Then She Was Gone (8 page)

He snapped another manacle on her free wrist, then tied her ankles to the bedposts at the end of the bed.

The gag was last.

He stood over her, the straps in place and secure. He could feel the shift instantly; the fear exuding from her feeding his desire.

‘You’re being paid to be here,’ he said, taking off his shirt one button at a time. ‘Stop your whining.’

She shook her head, tears springing from her eyes as she turned her head towards him. He was enjoying this already.

‘You have one job. To satisfy me. That’s all you have to do. If you don’t, then we don’t leave here until I am. Simple. There is no getting away from here, not until I
say so.’

He waited for her to nod her agreement, then looked her over. It would do.

He opened another drawer and removed what he needed. He moved back to the bed and smiled as she winced at him lifting her skirt up.

She wasn’t expecting the first whip of the cane across her. She began to struggle, but couldn’t move more than an inch or two. He brought the cane down again, more forcefully this
time. He closed his eyes as the sound of her screaming into the gag filled the silence.

He kept going, one hand bringing the cane down over and over, the other hand giving himself pleasure.

She passed out at some point, her blood now spilled out on the bed and beyond. He took a plastic bag and straddled her back. Jumped up and down a little to bring her back to consciousness.

When he was done, she was nothing to him. For ninety minutes, she had consumed him, but now, she was just a problem to deal with. He wasn’t sure if she’d recognised him, but he felt
certain that she wasn’t about to talk. He let her off the bed, barely watching as she limped gingerly away from the bedroom.

‘Remove the clothes and get dressed. Five hundred. And you don’t talk to anyone or I’ll find you.’

She sniffed, tears still cascading down her dirty face. She reached with shaking hands for the money he was holding towards her.

‘I mean it,’ he said, not letting go of the money. ‘I’ll come looking for you and no one will hear from you again, got it?’

She nodded, her whole body trembling now. He released the money and watched her leave, a thin smile on his face. He heard the door close and began chuckling softly to himself. He grabbed the
clothes off the floor where she’d left them, placing them in a plastic bag and taking them back to the bedroom. Stopped for a second to take in the bloodstains and results of his work.

‘Well done, Sam,’ he said softly to himself. ‘That was a great performance.’

He heard a knock at the door and frowned. ‘What the fuck does she want now,’ he said, moving towards the door and checking the peephole, but seeing no one there. He opened the door
slowly, then flew backwards as the door was slammed into him. He landed on the floor, instant pain in the bottom of his back. A figure stood over him, a black balaclava covering their head.

‘What the fuc–’

A bolt of electricity entered his body before he could finish his sentence.

‘You’re going to follow me out of here. You’ll do as you’re told, or I’ll keep firing this thing at you until you can’t breathe any more. What do you
think?’

Sam didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He was still trying to stop shaking as he lay on the floor. The figure above him wiggled the taser in their hand, soft laughter coming from the
darkness.

*    *    *

There was something he hadn’t known about being on the receiving end of brutality.

You start to wish for an end. Of any kind. Death was beginning to look like a preferable option than what was being done to him. Endless pain, in waves of torture and spilled blood. Mental and
physical. Both as bad as the other.

He was beginning to rethink his position on the use of these methods against enemies of war. Something he wouldn’t have ever thought possible before then.

He just wanted it to end.

Sam believed in God. Worshipped Him in his own particular way. Enough to appeal to a certain section of society but not too much to put off younger people who put less stock in those ideas. He
was a modern Christian. Belief without responsibility.

Now, he wondered if there was anything out there when this was ended. Wasn’t too sure he cared enough at that moment. He welcomed the idea of darkness. Of emptiness. Of anything but the
bright light shining in his eyes.

‘Please . . . please, no more.’

The words escaped his lips, cracked and swollen, rasping breaths following them. The cackle of laughter surrounded him, high-pitched and echoing.

‘When I say it’s done, it’s done.’

Always the same answer.

‘I can’t take anything else,’ he said, his voice sounding alien to him now. ‘Just tell me what you want. I can get you anything. Just, please, tell me.’

