Then She Was Gone (40 page)

Sound whooshed out towards him as light returned. He blinked and shielded his eyes from the sun which was now blaring down on him. Murphy moved further onto the roof, slower now, hearing sirens
below and in the distance.

‘Nice view.’

He made his way closer to the figure standing with arms outstretched on the raised edge of the building in front of him. The person didn’t turn at the sound of his voice. Murphy looked
around, seeing the taller buildings of the waterfront in the distance.

‘Probably an easier way of seeing the view though,’ he said, continuing to move further along the roof. ‘Don’t you agree, Simon?’

The figure tensed up as Murphy drew closer. His arms were still stretched out, but they were struggling to stay in mid-air.

‘You should have let them burn,’ Simon Jackson said, Murphy only just making out the words over the noise below them. ‘They deserved to die.’

‘Maybe so,’ Murphy replied, stopping a few feet to the side of the man in front of him. ‘Not my call, though. Not yours either.’

Murphy risked another step closer, coming further into line with Jackson as he did so. He could see his face more clearly now, the way his shirt hung loose, billowing in the wind which gusted
around them.

‘We all deserve to die.’

Murphy breathed deep as he got closer to the edge of the roof, trying to ignore the drop below him. ‘It’s over, Simon,’ he said, the gravel scraping under his feet as he took
another step towards Jackson. ‘It’s time to come down now.’

There was a soft chuckle before Simon turned his head slightly towards him. ‘I’ve seen you before. On the television, I think.’

‘Everyone has,’ Murphy replied, shrugging towards Jackson. ‘It’s a terrible kind of celebrity. Doesn’t get you anything.’

‘They’ll talk about me, though,’ Jackson said, turning his head back to face the smaller building opposite them. ‘Probably not in the same way they do you, of
course.’

‘Do you care about that sort of thing?’

Jackson lowered his arms a little more, then used one hand to wipe sweat from his brow as it got nearer to his eyes. ‘Only in the way anyone cares about the manner in which your work is
discussed.’

‘Work?’

‘Yes,’ Jackson said, his clipped tones sounding alien in the surroundings. ‘My work. I have completed my job.’

‘How about helping me complete mine,’ Murphy said, his breathing now under control. ‘Only fair, surely?’

‘Your negotiation tactics need a little work.’

Murphy held his breath as the wind picked up once more causing Jackson to sway. ‘What was your job?’

‘To destroy it all, of course. To rectify the mistake we made.’

‘What mistake?’

Jackson turned towards him again, his eyebrows raised as he considered Murphy anew. ‘I knew it was over when he came to see me.’

‘Who did?’

‘Wanted to talk to me about that slut who was crying rape all over campus in our final year. As if she hadn’t wanted what happened. He told me what I didn’t know.’

‘For someone who was intent on killing everyone involved with the club because of this girl, you don’t seem to be too sympathetic to her. You know, given she is the one who initiated
this change of heart.’

Jackson took a step to the side, almost off the building entirely, before he found purchase again. ‘It was never about her. She was nothing. She was just another one, like all the others.
It was about all of them. What they made us become. They destroyed us before I even started. They turned us into something we could never be.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Scum,’ Jackson replied, holding Murphy’s stare. ‘If what she, and so many others said, became known, it would never go away. They made us this way. It was girls like her
that made the club the way it was.’

‘That’s a very black and white way of looking at things,’ Murphy said, confused by the man’s words. None of it made sense, the reason and motive clouded by the
man’s hatred of women. ‘You kill men because of what they did, even though you blame the women for making them that way . . . you’re going to have to help me out
here.’

‘They killed his sister,’ a voice said from behind him. Murphy turned swiftly, stones slipping out from underneath his feet and scattering across the roof. ‘Isn’t that
right, Simon?’

The last person Murphy had expected to appear up there with them made her way towards them.

‘What are you doing here?’ Murphy said, taking a step back and trying to lower his voice.

Rossi shrugged towards him. ‘Had a visit from someone. A mutual friend of our man on the ledge here, isn’t that right, Simon? It’s the same every time. Sexist rapists, who hate
women, apart from the ones they’re actually related to. Of course, to some, that doesn’t even matter. Except these small-minded idiot boys.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jackson said, spittle flying out of his mouth and down to the street below.

