Emilia’s computer pings and she glances over to the other side of her bed where it is lying discarded. She has been opening it every morning, desperate for any scrap of news on the police search for the man and woman, but quickly finds herself unable to go any further, unable to face what the world might be saying about her. It’s as though she is no longer a participant in the events, but simply a witness. With nothing to be done.
She sighs, tucking her legs in towards herself, finding a small comfort in the foetal position. She can’t even face looking outside any more – there is a police car parked outside for their protection, but all it does is serve as a reminder that she is a target. Journalists come every day, hounding her parents as they leave the house to go to the shop or to get some fresh air.
‘How does it feel knowing that your daughter believed she was killing Sophie’s murderer?’
‘Do you think she wanted to kill him?’
‘How do you feel if it was him? Are you happy that he’s gone?’
Her parents try to ignore them, but her mum has stopped leaving the house. And her dad returns as though he has seen a ghost, his face pale and drawn. And they try to speak to her but the conversations feel hollow. Did they really believe her when she insisted that pulling that trigger was to save her own life, rather than to take his? Did she even believe it? When her finger moved, pulling back on itself to let the trigger fly, clattering into the hammer which forced the bullet out of the barrel, travelling faster than she could imagine, killing him instantly – when that happened, was it fear that made her do it? Self-preservation? Or was it anger? Rage? Was it love?
She throws her arm across her face, her elbow wrapping over her head, cocooning herself in the dark. She doesn’t know what it was. But does that mean she deserves to be punished? Should she have to spend the rest of her life locked up in a prison or always looking over her shoulder, terrified of what someone might do in the name of vengeance? In the name of justice? Why should she be the one having to live this way? Why should her family be the one with police parked outside the front of their house for protection? Where are they, the man and the woman? The Confession Room was theirs, the entire sick scheme was their doing. They’re probably on the run, or hiding in plain sight, but they should be the ones facing the wrath of the public. They should be the ones paying for everything that has happened – for the chaos that they orchestrated. She has been reaching out to the police liaison officer every day, asking questions – have they found anything? Anything at all? But she walks the fine balance between victim and suspect: if the police have found anything, they’re not telling her. The helplessness is overwhelming.
She sits up suddenly, gazing at her laptop which stares back at her. She blinks slowly – she has spent the past year watching people, monitoring them, researching them. Finding them.
She grabs the laptop and rushes to the desk. She doesn’t need to be helpless. Why is she allowing herself to lie around in this house, waiting for the outcome to the case against her, when she could be trying to figure out who they are? Why has she already given up? If she helps the police find them, it’s not only justice for the victims, for their families – but for her and Isabella too. Maybe then they could move on, away from the vitriolic glare, away from all the questions.
Somewhere in everything they said, in what they told her, there will be a key. There must be. And when she finds it, it will unlock everything.
But where to begin?
She closes her eyes, allowing them to appear in the dark. Their shadows reaching towards her, one tall, one smaller. The masks covering their faces. She shudders, her eyes immediately springing open, her heart racing.
No. She needs to stop being scared. They haven’t retaliated – they’ve gone quiet, their heads to the ground. Whoever they are, it seems they’ve disappeared along with the Confession Room. But they are the ones who should be afraid; they are the ones who should be looking over their shoulder. They can’t stay hidden forever. She won’t allow it.
She shuts her eyes again, this time tight as a trap. Once again they appear, closer this time. He was very tall – close to two metres. He was broad, his black top taut against his body. She was much smaller, only reaching the centre of his chest. Maybe five foot two, five foot three at the most. And their voices: their voices she could recognize anywhere.
Their relationship … When she first saw them in the Room, she had thought there was none. But then they mentioned their daughter. And as he was getting Emilia out of the van to release her on to the road, the woman barked something: stop playing with her. And it wasn’t just impatience behind those words. Or fear that they would be caught. There was jealousy there. Just a shimmer of it in her tone, but there all the same.
They are together. A team – in every sense of the word. Partners. Parents. Parents to a daughter.
