The Dying Place (7 page)

‘Not ones that bark.’

A few more seconds passed before they heard shuffling from behind the door. A mortice lock turning on the old-style door, the house not being adorned with one of the newer double-glazed models. It opened inwards a few inches, a face appearing in the gap.

‘Yeah?’

‘Sally Hughes?’ Murphy said, bending over so he wasn’t towering over the small-statured mother of Dean Hughes.

‘What’s he done now?’

Murphy raised his eyebrows at the instant recognition of them as police, even though they were in plain clothes. ‘Who?’

‘Our Jack. What’s he done? You’re either police or bailiffs. So he either owes someone or you’re trying to pin something on him.’

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Laura Rossi, this is DI David Murphy …’

‘Jack was here last night …’

Rossi held her hands out. ‘It’s not about Jack, Mrs Hughes. It’s about Dean.’

Sally opened the door wider, a look of resignation flashing across her face before she swiped her hand across her forehead, moving damp, lifeless hair away from her face. ‘Right. Well you better come in then.’

Sally walked away from them, locking the still-barking dog in another room before going through to what Murphy guessed was the living room on the left. He went in first, wiping his feet on a non-existent doormat without thinking and following her inside. He took the few steps into the living room, some American talk show snapping into silence as he walked into the room, the clattering of the remote control on a wooden coffee table.

‘Scuse the mess. Haven’t had chance to tidy up yet.’ Sally lifted a cigarette box and in a couple of smooth movements lit a Silk Cut and took a drag.

Murphy savoured the smell of smoke which drifted his way, before perching on the couch which was to the side of the armchair where Sally was sitting, legs tucked underneath herself.

‘What’s he done then? Haven’t seen him in months, so fucked if I know anything about it.’

Murphy glanced at Rossi, suddenly unsure how to proceed. If they opened with the fact Dean was dead, any information that may have been gleaned from a less stark opening might be lost. On the other hand, Murphy decided if his kid was dead, he’d want to know straight away.

‘We found a body in West Derby this morning, Sally. We think it’s Dean.’

The reactions are never the same each time. Every time a quiet difference. During his career, Murphy had experienced the whole gamut of emotions being projected in his presence; from howling tears of grief to quiet stoicism. He’d learnt to not really put much stock in the initial reaction, not to make assumptions based on them.

‘Fuck off.’

He’d not heard this one before.

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ Sally Hughes continued, laughing as she tried to take another drag on her cigarette, ‘look how serious you both are. Sorry lad, you’ve got the wrong house.’

Murphy breathed in. He’d seen the overall emotion of denial before – granted, it wasn’t usually accompanied by laughter, but once you got to the core of it, it was denial all the same. ‘Look at this picture for us, Sally,’ Murphy said, taking the blown-up, A4-sized photograph of Dean Hughes from the manila folder he was carrying. ‘Who do you see?’

Sally took a cursory glance at it, allowing her eyes to only alight on it for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, that’s not him.’

‘What about this tattoo?’ Murphy said, moving to another photograph which showed a tribal symbol found on the chest of the body.

‘Loads of lads his age have got the same thing,’ Sally said, still not looking at the photographs for more than a second.

Rossi moved out of the room beside Murphy, one quick glance passing between them. She’d be calling for support from family liaison officers, he hoped. Murphy leant forward, taking back the picture he’d handed to Sally and replacing it in the folder. ‘Sally, we think it
is
Dean, so someone is going to come and take you down the Royal to make an identification,’ – Murphy held up a hand to stop her interrupting – ‘and if it’s not him, then that’ll be it.’

‘It’s a waste of time, this. He can’t be there.’

‘Why not?’

‘He’s only missing. Probably getting into all kinds of shit.’ She stubbed out the cigarette into a clean ashtray. ‘But I’d know if anything bad had happened.’ She banged an open palm against her chest. ‘I’d know in here. I’m his mum. I’d know.’

Murphy watched as her hands began shaking, struggling to pass a hand through her hair to brush it off her face. Her eyes betraying her as they filmed over.

‘Sally …’

‘Don’t.’ She interrupted as he began to speak. ‘I’ll go down there, but I’m telling you, it’s a big mistake. Have you got kids?’

