Vanishing Point

by J G Alva

  Woman: “you were married before, that’s bad enough. But now a child…”

  A sob. The sound of distant traffic.

  Man: “Honey, please come home.”

  Woman: “fourteen years old. That means you were sixteen. For Christ’s sake.”

  Man: “Honey…”

  Woman: “I can’t come home. Not yet. I can’t even look at you. I need time. Just…just give me time.”

  And then the heart breaking sound of the woman sobbing.

  Once again, Fin terminated the recording.

  They thought about that for a moment.

  “Could he do something like this?” Sutton asked, almost to himself.

  Fin said, “what do you mean? He has done it.”

  “Chris Masters,” he said. “Everyone we’ve spoken to has said he was too placid. That he didn’t like confrontation. Could a man like that be this Rumbler?”

  Fin scratched his head.

  “Yeah. It does seem a bit weird. Especially after all the nice things we heard about him. But maybe he became someone else when he got behind a keyboard.” Fin shrugged. “He wouldn’t be the first person to unleash a bit of hate on to the internet.”

  “Neighbours described Ted Bundy as a nice man,” Sutton said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Of course, this makes things more difficult for us,” Fin pointed out, picking up his mug of coffee.

  Sutton nodded. He knew what Fin meant.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Now, potentially, every person he blackmailed could be the person who killed him. If his anonymity was compromised.” Sutton looked at the mountain of paperwork scattered across the surface of his coffee table and felt his enthusiasm suffer under such an onslaught.

  ◆◆◆

  “We’ll come back to the blackmail later,” Sutton said. “I’m not quite sure I’m ready to get lost down that rabbit hole. What about the people I asked you to look into? Did you find out anything?”

  “Yes.” Fin searched through the paperwork, until he uncovered a file folder. He had written HOMEWORK across it in large black letters. Such a comedian. Fin saw him looking and smirked. He opened the file. “Terence Wilkes. The porter. Fifty two years old. Unmarried. Lives in Cotham. So he’s close to the scene of the crime. He’s worked at Busbar since it opened in 2007. Before that, he worked at the University of the West of England. For ten years. And before that, he was in the RAF. Mechanical engineer.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Oh. And I found a conviction for Drunk and Disorderly in Public from 1988.”

  “Okay. He’s one to think about it. I wonder if –“

  Lucia appeared in the doorway to the hall. She had her handbag over her shoulder. She looked upset.

  “I called Josh,” she informed him. “He comes to pick me up.”

  “Lucia –“

  “He is here now. I must go. I do not want to stay.”

  Sutton went to rub his head but stopped when he touched the wound above his eye.

  “Alright,” he said. “But make sure he comes up to collect you.”

  “No. He must not.”

  “Lucia –“

  “I told him you were a friend. A girl. He cannot see you.”

  Sutton stared at her.

  “Then let me walk down with you –“

  “No!”

  “He won’t see me.”

  “No!”

  “Fine.” With difficulty, Sutton got to his feet. “Go and wait on the landing. Get him to come up. I’ll keep an eye on you through the spyhole.”

  “Sutton –“

  “It’s alright. He won’t see me.”

  Lucia looked tearful, either with the situation or her deception in it. She took out her phone and called Josh. The call was short.

  “He comes,” she said.

  “Okay. Say goodbye to Fin.”

  “Ciao, Fin.”

  “Goodbye, Lucia. Thanks for the coffee.”

  She smiled, and then Sutton walked her to the door.

  He put his hand on it to open it but she stopped him.

  “I am sorry, Sutton,” she said. “But Josh…he is so jealous…”

  “Hey. It’s okay.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his good arm around her.

  They stood like that for a moment, and then she raised her head. She stared at the wound above his eye.

  “Does it hurt now?” She asked.

  “It’s not too bad. You better go.”

  But she didn’t move.

  Finally, she said, “you know some bad people.”

  He couldn’t argue with that.

  She kissed him. It was a different kind of kiss than they were used to. Almost tender.

  He opened the door, and she stepped out on to the landing. He closed the door, and then watched through the spyhole. In only moments a man came walking up the stairs; he was young, good looking, with short cut brown hair. They greeted each other warmly, and then went back down the stairs. Sutton saw a possessive arm around Lucia’s waist. What was the girl getting herself into?

  He hobbled back into the living room.

  “Everything alright?” Fin asked.

  Sutton sank with evident relief on to the sofa.

  “Yes.”

  Fin stared at him.

  Sutton said, “what?”

  Fin shook his head and went back to his reports.

  “Nothing.”

  Sutton sighed.

  “He helps her out. This guy. Josh. Gives her lifts, lends her money. Helps with her English. He got her the job at the life class.”

  “But…?”

  Sutton took a deep breath. A stabbing pain shot through his chest from his back momentarily.

  “But…she doesn’t like him. Not in that way. It’s kind of a symbiotic thing. She needs his help, and he thinks he’ll get to fuck her at some point. The age old story.”

  “Sounds healthy.”

  “It’s hardly original. Where were we?”

