by Wes Markin
‘He’s missing, isn’t he?’ Yorke said.
Powers was taken aback. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘I just put two and two together based on something that Sturridge said, sorry, wrote down earlier. Did you know he doesn’t talk?’
Powers looked confused. ‘I actually spoke to him a couple of weeks ago. So … no.’
‘Well, things have dramatically changed since then,’ Yorke said. ‘We think his tongue may have been removed. As you are aware, he may have murdered a police officer, and he also claims to have murdered someone else. You didn’t answer the question – is the pimp missing?’
‘Alex Drake. Yes. Nasty piece of work. Bounced in and out of the station enough times. His days are numbered.’
‘Were,’ Topham said.
‘Mark,’ Yorke said, ‘let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. How many people are in this squat you are about to take us to?’
‘Seven or eight?’
‘Anyone that is particularly close to Sturridge?’
‘They’re all close, in their own way. Society’s rejects tend to find solace in each other.’
‘Obviously, we can get a warrant to search and seize, but let’s go gentle. Gung-ho will not get us information.’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Powers said. ‘Round here, it’s best to keep relationships strong.’
Powers led them past several run-down Edwardian houses. Lights glowed behind some curtains. Other houses were completely boarded over.
‘How many people live down here?’ Yorke said.
‘Most are occupied, and not, as you would imagine, by down-and-outs. Children set off to school from some of these houses.’
Yorke sighed.
They turned into a driveway of a house which, oddly, was one of the nicest on the street. Yorke looked at Powers. ‘The council doesn’t want these houses back?’
‘Yes, but as I said before, we are running a containment job around here, and things are moving rather slowly. Chucking people out of a squat has never been easy.’
‘Even when they are brothels?’
‘How can we be expected to catch those behind the brothel if we round up the small fry? We’re playing a long game.’
‘Well, you may have been playing too long with Alex Drake,’ Topham said. ‘I think Sturridge may have beat you to him.’
Powers knocked on the door.
A young woman wearing a silver nightie opened the door. Her eyeliner was smudged and she looked as if she’d been crying. ‘Detective Powers?’
‘Hello, Sylvia,’ Powers said, ‘we need to talk if that’s okay?’
Sylvia’s hand was on the edge of the door. As her eyes flicked from one officer to another, again and again, Yorke prepared himself for the door being slammed in their faces.
‘No one is in trouble, Sylvia.’ Powers offered her a smile. ‘We just want to talk.’
‘About what?’
‘About David Sturridge.’
There was a pause while she looked down at the floor.
‘Yes, I know you two are close,’ Powers said.
‘Come in, but you need to know that some of the rooms are busy.’
Topham looked at Yorke. Yorke knew what he was thinking. Ignoring crime?
Yorke stared back at him as if to say: priorities.
‘That’s fine, Sylvia,’ Yorke said, ‘please take us to the lounge and tell us what you know.’
Yorke expected squalor: pizza boxes and syringes; instead, he was presented with a tidy, clean living room.
As they sat, Yorke heard a knock at the front door. Sylvia was sitting with them now, so someone else was greeting the punter. He heard a muffled male voice and then looked over at Sylvia, who was looking down at her bare feet, clearly concerned that the law was being broken in front of three high-ranking officers.
‘Sylvia?’ Powers said.
‘I haven’t seen David in almost a month.’ She looked at Yorke as she spoke. ‘And I’ve been worried sick.’
‘David is safe,’ Yorke said, ‘and he will remain safe, Sylvia.’
She looked at Powers and gestured at her mouth. He wandered over to her and handed her a rolled-up cigarette. After popping it into her mouth, she took a lighter from the arm of chair and lit it. Her hand trembled as she took a hungry puff. ‘So, he’s in jail then?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Yorke said, ‘but as I said, that makes him safe.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘It is too early for us to comment on that.’
‘Is it to do with Alex?’
Alex Drake – the pimp.
‘Why do you ask that?’ Topham said.
