by Luca Veste
Murphy checked his watch, waiting for the apartment door to open. Looked around and raised an eyebrow at Rossi, who shrugged in reply. Bass heavy music came from behind another door in the corridor.
‘Taking their time.’
‘Students for you.’
The door opened a few seconds later, revealing a couple seemingly clinging to each other for dear life.
Murphy cleared his throat. ‘I’m Detective Inspector David Murphy, this is DS Laura Rossi. I’m told you knew we were coming?’
‘Yes,’ the woman answered from behind a damp tissue. She looked frighteningly young to Murphy’s eyes. Dainty features, small in stature, with just socks covering her feet. The long cardigan she was wearing seemed at least two sizes too big for her, the sleeves balled up in her hands. ‘Do you want to come in?’
Murphy shifted on the balls of his feet. Rossi took over. ‘It looks like it could get a bit crowded if we’re all inside. Is there somewhere else we can go, somewhere a little private?’
‘There’s a communal kitchen downstairs that no one really uses. We could go there?’
‘Perfect.’ Murphy replied.
Five minutes later, they were led down to the kitchen. The young woman had introduced herself as Rebecca and her boyfriend as Will. A small breakfast bar with three stools took up most of the space, with Murphy electing to stand to the side as Rossi sat opposite the couple.
‘So when was the last time you saw Donna?’
Rebecca had gained controlled of her sobbing. ‘Last Monday evening, around six. We had a Maccies and then she said she needed to go up to uni to do some revision. She’s done all-nighters before, so I wasn’t too bothered when she wasn’t back when I went to bed.’
‘Where does she usually go to study?’ Rossi said, her eyes not lifting from her notepad.
‘The library. It’s open twenty-four hours, so she usually goes there. I think it was probably to get out of the flat, bit more space and that.’
Murphy studied the boyfriend, looking for any sign that he knew more than his silence was letting on. Tried boring a hole into his head using just his eyes. Got nowhere other than a sharp pain in his own head from overstraining.
‘Okay,’ Rossi continued. ‘So what happened next?’
‘Well, the next morning she still hadn’t come home, so I texted her. Usually she replies really quickly, but I didn’t get anything back. I was worried, but thought she’d just crashed out somewhere. I went up to uni and checked the library to see if she was still there, but she wasn’t. I left it a few hours longer, and then started ringing around. No one had heard from her. I tried ringing and texting all day but got nowhere. So, I called the police that evening. We’ve been waiting for news for almost a week.’
‘We’re sorry it wasn’t better news,’ Rossi replied. ‘Was Donna worried about anything? Concerned about someone following her perhaps?’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘She was just normal. Stressed a bit because of her exams, but nothing out of the ordinary.’
Murphy shifted forward. ‘Where were you that night, Will?’
Will lifted his head at the sound of Murphy’s voice. ‘I was out with mates, and got back to the flat around twelve. Wasn’t I, Bec?’
Murphy watched as Will turned to Rebecca, something flitting across her eyes, which was followed by a quiet nod. ‘I’m going to need the names of your mates.’
Will turned back to Murphy. ‘You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?’
‘Not saying anything yet,’ Murphy replied, keeping eye contact with him. ‘I’m just covering all bases. Nothing to worry about I’d imagine.’
Will seemed to accept this with a nod. He gave Rossi a few names and took out his phone to provide her with numbers.
Murphy turned his attention to Rebecca. ‘What was Donna studying?’
Rebecca had watched the exchange between Murphy and her boyfriend open-mouthed, and took a few seconds to respond. Murphy tapped his foot, waiting. ‘History,’ she said eventually.
‘We’ll need a list of anyone else she was friends with, anyone she had arguments with, or fallen out with lately. Don’t leave anyone out. Understand?’
Rebecca nodded, before breaking down and crying once more.
Murphy rolled his eyes
‘Don’t you think that was a little harsh?’
Murphy grunted at Rossi in reply. Bloody students, he thought, which was about as far as his sympathy went for the couple they’d just left. He was driving back to the station, his foot not really lifting much off the accelerator. He wanted to get back and start making some headway. Time was passing them by.
‘I mean, they seemed pretty upset,’ Rossi continued. ‘They’re only students you know. Just felt a little over the top.’
‘Laura, if I want advice, I’ll ask for it. Now instead of wondering about those two dipshit students and their feelings, let’s work out what’s next.’
Rossi sighed. ‘Okay. I’m guessing we start at the university? Start interviewing?’
‘Yes. We check in first and get the team working. There’s a lot of work to do. I want that boyfriend checking out. Something’s off with him. I think you should talk to the girl on her own.’
‘Really, you think so? Seemed okay to me.’
Murphy snorted. ‘Always look for the easiest explanation. This letter has us all thinking too broadly. It’ll probably end up being someone she’s turned down or something. I want him checking.’
‘Okay. I went to that uni, you know. Maybe I should get in contact with some of my old tutors. Might get us somewhere a bit quicker.’
Murphy went back to grunting.
Experiment Two
She’d been asleep.
