Beyond Evidence

by Emma L. Clapperton

  Ross emptied the box on to the bed and began to go through each envelope at a time, all of which were numbered one to four. There was a large envelope at the bottom of the box with Ross's name on it. Again he felt the anxiety take over at the realisation that Maria knew that he would find it one day and actually wanted to tell him about his older brother. His skin tingled, his forehead ached and his hands trembled as he opened the envelope labelled with his own name. Inside was a letter to him and an official form which read, ‘Adoption Contact Scotland’.

  Ross set the form aside and opened the letter;

  Ross,

  I understand that you must be feeling confused, maybe even angry. But please understand that I had to keep this from you for both our sakes. You know yourself that your father was a horrible man and if you knew about this then it would have made everything a million times worse. He made me do it Ross, I fought and fought but you know yourself fighting with Billy was like fighting a losing battle. Giving Jeffery away was the best thing for him. But then you came along six years later and I was not about to give you up. I fought for you and in the end I won. I kept you and I left him Ross. But in the end he clawed his way back in and it was the biggest mistake that I ever made. Because of that mistake you have had to endure so much and I am so sorry for putting you through that. You should have had the freedom I gave to Jeffery. I am sorry that I had to leave you and you had to find out that you have a brother this way but it was the only way to keep you safe. I know this must be horrible for you and I wish I could be there with you when you find this but please know that no matter what I always loved you and I wish that things could have been different. I have put you through so much and I thought that the least I could do was give you the opportunity to find the last remaining part of me. I am not saying that you have to but the opportunity is there if you want to take it, even if it is in years to come. All you have to do is fill in the form and send it off and the adoption people will do the rest. I hope that you can gain some happiness in life and put all of our horrible past behind you.

  I love you Ross, always remember that, Mum x.

  Ross hadn't realised it but he had cried his way through the letter. They were tears of rage. Rage towards Billy for making Maria give away her first baby, rage that he had been kept in the dark for so long about his brother. But mainly, Ross was angry for himself, he had been given the short straw. Why did he have to suffer Billy as a dad, this Jeffery character had been given a, ‘get out of jail free card,’ and Ross was beginning to feel cheated.

  "None of this is your fault Mum," he said aloud. "None of it."

  Ross carried on clearing out the house for the rest of the day, all the while thinking of everything that had happened in the last twenty odd years, he was thinking of Jeffery.

  He finally finished clearing the house and as he made his way home in a taxi, he carried with him the box that contained a new world of information, that Ross wasn't quite sure how to cope with.

  Six

  1st December 2007- Collection time 7:30am

  He watched the Royal Mail van approaching the post box as he clutched at the envelope in his hands. It was just coming on seven thirty in the morning and Ross had been standing next to the post box for the past twenty minutes. It was still pitch black outside and he watched the freezing fog hover underneath the street lamps.

  He wanted to personally hand the envelope to the postman to make sure that it didn't get lost as he emptied the post in to the large post sack. It was freezing and the snow that lay on the ground had frozen too. Ross didn't feel the cold on this morning. There was too much going on to bother about the temperature.

  The van pulled up beside him and the driver got out. He stopped and looked at Ross, who was still clutching at his envelope.

  "Are you going to post that sir?" he asked Ross.

  This is it, the moment that could change everything that has gone wrong, he thought to himself.

  "Sir, did you hear me?"

  "Yes I am, but could you just put it straight into that sack. I want to see you take it away, I need to see it being carried off in that van, if it's not too much to ask?" Ross looked on at the man, who was already reaching over to take the envelope from him.

  "Whatever mate, I just want to get back into my van, its bloody freezing out here. You should put a jacket on before you catch your death!" the driver said as he unlocked the post box and began hauling the post into the sack.

  It won't be me catching my death sir, Ross thought, "Thanks mate, appreciate it."

  Ross crossed the road and made his way back up the stairs and continued on his train of thought.

  He couldn't believe how easy it was and how good it made him feel. He never used to think that revenge could make things better but for the first time in six months, Ross felt less grief stricken than he ever had. His thoughts referred to the murder that he had committed the evening before. A young homeless woman he had stumbled across in the street had begged him for money after he had already said no.

  "Please, I need the money for food and it is so cold out here. Can't you spare anything?" she had asked again, this time a little more aggressively.

  Ross could feel his patience running out.

  As she looked at him with eyes of hunger and anger, Ross felt the fuse burn out inside him. "Follow me and I will give you what I have in my pocket, I don't want any of your homeless friends seeing this or they will pounce on me," he said.

  He led her along the street and turned down an alley way that ran parallel to a main road. The alley was the access point to the large dustbins for the restaurants and takeaways that were situated there. The woman had no reservations about following him, none at all.

  She was so desperate for money that she couldn't risk him changing his mind, so she made the quick decision that mugging him was her safest bet. Just as she was about to make her move, he stopped suddenly in front of her and turned to face her. She had moved up so closely behind him that when he did turn around, there noses were almost touching.

