Murder. London. Hayley James, Luca Franco.
Emilia reads the confession over and over again. The words are there, as clear and bold as any headline on the front page of a newspaper or along the bottom of the ten o’clock news.
Someone has confessed to murder. And not just one victim. Two.
But it can’t be real. It can’t be.
Emilia opens the browser, navigating quickly to the search engine. Mimi trots towards her, manoeuvring herself to the space beneath the desk, her body warming Emilia’s bare feet. She smiles – who would have guessed Mimi would be such a faithful companion, even if she can only fill a tiny part of the huge hole left behind by Sophie? Emilia has never been a dog person before, but after leaving the police, Mimi has helped the loneliness. Her life is so different without Sophie: her days empty, as though all of the colour in her life, in her, has faded away to black and white. She lives in a new place, moving about fifteen minutes further out of the city than the house they had shared. Out of the buzz and into the quiet suburbs. Life feels so different. So she tries to fill it with any small pieces of joy she can find. A walk in the woods with her puppy. A podcast. Visiting her parents. Coffee with Jenny. But it isn’t the same.
Turning back to the screen, she types in ‘Hayley James’, her stomach turning. But there is nothing about a body being found or a missing person with that name. The confession has only just been posted – it will take some time for the media to discover it, verify, publish … But surely their families have realized that they’re missing?
Emilia grabs her phone and opens Instagram. She searches again, frantically typing Hayley’s name. The accounts load – countless profiles. No – she’ll never be able to find anything on Instagram. She clicks out of the app and opens Twitter. Her fingers fly across the screen as she searches again.
Hayley James, Luca Franco, London, Murder.
No results.
Soon enough, the users of the Confession Room will spill out, leaking the confession on to social media and out into the wider world. But for now, it seems, it’s still a secret locked inside the confines of the forum. Emilia shivers. She could be the first person in the world to have seen it.
She throws herself back in her chair and rubs her eyes frantically, her breath wavering.
It’s okay. It must be a joke. It’s just someone messing around.
She turns back to her phone, opening Instagram again. The search results are still there – the many faces of Hayley James beaming out at her from their various happy locations – a mum cuddling her small baby; a teenager playing volleyball on the beach; a young woman raising a glass of champagne, her head thrown back as she smiles. Looking through those profiles would take too long, the name too common. But the man …
Luca Franco. Yes. He might be easier to find.
Emilia types his name into the search bar. A list of results appears, and she begins to click through them, her eyes scanning the locations.
The first is a man in his early forties, with greying hair and bright blue eyes. But he posted less than an hour ago from Rome.
The second profile is a young boy in his early teens – America. And she clicks away quickly from the third– Australia.
‘London’, the post said. She needs to find a Luca Franco in London.
She clicks on the fourth profile down and images of a young man in his late twenties at the most smile back at her, his teeth gleaming inside his open-mouthed laugh. And there, in his most recent image – Annabel’s. He was in Mayfair just yesterday.
Emilia clicks on his followers. She searches for the name: Hayley James. They must be linked somehow.
A single profile appears.
They are connected.
Her breath held, Emilia clicks. She is there – hair tinged pink. Pretty. But there are no recent stories. And her last post was six days ago.
Emilia goes to her followers list and clicks through, searching profile after profile, watching their stories, looking at their most recent posts – but none of them are showing any indication that Hayley is missing or has faced some kind of danger. She does the same for Luca … Nothing.
There is nothing.
Nothing that she can find, anyway … But if these people have been reported as missing, the police would know.
Maybe Ciaran would know.
Emilia looks down at her phone, still cradled in her hands. She can’t contact him. Not now, after all these months of not speaking. She could call Jenny. But she wouldn’t know: she works in custody, not investigation. She should just call 999 and report the post: show them the website and let that be the end of it. But she needs to know that it isn’t real – that it’s just another hurt or sadistic person playing at a sick kind of make-believe. Or even one of Hayley and Luca’s friends, thinking for some deranged reason that this would be funny.
She should call Ciaran.
Her stomach flips at the thought of speaking to him again. The last time she saw him, he kissed her on the forehead, the same way he always did, and told her that when she was ready, he’d be waiting. But she hasn’t spoken to him since. Just a week before, he had helped her move to her new house – he had comforted her as she closed the door of the house she had shared with Sophie for the last time.
He might not even answer the phone. He might see her name on the screen and wait for the ringing to stop.
With shaking fingers, Emilia navigates her way to his name in her contacts. She never would have had to do that before – he would have made up all of her most recent calls and messages, their incoming and outgoing communication taking up the entire screen without interruption.