‘Don’t I?’ Rossi replied, eyes fixed on Jackson’s back and not acknowledging Murphy at all now. ‘You don’t think I’ve met people like you all my life?
Happy to subject women to your hatred, until it becomes someone you care about.’

‘Stop talking.’

‘You can’t silence me, Simon,’ Rossi said, coming to a stop behind Jackson, a few feet away from Murphy. ‘You didn’t know until my brother turned up at your office,
did you? He told you the truth. About what they had done. To Ellie. You had no idea what they did to your sister. Why she killed herself.’

‘I don’t want to hear this . . .’

‘Why not? This is your legacy. You’ve been trying to atone for what you helped create, by taking revenge on your fellow rapists. They took something from you and you felt responsible
for what happened.’

‘You don’t know a thing about my life. About my work.’

‘I know enough,’ Rossi said, looking towards Murphy for the first time and taking a step closer. He matched her step, seeing her intentions in her eyes.

‘You think you can comprehend anything? Just because they give you a suit doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘Because I’m a woman, is that it?’ Rossi said, taking another step and removing her hands from her pocket. ‘That’s not going to fly here, Simon.’

‘No, but I will if you keep moving towards me.’

Murphy stopped moving, now only just out of reaching distance of Jackson. Rossi took another step, before she too came to a stop.

‘We need to talk this all through,’ Murphy said, glancing towards Rossi and motioning with his head. ‘Make sense of it all.’

‘What does it matter?’ Jackson said, turning around fully now. The back of his shoes were over the edge, only one movement from falling down to the pavement. ‘It’s done,
there’s nothing left to do now.’

‘Tim will be released soon,’ Rossi said, facing Jackson and holding his gaze. ‘He didn’t kill anyone. Soon, he’ll be out on the streets, with nothing to answer for.
Are you telling me you don’t want to be the one to make sure he goes back inside?’

‘You’re lying,’ Jackson said, but Murphy could see the hesitation on his face. ‘He’s never getting out.’

‘Yes, he is,’ Rossi replied, her voice rising above the noise below them. ‘He was one of them, wasn’t he?’

‘She shouldn’t have been there,’ Jackson said, tears springing to his eyes as his feet wavered on the edge of the rooftop. ‘None of this would have happened if
she’d just stayed away.’

Murphy bit back a reply, hoping Rossi would do the same.

‘They did to her what you all had been doing for years. To other people’s sisters and daughters.’

‘She wasn’t like them,’ Jackson said, anger on his face now, turning redder by the second. ‘She was a good girl. They took advantage . . .’

Rossi moved towards him. ‘You’re not going to jump off here and escape it all, Simon. You can’t run away from this. You’re going to face up to what you’ve done,
make sure Tim Johnson doesn’t get away with what he did. That’s what you’re going to do.’

Jackson wiped a sleeve across his face, looking at Murphy for a second before turning his attention back to Rossi. ‘She never listened to me,’ he said, a wry smile creeping across
his face. ‘She just wanted to be a part of whatever I was doing. She was always like that. When Vincenzo turned up at my office, I didn’t know what to say. I knew, though, before then.
I knew what had happened.’

‘You just needed to hear it being said by someone else.’

‘She never told me. She came here, for one weekend. I didn’t want her at the party. I knew what they were like. Sam, Tim . . . they were the worst. They liked them
young and Ellie was only seventeen. Looked even younger. I tried to keep an eye on her, but she left with them. I didn’t know that, though. She sent me a message saying she’d gone back
to my flat. I didn’t even check to see if she was in bed or anything. She’d gone back home by the time I woke up the next morning.’

‘When did she die?’

Jackson shook his head, Murphy watching the exchange without speaking. He inched a little closer, hoping Jackson wouldn’t notice.

‘A few months later,’ Jackson said, looking up towards the sky. Murphy held his breath as he waited for him to topple backwards.

‘They never said anything to you?’

Jackson shook his head. ‘They would make jokes, before she died. That’s all I thought they were – jokes. Banter and that. I didn’t think it was actually true.’

