by Chris Thomas
‘Let me just check,’ replied Harris, looking around the half-empty canteen. ‘No, you should be OK, but if someone better-looking comes along you’ll have to move. Still on the diet I see. When do you think it’ll start having an effect, eating all this rabbit food?’
‘Hilarious. Probably about the same time your heart attack kicks in from eating all that shit,’ she replied, as Harris took a huge bite of his cheeseburger.
The food in the canteen wasn’t great, but at least he didn’t have to worry about cooking for himself when he eventually arrived home. More time to do his Greek project.
‘Fair enough. So, did you manage to find anything from the case workers about our two little elusive friends?’
‘A bit. Karen didn’t really maintain any sort of online presence, kind of a pre-requisite for her new identity. Can’t have her shouting the odds on Facebook. She had a basic phone, very little activity. Pretty much, she spent her whole time indoors with her cats, eating and watching daytime television. Mark on the other hand was a lot more active on the internet.’
‘Is that a euphemism?’ interrupted Harris, chuckling to himself.
‘For what?’ replied Brooks, somewhat confused.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Right. Anyway, he had a few online profiles,’ Brooks continued, ‘not on any social media sites, but log-ins for gambling websites, Amazon, and loads of porn sites.’
‘I knew it!’ Harris said, triumphantly.
‘God, you’re weird. Yes, porn sites,’ she replied, weary at his childishness. ‘But he seemed to spend most of his time on a live roulette game run by one of the big bookies.’
‘If it’s a bona-fide site, they wouldn’t allow him to run up gambling debts, so I can’t see that being a factor in his disappearance. Did they ever contact each other?’
‘Not that we can see. I don’t think there was much love lost between them after they were arrested, each trying to blame the other, etcetera.’
Just at that moment, a junior analyst from their team burst into the canteen and made his way hastily to their table.
‘Danny,’ said Harris, chewing on a mouthful of chips. ‘I’d offer you a seat, but I told Grace she’d only have to move if someone better looking came along, and frankly, you look like a pile of crap.’
‘Whatever,’ Danny Fowler replied. ‘Stop stuffing your face, you need to come and see this. Now.’
‘WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?’ asked Harris, as six members of the team huddled around Fowler’s desk, watching the video play out on his screen.
‘It was sent to the general email address just now,’ replied Fowler, adjusting some settings on his monitor in an attempt to make it clearer.
‘The general email address?’ asked Harris. ‘Isn’t that monitored by Dorothy?’
‘Yes, she nearly had a fucking coronary when she clicked on it, poor old mare. She’s having a lie down in the common room.’
‘But we don’t know who sent it?’
‘Well, we have a sender obviously, and we can see the return path is somewhere in Russia, as it nearly always is. We haven’t started trying to run any traces yet, it literally just arrived,’ replied Fowler.
‘Is that a clown in a tuxedo?’
‘Yes, it would appear so.’
On the screen, a crystal clear but silent video played out of the clown in a tuxedo twirling a knife close to the camera, before it cut to a close up of him slitting the throat of a chubby, beaten, and bloodied figure sat in a chair. The shot then zoomed in to the man’s head, blood clearly flooding from his severed artery, focusing in on his eyes as the life slowly drained from them, before they eventually closed.
The team had seen enough videos and supposed snuff movies on the dark web during the course of their work to know that there were a lot of fakes out there. Highly realistic fakes, but fakes nonetheless. Usually, they would be grainy amateurish home movies, shot on a smartphone. But this video was made all the more disturbing by the amount of effort taken with setting and production values. The clip lasted barely thirty seconds, but every bit of detail was played out in high definition.
‘It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen from the dark web,’ said Fowler. ‘This is a proper serious effort. These guys clearly meant business; they weren’t just filming this to send around within their little group of mates.’
‘So why have we got a copy?’ pondered Brooks.
‘Clearly someone wants to make us aware of it. Conspicuously,’ replied Harris, arms folded, picking some burger from between his teeth.
‘Any idea who the poor sod is in the chair?’ asked Brooks.
