He pulled up his hood as he lingered at the end of the woodland path. The school day was ending and he was waiting for Ruby.
The place was the same as it had been all those years before. No one noticed him because so much time had passed. When someone died, people looked out for lurkers and everyone held their little ones a bit closer. If they’d looked out for them beforehand, they could have stopped him. They all had to share some of the blame.
He’d expected to feel more, though, going back. Perhaps a tremor of excitement, some nervous energy at the revisit to the same spot, but there was nothing except a sense of familiarity.
His emotions had always been like that. Empty, distant, apart; he’d never felt the same joy other people professed to feel. Everything was clinical, as if it didn’t really mean anything. Perhaps it never had. He only felt himself come alive when he was killing, when his nerve endings tingled, his mind sharp and focused. That’s what people talked about in the true-crime books he’d researched to try to understand himself. But it’d still felt hollow somehow, until he’d realised that it was the effect on the living that gave him the most pleasure. He observed the bereaved like butterflies trapped under glass. Ellie had been just a vehicle, a way of creating an effect; it was the ripple of her death through the living that excited him.
Being at the same spot didn’t have the same resonance. Back then, it was as if he’d been looking through a fisheye lens, just the centre in focus and the rest blurred. His footsteps had been loud, hers too, no other sounds. He was zoned in on her, everything about him that day sharp, everything about Ellie so clear. Her legs fighting against him, the undergrowth rustling. The sound of her school blazer against the ground, her hair snagging on a small twig, the thud of her heels as she kicked against the ground, the creak of his fingers as they gripped her throat.
Then he was gone, running through the trees, heading for the estate on the other side, where he could get lost in the small passageways until he ended up in the large car park where he’d left his car.
They’d called it random, but that was wrong. Ellie had been chosen. He’d followed her and learned her routines. He’d even spoken to her, just to ask directions, gave her a smile. She had been tall and awkward but her innocence smouldered, her eyes large and warm, her smile quick and easy.
That was how he worked. He drove around. He watched. He asked for directions, flashed a smile as he leaned across the passenger seat. He saw how shy they were when they leaned forward.
He wasn’t alone, though. He’d spotted others as he travelled around. There was always someone watching from a distance, the long-held desire they didn’t act on, as if watching was all they needed to do. If he saw it, he took it.
It was strange how his first had led to something so beautiful: little Ruby, grown up so tall, just like her sister. From his act, new life was born. If he asked Ruby to choose, she’d want Ellie to die so that she could live. Who wouldn’t? Everyone begs for their own life in the end.
He’d watched Ruby from a distance as she grew up. Her first day at school, her dress too short for skinny legs, only just sticking out from the hem of her red coat. Sports days. Her move to high school. He’d experienced them all, just the man watching from a distance, a shadow amongst the trees or in a parked car. He’d created her, in his own way; she was his responsibility.
He was shaken from his thoughts by the stream of schoolchildren. Some disappeared into cars parked nearby; others boarded the buses that queued up further along the road. His eyes scanned the pavement as he looked out for her.
He waited twenty minutes, until the crowds thinned out. Ruby always came this way. He knew that from all the times he’d watched her.
He got up from the sign where he’d been leaning and headed towards the school, his hands thrust into his jacket pockets as he walked up a slight rise. Most of the cars were gone. She must have walked a different way.
A sudden burst of anger flared inside him, but then he saw her.
She was scowling, standing with her arms folded, a long canvas bag hanging down to her waist, heavy with schoolbooks.
He smiled as he approached her, disarming, friendly. She didn’t look his way. She’d taken her phone out of her pocket and was scrolling through something.
As he drew alongside her, he said, ‘Hello, Ruby.’
Ruby looked round, surprised, and then she said, ‘I saw you this morning. Hanging around my brother’s apartment.’ She sounded petulant.
‘Yes, sorry, I’m a friend of Joe’s,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for him. Have you seen him?’
‘He’s coming soon. Supposed to be, anyway.’
He checked his watch. ‘I’m going to have to go, sorry. Can you tell him I came looking?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He set off walking. Ruby shouted after him, ‘Who shall I say was looking for him?’
He turned as he answered. ‘Mark,’ he said, walking backwards, waving. ‘Tell him Mark Proctor came looking.’
When he turned back again to go to his car, his cheeks were flushed and he couldn’t stop his grin.