‘Vincenzo told you, though, didn’t he? He told you what they did to her.’

‘Yes,’ Jackson replied, his head falling onto his chest, eyes closing. ‘I called him a liar. Told him to keep his mouth shut, otherwise he would destroy everything. It
wasn’t the way things should be done. She shouldn’t have been there.’

‘You can’t run away from this any more, Simon,’ Rossi said, a couple of steps away from him now. Murphy was almost as close. Within a step or two, they would be almost on him.
‘It’s over.’

Jackson lifted his head, looking first at Rossi, then Murphy. He looked up towards the sky again.

‘Think of your family,’ Murphy said, trying to stop the inevitable. ‘Are you just going to leave them to pick up the pieces?’

‘It doesn’t matter. They’ll get by a lot better without me. I failed her,’ Jackson said, lifting his arms into the air again, outstretched as if he was on an invisible
cross. ‘But I made it up to her. It’s over all right. They’ll never do it again.’

When people spoke to Murphy about these kinds of situations, they always said time slowed down. They said everything stopped and they could see everything happen in slow motion.

It didn’t happen that way for him.

One second, he was reaching out towards Simon Jackson, Rossi by his side matching his movements.

The next, he was grabbing at thin air, hearing the screams from down below.

It doesn’t matter what they say. They can never change your mind. You knew how this ended, before you even began. You knew all those years earlier, when you lowered Ellie
Jackson into her early grave. The look of pain and agony on your parents’ faces as they buried their daughter. You knew then, there was only one way to make up for all that you had
caused.

You look at both of those strangers on the rooftop, one to the other, then lift your arms out. You hope to be welcomed home, to see her again.

To say you’re sorry. To beg for forgiveness. For everything you did.

There’s a second when your feet try to find purchase, then all you can feel is the wind rushing around you. You close your eyes to it all. You embrace the darkness as you fall, down and
down.

You hope that the trip down ends there. That you don’t keep falling afterwards. That you’ll make your way back up. That you won’t go to hell.

The last thing you think of before you hit the ground is her.

Ellie. Your sister. The one you allowed to die. She killed herself, because she couldn’t live any more.

Please forgive me.

It hadn’t taken much to get Vincenzo Rossi to talk. He knew he was in deep trouble and that his sister wasn’t going to be able to help him unless he revealed all he
knew.

His information had led them to where they were now. Standing outside the anonymous door of an apartment near Sefton Park. Close to the place where Tim Johnson had lost what he thought was his
daughter.

‘Let them go in first,’ Murphy said to Rossi. ‘Clear the place just in case.’

He still wasn’t sure she should be there with him, but he knew there was going to be no talking her out of it. She wanted to be there at the end, to make sure everything was done right, in
case it meant even further trouble for her brother.

‘Police, open the door.’

Murphy stood further back from the other uniformed officers, waiting for the door to open.

Tim Johnson was going to be released, based on Vincenzo Rossi’s statement, he thought. They were currently in the process of tracking down the Polish woman he had supposedly murdered. It
wouldn’t take long, not with the information Vincenzo had provided.

Murphy had agreed to Rossi’s request in exchange for all of this. Her brother’s name would be kept out of it all. It was a risk, given that Hazel or her eventual lawyer might use
that in her defence, but they could plead ignorance.

It would take time for them to get back to normal, but Murphy knew it would happen. There was just too much between them for it not to.

‘We’re going in.’

Murphy watched as they broke down the apartment door and quickly entered one after another. He was pretty sure they would find nothing in there.

Hazel Jones would be gone.

‘What do you think will happen to them?’

Murphy turned back to Rossi, trying to figure out an answer to her question. He knew who she meant. ‘I think the Abercromby Club will struggle to come back from this.’

The burnt body of James Morley, the final name on Simon Jackson’s list before his own, had been returned to his family down south. With the exception of Tim Johnson, all the founding
members of the club were now no more.

Already, women were coming forward with stories of the club’s practices over the years. Tim may be released for a murder he didn’t commit, but he wasn’t going to be free for
very long. There would be a number of prosecutions over the coming months and years.