by Steve Mosby
Kearney felt Todd shift slightly beside him. His partner had just folded his arms, a familiar signal. We're losing him here, Paul. And he thought Todd was right. If so, the fingerprint was the important thing. Kearney thought about it and remembered something from when they'd been researching vampire lore. It sounded like 'aneurysm', but the exact word wouldn't come to him.
'Do you have a helper, Thomas?'
Wells looked up suddenly. The question had caught him off guard. 'What?'
'A human helper?' Kearney said. 'A servant?'
Wells's gaze darted to the far side of the room. His composure had slipped. For the first time, he looked worried.
'I have… no. But the thing is, I don't know.'
'Someone who helps you with the bodies?'
No reply this time. Wells leaned forward, and then suddenly back again. Then he folded his arms, and one finger began tapping against his elbow.
Kearney said, 'Did he tell you not to talk about him?'
The finger stopped. 'Nobody tells me anything.'
'No, of course.'
Wells tilted his head to one side and stared intently at Kearney. He frowned.
And then a sly smile crept onto his face.
'Ha ha,' he said.
For a moment, the man had been floundering - searching for something out of the reams of insanity in his head. Now, apparently, he'd found it. It was infuriating: the man's personality was like a ring of coloured discs, rotating into place across torchlight, one colour after another. Right now, his face was full of stupid cunning.
'Thomas?' Kearney said.
'No.' 'Where's Rebecca Wingate?'
'Who?'
The smile didn't falter. Kearney had a mental flash of her picture and felt his patience falter.
'You know who,' he said. 'Rebecca Wingate.'
'Who?'
To Wells, this was clearly the most intelligent thing he'd ever thought of, and he seemed immensely pleased with himself. His eyes were glittering. Full of sparkle.
'Thomas…' Kearney fought back the frustration, and levelled his palms out in front of him. 'This is all over. OK? Why not just tell me? This is a woman's life we're talking about here.'
Wells licked his lips, glanced to either side, then leaned forward conspiratorially, as though he was about to tell a secret. Kearney moved forward, matching him.
'Who?' Wells whispered.
The man sat up again, smiling to himself.
And then he looked bored.
Kearney leaned back slowly. He could feel Wells's silence throbbing in his head. Once again, he had that sense of there being no time. His throat was tightening more with every pulse of his heart; he thought he might even be on the verge of a panic attack. The warning signs had become familiar over the years.
And then he thought of his dream, of Rebecca Wingate disappearing backwards into the mist, and the urgency flared up, overtaking him.
We will find her…
He scraped back his chair and stood up.
'This is going nowhere. A break.' He checked his watch, his wrist shaking visibly. Then looked up at the black-bulb camera in the corner of the room. 'Sixteen twenty-four. Interview paused. Fifteen minutes.'
Beside him, Todd shook his head once, then pressed the button on the control panel. The red light that had been glowing beneath the camera blinked off.
Kearney walked behind Wells, over to the window. His legs felt weak, like they might give out on him.
We will find her…
He wasn't quite sure what he was doing. 'It's too dark in here.'
There was a rustle as the blinds clicked open. And then Thomas Wells began to scream.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Before I left my brother's house, I found an old sports bag in the gym room and took Sarah's folders with me. I also needed to get on the Internet. I called into town and bought myself the cheapest laptop I could find, and, as an afterthought, a pay-as- you-go mobile phone as well. Then I headed back to my hotel room. When I closed the door, it felt like I was sealing myself in.
My heart was thumping.
The wireless link was weak, but good enough to get me online. I paid for a twenty-four hour account with the Cloud, left the laptop open on the narrow desk, then walked across the room, running my hand through my hair.
On the bed, I had the two folders I'd already looked through - the one with Sarah's newspaper clippings, the other with all the photographs - and also a third one, much thinner, that hadn't been labelled but appeared to be additional research material she'd gathered together. I unclipped the contents of that one and spread the pages out on the rough bed sheet.
A bundle at the front contained more print-outs, but these weren't from newspapers. Some looked like academic texts, while others appeared to be screen grabs from websites and forums, each with a URL scribbled at the top for reference. The one thing they had in common was that they were all concerned with death, but at least these were more mainstream. Relatively tame compared to the horrors she'd collated in the 'Research' file.
Next, I found pages of handwritten notes.
The first contained a series of hastily sketched diagrams. There was a rectangular, slanted 'U'. Then an angled line with a smaller line near the base, like a sword pointing to the north-east. A cross with two middle strokes. And so on: different combinations of lines and circles. I wasn't sure what they were supposed to represent. They looked vaguely occult, but they also reminded me of something else, and I couldn't think what. But Sarah had obviously only been drawing them as a reminder to herself, so she hadn't bothered to explain what they meant.
Help me out here.
