The Prisoners' Dilemma
Two men found themselves imprisoned in neighbouring cells, not knowing how they got there. They soon realised they were facing a difficult dilemma.
Travis awoke to the sound of shouting.
“Hey!” said an echoey voice. “Wake up! I can hear you snoring! Wake up!”
“What is this?” said Travis.
The space he was in was completely dark. How had he got from the forest to here? And where was here?
“Hey!” said the voice. “My names’s Beresford. Oscar Beresford. Who are you?”
“Where am I?”
“Your name. What’s your name?”
“Jason Travis.”
“Jason, I’ve been stuck in here alone for three weeks now.”
“I can’t see anything.” said Travis, panic rising in his voice.
“You’re in a cell. It’s some kind of prison cell. I think we’re underground. Do you remember how you got here?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I was in the forest —” said Beresford.
“So was I. I was in the forest off Chipping Lane.”
“Yes! Exactly. That’s where I was. Then I woke up, and I was here.”
“Isn’t there a bloody light?”
“The lights go off every evening and come on every morning. At least I think it’s evening and morning. I don’t have a watch. I’ve got a phone but the battery died and there’s no signal in here anyway.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s almost morning, I think. I woke up and I heard you snoring.”
Travis staggered to his feet and began feeling his way around in the dark.
“There’s something here.” he said. “A button.”
“Yes! That’s it! Press it!”
“What is it?”
“Just press it.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s the light switch.”
“You just said the lights go on and off by themselves, mate. Which is it? This don’t feel like no light switch.”
“Look, just … just trust me, OK? Press the damn switch.”
“I’m not pressing it till I know what it does.”
Beresford sighed heavily in frustration.
“Will you just press the bloody switch and we can both get out of here.”
“This don’t feel right. I’m going to wait for the light. Who are you anyway?”
“I told you, my name is Oscar Beresford. I’m a teacher at the school in Almsbury. I’ve been missing for three weeks.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about you. What are you doing here then, mate?”
“I told you already, I don’t know. I was walking in the forest and the next thing I know I’m here.”
“This is messed up.”
“I wish you would just trust me and press the button. It opens the door …”
“Shut your cake hole and let me think for a bit.”
Beresford sighed again.
Travis continued to feel his way around the cell. He’d woken up on a mat on the floor; really a kind of thin mattress, covered in plastic. Working around the cell, there was the button, a large, bulbous plastic thing sticking out of the wall, and next to it, a smooth surface, the size of a large sheet of paper, making a sharp contrast with the roughness of the rest of the wall.
A little further along the wall there seemed to be two holes opening onto chutes, one going down and the other leading upwards, but neither big enough to get into. The downward chute had an extended lower rim, the concrete jutting slightly outward. Next he found a sink with a tap, and a towel hanging next to it. That was on the opposite side to the mat. The remaining wall was blank and empty except for a metal door. It had no handle and he couldn’t move it at all, neither by pushing on it nor by clawing at the edges of it with his fingernails.
The walls felt like they were made of concrete.
Above the mat was a square hole about six inches wide, through which he could hear Beresford’s voice, supposedly in the neighbouring cell.
After finishing his inspection, he sat down again on the mat.
“How long before the lights come on, then?” he said.
“I don’t know. Could be an hour, could be —”
Then the light abruptly turned on. Travis blinked and rubbed his eyes. The light came from a hole in the ceiling, covered with a wire metal grill and again far too small to crawl into.
The cell was largely as he had already imagined it, except now he saw there was writing on a piece of plastic stuck next to the button.
It said, “Press the button to open the door of the neighbouring cell and cut off your food supply.”
He was pondering the notice when there was a sudden noise and a supermarket shopping bag made of thin plastic and containing several items fell out of the upward-leading chute.
“So now you’ve seen it.” said Beresford.
“What?” said Travis, inspecting the shopping bag. It contain a loaf of cheap wholemeal supermarket bread, some cheese, a roll of toilet paper and a bar of soap.
“The notice.”
“Yeah. You got the same thing in your cell, then?”