‘Because we haven’t seen him in weeks either,’ Sylvia said.
Topham and Yorke exchanged glances.
‘When did you last see him, and what happened?’ Yorke said, readying his notepad.
Sylvia ignored the question and gave them a potted history of David Sturridge instead: a kind and sensitive boy who had been badly damaged by the events back in his home city of Southampton. He sounded a far cry from the smiling murderer sitting opposite Yorke in the interview room earlier. Sylvia continued by explaining how the idea of prostitution had repulsed Sturridge, as it did with many of the workers, she added. So, he’d tried his very best to keep it to a minimum and had only turned to it when he’d become too strapped for cash. However, pimp Alex Drake, who was providing the roof over their heads, was forever demanding more money. Several local army barracks ensured that there was never a shortage of business, she explained, and the number of repressed homosexual soldiers was staggering. Alex had wanted him working harder and had been becoming increasingly frustrated with Sturridge’s excuses. Sturridge could get by on less because, like her, he never touched drugs. A rarity, she admitted, and one of the reasons they were particularly close. He was like the brother she’d never had. She described how they planned to save what little money they earned and get a place together – away from the drugs and prostitution. ‘Sounds like fantasy, doesn’t it?’
‘No,’ Powers said. ‘It sounds like a good idea.’
She smiled. ‘Well, it isn’t going to happen now. I’ve lost him, haven’t I? What did he do anyway? Did he kill Alex?’
Yorke flicked to a fresh page of his notebook. ‘We don’t know that, Sylvia. You are really helping us though. When was the last time you saw David?’
‘Three weeks ago. He’d been struggling for a month or so before that. He wouldn’t tell me why – just spent a lot of time online, quiet and alone. Didn’t really want to speak to me that much anymore. Thought I’d done something to offend him.’
‘You have the internet?’ Topham said.
‘Some of the legally owned houses on the street do. We just tag along on their wi-fi, for a small cost. Not much.’
‘What was he doing online?’ Yorke said.
‘I don’t know. Again, we kind of drifted apart.’
‘Did he have a laptop to surf the internet?’ Yorke said.
‘He had a smashed-up old tablet which he could get online with.’
‘And what happened the day he disappeared?’
‘Not much. He just went out and didn’t come back.’
‘And what did Alex Drake have to say about that?’ Topham said.
‘What you’d expect. Shouting and swearing. Demanding to know where he was. Threatening to evict him if he ever came back. It was irrelevant. No one knew where he’d gone, and that was that.’
‘Does Alex Drake come around often?’ Yorke said.
‘Daily. But not anymore. That’s why I thought he might be dead. It’s David, isn’t it? He killed the bastard. He probably deserved it. Used to knock some of us around.’
‘Did David leave any of his belongings?’ Topham said.
‘Yes – but there’s not much. Like most of us, he literally lived out of a backpack.’
‘Can you get his belongings please?’ Yorke said.
Five minutes later, Sylvia retur
ned with a Lidl bag-for-life.
Yorke asked Topham and Powers to log the items as he took them from the bag and laid them out. Yorke then pulled a pair of plastic gloves from an inside pocket of his suit. Just as he was about to start laying the items out, his phone rang. He took the phone out of his pocket and read the name on the screen.
Harry Butler.
Yorke’s heart thrashed against his chest. He jumped up as a collection of images turned over in his mind: standing with his best friend, Harry, as they graduated as officers together; sitting at the dinner table with Harry and his new wife; dragging Harry away from his wife who was lying dead on the ground after being shot by a deranged farmer; watching Harry lose his job after planting evidence on an innocent man suspected of killing Yorke’s sister …
Yorke steadied himself against the wall as he stared at the name on the phone screen.
It’d been years. What does he want?
He felt Topham’s hand on his shoulder. ‘Sir?’
Yorke sent Harry to Voicemail, and put the phone in his pocket. ‘Let’s continue.’
