by Luca Veste
‘She knows something,’ Murphy said, unlocking the car and climbing inside. ‘The way she was on the verge of saying something every few minutes. She has something to say. I’m hoping that a few more days of Sam being missing will make her talk. They didn’t seem all that upset, which was weird.’
‘All a front. Stiff upper lip and all that shite.’
‘Suppose so. For now, no, we don’t have much, but hopefully they’ve found something back at his office. There’s a bit of secrecy going on around this thing.’
‘To be expected, I suppose,’ Rossi said, clicking her seat belt on just as Murphy pulled out into the road. ‘I bet if we really knew what went on with MPs behind closed doors, we’d never vote any of them in.’
‘You say that like it would be a bad thing.’
Rossi laughed, filling the car with its distinctive sound. That’s when Murphy knew he’d made Rossi laugh properly . . . when his ears were still ringing a few minutes later.
‘I’ll give you that one,’ Rossi said, pulling her notepad out and studying the notes she’d made. ‘A bunch of first names and a Simon Jackson. I really hope we don’t have much trouble accessing Byrne’s social media accounts. Otherwise, this could be a very long and boring process.’
‘I’ll leave that to you and Graham to sort out,’ Murphy said, grinding his teeth at the mere mention of social media. ‘Wouldn’t know what I was doing anyway.’
‘You still refuse to get with the programme? Everyone is online now. Stop resisting it. You’re missing out on trolls, political arguments, echo chambers and pictures of cats. What more could you want?’
‘I’ll live,’ Murphy replied, bringing the car to a halt at a set of traffic lights. ‘I can think of a hundred and one other things I’d rather torture myself with before joining those sites.’
‘I give it another six months, then you’ll cave.’
‘Keep dreaming. I’m more likely to visit Goodison Park than open a Facebook account.’
Rossi laughed, but the noise of it didn’t fill the car this time. ‘We’ll ask the university as well, but can’t imagine we’ll get far with that one. What did you make of them anyway? Have to say, when Mary walked in with the tanned tights and sensible shoes, I thought I’d end up disliking her more. Turned out she was OK.’
‘She’s definitely hiding something about her son. I doubt we’ll ever know if the dad has his way, though.’
‘Oh yeah, it’s all about the correct image with him. All about the campaign and how that’s going. That’s why we’re having to keep everything in the dark. If it gets out that a prospective MP has gone missing and then he turns up looking sheepish with a few love bites and a three-day hangover, he would probably lose a fair few votes. Not very professional. What about that house, though . . . amazing furniture in there.’
‘You could do a whole hour of the Antiques Roadshow in just the living room, or whatever they want to call it.’
‘Probably a morning room or something,’ Rossi said, taking her phone out and keying the screen. ‘I’ll put Graham on the list of names, but I don’t think we’re going to get very far with just this. We need something a bit more concrete.’
Murphy slowed the car as traffic built up in front of them. Thought through the meeting with the missing man’s parents once again in his head.
Something wasn’t right. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out exactly what that something was.
Sam
Four Days Earlier
He enjoyed pain. Particularly carried out on others. Women especially. He liked seeing the hurt in their eyes. The awareness of their helplessness reflected back at him, knowing he could end it at any point. Under his control, his power. There was something about that kind of thing which really got him going.
Problem was, not all women liked his particular brand of play. In the past, he’d had too many whiny bitches who became worried about their safety as soon as he started playing. Idiots. As if he would put himself in danger for some whore who didn’t like it when he went a bit far.
That’s all they were, really, he thought. Playthings, objects for him to derive pleasure from.
It wasn’t his fault he had been driven to this mindset. They had done that. All that talk of equal rights and safe spaces. It was his world. He was the one in power. If they wanted to take some of that, they would have to deal with the consequences.
That was how he had dealt with the changes in the world around him. His father had instilled in him the importance of power. How he had to take it, make it his and never let it go.
Once he had made it through the next few weeks of the campaign, he would have everything he needed.
He would have his pick.
For now, the urges had become too strong. He needed a release and she was a willing and cheap solution.
‘Put these on,’ he said, handing the clothes to the woman. He turned away as she swiped a hand across her nose and began undressing. He didn’t want to see her until she was properly attired.
‘If you want any of that weird shit, that costs extra,’ the woman said, a rasp to her voice which set his teeth on edge. ‘You hear me? You have to give me more if I have to do anything like that.’
‘You’re getting paid well enough,’ Sam said, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to maintain control. ‘I’ll give you three hundred quid just to shut the fuck up.’
‘My lips are sealed,’ the woman said, unable to keep the glee from her tone. ‘Well, until you need them to be open.’
‘Are you dressed?’
The woman murmured a yes. He turned round to see her properly. She was a little older than he would have liked, but he would see past that. The short plaid skirt, the white blouse, the tie loose around her neck. It would work.
‘Walk this way and keep quiet.’
He led her to the bedroom in the back of the flat, the lights off so she couldn’t see what was inside. He felt a slight touch of hesitation when they reached the doorway, but a gentle nudge kept her walking.
