Looking Good Dead

64

Chris Willingham stared at the hysterical man with puke spattered down the front of his T-shirt standing in the doorway of the living room, screaming at him, and tried desperately to remember from his recent training how to deal with a situation like this.

‘YOU’VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING! PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. YOU HAVE TO HELP ME FIND MY WIFE!’

Talk quietly, he remembered. That was the first thing. So, in a soft voice he said, ‘What’s happened, exactly?’

‘SHE’S SCREAMING. SHE’S TERRIFIED OUT OF HER FUCKING WITS, OK?’ Tom Bryce entered the room and grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘YOU’VE GOT TO FUCKING DO SOMETHING!’

The young family liaison officer gagged at the stench of the vomit. Keeping his voice soft, he said, ‘Tell me, Mr Bryce, what’s happened?’

Tom Bryce turned and walked out of the room. ‘Come on, come and see! She’s on my computer!’

The PC followed Tom up the stairs and into the small den lined with books and files and framed photographs of his wife and children. He saw a laptop on the desk, the lid open, the screen blank. Tom Bryce tapped the carriage return on the keyboard and his email in-box appeared.

The stench of vomit was even stronger in here, and Willingham, concentrating on the screen, carefully stood clear of the mess on the carpet. He watched Bryce sit down, stare at the screen, frown, then search down through it.

‘It was here,’ Tom said. ‘It was here, an email with a fucking attachment. Oh Jesus, where the hell is it?’

Willingham said nothing; Tom seemed a little calmer for a moment. Then he appeared to lose it again. ‘IT WAS HERE!’

Tom stared in disbelief. The bloody email had vanished. He tapped in as a search key, one after another, every word from the email that he could remember. But nothing appeared. He sank forward, cradling his head in his hands, sobbing. ‘Please help me. Oh please do something, please find her, please do something. Oh Christ, you should have heard her.’

‘You saw her, on your screen?’

Tom nodded.

‘But she’s not there now?’

‘Nooooo.’

Willingham wondered about the man’s sanity. Was he imagining something? Flipping under the pressure? ‘Let’s take it from the top, shall we, sir?’

Trying to keep calm, Tom talked him through exactly what he had seen and what Kellie had said.

‘If you received an email,’ the PC said, ‘then it must be on your computer somewhere.’

Tom searched the deleted folder, the junk mail folder, then the rest of the folders in his email database. It had gone.

And he began to wonder, just for a moment, whether he had imagined it.

But not that scream. No way.

He turned to the constable. ‘You are probably thinking I imagined it, but I didn’t. I saw it. Whoever these people are, they’re clever with technology. It’s happened before – I’ve had emails this week that vanished, wiping my entire database out.’

Willingham stood there, unsure what to believe or what to do. The man was in a bad state but did not seem mad, just in shock. Something had happened, for sure, but in his limited knowledge of computers emails did not just disappear. They might get misfiled; that had happened to him. ‘Let’s try again, sir. Let’s go through all your files, one at a time.’

It was past midnight by the time they finished. Still they had not found it.

Tom looked up at him, imploring. ‘What are we going to do?’

The FLO was thinking hard. ‘We could try the High Tech Crime Unit, but I doubt if anyone will be there at this hour on a Sunday night. How about the technical support of your internet service provider – they might be twenty-four-hour?’ Then he frowned. ‘I, er… Actually, on second thought, I need to run this by DS Grace first.’

‘Let me just try,’ Tom said. He looked up the number and dialled it. An automated response put him on hold. After ten minutes of drecky music a human voice came on the line, an Indian accent, helpful and eager to please. After a further ten minutes that felt like ten hours he came back and reported that he could find no sign of the email or the attachment.

Tom slammed the phone down in fury.

In a tone that told Tom the FLO was becoming increasingly sceptical, Willingham asked, ‘What were the exact words your wife said to you?’

Trying desperately to think clearly, Tom related her words as accurately as he could remember.

‘She said, “Don’t tell the police. Do exactly what they tell you, otherwise it will be Max next then Jessica. Please do exactly what you are told. You must not tell the police – they will know if you do.”’

‘Who are “they”?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, feeling so utterly helpless.

Willingham pulled out his digital radio. Tom immediately clamped his hand over it. ‘NO!’

There was a long silence between them. Several more emails came in and the junk filter deleted them. Tom checked the folders. Nothing.

Finally, Willingham said, ‘I think I should file a report on this.’

‘No!’ Tom snapped back.

‘It will be secure, sir; I will only file it on the police system.’

‘NO!’

Taken aback by the man’s vehemence, the constable raised his hands. ‘OK, sir, no problem.’ He grimaced. ‘How about I make a cup of tea for us both – or a coffee – and we have a think about what to do next?’

‘Coffee,’ Tom said. ‘Coffee would be good, thank you. Black, no sugar.’

The constable left the room. Tom continued to stare at the screen; his entire life lay somewhere beyond its horizon.

A new email came in. It was from postmaster@scarab.tisana.al. Instantly, he clicked on it.

Congratulations, Tom! You are cottoning on fast! Now get out of the house, take Kellie’s car, head north on the A23 London Road and wait for her to call you. I don’t like you ignoring my instructions not to talk to the police. If you say one word, just ONE word to your new best friend, your rookie cop housekeeper, then my friend you will never see your wife alive again. Don’t attempt to reply to this email. And don’t bother searching for the hidden camera – you are looking at it.