Trying to steady his gloved hand, Yorke took out the items one by one and laid them on the coffee table. ‘Item one - a Stephen King novel. Item two – a photograph of a younger boy, potentially him with his family.’
He continued to pull out the items, most of which were pieces of clothing before reaching, ‘Item 11, a 10-inch tablet with a smashed screen.’ He looked up at Sylvia. ‘Do you know how to get onto this?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Jake had been waiting over an hour to speak to Marcus Long. That was how long the medical staff had needed to check everything was in order following the operation, and to talk Long through his life-changing injuries.
His self-inflicted life-changing injuries. They couldn’t reattach his tongue because he’d flushed it down the toilet.
Jake took a seat beside Long’s bed and watched him run his fingers over the gauze covering his mouth.
‘Why Marcus? God, why?’ Jake said.
Long shrugged. He was pale and weary. This interview would not be lasting long. Jake pulled the food table attached to the bed by an arm over his lap. He lay a notepad and pen down so Marcus could write.
He wrote: No choice.
‘Explain.’
Severance wrote letter. Told me to do this or Susie dies.
‘Where is this letter?’
Cell.
‘You should have told me.’
Then what? Susie dead? Long stared at him.
‘But why your tongue?’
Obvious? I took his and now he’s taken mine.
After Marcus Long had served his sentence for sexually abusing Christian Severance, he had returned to a broken life. A jobless, and loveless, life. A decade elapsed in which he sank further and further into misery, while the young man, Severance, grew more successful in his chosen scientific field. One day, Long decided to go and see Severance again. It wasn’t well received by his former student, but it still rekindled old feelings in Long. Feelings that contributed to his every waking thought for months on end. Eventually, he succumbed to his feelings, and initiated a campaign which saw him stalking, and trying to weave himself, like a spider, into every aspect of Severance’s life. It was nothing short of obsession and mania. It had ended in Severance’s kitchen with a gun that Long had acquired from the dark web. The solution, Long had told the jury, was one that was clouded with love and fatalism – if he couldn’t have Severance, no one could. The bullet entered Severance’s cheek, smashed his jaw, and destroyed his tongue.
‘We cannot find Severance, Marcus, not for the want of trying. Are you even sure it was him that wrote the letter?’
Long scribbled. Yes. It’s him. I know his words. Jake noticed a tear in his eyes. Did he still love him? After all of this pain and misery?
Long flipped to another page of the notebook and continued writing. I destroyed him. He destroyed me. Fairness?
There is nothing fair in mutilation, thought Jake. He kept his thoughts to himself.
Jake leaned nearer to Long. ‘Does he say anything else in that letter? Any indication of where he might be? What else he wants?’
No. This was what he wanted. Maybe Susie will be released now?
‘I hope so. You know that I need to see that letter?’
Yes. Charles Dickens. A tale of two cities.
Jake gave him a puzzled look.
On my bookshelf in the cell.
‘Thank you.’ Jake made a note in his own book to have the guards retrieve the letter from his cell.
I thought this was for the best.
Jake nodded, and thought, how could you possibly think that this would be for the best? ‘You need to rest now.’
The next message that Long scribbled was longer. Jake waited patiently, observing the man crumbling under the heavy weight of a failed life.
I’ve made mistakes. A lot of them. I’ll apologise for them. Suffer and die for them. But she doesn’t deserve it.
‘No, she doesn’t, and we are trying to find her.’
Long had the energy for one last message.
Please Detective. Help her. I beg you.
Jake nodded.
There was only one file on the home screen for them to open. Yorke, Powers, Topham and Sylvia gathered around the cracked tablet.
They played a video file of a room which was barely furnished. A mattress on the floor. A small pile of magazines beside it acting as a bedside table. Lights were dim, although this could have been the quality of the tablet’s camera.
‘It’s the room he was staying in … upstairs,’ Sylvia said. ‘There is a television opposite the bed. This is where he must have positioned the tablet.’
‘To film what?’ Powers said.
The room was briefly illuminated by a brighter light, presumably from the landing outside as someone opened the door to come in.
