Then She Was Gone

by Luca Veste

  ‘Are you going to close that? Only I don’t really want people seeing me coming in. I had to wait until your other half left before knocking.’

  Rossi shook her head and closed the door. She turned and faced her brother. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Do you want to put that down for a start?’ Vincenzo said, giving her a smile as if this was a normal meeting between them. ‘I don’t fancy feeling that being wrapped around my head.’

  Rossi looked down and realised she was still holding onto the telescopic baton she kept near the front door. She dropped it to the floor, then bent down to pick it up and place it back in the vase where it usually lived.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Vincenzo turned his back on her rather than reply and made his way into the living room. She followed him, standing near the doorway and folding her arms, watching him as he sat down on the sofa.

  ‘Looks like I might be in a bit of trouble,’ Vincenzo said, leaning forwards and clasping his hands together. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

  ‘What’s happened, Cenzo?’ Rossi said, still standing in the open doorway. ‘Tell me what’s been going on.’

  ‘Is the kettle on?’

  ‘It can wait. First, you tell me what you’ve done. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.’

  Vincenzo sighed, then moved his hands to the top of his head, smoothing down his thick, dark hair. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ Rossi replied, unfolding her arms and moving into the room. She perched on the arm of the sofa opposite to Vincenzo. ‘Tell me one thing before we start . . . have you got anything to do with what’s happened this past week?’

  There was silence as Vincenzo looked towards the ceiling, hands interlocked behind his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally, dropping his head down and looking across at Rossi.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ Vincenzo said, hands dropping to his knees as he leaned back into the sofa. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Look, I’m not saying I’ve been going around killing people. I hope you know me better than to think that.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rossi said, hoping her voice held more conviction than she felt. ‘I don’t understand how you’re mixed up in any of this, though.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, neither do I.’

  ‘Then start talking. Because I need to know exactly how far this goes.’

  Vincenzo looked up towards the ceiling again. Rossi could see the effect of the previous few days on his face now. Lines creased his face, dark rings showed under puffed-up eyes. Every movement he made seemed to take more effort than it should have done.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I was much older than most of the people at university. I was treated like a stranger there, as someone that wasn’t like them. There were other mature students, but it was difficult, you know. I got talking to one guy in the first week, in the library. Sam Byrne.’

  ‘Mannagia . . .’

  ‘He seemed all right. Bit more grown up than the rest of the kids I’d met before then. We had a very interesting conversation, about history, politics, that sort of thing. Disagreed on some things, but we got on, you know? We ended up going to the pub from there and carrying on for a few more hours. He was bright, intelligent, but seemed to have something more about him than the other students. It’s why he’s done so well. There was always a point to everything he did. Very goal-orientated, as they say.’

  Rossi kept her mouth closed as she waited for Vincenzo to speak again.

  ‘He had this idea for a club,’ Vincenzo said, bringing her attention back to him. ‘He wanted to do something different. He wanted to bring a bit of class and decorum to the place, he said, but I knew there was more than just that going on. He wanted me to help him, but it didn’t work out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was about money,’ Vincenzo replied, giving her a quick glance and wry smile. ‘The people who joined, they were all similar to Sam. They all came from money, but another thing they had in common was that they felt they shouldn’t have been there. Not at a university in Liverpool – no matter that’s it’s a prestigious red-brick university They thought they deserved to be somewhere different. That’s where it started. You know that thing about starting out with resentment in mind?’

  ‘Never works out well . . .’

  ‘Exactly. They were all angry from the start and that anger bled into the club. I didn’t want any part of it. I think Sam thought I’d add some kind of respectability to the group, being older and more mature, but I don’t know really. He had his own reasons, I’m sure. Anyway, once I’d listened to some of the things they had in mind, I knew it probably wasn’t for me. I wasn’t about to spend a few grand on a suit for a kick-off.’

  ‘What does that club have to do with what’s happened now, Cenzo?’ Rossi said, dropping onto the sofa.

  ‘It grew, unbelievably to me. I thought it would just be those eight lads, getting together and drinking real ale like they were in their fifties or something. I don’t know how they did it, but it became something. I would speak to Sam and a few of the others every now and again, but I still wanted no part of it. Anyway, it became something, that club. They would throw parties, which would be legendary. They had something about them. It was attractive to both men and women, even though it was a “boy’s” club. No women members at all. And it wasn’t just parties. There was accusations flying around all the time. That they would cheat on exams, hire people to write their essays. Then, there was the stuff they got up to at those parties. Dozens of women, all wondering what the hell they got themselves into. Dropped and discarded after they’d had their fun. Shamed.’

  ‘Something happened in their final year,’ Rossi interrupted.

  ‘See, that’s the thing,’ Vincenzo said, shaking his head. ‘I knew it would come out about her, but she wasn’t the only one, Laura. There were many young girls over the years with similar stories. She was just the only one that tried to fight back against them. The others . . . they just accepted what happened to them as part of university life or something. I don’t know. There were one or two who maybe said something, but it was quickly hushed up. Sam and his friends had power from very early on. Their parents were influential, had friends in high places, the usual bollocks.’