‘I’m just running facial recognition now,’ replied Fowler. ‘Luckily, the resolution is top-notch, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. Unless his injuries are too severe for the computer to bring up a match, that is.’
Harris leant in to the screen and clicked the cursor on the progress bar of the video to make it return to the beginning, then paused it. The clown face stared back at him. Its eyes, the only human part visible through the wrinkly mass of latex, burned themselves into his consciousness. These were the eyes of a murderer. Harris was convinced, after watching it and re-watching it, that this was far too precise and calculated to be a fake. This was a serious operation and these were very dangerous people.
‘Got it,’ said Fowler, as the computer screen pinged up the word MATCH. ‘Gary Sweetman. Fifty year old male, arrested a few years ago for grooming a couple of young boys and—’
‘Yes, I remember him,’ interrupted Harris. ‘He was let off largely because of a technicality—’
‘Police cock up you mean?’ jumped in Brooks.
‘Well, that as well,’ replied Harris, already sliding around the desks to get to his own. He brought up the crimes log again and typed Gary Sweetman into the search field.
Your search returned 0 matches.
‘Damn, nothing has been reported. Not in the last month anyway. I’ll try and expand the search period,’ said Harris, scratching his head. ‘Grace, can you access the file for the original Sweetman case, please?’
She had already returned to her desk and was searching for it on the database.
‘Got him,’ she replied excitedly, after a few minutes. ‘Only the search function on the main database is a lot better than on that new system, so it’s better at recognising partial matches.’
‘I don’t really want your life story. What’ve you got?’
‘Alright, calm down. Turns out that Sweetman was his middle name, which he tended to use as his surname, and that’s what everyone knew him as.’
‘What was his real surname?’
‘Cock.’
Harris choked as he took a sip of water. ‘I can see why he didn’t like it. Actually, you’d think that being a paedophile he would be quite proud of it.’
Harris turned back to his screen and typed in Gary Cock.
Your search returned 1 matches.
‘Bingo,’ he whispered, clicking on the search result, Gary Cock – MISPER.
He banged his fist on the desk and stood up. ‘OK, listen everyone. This guy is on the system as another missing person. Reported a week or so before Parker and Rankin. I’m not saying they’re linked, but I think we would do well to assume the worst. Someone has sent us this file for a reason. Fowler, you work on who, we’ll try and work out why. We’ll also see if we can find anything down on the deep web involving our two erstwhile lovebirds. Let’s get to it.’
Retrieving the pile of papers from out of his drawer, he placed them in the top of his printer and began scanning.
‘I’d better get these emailed over to the mother-in-law. It’s her project now. Grace, we might be in for a late one.’
23
‘So, good weekend?’ asked Rosco, sipping the frothy head from the top of his ale.
Billy and Joe looked at each other across the table.
‘It was alright,’ shrugged Joe. ‘We had a few beers around mine on Friday
night, stayed in with a curry Saturday night, and then did bugger all yesterday. You?’
‘I was working most of it,’ replied Rosco, ‘hence the urgent Monday night beer club. My dad took a plastering job in some huge mansion just out of town and insisted we spend the whole weekend there, rush job apparently. One of the rooms was in a right state, looked as though someone had been trying to punch a hole through the wall. Still, the money was good. Billy? How’s the world of high finance? Did you kill the bear today or did the bear kill you? Or whatever it is you lot like to say.’
Billy had barely taken his eyes off Joe since they got there. The two had not had any communication since he stormed out of the garage three nights ago. Billy had spent the weekend wrestling with his conscience, doing his best to try and block out what they had watched. Deciding that his loyalty to his friend was still of great importance, coupled with feeling slightly responsible for introducing him to the darker area of the internet in the first place, he had opted against telling anyone. But he still felt as though Joe needed to face up to his actions of Friday night.
‘Well, my day started rather uneventfully. It carried on equally uneventfully up to and beyond lunchtime and then just as I was about to leave, my wanker of a boss decided to drop a massive file on my desk requesting that I write a report on it to present to the department heads tomorrow morning,’ he said, staring into the whirlpool of ale as he rotated the glass with his wrist.