  "Oh, you're keen," he said with a smile.

  She suddenly felt doubt in her mind and realised that she was alone with a strange man in an alleyway. It was pitch dark and the alley was not lit.

  "I am just starving," she tried to hide the doubt in her voice.

  "Must be horrible living out here, especially at Christmas time?" Ross was good at putting sympathy into his tone.

  "You get used to it," she said, beginning to lose her nerve.

  "Why don't I put you out of your misery?" Ross smiled and put his hand into his pocket.

  As the woman watched his hand move to his pocket, she felt a little more at ease and she let out a silent sigh of relief and dropped her chin to her chest.

  Ross watched her do so and as she lifted her head back up to face him, she was shocked to feel his fist meet her jaw. She fell to the ground and as she struggled to get back up and run from him, he was suddenly on top of her with his cold hands around her throat.

  He was heavy and extremely strong. She was no match for him. She couldn't scream, couldn't move. All she knew was that she was going to die.

  He closed the door of his flat and made his way into the bedroom. As he lay in bed looking up at the ceiling, he replayed in his head the look on her face as he killed her.

  When he heard her last breath squeeze out of her mouth, he felt the release of a weight, like some grief went with the dead girl's soul. Leaving her in the dustbin outside the back of the restaurant was the hardest part, not for his conscience, no not for that. It was the physical work of it that was the hardest part. She was literally a dead weight. But he had managed it and with great pleasure too.

  "Homeless people are easy targets," he told her lifeless body as it lay inside the bin. "No-one will miss you!"

  And no one did, it wasn't on the news and there were no missing person's adverts in the papers or shop windows. He was right, no one missed her.

  Homeless girls weren't the ones
he wanted though, he wanted the ones who caused him and his mother the most pain. That was the type of satisfaction he was looking for and if it was out there then he was going to take it! He needed a challenge, needed to set himself some targets, but how?

  "Let's see what I can do next," he said to himself as he fell asleep.

  Seven

  Death's prophecy

  Early on the morning of the 1st August 2010, Patrick sat at the breakfast bar in his city centre flat reading the headlines of, ‘The Record,’ in disbelief. ‘Third female found dead in city.’

  He couldn't quite get his thoughts straight, he couldn't even tell if they were his own thoughts at this time. He had been having very strong visions and voices running through his head in recent weeks. They were so graphic and clear that sometimes he had to remind himself that he wasn't having a conversation with a live human being!

  He sipped at his steaming hot coffee, the first of many that morning and he read on;

  A young woman has been found dead in the city centre in the early hours of this morning. The young woman, who has not yet been named, was found in an alley just off St Vincent Square by a cleaner who was disposing of rubbish from one of the local pubs that she works in.

  She is the third female to have been found dead in the city in the last two months. A post mortem has yet to be carried out but it is likely that she is the latest victim of the recent murders to have taken place in Glasgow's city centre.

  In link with the two current cases Strathclyde Police have confirmed that they are running voluntary DNA sample checks at Pitt Street station.

  White males between the ages of 20 and 30 years old who were in the city centre at the times of these horrendous murders are invited to give voluntary DNA samples to help with their enquiries.

  Patrick's reading was interrupted when his fiancée Jodie put her hand on his shoulder.

  He took another sip of coffee and turned to her. "Morning" he said.

  Jodie looked at the newspaper on the breakfast bar and sighed. "Another one?" she asked, knowing his response.

  "Looks like it!" said Patrick keeping his eyes on Jodie.

  "When did it happen?" Jodie asked.

  "Just last night going by what the paper is saying."

  Jodie and Patrick had been together forever, ever since that first meeting at school all those years ago. They were soul mates and had so much understanding between them. Jodie was aware that Patrick had had some trouble sleeping over the last few weeks, ever since the first killing had been reported. She knew exactly why, but never mentioned it directly to him. She didn't want to invade his thoughts anymore than they already were. She could see that he had taken his eyes off of her and had moved them back to the newspaper report he had been reading when she had first entered their medium sized kitchen.

  Patrick and Jodie had been living together since they were just nineteen years old. Patrick's parents, Derek and Sue were killed in a horrific car accident just before his 19th birthday and their death almost killed Patrick. He had been so close to them and his Grandparents who had passed away when Patrick was very young. Not a lot of people can say that they are close to their Grandparents at a very young age but Patrick could. He and his Grandpa especially, after all they did share a special gift. Patrick's gift could allow contact with any spirit however he could never make contact with Derek and Sue. His Grandpa would say that their spirits left their human forms so quickly because of impact that they could have been in shock and that was perhaps the reason that Patrick couldn't contact them.

  Jodie's heart ached for Patrick when Derek and Sue were killed, all she wanted to do was comfort him but no amount of comfort would change the loss of his parents.

  After Derek and Sue's deaths, Patrick moved in with Jodie at her parent's house and they saved money to buy their own place. Six years later they moved in to their flat in Glasgow harbour. It was at that point that Patrick began to feel happy again, he finally felt like he had something to live for.

