bin. Salvo was being framed." He crossed to the suspect list, pausing before moving on to the board beside it. "We\'ve all decided that it\'s someone from our generation, because of the knowledge of things like chewing gum, as well as knowing who we all are. The security around our being raised ensures that. The killer needs to know that we exist, as well as our names and things about us. In every case but Hollow\'s, there was also knowledge of addresses, but Hollow did say that someone had been in her home. The killer is right-handed and a good shot. Near, why isn\'t it you?"



Deontic replied, "Because I can alibi him for Hollow\'s death."



Hal added, "I can provide an alibi for all the other events too."



"Right." Mello crossed Near\'s name off. "Luigi and Fenian. Fenian would have known about Sheol. Luigi, why isn\'t it you?"



Luigi crumbled on his chair. His head went and he trembled so badly that the table vibrated under him. Linda rose, with a glare at Mello, and cuddled her friend. "Come on, Lu, he\'s not saying it is you. He\'s asking for any evidence in your defence." She bent to hear his whisper. "Right. He says he hasn\'t got any. He wasn\'t with anyone for an alibi and he had access to the cigarettes and the origami. Oh! Someone help him! Why isn\'t it Luigi?" There was silence. "You said that he couldn\'t shoot!" She tried to out-stare Mello. "For the record, and bearing in mind that my Jonny is one of the people we are talking about, oh so coldly, here. I don\'t suspect Luigi for one second."



"Noted." Mello bowed his head, his gaze returning to the door back into the main room. He sighed and selected another whiteboard. "The killer is fourth generation Wammy\'s House or is a member of staff who was there at the time. However, now a bomb has been placed there. All of the fourth generation who could have placed that have already been crossed off our suspect list. Deontic\'s formulas have logically argued that a second person is a co-conspirator; this person doesn\'t necessarily have to be fourth generation, but does have to have access to Wammy\'s House now. It doesn\'t quite work, because there is a common denominator, in that it could be a member of staff. However, it also places the fifth generation in the frame. I personally find it hard to believe that any of us would invite someone into their home, just because that child told us they were from Wammy\'s House. Near, have there been any reports of runaways?"



"No."



Century called out. "Check the security cameras? See who went up the attic."



Mello shook his head. "They stream but don\'t record. Matt configured them, so I know." He waited, but there was nothing else forthcoming. "Right. We get to today. At 11am, I sat down for a Russian Language exam. That can be checked. I was in the hall until 2pm, then reached home at 20 past.." He froze and most of the people watching smiled.



"You really are quite tired, aren\'t you, Mello?" Linda chided. "So you live within twenty minutes motorcycle ride from a verifiable place? We\'ll all be round for tea when this is over."



Mello detonated. He covered the ground between the whiteboards and the table in three long strides and slammed his clenched fists onto them. His eyes were in shadow, as he glared from under his fringe, but that didn\'t disguise the sheer menace in his stare. "You... any of you... come within fifty yards of mine and Matt\'s home and I will not be responsible for my actions. You think I can be frightening? You have no idea what traps and devices that Matt can come up with when he\'s bored. It is monitored, secured and protected to the best of both of our twisted abilities. You want to risk that, be my guest, but I will not be picking up your corpse and taking it home to Roger." Fear crossed every face but Near\'s, each person involuntarily leaning further back in their seats. Mello pushed away from the table and turned his back on them. The snapping of his chocolate was like a gunshot through the tense silence. "Is that understood?" There was no response. "Good." He picked up the marker from where it had been thrown into the floor. "At midday, Hollow called Matt. Somewhere around 2 - 2.30pm, they were seen talking in Winchester Cathedral. I believe that it was nearer to 2pm, because I first tried to call him at 20 past and he didn\'t pick up."



Salvo interjected quietly, "The post-mortem suggested around 2pm for when Hollow died."



"Right, so we have about twenty minutes in which Matt was being taken from the Cathedral. Near has speculated that he was told that there was a bomb in Wammy\'s House and that is why he left quietly."



"No." Chrissie mused. "Sorry, Near, there\'s something here. A bomb being triggered in the House from the Cathedral? If that was the case, what did the kidnapper show Matt? Are we to believe that this person had the control in his or her hand, with a wire running out of the building, down the street, around the corner, through the House and up to the attic, without anyone else seeing it?"



"It\'s possible to have controller without wires." Mello replied, subconsciously covering the scarred side of his face with his hand. "There are dozens of ways to explode a bomb."



"Yes, but one which can be sneaked into a busy Cathedral? I\'m assuming that Matt believed this to potentially be set off if he didn\'t comply. If it had been a vague threat, he could have made a run for it to warn Roger."



"He might have just been being held at gunpoint." Lamond commented. "Why do we think he knew about the bomb?"



"Because..." Mello frowned. "Well, it made sense theoretically and there was actually a bomb. It is just speculative that that was the threat..." He paused. "Matt can keep very calm with guns being pointed at him. I\'ve told him that if he\'s in danger that he should do everything to save his own life; but he\'s a provocative smart-arse and I don\'t know... I really don\'t. If shooting him might alert those around him to what was happening, he might have just martyred himself."