“Yep. What does yours say?”
“What does yours say?”
“Why don’t you tell me first?”
“Mine says, press to kill the person in the next cell.”
“That’s what mine says.” said Beresford. “You got food too?”
“Just bread and cheese.”
“That’s what I’ve got.”
“Why did you want me to push the button? Do you want to die or what?”
“Exactly. It’s better than being stuck in here.”
“Fricking weirdo.” said Travis.
He was hungry, and he started eating the bread and cheese. Then he went to the sink, ran the water and held his mouth underneath the tap. The water was ice-cold.
“Why don’t you press the button?” said Beresford.
“Shut the hell up and let me think.” said Travis.
A thought struck him with a swiftness that surprised him, and he tapped his pocket. His phone was still there, switched off so they couldn’t track him.
He took it out and turned it on.
“Do you have a signal?” said Beresford hopefully, when he heard the phone playing a little startup melody.
After a pause, the reply came, “No.”
Travis walked around the room, holding the phone up, trying to find a signal.
“It’s useless.” said Beresford. “I’ve already tried. There’s no signal, I told you.”
Travis went over to the mat and peered through the square aperture that led to Beresford’s cell. The wall between the cells appeared to be about a foot thick. He couldn’t see much through the hole, except the opposite wall.
“Stand up so I can see your face.” said Travis.
Beresford obliged.
“Yeah, you’re him.” said Travis. “I recognise you from the TV.”
“Are many people looking for me?” said Beresford, hopefully.
“Probably just locally, mate. Lot of people saying you’ve probably taken off to France.”
“Christ! This is definitely not France.”
“How do you know? We could be anywhere.”
“The shopping bag. The cheese. It all looks English.”
“Yeah, fair point.”
“What do you do?” asked Beresford.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean for a living. What’s your job?”
“Painter and decorator, mate.”
“Painter and decorator.” Beresford repeated thoughtfully. “Do you have any idea who’s put us here? Do you have any enemies?”
“Not really. Do you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well that’s a fat lot of use, isn’it? Listen mate, go over to the opposite wall for a minute.”
“Why?”
“I just want to try something. Stand on the mat against the wall.”
Beresford went over to the opposite wall and stood on the mat. Through the aperture, Travis could see all of him except for his feet.
Travis took his phone and stuck it through the aperture. Beresford realised he was trying to photograph the notice by the side of the button in his cell.
He ran forward and snatched the phone from Travis’s hand.
“Give me that phone back or I’ll break your face.” Travis raged.
“Oh, how are you going to do that, Einstein?”
“When we get out of here I’ll make you suffer if you don’t give me that phone back pronto.”
Travis withdrew his arm from the aperture and glared at Beresford through it, his face distorted with anger and malevolence.
Beresford brought his own face level with the aperture.
“Make me.” he said.
“You got family? Wife, maybe? Kids? You’re putting them all in danger.”
“You don’t know who you’re talking to, you ignorant uneducated ape.” Beresford hissed. “I’ll cut out your eyes and feed them to you.”
Travis spat at him, the spittle hitting Beresford’s face with surprising accuracy.
“You piece of human detritus!” shouted Beresford. “You asked for it. Now you’re going to die. I’m pressing the button.”
“I’m pressing the button.” Travis repeated, in a mocking lisp “Do it, then. Push it. Push the button.”
“Any last words?” said Beresford.
“Yeah.” said Travis. “Screw you, you pathetic gimp.”
“No. It’s too easy. I’m going to push it randomly when I feel like it. You’ll never know when you’re about to die.”
“Why don’t you photograph whatever’s written next to that button and give me the phone back?”
“This is my phone now.”
“I’ll tell you why.” said Travis, straightening up. “That button don’t say what you say it says. You’re a liar.”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”
“What do you mean by that, gimp boy?” Travis adopted a crude and innacurate imitation of Beresford’s accent and in sing-song tones, said, “Do tell. We are all most anxious to know.”
“Go to hell!” Beresford roared.