  As they began their new life together they also began running the new West End Spiritualist Church, Patrick took this upon himself at first mainly because of his parent's death. He wanted to help others who had lost someone close to them and give some sort of comfort. Their friends and family knew that they were spiritually gifted and to begin with, Jodie's parent's were not entirely happy with the idea but in the end they came to understand it. Life was going well for them, both having successful jobs and a successful church. However, recent weeks were proving difficult for Patrick and he was beginning to lose control over his ability. He was receiving messages so often that he was losing sleep and as the weeks had gone on and the news reported now of a third murder, Patrick was beginning to figure things out slowly.

  Jodie stood behind him whilst he read the report. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the back of the neck. She felt him relax a little under her embrace.

  "You're tired aren't you?" she asked, but it was almost like she was stating a fact.

  "You have no idea how exhausted I feel Jodie. My mind has been vividly awake for the past eight weeks. Whilst my body feels rested, my mind feels like it has been actively awake the entire time. I feel like someone is watching me, entering my thoughts. There is no space for my own thinking and I'm having visions that do not belong in my head," he sounded tormented.

  She felt it. She knew what it felt like to have a bombardment of voices in her head during the night. The only difference being that Jodie's ‘memories' were just voices. Some lost spirit who had stumbled across her and just wanted to put something into her head, nothing serious or sinister, just a memory of grandchildren or a favourite song. There were no visions with Jodie.

  Patrick's senses on the other hand were a little different. He had visions, other people's visions, past lives and memories. Most of which were not very pleasant. Some spirits would project visual memories of abuse within a family, alcohol related illnesses which led to death, stresses of life which led to suicide. His visions were constant, but over the years he was able to block out some of them at times when he wanted his thoughts to be his own.

  But over the last eight weeks or so, Patrick had found it exceptionally hard to block out his visions.

  He turned in the bar stool which he was sat on and looked at Jodie. She knew he was going to tell all by the look on his face but she didn't know to what extent.

  "It's all been remarkably clear, especially at night. When you have been asleep next to me at night, I have felt like someone else. Like I don't know who you are..." he stared at her, in disarray at his own words.

  "What do you mean? Like you don't know me anymore?" Jodie asked, also baffled.

  "No, not like that, it's like I am someone else Jodie. The visions and memories at night have taken control over my own mind that I feel like I am the person who is trying to contact me. The only thing is this time it's different." He looked back at the newspaper report and lifted his coffee. He sipped at it again, only to find it had gone cold.

  "It's not just one person is it?" Jodie understood immediately at that point what Patrick was trying to tell her.

  "I have been trying to piece together the visions and memories that are being put into my head and I think I have finally finished the puzzle," he said almost excited now.

  He looked back up from the newspaper and put his hands on Jodie's shoulders, as if to steady her for what was about to come.

  "Last night you saw the mess I was in, talking about that woman in the sitting room. What I saw was horrible, she looked like she had been dragged along the ground on a wet night, her clothing was covered in what seemed like oil, dirt from the ground and her hair looked like a wig in bad need of a wash, which had been put on backwards." Jodie almost laughed at the wig comment. It was as if he was trying to make light of what had happened, what was happening.

  "But that is not the only time I have experienced her, well her for the first time yes, but I've been having visions of two others too, sam
e kind of state, dirty clothes, bruising and just a complete mess. You've missed me seeing all of this because you have been in bed while I'm pacing the flat, desperate for sleep."

  He was nodding now, as if everything had just been pieced together. "Jodie I think the spirits who are trying to contact me are the three women who have just been murdered."

  Eight

  Patrick's purpose

  Jodie stood in the shower. She needed some alone time to process the conversation she had just had with her fiancée. Not that it was brand new information to her that he was able to communicate with the dead, to put it bluntly, obviously she was able to do that too. But she had never seen him so affected by it before now.

  The hot water powered down on her neck and back and trickled down her face as she stood there, wondering what would come of the visions Patrick had been having. She thought about all of the sleepless nights he had been having and how tired he had been over the last eight weeks or so.

  She finished bathing herself and climbed out of the shower. She walked into the bedroom that she shared with Patrick and sat on the bed with the towel wrapped around her. Patrick entered the room and sat next to Jodie. There was silence for a while.

  "The Police are asking that any white males aged between twenty and thirty who were in the city centre the nights of the murders should go to give a voluntary DNA sample." He looked at Jodie as she sat on the edge of the bed listening.

  "Have they found traces of DNA on the women?" Jodie asked.

  "Apparently so. We were in town the night the first girl was murdered, so I'm going to give a sample." He expected protest. It would be just like her.

  "Well if you think it will help," she took his hand in a reassuring manner. "It may put your mind at rest too," she hoped.

  "I think I can help. I have had visions of these women in not so pleasant circumstances and I don't even know them Jodie, never met them before in my life! I think I could really help their investigations," he said with sincerity in his voice.