Murphy shook his head.

‘Then you wouldn’t know. I’m telling you, I’d feel it if he was gone. And I’m not feeling anything.’

Murphy let the silence hang in the air, staring at the crown of Sally’s head as she leant forward, both hands grasping at her hair before sliding down and crossing over so she was hugging herself. Murphy blinked, and believed she’d aged ten years since they’d walked through the door, realising quickly it was a trick.

‘They’re on their way,’ Rossi said softly, returning to the room. ‘Be about fifteen minutes. Do you want a tea or something, Sally, while we wait?’

‘It’s all right,’ Sally replied, forcing herself upright, ‘I’ll do it. You want one?’

Murphy shook his head, leaning back as Rossi followed Sally through.

Denial. He was sure it was on one of those lists about grief he’d once read. He just hoped acceptance wasn’t too far behind.

6

Murphy and Rossi returned to the station, leaving the support officers with the task of taking Sally Hughes to the morgue to identify her son; Murphy hoped they’d managed to make Dean look presentable at least before showing his mother the body. Murphy was relieved that the next time they’d speak to her she might be more accepting of the reality. At the moment, they had little to go on without speaking to her, other than a list of people whom Dean Hughes might have spent most of his time with. He read through it as Rossi questioned the officers who had been going door to door around the church that morning. Murphy realised how long it had been since he’d been in uniform, where you’d come across the same people, the same names, over and over. Now the names meant nothing. The people on the list would have only just entered primary school when he was in uniform in the late nineties, before the explosion of technology which seemed to have occurred a decade later. Now everything seemed to centre on a computer. Even those weren’t really needed any longer, as everyone seemed to have a brand new mobile phone which did the job just as well.

Not even forty, Murphy thought as he scanned the list. Barely late thirties, and he already felt left behind.

Social media, that was the thing. Everything being laid open. Murphy shunned it completely – didn’t like the idea of anyone from his past being able to find him that easily. He’d been involved in a few cases in the previous years which had involved the websites – Facebook, Twitter, Bebo – so he knew enough about them that he wasn’t lost in a conversation.

Twitter was the new thing, it seemed, for the genesis of such cases. The papers went through peaks and troughs with the story – usually when nothing much else was happening. Trolls, bullies, threats. Each platform gets their turn. They all get blamed, when Murphy knew the real cause.

The people.

It didn’t matter which website or avenue was used, they’re all just a way of exerting power.

Murphy had no doubt Dean Hughes would be on there, so he rolled his hand over the mouse of his computer, typing www.face—before the page auto-filled itself.

Scrolling down the page, he realised just how common a name it was. He tried to narrow it down by putting in Liverpool as the location, but it was still difficult to find the right one from all the results. Dean and Hughes was obviously a popular combination of names in Merseyside. He clicked on two different profiles before finding the right one. Profile picture set to a group of five lads, shaven heads on three of them, the other two with a swept-over quiff thing going on. Dean Hughes in the middle. All arms spread wide, cans of lager in one hand, teeth showing. First comment on the picture when Murphy clicked on it …

Gay as fuk lads!

Murphy shook his head, clicking the
x
in the corner of the picture and returning to the profile page itself. He waited for the inevitability of the page being set to private, which was supposedly happening more often these days. He was only mildly surprised when he was able to start scrolling through Dean’s wall posts. Most of the youngsters – or teenagers he should say – he’d had reason to investigate this way seemed to revel in the lack of anonymity. Everything was left open for public viewing and consumption.

‘What you on?’ Rossi said, swivelling her chair around the desk and stopping as she reached his side.

‘Dean’s Facebook page. Look at this –
Carnt be assed wth dis. Ned 2 gt stned lads
– how do you misspell “need”?’

‘No one gives a toss online.’

Murphy grunted in reply and carried on scrolling, only pausing to read the various status updates. ‘Last one was seven months ago. Which ties in with the theory of him disappearing suddenly.’

‘Anyone posted on his wall recently?’

Murphy scrolled back up to the top, looking to the left side of the screen. ‘Few here. Mainly when he went missing. People asking if he’s all right. Nothing of interest really … wait.’