“OK, you’ll like this one.” said Professor Stephen Green, washing down a piece of steak with a sip of Sauvignon. “Two players. Each player has to choose whether to split or cooperate. If he splits, he gets a hundred quid, immediately. If he cooperates, he gets a thousand quid, but only if the other player also cooperates. If the other player splits, he gets nothing.”
“Interesting.” said Sam. “Let me think.”
He ate a forkful of pasta mixed with seasonable organic vegetables.
“I’d split.” he said. “I’ve been in business too long to trust people.”
“No you wouldn’t.” said Sam’s wife, Daphne, laughing. “You’d cooperate. You’re the most trusting person I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” said Sam. “But I’m not naively trusting. I assess people. You’ve got to know who you’re working with. It’s a skill.”
“Do these players get to talk to each other first?” Daphne asked Stephen.
“No.” said Stephen. “They don’t know anything about each other.”
“Depends on the culture though.” said Sam. “In some cultures people trust each other more than others. If you do this experiment in, say, Norway, people are probably going to cooperate. If you do it in Hungary, they’re going to assume the other person’s an asshat and they’ll split.”
Stephen glanced back and forth at Sam and Daphne, his eyes sparkling.
“Are you going to take this revolting slur against your people, Daphne?” he asked.
“Yeah.” she said. “He’s right. We don’t trust each other in Hungary. Communism destroyed our trust. Everyone reporting on everyone else. I’d split. Every time.”
“OK, what if we change the numbers.” said Stephen. “If you split, you still get one hundred. If you cooperate, you get five thousand. But only if the other player also cooperates.”
“Can they discuss it, or not?” asked Daphne.
“Would that make a difference?”
“I don’t know.” said Daphne. “I mean, it makes no sense to take a hundred when you could get five thousand. You’ve made it too extreme.”
“The problem with you two is, you’ve got more money than God. To some people, a hundred pounds might be the difference between eating and not eating. To you two, it’s the sort of money you hand out as a tip in a nice restaurant like this one.”
Stephen gestured around the room.
They were sitting at a table lit by candles and discretely-placed soft electric lights built to resemble lanterns. On the walls were watercolours of Tuscany and Provence.
“Not my fault we got into crypto at the right time.” said Sam. “We try to use our money to do good. We still value money. You have to, otherwise you get poor real fast.”
“It’s hard for me to think of a hundred as a lot, I’ll admit.” said Daphne. “You need to raise the stakes, Professor. Give us an experiment we can feel properly invested in.”
She raised a wry eyebrow at him.
“Look, this is ridiculous.” said Beresford, throwing a bunched-up wad of toilet paper down the chute.
He had just finished cleaning up a lump of faeces that Travis had hurled through the aperture.
He began washing his hands meticulously, a look of disgust on his face.
“We need to cooperate if we’re going to get out of here.” he said.
“Unless you give me my phone back, this hole in the wall is my personal rubbish disposal chute and toilet from now on, mate.” said Travis. “That’s just how it is.”
“I’ll give it back.” said Beresford. “Let’s de-escalate.”
“I want a photo of the notice next to your button.”
“All right!” said Beresford angrily. “You’ll have it. Let’s just agree not to throw things through the hole.”
He photographed the notice and slid the phone back through the aperture. It was almost out of charge.
Travis read the notice on his phone, laughing quietly.
“That’s what mine says. But you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes. I photographed the room when my phone was still working.”
“Figures.”
“We both just need to push our buttons and we’ll get out of here.”
“Go ahead and push it, then. I’ll push mine when you’ve done it.”
“You push yours first, then I’ll push mine. I give you my word.”
“Your word’s not worth nowt, mate.”
“Then we’re at something of an impasse, aren’t we?”
Travis laughed again quietly.
“Listen to me.” said Beresford. “There’s something you don’t know.”
“What’s that?”
“The food. There’s less food every day. Slightly less. Haven’t you noticed? I’ll bet the loaf they gave you today was smaller than yesterday’s, and that was smaller than the one you got the first day you were here. Same with me. They gave me lots of food to start with, now I’m hungry half the time. They’re going to starve us to death if we don’t push the buttons.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed it. You’d better push the button soon then, hadn’t you? Before you start getting all faint.”