  ‘Why is she different?’

  Vincenzo closed his eyes for a second and looked away. ‘She was the last one, I was determined about that. Turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.’

  ‘We know what Sam Byrne was doing.’

  ‘He wasn’t exactly discreet about it. That guy was screwed in the head. He would have killed someone eventually. I know it, you know it.’

  ‘So, what did you do?’

  There was a moment when she felt she’d gone too far. Then he spoke.

  ‘I didn’t do anything about it. That’s why I’m worried about her.’

  Thirty-five

  Murphy could feel the shift in the mood of the incident room. It helped that he’d felt it before, on too many occasions. A sense of losing. There had been a battle going on all week and there was a feeling that they weren’t winning any of it. The clock was ticking down now – that was another thing they could feel.

  It was almost over.

  Another photograph was added to the others already displayed on the murder board. Neil Letherby, another name to be crossed off the list.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  It was a question Murphy had heard a few times in the previous hour. He turned to DC Hashem and tried not to shrug in response.

  ‘We keep looking,’ he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. ‘He’ll be coming to Liverpool. That’s what has happened to the last three. I know there’s two suicides, but maybe whoever is doing this was worried about being caught. Now, it’s all zeroing in on
the city.’

  ‘I can’t believe they let him get away.’

  Murphy didn’t respond, preferring instead to keep his thoughts on the uniforms in Manchester to himself. The call had gone in for Simon Jackson to be placed in protective custody and moved out of the building. When the uniforms had gone up to his office, he was already gone.

  ‘Look, there was nothing we could have done . . .’

  ‘I don’t know about that . . .’

  ‘Well, that’s the way it is. We offered to take him last night, but he refused. We had people at his workplace, but we can’t have eyes everywhere. This isn’t over.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  Murphy ran his fingers over his head, caring little how the remaining hair on his head looked once he’d messed it up. ‘We need to work out where Simon Jackson could be.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  A few minutes later, Murphy was doing the only thing he could think of – going back to the beginning. He was downstairs in the evidence room going through everything they had collected so far.

  ‘We’re looking for anything which may give us an idea of some kind of pattern,’ he said, looking over the assembled tables at the young DCs gathered there. ‘I know it’s a long shot, but at the moment, it’s all we have.’

  He waited for them to start going over the crime scenes and the evidence from them, whilst he concentrated on what had been needling him all week.

  ‘The forensics report for each crime scene is shocking, really,’ DC Hale said, sitting down with a stack of paper in front of him. ‘Just nothing of any use.’

  ‘Keep going with it,’ DC Kirkham said to him, organising his own pile to go through. ‘You never know what’ll jump out of it.’

  Murphy listened to the various conversations around him, staring at the things which had been brought from Sam Byrne’s office. There was something there which had stuck in his mind, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

  ‘It strikes me that we’re almost looking for a connection between them all,’ DC Hashem said, walking back to the table as the door closed behind her. Murphy spied the new folders in her hand, Chris Roberts’s name marked on the top file. Someone must have just delivered it, he thought.

  ‘We already know the connection, though, don’t we?’ Hashem continued, stopping in the middle of the room for a second, before moving towards the table again.

  ‘The club at university,’ DC Kirkham said, the pen in his hand travelling up to his mouth.

  ‘Exactly,’ DC Hashem replied, sitting down at the table and laying the files down in front of her. ‘Did we ever get any information from the university about that?’

  ‘Nothing useful,’ Murphy said, joining the conversation finally. ‘They acknowledged the existence of it, but said it was unofficial and had nothing to do with the university, as such. Denied any connection whatsoever.’

  ‘It still exists though.’

  ‘Yes, as far as we know . . .’

  ‘And before you ask,’ DC Kirkham said, cutting in once he’d removed the pen from the corner of his mouth, ‘we did try and speak to current members. No one was very helpful, though. Me and Mike went over there, but it was all very cloak-and-dagger. They barely even recognised the names we gave them. We crashed one of their meetings. They were more interested in telling us about the fact they were no longer gathering in the old pub round the corner. They have a whole meeting room thing going on now, at the Old Vic on the campus. The art gallery and museum place. Even if they did know something, I doubt we’d get any info from them without bringing them into the station and interviewing them under caution.’

  ‘All those rich boys have a bloody good solicitor on hand, anyway,’ DC Hale said, shaking his head. ‘Not going to get very far there.’

  ‘Back to the old-fashioned way then,’ Murphy said, returning to the stacks of paper in front of him. ‘See if something here gives us an answer instead.’

  Murphy spent the next hour reading through the files garnered from Sam’s office. Most contained correspondence that had no influence on the case. There were a couple of nasty letters, which he put to one side to make sure they had been followed up on. However, it seemed unlikely that this was all the work of a disgruntled member of the public. A left-wing activist who killed and dismembered rich Tory boys was probably what certain people were hoping for, but he didn’t think it was going to be the answer here.