‘Lie down on the bed.’
She complied, as they always did. Their stupidity driven by the desire for money. To feed an addiction. It sickened him.
‘Close your eyes,’ he said, crossing the room and opening the bottom drawer of the bedside table. ‘Now.’
She did as she was instructed, lying down fully on the bed now. He moved quickly, placing the blindfold over her eyes. ‘Turn over,’ he said, not wanting to touch her yet. She did as she was told, lifting herself and turning over. She raised her lower half in the air, but he pushed it down with an elbow and leaned over her. He snapped a manacle hanging from the bedpost around her wrist.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ she said, lifting her head up off the bed and turning towards him.
‘Shut up, or you won’t get your money. You’ll do as you’re told and be out of here within an hour. Keep talking and you’ll get nothing.’
The threat was enough, just as it always was. He was surprised it worked, but then he didn’t understand the way these people lived.
He snapped another manacle on her free wrist, then tied her ankles to the bedposts at the end of the bed.
The gag was last.
He stood over her, the straps in place and secure. He could feel the shift instantly; the fear exuding from her feeding his desire.
‘You’re being paid to be here,’ he said, taking off his shirt one button at a time. ‘Stop your whining.’
She shook her head, tears springing from her eyes as she turned her head towards him. He was enjoying this already.
‘You have one job. To satisfy me. That’s all you have to do. If you don’t, then we don’t leave here until I am. Simple. There is no getting away from here, not until I say so.’
He waited for her to nod her agreement, then looked her over. It would do.
He opened another drawer and removed what he needed. He moved back to the bed and smiled as she winced at him lifting her skirt up.
She wasn’t expecting the first whip of the cane across her. She began to struggle, but couldn’t move more than an inch or two. He brought the cane down again, more forcefully this time. He closed his eyes as the sound of her screaming into the gag filled the silence.
He kept going, one hand bringing the cane down over and over, the other hand giving himself pleasure.
She passed out at some point, her blood now spilled out on the bed and beyond. He took a plastic bag and straddled her back. Jumped up and down a little to bring her back to consciousness.
When he was done, she was nothing to him. For ninety minutes, she had consumed him, but now, she was just a problem to deal with. He wasn’t sure if she’d recognised him, but he felt certain that she wasn’t about to talk. He let her off the bed, barely watching as she limped gingerly away from the bedroom.
‘Remove the clothes and get dressed. Five hundred. And you don’t talk to anyone or I’ll find you.’
She sniffed, tears still cascading down her dirty face. She reached with shaking hands for the money he was holding towards her.
‘I mean it,’ he said, not letting go of the money. ‘I’ll come looking for you and no one will hear from you again, got it?’
She nodded, her whole body trembling now. He released the money and watched her leave, a thin smile on his face. He heard the door close and began chuckling softly to himself. He grabbed the clothes off the floor where she’d left them, placing them in a plastic bag and taking them back to the bedroom. Stopped for a second to take in the bloodstains and results of his work.
‘Well done, Sam,’ he said softly to himself. ‘That was a great performance.’
He heard a knock at the door and frowned. ‘What the fuck does she want now,’ he said, moving towards the door and checking the peephole, but seeing no one there. He opened the door slowly, then flew backwards as the door was slammed into him. He landed on the floor, instant pain in the bottom of his back. A figure stood over him, a black balaclava covering their head.
‘What the fuc–’
A bolt of electricity entered his body before he could finish his sentence.
‘You’re going to follow me out of here. You’ll do as you’re told, or I’ll keep firing this thing at you until you can’t breathe any more. What do you think?’
Sam didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He was still trying to stop shaking as he lay on the floor. The figure above him wiggled the taser in their hand, soft laughter coming from the darkness.
* * *
There was something he hadn’t known about being on the receiving end of brutality.
You start to wish for an end. Of any kind. Death was beginning to look like a preferable option than what was being done to him. Endless pain, in waves of torture and spilled blood. Mental and physical. Both as bad as the other.
He was beginning to rethink his position on the use of these methods against enemies of war. Something he wouldn’t have ever thought possible before then.
He just wanted it to end.
Sam believed in God. Worshipped Him in his own particular way. Enough to appeal to a certain section of society but not too much to put off younger people who put less stock in those ideas. He was a modern Christian. Belief without responsibility.
Now, he wondered if there was anything out there when this was ended. Wasn’t too sure he cared enough at that moment. He welcomed the idea of darkness. Of emptiness. Of anything but the bright light shining in his eyes.
‘Please . . . please, no more.’
The words escaped his lips, cracked and swollen, rasping breaths following them. The cackle of laughter surrounded him, high-pitched and echoing.
‘When I say it’s done, it’s done.’
Always the same answer.
‘I can’t take anything else,’ he said, his voice sounding alien to him now. ‘Just tell me what you want. I can get you anything. Just, please, tell me.’
Silence was the only response. His leg muscles burned underneath him, thighs on fire from being made to kneel for hours on end.
