by Jessica Moor
A sheet of paper was laid out in the centre of the coffee table.
I’m sorry. I’ve been unhappy for a long time, and I can’t do it any more.
Goodbye.
Katie.
‘It was under a pile of laundry on the bed,’ Noah said.
He was still sniffing.
Whitworth wanted to punch him, grab him, threaten him, demand to know how come a fucking suicide note was only showing up now. He wanted to do that even though a handwriting expert had already seen it and said that it was virtually certain Katie had written the thing.
Whitworth didn’t care. He suspected that Noah was just the sort of man that other men wanted to punch.
Noah looked up, tears and snot coating his face, and Whitworth had to turn away.
‘What were you doing on the bridge yesterday, Noah?’ Brookes asked. It was as if he were able to cut through the tears somehow, as if they didn’t stick to him. Whitworth felt ashamed but didn’t know why.
‘I just . . . I just wanted to understand her a bit. I dunno.’
‘You didn’t understand her?’
‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know those things about her. I didn’t know about the . . . the false-identity thing. She lied to me.’
‘Maybe she lied. We don’t know for sure.’
‘Yeah.’ Noah sniffed. ‘Maybe. I guess she had her reasons. She always did. I just never really understood what they were. There was always a part of her I was never going to really see. That was the deal with us.’ Noah turned his gaze flatly towards Whitworth. ‘There are so many things I don’t understand.’
* * *
• • •
Whitworth called DI Khan. On the phone. That felt like a small victory.
‘Whitworth?’ Her voice was ratty on the other end. ‘Haven’t we got a conference call scheduled in for three?’
‘Just thought you’d want an update now, ma’am,’ Whitworth said. He was trying not to sound too breezy. ‘We’ve recovered a suicide note which seems to have been written by Katie Straw. Waiting to hear back from the lab, but at the moment it looks authentic.’
‘A note?’ He could hear a harsh, relentless typing in the background, distorted by the phone line, but unmistakeable. ‘Why didn’t we find this earlier?’
Whitworth gripped the arm of his chair and said the usual things about limited resources and the lack of an available forensics team. He thought he might as well throw in an extra jab and pointed out that rural forces had – shall we say? – challenges around access to resources.
‘I hear what you’re saying, Sergeant.’ A pause. More keyboard tapping. ‘Look, it’s noted. It’s all noted.’ He could hear her slurping on her coffee. ‘And I take it the question of the victim’s identity has been cleared up?’
For half a second, Whitworth thought about lying and saying yes, just to get off the phone with the damn woman.
Then – ‘No.’
‘Right.’ A whistling noise down the phone as DI Khan pushed out her breath between her teeth. ‘Look, do I need to come in?’
‘No.’ He shoved the word out quickly, hardly letting himself think about the question. ‘Not at all. We’re closing in. We’re almost there.’
‘I’m working on it,’ Brookes muttered when Whitworth walked out of the office, doing his best not to slam the door too loudly. And he really did seem to be working on it. There were piles of print-outs stacked all over his desk. Print-outs of social media accounts, highlighted lists from electoral registers, photocopies of death certificates.
‘Hmm,’ Whitworth said, but in his head something reminded him to have some bloody faith in the lad, will you?
Then Melissa dashed towards him. Her hair was dishevelled, her face triumphant.
‘I found him. I mean . . . we found him.’
‘Who?’
‘The troll.’
‘Troll?’ Whitworth stared at her blankly.
‘The guy. Who’s been harassing Val Redwood. And guess what.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve met him before.’
Whitworth was expecting to see some blunt-nosed, blank-eyed hulk of a man but, instead, it took him only a moment to recognize the face in the photograph. The young man looked almost girlish – rail-thin, with large, trapped-looking eyes and hair cropped close to his head. He looked like some defenceless baby animal. Yes, Whitworth had seen the boy before.
‘He was at the community engagement event. I drove him home.’ He saw the twist of confusion on Melissa’s face, her open mouth stuck still.
‘He made a bit of a scene. Wouldn’t call it – what did you say? – trolling. But he was upsetting people. Not as much as he was upsetting himself, mind. I was heading off, anyway, so I dropped him off. Vulnerable, you know.’
* * *
• • •
Brookes was driving. Whitworth sat in the passenger seat.
It was about a twenty-minute drive, which meant Whitworth had plenty of time to bring up something he’d been putting off, even accounting for a few minutes’ procrastination.
He did his best to introduce it subtly, though he knew Brookes was enough of a detective that he was sure not to be fooled.
‘Did a good job, tracking this bloke down, Melissa.’
‘Hmmm?’ Brookes looked at him from the road, his expression polite and uninterested in equal parts. ‘Melissa? Yeah.’
‘Nice girl,’ Whitworth said.
‘Yeah. Good colleague.’
His words were chosen carefully. If Whitworth wasn’t cautious, he’d end up looking like a dirty old man himself.
‘Just – just remember to keep things platonic, all right? I’ve seen you looking at her a few times and . . .’
He trailed off before the meandering phrase could turn into an accusation.
