In and out of darkness, flashes of light, consciousness, confusion. His body being moved, lifted, something going around his wrists. The sound of breathing, close by, wet exhalation on his neck. The smell of sweat, musty and cloying, hitting the back of his throat.
The room spun out of control before slowly righting itself. His head felt heavy on his neck, as if it had been replaced by something too big, too cumbersome to be normal. Murphy squinted against brightness shined into his eyes, then the light was snapped off.
Candles. He remembered them dotted round the hallway. Into his dining room.
His eyes began to focus, blurred visions of what was familiar. The display unit against one wall, the photographs on the wall, his wife sitting opposite him. Only an outline of her body, the features still not coming into focus.
Murphy tried to move, his hands resting against the base of his spine, bound together. He was unable to stir his feet into action, there was a restraint around them too.
He tried to speak, the sound nonsensical to his ears. He felt the tape across his mouth, stopping him from talking aloud. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision. The room spun once more, the pain in his head growing each time he moved. Feelings of nausea hitting him like a wave.
‘You with us, Detective?’
A voice in the shadows. Permeating the thickness of the atmosphere surrounding him. Each second becoming more and more clear. His eyes opening and closing of their own accord.
Murphy remembered in stages. The text message from Sarah. Walking into the house, the sight of candles, the smell of wax burning. The tea lights Sarah had bought months before, laid out along the laminate flooring in the hallway. Taking off his jacket and shoes.
Walking into the dining room.
He remembered the view in front of him as he’d walked in. Sarah, bound to one of the chairs they had picked out in a furniture shop a year earlier. Duct tape across her mouth, shaking her head, trying to speak to him.
‘You’re really heavy, took all my strength to lift you onto that chair. Almost didn’t think I’d make it.’
He wanted to answer, but couldn’t. Cramp hit his legs, the pain causing him to convulse and attempt to stretch out. But there was no give in the ties binding him to the chair, only his fingers able to move.
‘I had to do this, I really did. I’m sorry it’s not my usual well-thought-out way of doing things. I don’t like to hit people in the head before we start. Everything can go wrong straight away with head injuries. I’ve seen them in my line of work. One punch can destroy a life. One unnoticed kerbstone, or missed stair, sending you over. A slip is enough.’
Murphy looked towards the shadow where the voice was coming from. The unmoving figure blending into the walls.
‘This doesn’t work if you can’t speak to each other, so I’m going to remove the tape covering your mouth, David. Do you mind me calling you David?’
Murphy stared into the darkness, calculating his next move. His mind was still not firing correctly, thoughts colliding with each other. He shook his head slowly, expecting another wave of nausea to hit him. His body had settled a little, only his heart hammering against his chest gave him the sense something was happening inside.
‘If you shout or scream, David, I’m going to start slicing into your lovely wife. Do you understand that?’
Murphy nodded a little more forcefully, turning his gaze back to Sarah. Her head was down, her shoulders hitching every few seconds. His heart rate increased, every fibre within his body on alert, wanting to cross that room and hold her.
‘Good, I can do that then.’
The slight figure emerged from the shadows, crossing the short space between them and appearing in front of Murphy. The baby-faced form of Ben Flanagan, standing a foot away, looked down on him with an expression of interest. His face lit up by candlelight.
A hand gripped the side of his head, whilst the other tore away the tape covering his mouth. Murphy sucked in air, his breaths shallow and quick. He looked up to see Ben now standing close to Sarah, his empty hands now holding something against her face. It shimmered in the light and he saw the silver of a blade.
‘What do you want?’ Murphy said, coughing as he reached the last word.
‘I want to go back,’ Ben replied, smoothing down the hair on Sarah’s head as she continued to look down. ‘To not make the mistakes I made last time. It was the drug, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s something we can talk about later. You just have to let us go.’
‘I thought it was. I didn’t have a choice really. Once the drug had been decided on, I had to use it. I thought I’d given just enough so it wouldn’t show up afterwards. I guess I gave that last girl too much, didn’t I? Didn’t cover my tracks well enough, obviously.’
‘Why . . . why are you doing this?’
‘When you all turned up at the pub earlier, I was ready to hand myself in. End this whole thing. It’s been difficult this past week . . . but I can’t leave Number Four now. Not after everything we’ve been through. Then I remembered you. I know you, Detective. I’ve seen you. There was one last game I could play and stop you in the process. I can show Number Four that I was right.’
‘Number Four?’
‘She doesn’t understand. None of them did. They don’t listen to me. I only wanted to show them all that I was the better choice all along. That if they’d given me the chance, I could have shown them that.’
Murphy’s eyes were becoming more used to the darkness within the room, the outline of the room clearing. ‘This isn’t the way, Ben.’
‘Don’t use my name,’ Ben said, his voice echoing back from the walls. ‘That’s a trick. I’ve seen it on telly. I’m the one in control here.’