A voice grew louder as it neared the tablet. ‘How many times do we have to have this fucking conversation? You have to provide for me, or I won’t provide for you.’
‘That’s Alex, charming as ever,’ Sylvia said.
Alex and Sturridge moved in front the camera. The size difference was vast. Alex was a large, looming man, not unlike Powers. Sturridge was a boy barely out of his teens; skinny and fresh-faced.
‘I provided for you last time you were here. I did exactly what you asked,’ Sturridge said.
Sturridge was yet to open his mouth in Yorke’s presence, so to see him talking here was disorientating.
Alex turned around and moved away from the camera. The room dimmed again, indicating that the door had been closed. When he came back into view, he pointed a finger in Sturridge’s face. ‘Any louder and you may have been heard. How do you think that would have gone down?’
‘Sorry…’ Sturridge said.
‘Do you think I’m like you?’
‘No … of course not.’
‘Good. Do I look desperate? Queer?’
‘No.’
‘I think you need to think about leaving. You’ve been here a long time now.’
‘No … please. You know I’ll do whatever you want. Right now.’ He reached out a hand and placed it on Alex’s crotch. ‘I need this place.’
Alex shook his head. ‘So, you won’t suck a punter’s dick, but you’ll suck mine? What’s that all about?’
‘I don’t want to be like the others. I don’t want it to be everything.’
Alex laughed. ‘Or, you could just admit it? You like me, don’t you?’
Sturridge didn’t reply.
‘Say you like me.’
‘I like you.’ Sturridge looked down. He was shaking.
‘Look me in the fucking eyes as you say it.’
Sturridge looked up. ‘I like you.’
Alex stroked his face. ‘You’re good-looking, do you know that?’
Sturridge nodded.
‘Very handsome.’ Alex kissed him on the lips. ‘Now, say you li
ke me again.’
‘I like you.’
‘Again. Convince me.’
‘I like you.’
‘Good.’ Alex continued to stroke his face for a moment until Sturridge started to shake less. ‘Relax, David.’
Sturridge nodded.
Alex slapped him hard across the face. ‘Fucking faggot.’
Yorke heard Sylvia gasp beside him. Yorke paused the video file and looked at Powers, who read his cue.
‘Come with me Sylvia. Let’s go outside,’ Powers said.
Once Powers and Sylvia were outside, Yorke and Topham watched the end of the recording.
Alex grabbed Sturridge by his shoulder and threw him onto the bed. Before the young boy was able to turn over, Alex had straddled him.
‘Jesus,’ Topham said. ‘The man is about twice his size. What chance did he have?’
At first, Sturridge struggled, but it was futile under the crushing weight of the huge man. Alex pulled up Sturridge’s arms and pinned them down with one hand, while he used his other hand to pull down the boy’s jeans and underwear.
‘You are good-looking, David, that’s the problem really,’ Alex said as he fumbled with his own belt. ‘Fuck you for being so good-looking.’
Sturridge struggled for a couple of seconds more before submitting; then, he screamed out loud when Alex forced himself inside.
Yorke put a hand to his mouth.
Topham ran a hand through his hair. ‘Sick bastard.’
6
IT WAS VERY late, but Yorke needed to follow up on what he’d just seen. He also knew that as soon as he finished his shift, he had his old friend, Harry Butler, to contend with. Harry was a widowed, disgraced copper who needed to stay as far away from his old life in law-enforcement as possible. Contacting Yorke certainly did not fulfil that criteria. He’d felt his phone buzz several times on the journey back into the station with Topham, but he’d sensibly kept it in his pocket.
In the car, he’d offered Topham the opportunity to go home and get some rest, but it had been declined. Yorke could see a familiar fire in his colleague’s eyes. A fire that burned regularly in the eyes of the people he so often worked with.
Before they went into the interview room with Sturridge, Yorke turned to face his colleague. ‘What that boy endured is horrific, and indescribable. But he’s still responsible for destroying the lives of other people.’
