When The Snow Falls

The school doctor exhaled loudly and Daniel knew they had caught her off guard. That was good news for them. The less evasive she was, the better.

"I know you are his aunt Rachel Emberry," he continued. "I just don't know why you did it."

"How did you know it was me?" she asked evenly.

Daniel didn't blink at hearing confirmation of his theory. If he looked surprised, she would know he was mostly bluffing.

"You were involved in the drug trial six years ago and he found out, didn't he?"

"He did," she replied briefly. "I didn't want to do it."

"Someone told you to?" Felix asked.

Daniel's gaze shifted to one of the closed off beds. Something had caught his eye. He could see a slight silhouette in the curtains. Was there someone in it?

"Was it the headmaster?" he whispered.

Her eyes shifted towards the bed and she nodded.

Daniel now knew who else was in the room with them.

"It wasn't a decision I took lightly," she said at a normal volume.

Daniel decided to continue with his plan despite the fact that they hadn't predicted the presence of the headmaster. Mr Noble was being completely silent at the moment.

"It can't have weighed on you that much, you got married to the man behind the whole thing," he pointed out.

Rachel flinched and he knew he had got somewhere.

"I didn't mean to…"

Daniel took out something from his pocket. He had printed out the photo Lily had sent him for a moment like this. He held it out to her.

She accepted it and he saw tears start to well in her eyes.

"What happened 20 years ago?" Felix asked gently.

"20 years ago, we were developing a new drug. I was leading the team and went on holiday for a week. When I came back, I was told we were ready to start testing on trial volunteers. The six volunteers given the drug died within five minutes of the first dose. We had a real problem on our hands. It turned out that the drug hadn't been tested on animals first. We didn't know what to do."

"What was the solution?"

He didn't want to give away that they had been snooping in the old building. The more ignorant the headmaster and Dr Noble thought they were about the truth, the better.

"We first paid off the placebo volunteers and any that we hadn't yet given the drug to. Then we had to sort something out about the deceased. It was agreed that the bodies would be put in the well outside and subjected to sulphuric acid. In the meantime, I demanded that the place shut down if we were going to be covering something up like that. In the end everyone agreed and the lab shut down. We kept a small part of it and began converting the building into a school. I always wanted to be a teacher…"

Daniel was appreciating all the information and he was sure his phone was as well. His and Felix's phones were recording the whole conversation.

"We opened the school the day after the dead bodies successfully broke down. I was happy for a while. Then one day, I saw that I had a student called Carter Emberry in my class. I made him promise to not tell anyone that I was here in Japan. I didn't want to see anyone I knew from England."

There was something odd about what she had said and Daniel couldn't work it out. He saved it for something to think about after they were away from the headmaster and Carter's murderer.

"He said he wouldn't say anything and I relaxed. But one day, I was in my classroom marking when one of the researchers from the lab came in and told me to come with her. Carter was lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs on the ground floor. That woman had realised someone had taken the poster down and found the lab. It was so late in the day that no one was there except teachers and Carter so she knew it was Carter."

Daniel knew they would have to find out who that researcher was as well. She had a part in his death.

"I took him to the first aid room and patched him up the best I could. He had one of the prototype pills in his pocket and probably more evidence on his phone- his phone had run out of battery- he must have been on his way to use the payphone in the lobby. I took his phone and the pills and I had to see Mr Noble."

Carter must have taken the pills out the blister pack Felix had found. It felt strange to think they had been following in a dead person's footsteps.

"I was told he would have to be silenced forever. That I would have to kill a child I had taken care of over the years and doted on… I did my best. When he woke up, I gave him morphine so he wouldn't feel the pain. I gave him a mixture of all the prototype pills and his heart stopped within seconds…"

Daniel frowned. If she had really cared, she wouldn't have killed him just to silence him. In fact, she would have told the truth to the authorities 14 years before if she had wanted to be completely innocent.

"The next day I went around to his parents and told them that if they ever wanted to bury him, they would have to keep quiet. They're still here waiting for me to weaken…"

Hopefully a lot of the effort in waiting for her weaken had been done by the Emberries for six years and it wouldn't take much more.

