The Game

by Luca Veste

  ‘She was angry at herself. We all just got caught in the crossfire. I got off lightly and I don’t think that was accidental. She knew I hadn’t really done anything wrong to her, despite what she writes in that letter. Honestly, if she had just chilled out a bit, then everything would have been different for her. She couldn’t do that though. It doesn’t mean what she wrote here is true though. I had nothing to do with what happened to her.’

  ‘You said she had messed with things she didn’t understand…’

  Stephanie made a noise as if to speak, then stopped herself. She seemed to grow smaller in her seat, as Mark looked at her. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said anything, it doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘You need to tell me,’ Mark said, firmer now, seeing that, if anything, he’d only made the whole case even more incomprehensible. He began to feel out of his depth, but ploughed on regardless. He couldn’t just let it all go. ‘I’ve taken a chance on trusting that you had nothing to do with what happened. That’s why we’re in here and not an interview room under caution. Now, you need to trust me.’

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s silly.’

  He remembered the words written in the letter, what Emily had mentioned, and knew there was only one question to ask her now.

  ‘Stephanie,’ Mark said, reaching out a hand and resting it close to where she was sitting. ‘What’s The Game?’

  She didn’t answer immediately, swallowing hard and rubbing a hand across her face. ‘It could be why she’s dead.’

  Forty-Four

  Mark waited for Stephanie to explain what she meant, but she had gone suddenly quiet. Her eyes glistened as he waited, unable to take his eyes away from her. He wanted to push her, to force her to explain, but he didn’t think that would work.

  ‘It’s not supposed to be a real thing,’ Stephanie said, almost at a whisper, without conviction. ‘It’s just a stupid thing that got passed around school one year.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s this story. Started online. Someone finds out some kind of secret you have and makes you play some kind of game. It erases the bad thing you’ve done and makes it all forgotten. You just had to do certain tasks first. Like levels in a video game. We scared each other with it, that sort of thing. It wasn’t like anyone actually did anything with the secrets.’

  ‘Emily talks about it differently though, as if it’s really happening to her. As if she was being made to play it,’ Mark replied, leaving the words he almost said safely unspoken.

  Or she did.

  ‘I never thought it was a real thing people did. No one did, not really. We all knew it was just something that had been made up. Some stupid, online bullshit that didn’t really mean anything.’

  ‘Why would she think it was real though?’

  Stephanie shrugged in response, but Mark could see there was something she wasn’t saying either. He decided to try a different tack.

  ‘Where did it start?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was one of those things, you know, that just gets passed around school and that. A group of us talked about it in school and that was it. There’s a whole bunch of people who talk about it online though. Emily must have heard about it. That’s all.’

  ‘Why would she be interested in it? Do you think she would have believed in it?’

  ‘I… I don’t know. Maybe, if she’d done something even worse than we know about, someone could have made her play The Game or something. But it’s not a real thing. It’s just a story. No one actually makes anyone do anything like this.’

  Mark leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and stroked his forehead with his fingers. Wondered how the hell he’d ended up in a mess such as this. ‘Is it possible someone used this thing to get back at her? Made her think if she played this game, she could make up for something?’

  ‘We spoke about it. Once.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I can’t really remember. It was a while ago.’

  This time, Mark didn’t hide his disappointment in her answer. He gave her a look to tell her so. ‘Come on, you know that’s not true as much as I do. You spoke to Emily about this game…’

  ‘The Game.’

  ‘Right, “The Game”,’ Mark said, using his fingers to emphasise the point that he didn’t really understand what this was all about. ‘Is it possible, with all the things that she’s done over the past year or so, that it could have been used against her?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Obviously she said something, or did something, that resonated. Otherwise you wouldn’t remember it. You need to start telling me everything. This is too serious now. No one thinks you have anything to do with Emily’s death at the moment, but that can change if you keep things from me. People will think you’re lying by omission and think you have something to hide. You’ve got to give me something to work with here.’

  ‘I never asked you to do anything.’

  Mark sighed and leaned forward in his seat. ‘I know you didn’t, but you need answers. Your mum and the rest of the family need them as well. Right now, this is what we have. I need you to start talking to me.’

  It was Stephanie’s turn to sigh. ‘It was a few months back, when I came home from university for the summer. I was going to be living back at the house, but I decided to stay with some mates instead. One of them had digs and a spare bed, which made more sense than moving back home for a couple of months. Easier all round. Emily wasn’t happy, but I didn’t understand why. Whether it was the thought of being on her own, even though we both hated sharing a bedroom. Or that I had friends and she didn’t. I don’t know. I went round there and wanted to pick up some of the clothes I’d left at home. She came in the bedroom while I was going through them. She asked me about it. The Game, I mean. Asked if I knew anyone who had actually done it. Played. I said no, because it wasn’t real.’

  ‘Did she tell you why she was asking?’

  Stephanie nodded her head, her hands clasped together in her lap. ‘Yeah, she said she’d been looking into The Game. Said she’d found some things online that had made her interested in it. Looking back now, I think she wanted to talk to me more about it because of what I’d done in sixth form.’