  “Well. I’d given you all I had on Terence Wilkes. So next is Victoria Clapham and Steven Cook.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Not a big digital footprint for either of them,” Fin remarked, scanning through some of the printouts. “But we already know that Victoria Clapham comes from Newquay originally, but her family moved to Swindon about ten years ago. Her father works for a big manufacturing company, as a toolmaker. Her mother was a reasonably successful singer, as I said. Not Top of the Pops, but she did a lot of stage and theatre work. Even released an album in the sixties. Uh…” Fin held a sheet up and read through it briefly. “Steven Cook is from Shepton Mallet. His father owns a farm.”

  Fin dropped the paper on the table and shrugged.

  “That’s it?”

  “Hey. There wasn’t much to find. And I didn’t have a lot of time.”

  “Okay. Keep digging. I’m still not sure about her…Anyway. Who’s next?”

  Fin held up another sheet of paper.

  “William T Mackenzie. Or William Thomas Mackenzie. Now this gentleman was a lot easier to research. Probably due to the fact that Sociology Magazine did an article on him about twelve years ago.” Fin grinned. “So what do we have on him? Born 1977. So he’s forty. He used to teach secondary school, in Southampton and Burnham-on-Sea, during which time he wrote some interesting articles. Mainly on sociological issues. Then when they opened Busbar they invited him to work in the Social Sciences Department, based on the strength of those articles. He got made head of the department five years later. He’s unmarried. He has a brother, who emigrated to Australia. No other surviving relatives, except some distant cousins in Wales.”

  “Was he ever married?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I printed out some of the articles he’s written on various social issues. They were printed in the Sociology Magazine again, and the Sociological Review. He’s something of a respectable name, in those circles. Or so I gathered. Here.”

  Fin t
hrew some stapled sheets across the table towards him.

  Sutton picked them up and began to read.

  A society’s complexity is both its strength, and its weakness; the more complex the system needed for a particular function, the more efficient the function…but so too the more iterations there are for those components to fail. And so we have a model for our new post-industrial society, who’s racing complexity and development may outstrip the slow and sometimes ponderous social and economic systems in place to sustain it. Structural Functionalism becomes defunct through its lack of understanding on the individual level, and this too is its weakness and its strength. It proposes a simple explanation, a broad framework…but is reductive on the issue of change, which occurs – at first – at the micro-level. Perhaps its true weakness lies in the fact that it is proposed by the same minds which make up that society…and history has taught us that these minds are deeply flawed. Can then this building theory also be flawed? To expand on this explanation using another organic analogy, can the thousand children of a mother spider sitting on her back really know where she is going, and why?

  “Hm. Deep thinker,” Sutton remarked.

  “And last but not least, we have Detective Inspector Charles Leeman.”

  Now. This would be interesting.

  “What did you find out about him?” He asked.

  “That if he’s after you, you better watch out.”

  “What?”

  “He was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for gallantry and distinguished service in 2002. That was for an investigation into a terror cell. He also got a Police Bravery Award for tackling three armed gunmen in 2006. That was for an investigation into a drug cartel. In Liverpool.”

  “He’s been around a bit.”

  “But born and bred in Bristol,” Fin said, reading from a printout. “He was born in Knowle West –“

  “Tough area.”

  “But his family moved to Mangotsfield in 1990. He joined the police force when he was twenty six. He went undercover for three years. This was in Manchester.”

  “He’s the real deal then,” Sutton said. He leant his head back against the sofa cushions. He closed his eyes. The throbbing of his headache was as reliable as a ticking clock.

  “Yeah.” He heard paper being shuffled about. “What did he want to talk to you about?”

  Sutton didn’t answer for a moment.

  Eventually, without opening his eyes, he said, “he’s a friend of Freddie Hopkins’ wife.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. If she had her way I’d be hung, drawn and quartered. As it is, she’ll settle for a conviction.”

  “For what?”

  “For anything.” Sutton opened his eyes. “It’s just grief. Not particularly rational, but she wants someone to be held accountable. I can’t say that I blame her. I’m just surprised that she’s naïve enough to think that the world works like that. She’s a Criminal Defence Solicitor, for God’s sake. She probably comes into contact with a lot of unsavoury types. She must know by now that nothing is ever really black and white. Not in the real world. It doesn’t just end, so you can put a line through it.”

  “So this detective told you all this?”

  “More or less. He said he was her friend, but he didn’t want to do what she was asking him to do: namely, seeing me banged up.”

  “Why not?”

  “He said it was because he liked me…but I didn’t believe that. I think it was really because he’s lived in the real world too. Well. His CV proves that, doesn’t it? He’s seen more than most. There’s no black and white in the real world. Just shades of grey. Endless shades of grey.” Sutton looked at Fin. “But there’s no point in trying to argue with a woman. As recent evidence would indicate.” Sutton indicated the hall and, by inference, Lucia. “So he did what she asked him to do. To a point. He didn’t argue. He’s smart enough to avoid that too.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Did you get a chance to look into the deaths at the university?” Sutton asked, once more shifting his position on the sofa. Even with the Co-codamol, he couldn’t quite get comfortable.