Yes, Joe Parker, he’d known it was you all along. He’d always known. That’s why he’d asked for you.
He laughed to himself. Sometimes the smallest of ripples cause the biggest effect.
Joe tapped on Melissa’s bedroom door.
He was confused. He wanted to know about Mark Proctor but he wanted Melissa too. He’d felt it the night before and it had felt so right not long before. But thoughts of Ellie and Proctor had taken away the moment.
Melissa didn’t answer. He’d been expecting another expletive, a demand that he leave, but there was just silence.
He pushed open the door. Melissa was sitting on the bed, still in her knickers and T-shirt, her jeans on the floor by her feet.
‘Did you expect to find me in here crying?’ she said, and looked up to him. ‘Is that the game? Get me on the hook and then play with me?’
Joe went to the bed and sat next to her. He looked at her legs. Her skin was pale and her hairs soft. He ran his finger over her thigh, expecting her to pull away, but she didn’t.
‘There’s no game,’ he said.
‘It’s been a long time for me,’ she said, not looking at Joe. ‘I don’t know what the rules are now, but I thought I sensed something in you, that you wanted me, and I liked it. I haven’t felt wanted by a man for a while. I misread it. I’m sorry.’
‘You didn’t read it wrong,’ he said. ‘And there are no rules. You just go with what feels right.’
‘And it didn’t feel right for you?’
‘Like I said, it’s complicated.’
‘Because you’re my brother’s lawyer?’
He gave a small laugh. ‘Something like that.’
She turned to him. ‘You need to talk to me about Mark.’
Joe was unsure. If he told her, it would change everything. How could he go from this closeness, such as it was, to ‘
Your brother killed my sister’
?
‘I will, I promise. Just be patient with me.’ He put his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled of soft fruit, the remnants of whatever shampoo she’d been using before he arrived. ‘If I make you wait, you’ll have to see me again.’
‘Do you want to see me again?’ Her voice was a soft murmur, her head resting on his chest.
‘Yes, I do.’ And when he said it, he knew that he meant it.
She sat up straight. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nearly half three,’ Joe said.
Her head drooped. ‘Shit.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry. Carrie will be back from school in fifteen minutes. We can’t be found like this.’
School?
‘Oh shit, I’ve got to go too,’ he said.
‘What is it?’
‘My sister is staying with me, just for a couple of days. I need to collect her. I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Not used to the parenting lark?’
He grinned. ‘Something like that.’
Melissa stood up to pull on her jeans. He went as if to go, but he paused as he admired her body, enjoying her slender legs as she wiggled herself into her jeans.
She caught him looking and blushed. ‘If you want to see them again, come round again. Now go.’
Joe grinned and did as he was told.
Once he was back on the street, he texted Ruby:
Running late. Go to Mum’s. I’ll collect you.
A message pinged back:
Too late. On the bus to yours.
Joe cursed and jogged to the main road, pacing back and forth until a black cab rumbled towards him.
Ruby was walking towards his apartment building as he climbed out of the cab, playing on her phone, hunched over the small screen, tapping something in. ‘Hi,’ she said, without looking up.
‘Ruby, you need to go home.’
‘Let me stay a bit longer,’ she said. ‘I need a break.’
Joe let her into the apartment building and endured her silence as her attention never wavered from her phone. Once in the apartment, she dropped her school bag, heavy with homework, on the floor and sat down on Joe’s favourite chair.
Joe put his hands on his hips, splaying his jacket. ‘Can you see now why it’s easier for you to be at home? I can’t always drop everything.’
Ruby didn’t look up from her phone when she said, ‘Yeah, well, because you didn’t make it, I had to put up with your creepy friend.’
A chill ran through him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘After school. I was waiting for you and this creepy guy came over. He said he was looking for you but he had to go. What was he doing waiting outside a school? Creep.’
Joe went over to her. He knelt in front of her. ‘Who was he?’
She shrugged but didn’t take her eyes from her phone. ‘Just some random guy.’
He snatched her phone from her. ‘Who was he?’
She was about to object but something about the glare in his eyes told her that it was something serious. ‘I saw him outside the apartment this morning. Told me to tell you that he’d been there. Said he was called Mark Proctor.’
Joe clenched his fists and closed his eyes as blood rushed to his brain.
This changed everything.