“I’m a schoolteacher. You can trust me to do what I say.”
“You’ve mistaken me for someone who respects teachers. I don’t respect teachers. I hate teachers. Always have.”
“That’s beside the point. The point is, I’m a trustworthy person. If you push the button, I swear on my life, I’ll push mine.”
“Yeah, you’re so very trustworthy. What a trustworthy bloke. That’s what I said to myself right at the start. Solid gold, that geezer.”
“What do you mean by that? I am trustworthy. I do a responsible job.”
“You lied to me when I first got here and I’m wondering what else you’ve lied about.”
“I lied to you about the notice because I was desperate for you to push yours. Surely you can understand that. “
“You wanted a little bit of power, didn’t you. Typical schoolteacher. You weren’t going to tell me your button cuts off your food like mine.”
“It was simply a question of maintaining the upper hand. I haven’t lied to you about anything else.”
“Yeah? What were you doing before you woke up here? Just going for a nice little walk in the forest?”
“That’s exactly what I was doing. I happen to have an interest in wild mushrooms. I was looking for chanterelles.”
“Looking for what?”
“Chanterelles. They’re a kind of wild mushroom.”
“Just a nice little innocent walk. Just looking for mushrooms. How frigging lovely.”
“It’s the truth! What were you doing? Why were you in the forest?”
At that moment bags containing food slid down the upward chutes.
Beresford ran to the chute and began shouting.
“Hey! Let me out of here! Please! He’s not going to push the button! Let me out! We’ll starve! You can’t do this!”
“Don’t waste your time, mate.” said Travis. “Whoever put us here, wants us here and nowhere else.”
Beresford turned to banging on the cell door.
“Let me out!” he shouted.
After some minutes he stopped and began to cry.
“I have a wife.” he sobbed. “I have people who love me. I have to get out of here.”
“Yeah, I think I saw her on the news, actually mate.” said Travis. “Quite the catch.” he added sarcastically.
Beresford darted to the aperture.
“Don’t you dare insult my wife!” he screamed. “Don’t you dare! Two people can play at your disgusting games, you filthy ape! I could make your life a living hell!”
“You want to see who can hurl the most disgusting filth through this hole, mate? I’m up for it.”
Beresford went to his mat and curled up on it, crying.
“Oh God. Dear God, get me out of this place.”
“All you’ve got to do is push the button.”
“I can’t.” said Beresford, in a whimper.
“What’s that?”
“I can’t. You’ll go and leave me here and I’ll starve.”
Travis sighed.
“You don’t trust me. I don’t trust you. Seems to me like we ought to start prop’ly communicating. Get to know each other a bit. What about that?”
Beresford made a whimpering noise to indicate assent.
“Let’s start with what you were doing in that forest.”
Beresford breathed heavily.
“I … I was following someone.”
“A woman?” asked Travis. The question sounded almost like a statement.
“Yes. A woman.”
“Yeah. Me too. And what would you have done if you’d caught this woman?”
“I just wanted to talk to her.”
“Sure you did, mate. It’s totally normal to follow women around forests so you can talk to them. Tell you what, mate, I don’t even want to know what you were up to.”
“What were you doing in the forest?”
Travis laughed.
“You might be educated but you’re not very bright, are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose I was up to no good in that forest. If I told you what I was up to, I’d have an incentive to leave you here to rot if I could, wouldn’t I? And you, being an educated bloke, would figure that out eventually, and you’d never trust me to push the button. That means you’d never let me out.”
“What?” said Beresford. “I … I’m not following.”
“Take some time to think about it.”
Beresford sat quietly, breathing heavily, his nose stuffed up from crying.
After a while, he said, “I was going to kill her. There, you see, I trust you. I was going to strangle her. I admit it. Is that what you wanted? Are you happy now?”