‘Ha, so this is you writing a report then? Another couple of pints and you’ll fly through it,’ joked Rosco. ‘Anyway, you never said what you got up to at the weekend. The usual chatting up some tart at Kickers, plying her with cheap alcopops before going back to hers?’
‘No, actually. My weekend was way, way, more interesting than that,’ replied Billy, suddenly looking more animated, much to the uneasiness of Joe, who stared at him wide-eyed whilst trying to subtly shake his head without Rosco noticing. Sensing Joe’s unease, Billy continued, ‘Like Joseph here said, I went around to his on Friday night. We had a few beers, watched a bit of television. Actually, Joe found this cracking new programme. It’s online only—’
‘Billy! I don’t think Rosco really wants to hear about that. It wasn’t particularly interesting,’ said Joe, through gritted teeth.
Billy stared at him briefly before smiling at the side of his mouth. ‘No, you’re probably right.’
‘No, go on. I want to know.’
Sensing Joe’s eyes on him, and his increasing irritation, Billy decided to continue. ‘Well, it’s this gameshow where people log on to watch a live feed and they can place bids—’
‘Billy …’
‘As I was saying, they place bids and whoever bids the most wins and they get to—’
‘Evening, gentlemen, sorry I’m late,’ interrupted Mike, dropping his leather man-bag down onto the middle of the table. ‘Bastard signal failure on the tube one stop from home. We sat in the dark for about twenty minutes. Anyway, I’m here now. What’s everyone drinking?’
Billy cast a final glance at Joe, stood up and went to the bar with Mike to help with the round. Joe stared at them as they walked away, slowly taking small sips from his pint glass.
‘So what’s this gameshow then, Joe?’ asked Rosco, as he sidled onto the empty stool next to Joe.
‘It’s nothing. Look, it’s just a stupid website where you pay to watch a couple of birds doing stuff to each other and whoever bids the most amount of money each round is allowed to tell them what to do to the other one next,’ replied Joe, pondering to himself whether he was entirely unconvincing or just mildly unconvincing.
Surprisingly, it seemed to have worked. ‘Is that it?’ asked a slightly disappointed Rosco. ‘You can watch that sort of thing for nothing on late night free-view channels. Anyway, I don’t really want to imagine you two bumders cuddling up on your sofa watching grotty websites.’
The other two returned from the bar with a tray of beers and handfuls of crisps and pork scratchings. Just as they were sitting down and arranging the glasses and packets on the small table, Joe’s phone chimed with a message alert. His heart leapt and he spun around on his chair, scanning the rest of the pub.
‘What is it, dickhead? Did your secret boyfriend text you to say he’s coming to sit with you?’ asked Mike.
‘Ha, no,’ laughed Joe, slightly nervously. ‘I thought it was Ellie, but it’s probably just a wrong number.’
He looked at the text again. There was no number showing for the sender, just the two initials, BR.
Aren’t you going to offer us a drink?
He swiped to delete the message and put his phone down.
‘So, Joe was telling me all about this website that you started saying about,’ said Rosco.
‘Did he indeed? What exactly did he say?’ replied Billy.
‘Just that you two were watching some grotty site where you could pay the women to do sex things to each other.’
‘Right, yes. A sex site. Like I said, pretty interesting. But Joe, you forgot to tell them all the best part about it. Tell them how much you spent. It cost him a small fortune just to pay for the privilege of entering the site,’ said Billy, jabbing Joe in the ribs with his elbow.
‘It wasn’t that much,’ said Joe, twirling his phone around in his fingers.
‘It would have been if he’d placed any bids. Luckily, I think I talked him out of it though.’
Joe looked at him and raised his eyebrows, and suddenly it dawned on Billy that he had indeed failed to talk Joe out of it.
‘You utter twat,’ said Billy. ‘How much did you spend? What did you have them do?’
‘Not a lot. Anyway, I didn’t win.’
‘Thank god for that.’
Mike and Rosco stood up from the table. ‘This is all very interesting, but I think the fruit machines are calling, so we’ll leave you two to discuss your special interest sites.’