Silence was the only response. His leg muscles burned underneath him, thighs on fire from being made to kneel for hours on end.

‘I’m an important man,’ he said, his throat protesting against the cruelty of speaking. ‘Just tell me what you want from me. Money? I can get you as much as you need.
Please, name a price. I want to make you happy. I want to make you stop this madness.’

‘I don’t want anything. I have what I need. I have you.’

The voice bounced around him, turning from a whisper to a shout in a second. The smell of smoke made its way through the hood, he heard the noise of something being cut or sawn into pieces.
Sometimes the smells and noises meant something to him, other times not. He was never sure if pain was about to arrive, or if they were playing with him.

He wasn’t sure about anything any more.

He’d always been the one in charge. The master. Now that control had been snatched from him.

‘What should I do with you now? Maybe I should cut off parts of your body one by one. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? That would be justice for someone like you.’

He shook his head, which was the only part of his body he could still move. He felt the now familiar pressure on the back of his head, as something was wrapped around his mouth area, cutting off
his voice once more.

Sam was screaming into nothingness.

‘There’s something you should know, Sam. You made this happen. This is no one else’s fault but your own. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying this. This has been such
fun. All fun has to end at some point, though. I know this. You know this.’

Sam realised he didn’t want the end to come. He still wanted to live. As much as he wanted the pain to stop, he didn’t want this to be the end. He could feel tears fall from his eyes
and run down his cheeks, his shoulders hitching as his muffled cries escaped.

He didn’t want to die.

‘First, I’m going to list your crimes. Then we’ll sentence you for them. And we’re talking proper sentences. The punishment must fit the crime, isn’t that right?
That’s fair, right?’

He wasn’t expected to answer. Sam knew that. The decision had already been made. Before he had been brought to this place, wherever it was. He’d been sentenced long ago.

On some level, he knew he deserved it. For all he had done in his life.

Now, he was helpless and had to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long.

There was a sense of boredom creeping in, which Murphy knew wasn’t a good sign. A missing person could sometimes be an interesting case but, more often than not, it was a
whole bunch of work for little to no reward. There were just too many cases, too many people missing, for it to be any other way.

He’d thought he’d left that sort of thing behind him. Now, any missing persons case which came into the division was usually shifted elsewhere, unless there was an extreme likelihood
of violence or similar.

Turned out, all you needed was for the missing person to be vaguely in the public eye, and the case was forced upon him to deal with.

It was all about who you know. As with everything in life.

‘They’ve found his email password,’ Rossi said from her desk opposite him. ‘Just got access now. Pazzo left it on a Post-it note on his desk. Should mean that we will be
able to get control of his social media accounts. If you think that’s right, of course?’

Murphy leaned back in his chair and thought for a second. ‘Do it, but only because of the circumstances. I’m sure his parents would be happy with us for doing so and not give one
about privacy issues. As far as we’re aware, he’s missing, presumed in danger, so we use anything we can.’

‘We’ve already been through his sock drawer, the very definition of invading privacy,’ Rossi said, a ghost of a smile on her face. ‘Probably boring anyway. He’s a
prospective MP, desperate not to get into any scandal until he’s been in the actual job for more than five minutes. I imagine he’ll have scrubbed the thing clean.’

Murphy gave her a look.

‘OK, odds are there’s something,’ Rossi said, the ghost smile becoming real now. ‘Still, he looks far too clean-cut and a bit geeky for anything too weird. We’ll
get access and let you know.’ Rossi beckoned to DS Graham Harris, who wheeled himself over to her side of the desk. They began to speak in low tones.

Murphy went back to recent John Doe cases, of which there were an alarming number. Most would be identified quickly, but some would be left to drift: the homeless, the missing, the immigrant,
the loner. All lying in a morgue in the centre of Liverpool with no one to claim them as their own.

Most were too old to be Sam, but a couple caught his eye. He prepared a message and sent it to the coroner, thankful that he didn’t have to do so in person. Dr Houghton wasn’t
exactly the first man he would choose to spend time with. The antagonism between them had been one-sided for a long time, but Murphy’s dislike of Houghton had grown and now the feeling was
more than mutual.