‘I’m an important man,’ he said, his throat protesting against the cruelty of speaking. ‘Just tell me what you want from me. Money? I can get you as much as you need. Please, name a price. I want to make you happy. I want to make you stop this madness.’
‘I don’t want anything. I have what I need. I have you.’
The voice bounced around him, turning from a whisper to a shout in a second. The smell of smoke made its way through the hood, he heard the noise of something being cut or sawn into pieces. Sometimes the smells and noises meant something to him, other times not. He was never sure if pain was about to arrive, or if they were playing with him.
He wasn’t sure about anything any more.
He’d always been the one in charge. The master. Now that control had been snatched from him.
‘What should I do with you now? Maybe I should cut off parts of your body one by one. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? That would be justice for someone like you.’
He shook his head, which was the only part of his body he could still move. He felt the now familiar pressure on the back of his head, as something was wrapped around his mouth area, cutting off his voice once more.
Sam was screaming into nothingness.
‘There’s something you should know, Sam. You made this happen. This is no one else’s fault but your own. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying this. This has been such fun. All fun has to end at some point, though. I know this. You know this.’
Sam realised he didn’t want the end to come. He still wanted to live. As much as he wanted the pain to stop, he didn’t want this to be the end. He could feel tears fall from his eyes and run down his cheeks, his shoulders hitching as his muffled cries escaped.
He didn’t want to die.
‘First, I’m going to list your crimes. Then we’ll sentence you for them. And we’re talking proper sentences. The punishment must fit the crime, isn’t that right? That’s fair, right?’
He wasn’t expected to answer. Sam knew that. The decision had already been made. Before he had been brought to this place, wherever it was. He’d been sentenced long ago.
On some level, he knew he deserved it. For all he had done in his life.
Now, he was helpless and had to wait.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Seven
There was a sense of boredom creeping in, which Murphy knew wasn’t a good sign. A missing person could sometimes be an interesting case but, more often than not, it was a whole bunch of work for little to no reward. There were just too many cases, too many people missing, for it to be any other way.
He’d thought he’d left that sort of thing behind him. Now, any missing persons case which came into the division was usually shifted elsewhere, unless there was an extreme likelihood of violence or similar.
Turned out, all you needed was for the missing person to be vaguely in the public eye, and the case was forced upon him to deal with.
It was all about who you know. As with everything in life.
‘They’ve found his email password,’ Rossi said from her desk opposite him. ‘Just got access now. Pazzo left it on a Post-it note on his desk. Should mean that we will be able to get control of his social media accounts. If you think that’s right, of course?’
Murphy leaned back in his chair and thought for a second. ‘Do it, but only because of the circumstances. I’m sure his parents would be happy with us for doing so and not give one about privacy issues. As far as we’re aware, he’s missing, presumed in danger, so we use anything we can.’
‘We’ve already been through his sock drawer, the very definition of invading privacy,’ Rossi said, a ghost of a smile on her face. ‘Probably boring anyway. He’s a prospective MP, desperate not to get into any scandal until he’s been in the actual job for more than five minutes. I imagine he’ll have scrubbed the thing clean.’
Murphy gave her a look.
‘OK, odds are the
re’s something,’ Rossi said, the ghost smile becoming real now. ‘Still, he looks far too clean-cut and a bit geeky for anything too weird. We’ll get access and let you know.’ Rossi beckoned to DS Graham Harris, who wheeled himself over to her side of the desk. They began to speak in low tones.
Murphy went back to recent John Doe cases, of which there were an alarming number. Most would be identified quickly, but some would be left to drift: the homeless, the missing, the immigrant, the loner. All lying in a morgue in the centre of Liverpool with no one to claim them as their own.
Most were too old to be Sam, but a couple caught his eye. He prepared a message and sent it to the coroner, thankful that he didn’t have to do so in person. Dr Houghton wasn’t exactly the first man he would choose to spend time with. The antagonism between them had been one-sided for a long time, but Murphy’s dislike of Houghton had grown and now the feeling was more than mutual.
‘Couple of deads in the morgue to look into,’ Murphy said, waiting for Rossi’s head to pop up from behind the monitor. ‘Nothing that promising, though. Same age bracket, but one is almost pointless checking out. How are you getting on over there?’
‘Facebook is open, just waiting for Twitter. Only messages to do with work, from a cursory glance. Will take us time to go back any further.’
‘If he is in danger, there’s a possibility they’ll have been deleted anyway.’
Rossi clicked her pen against her teeth for a few seconds. ‘Any word on his phone?’
Murphy checked his notes. ‘Last switched on four days ago, which is the same day he went missing. Bounced off a mast in the city centre, but nothing since then. Must have been out in town.’
‘What time was that?’
Murphy looked again. ‘Some time just before midnight.’
‘Could be on CCTV, we could track him from that.’
‘Already on it,’ Murphy replied, dropping his notes onto a stack of others which he would get around to shifting off his desk at some point. ‘Not exactly a small area to check though. There’s also the issue of how long this’ll stay out of the media for. The more we check into things, the more likely it is someone will talk.’