Joe’s phone received another message.
Don’t forget to invite your friends next time
Joe went white and placed the phone down on the table as he got up from the chair. He started walking around the pub, looking for anyone who might be sending the messages. The pub wasn’t particularly full, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them. A couple sat in the corner; he’d watched them having a domestic for the last twenty minutes, it couldn’t have been them. An old man with grey hair sat alone on a table for four, nursing a pint of ale in a dimpled glass with a handle. He didn’t look like he would even be able to use a mobile phone. Just across the room he saw another couple sitting together; the man tapping away at something on his phone. The man looked up and, as they made eye contact, Joe sensed it must be him. He darted across the room and stood next to the couple’s table.
‘Did you just send me a text?’ Joe asked the man with the phone.
‘What? No,’ replied the man, slightly bemused. ‘Why the hell would I have sent you a text?’
The man turned away to carry on the conversation with his girlfriend, and as he picked up his pint, Joe snatched the mobile from his table. Before the screen lock came on, Joe scrolled through the session windows; but all he found were takeaway apps, Twitter, and Angry Birds running. The man slammed his glass back down onto the table.
‘Oi, what the fuck is wrong with you, you freak. Give me back my phone,’ he shouted, as he tried to wrestle the phone away from Joe’s hand. Joe turned away, shielding the phone from the man as he accessed the messages. Seeing that there did not appear to be anything sent to his phone, he threw the phone back on the table. The man stuck his middle finger up at him, and signed the conversation off with a loud, ‘Prick’. He sat back down to a consoling arm around his shoulder from his partner.
‘What the fuck was that all about?’ asked Mike, as they joined him on the way back to Billy at the table.
‘Nothing, just a misunderstanding,’ retorted Joe, as he barged past the oncoming old man, who had by now finished his pint, put on his flat cap and trench coat,
and was trying to leave the pub. ‘Watch where you’re going, you old fart!’ Joe shouted at the man, as he stumbled against the cigarette machine to regain his balance. The man held out his hand in timid acknowledgment and left the pub without turning around.
‘Calm down, Joe, what the hell is wrong with you?’ said Mike, shaking him by the shoulders.
Joe shrugged him off and sat down. Looking up, he saw Billy staring at him, his eyes wide, cutting through Joe like daggers. Glancing down at the table he could see why. He turned his phone over and the text from BR was on screen; clearly Billy had read it.
‘It’s them isn’t it, Joe?’ asked Billy, knowingly.
‘Who?’ interjected Rosco.
‘No-one,’ replied Joe, bluntly. ‘Just some people.’
‘What people?’ asked Rosco again.
‘No-one. Rosco, just leave it, it’s fine. Who’s for another beer? I’ll get a round of sambuca to go with it.’
‘No thanks. I’m going to call it a night, got an early start in the morning,’ replied Billy, picking his hoodie off of the back of his chair. He shook hands with the three of them, staring Joe straight in the eyes as he tightened his grip. Before any of them could protest at him, or call him something along the lines of ‘a big girl’ for leaving, he walked out of the pub.
After a brief moment of silence at the table, Mike announced, ‘Go on, I’ll try one of those beer things you keep mentioning.’
‘Good man,’ replied Joe, slapping him on the back as he got up and walked to the bar. ‘I’ve got at least another couple of pints left in me tonight.’
Joe stood at the bar ordering his drinks. He surveyed the other patrons sat at various tables, wondering to himself if one of them was the one watching him, sending him texts. Just as the tray was placed on the soggy beer-soaked towel in front of him, he heard his phone chime.
Wrong man, Joe. We are coming for you. Nowhere to hide.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Joe sat at his desk, rubbing his temples. He stared through a thick hazy fog that hung in his brain. All he could see were lines and lines of emails melting into one giant jumble of quotation requests, invoices, and other mundane nonsense. The steam from his coffee rose and filled his nostrils, but it did little to clear his mind. Late delivery notifications, shipping exceptions, missing paperwork. It now all seemed so trivial. He had received no further text messages since the pub last night, but the last couple played over in his mind.