‘Hmm?’ An expression of something that might have been disdain or embarrassment slid over Brookes’s face, but it cleared away so swiftly Whitworth couldn’t be sure. ‘I mean, yeah, she’s really cool and everything. But I’m already interested in someone. Nothing to do with work.’
‘Right. Good.’
‘It’s nothing personal about Melissa. I just think it’s best to keep that stuff separate. Work and life. You know.’
‘Sure.’
They diligently resumed their silence for a few minutes. Then it was Brookes’s turn to abruptly break it.
‘I don’t know how we’re going to do it, you know. In the future,’ he said. It came out of nowhere, but there was still another ten minutes to drive, so Whitworth took the bait.
‘Do what?’
‘Police the internet.’
Whitworth laughed. ‘Not my problem. I’m one foot out of the door. Glad I’m not starting my career now, though, I’ve got to admit. Everyone seems to turn into a nutter as soon as they’re behind a keyboard. I don’t understand it myself.’
‘Yeah,’ Brookes said. ‘That’s how you get the Val Redwoods of the world, right? They’re obsessed with the internet,’ he said to the road.
‘Who?’
‘Feminists. You know. The nutty ones.’ He heaved a sigh, as if in despair at the world. ‘I s’pose it’s easy to find stuff to prove their point on the internet.’
‘Easy to find anything on the internet. Can’t be bothered with all that social media stuff.’
‘Lucky you. If you’re my age, you don’t get the option of ignoring this stuff. Everyone thinks that what the world needs is their statement on Brexit or the Middle East or whatever, and the hardcore feminists are some of the most annoying. Look, I’m all for equality and everything, but . . . Jesus.’ He shrugged. His voice was exploratory, contemplative. ‘They get slapped down now and then and they expect us to police it. But what they really want is for us to police people’s opinions. Look at Val Redwood. She thinks s
he’s got the keys to the universe.’
‘Don’t we all, in our way?’
Brookes gave a slight scowl, braking abruptly to stop the car.
‘I don’t,’ he said, getting out and slamming the car door behind him.
* * *
• • •
They were buzzed into the eerily silent apartment building by a voice that could have belonged to anyone, its distinctiveness smudged away by the crackle of the intercom.
‘Doesn’t sound like a troll to me,’ Whitworth said, half joking, as they got into the lift.
‘Why? What were you expecting? Audible drooling?’ Brookes rolled his eyes good-naturedly, his expression punctuated by the knell of the lift as it announced, ‘Fourth floor.’
Whitworth wanted to laugh, but the truth was that there was still something nagging at him, even now, after the suicide note.
Maybe it was just the thought of a young woman choosing to drown. As Val Redwood had said, it was a terrible way to die.
Could there have been something else? Something foul and sinister that came out of nowhere and snatched Katie out of life?
The door to flat 46 was answered by a young man. A surprisingly young man. His youth had seemed incongruous at the community meeting, too, among all the old biddies. In his mid-twenties, at most. He was of shorter stature, slim. His dark eyebrows were drawn together in an expression that was appealing by default.
He asked to see their credentials immediately, and beyond that showed no resistance to the idea of their presence.
‘I knew you’d come,’ he said simply, stepping aside to let them in. He nodded shyly at Whitworth, seemingly in acknowledgement of their previous meeting.
He led them into his flat. The new-build apartment was well fitted out but dusty. There was absolutely nothing there that didn’t need to be.
The living room was taken up mostly by a large desk with three screens and a bulky ergonomic keyboard. The sofa and TV were crammed around it, as if they were doing their best to sidle out.
‘I was working,’ the boy said, nodding at the lines of coloured text on black background scattered over the computer screen. ‘But now my concentration’s broken.’
‘Sorry,’ Whitworth said. The boy looked at him blankly, so he continued, too cheerfully, ‘What’s a young techie like you doing, living in a washed-up town like this?’
‘I work remotely. My mother left me money to buy a place. But she’s dead now.’ The boy sounded very much as if he was trying not to care.
‘You could sell up and leave. Property prices aren’t bad round here.’
The young man turned around. There was a look of naked horror on his face. ‘Oh, no,’ he breathed softly. ‘I could never do that.’
He looked more like a little boy than a man, really. Girl-size, Whitworth thought. You wouldn’t be sure who would win in a fight between this man – boy, child – and a girl like Nazia. The word ‘troll’ could hardly have seemed less apt.
‘I take it you know why we’re here,’ Whitworth said.
‘Of course I do.’
‘We’re looking into . . .’
‘Yes. I know. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long. Free speech is dying, but we shouldn’t be surprised. The legal system’s very gynocentric.’
Whitworth blinked.
‘Gyno—. Sorry?’
‘Exactly,’ the boy continued. ‘We don’t even have the vocabulary to describe what’s happening. But that’s not your fault.’ He wasn’t looking Whitworth in the eye.
The feminist lobby is incredibly powerful and will block anything that doesn’t fit their agenda.
‘Why are you bothering Valerie Redwood?’ Whitworth asked, as gently as he could. It was hard not to be gentle when someone looked so fragile. ‘Bright guy like you, good job, future ahead. You’re not one of those people.’
