Rob sighed. Strike two. ‘No. I’ll try now.’
‘Cool. Look, I’ve got to get on with giving Leah her feed. Let me know when she turns up, okay?’
‘Okay.’ He ended the call and tried ringing Jemma again. He had to leave a voicemail this time. Could be important.
‘Jemma, it’s Rob. Ring me.’
He sent a text message.
Babe, I’m worried. Where are you? x
He rang the number for Jemma’s mum from memory. When they’d first started seeing each other they spoke on the phone a lot. Her mum used to go mad at her for tying up the line.
Jemma’s mum answered on the third ring. ‘2461.’
‘Hi, Helen, it’s Rob. Is Jemma at your house?’
‘No. Should she be?’ Rob heard her stifle a yawn.
‘I don’t know. She went out with Carla and the others last night. I’ve woke up this morning and she’s not here. Just thought I’d check to see if she’d ended up at yours instead.’
‘I haven’t heard from her for a while. Are you saying she’s missing?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just not like her to not get in touch.’
‘Have you spoken to her friends? Maybe they know something.’
‘Yeah, spoke to Carla, well, Carla’s husband Andy anyway. She left earlier than the others and went for a taxi.’
‘This doesn’t sound good, Rob. Should I come over?’
‘No, you don’t have to. I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
‘Well, I suppose I best stay here just in case she comes here. Ring me the second she turns up.’
‘Will do.’
Rob pressed the red end call button and stared at his phone. He stood next to the bed, and dropped down when he’d ended the call. He tried to think of where else she might have been. Who else he should call before the police.
What was he supposed to do? What was the right course of action?
Carla and her mum, they were the only people he knew Jemma spoke to regularly. He glanced at the alarm clock.
‘Shit.’ He should have been leaving the house now, going in to work at the university for overtime. He wasn’t going anywhere though. He walked back downstairs, going through to the living room and looking outside, hoping to see Jemma passed out on the doorstep. Nothing again. Outside, only socks on his feet, looking around the front of his house, the pavement, the side alley near the bins. Still the expected nothingness. Rob shivered, looking around the quiet street, looking for any curtains twitching. Anyone walking past or peeking out of their windows from the houses surrounding him would have seen a confused looking, average bloke, searching for someone. That was right.
He went back into the living room, ran a hand through his hair, still messed up from sleeping. Dropped his hand across his face and the intentional three-day stubble. Stood near the window, opening the blinds and began drumming his fingers on the windowsill.
It had finally happened.
She was gone, and now he had to deal with the consequences.
4
Sunday 27th January 2013 – Day One
There are two tunnels running underneath the River Mersey and into the Wirral Peninsula. Only separated by a mile and a half of water, the tunnels provide the only way into Liverpool which doesn’t involve a ninety mile round trip down the motorway and through Runcorn. Murphy could see a connection becoming closer each day, the sheer amount of traffic coming from the tunnels telling their own story. If you filled in the Mersey with concrete, most would barely recognise the difference. Coming from the city centre, the first tunnel you hit is Birkenhead tunnel. Carry on further, down a wide A road, Byrom Street, which runs directly from the city centre, pull into the left hand side, and a curved road takes you around to Wallasey tunnel. Stay on the right hand side and within minutes you’re on Scotland Road. Turn off onto Hunter Street and behind one of the four universities in the city is St Anne Street running parallel to the tunnel approach. Halfway down, over a dip in the road, amidst abandoned warehouses, converted offices and a small housing estate, was the police station which served Liverpool North division.
Murphy pulled up in the car park behind the station, and sat for a moment amongst the police vans, unmarked cars, and personal vehicles. The dirty red brick building, which loomed over the street five floors high, looked as ominous as ever. An old-style office building, repatriated as the hub of a policing section which served seven areas of Liverpool.
Scratch that, Murphy thought, it was eight now. Cuts meant they’d inherited part of Liverpool South. He sighed to himself. If that hadn’t been the case, the dead girl in Sefton Park would be someone else’s problem.
He ran through the last couple of hours in his head. He still hadn’t eaten. Probably a blessing in disguise. Even after almost twenty years he still felt a jolt at seeing someone with the life sucked out of them. He’d run on adrenaline until then, but he needed to eat. Plus, of course, if you let adrenaline take over this early, it could lead to mistakes.
He could do without any of them.
Murphy pushed his way into the major incident room, people bustling back and forth as the events of the morning took precedence over other cases. He spotted DCI Stephens barking orders at a number of DCs.
Rossi had beaten him back there. Hunched over the computer screen, A4 sheets of paper strewn about the desk, one pen in her hand, another behind her ear.
‘Anything?’
Rossi turned in her chair to face him. ‘Nothing yet. There’s been a number of missing women reported in the last month. Trying to narrow it down now.’
‘Good. I’m going to run Reeves through the system. Make sure he’s not a murderer and we’ve already screwed up.’
He moved over to his desk, noticed a post-it note stuck to his computer monitor.
CALL HOUGHTON
He picked up the phone on his desk and called the pathologist. He’d be at the hospital morgue, tucking the body away for the post-mortem later in the day.
‘We found something on the body when we removed her clothing. A letter. I think you’ll want to come see it.’
‘Right,’ Murphy replied, pleased the pathologist was getting straight to the point. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘I think it’s best you see it for yourself.’
EXPERIMENT THREE
To Whom It May Concern,
I don’t know you yet, but I will. The same applies both ways I suppose. You’ll be trying to find out my name. My reasons. Everything will become clearer over time. Just know, I do it all for a good cause. We need to be clear about that.
The young girl you have found isn’t the first experiment I’ve carried out.
She won’t be the last.
When the American government was experimenting on an unsuspecting public, we didn’t accuse them in the same manner you will be accusing me. They were the beginning of the end I feel. The last of my kind, willing to go to any lengths in order to study mankind.
What you have with this girl is a modern interpretation of one such experiment.
Part of the MK Ultra