“Well. Now you’ve done it, haven’t you? Now it’s best for you if I never get out. You wouldn’t want me telling anyone your little secret, would you? Once again we arrive at the conclusion that I can’t trust you to push the button. You’re going to have to push yours first, or we’ll die in here.”
Beresford swore loudly.
“I’m sick and tired of these mind games!” he shouted. “I’ve told you what I was doing, now you have to tell me what you were doing. Then we’re equal.”
“You’re the serial killer they’ve been looking for. The Rampton Strangler, they call him. Can’t really see me ever trusting a confessed serial killer.”
“One woman. I killed one woman. I didn’t do the others.”
Travis laughed.
“Stuck in a dungeon with a serial killer.” he muttered to himself, and he laughed again.
“You.” said Beresford suddenly.
“What?”
“You killed the others.”
“No, mate. I ain’t killed no-one. The woman I was following was my girlfriend. I thought she was meeting some bloke she works with. So I followed her. That’s all.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like. It’s the truth. So now I’ve got something on you and you’ve got nothing on me. You’ve got a reason for letting me die in here and I’ve got no reason for wanting you to die, so you’d better push the button first, then I’ll let you out. It’s common sense. That’s the only thing that works.”
“You idiot.”
“Me, an idiot?”
“Yes, you. Only a psychopath would think like that. Of course you’ve got a reason for wanting me to die in here. At least, you would, if you were a normal person. I’ve just said I killed a woman and I was about to kill another. Any normal person would happily leave me to rot in here. But you’re not normal, are you Travis? You’re not a normal man. You’re a killer, just like me. You don’t even know how normal people think.”
Travis was silent.
“You’re a killer, Travis! I’ve just seen straight through you!”
Travis began to clap slowly.
“Brav-fricking-o.” he said. “So now we both know what we are.”
“I have something else you might like, but it’s a bit twisted.” said Stephen. “It was thought up by a student of mine. She’s working on her PhD. The problem is, it’s too unethical to actually try.”
“Now you’re talking.” said Sam. “Do share.”
“OK, there are two people. One is an actor and the other is the actual subject of the experiment. They are both led into a dark room.”
“Do they know each other?” asked Daphne.
“No, of course not. The whole point is that the subject doesn’t know the other person is an actor. He thinks the other person is a test subject like himself.
“They’re actually placed in two separate rooms, with a wire grill separating them. They can talk to each other, but they can’t see each other. Or if they can see each other, their view is restricted somehow, to maximise distrust, and also so that the actor can secretly relax a bit.
“In each room there’s a button on the wall. Next to it there’s a notice. The notice says, ‘Push this button to open the door of the other cell.’ But there’s a footnote. The footnote says, ‘Pressing the button starts a five-minute timer. When the timer stops, your cell will fill with poison gas.
“The question is, will either of them press the button?”
“That’s dark.” said Daphne. “I like it.”
“So they can release their cellmate, but only by killing themselves?” asked Sam. “I don’t get it; why would anyone push the button?”
“They have to rely on their cellmate to push their button too.” said Daphne. “Then they can both get out of there. Isn’t that right, Steve?”
“Exactly.” said Steve. “It’s about trust. They can only escape by completely trusting the other person, who they don’t know. If they can talk and build rapport somehow, they can escape. Otherwise, they’re doomed.”
“How did your student come up with this?” asked Sam. “She sounds like she needs a psychiatrist.”
“Julia.” said Stephen. “As a matter of fact, she’s seeing a psychiatrist. You know this serial killer who’s been roaming about Rampton Forest?”
“The Rampton Strangler.” said Daphne.
“Yes, him.” said Stephen. “He killed Julia’s sister. I advised her to write down her thoughts, to help her come to terms with it. She’s devised fifteen different ways to kill him so far. She’s trying to devise experiments that kill the guilty and spare the innocent. Sort of like a mediaeval ordeal trial kind of a thing.”
“Tell her if she can catch him, we’ll fund the experiment.” said Daphne, laughing.
“Absolutely.” said Sam. “I want to see what happens.”
“You two have got way too much money.” said Stephen.