"Do you think perhaps that you should just give up and admit your guilt?" Felix asked softly. "You must be tired…"

Her eyes shifted again to the bed and then down at the photo in her hands.

"I can't do anything. Speak to my husband. He's here."

There was an audible pause and Daniel thought about what to do. As it stood, they had a very damning testimony recorded. If they went to the Police now, they had enough evidence for warrants to be obtained.

"I think we will come back another day to speak to you again," Felix said and began to push him towards the door. "G-"

"You two have got much farther than I ever expected," a familiar voice spoke.

It was the man from the theme park.

"Come and see me. I might up my offer to 3 million pounds to your parents if you don't. I'll run that company into the ground and make sure they can never get a job again."

Felix shrugged and opened the door. He didn't seem bothered and Daniel knew why. They were going to the Police anyway. If the headmaster was arrested, his offer wouldn't be valid anymore.

"Actually, I'll just call my private security team to keep you two from leaving," the headmaster added. "Does that stop you?"

Daniel was about to say to Felix to just leave and not call his bluff and then he remembered that the headmaster certainly had people at his disposal if Lily had been under observation for four years. He would have to do something to distract the attention from Felix who would hopefully come up with something.

He strode over to the curtained bed and pulled back the curtains. Sitting primly on the bed was a man in a well cut black suit and neatly arranged white hair.

"Hello, Daniel Entwhistle," he greeted pleasantly. "You know, if you keep this up, you won't get to be an Earl like your father."

Daniel chose to ignore the implied threat. It seemed like the headmaster had finally done some research on him.

"What do we need to do to get you two to just give up and turn yourselves in?" he demanded.

Felix could take on an old man and he could probably incapacitate Dr Noble.

"Well, I've been listening in on your conversation with my wife- please forgive me for the bad manners. I like to come here to relax and you two just happened to walk in. I am delighted by your intelligence and I'm willing to give you two a chance to walk out of here with all the evidence undoubtedly stored on your mobile devices."

The reborn detective stared at him suspiciously. Articulated and well spoken villains were always too dramatic. Clearly Mr Noble watched too many films, but that might actually help them out.

"If you two find Carter Emberry's dead body, I will let you two leave. It's been hidden quite well and should stump you two. If you don't take the chance, you two will end up just like him. We still have some of those prototype drugs to hand. Will you take the chance?"

Daniel exchanged glances with Felix who had come to stand next to him. In actuality, he had never thought to consider where Carter's body was hidden. Felix nodded at him and Daniel knew he had sent the recording to someone whilst the headmaster's attention had been diverted.

"We'll take the chance," he said.

"Wonderful. Right, you will be observed over the CCTV and I have a security team patrolling the walls. If you try to leave, they will bring you right back."

***

The headmaster hadn't forgotten to give them a time limit.

"We have one hour and he took our phones," Daniel complained as they left the building.

"I saved my recording externally while he was talking," Felix replied. "Then I think I sent it to Lily okay. I think. I couldn't exactly check the screen properly."

"I was hoping you would do that," Daniel said. "So we do have a way out of here if it went to plan."

"Do you have any ideas?" Felix asked. "On where to find the body."

Daniel walked over to the bench next to the tennis courts. The school was practically empty now, but he didn't want to have to worry about anyone involved in the case listening in on them.

"Let's pool together everything we have."

He took everything out his pockets and Felix did the same. Daniel found the map of the school in the prospectus.

"First, we know that the body will have to be um… whole? It can't have been treated the same way as the other six because they need it on hand to manipulate Mr and Mrs Emberry. They wouldn't have risked breaking it down just in case the Emberries threatened to go rogue."

"Right," Felix agreed. "It's not down the well and it has to be whole."

Daniel surveyed their surroundings. The school had a fair amount of land and a lot of it would have been under construction at the time of the murder which didn't help. However if Carter's body had been put in the foundations of the buildings or tennis courts, Dr Noble wouldn't be able to retrieve it.

"It has to be somewhere where it can be retrieved fairly easily…"

"Or they have a map marking it so they don't need to make it easy for just anyone to find," Felix pointed out.

"There's two sports fields here and the area where we are sitting as well. There's the garden areas by the wall," Daniels started listing probable areas.