Lying on the mattress, or at least what she hoped was a mattress, sleep had taken her without her welcoming it. She’d been crying, she remembered that. And then she was floating into nothingness. As random thoughts and words faded away, she couldn’t recall at what point the room disappeared around her.
She’d been dreaming. Lost on a whisper of consciousness, gone forever.
She rubbed at her eyes with greasy palms. At least she wasn’t crying anymore, that was a bonus. One-nil to the petrified girl in the pitch black room.
She took her palms away. Her eyes fighting to become accustomed to the dark once more. She could make out some shapes, but nothing concrete.
She laughed, the sound of it echoing back from the walls. It made her recoil, it didn’t sound like her.
Everything surrounding her was concrete. The walls, the floor. But from touch alone, she guessed the door was something a little different.
She stood, found the wall next to the mattress. Placed her left palm against it, and walked slowly, tracing her way around the room. She stopped as she got to the corner, turned to her right and carried on. She passed her fingers over the ridges of the door, into the next corner. Turned right and walked forward.
Her foot struck porcelain. She felt around the top of the cistern and then downwards, finding the seat. She placed it down and turned around.
After she relieved herself, she instinctively reached for toilet roll. She was surprised to find some there, thinking it would be another home comfort she would have to do without. She flushed, and started the process again. Placing her fingers against the wall above the toilet and moving back towards the mattress in the corner of the same wall. Her feet bumped against something and she stopped. Crouching down, she moved her hand down and began feeling around. More smooth surface. She knocked on it, the sound created sounding similar to the toilet she’d discovered earlier. She grasped both sides of the porcelain, feeling with her palms as she stood up. As she reached the top, it became wider, before dipping down dramatically on the other side.
She felt the outline of something metallic, a hole at one end, fixed to a smooth surface.
A sink.
She tried the tap, twisting it. Water came out, cold. She ran her hands underneath. She cu
pped her hands together and splashed her face.
This was good. A place she could wash and feel refreshed at any time. ‘Things are looking up,’ she said aloud, the sarcasm echoing back at her.
Great, talk to yourself out loud. That’ll stop you going crazy, she thought.
She turned the tap off, and moved her hands around, trying to feel for a plug. She couldn’t find one. It’ll do though, she decided.
She wiped her hands dry on the front of her dress, then moved back toward the mattress and stood next to it. She could feel the frustration bubbling up inside her again, her hands gripping the ends of her skirt and twisting it around and around. Nobody had the right to do this to her, nobody. She wanted to do something, anything, to release it.
‘Can you hear me? I’m talking to you. Can you hear me? Let me out now. People will be looking for me, people you don’t want to meet. You best let me go now, you bastard.’ Her hands were shaking. Not just through anger and frustration.
It was fear. She needed to control herself, push down the dread which was swarming over her. She was stuck there. In the darkness with no escape.
‘Let me out, please. Just let me go.’
Silence was her reward. She listened closely for anything else.
There was something, she couldn’t place what it was though. She moved alongside the mattress again, trying to pinpoint the noise. In the next corner she stopped and listened.
A light humming noise from above her. She looked up but couldn’t see anything. Just darkness.
She reached up towards the sound, but her small stature betrayed her. Her arms slumped back to her sides. She needed something to occupy her, to stop the terror bubbling inside her from increasing. She placed her back to the wall, the mattress to her right, and counted off paces to the next wall.
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six …’
Her foot hit the wall. The door was to her left. She placed her back to it and walked towards the toilet.
‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven …’
On the seventh pace she slipped her foot past the toilet bowl and hit wall.
Six by seven. Almost as big as the box room at her home.
A noise by the door, a lock turning. She turned towards it and something clanged down. The hatch. Something was pushed through, clattered to the floor. The hatch closed again. Jemma stayed still for a moment.
No sound.
She went towards the door, pausing as her feet brushed against something. She bent down and felt around. A plastic bag, something squishing inside as she squeezed the content. Her mouth salivated as she realised what it was. From the shape and texture she thought it was some kind of sandwich. She moved her hand around and found something else. It was wrapped, long, rectangular. Chocolate bar she guessed.
She was hungry, but stopped herself from tearing open the food and devouring it. Anything could be in there. She didn’t want to lose any more control than she already had.
‘I’m not eating this, you hear me? Someone’s coming for me. I don’t need this.’
She threw the bag containing the sandwiches against the door. Lifted herself up and moved back to the mattress.
‘Someone’s coming for me. You hear that you fucking shit, you best hear me. You’re screwed, you hear that. There’ll be nothing left of you.’
She heard a whirring noise. It came to her then, what it was.
‘You’re filming me? You sick twisted animal. Film this.’
She stuck two fingers up towards the corner where she thought the camera was placed.
Lights blared out. She shielded her eyes. Bright light from the ceiling illuminated the room. She’d been in darkness so long it took a while for her to remove her arm from her eyes. She squinted against the brightness. The walls were dark, her eyes adjusting constantly against the sudden light. All around her, written on the wall. Words and words. Blood red, daubed across, surrounding her, causing her to flinch back. She moved towards the writing, reaching out her hand and tracing a fingertip over the words.