‘Couple of deads in the morgue to look into,’ Murphy said, waiting for Rossi’s head to pop up from behind the monitor. ‘Nothing that promising, though. Same age bracket,
but one is almost pointless checking out. How are you getting on over there?’

‘Facebook is open, just waiting for Twitter. Only messages to do with work, from a cursory glance. Will take us time to go back any further.’

‘If he is in danger, there’s a possibility they’ll have been deleted anyway.’

Rossi clicked her pen against her teeth for a few seconds. ‘Any word on his phone?’

Murphy checked his notes. ‘Last switched on four days ago, which is the same day he went missing. Bounced off a mast in the city centre, but nothing since then. Must have been out in
town.’

‘What time was that?’

Murphy looked again. ‘Some time just before midnight.’

‘Could be on CCTV, we could track him from that.’

‘Already on it,’ Murphy replied, dropping his notes onto a stack of others which he would get around to shifting off his desk at some point. ‘Not exactly a small area to check
though. There’s also the issue of how long this’ll stay out of the media for. The more we check into things, the more likely it is someone will talk.’

Rossi shrugged and looked back at her computer. ‘Not sure why we’re keeping it quiet anyway. If he turns up, all’s well. If he doesn’t, then we’re going to need all
the help we can get.’

‘Can’t disagree with you there,’ Murphy replied, turning away and looking over towards DCI Stephens’s office. ‘I think that’ll change soon enough. Just the
way of things. There’s no way this’ll be kept quiet for much longer.’

Murphy lifted himself off his chair and made his way towards DCI Stephens’s office. He knocked once, waited for a response, then knocked again when there was no answer.

‘Come in.’

Murphy made his way inside, nodding when DCI Stephens held up a hand at him as she finished on the phone. The office was about the only thing that Murphy envied about the DCI position. However,
everything else that went with the job outweighed the joy of being able to collect his thoughts in private. He had enough on his plate as it was without the pressure that came with being in that
sort of authority.

‘OK . . . OK . . . Look, we’ll talk later.’

He tried looking elsewhere and stared at a box file on a filing cabinet, wondering why she’d allowed him inside whilst still on the phone.

‘I know . . . I can’t talk now . . . Bye.’

Murphy tried not to jump when DCI Stephens slammed the phone down on the desk. Definitely a bad time.

‘Yes, David,’ DCI Stephens said, a trace of impatience already apparent in her voice. ‘What can I do you for?’

‘Erm . . . I just wanted to give you an update,’ Murphy said, giving her a quick glance before looking down at her desk. ‘About the Sam Byrne case.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Murphy updated her on the afternoon’s events. It didn’t take long, which he hoped was an indication of where they were. ‘We’re just waiting on a few things to come back
now,’ he added when he’d finished. ‘We haven’t really got much to go on and if you want things kept quiet, I’m not sure if there’s anything else we can
do.’

‘I think we both know that’s a situation that isn’t going to be possible for very long. I’ve told DSI Butler, who seems to be the main point of contact with the parents,
but you know what it’s like with these types of people. Everything swept under the rug, a large piece of furniture then placed over that rug . . . we’re just going to do
our best and see what happens in that regard.’

‘Good to know,’ Murphy said, breathing a little easier. ‘I’m not sure if there’s anything else that we can do. You know what it’s like with these
things.’

‘All too well,’ DCI Stephens replied, straightening up the papers on one side of her desk. ‘If anything else major comes in, then we can talk. But for now, let’s see if
we can get this dealt with quickly and out of our hair before the end of the week. Sound fair?’

Murphy made as if to salute then thought better of it. ‘Yes, boss.’

He left her office and made his way back to his desk. Checked the clock on the wall and sighed when he saw the time. Another hour or two and it would be evening. He had left Sarah on the
waterfront at one p.m. Five hours later and everything was so different. He’d texted her a few hours earlier to say he wouldn’t be able to meet her as planned, but imagined she’d
be home by now. He picked up his phone to call her, then noticed a note on his desk. He placed the phone back down and picked up the note instead. Read it once and then threw it towards the
bin.