Fallen Heroes

by Amy Cross

  “Don't you want to go home?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ophelia, I can help you. Everything's going to be okay. I know it must seem impossible right now, but you're going to be fine. I swear to God, Rebecca Bridger, everything will work out just fine.” A tear ran down her face as she waited for a reply. “Don't you want to go back to your old life?” she asked finally. “Don't you want to be Becky Bridger again, instead of this... Ophelia thing?”

  She waited, but silence fell between them for a moment.

  “We can go away,” Laura said cautiously. “We can both take time to work this out. I can take leave from work, I can take everyone's advice and step back from the Daniel Gregory thing, and we can...” She paused, desperately trying to make sense of the conflicting ideas bouncing around in her head. “We can help each other. I'll help you get through this, I'll help you work out what you want to do. No pressure, no judgment, just calm, rational decision-making. And you can help me. I need to work out what the hell I'm doing, because right now I'm in this spiral. Maybe I can't deal with Daniel Gregory. Maybe there's no shame in admitting defeat when the odds are too great. I'm not as smart as I thought I was.”

  She paused, feeling a huge weight lifting from her shoulders. For just a fraction of a second, she felt as if she really could just walk away.

  “Do you have any idea,” Ophelia said eventually, speaking slowly as if to emphasize each word, “how stupid that makes you sound?”

  “Listen -”

  “Everything is not going to be fine,” she continued, taking a step back. “What, you think the truth is just going to fix the world?”

  “Just try to -”

  “You're an idiot,” she added. “I mean, God, you invited me to come and live with you, when you barely even knew me! Are you so pathetically desperate for company that you just let some random homeless girl crash at your place forever?”

  “It's not like that.”

  “You've got no friends,” Ophelia continued, as her anger continued to build, “no boyfriend, no husband, no anything. It's just you and your increasingly-demented mother rattling around here while you edge closer and closer to being fired. You can't even do your job properly! People actually lose their lives, Laura, because you fuck cases up! People die because of you! You're like a serial killer, except your way of killing people is just to fail to catch all these murderers!”

  “That's not true,” Laura replied, forcing herself to stay calm. “You're angry, you're lashing out -”

  “You think I'm lashing out?” Ophelia asked, stepping toward her before looking over at the sideboard. “I'll show you lashing out! I don't know why you think it's funny to pretend Andrew Renton phoned you, but if you're trying to provoke me, then fine. I'm provoked!” Grabbing the sideboard's edge, she pulled it away from the wall and then tilted it over, sending it crashing down. In the process, all the doors opened and spilled out their contents of plates and glasses, with everything smashing onto the floor.

  “Stop!” Laura shouted.

  “You're lucky I didn't tie you up and rob you the first night I was here!” Ophelia shouted, climbing over the sideboard and grabbing a knife from the counter, before turning back to face Laura. “You're lucky I didn't put one of these in your gut!”

  “Why the hell would you do that?” Laura asked. “Listen, I understand, you're panicking, but you just need to calm down!”

  “Don't tell me to calm down!” she shouted.

  “Rebecca -”

  “Shut up!” she shouted, grabbing Laura by the throat and slamming her against the wall before holding the blade of the knife against her neck. “I swear to God, if you say that name one more time, I will kill you, do you understand? I will stab you to death. Believe me, I've done it before.”

  Staring back at her with tears in her eyes, Laura held her breath.

  “I can't...” Pausing, Ophelia took a step back, her feet crushing some more cups in the process. After a moment, she dropped the knife. “It was fun while it lasted,” she continued, her voice still trembling with rage, “but I should've realized it'd end like this. You shouldn't have found out who I am, and you definitely shouldn't have tried to play games with me. It's a shame things have to end this way, but it's not my fault.”

  “Let's sit down and talk,” Laura told her, trying to keep from panicking.

  “Go to hell,” Ophelia replied, turning and hurrying to the front door.

  “Wait!” Laura shouted, climbing over the sideboard and making her way to the hallway, only to see that the front door was already wide open. Running out to the street, she looked around, but in the darkness there was no sign of anyone. “Come back!” she shouted, but she already knew it was too late.

  Ophelia, the master of running, the queen of great escapes, was gone.

  Turning and heading back inside, Laura stopped as she saw that her mother was still sitting calmly at the table, working on the jigsaw puzzle.

  “I think I found where this piece goes,” Maureen said after a moment, as if she hadn't even noticed what had happened. “When Trevor gets home, I'll make dinner.”

  Chapter Ten

  “She asked if she could go to the ice cream van,” the woman sobbed, as her husband put an arm around her. The video was old and flickery, and the internet connection kept buffering, but Laura stuck with it. “She loved that van, but she was always late to get ice cream. This time, I gave her a fifty pence and sent her out, and she never...”

  As the woman paused, more camera flashes lit the screen, and there were a few coughs in the distance.

  “We just want her back,” the woman continued, with tears running down her face. “She's just five years old. She's my little angel and -”

  At this, she broke down into a series of sobs. The camera zoomed in closer to get a good look, to catch every tear in immaculate details.