Alone, friendless, abandoned, deserted, forsaken, solitary.
Isolated.
Over and over. Written on the walls. She pulled her fingers back, looking at the tips of them as she did. Red stains.
She looked around and saw the sandwiches near the door, the Crunchie bar lying close by.
‘No one is coming. Eat, don’t eat. Nothing changes that simple fact. You’re alone here.’
The voice seeped from the walls, like blood running down the concrete. The words in red becoming larger, pulsating, alive. She blinked, and they went back to normal.
‘You fucking … I’ll kill you. I’ll tear you apart, you sick bastard.’
A low chuckling sound was her response.
Then, the lights went out. The darkness returned.
That was day one.
10
Monday 28th January 2013 – Day Two
Almost thirty-six hours after the body of Donna McMahon was found in Sefton Park, Murphy and Rossi parked up near the City of Liverpool University.
Liverpool is the home of four universities. One near the city centre, which could be seen from the windows of the police station where Murphy worked. Two more further out from the waterfront, one to the north near Ormskirk, one to the south, Childwall University.
City University lay just beyond the outskirts of the main hub of Liverpool. In another of Liverpool’s little paradoxes, the city centre isn’t actually in the centre of the city, but to the left of centre as you look at it from above, built out of the port at Albert Dock. Being a former major worldwide port, that was where the money came from, the shipping merchants of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries building their big houses just outside the centre. Murphy had a book somewhere, which detailed the whole history of it, but couldn’t remember where he’d left it now. Probably lost in one house move or another.
Murphy looked around the campus, the vastness of the area taking him aback. There were walkways linking the different buildings, with the students guild building smack bang in the middle. Directly opposite was a bookshop which seemed to only stock large textbooks, which Murphy imagined students would need a wheelbarrow to cart around.
‘We need to walk down to the old library, and there’s a building near there that houses the history department,’ Rossi said, a folded map in her hand. ‘It’s moved since I was here.’
‘I don’t see a library.’
‘It’s straight ahead. About ten minutes’ walk.’
Murphy stopped. ‘Exactly how big is this place? I thought this was it.’
Rossi turned, but didn’t stop. ‘Big.’
Murphy moved, shaking his head. ‘No wonder they had to increase the fees. The council tax alone must be bankrupting.’
‘I doubt they pay …’
‘I know, I know,’ Murphy interrupted, ‘I just didn’t realise it was so big.’
They continued to walk in silence. A few minutes later, a walk across a busy main road, a shortcut across a small grassed park area, and they were at the bottom of the steps which led to the history building. Grand stone steps led upwards to a bulky door, old brass door knocker and number on the front. In the window to the side, a poster hung, asking for solidarity against university cuts. Murphy rolled his eyes and pushed open the door, holding it out for Rossi.
‘What’s the advisor’s name again?’ Murphy asked, as they ascended the stairs inside the building.
‘Lynn Ripley. She was here when I was studying. Don’t know her though.’
They stopped outside the office on the first floor, the staircase continuing upwards to more floors than Murphy could count. He reached out and knocked. A voice from within told them to enter.
The office was neat, tidy, efficient. The window faced out onto the green they’d crossed earlier. Lynn Ripley sat back in her large office chair, smiling tightly. Her hands were clasped together on the lap of her long skirt. White blouse, buttons closed all the way up ov
er her ample chest, to her neck.
They introduced themselves, and Murphy allowed Rossi to take the lead as he scanned the office. Everything had its place, tucked away, maximising space. Clearly labelled. Nothing would be lost in this office.
‘We’re all in a state of shock in the department,’ Murphy heard Lynn say as he tuned back in, ‘she was well thought of by the staff. She would have gone far.’
Murphy waited for the tears to fall, but she composed herself. ‘What can you tell us about Donna?’ he asked after a few moments of silence.
‘She was well liked. Seemed to always have someone to talk to, many friends.’
‘Anyone special?’
‘Not that I know of. We don’t usually get involved in that side of things unless there’s a problem.’
Murphy scratched at his beard. ‘What about teachers, lecturers, anyone take a special interest?’
Ripley took a moment to think and then answered him, ‘No, it was all strictly professional with her lecturers as far as I was aware.’
‘Any problems with other students? Anyone who hung around when he wasn’t wanted, that type of thing?’ Murphy moved forward, leaning on a filing cabinet for support.
‘She lived with a girl … I forget her name …’
‘Rebecca,’ Rossi said.
‘That’s right. She has a boyfriend. Little stocky thing, shaved head. Short man syndrome.’
Murphy nodded, waiting.
‘I saw them arguing a couple of weeks back. In the library. Only caught a bit of the conversation, but it was definitely heated.’
‘What did you hear?’ Murphy asked, the wheels turning.
‘Donna was saying she was going to tell her. I don’t know what that meant.’
Murphy breathed out. ‘I think I have a pretty good idea.’
They walked briskly back to the car, Murphy talking a mile a minute as he laid out his theory to Rossi. ‘So, Donna finds out Will is doing the dirty or worse, behind Rebecca’s back. She threatens to tell Rebecca everything, Will loses his mind, and kills her.’