The Dying Place. Luca Veste
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.