  “I want to reiterate,” the police officer said a moment later, as the camera panned to him, “that we are going to find Becky, and that we still believe that there's an excellent chance of reuniting her with her parents.”

  “I found her,” Laura whispered, grabbing her phone and checking for the fiftieth time that she had no missed calls. “And then I lost her again.”

  ***

  “So that's the most surprising part of our initial investigation,” Nick continued, as they sat in the parked car. “Everything points to Sarah Jenkins having been murdered by some kind of genetically-engineered half-man, half-cat creature.”

  He waited for Laura to reply, but as he watched her face he realized that, yet again, her attention seemed to have drifted elsewhere.

  “The only thing we know for certain,” he added, “is that this monster has traveled back in time from the fifty-first century, probably using stolen technology, and he seems determined to go around killing young women and generally screwing with everyone's heads. When it's not doing that, he disguises itself as a house-cat named Fluffy, but we're pretty sure his real name is Darth bloody Vader.”

  He waited again.

  No response.

  “You're not listening,” he continued, nudging her elbow. “You're the one who insisted on meeting for an update, and now you're not even bloody listening to me.”

  “What?” She turned to him. “I'm sorry, what were you saying? Something about the search at Sarah's flat? There was a cat there?” She paused, as she tried to make sense of the words she'd only half heard. “Darth Vader? What?”

  “I was saying,” he continued with a sigh, looking back down at his notebook, “that the flat was a bust. We didn't find anything that might give us a DNA hit on the killer. Whoever this guy is, he either didn't leave anything behind or he cleaned up after himself. Maitland reckons there's some evidence to suggest the body was wiped clean in certain places, which I'm assuming was done to avoid fingerprints. Meanwhile, CCTV cameras aren't proving to be much use. If I didn't know better, I'd say this guy studied every blind spot in the area and then picked his
route accordingly, which would be rather impressive.”

  “There must be something.”

  He shrugged.

  “With the Natasha Simonsen murder,” she continued, “we found a trace of Daniel Gregory's DNA in the apartment. That was how we got onto him in the first place.”

  “So? Even if Gregory was behind this and was copying the Simonsen case, he wouldn't copy his mistakes too.”

  “But another copycat would.”

  “Come again?”

  “You said the murder weapons seem to be identical,” she continued. “You said lab tests even showed the same type of rust on the two blades. That's a pretty tight level of detail, so wouldn't the killer try to replicate every last thing, even the parts that weren't necessarily that convenient?”

  “And maybe he couldn't manage it,” Nick suggested. “Maybe he couldn't get a DNA sample to plant this time. I mean, the guy can be a copycat without being anal about the whole thing, right?”

  “Or maybe Daniel Gregory couldn't bring himself to be quite that stupid,” she replied. “Maybe the DNA trace last time was a genuine mistake, and that's why he omitted it this time. He wanted to commit the same crime again, but this time without making any errors. He's a really messed-up individual, we can't rule any action in or out of possibility just because it doesn't seem like the kind of thing a normal person would do. I know he gives off this vibe of being an everyday guy, but he's not. You've seen his eyes. Didn't you see a flicker of something darker?”

  “You're tying yourself up in knots.”

  “I want to come with you to talk to Sarah Jenkins' parents.”

  “Laura...”

  “You said I could ride along.”

  “If Halveston finds out...”

  “He won't.”

  Pausing for a moment, Nick eyed her with suspicion. “Fine. But in return, you have to tell me what's been on your mind all bloody morning. And don't try telling me it's nothing, 'cause I know you too well. Spill it.”

  ***

  “Becky Bridger?” he replied, clearly shocked, as they made their way along the street. “No way!”

  “Yes way,” she continued, checking over her shoulder to make sure that no-one overheard, “and keep your voice down. You promised not to let anyone else find out, remember? If she comes back, she's not going to be happy if she realizes I've been telling people.”

  “That scrawny kid is Becky Bridger? The girl who went missing? Ophelia, the most annoying person in the entire world, is that sweet little girl?” He paused. “What went wrong?”

  “If you take a look at their photos side-by-side, you can see the resemblance. It's one of those things that... Once you see it, it's really obvious. I almost feel like I should have twigged sooner.”

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “I figured she was hiding something, but I just assumed she was just some kinda psycho, something like that. Maybe an ex-junkie who'd taken one tab of acid too many, or someone's who'd been through some deep shit. I mean, it's obvious she's not quite right in the head. What are you going to do?”

  “There's nothing I can do. She ran off.”

  “But she'll come back.”

  “I don't know. She... To be honest, she kind of flipped out. It's like hearing her real name tripped some kind of switch in her head, especially when I mentioned this Renton guy, it brought about a very sudden change in her demeanor. She actually became a little violent. I was scared for a moment.”

  As they reached the house on the corner, Nick pushed the garden gate open and led her to the door.

  “I remember that case,” he continued. “Becky Bridger, bloody hell. She was the most angelic-looking kid you could imagine. One of those really photogenic ones, you know? The bloody tabloids were all over here, drooling and putting her picture on the front pages. I mean, let's be honest, an ugly kid isn't gonna get that kinda treatment, but Becky Bridger, she was like the Princess Di of missing kids.” He paused, as if he still couldn't quite believe the news, before knocking on the door. “So where's she been all this time? Fourteen years is quite a while, eh?”