  There were a number of photographs, which he stacked together. Some were framed, others loose and still in sleeves from a couple of different developers. It was odd to see them again – everyone seemed to just save their photographs on their phones or computers these days.

  ‘Where’s the report on Sam Byrne’s computer?’ Murphy asked no one in particular. DC Kirkham’s head popped up first.

  ‘Think it’s in . . . Ah, here it is. I had a quick scan of it, but Graham was working on it. If he hasn’t mentioned anything, I doubt there was anything there.’

  As if on cue, the door swung backwards and DC Harris wheeled himself into the room.

  ‘Speak of the devil . . .’ Murphy said, standing up and then sitting back down quickly. He’d once tried to help DC Harris and been given down the banks for it for the following half hour. He wasn’t about to repeat that mistake again. ‘Just talking about Sam Byrne’s computer. Anything of interest?’

  ‘Not really,’ DC Harris replied, making his way to an empty spot at the table. ‘Bunch of porn, but I’m not sure that’s anything out of the ordinary. A lot of “barely legal” stuff, but nothing that doesn’t seem professionally put together, rather than amateur. Usually means the girls are old enough.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’ DC Hale said, files in front of him forgotten as he leaned forwards on the table.

  ‘Mostly nudes. The only stuff of any interest was the harder-edged images. BDSM, that sort of thing. A lot of girls tied up and that sort of thing. Never understood the fascination with that, to be honest.’

  Murphy tuned out as he heard the conversation continue. He was likely to become annoyed with one of them if he carried on listening. Instead, he drew the photographs closer, going through each one in turn.

  It was a minute or so before he found the photograph which had been on the edge of his memory all week. It had been lying in a drawer, rather than hung on the wall like you would expect it to.

  Eight men, all in tailcoats, holding champagne flutes in front of them. Wide grins plastered across their faces.

  ‘I’ve seen that picture before,’ a voice from beside him said. Murphy turned to see DC Kirkham. ‘It was on Simon Jackson’s wall. That’s what drew my attention when we were in his office and he was denying being in contact with Byrne.’

  Murphy was aware that the voices inside the room had died down and everyone was listening. ‘This frame,’ he said, discarding the packets of photographs and leaving only the framed pictures on the table, ‘it’s different to all the others.’

  ‘Older, maybe?’

  Murphy hummed in response, but continued to stare at the photograph. Along the bottom edge of the photo, there was something that caught his eye.

  ‘Pass me the box of gloves, Jack,’ Murphy said, waiting for Kirkham to slide them his way and then putting a pair on. He turned the frame over and undid the clasps on the back, removing the piece of card which held the photo in place. He turned the frame back round and let the photograph fall onto the table.

  ‘He’s folded the photograph to make it fit the frame,’ DC Kirkham said, leaning on the table next to him. Murphy straightened out the photograph and read what was inscribed on the section that had been hidden from view.

  Where It All Began – The Abercromby Boys

  ‘Sir.’

  Murphy looked up to see DC Hashem standing on the other side of the table and pointing towards the photograph.

  ‘There’s something written on the back.’

  Murphy turned the photograph, the scrawl of handwriting there now clear to see
.

  Sam,

  Do you remember this night? End of first year, I think. This was when you knew it was all going to plan, wasn’t it? That you had created something that would satisfy your craven desires. This was the beginning of the end for you.

  I’m coming back.

  Everyone in this photograph will pay for what they did.

  A Friend.

  Murphy finished reading, remaining silent as he let everyone take in what was written on the photograph.

  ‘That’s the same handwriting that was on the note found with Matthew Williams.’

  Murphy turned to nod at DC Hashem. He began to formulate a reply but didn’t get a chance to.

  ‘I think I’ve found out where James Morley is going to be later.’

  Murphy faced DC Hale who was holding a flyer of some sort, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘This,’ DC Hale replied, sliding the paper over towards Murphy. He picked it up, reading the simple message written on there.

  THE RETURN

  ONE OF THE ORIGINAL LEADERS IS COMING BACK.

  FOUNDING MEMBER GRANDMASTER MORLEY WILL BE SPEAKING TO US ALL

  3 P.M. – FRIDAY 23rd – THE OLD VIC

  ‘I know where that is,’ DC Kirkham said. ‘Do you think . . .’

  ‘Everyone, let’s go,’ Murphy said, feeling the rush return. They had it.

  ‘Where are we going?’ DC Hashem asked no one in particular, looking confused as they moved towards the exit.

  Murphy stopped in his tracks at the door, turning swiftly round and looking above everyone’s heads. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  DC Kirkham thought for a second, then his mouth dropped open.

  ‘He’s not going to stop at just the eight men,’ Murphy said, moving out of the door and starting to jog down the corridor. ‘He’s going to end the whole thing.’

  Murphy thought of the place where the men all met up. The Old Vic, the art gallery and museum . . . the cafe downstairs where Jess had suggested to Sarah she should go that afternoon.