by Luca Veste
Rossi watched her brother leave. Her hand shook as she lifted the half-empty glass in front of her, necking it in one go. She risked a look around her, making sure no eyes were on the corner of the room where she was sitting.
There was a sense of losing control. That she was opening a box full of things she didn’t wanted to see. A box that couldn’t be closed.
Her brother was involved. She knew that now. Could read it in every line on his face, every dark swathe underneath his eyes.
She just didn’t know to what extent.
* * *
Murphy placed the phone back on his desk and turned to face Rossi’s empty chair without thinking. He opened his mouth to speak, but then thought better of it. The last thing he needed right then was for the rest of the team to have any evidence he was losing his mind a little.
Which he was, when he went to study the murder board at the back of the office and tried to work out what the hell was going on.
At that moment, all he was sure of was that Sam Byrne was definitely dead, and that was only because he’d seen his dismembered body for himself. Without those pieces, he would have still been checking for a pulse.
‘Nothing about this makes any sense,’ Murphy said, looking down at DC Harris. Graham had joined him there, waiting patiently for him to speak before saying anything. ‘Was there really nothing else CCTV-wise?’
‘The Tesco one is the best we have,’ DC Harris replied, leaning on one arm of his wheelchair. ‘We have some from further away, but with the vic’s car likely being in the car park behind the apartment block, it seemed a little redundant. We have the car being driven out of the back street that runs along the building . . .’
‘Benson Street . . .’ Murphy said, picking up a pen and beginning to write on the murder board.
‘Right, Benson Street – which is a one-way street, by the way, something I didn’t know – and then onto Renshaw Street. We lose the car pretty soon after that. Whoever was behind the wheel was driving out of the city centre, but I’m not sure what help that is.’
‘This is Thursday night, right?’
‘Yeah,’ DC Harris said, picking up his pen as Murphy stood poised with his own in the air. ‘Late Thursday, into Friday morning possibly.’
‘Right, so we have three full days, before he’s killed some time on the Sunday night.’
‘Dead at least seventy-two hours, according to the post-mortem report, so that’s correct.’
‘Three full days, so where was he? No outside contact, his phone is off, so no pings off any towers.’
‘Not just off, battery and sim card removed.’
‘Good point, so wherever he goes from the apartment, it’s highly likely it wasn’t too much time before he met with his killer. No pings from what time that evening?’
DC Harris didn’t even look up. ‘Eleven twenty-three p.m.’
‘I’d kill for a memory like yours, Graham.’
‘Bit inappropriate, given what we’re talking about here. Can’t be too careful in this PC world.’
‘I always preferred Dixons myself. Anyway, it’s pretty likely, given what happened to the CCTV at the apartment block, that he was taken from there. We don’t know where, or by who, but at least we know that for certain. I can’t see it being by choice either.’
‘What time did you see the prostitute Rossi recognised on the CCTV?’
‘About ten, I think. Maybe ten thirty. Not sure, but that sounds about right.’ Murphy really did wish his memory was better. DC Hashem joined them at the board, leaving DCs Hale and Kirkham talking amongst themselves.
Murphy opened the file he’d been holding and leafed through the information inside. ‘Eight names, all in a close-knit group at university, what do they have to do with this?’
‘My guess,’ DC Harris said, taking the CCTV logs from Murphy’s proffered hand, ‘is probably nothing. We’re being sidetracked by extraneous info. I think we need to concentrate on the prostitute. If she was there at that apartment – and given Sam Byrne’s previous, it’s likely she was – then she’ll be the last person to have seen him alive.’
‘Rossi is working on finding her now,’ Murphy replied, staring at the names of the seven men Sam Byrne had been friends with while at university. ‘Quite a few people we’ve spoken to has mentioned this group he set up at university. There must be some reason for that.’
‘Throw the names up there anyway,’ DC Hashem said, cutting in to the conversation. ‘Can’t hurt.’
‘Suppose not,’ Murphy replied, smiling at his new favourite DC. Sometimes you just take a shine to people. ‘We need to track them down anyway. See if they’ve been in touch with him.’
Murphy wrote the names quickly, stepping back and clicking the lid on the pen when he was finished. ‘The most important thing is tracking down that woman. Graham is– Where are you going?’
DC Hashem had made some sort of noise and scurried off. Murphy saw her rush over to her desk and almost send her chair flying as she tried to sit down on it.
‘Something has got into her the last couple of days,’ DC Harris said, turning to face Murphy. ‘I’m telling you, they’re getting younger and more clumsy by the day.’
Murphy wasn’t listening, instead watching as DC Hashem began clicking furiously on her laptop. He walked over to her, still holding the marker pen and file in his hand.
‘How old was Sam?’ DC Hashem said as Murphy reached her side. She wasn’t looking at him, eyes fixed on the screen in front of her.