  “Beats me,” Laura replied, taking a deep breath as she saw a figure approaching the door from the other side of the frosted glass. “She wasn't exactly in the mood to talk about things.”

  “Wherever she was,” Mark added, “it's obviously done a number on her. I mean, one minute she's a sweet little kid, and the next she's... Well, Ophelia... For all her qualities, one thing she definitely isn't is a sweet little kid. Or an angel. Wherever she was for all those years, it must've totally done her in mentally.” He turned to her. “She's insane. You know that, right? She might have been a sweet little girl once, but now she's out of her bloody -”

  Suddenly the door opened, answered by a teary-eyed woman holding a tissue in one hand.

  “Mrs. Jenkins,” Nick said, instantly switching gear. “I'm Detective Nick Jordan and this is Detective Laura Foster. We're here to talk to you about Sarah.”

  ***

  “She never exactly had boyfriends,” Mrs. Jenkins said a short while later, as they sat at the kitchen table. Dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, she'd clearly been crying all day. “Just men she hung out with now and again. She never wanted to settle, you know? She was always too busy focusing on her career. She said a man wouldn't understand, that there'd be time for that later, after she'd got her career started.”

  “She met them on the internet,” Mr. Jenkins added, stony-faced and severe. “Chat-rooms. She was constantly in those bloody chat-rooms. I mean, you never know who's really on the other end, do you? She was a smart kid, but in some ways she could be...” His voice trailed off for a moment. “I told her. She wouldn't listen, but I told her. She was convinced the world was just going to organize itself in her best interests.”

  “And now she's...” Mrs. Jenkins whimpered, as she began to sob. “Now she's dead.”

  “We had to identify the body this morning,” her husband added, putting an arm around his wife.

  “We're getting copies of Sarah's computer logs,” Nick told them. “That'll allow us to she who she was talking to and what they were saying. We're particularly interested in a man who seems to have been making promises about her modeling career.”

  “So you think it was...” Mrs. Jenkins took a deep breath, fighting back tears. “You think it was someone from the internet who did this?”

  “It's definitely a possibility,” Nick replied.

  “Bloody internet,” Mr. Jenkins muttered. “Everything's about the internet these days, even...” He paused, before glancing at Laura. “What about you?” He waited for a reply, but Laura was staring down at the coffee table with a faraway look in her eyes.

  “Laura,” Nick whispered, nudging her knee.

  She turned to him. “Yes?”

  “I asked what you think,” Mr. Jenkins continued. “All this stuff about the internet, people pretending to be different people, luring girls into dangerous situations.”

  “I...” Laura paused, having clearly been thinking about something else. “We're going to find your daughter,” she said finally, “and I'm very confident she'll be alive and well, and we'll be able to bring her home to you soon.”

  She waited for someone else to speak, but they were all staring at her with shocked expressions.

  “What my colleague means,” Nick said after a few more awkward seconds, “is that we're going to find the man who killed Sarah, and we're going to bring him to justice. I promise you that.”

  “That's what I meant,” Laura replied. “I'm sorry...”

  “You've barely said a word since the pair of you arrived,” Mr. Jenkins continued, eying her with caution. “What's your job? Are you supposed to just sit there, or have you got something to say? If we're keeping you from something more important, feel free to go and get on with things.”

  “I'm just assisting Detective Jordan,” she told him, keen to avoid giving the impression that she was formally involved in the case. She knew she had
to concentrate on the Sarah Jenkins case, but she couldn't stop thinking about Ophelia, or rather about little Becky Bridger, and about how the latter had ended up becoming the former.

  “He's told us what he thinks,” the man continued, “so why don't you tell us what you think?”

  “I think Detective Jordan is doing a fine job,” she replied diplomatically.

  “But do you buy his version of things? That Sarah met some guy online and he offered to help with her career, and then when they saw each other in real life he...” Pausing, he seemed unable to get the final words out. “Well, you know. That he's the one who did it? He's the one who put the knife in her.”

  “Crutchlaw,” Mrs. Jenkins said suddenly, wiping her eyes. “She mentioned Crutchlaw a few times.”

  “Crutchlaw?” Nick replied, writing the word down. “In what context?”

  “I thought it was a weird name at the time,” she continued. “She even got postcards from him when he went traveling. They came here, I saw some of them. I mean, I know I shouldn't have, but I started reading them. Postcards aren't like letters, the writing's right there so you can't really avoid it, can you? There must have been one a month, he seemed to travel all around the country.”

  “And he sent her postcards?” Laura asked.

  “There was one from Coventry, I remember that. And Edinburgh. He traveled for work, and whenever he went somewhere new, he sent her a postcard, like it was a little joke between them. Always going on about how he was involved in something important. He was working on newspaper stories or something like that. Blowing his own trumpet, if you ask me. The guy was trying to make himself seem important.”

  “But why did they come here?” Laura continued. “Sarah moved into her own place, what, six months ago?”