I Know What You Did Last Wednesday Read Online Free PDF Page A

help.
    “Both Brenda and … Tim’s little brother saw somebody last night,” he went on. I didn’t know why he couldn’t call me by my name. “Now that could have been one of us, dressing up to frighten the others. But remember, we were all inside the house … and this thing, whatever it was, was outside. So maybe it was someone else. Maybe it was someone we don’t know about.”
    “You mean … someone hiding on the island?” Mark said.
    “Exactly. We know we can’t call the police. We know we’re stuck here. But it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is find out if there’s anyone else here.”
    “We’ve got to organize a search party,” I said.
    Tim shook his head. “This is no time for a party, Nick,” he muttered.
    “You’re right, Eric,” Libby said. “We’ve got to go over the island from head to tail.”
    “But at the same time, I think we should keep an eye on each other,” Brenda said. “I’ll feel safer that way.”
    Eric went upstairs to get changed. Mark went with him. From now on, we were going to do everything in pairs. Brenda and Libby cleared the breakfast things. I’d already noticed that most of the food in the house was in tins – which was just as well. Even the cleverest killer couldn’t tamper with a tin, so at least we wouldn’t starve. At half past nine we all met in the hall. Then we put on our coats and went outside.
    The search began back at the jetty, right at the head of the crocodile. The idea was that we could cover the entire island, working like the police searching a wood when someone has gone missing. That is, we kept ten metres apart, always in sight of one another, moving across the island in a line. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and the sea was blue, but even so I could feel a chill breeze on Crocodile Island. And there was something else. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was being watched. It was weird. Because it was obvious that there wasn’t anybody in sight … not even so much as a sheep or a cow.
    It only took us an hour to cover the island. There really wasn’t very much there. Most of it was covered in gorse that only came up to the knee, which no killer could have hidden behind – unless, of course, he happened to be extremely small. There were a few trees but we checked the branches and Tim even climbed one to see if anyone was hiding at the top. Then I climbed up to help Tim down again and we moved on. We came to a couple of ruined outbuildings. I went inside. There was nobody there – but I did see something. Another security camera, fixed to the brickwork. Of course, a rich man like Rory would have had to be careful about security. I remembered the camera I had noticed in the kitchen. He had probably covered the whole island. Was that why I had felt we were being watched?
    We went past the house and continued towards the crocodile’s tail. The ground rose steeply up, finally arriving at a narrow point at least twenty metres above the sea. This was what I had seen from the boat. Six great rocks, steel grey and needle-sharp, rose out of the water far below. Looking down made my head spin. I wondered briefly if there might be a cave somewhere, perhaps tucked underneath the lip where we were standing. But then a wave rolled in, crashing against the cliff face. If there was a killer down there, he’d be soaking wet. And anyway, as far as I could see, there was no way down.
    We moved away, retracing our steps. There was nobody outside the house, but how about inside? Starting in the hall, we went from room to room: the library, the dining-room, the conservatory, the hall and so on. We looked behind curtains, under tables, in the fireplaces and up the chimneys. Tim even looked in the grandfather clocks. Maybe he thought he’d find somebody’s grandfather. We covered the ground floor and then went up to the first. Here were the bedrooms, with our names still attached to the doors. We went into every one of them.