Then She Was Gone

by Luca Veste

  ‘Once a week,’ Mary replied, staring past the two detectives at the wall behind them. ‘He was very busy, so it was just quick phone chats. I haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘I know this is a difficult time for you both, but I really need you to think about any possible reasons Sam may have been in danger. If he was mixed up in something potentially dangerous, however small.’

  Mary looked at her husband who didn’t return her gaze. ‘No. He was not involved in anything that could lead to something like this happening. He was a good man. Was trying to do right by his community and his country.’

  Murphy watched Mary whilst Arthur spoke, frowning as she gripped her knees more.

  ‘Mary, look at me,’ Murphy said, his voice deliberately soft. ‘If you think you know something, and really want justice for your son, then you need to tell us.’

  She shook her head in response, but he could see hesitation.

  ‘I imagine it was one of those bloody people being let into the country. Have you checked it wasn’t a terrorist incident? I hope you have. Open borders and damn liberal minds cause things like this to occur to good people . . .’

  ‘Arthur, do please stop,’ Mary said, her hands now shaking. ‘We both know what’s going on here . . .’

  ‘That’s enough. We don’t need to talk about any of that.’

  Murphy looked over at Rossi who was staring at Mary.

  ‘We can’t keep this quiet. It’s impossible. They should know everything.’

  Arthur stood up, Murphy shifted forwards on the sofa waiting for him to make a move.

  ‘There are things that people outside of this house do not need to know,’ Arthur said, looming over his wife who sank back in her chair a little. ‘Unimportant information that will only besmirch our son’s reputation. Do you want to do that to him? Really, now?’

  ‘You think his image matters more than getting justice for our son? You’re not worried about him at all. You’re worried about yourself. That’s how it’s always been. You’re scared that he will damage your credibility. Your reputation.’

  Murphy and Rossi watched the exchange in stony silence, looking between the couple as if they were watching a tennis match. In this case, a tennis match fuelled by thirty years of pent-up anger.

  Arthur stood over his wife for a few seconds longer, then crossed the room to a large wooden bureau. His hand was poised over the handle. Murphy guessed it was where he kept his alcohol, but that he wasn’t prepared to start drinking in front of them.

  ‘Might I suggest something,’ Rossi said, lifting herself off the sofa. ‘How about Mary and I go and make some tea and have a chat.’

  Mary looked up and gave a slight nod. Arthur still hadn’t turned round, but his hand dropped to his side.

  Rossi waited for Mary to walk out of the room before turning to Murphy and mouthing, ‘Talk to him.’

  Murphy watched her leave, then looked at the great bulk of Arthur. He had to stop himself from sighing.

  Fifteen

  The kitchen, a cottage-style set-up with exposed brick and wooden beams overhead, was much as Rossi had expected given the type of house Arthur and Mary Byrne lived in. There was a large Aga, which took up most of the space along one wall, and a farmhouse sink beneath the window. Mary crossed to the kettle situated on the thick wooden worktop and switched it on.

  ‘I’m sorry about my husband,’ Mary said, her back to Rossi. ‘He is so ingrained with his former life that he doesn’t understand that sometimes we have to think a little more emotionally about things.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Rossi replied, pulling a white chair away from the small table. ‘It’s a difficult time for you both. We understand that.’

  ‘I just don’t want us to keep something quiet that could be important. Especially when it’s because someone is concerned about the way it makes them look. Like anyone would care any more. Arthur hasn’t been an MP for over ten years now. He’s been forgotten about, but he doesn’t want to accept it.’

  ‘What is it, Mary? What do you want to tell me?’

  Mary waited for the kettle to finish boiling. The other two people in the house had been forgotten, Rossi thought. She waited for Mary to make the tea and bring over the drinks to the table. Mary produced a small jug of milk, which Rossi added to the mug in front of her, but no sugar was offered, which was annoying.

  There was a hesitation as Mary looked towards the kitchen door, as if suddenly remembering the two men in the house. Then she sat down opposite Rossi, cradling the mug in her hands as if to feed on the warmth resonating from it.

  ‘Sam was always a precocious child,’ Mary said, staring down at the table surface. ‘Always wanting to do something, or talk about things on his mind. He was reading very early, talking in full sentences sooner than any child I’d known before. Very intelligent. The problem was he would become bored easily. Nothing was ever enough for him. There was always something else he thought he should be doing. That’s why he failed to get into the universities in the south. He could never focus when he was younger.’

  ‘You didn’t have any other children?’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ Mary replied, shutting down that avenue of questioning quickly.

  ‘He still managed to achieve a lot,’ Rossi said, blowing on her mug a little. ‘It takes effort to get to the position he did.’

  ‘He was intelligent, as I said. Once he calmed down a little, knuckled down at university, he was always going to do something important. There were other things, though, which influenced him.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Power,’ Mary said, tracing a circle with one finger on the table. ‘He had the same lust as his father. He wanted to be respected by the many, not just the few. Politics has that effect on people. It seduces you into thinking you’re in a position which is exalted. That you have an effect on people’s lives. He enjoyed that belief.’