Sam was looking at vodkagirl’s profile again, trying to find some kind of hint. He was still logged in but she hadn’t replied. Then he noticed something on the top of the page. A logo of a thumb.
He clicked on it and the logo changed to a thumb with a gold star on it.
Sam sat back. ‘What did I just do?’
Charlotte looked over. ‘I take it you’re not into the social media thing,’ she said.
‘No, not really. I prefer real life.’
‘You’ve just
liked
her.’
‘I did that already. I sent her a message.’
‘No, this is something different.’ When Sam frowned, she said, ‘The site makes money from people making contact with other users. How did you say it worked, that the first five contacts were free but after that you paid for them?’
‘Something like that. You buy credits.’
‘Think about it, Sam. People aren’t going to pay money to send a slew of messages to random strangers, hoping for a response. But what if that person has already hinted that they like you? You might buy some credits to send a message then. You’ve just told vodkagirl that you like her. It’s the site trying to stimulate conversation, because chat pays.’
‘Can I tell if anyone else has liked her?’
‘Hang on.’ Charlotte got closer and took the computer mouse from Sam. She moved the cursor over the thumb icon and it flashed up that 112 people had liked vodkagirl’s profile.
Sam groaned in dismay. Over a hundred men responded to the ambiguity of her not being eighteen. The hint was obvious, and there were a lot of men too eager to chase it.
‘It must be here somewhere,’ Charlotte mumbled, before clicking on a heart symbol underneath the profile picture. A list of thumbnail images appeared, with links to user profiles underneath.
Charlotte grinned. ‘It had to be somewhere. The site makes money from online chat, not meetings, so there had to be a way for people to connect with each other. Shared interests, you might call it.’
‘Why didn’t the guy from the site tell me this?’
‘Because it’s called No One Tells. He did tell you to search the site, though, to find it for yourself. Now you’ve done that, you can try to contact these people. You’ve got seven days before your trial period ends. You need to move quickly.’
Sam thought about that as he looked at the list of profiles. He had to be careful. The whole point of this site, as far as he could see, was for people to find extramarital sex; if he called at their houses, they would clam up, claim they had been the victim of a hoax. No, he had to appeal to their need for discretion. To their fear of being found out.
Geography seemed the obvious filter. Sam made three columns on a sheet of paper. One was for those from the Manchester area, the middle one for anyone within a fifty-mile radius, and the last being further afield. Sam had to assume that most users told the truth about where they lived: sneaking out for a sleazy liaison would be tricky if it involved a hundred-mile trip. It was simply a case of going to each profile and looking at the town or county given, and checking whether they gave away any information that could identify them.
He drafted a message to send to them all:
My name is DC Samuel Parker from the Major Incident Team in Manchester. I am investigating a case that may have links with the website of which you are a member, No One Tells. I need you to contact me as a matter of urgency, and if you don’t, I’m afraid I will need to call at your house to discuss the case. I understand the need for privacy so please contact me through the police switchboard or by using my police email.
He knew it was blunt, but he was banking on the fear of being found out outweighing the reluctance to call. He needed to find out about vodkagirl, to see if there was any connection.
‘This is only going to work if the person logs in,’ Sam said.
‘See if there’s a different way to make contact?’
Sam went through the user profiles again, until he saw something.
‘There,’ he said.
Charlotte leaned in.
‘Someone’s put their email address into their profile,’ he said.
‘Cheap as well as perverted,’ she said. ‘Going for the direct contact rather than paying through the site.’
‘Except he’s slipped up, because that looks like a work email, not some Hotmail account. We can trace him.’
Sam smiled. Charlotte was right, someone had made a mistake, because the email gave up his name. He went by the username of
cashlover
, but his email address identified him as B. Carter.
Sam put the email address in an internet search bar and on the first page it identified him as Bruce Carter from a Manchester management consultancy. Bruce’s smile beamed out from the About Us page of the company’s website.
‘Shall we pay him a visit?’ Sam said.
‘Why not?’ Charlotte said, and logged off her computer.
Just before Sam did the same, he scrolled through the rest of the profile pictures. Most were blank or were of people who thought they were handsome enough to be a magnet. Near the bottom, there was a profile picture showing a Mercedes, nothing else, apart from two letters on a sign behind the car, large and red on a white background. R and D. From Richards Garage, the showroom where Henry Mason had worked.
He grinned. They’d just found Henry Mason.