The next sheet was more obvious. It was just a single sheet with a list of words scribbled down faintly in pencil, one on top of another:
redpepper
A: grudge
B: buried
C: graves
D: burner
E: ironed
F: carnal
G: damage
Sarah's surname was Pepper and she'd always dyed her hair bright red, so I thought 'redpepper' might be an online user- name. It made sense: the rest all had six letters, so were probably passwords for different websites. The ones where she'd found those photographs, I was guessing.
The next page contained a key.
A: http://www.doyouwanttosee.co.uk
B: http://liveleak.com
C: http://ogrishforums.com
D: http://www.rotten.com
And so on.
I cross-checked with the 'Research' folder, and it was clear enough what she'd done. The photograph of the prison riot was labelled 'A3', for example, so presumably she'd found that at doyouwanttosee.co.uk, where her password would be 'grudge'.
That site was also where she'd found the photo of Marie.
Last of all, there was a stapled, four-page list, with a table of contacts and interview details. The only complete columns were the ones giving computer usernames and a corresponding letter, once again from A through to G. Beside these, there were spaces for 'real name' and 'street address', but the majority were blank. There was a handful of phone numbers, but still not many. Almost everyone on the list was identified only by an email address, and then the date of when they'd been interviewed.
The hotel room felt dark and claustrophobic.
Come on. You can do this.
I checked the label on the photograph of Marie -
[20/04/08. Ai: CE(i)-f2f]
- and then referred back to the table.
There it was.
Sarah had conducted only one interview on the twentieth of April. 'CE' stood for Christopher Ellis - username 'Hell_is' - and there was an address for him in Wrexley, which was about ten miles west of here.
I presumed 'f2f' meant she'd conducted it in person.
Checking through, he appeared to be the only person she'd spoken to in the flesh. Of the three other addresses she'd tracked down, two were outside the country and the third
would have been too far to travel. They all had 'email' next to them.
Christopher Ellis.
The name meant nothing to me. I was fairly sure I'd never even heard of this man. But there had to be a reason Sarah had connected these people to specific images, and all I could think was that they'd been the ones to post those pictures online.
And that meant something to me.
Come on then.
I went across to the computer and typed the web address into the browser window. Before I could change my mind, I pressed 'return'. The site loaded immediately, and I was faced with the plain front page to a forum. The background was entirely black. There were no fancy graphics, just a simple table divided into three separate blocks of text. The titles of sub-forums showed up in pale red - flesh-coloured, I realised. The date and name of the most recent post in each appeared in grey- white.
A small header at the top right of the screen was like a dare:
do you want to see?
I stared at that for a moment, then turned my attention to the forum below. The middle section was titled 'content', and there were three sub-forums within that: 'images', 'videos', and 'non- gore-related'. I clicked on 'images', and immediately, a pop-up window appeared:
You must be logged in to view that section
Log-in Register
The option to register was disabled. At the bottom of the new window, I noticed a tiny note added in grey:
hell is full - we are closed to new members at present
You don't get rid of me that easily, I thought. Bastards.
I clicked 'Log-in', then entered 'redpepper' and 'grudge' at the prompt. The mouse pointer changed to an hourglass.
And nothing else happened.
I sat there, waiting, and after a few moments I began to have the uncomfortable sensation that someone was peering out of the screen at me. It was ridiculous. But I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I was about to hit a key - wondering if the browser might have jammed - when the screen hiccupped once, and the 'images' sub-forum appeared.
I was in.
The screen showed the forum topics as a vertical list: rows and rows of subjects, ordered by the date the most recent comment had been added. The hottest topic at this point in time was something called 'Pathologist at play', which had nine pages of comments attached to it. Below that, the next line read 'Race driver decapitated'. Then 'suicide by cop'. And so on. The page link option at the top of the table suggested there were another forty-four screens of this.
I decided to use the search function instead. There was no need to wade through all the shit on here, not when I could just sieve it instead: pull out the threads started by 'Hell_is' and see what was there.
But even his username brought up several pages of links. Christopher Ellis was obviously a heavy user of the site. And he was still active too: the most recent post he'd made, at the top of the list, was from only a couple of days ago.
When I saw the title, my heart skipped.
'Dead woman in wood'
Sarah.
The mouse pointer hovered over the link. I kept reading the subject line, over and over again, unsure what to do.
The police think someone else must have found it first.
I hadn't even considered the possibility that one of these people might know anything about what had happened to Sarah, never mind that they might be involved somehow. But now that I thought about it, it wasn't such a huge fucking leap, was it? The kind of person who'd steal a body would probably also enjoy seeing photos of one, which meant they'd end up at a place like this. At the very least, there was an obvious sliding scale there.
I hesitated.
Do you want to see?
I steeled myself, clicked the mouse button…
And relief spread through me. It wasn't her. The picture was some kind of leaked police photograph, showing a woman's naked body. She had been stuffed into the entrance of a large waste pipe in woodland, and only her upper body was visible, as though the photographer had captured her in the act of clambering forward out of it. The body was on its front, with the woman's face tilted back, resting on its chin and staring at the camera. The skin was wrapped tightly to the bones, the lips peeled away from a grimace of teeth.