‘Twenty-seven,’ Murphy replied, one hand on the back of her chair as he leaned in to see what she was looking at. ‘Who’s that?’
There was a photograph of a man on the screen who looked vaguely familiar. He was in his mid-twenties with scruffy hair. His face was thin, drawn, as if he hadn’t slept in a good week or so.
‘Meet Tim Johnson.’
Murphy turned and checked the list of names he’d just scrawled on the board. ‘That was quick.’
‘We did him last year. I’m surprised you don’t remember the case . . .’
‘There’s a fair few in the city. I can’t keep up to date with all of them.’
DC Hashem turned towards Murphy, causing his arm to slip off the back of the chair.
‘We did him last year . . .’
‘You’ve said that . . . what for?’
‘Murder.’
* * *
Vincenzo Rossi pulled over his car as soon as he felt he was far enough away from the pub. He pulled out his mobile phone before leaning back and closing his eyes, breathing hard.
‘It’s OK,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Everything will be OK.’
He put the phone to his ear once he’d found the right number and pressed dial.
‘It’s me . . . No, it’s OK . . . She knows, which means they all do . . . About the club, about me being involved, I don’t know what else . . . Well, I didn’t think to ask, did I? Jesus . . . Where are you now? . . . Go to the other place . . . I think it’s best . . . OK, see you soon.’
Vincenzo ended the call, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes again.
Shook his head and wondered how the hell he’d got himself into this mess.
Tim Johnson
It had been a year since she’d been taken, but still that final image rolled around his mind. The pram wheel spinning, the darkness which had engulfed him. The weeks which had followed, the feeling of desperation growing as no one came to his aid. The months on remand for a murder he was certain had not occurred, and had nothing to do with him.
The trial had been a sham. He couldn’t believe he could be convicted without a body.
He was a murderer without a victim.
Every day, he wondered if this was the moment they would realise their mistake. Whether today would be the day he would be let free, so he could finally do what he was supposed to.
Find his daughter.
Find Molly.
There was no one on the outside help
ing him. His family – what was left of it – had turned their backs on him. They believed the lies which had been told, the veil of unreality that had been created around him. The club he had given so much of himself to at university had similarly left him to rot.
A story had been told before he’d had a chance to give a different point of view. He was waiting for the twist in the third act, but they thought his imprisonment was the final scene.
‘This isn’t real. How can this happen? I loved her.’
His solicitor hadn’t believed his side of the story. He could tell that just by looking in her eyes. There was a veneer of sarcasm to everything she’d said, an attempt to try and make him come out and say what he’d done, just to make her job easier.
‘We need to find her. Then everything will be OK. She has Molly. It’s obvious.’
Back on that cold night, a year earlier, he hadn’t known that he wouldn’t be able to walk free again. That it would be the last time he would have the choice to do as he pleased. Taking away someone’s freedom, for something they hadn’t done . . . there was little he could think of that was worse.
‘I’m not lying. I’m not mentally ill. I don’t have any issues. She exists. They’re lying.’
He had been put in the back of that car, watched the lights fade around him, and had almost accepted his fate. When they had begun to question him, he had simply told the truth. He had told the detectives all about his and Lauren’s relationship – the truth this time. He had thought that would help, but it only made their eyes grow darker as they looked at him.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I shouldn’t be here. You have to help me. I don’t care if I’m in prison for the rest of my life . . . please, you have to find Molly.’
He had started to realise what was happening during the second interview. The room wasn’t what he had been expecting – the cold, bare walls designed to feel constricting, the metal chairs, the detectives stood over him screaming at him for the truth . . . those hadn’t existed. It was almost like a small office, albeit one without windows. A large table stood between him and the two people who would be the only people he would speak to for days. They looked like normal people, just two random strangers that you’d pass on the street. They didn’t look like hardened investigators. They hesitated, stammered, mixed up their words, just like regular people.
They would take his life away.
‘It’s ridiculous. How can they say what they’ve been saying? There isn’t even a body. None of this makes any sense.’
On and on, for hours and hours, asking the same questions again and again. It was relentless. Tell the story, tell it again, tell us a different story. Hell was repeating yourself over and over, with no reward for what you had to say. It hadn’t taken him long to realise what they were thinking.
‘Molly is real. Lauren is not dead. She has taken my daughter and framed me for this. I don’t know why. She hates me for no reason. I don’t understand any of it.’
Questions would start with Molly. What was she like? How had she looked the last time he’d seen her?
That single image would return constantly. The pram wheel spinning and turning and circling, making him dizzy and sick as it moved around his mind.
Within a few hours of that first day in that police station in South Liverpool, he had begun to see what was going to happen to him. They’d shown him pictures of bloodstains on the ground. They’d shown him ripped pieces of fabric, clumps of discarded hair. They’d asked him about those things as if he knew what the answers were.
He’d tried to be honest. To be unaware of what they were implying. It had been too late, though, they had formed the story in their own minds and were only wanting it confirmed by him.