  ‘What was he like outside of that life?’

  Mary gave a tight-lipped smile. ‘He was always very polite, staid and proper. With the right people.’

  ‘There was another side to him?’ Rossi asked, glancing around the kitchen and frowning as she tried to work out what was missing in the house. ‘One that he didn’t show to just anyone.’

  ‘We tried our best with him, we really did. I wanted him to know that there was nothing that would make us think any less of him. He was our son. We wouldn’t turn our backs on him.’

  Rossi studied Mary, the older woman was still looking down at the table. ‘What are you trying to say, Mary?’

  ‘Well . . . I assumed wrong. That’s all.’

  ‘Assumed what wrong?’

  ‘I thought perhaps he was different. That he was single because of another reason.’

  Rossi had to stop herself from sighing audibly. The usual dancing around the topic, which she saw so often from the older generation when it came to anything to do with sexuality. ‘You thought he was gay, that’s it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it so bluntly.’

  ‘And you were wrong about that? Was he worried about his sexuality?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘No, I was wrong. He wasn’t that way. There was something else, though. Something he didn’t want us to know.’

  ‘Did you know about the flat he kept in town?’

  There was another hesitation from the woman. Rossi waited patiently for an answer.

  ‘I don’t know much about his private life.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘I don’t want to go into many specifics. There have been a few issues over the years we have had to deal with, that’s all. He didn’t have a normal life in that regard.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  Mary didn’t answer, seemingly noticing the tea in front of her for the first time. She took a long sip, then set it down and looked at Rossi. ‘Whilst he was in university, he was part of a group of friends who got up to some high jinks. Arthur had to smooth over some difficult moments, but t
here was nothing serious.’

  Rossi felt there was more, but didn’t want to push too hard. ‘What kind of moments?’

  ‘As I said, nothing too serious. They would drink, as students do these days, and sometimes that led to over exuberance. A few local businesses weren’t too happy. That was all easily sorted out, however.’

  ‘There are other things, though, aren’t there?’

  ‘Girls. More than one. I never knew specifics, but eventually we had a girl turn up here,’ Mary said, looking away and screwing her eyes shut. ‘About a year or two ago. Just came up and knocked on the door.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘She never told us her name. She could barely speak, poor thing. Began to ramble on about our son, about what he’d done to her. About what he and his friends had done.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She was so upset. Crying and wailing. I brought her in the house, because I didn’t know what else to do. She . . . she said he had done things to her. Unspeakable things. Against her will. She was unstable. Crying one minute, angry the next. She wanted justice, she said, but no one would believe her.’

  Rossi swallowed and tried to remain calm. ‘What did you do about this?’

  There was a pause as Mary considered her words. ‘I couldn’t believe a word of it and she was so out of control emotionally. I had Arthur send her away. We didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t believe we could have raised a son who would do such things. Arthur said she was quite plainly lying – that she just wanted money or something.’

  ‘You told Sam about her visit?’

  Mary nodded, her eyes becoming teary for the first time since Rossi had arrived at the house with Murphy. ‘It was the first time I had seen real, aggressive anger in him. He was in a rage. Even Arthur couldn’t calm him down. He was so filled with fury. I’d never seen him like that before.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘He said he would sort it out and we never heard about it again. I asked Arthur about it a while later and he said it was all taken care of. I was . . . I didn’t want to ask any more.’

  ‘Did you ever learn anything about the girl who came here? A name, or something like that?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to know. It wasn’t something I had any interest in getting involved with. Sam seemed to be OK the next time I saw him after that and he sent me some flowers to apologise. That was enough. Now . . . now I’m worried he may have got himself into trouble and couldn’t control it.’

  Rossi sat back in her chair and took in the information. Formed a picture in her mind of a different Sam Byrne than the one she’d first imagined.

  Realised what was missing in the house.

  Photographs. There were barely any family pictures in the house. She recalled seeing one or two in the living room, but they weren’t exactly displayed prominently. It was a show home. It was a facade.

  ‘The only thing was . . . when I first spoke to Sam about the girl, he didn’t ask about her name. All he said was “which one”.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘It was like he’d been expecting it to happen. That someone was going to turn up and say these things, but he couldn’t be sure who it would be.’

  * * *

  Murphy settled back into the sofa as Arthur Byrne paced the floor. He moved quickly for a man of his years and weight. Every few turns he would remove his glasses then place them back on again, shaping as if to speak, before changing his mind.

  ‘What do you think they’re talking about in there?’ Arthur said, stopping in front of Murphy.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Murphy replied, looking up slightly at the older man. ‘Why don’t you sit down and talk to me while they’re away.’

  ‘I don’t understand the point of all this,’ Arthur said, turning around and facing his chair. ‘What does it matter what Sam did in the past. It has nothing to do with what’s happened to him now. That’s guaranteed.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘It’s not important,’ Arthur said, his voice getting quieter. The older man dropped into his chair. ‘He’s dead. What does it matter?’

  ‘Because if you want me to find who did this,’ Murphy said, moving forwards and perching on the edge of the sofa, ‘you’re going to have to tell me everything. We need to know.’