The relief was quickly replaced by revulsion.
But it's someone.
I started to scroll down the comments - but then stopped. The first few were making fun of the dead girl. One even had a smiling emoticon clapping its hands. After reading a couple, I realised I was shaking slightly, as though I'd had one cup of coffee too many. I didn't know if it was caused by the shock from seeing the photograph or the sudden anger I felt towards these people, but I closed the thread anyway.
For the next half hour, I clicked through screen after screen of links posted by Christopher Ellis, scanning the titles without opening them. He was a prolific poster, it seemed: a really committed collector of other people's suffering.
And finally, at the top of the ninth screen, I found mine.
'Bridge suicide - bitch in bits'
I breathed out slowly.
Bitch. I think it was that word, as much as anything - just thrown out like that by a complete stranger. Someone who'd never known Marie or the difficulties she'd had in her life. Someone who was probably glad she was dead just so he could find a picture of it, post it online, and laugh about it.
Do you need anything else while I'm out?
Even now, I missed her so much. I could still feel the lurch of guilt inside me: that terrible, endless drop of a moment when you realise it's too late. That something has been lost, and that you would give anything - anything at all - for it to return. For one chance to do things differently.
Just you to come back to me.
The screen in front of me was suddenly blurred.
I'd come this far now, though, even if I was no longer sure why, so I took a deep breath, and went to click on the link. But then I noticed something else and stopped moving completely.
I'd known it was here, of course. And I'd already seen the picture itself. What I hadn't prepared myself for was where on the site it had been posted. Ellis's thread wasn't in the 'images' sub-forum at all. It was under 'videos'.
Carefully - without really thinking about what I was doing - I got my coat and decided I was going out for a while.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
I wandered the late-afternoon streets, moving at random through the crowds of shoppers.
The day was bright and clear, and everyone passing by seemed to be framed in wedges of sunlight. The more I walked, the stranger the people around me appeared: so free of concern and worry, so unaware of how easily life could slip and what would be waiting for you when you fell. I watched them hitching up bags and trousers, tipping back bottles of Coke. Gripping massive plastic carriers full of clothes. I heard music thumping from cars. I heard laughter.
And once again, I felt separated from all of it.
You've got to try to hold onto the good memories. That was the thing I couldn't get out of my head now. It was what Sarah had said to me on the day of the funeral. That's where Marie is now, and you need to try to remember her smiling.
But I hadn't, and it felt like I'd failed her after her death just as badly as I did before it. The only minds she'd existed in since belonged to the people who visited the bowels of that fucking website. Instead of being remembered smiling and holding my hand, however tentatively, she'd been excluded from my thoughts altogether. In doing so, I'd allowed her to be defined by those last few lonely, desperate moments. Plastered online, like a poster in some dirty, boarded-up basement.
As I walked, everything around me was reverberating in my head. I circled the city centre for the best part of an hour, moving aimlessly, attempting to escape what I was feeling.
Eventually I stopped, just around the corner from my hotel.
You don't want to see this, I told myself.
The voice was far more appeal
ing now, but I knew it was only offering the bleakest kind of comfort. Because it wouldn't make any difference. The video would always be there, whether I watched it or not, just as whatever responsibility I had for Sarah's death would remain, regardless of whether I chose to face up to it. I could run away. But not looking at something doesn't mean it isn't there.
If Marie had been alive, I would have done anything - anything at all - to go to her. Strangely, standing there now, the fact she was dead didn't feel like it changed that.
So I altered course and bought vodka from the train station.
And then I went back to my hotel room, locked the door, and watched.
Analysing it critically made it easier. The footage had been taken on a mobile phone, I thought, and not one with a great camera either - very obviously technology of the time. The colours were blocky, and whenever the person holding it moved, the clip seemed to swirl and take a second to catch up, as though the phone was drunk and dizzy. The audio - an occasional roar of breeze; traffic like a rustling stream - sounded like it was coming from underwater.
I poured myself a neat vodka. The quality of the clip also made things easier, I told myself. It wasn't like watching something that was actually happening or something that could be stopped.
The first thing I made out was the pavement and a trainer, then a bollard. The mobile swung up, jittered, and I realised the person with the camera was on the next bridge along from Marie. I could hear him breathing quickly.
A moment later, he focused on my wife in the distance.
She was just standing there, barely a centimetre tall on the computer screen. A lonely figure, huddled up beside the shape of her car. Little more than a blur of tiny pixels shimmering.
I moved my face as close as I could. For a few moments, she did nothing, then I had the impression she was glancing behind her. She leaned over the barrier and looked down at the road. A second later, she clambered awkwardly over the railings, one leg then the other, until she was sitting on the barrier. I watched her shuffling slightly, as though adjusting herself for comfort.