  ‘Sixth form?’

  ‘Oh, I did some kind of project about it,’ Stephanie replied, her hands unclasping quickly. ‘About modern-day myths and how they become part of wider societal thinking. Proper college level, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Stories interwoven into the fabric of how we think, how we act… all that rubbish. I’d used The Game as an example and talked about some real-life examples of mysterious disappearances, to do with other kinds of online games of this sort. That kind of thing. There’s very little out there about it, to be honest. Some forums online that talk about it, but it’s always different. All with different rules.’

  Mark began to see things becoming clearer, but still wasn’t sure if he could make this even slightly believable to DI Bennett. ‘And Emily asked you about it?’

  ‘She had obviously read my essays on it and had her own questions. Problem was, she didn’t want to talk to me. It was still tense between us. Not from my side, but I think she still felt guilty about what she’d done. She wanted to know if I’d ever found a case where it was proven that someone had actually played it. Of course, I couldn’t give her that. It’s not like it’s a real thing. And even if it was, it’s not like we’d ever know for sure. It was a day or so later that it all came out anyway, so it was forgotten about.’

  ‘What came out?’

  ‘All the stuff she was doing to people online,’ Stephanie said, another dismissive wave of the hand. He guessed she had been more bothered when what Emily had been doing was first revealed, but had a little perspective now. ‘That came out and it was just endless after that. I was doing damage control for her from that point until I went back to university. People wanted blood, but
I managed to keep the worst of it controlled. She denied doing it, but the evidence was all there. That was bad enough when it got out, but if she’d done something even worse, it could be the reason someone could have forced her to play The Game. And she didn’t think she had any choice.’

  ‘The pictures, of you – when did that happen?’

  ‘Around the same time. She denied doing that as well, but I knew when she was lying. Mum never found out, thankfully, and hopefully she never will. Emily was…’

  ‘Troubled?’ Mark said for her, when it became clear Stephanie was struggling to find the right word. He used the one she’d given him a few days earlier, when they’d been sitting in her bedroom. When they had still hoped to find her alive. ‘So, I think I’m starting to put this together.’

  ‘Really? Because to me, it all seems so much more difficult to work out. If this was someone online, it could be anyone.’

  ‘There is that,’ Mark replied, leaning back and scratching the growing stubble on his cheek. Made a decision. ‘There was another girl found dead this week. A student living in the new block, down past the Baltic Quarter on the waterfront.’

  ‘The one we saw…’

  ‘Yes. She was called Joanna Carter, not sure if you were ever told her name?’

  ‘We were, to see if we recognised it or if it might have been someone Emily was talking to. You asked us.’

  Mark nodded slowly, remembering. His memory of the week’s events was already becoming jumbled up, he realised. ‘Right, of course. Anyway, they think she was killed after seeing what happened to Emily. She was a witness and paid for it. Yards away from where Emily was seen last. Only there was something more. She was a loner, like Emily. Struggled to make friends and seemed to live her life online. And there were some reports that she was doing some strange things in the weeks leading up to her death. I’ve not found anything to suggest she was doing what Emily was doing to people…’

  ‘Catfishing.’

  ‘Right, catfishing. Joanna just seemed to live her life in anonymity on the internet, rather than making friends in the real world. We haven’t dug deep enough yet, so maybe she was doing something similar online. Even so, it’s sort of similar to what Emily was doing; not living in the real world, finding herself on the internet, etcetera etcetera. On the night of her death – two days after Emily goes missing – the only thing we know for certain is that she was caught on CCTV in the student building. She was in the lift, doing some weird stuff, then outside of it, then she is followed by someone up to the roof. The next morning, her body is found.’

  Mark stopped talking, as Stephanie’s eyes widened with alarm. He could see flecks of red in the white around her pupils. ‘What is it?’ he said, pausing from his speech.

  ‘Was she like, pushing buttons and going in and out?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Mark replied, about to continue but Stephanie wasn’t going to let him.

  ‘That’s a version of it. Of a game, I mean. It’s called the Elevator Game. That’s all online, you can look it up.’

  ‘This just gets better and better,’ Mark said, covering his face with both hands. ‘So, there’s different versions of this game and they’re being used to, what, make people pay for things they’ve done wrong?’

  Stephanie opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Instead, she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. It all sounds stupid when you say it out loud.’

  Mark didn’t want to hear any more of this, but couldn’t stop it now. He realised what a mistake he had made. Being drawn into this.

  He breathed through it and tried to ignore the feeling. Tried to remember why he was there. Why he wanted to be there to hear this.

  ‘Emily wouldn’t have believed this,’ Stephanie said, her voice shaking now, as she struggled to hold back the events of that day. ‘She was smarter than that. It’s all so stupid. It doesn’t even make sense.’

  ‘Could someone have noticed she was talking about it?’

  Stephanie shrugged, but didn’t say no. Mark tried to walk it back, work out what he actually understood, what would make sense.

