Vanishing Point

by J G Alva

  Vicky nodded.

  “Or you could try…other means.”

  “Other?”

  Vicky said, “he put more and more pressure on us to find ways to affect change. He was almost maniacal about it. He quoted Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, he offered ideas, from protesting to sabotage. I started to get scared.”

  “We both did,” Steve said. “And unfortunately that was when I introduced him to Chris.”

  Steve took a moment. He shifted in his seat, tentatively touching his broken ribs.

  “It was purely by chance. Or not by chance. Maybe it was inevitable. We were enjoying lunch in the cafeteria. Bill came in and sat down with us. Once I told him what Chris could do, something came over Bill, some change…I don’t know. I don’t know how to describe it. But Bill and Chris grew incredibly close. They were always talking. Always together.”

  “What did they talk about?”

  “Everything to do with computers. Everything you could think of to do with computers. But I suppose in the end he was only interested in one thing really.”

  “How to hack them,” Sutton said, with sudden insight.

  “I know what he thought,” Steve said. “He thought he’d found the perfect instrument, the perfect weapon, for his mission to affect social change. Nowadays, everything is run by computers, and Bill knew that. He wasn’t stupid. I think Bill only invited us to be a part of it to keep Chris happy. And one other guy, one other student, in our class. But one night Bill invited us to his house and told us about his idea for The Rumbler.”

  “It was his idea?”

  Steve nodded.

  “Although that wasn’t his name for it. For us. He called us the Bristol Revolutionary Society – I suppose in direct reference to the London Revolutionary Society. When he told us about it, at first it was exciting. The Rumbler was to be this big moral scythe, cutting through society via an electric medium. Bill loved the irony: using power to undermine power. We would have the power to affect change – with Chris’s hacking skills – and we would remain anonymous too. I must admit, I was hooked. We both were, weren’t we, honey?”

  Vicky nodded.

  “We picked rich people. Obviously. They were the sickness on society, the parasites…and they could stand to be fleeced without too much discomfort…because they were so wealthy. We looked through society pages, or business magazines, and purely picked them at random. Once we knew where they lived, Chris would try to hack them. If we could get in, he’d start going through their e-mail history, or their bank transactions, anything really, just to get some dirt on them, so we could blackmail them and get them to transfer money to us.”

  “Why not hack their accounts directly?”

  Steve shook his head.

  “Chris could have done it – he was that good – but if it was an illegal transaction, then insurance would cover the affected parties. They wouldn’t lose anything, in the end. And then the banks would be on to us. We couldn’t remain invisible, if they knew we were out there. A voluntary transaction was the answer, one that the account holder could vouch for, and a crime that would never be admitted, because the secret on which the blackmail was based could always be held over them.”

  “Bill wanted them to suffer,” Vicky said, so quietly Sutton almost couldn’t hear her. “He wanted them to know they’d been beaten.”

  Steve looked shocked all of a sudden, as if talking about this to someone else was making him see it anew…and see how shocking it was.

  He looked ill, but continued.

  “It was crazy how easy it was. And we made a lot of money. I mean, a lot.”

  “How much?”

  Steve shrugged

  “I don’t know. We never kept it. We always passed it on to reputable charities. Or foundations that Bill thought could affect the most change. That sort of thing.”

  “You didn’t keep any of it?”

  “We’re not criminals,” Steve protested.

  “And that wasn’t the point,” Vicky said, but Steve interrupted her.

  “We’ll get to that in a minute.”

  He cleared his throat, shifting in his seat again, trying to straighten his back without aggravating his ribs.

  “It was easy, but for every success, we ruined someone’s life. In the end, it didn’t matter if they were rich; they were still people, and we made them suffer. It was no longer fun. Instead, it began to feel wrong. Very, very wrong. I stopped sleeping, not for more than a couple of hours at a time. I had nightmares. All the time. And Vic….Vic had some health problems too. Chris was getting increasingly paranoid. He thought people were watching him, that they knew who he was, what he was doing…and they were going to get him. He used to have all his computers at home, all his gadgets, but he moved them out to a garage nearby.”

  “The one you burned down?”

  Steve nodded.

  “Chris said he couldn’t sleep with them in the room with him. He said it was like eyes were watching him while he slept.”

  “And Bill?”

  Steve stared at him. He looked upset.

  “Bill loved it. Bill couldn’t get enough of it. Bill never wanted it to stop.”

  “But you did.”

  “We all wanted to. All of us. Me, Vic…our other friend. But most of all Chris didn’t want to do it anymore. And without his knowledge of computers, it was over. The tip of the spear…gone suddenly dull. So we were done.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We all agreed to quit. To destroy The Rumbler, once and for all. To never mention him again. But only after one last attack. One big final hurrah.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Someone close to home,” Steve said. “Someone who controlled not only a big portion of the university, but who also controlled – with some of his friends – most of the student housing in Bristol. To strike at an enemy so close…we all agreed that it was a just cause. I certainly wouldn’t suffer any sleepless nights over it, and so would nobody else.”

  “Who was it?”