“Three.” said Beresford.
He was lying on his mat, listening to the rumbling of his stomach.
“What?” said Travis.
“I killed one woman. The newspapers say four women have been killed. I’ve been trying to remember it. I’m sure they said four. That means you killed the other three.”
“That they know of.” said Travis.
“More?” asked Beresford.
“I’ve said enough.”
Beresford gave a short sarcastic laugh.
“I followed her all the way down Chipping Lane, the last one. That’s a long lane. She turned off into the forest near the picnic area. I followed her into the forest about half a mile, I’d say. When I got close enough I shouted to her. Told her I’d lost my dog, asked her if she’d seen it. I got closer and closer to her. Walked right up to her, almost. She looked nervous but she didn’t run. Then I felt a pain in my neck. That’s the last thing I remember. I reckon they shot me with a tranquiliser dart.”
“What did she look like?”
“Pink jacket. Shorts. Long brown hair. About twenty-three, I’d say.”
Travis, who was also lying on his mat, staring at the concrete ceiling, scrabbled to a sitting position.
“I was following the exact same girl.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. Pink jacket, shorts, brown hair. Exactly the same, mate.”
“Did you feel something sting your neck?”
“My back. I thought something bit me.”
“I think we’ve been played.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see? She’s not the victim here. We’re the victims. She hunted us. Her and an accomplice.”
“Why not just kill us?”
Beresford laughed again.
“She has killed us. You’re stupider than I thought if you can’t see that.”
“Screw you.” said Travis.
For some minutes they lay in silence. The only sound in the cells was their breathing and the rumbling of their stomachs.
“Why did you do it?” asked Travis.
“Now you’re asking.” said Beresford. “I’ve just always wondered what it would be like to kill someone. Take someone’s life, with my own hands. When you started killing women in the forest, I just thought, why not try it? I knew they’d think you’d done it. I mean, the Rampton Strangler.”
“Why were you going to kill another one then? Wasn’t one enough to satisfy your curiosity?”
“I suppose I liked it. Got a bit of a taste for it. Why did you kill them?”
“I hate women.” said Travis.
“Fair play to you.” said Beresford. “Someone must have really messed up your head.”
“Not really. I’ve always hated them.”
Stephen put the sheaf of papers down on his desk.
“Julia,” he said, “we’re psychologists. We’re not vigilantes. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to your sister, I really am, but we should leave this to the police.”
“Think of it as a psychological experiment.” said Julia.
“So you walk around in the forest alone and the killer spots you and follows you. Meanwhile I’m following with a camera, and I run up and photograph him. What’s to stop him pulling out a knife and threatening to kill you unless I hand over the camera?”
“I’ll be armed with pepper spray.”
“Pepper spray is illegal, Julia. You’ll go to prison even if you’re defending yourself.”
“I won’t. He’s hardly going to go to the police and complain, is he?”
“No, but if they catch him, using our photograph, he’ll definitely say you pepper sprayed him.”
“Steve,” said Julia, leaning over his desk and staring him directly in the eyes, “women are dying out there. He’s not going to stop. The police aren’t doing anything. I’m prepared to spend a few months in prison if that’s what I have to do to catch this monster.”
Stephen sighed, shaking his head.
“You know you’re crazy.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Tell you what.” said Stephen. “I know a guy who works for the police in Germany as a psychological profiler. How about if I ask him to profile the Rampton Strangler? At least we’d gain a bit more insight before we go concocting any crazy schemes to catch him.”
“Won’t that be expensive?”
“The people who are funding our work here, they’re personal friends of mine. If I explain your plan to them, they’ll probably pay for a profile. They’re as a crazy as you are. Maybe crazier.”
Julia stood up straight, smiling.
“OK.” she said. “It’s a start.”
There was a slithering sound and shopping bags containing food fell out of the chutes.
Travis cursed in frustration.
“They mean to starve us to death, and soon.” said Beresford. “We need to get out of here.”
“Push the button then.” said Travis.