  ‘If Joanna Carter had been discovered doing something bad to people, was told the same story, was in the same situation, then it makes sense that the two things could be linked. That someone was making both Joanna and Emily play this game and they were killed at the end of it.’

  ‘Are you saying they both killed themselves or that someone killed them?’ Stephanie replied, carefully. ‘Because there’s a big difference. And Emily definitely didn’t kill herself. Maybe that’s part of what happened – she fought back. Could that be it? Because she didn’t really do anything wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Mark said, but he felt he was close. Closer than he had been all week. Not to actually finding the person who had done this, but closer to a reason why it had happened.

  ‘I need to find out more about this. It’s going to take some time to get people to believe this is a possibility… I mean, that both girls were involved in some sort of game and were pushed into doing it.’

  ‘Thank you. For trusting me,’ Stephanie replied, a smile briefly appearing on her face, before falling away.

  Mark smiled thinly at her, the atmosphere thickening. He suddenly saw the weight she would carry for the foreseeable future. The twin left behind.

  After a few seconds, he broke the silence. ‘Go back to your mum. Get back home. She’ll need you right now.’

  He watched her leave as he remained sitting there, processing everything she’d said. Inside his pocket, his phone vibrated. He took it out, seeing Natasha’s name on the screen. He paused, then let it go to voicemail. Another missed call from her, to join the others from earlier.

  His private life would have to wait. He needed to think.

  He needed to work out what to do next to find out who had done this.

  www.2468101235791113.cam/board/gamers/pg1/thread

  Posted: TODAY

  Status: Live

  All players eliminated.

  A new game has begun.

  New players chosen.

  Player One and Player Two.

  They’ll think they can bring this to an end, but we’ve already won.

  KEEP PLAYING THE GAME.

  THIS IS OUR TIME.

  TIME’S UP FOR THEM.

  I’M WITH YOU ALL THE WAY.

  Forty-Five

  Mark woke to the sound of the vending machine being struck a few times, then a stream of expletives. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, wondering when the thing had been installed in his bedroom. A few moments later, he realised he was sitting upright in the small kitchen next to the incident room at the station.

  ‘You not got a home to go to?’

  Mark blinked in the direction of the voice, squinting at the harsh light that suddenly bothered him so much. ‘I was working late,’ he managed to croak out at the blurred figure of DS Cavanagh.

  ‘Yeah, I can see that.’

  As Mark gained more consciousness, he looked down to what DS Cavanagh was gesturing towards. The memories of the long night before came back to him. He began gathering up the mounds of paperwork he’d been working on overnight.

  He didn’t want anyone to see it all just yet.

  ‘Just some stuff on the case. Came to me late on and I thought I’d get it sorted before the morning. Guess I underestimated how tired I actually was.’

  Mark looked at the clock on the wall, seeing that he’d been asleep at least two hours in there. The pain in his neck attested that it hadn’t been all that comfortable.

  ‘Yeah, well, the boss isn’t in yet,’ Cavanagh said with a smirk, then turned back to the vending machine. ‘So you’ve probably got away with it. She’d go mad if she knew you’d fallen asleep in here and not gone home for the night.’

  ‘Course, right,’ Mark replied, standing up and shuffling towards the doorway. Pins and needles hit his left leg, but he soldiered on. ‘I need to put this tog
ether anyway, before she comes in.’

  ‘How did it go with the twin?’

  ‘Some useful stuff. Some not so useful stuff. I think I can say with some certainty that this was a targeted attack and it was from someone she did something to online. She was being made to do something…’

  ‘I’ve got a feeling that something else has turned up on the uncle,’ Cavanagh said, before Mark had the chance to continue. He looked back from the doorway, seeing Cavanagh leaning against the vending machine, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not sure, but they’ve interviewed him again this morning already. Clock’s running down. Forensics might have found something.’

  ‘It wasn’t him.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ DS Cavanagh said, then looked at what Mark was carrying. ‘What is all that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All that stuff,’ Cavanagh said, frowning at him. ‘Doesn’t look like normal paperwork to me. On the wrong paper, for a kick off. Is there evidence there?’

  ‘It’s information I printed out,’ Mark managed to stutter out. He was suddenly aware of how this would look, how it would sound. He needed to get his story straight on it all, before talking to anyone. Even if Cavanagh was more accepting of his previous theories. ‘I need to get it in some sort of order, if what you’re saying about the uncle is right.’

  ‘Must have been enough to make you sleep in this place. Can’t even get a bloody Mars bar from the vending machine…’

  Mark managed to slip out of the room, as Cavanagh continued to grumble at the machinery. He shoved the papers in his desk drawer and then went into the bathroom. Splashed cold water on his face a few times, then over his hair as well. Ran fingers through it, then dried himself over.

  It was ten by the time he was back at his desk, putting what he’d learned overnight in some sort of order. The information he’d managed to gather had been difficult to pull together – taken from a multitude of different websites and forums. He felt he had enough though.