  Fin shook his head.

  “Only the name you gave me. If the university are covering the others up, then they’re doing a pretty good job, because I couldn’t find much of anything. Tobias Bloch, however, couldn’t be covered up, because a public appeal went out for his location before they found him. I found an online article on the Bristol Evening Post website. And a few others.” Fin searched through the paperwork, found it. “Here.”

  He passed it to Sutton.

  A student whose body was pulled out of a river today has finally been identified by his family, it has been confirmed.

  Tobias Bloch, 20, a student at The Bristol University of Science, Technology, Business and Art, disappeared in the early hours of Friday morning minutes after texting his friend, Jorden Wright, that he didn’t have enough money for a taxi.

  “I told him to get a taxi anyway, that I’d pay for it,” Jorden explained to this reporter. “But by then my texts weren’t getting through.”

  Police were called when the second year Business Studies student didn't return to his home the next day or answer his phone. CCTV footage shows Tobias’ journeys around the Temple Meads area earlier in the night, but not in the hour leading up to his disappearance.

  Just hours after family urged locals to look for him, police confirmed fire fighters had found a body in the River Avon at around midday on Saturday.

  His family, including his father John, a sales director, and his mum Gwen, a retired stewardess, had come from Southampton to Bristol to help find him. Today, they will be leaving with heavy hearts.

  “I’ll keep digging on this too,” Fin said, making a note on his laptop.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you going to tell me who attacked you now?”

  Sutton sighed.

  “There were three of them. They had baseball bats. They were in the walkway just around the corner. Down by the bridge. You know it?” Fin nodded. “It was stupid really. Not thought out at all. The walkway was too narrow for them to surround me, so they almost had to come at me in single file.”

  Fin waited.

  “Is that it?”

  Sutton allowed himself a small smile.

  “No. They were there for me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty much. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve made some judgements. They had a gun –“

  “What? Jesus, Sutton –“

  “Calm down. They weren’t going to use it. If they were, why bring the bats? It was just a contingency. If things went wrong. Which they did. So. Judgements. Assumptions. They had the gun. They could have just shot me outright. But they didn’t. They attacked me with baseball bats. So they only wanted to slow me down. Put me out of action. Which means our poking around has upset them a bit. But they don’t like violence…and whoever killed Chris didn’t like violence either. Hence the car. A real stupid way to kill someone. But sterile. Removed. Like a video game. So I think we can safely assume that the people who attacked me today are the same people who killed Chris. Which means we’re not after just one killer, but a group of them.”

  Fin looked stunned.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Whoever it was, they panicked. Going after me today, in the way that they did…it reeks of inexperience. And they were clumsy with the bats. So we’re not dealing with career criminals. We’re dealing with something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Sutton hesitated, but then said, “there were three of them, two tall and one short. They were slim. Young. But reasonably strong. The short one was a woman. I’m reasonably sure I’m right. Her shape though…I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think the short one was Victoria Clapham.”

  ◆◆◆

  “So what do we do?” Fin asked. “What’s our next step?”

  “Well,” Sutton said, rising from the sofa with some difficulty. “We’v
e got to talk to the girl. I kicked her in the face. If it is Victoria, she’ll have a mark. And one of them, I broke some ribs. I think. If one of the two tall guys is her boyfriend, and he was the one who got hurt, then we’ll know it when we see him – he won’t be able to hide it.”

  Fin had watched Sutton get to his feet.

  “Are you in any kind of condition to do that?”

  “No,” Sutton admitted, with a smile. “So let’s do something light and fluffy instead.”

  “Like what?”

  Tentatively, Sutton straightened his back. No pain. Great. Good.

  He said, “let’s see if we can’t find where Chris Masters’ secret office is.”

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 12

  Saturday, 4th June

  The Saturday traffic was bad.

  There is a fundamental flaw with the design of central Bristol which, ironically, gives it its charm: it had been designed for a sporadic flow of horse and carts, not for a multitude of belching metallic beasts. As such, many of the roads are too narrow, their curves too acute, their entranceways too awkwardly sandwiched between buildings. As a consequence, drivers on the whole stick to the main roads, and as a further consequence, the main roads – during peak times – are always jammed.

  Waiting just back from the roundabout on Queen’s Road, Fin asked, “how are we going to find it?”

  Sutton turned his head. His neck was stiffening up.

  “Intelligent supposition,” he pronounced.

  “What?”

  Sutton smiled.

  “We’ll make some educated guesses.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well. Chris Masters didn’t have a car. So we can assume that – wherever his secret hideaway was – it was close to his flat. Maybe on his route to and from work, so he could pop in there on his way back.”

  “Okay. Makes sense.”

  The sluggish traffic advanced twenty feet. They were almost at the roundabout.

  Sutton continued.

  “But as secretive as he was, he wouldn’t rent it under his own name. I’m assuming, if he indeed was this Rumbler, then he could come up with some kind of fake identification easily enough.” He suddenly remembered. “Did you bring that photo of him like I asked?”