  Steve looked regretful when he said, “Michael Dunbar.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Dunbar – along with a bunch of his cronies – owns a company called 4StudentLets. Now, eleven years ago, he invested a lot of money in property, and bought up all the buildings around Busbar…but this was before Busbar was built. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “He had insider knowledge,” Sutton said.

  “One can only assume so. Now, he controls ninety percent of the student accommodation around Busbar, and in Cotham, Redland, and Clifton.”

  “A monopoly.”

  “Yes. And one he’s not afraid to wield.”

  Vicky said, “he’s been putting up the prices year on year, well above inflation.”

  “Ten percent,” Steve said. “Sometimes fifteen. We protest, but still it goes up. We held a demonstration in September, outside of the HTV building just down the road here. We called it LetStudentsLearn. Nothing. Still the prices continued to rise. And do you know why he keeps doing it? Not to line his pockets. Oh no. They are already well-lined. No. He’s doing it so that underprivileged people can no longer afford to go on to higher education. He’s doing it so only his rich friends – and their children – will be the ones to get a good education. And then the best jobs. Thus ensuring a domineering elite.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Sutton said. It sounded too much like an old world conspiracy.

  “The prices go up every year!” Steve protested, agitated. “That’s a fact!”

  “He’s just a rich man who wants to get richer,” Sutton said. “Hardly a rare phenomenon.”

  “But the students,” Vicky said, her beautiful dark eyes haunted.

  “Yes,” Steve said, latching on to it. “The students who died. That proves our theory.”

  Sutton frowned.

  “How does it do that?”

  Vicky turned in her seat to look at Steve.

  She turned back and said
, “all the victims of accidental death in the last year have all either been protest leaders at the LetStudentsLearn demonstration, or members of Social Sciences.” Vicky looked tearful. “Our friends. He killed our friends.”

  “He?” Sutton said. “You mean Dunbar?”

  “His son,” Steve said. “We mean his son. Adrian Dunbar.”

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 19

  Monday, 6th June

  “Michael Dunbar’s son is at Busbar?”

  Vicky nodded.

  “Studying Business and Law.”

  Steve said, “he’s been kicked out of three other universities. Once for vandalism. Once for reckless endangerment. And the other one was for the alleged sexual assault of a fellow student.”

  “Alleged?”

  Steve shrugged.

  “She decided not to prosecute, provided he was banned from the university. We’re assuming her family got rich overnight. That’s how these guys work. But his father’s money couldn’t do anything to keep his son in higher education – after all, a university’s reputation is priceless. So he had to go.”

  Vicky said, “and the only place that would have him is the one his father has heavily invested in.”

  Steve sat back, a small rueful grin on his face.

  “Funny that.”

  Sutton shook his head.

  “It seems…risky.”

  “What does?”

  “Michael Dunbar’s son arranging accidents for students making trouble for his father? If he did arrange these accidents, which would take some skill. It just seems…crazy. There’s too much risk involved. He’d stand to lose too much. He could just offer a price freeze for all his student accommodation, then put it up the next year, or the year after, when there’s another batch of new students who are unaware of what’s going on.”

  Steve nodded.

  “You’re absolutely right. Which is why we think the son is acting alone.”

  “His father’s not aware of what he’s doing?”

  Steve shook his head.

  “Like you said, it’s too risky. It doesn’t make sense. But from what we’ve managed to find out, Adrian Dunbar is unstable. The vandalism charge was for driving his car down a set of eighteenth century stone steps into a monument while he was drunk. The reckless endangerment charge was for a hazing ritual, where he dangled a first year student over a twenty foot high railing above a busy road. According to what we could find out, the girl he assaulted was beaten quite badly. Maybe this is his way of trying to impress his father. The only way that he can impress him. I mean, he’s good at it. No one has suspected that the accidents are anything more than what they appear to be.”

  “Except you.”

  “Well. We had a secret weapon.”

  “Which was?”

  “We had Chris.”

  “He killed him,” Vicky said miserably. “He somehow found out that Chris was on to him, and so he killed him. Poor Chris. Poor poor Chris.”

  “It still doesn’t fit,” Sutton said.

  Now Vicky looked mad. Hot eyes flashed at him.

  “Chris called us,” she said. “That night. The night he was killed. He said he’d found something on Adrian. Something that would prove he was killing students. That’s what he was coming over to see us about. And that’s why he was murdered.”

  “How did Adrian know?”

  Vicky started crying. She was staring at Sutton as if she hated him.

  Steve said, “we don’t know.”

  Vicky said, “he could have found out any number of ways.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Vicky said desperately. “Maybe Chris was following him. Maybe Adrian noticed him, and did a bit of investigating of his own. It could be anything. But I’m convinced it was him. It had to be him.”

  Sutton tapped the head of the bat on the floor three times. It made a hollow knocking sound.

  “It’s not,” he said, “but I’ll tell you why in a minute. First, tell me what happened to the money.”

  Vicky said, “what?”

  “Steve said he’d tell me about the money. Someone was keeping it.”