“I’m telling you, on my life, I swear to God, I will push my button if you push yours. Can you not understand what I’m saying to you? We’re both murderers, we’re both the same. We’re equal. Neither of us will go to the police. Just push the button.”
“I’m not the same as you, teacher boy. I’m a serial killer. You’re just someone who strangled a woman once. Now shut your trap for a bit, I’m eating.”
“What is this, a flippin’ competition? I’ve just as much reason to avoid the police as you.”
“No you don’t.” said Travis, his mouth full of bread. “I’ve murdered way more women than you. You could strike a plea deal and get off, in return for telling them about me. I’m not letting you out unless you let me out first.”
“They’re not going to let me off after I’ve told them I’ve murdered someone, you idiot!” said Beresford.
“Reduced sentence, then. Whatever.”
“You knuckle-dragging imbecile! That makes no sense at all. We both just want to get out of here.”
“You push the button first, then. How do I know you’re even real?”
“What?”
“For all I know,” said Travis, in-between eating chunks of bread and cheese, “you’re an actor. A stooge. You’re just trying to make me confess; extract information.”
“You have confessed. Why would we still be in here if I were an actor?”
“You probably want to know where they’re buried.”
“You absolute cretin. Do you seriously think I’d agree to spend weeks in a cell, living off bread and cheese, just to get information out of you?”
“I can’t actually see the side of your cell, mate. For all I know your door’s open and you’ve got all the comforts of home right there.”
“You’re losing your tiny mind!” said Beresford. “How do I know you’re not an actor?”
“Yeah.” said Travis, chewing his food. “You don’t.”
“Right, that’s it. You’ve driven me to this.”
From Beresford’s cell came the sound of fabric being torn.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Travis.
“I’m tearing up my mat.”
“Why are you doing that?”
Beresford made no reply.
Travis peered through the aperture.
“Fricking lunatic.” he said.
Beresford disappeared out of his field of vision, taking the torn-up mattress with him.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” said Travis.
“I’m blocking up the sink.” he said. “And the rubbish chute.”
“Why are you doing that, you plank?”
“You’ll see.”
After ten minutes, Beresford turned on his tap.
“Your tap’s running, you mentaloid.” said Travis.
“Yes. And it’s going to go on running until both our cells fill completely up with water.”
“You what?” said Travis, laughing.
“My cell will fill first, but only up to the hole between our cells. Then the water will gush into your cell. Eventually, you’ll drown.”
“The water’ll go down my rubbish chute, you fool.”
“Yeah and how deep do you think that is? It’s not connected to a sewer, is it? I can smell all the stuff I’ve thrown down there. It reeks of excrement in here. I reckon it goes down maybe two or three metres. It’ll fill up pretty quickly.”
“You’ll drown too.”
“We’ll both drown unless you open my cell door. That’s the only way you can drain the water.”
“No,” said Travis, with exaggerated patience, “we’ll both drown unless you open my cell door.”
“Then we’ll both drown, because I don’t trust you further than I can spit.”
Julia was sitting in the psychology library making notes from a book when Stephen sat down next to her. He placed a folder on the table in front of her.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Report from the profiler.” said Stephen. “You’re going to want to read it.”
“Why, what does it say?”
“It says there isn’t just one man murdering women. There’s two.”
“Two?”
“The profiler says the second one’s probably a copycat. His MO—”
“MO?”
“—Mode of Operation is mostly the same, but what he does to the corpses afterwards is different. I’d suggest not reading it before bedtime. I wish I’d not read it at all. I still feel sick.”
“So what now? If there’s two, that doubles our chances. We can at least catch one of them.”
“See, my friends, Sam and Daphne, I told them about your experiment. The one with the cells and the buttons. I can’t believe I’m even considering this, but they pointed out that if we had two subjects, we wouldn’t need an actor. It’d actually be a pretty interesting experiment.”
“You’re suggesting we catch them and experiment on them?” said Julia, smiling broadly in amazement.