‘Typical feminist,’ the boy said to his knees. ‘Conflating accountability with harassment.’
Accountability? What was this boy’s idea of holding a woman to account?
‘You did say she deserved to be raped, though . . .’
‘That was a thought experiment.’ The boy waved the idea away. ‘A comment on the feminist straw man of so-called “rape culture”. Not a proper threat. She just wants unchecked power. That’s all she wants. That’s what they all want. It’s nothing to do with equality.’
‘Yeah,’ Whitworth said. There was clearly something not quite normal about the boy. ‘Look, I’m sure you’re not some kind of woman-hater –’
‘I don’t hate women.’ The boy had interrupted but didn’t seem to realize that he had. ‘I love women. I miss my mother every day.’ He twisted his hands. ‘It’s the degrading of masculinity I can’t stand. By people like Valerie Redwood. And that degrades women, too. Women like my mother, who did nothing but care for me.’
women are unbelievably coddled by the modern world even though men are committing suicide in droves it seems these feminists don’t care at all.
‘I can understand that, mate,’ Whitworth said, not bothering to think too much about whether he really could. ‘But you’ve got to lay off Women’s Aid. The girl who worked there killed herself, you know.’
The boy sat down sharply. Stared at his hands.
‘When?’
‘Just after that meeting.’
‘And you think it was because of me.’
‘We didn’t say . . .’
‘I didn’t make her do it. You can’t make people do things they don’t want to do. Media portrayals of people driven to suicide by harassment are vastly overstated. There are a host of factors at play.’
He didn’t look like he believed this at all.
‘We’re not saying you did.’ Whitworth wasn’t sure if he entirely meant that. ‘She had a lot of problems. A lot going on. I don’t know if the hate mail was helping, but it wasn’t the main cause. She had been unhappy for a long time.’
‘I don’t hate them.’ The boy sounded desperate. ‘I mean, I hate what they stand for – you know, female supremacy – but I know they’re just people. I don’t hate them because of that.’
Whitworth realized he had been scratching, scrunching, pulling at the wad of papers in his hand. All the boy’s comments and threats. Printed out, they seemed laughably analog; old-fashioned, good old poison-pen.
How about i come over and fucking rape
Whitworth imagined this boy trying to scale the mountain that was Val Redwood. The differential between them made him want to laugh.
But Katie . . . Katie had been fragile.
‘I should give you an official warning,’ he said gently. He wasn’t sure whether that was exactly accurate – it was hard to remember what the guidelines on internet shenanigans were supposed to be. ‘But I can see you’ve had a hard time. I don’t want to cause trouble for you.’
The boy lifted up his face. Tear-stained.
your
fat
whore
cunt
‘I don’t know what to do,’ the boy said. There was something painful about the admission. The lack of caveats. The imploring look.
and maybe you’ll see how fucking stupid you sound
Whitworth felt his chest tighten and said, ‘Look, don’t do it again. All right?’
He stood up and patted the boy on the shoulder. The bone felt like it might collapse under the force of his hand.
talking about
so called
rape culture
you
overprivileged
bitch
* * *
• • •
They sat in the police car for a few moments. Brookes looked a little shaken.
‘All right?’ Whitworth said. He did his best to make it sound casual. Things had been piling up over the last d
ay. It would make sense that it was starting to get to Brookes.
‘Yeah,’ Brookes said quietly. ‘Yeah. I just feel sorry for the guy. It’s so sad. And he thinks it’s all his fault, you can tell.’
‘Well, you’ve got to take some responsibility for your actions, I suppose,’ Whitworth said. He knew that everyone claimed it was worse, being bullied on the internet. Having seen what had happened to Lynne Ward, he thought that was a bit hysterical.
‘He doesn’t really believe all that stuff,’ Brookes said. ‘You can tell.’
‘No,’ Whitworth agreed. ‘No, I don’t think he does. I think he’s just unhappy.’
The word felt so heavy, even though the feeling was so unremarkable, so commonplace. Whitworth needed to lift things up and make them lighter, back into the world of work.
‘So you don’t think he killed her, then?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ Brookes said. ‘She killed herself. You saw that note.’
‘I know. I’m just having a bit of a hard time getting my head around it, I s’pose. And I did wonder if there might have been something else going on.’
‘Not a chance. You could write that guy off on the strength differential alone, before you even get into the psychology of it. Plus, if we’re figuring that she went into the water on her way home from the meeting, then he had an alibi at that time.’ Brookes turned the key in the ignition. ‘You.’
‘Couldn’t he have come back?’ Whitworth queried. But even as he said the words he felt the weight of their implausibility. How would this boy even have got Katie into the water? She would have been half a head taller and a good stone heavier than him. It made no sense.
‘You’re right,’ he said flatly. ‘We’re no closer. It was just a . . . a troll.’
Just background noise. Internet chatter. Nothing to do with real life.
47.
Then
When Katie wakes up, Shellie is sitting next to her with a laptop open in her lap, peering into the water jug. Katie can see the distorted outline of the phone through the fogged plastic.