  Steve looked cagey, but said, “Chris told me he transferred some of the money to Bill. Bill said it was an investment in a good cause, but he was foggy on the details.”

  “How much?” Vicky asked.

  Steve shrugged.

  “A couple of million.”

  New clothes. New car. A mid-life crisis…

  Or a sudden influx of money.

  Sutton said, “do you know that Mackenzie is on forced leave today?”

  Vicky looked at Steve, who said, “yes.”

  “Apparently, he made sexual advances towards a female student.”

  Vicky looked shocked.

  “How did you…?”

  “Was it you?” He asked her.

  Vicky looked everywhere around the room, as if searching for an escape route.

  “Tell him, Vic.”

  Vicky put her hands into her hair and pulled, as if to relieve a headache.

  Eventually, she let go, and put her hands back on the table.

  “I made the complaint, yes.”

  “He made advances towards you?”

  She squirmed.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “You made it up?”

  She looked desperate then.

  “It was the only way to stop him.”

  “Stop him doing what?”

  “The club,” she said, and shot a look at Steve. “The Jacobin Group. He wouldn’t stop.”

  “He wanted you to do more things? To affect social change?”

  “No,” Steve said. “He was worried that someone knew we were The Rumbler. That someone was snooping around, and might find out the truth.”

  “Who?”

  They both stared at him.

  “You,” Steve said.

  “He told you to attack me?” Sutton said. “The baseball bats were his idea?”

  A guilty shifting of two sets of eyes.

  “I’m passed being mad,” Sutton assured them. “I just want the truth.”

  “We didn’t want to do it,” Vicky said, pleading.

  “We didn’t,” Steve said, meeting Sutton’s eye finally. “But we were scared. We didn’t know who you were, why you were asking questions. You came to see Vicky, and Bill saw you at the university…we just assumed the worst. All of us.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry, if that means anything.”

  “Actually, it does.”

  Vicky said, “then can I apologise too?”

  “You can. But I won’t accept it until you tell me what it was that Bill wanted you to do last night. What it was that he wanted you to do that was so terrible, you made up a sexual assault charge against him, just to stop him.”

  “You don’t understand!” Vicky exploded. “He has such control over our lives! A bad grade, you think it’s funny, but those are our careers, our lives! I had to do it! I couldn’t do what he asked! I couldn’t!”

  Vicky dissolved into tears.

  Sutton turned to Steve.

  Steve’s face was expressionless when he said, “he wanted us to kill you.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Everybody I spoke to about Chris, everybody who knew him, said he was a good person,” Sutton said. “Of course, I didn’t believe them. Doing what I do, my default position is scepticism. It’s a prerogative. And when I found out he was The Rumbler, I just assumed he kept that part of himself secret. But now I’m starting to think he was a good person. Maybe a little misguided…but when you’re lonely, you’ll go above and beyond to please your friends. I don’t think he was unusual in that.”

  Steve and Vicky both looked guilty.

  “You’re packing to leave?” Sutton asked, indicating the suitcase on the floor.

  Steve nodded.

  “Just for a while,” he said. “We thought it would be prudent to…be away from Bi
ll.”

  “It is prudent,” Sutton said. “And not just because of Bill. If I found you, if I could find out that you were part of the group behind The Rumbler, then so can other people. So yes, stay away for a while. Maybe a long while. Maybe don’t come back to this university. Maybe not even this city. It’s not safe for you here. You’ve pissed off some very rich and powerful people, and they’re not liable to let this lie. For one, you took away the thing they love the most: money. For another, more than just their pride was hurt. I have it on good authority that one girl committed suicide after what The Rumbler did. So now it’s not justice. Now it’s revenge.”

  “Oh God,” Vicky said miserably, a shaking hand covering her mouth.

  “We’ll go away,” Steve said, looking at the back of Vicky’s head with love and sympathy. “And we’ll stay away.”

  “Good. Nobody will hear anything from me. And hopefully that will be the end of it.”

  “Thank you,” Steve said humbly, searching Sutton’s eyes for something…perhaps the reason behind such mercy.

  “Why?” Vicky asked, going straight to the heart of it. “Why are you helping us?”

  For some reason, the question made Sutton uncomfortable. Why was he helping them?

  “I’m looking into Chris Masters’ murder,” he said. “You didn’t kill him. Therefore you’re not really my business.”

  But ultimately he was dissatisfied with that remark. It didn’t feel like it was the truth.

  “Leave tonight,” he continued. “As soon as I’ve gone, pack up and go.”

  “We will,” Steve said.

  “There is one thing you can do for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need Bill Mackenzie’s home address.”

  “Alright.” Steve frowned. “Why?”

  Sutton debated about not telling him…

  But in the end, he said, “because he killed Chris Masters.”

  Vicky’s head came up in surprise.

  “What?” She said. Her voice was strangled.

  “No,” Steve said. He didn’t want to believe it.

  Sutton nodded.

  “I think I’m right,” he said.

  “You can’t be!” Vicky said.

  “Why do you think it’s him?” Steve asked, more in control.