‘Of course you are, I’m sorry,’ Murphy replied, hoping his voice sounded sincere. He couldn’t take his eyes off the blade held against Sarah’s throat, pressing closer as Ben had shouted back at him. ‘You’re the Man in Black.’
Ben giggled, a high-pitched noise which made Sarah flinch. ‘Ridiculous, I know, but I didn’t know what to call myself. I needed something, though. I needed people to listen. I needed to show you all. Teach you about love. You’re not doing it right. You know that, I hope? All the mistakes you’ve been making. You’re corrupting it. Defiling it with your lies and your secrets. It’s wrong. You’re all wrong.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’ve been following you, David. I wanted to see what you did when you weren’t trying to find me. I’ve seen what you’ve been doing. Your little journeys. You came close to finding me just from those. So close.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Murphy said, his hands beginning to shake behind his back. He felt the familiar weight against his lower back for an instant. A reminder.
‘Don’t you think it’s best you tell your wife about this? What you’ve been doing? What secrets you’ve been keeping?’
Murphy lowered his head. ‘There isn’t anything you know about. Nothing you would understand.’
‘It’s not for me to understand, is it? I’ve been here a few hours now, speaking to little Sarah here. She doesn’t know anything about what you’ve been keeping from her. She’s totally in the dark. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
‘I was going to tell her,’ Murphy said, looking across at Sarah who was now staring at him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, which scared him. ‘It’s nothing that deserves this.’
‘Why hide it at all then? Why not tell her what you’ve been doing? You were supposed to be concentrating on me and my work, but instead you’re driving round the city talking to people left, right, and centre.’
‘You want me to tell Sarah? I’ll tell her. No problem at all . . .’
‘No, that’s not the way . . .’
‘I don’t need to be tortured,’ Murphy said, looking at Ben now. ‘I can tell her anything. I know she’ll understand. That’s what love is, Ben. You have it wrong. You mistake it for power, when it’s nothing like that.’
‘You have no clue, do you?’ Ben said, the knife in his hand pressing further into Sarah’s throat. ‘You don’t know what real love is.’
‘I know it better than you. You’ve never experienced it in return, have you? You don’t know what it’s like to have someone love you back. How can you do this, not knowing that feeling? How can you take that away from people?’
Ben’s hands began to shake, the knife in his hand slipping away from Sarah’s neck, before being pushed back against. Murphy strained at the bonds tying him to the chair as he heard Sarah moan against the tape across her mouth.
‘No. You’re wrong.’
‘Okay, okay. Don’t hurt her. Just keep talking to me.’
‘You need to tell her now. The truth. Or I start cutting her.’
Murphy breathed in, his mind now almost as clear as it had been when he’d first entered the room. He shifted in the chair, just a little further forward. ‘There’s a girl I used to know,’ he began, looking at Sarah, who was fitfully blinking as he held her stare. ‘Back where I grew up. She lived round the corner from me. She got in touch recently, as her daughter has gone missing. Amy Maguire. Just about to turn nineteen. You know who I mean?’
There was a slight nod from Sarah.
‘The case was with Liverpool South, but it got shunted across to us. When it did, I met with Stacey, Amy’s mum. She told me something . . .’
Murphy hesitated, unsure how to continue.
‘Keep talking,’ Ben said, his childish tone sounding odd in that room. ‘Tell her everything.’
‘When we were about seventeen, eighteen, we slept together. One night, that’s all it was. She thinks Amy might be the result of that one time. I don’t believe it’s true. Stacey’s desperate to find her daughter, but with her being missing, I can’t be absolutely certain. When the bodies of Chloe Morrison and Joe Hooper were discovered, the case went back to Liverpool South. I was keeping an eye on it, speaking to people and that.’
‘I was keeping an eye on it,’ Ben said, mocking Murphy’s voice. ‘You kept the possibility that you had a daughter from your wife. That’s not good, David. Who’s saying that’s all that happened? Maybe old flames were rekindled when this mother came back on the scene.’
‘There was nothing like that going on,’ Murphy said, his jaw clenched, teeth grinding against one another.
‘We’ll never know, will we? That’s the problem with keeping secrets and lying. How can we ever really know the truth. What do you think about that, Sarah? Do you still trust him? How could you? He’s lied to you. Kept things from you. Is that the sign of someone committed to the relationship?’
‘Look at her. Look in her eyes. She still loves me. I can see that, because we have history. You don’t know us. You’ve got what you wanted from me. Let’s talk about this.’
‘No,’ Ben replied, moving towards Murphy, the knife held up in front of him. ‘I haven’t got what I wanted yet. It doesn’t work like that. You’re not giving me what I need . . .’
‘What do you need?’
‘You’ll find out.’
‘What are you going to do? You need to work with me here. I can help you.’
‘You can do nothing but listen,’ Ben said, moving directly in front of him, blocking his view of Sarah. He replaced the duct tape across Murphy’s mouth.
‘You’re not the only one who has been lying.’
