The Last Murder at the end of the World

FOUR

Peering through his binoculars, Adil watches Emory and Niema talking on the balcony outside the barracks, his heart thudding.

He’s halfway up the east face of the volcano, having found his way through the lava tubes that riddle this section. The ground is ash, the rocks black with razor-sharp edges. It’s as if his thoughts are radiating out of him, scorching the land.

He’s thirty miles away from the village, but he’s chosen this vantage point because it has a clean line of sight over the walls.

He can see Emory comforting Niema, placing an affectionate hand on the older woman’s arm. Every second of it burns, dripping poison in his veins.

I don’t counsel him towards kindness. There’s no point. For the last five years he’s thought of nothing except revenge. I have to nudge him to eat, and he does so impatiently, wrenching vegetables out of the earth, or plucking armfuls of fruit from the trees.

He’s fifty-eight, but he looks ten years older. His flesh is pulled taut over cartilage and bone, his face gaunt, his black hair turned grey and his brown eyes gone dim. His skin is blotchy and sickly-looking, and his chest rattles when he coughs, hinting at the sickness within. Under normal circumstances, I’d order him back to the village to be cared for, or at least have company in his final days.

Unfortunately, that’s not possible. He’s the island’s only criminal, and his punishment is exile.

‘She thinks Niema’s her friend,’ he murmurs aloud, a habit of his since he was banished. ‘She has no idea what Niema’s taken from her.’

As Emory hurries away, clutching her book, Niema glances up at the volcano. She can’t see Adil at this distance, but she knows he’s there. I report his movements to her on an hourly basis. He’s one of the few dangerous people on the island; she likes to know where he is at all times.

He sucks in a trembling breath and stares at his knife, imagining plunging it into her belly. He wants to see her eyes roll up in their sockets as the life goes out of them. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything.

‘And what good will revenge do you?’ I ask. ‘Have you thought about that? Have you considered what your life will be after you’ve killed somebody. How you’ll feel?’

‘I’ll feel like the job’s half done,’ he replies. ‘Niema’s the worst of them, but I won’t stop until Thea and Hephaestus are in the furnace. So long as they’re alive, we’ll never be free.’

‘You’re being ridiculous,’ I say. ‘Whatever you plot, I’ll warn them about. You’ll never get anywhere near them.’

You can’t watch me forever, he thinks.

He’s wrong about that. I was in his thoughts when he was born, and I’ll be in his thoughts when he dies. I watched over his ancestors, and I’ll watch over his descendants. There are so few humans left, they must be protected, and the village is the key to that. It must be safeguarded, at any cost.