An all too familiar sadness stirs in her stomach. She has missed him with the aching that only comes from truly missing a person. But she had forced herself to forget.
Maybe it’s time to remember.
She jabs the call button and lifts the phone to her ear, her heart beating faster and faster with each long ring.
‘Emilia?’ His surprise sends chills down her arms.
‘Hi Ciaran …’ She waits, hoping he will say something, but he remains quiet, his shock palpable. ‘How … how are you?’
‘Um …’ He pauses, clearing his throat. He has always done that when he doesn’t know what to say; biding his time to formulate a response. ‘I’m good, Emi. I’m good … How are you?’
‘I’m okay.’ She chews her lip, trying to detect a hint of a smile in his voice. ‘I … Are you on shift? I’m sorry for calling you like this –’
‘No, it’s okay. It’s good to hear from you … I’m just at the station. When I saw your name on the screen, I thought you’d sat on your phone or something.’
She smiles, her heart warming at the sound of his soft laugh. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t reached out to you sooner. I just … I didn’t know how –’
‘Please, don’t apologize.’
Emilia nods, squeezing her eyes closed. How did she let him go? How did she push a man like this away? A man who would have done anything for her, a man who loved her in the way that most people can only ever dream of being loved.
‘There’s something I wanted to ask you about.’
He sighs quietly – so quietly that if she knew him less well, she would have missed it completely. He’s disappointed. Disappointed that she was calling him because she wanted something, and not because she wanted him. ‘What is it?’ he responds.
‘Have you heard of the Confession Room?’
‘Um … I can’t say I have.’
‘It’s a forum where people can post confessions anonymously. It started around a year ago but it’s been gaining a lot of traction recently. It’s got thousands of confessions now –’
‘Okay –’
‘Anyway, I was on the forum just reading through the confessions, and one just came through … Someone has confessed to murder and left two names.’
He doesn’t respond. His breathing rattles through the receiver but he doesn’t say a word.
‘Ciaran?’
‘Sorry, I’m here … What exactly does it say?’
‘It just says, “Here’s a confession. Murder. London. Hayley James. Luca Franco.” That’s it.’
Emilia waits, chewing on her thumb nail as Ciaran taps on his keyboard. She can see him now, his dark brow lowered over his green eyes as he squints at the screen, pushing a soft curl of hair from his vision.
‘Do you see it?’ she whispers.
‘Yep … When did this appear?’
‘About fifteen minutes ago. I searched for the names on social media and I’m pretty sure I’ve found them. I can send you their profiles but I thought you might have heard something about missing persons?’
‘Uh, not off the top of my head. Let me check …’
Emilia listens as he taps away on his keyboard. ‘No. Nobody with those names.’ He sniffs. ‘How long have you been on this forum?’
‘Months now …’
‘But have you looked through it? Have you read other confessions?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘And are they serious? Or is it a joke?’
‘Some of them are serious. And some of them seem … I don’t know, more like jokes. Dark humour.’
‘Well, we haven’t got any investigations out for anyone with those names. No missing persons. Nothing … So unless it’s all happened very recently, my gut instinct would be that it’s a hoax.’
‘You think?’
‘Yeah … I’ll look into it though. And Cyber Crime will be able to trace the IP address.’
‘Okay. Thanks, Ciaran.’
Emilia falls silent, unsure of what to say, or whether she should say anything else at all.
‘Emi? Are you still there?’
She nods, even though he can’t see her. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m still here.’
‘It’s … it’s been good to hear your voice,’ he whispers, his words tinged with a smile.
‘Yours too,’ she whispers back. Anything more than a whisper feels too loud, but their shared quiet fills her with a sudden bout of bravery. ‘I’ve missed you.’ She listens to his intake of breath, then his silence. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward –’
‘No, you didn’t. I’ve missed you too. Maybe we could meet up one evening. Have a drink?’
‘That sounds great. Thanks again, Ciaran.’
‘Cool. Well, you’re welcome. I’ll call you … Night, Emi.’
‘Night.’
The phone call ends, but Emilia remains completely still in her chair, the phone still fixed to the side of her face, his voice still echoing in her ear.
She turns to look back at her screen – he’s right. It must be a sick joke. Somebody stumbled upon the forum, and thought it would be hilarious to confess to the most violent crime that exists.
Emilia nods decisively and stands, making her way back to the kitchen. She pulls her dinner – a macaroni cheese – from the fridge and places it in the microwave. But as it rotates, her mind begins to wander, navigating its way back to the Confession Room.
It must be a hoax. Nobody would publicly confess to murder.
Would they?