He thought back to Dr Noble. The lilies on her windowsill and the fact that she had given Carter morphine first meant she had some heart and was mourning him.

That could mean she had buried him somewhere quiet where people wouldn't walk over his hidden grave.

Daniel struck the sports fields off his mental list. That didn't leave him much. He poked around in the pile of evidence they had gathered from the mystery and picked up the meeting minutes that had started the whole investigation off.

Then something he should have realised from the start struck him.

"Six years ago, they called it the 'Mysteries of the School'..."

If the Seven Mysteries were such a classic and long running tradition, they would have known the proper terminology and used it.

"...Because there weren't seven mysteries at the time?" Felix asked unsurely. "Which one is missing and does it help us?

Daniel looked down the list of roles and added it with something Amien and Phillip had said about the closure of the clubhouse six years before.

"Six years ago, there weren't any cherry blossom trees... because they hadn't been planted yet to hide the old building from sight. No one here has been assigned a role to look for them because they didn't exist at the time…"

"You think Carter's body is buried where the trees are?" Felix questioned. "It's out of sight from people and they can dig it up again if need be…"

They exchanged looks.

"Let's get something to dig with," Daniel said. "But where would we get something to dig with? Maybe this is why the headmaster is expecting us to fail."

"Tatsuaki should have something," Felix replied shortly. "Let's go."

They strode into Tatsuaki's office without knocking and found him sitting at his desk drinking tea.

"Did you need something?" he asked sharply.

Daniel put everything suspicious about Tatsuaki to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand. They had 45 minutes left to locate the body.

"Do you have a shovel we could borrow?" Felix demanded.

Tatsuaki didn't reply and disappeared into the back room and quickly emerged with a shovel. He appeared to understand that they were in a rush. Felix took it and ran out. Daniel nodded to Tatsuaki and rushed after his boyfriend.

It took them 5 minutes to run across the grounds to the area of trees. It was fortunate it wasn't getting dark yet otherwise they would be in the same situation as the previous night.

Felix took a glance at the nearest tree.

"This is a peach blossom tree."

He walked down the first row of trees and peered at each one.

"They are all peach blossom trees…"

Daniel g.r.o.a.n.e.d.

"Wait, if there's one cherry blossom tree here, that's where we'll find it."

"That's true," Felix replied in a terse tone. "I'll check the next row. A peach blossom tree has shorter stems and the blossom petals are rounded. They also don't bloom at the same time of year."

Daniel took the hint and walked into the middle area of the trees. It felt right that the body would be hidden somewhere deep within the trees and not on the outskirts. The trees were definitely planted well, he was having trouble following a particular order.

He took out his notepad from his pocket and tore up some sheets and began to mark the ones he had checked by tying the paper around the lowest branch. His previous life had taught him to always carry around a notepad.

"We've got 15 minutes left," Felix reported a while later. "I haven't found anything. Maybe there isn't a cherry blossom tree here…"

"Don't say that…" Daniel said and moved onto the next tree.

The unbloomed buds were more closely packed together than the other trees he'd checked so far and the stems were longer. He let hope rise in his c.h.e.s.t.

"Felix! I think I've found it!"

His boyfriend came rushing over and made a triumphant noise.

"It looks a lot like a cherry blossom tree. We really haven't got much time left so let's go for it."

He grasped the shovel and began to dig around it. Daniel stood at the side and kept quiet. The last thing Felix needed was a distraction. He also needed to formulate a plan in case they didn't find anything and the recording hadn't reached Lily or she hadn't called the Police. If she'd called them immediately, the Police would be there already. He was getting worried.

"I've found something…" Felix said a few minutes later.

Daniel checked over the hole. Felix had made quick progress in his digging. There was something that definitely wasn't soil visible. He jumped into the hole and began scraping the dirt away. Something became slowly visible and Daniel fought back the urge to be sick.

It was a dead body in a British International School uniform.

It was Carter Emberry.

"We've found him."

-

Hello, I am sorry for not updating for a while. I work in retail and this is the busiest time of the year so it was hard to find the time to get anything done or even go on here. I'm now very confused by the new currency system and done seem to have much of it, but I guess that's what I get for not logging in for so long.

Sorry again for not updating.