‘This can’t be real. It can’t be happening. You have to stop this. I don’t care if my DNA is there. I don’t care if you’ve found a weapon, I didn’t do it.’
He would come back to Molly and ask his own questions. They would bat them back as if they didn’t mean anything.
They had waited until the second day before they dropped the bomb.
Molly didn’t exist. She was a figment of his imagination. A story he had invented to help him get away with the murder of a woman whose name wasn’t really Lauren. The woman was named Irenka Dubicki, and she was missing. Some Polish immigrant. According to them, she had worked close to where he’d lived and he had become obsessed with her, creating a life which didn’t exist. He was another lowlife, another statistic. Another man who had killed a woman he supposedly loved.
Maybe there had been a relationship, they’d said, but it was nothing like what he’d told them it had been. There were no witnesses to attest to the fact that they’d been together that long.
They had told him that they met men like him every day. Someone who had gone too far. One argument too many. He had invented a story about a woman called Lauren and a daughter called Molly, only because he had been scared of being discovered. Maybe because the guilt over what he had done to Irena Dubicki was too much to take. That was all.
‘Why would I make up a story about having a daughter? It makes no sense. None of it. The story doesn’t look right at all. Surely you can see that?’
It didn’t matter. They had evidence. They had no body, but that didn’t matter. They had motive, they had opportunity, they had Irena Dubicki’s DNA and blood on a knife. The body of Lauren, or Irenka, as they were now calling her, had disappeared.
Tim had just wanted the story to stop.
There was no Molly. There was only the sick mind of a killer.
That was their story.
How could he argue against it? He didn’t use social media, he didn’t keep in close contact with anyone outside of his house. He didn’t have friends, he had acquaintances. He had turned his back on the close-knit group he had been a central part of at university and he’d tried to start again. No one knew he had met Lauren and become a father.
He’d thought Lauren was his way of escaping his past. He had been wrong.
He couldn’t escape his past.
It was karma. He was paying for mistakes he had made. He could feel that on one level.
On another, it was just another example of the people he had come to hate. A gender which had caused nothing but hurt and agony for him in his life.
‘You’re just like the rest of them. Like that fucking Muslim bitch who arrested me in the first place. You’re not going to help me. I’m going to rot here and you’ll be happy about that. This trial is a sham. I’m going to be sentenced to life and you’ll move on and not care what happens to me afterwards. I’m going to die here, you know that, I know that. And no one cares. They bought the lies and deceit and that’s me done for.’
He had no hope. He was just another statistic. Another innocent man jailed for something he hadn’t done.
How many more of him were out there? How could any man believe anything they were told if this was where they ended up?
He wasn’t a father any more. He wasn’t a loving partner.
He was a killer.
That’s all people would see when they looked at him. His future was behind prison walls, with no freedom.
No way out. No way back.
Gone.
IN THE BEGINNING
Formless and Empty
The pain wasn’t supposed to be real. It wasn’t supposed to exist. There had been moments when she believed that. That the pain she felt wasn’t authentic. That it was just a figment of her imagination.
She hadn’t expected it to hurt, deep inside her. A lingering, dull ache. Not something that would live with her for years after. A burned memory she would carry with her across years of brokenness and disappointment.
Pain was something other than hurt. She knew that now. There was a whole other level of agony she could experience, which made the rest of her experiences in life fade to nothingness in comparison.
She couldn’t look at herself in a mirror for very long any more. She st
ruggled to look people in the eye, afraid of what they would see staring back at them. She didn’t like the same things she had before that night: TV programmes, films, music. There was a black hole within her now that she didn’t think would ever be filled.
It hadn’t started like that.
University was supposed to have been her chance to become something more. A way out of her boring life. An opportunity to find out who she really was as a person, to cultivate a personality which would last into adulthood.
It was also supposed to have been fun. It was, for the first few months – the lectures becoming of secondary importance as she made friends and had nights out in Liverpool. A group of them had formed – all from different parts of the UK, coming together in a strange city, helping each other become accustomed to the strangeness of being away from home. They’d been living in the same student accommodation, all hiding in their own rooms for the first week, before tentatively coming together in the communal area during the first semester.
Learning to make friends all over again, like the first week of secondary school.
She had been studying politics and international business, deciding early on that she had probably made a mistake. The other students on the course all seemed to be much more knowledgeable than her – with the added caveat that the lecturer seemed to want to skew things to a left-wing perspective unfortunately – but there were some enjoyable parts of the course. She just had to look for them a little harder. She wasn’t about to give up, she was there for a reason, even if some days she forgot what that reason was. Her father had instilled in her the importance of university education and she was always willing to accept what he had to say.
The girls she lived with had made a pact early on not to discuss personal politics. They would rail against injustices and perhaps touch on ways of dealing with them, but it never went further than that. They all had the privilege of making that choice, of course. They knew that.