  Murphy clenched his teeth to stop them grinding together as Arthur removed his glasses once again.

  ‘He was just a boy really. All of them in university are. We coddle them too much these days, so that when we send them off to the big wide world, they’re not real men. Not like when I was younger. Now, every Tom, Dick and Harry from a council estate gets the chance to go to university. Time was, you were there on merit. It was your family that got you there. It’s all changed now, of course. Now, you can walk off the damn street and get a degree.’

  ‘You’re avoiding the subject here, Arthur.’

  ‘I know, I know. He was a boy. Eighteen, never been away from his family. His mother would still press his shirts for him, for Pete’s sake. Give young boys like that an opportunity on a plate, what did they expect?’

  Murphy felt his stomach tumble over a few rotations. ‘Boys?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arthur replied, his glasses now discarded on the arm of the chair. ‘It seems Sam had organised some kind of club whilst at university. They would convene at a pub on campus but they also met at all the best restaurants and bars. It was a group of like-minded souls, who all swore to help each other. A secret society of sorts. I was a member of something similar at Oxford, years ago. Liverpool had never seen anything like it before.’

  ‘A kind of Bullingdon Club, is that what you’re talking about?’

  ‘I don’t really know if the comparison fits, but it’s close enough.’

  Murphy stood up, walked over to the bureau and picked up one of only three photographs in the room. ‘This is them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arthur replied, without looking up at him. ‘Eight of them. They got into a little trouble during their final year.’

  ‘Tell me about that.’

  ‘They were just exuberant young boys. They chose the wrong girl to party with. She woke up the next morning making accusations. It was all sorted out.’

  ‘What sort of accusations?’

  ‘I think we can both read between the lines, can’t we?’

  Murphy bit his lip. ‘Were the girl’s accusations made official?’

  ‘No, I managed to stop it before it got that far. It wasn’t the only time their parties got a little out of hand. She was the only one who turned up again a few years later though. Look, this will have nothing to do with what’s happened to Sam now. Mary . . . she won’t let this lie, that’s all. She believes in all that karma rubbish. She thinks Sam may have done something bad when he was younger. She was always worried that it would come back to haunt him later on, but it was just boys being boys. These girls . . . they were just looking for a payout, that’s all. As soon as that one found out who a couple of the boys’ fathers were, she invented a whole story.’

  ‘Who are the other men in this picture, Arthur?’

  Arthur shook his head in response. ‘I don’t want to give out that information. You can’t make me.’

  Sixteen

  Murphy waited at the car for Rossi to finish speaking to Mary Byrne. Through the living-room window he could spy Arthur, still sitting in the chair were he’d left him. Murphy leaned against the car, blowing some warmth into his hands as the surrounding air became cooler by the second.

  ‘New best friend?’ Murphy said as Rossi made her way down the path towards him shaking her head. ‘I just hope you got something more than I did.’

  ‘She told me a story.’

  ‘I bet she did,’ Murphy replied, opening the door and getting inside the car. He whacked on the heating as soon as he’d started the engine, shaking his head as Rossi got in and removed her jacket. ‘Do you not feel the cold?’

  ‘I do,
but it’s still warm out. It’s you getting older and feeling an invisible draught everywhere we go.’

  ‘Less of the old. Come on, what did she say? We need to compare notes.’

  Rossi explained what Mary had told him, Murphy cutting in every now and again to confirm the similarities and differences between the two stories they had been told.

  ‘What do you reckon then? Think it has anything to do with his death?’

  Murphy paused for a few seconds, trying to make sense of the information they had so far. ‘Everything is jumbled up at the moment. It’s like we’re getting parts of a complete story, but it’s all out of order. We need to go back to the beginning and work out where it all starts.’

  ‘Because the start would be somewhere else?’

  ‘You talk back a lot more these days.’

  ‘You can blame that on me getting older,’ Rossi replied, smirking and running a hand through her hair. ‘I think you’re right. Nothing has made sense yet. It’s quite obvious that he and his friends at university have possibly raped a young woman – maybe women – and it’s been hushed up by his father and his powerful friends. Is that enough for someone to take revenge on him in this way years later?’

  ‘I think we’ve both seen revenge taken for much less.’

  ‘True, I suppose,’ Rossi said, giving Murphy the go-ahead to pull out after checking the road on her side was clear. ‘I still think we’re missing something.’

  ‘I’m hoping CCTV and forensics from the flat will clear up his last movements. That’ll answer a few questions.’

  ‘He was cut up. That’s not something you do unless you have something against the person. Surely? This is either another ever-so-delightful serial killer on our shores, or it’s personal.’

  ‘Could be both,’ Murphy replied, hoping he was wrong. ‘Weirder things have happened around here lately.’

  ‘Ever think we’re getting more violent?’

  ‘Not us personally, I hope?’ Murphy said, flashing Rossi a grin. ‘Unless you want to confess to something?’

  ‘No, I mean as a species. Seems like everything is getting worse the last couple of years. Murder in the news, on the streets . . . enough to drive you to drink or religion.’