“Ssshh.” said Stephen, looking around the library suspiciously. “Keep your voice down. I’m not saying I’m going to do it. I’m just relaying an idea my friends raised. They suggest we scrap the pepper spray. They did some work on rescuing wounded gorillas in Africa somewhere. They’ve got tranquiliser darts. And they’ve suggested a few minor modifications to the experiment.
If you do it, our story is going to be that you’re an innocent victim and my friends, Sam and Daphne, will take full responsibility for everything. They’ve got three different passports, at least; after it’s done, they’ll disappear abroad. We don’t think the police will care enough to chase them. The experiment would last maybe a month.
“And if they press the buttons?”
“They’ll be released, but we’ll send their photographs to the police when we catch them, and we’ll record their conversations and send the recordings to the police too.”
“We’d be able to listen in on them?” said Julia excitedly.
“Hold your horses. We think there’s too much danger of excessive emotional involvement if we do that. No, we’d record them and only listen to the recordings after the experiment’s finished.”
“And if we can only catch one?”
“Then Sam will be the actor. What do you think? If you want I can put you in touch with them. I’m probably going to stay out of it. It’ll be between you and them.”
“Do it.” said Julia.
“Julia, this won’t bring your sister back.”
“No, but it’ll save someone else’s sister.”
The summer was almost over and autumn was beginning when they made their way down the muddy track to the building they called The Box. There was a slight chill in the air.
“We should just leave them in there.” said Daphne.
“I agree.” said Julia.
“That’s not what we decided.” said Stephen. “We’re not murderers. It’s been over a month and neither of them’s pushed the button. It’s time to let them out. The police know who they are now. They won’t stay free for long.”
“I agree with you,” said Sam, “but you have to admit there’s a risk.”
“It’s minimal.” said Stephen. “They’ve nowhere to go, and everyone knows their faces.”
“I really want to hear the recordings.” said Julia. “I can’t wait.”
Eventually they arrived at a barn, at the side of a field.
“This is it?” said Stephen.
“This is it.” said Julia.
“It looks too flimsy.” said Stephen.
“Looks can be deceptive.” said Sam. “Inside there’s a brick wall, and inside that a concrete inner shell, a foot thick. They’ll think they’re underground.”
“How do you feed them?” Stephen asked.
“There’s a machine above the cells. It dispenses shitty long-life bread and cheese. Underneath there’s a cesspit.”
He unlocked a padlocked door and opened it. Inside were two wooden doors, set into wooden panelling.
“These aren’t the cell doors.” said Sam. “They’re outer doors for soundproofing. The real doors are behind them.”
“What if they push the buttons now, while we’re here?” said Daphne nervously.
“Don’t worry,” said Sam. “there’s a two-minute delay before they open. We’d have time to get away.”
“The buttons actually do open the doors, then?” said Stephen.
“Yep.” said Sam. “They could have left anytime they’d wanted.”
He flipped open a plastic case attached to the wall between the doors, revealing a green button, and held his thumb over it.
“Do I press it?” he asked.
“Let them die.” said Julia.
“You have to press it.” said Stephen.
“He’s right.” said Sam. “Let the police deal with them.”
Sam pressed the button.
“So now the timer’s started?” Daphne asked.
“Yep.” said Sam. “In an hour the doors will spring open. We’d better get out of here.”
“Don’t forget the recordings.” said Julia.
“Good point.” said Sam, and he pushed and then pulled out a micro-SD card from underneath the button.
An hour later they were sitting in a house Sam and Daphne had borrowed from a wealthy friend, listening to the recording.
“It’s exactly as you predicted.” said Stephen.
“Told you.” said Julia. “I knew neither of them would ever trust each other.”
“Go to the end.” said Daphne. “The end’s got to be the most interesting bit.”
Sam clicked the video player on the computer screen to play the end of the recording.
“Shame we didn’t film it.” said Julia.
From the computer came the sound of splashing and screaming.
“What the devil is this?” said Stephen.
Three miles away, in the field, the cells doors opened and a torrent of water gushed out. The corpses of two men washed out with it and lay still on the field, where crows soon began to peck at their eyes.