"Yet he sat quietly while Hollow was killed." Linda gulped. "Then he arranged her body."



"It would have taken her thirty to forty seconds to die." Salvo added. "Not much time."



"Forty seconds feels like a long time, sometimes." Near spoke from the floor. "Matt did not know until it was too late or Matt\'s action were controlled. Matt thought it was the Death Note. The killer was on the other side of Hollow."



"No, I tried that." Linda left Luigi\'s side and ran to collect some sketches from the other room. "I think the killer was behind them. Applying the catheter thing would have been too obvious, when viewed from behind, if the killer was sitting at her side." She thrust that sketch into Mello\'s hand. "Hold that up, you hormonal bastard." She held up a second sketch. "If the killer was behind, then whatever was powering the air, maybe some kind of pump or compresser, could be hidden below the pew. The catheter could have been hidden by the person\'s body and by Hollow\'s hair and veil. I think it was a pump, because a compressor is too loud. If Hollow and Matt are both facing forwards, it could have been done quickly enough for Matt not to have seen before it was too late."



"But the killer is using both hands. Even facing forward, he would see that in his peripheral vision. What\'s he or she threatening Matt with?"



Near peered up. "His name."



Mello stopped glaring at Linda, "He hasn\'t got any peripheral vision. He wears goggles." He moved to stare at the sketch in its artist\'s hands. "Are we talking ourselves into this because it fits? Only we have the bomb and his name and both seemed so right at the time." He shook his head. "It was the bomb. Near, you are thinking of his name because you had the suggestion of forty seconds to die of a heart attack just before that. I think that they were both told that there was a bomb and that the detonator was in the person\'s hands. That blind-sided them for the time it took the killer to reach around Hollow and stick the catheter into her jugular."



Near frowned. "Maybe you are right about suggestion. Maybe. But Mello is obsessing about the bomb for similar reasons."



Century piped up, "How did the killer know that they were there? This person sounds very prepared. You don\'t just carry a pump and catheter in your pocket on the off-chance you\'ll find a Wammy kid to kill."



"Hollow had had someone in her house. She was followed." Chrissie determined.



Mello shook his head. "In her conversation with Matt, she was parked up and it didn\'t sound busy in the background. She could have been killed then." He frowned. "Matt\'s in a world of his own most of the time, but he\'s also very observant. He\'s really good at picking up on the fact that he\'s being followed. Yes, he can be over-confident on it, but I think he\'d have noticed something like a vehicle tailing him from our house all the way to Winchester. Did someone else know that the meeting was taking place?"



Deontic gasped. "The object, as Near saw it, is to kidnap Matt, to lure Mello and potentially to bring Near into the open. Therefore, the important point to kick-start that chain of events was the luring of Matt into the Cathedral. Hollow is only crossed off as the suspect because she was killed. She and Nathalie were friends! She could have been around there next day. Jonny would have let her in. I know that she exchanged e-mails with Mairoo. I want Hollow put back on the suspect list. I think she was key in luring Matt out and she had all of the information needful to set us all up. I believe that there are two people involved. The other one could have been tipped off by Hollow, then betrayed her."



"It\'s a possibility. We could also be talking ourselves into things." Mello drew a squiggly line through the line across Hollow\'s name. "All work on it. Find the holes. Find the flaws. Tell me what\'s wrong." There was a wave of giggles. It broke the tension a little. He had been impersonating Mr Wong, their forensics master. Mello winked, then took a deep breath. "So, where was Matt taken?"



Sympathy painted itself across a lot of faces. Chrissie flashed a weak smile. "We\'re working on it, Mello."



Mello remained calm. "We know that he\'s on a ledge, with no food or water. We know that the walls around him are chalk. We know that he\'s got a noose around his neck, that looks remarkably like a choker chain and, despite not having his hands bound, he hasn\'t just taken it off. We suspect that the drop beside him is deep enough to hang him, if he slips off it. No-one believes that he will be released if I\'m offered up in exchange. There doesn\'t appear to me to be any reason for the abducter to return to him." He sucked heavily on a piece of chocolate. "What\'s his chances?"



Lamond sighed. "The biggest danger, as I see it, is the lack of water. He\'s in a chalky climate, which isn\'t going to help. He might be fine for the first twenty-four hours, depending on how chalky it is and whether or not he just sits there. He shouldn\'t be moving around because he\'ll sweat and lose more water from his body. He might get a headache, if he\'s sitting there, but that\'s about it. After that, he\'s going to start getting light-headed, fatigued and dizzy. The fact that he\'s not eating or sleeping will speed those things up. He\'ll also start becoming confused. All of which heighten the chance of him slipping off the ledge." She shrugged apologetically. "The other danger is happening right now. He wasn\'t wearing a jacket and it\'s the early hours of the morning. How exposed is that ledge? You can die in three hours through exposure."



"Yeah." Mello replied softly, placing down his marker pen. "This overview is over for me. I\'m going back to work." He walked towards the door, then looked back. "He\'s very good at surviving. Mail Jeevas." He left before anyone could see the tears fill his eyes again. They gave him a few seconds grace, before all quietly reclaiming their work stations too.