‘What?’ Rossi said, leaning forward.

‘Same name posting a few times. Gets more and more angry. Paul Cooper. Dean owed him money by the looks of it.’ Murphy made a note of the name.

Murphy’s phone rang before Rossi had a chance to reply. ‘Sally Hughes has finally confirmed it’s Dean,’ he said once he’d finished the call from Dr Houghton’s assistant. ‘Post-mortem starts in an hour.’

‘We’d best get over there then.’

Naked, stark light shone above the body as Dr Houghton began his work. Murphy had begun to find the whole process quite boring. Once you’d winced and felt your stomach turn over the first ten or twenty times you attended a post-mortem, it became more methodical.

‘I count sixty-three different contusions and marks. Some inflicted close to death, some occurring days or weeks before. The worst of those are concentrated on the torso and arms,’ Dr Houghton said, speaking into a digital recorder as well as for the benefit of Murphy and Rossi. ‘Healing contusion to the eye area, around a week old, I’d suggest. Bruising to the neck area, asphyxiation a possible cause of death.’ He pressed the stop button on his recorder before turning towards Murphy. ‘He was beaten severely and then strangled by a thin ligature. It’s pretty obvious.’

‘Rule out suicide then?’ Rossi said.

‘Unless he’s worked out a way of hanging himself whilst lying down, then yes. He was on the ground when he died.’

‘What was used to beat him?’ Murphy asked, before Rossi had a chance to swear at the doctor in her mother tongue.

‘There are three different distinctive markings,’ Dr Houghton said, turning the body over with a sigh, before his assistant moved quickly to lend a hand. ‘On the back here is a marking from some kind of heavy object, a bat or plank of wood maybe. On the front, something thin like a whip or something similar. And then here,’ Dr Houghton pointed to the left-hand-side rib area, ‘half a boot print. He was stamped on so hard I’d guess there are a few broken ribs in that area.’

Murphy tried and failed to keep the grimace off his face. The memory of the injuries he’d sustained a year earlier – broken arm and ribs after being pushed down concrete steps which led into the darkness of a basement – was still fresh. The breathlessness of having your ribs broken in more than one place. The look on the doctor’s face in the Royal Hospital – only a few floors above from where he was standing now – as he’d explained to Murphy that they had to heal on their own. It was a couple of weeks before he could even stand walking any kind of distance.

Still, the sick pay was nice. Plus, he’d suddenly became more accepted around the station again, which made things much easier than they’d been previously. The snide remarks and sideways glances, just waiting for him to screw up, had pretty much ended that day. Injured in the line of duty had that kind of effect on petty differences.

Murphy absent-mindedly rubbed at his right-hand side as he replied, ‘Think you can get a print off that?’

‘I imagine so,’ Dr Houghton replied, sounding amused by the question. Hiding a grin behind his mask, Murphy assumed. ‘Wonders of modern science. We have scrapings underneath the fingernails as well, which I imagine are from the back of the hands of the person who was strangling him to death.’

‘Good. Full report?’

Dr Houghton sighed. ‘In the morning at the latest.’

Murphy kicked at a stone in the hospital car park, watching as it jumped up and hit the side of someone’s Ford Focus. He didn’t move slowly enough to check if he’d chipped the paintwork as he continued to trot towards his car.

‘Who interviewed the kids who found him?’ Murphy said, turning to Rossi who was, as ever, struggling to keep up.

‘Harris and some other DC I can’t remember the name of. They’re basically interchangeable at this point.’

Murphy smirked, knowing exactly what she meant. Local cuts to the police service meant that constables in CID were being sent all over Liverpool to fill in where and when needed. It meant there was no kind of consistency on who was working at St Anne Street from one week to the next. Once you got used to one face, they were sent over to the other side of the city to fill in on some other case. Murphy didn’t even want to consider the mind who had thought up this gloriously stupid way of working.

‘I’m guessing nothing came of it, otherwise you would have told me?’

Rossi shook her head. ‘Just found him and ran. Didn’t see anyone at all. Nothing from door to doors either really. Other than a neighbour who thought she heard an argument near Castlesite Road. Wasn’t sure of the time because she was half asleep. Could have been dreaming, for all we know.’