A rush of adrenalin pounds through her, the tips of her fingers tingling. They spoke about their daughter. The woman’s voice changed, turning warm then sad before finally being consumed with anger, the man bringing her rant to an abrupt end. What was it she said? Emilia presses both fists to her eyes, her knuckles digging into the sockets as she wills herself to remember. The woman’s masked face appears, her mouth, visible through the open slash in the material, moving passionately.
You should know more than anyone why we do this, Emilia. The monster who took our daughter did it without thinking twice. Just like your Sophie. And the police did nothing. They did nothing!
Emilia’s hands drop, hanging limply down by her sides as the woman’s voice echoes deep inside her mind. They arrested that boy, sure, but then they let him go. They set him free! Not enough evidence. And we were meant to simply get on with our lives? No. No! It should have been us who killed him –
She frowns as the woman falls still. That was when the man interrupted. Quiet, he muttered with a glare.
But … she said one more thing, didn’t she? Didn’t she say one more sentence, the man then repeating his demand for silence with a shout that had bounced around the room, slamming violently against the walls?
Yes. She did.
He shouldn’t have been able to do it himself.
That’s it, Emilia thinks, her eyes springing open, the cold winter light streaming through the window warming her face. That is the key.
The woman gave too much away.
If she hadn’t felt the need to parade their ethos in front of Emilia, if she hadn’t insisted on rallying against Emilia’s cries that what they were doing was wrong, and would always be wrong, Emilia would be ignorant. But now that this memory has risen to the surface, she knows things. She knows that they had a daughter. A daughter who was killed, and the person they believe did it wasn’t charged. Arrested, but never charged. And he killed himself. She never said it explicitly, but what else could those words have meant? It should have been us who killed him, she said. He shouldn’t have been able to do it himself.
So that’s who they need to look for. A couple, either married or partners, a daughter who passed away. And a man questioned about the crime who committed suicide soon after.
Emilia rubs her finger furiously on the trackpad, the screen turning bright, and clicks on the internet. She breathes in deeply, then exhales slowly, cricking her neck from one side to the other.
Okay, she thinks, staring at the empty search bar. Let’s begin.
The faces on the screen gaze out at her, their cheeks pallor-grey, their eyes full of sorrow. She moves closer, unable to look away from the photograph of the husband and wife, dressed in mourning, all in black.
Joshua and Amanda Reign. Mother and father to murdered fourteen-year-old Lacey Reign.
Emilia lets out a shaky breath.
Is that them?
She moves still closer to the screen, not even allowing herself to blink as she scrutinizes their eyes, their mouths, their height difference. She is a little taller than his chest-height, but she could be wearing heels. And the man in this photo, Joshua, looks a little leaner than the man was in the Confession Room. But time has passed. This article says that Lacey Reign was killed five years ago – a person can change a great deal in five years. They can put on weight. Lose some of their stature. Become a murderer.
She scans the article again, her eyes searching for the sentence that had caused her to pause, her breath catching in her chest. She has looked at so many articles about so many poor parents who have lost a daughter and she has immediately moved on, but as soon as she read this sentence she realized that there was something there: this one was different. This one could be them.
Her eyes land on it and that feeling stirs inside her again, in the place below the chest, in the very centre of the body where all emotion lives and is stirred up, rising out before submerging once more.
A suspect, who has not been named by the police due to his age, was interviewed but released shortly after without charge.
The woman had called the person who was arrested a boy, not a man. She wouldn’t have done that unless he was young, young enough for him to process in her mind as a child. And this suspect was kept anonymous due to his age.
Emilia’s eyes dart around the room, searching for her phone.
Where is it? Where on earth has she left it –
She rushes to grab it from the floor beside her bed and unlocks the screen, navigating quickly to his name.
‘Emi,’ Ciaran answers, his voice as warming as the sun still shining on her through the glass. ‘I was going to call you after my shift. How are –’
‘Ciaran, I need your help with something,’ she says, interrupting him.
‘What’s wrong? Has something happened?’
‘Are you in the office? Are you at your computer?’
‘Yes … Why? What’s going on?’
Emilia sighs, the familiar pang of guilt stabbing in her chest. ‘I need a favour.’
‘What is it?’
‘I need you to look up a case for me … a murder investigation.’
‘Why?’
‘Please can you just do it?’
‘You can’t just ask me to break the rules and not tell me why!’
‘I’ve been searching for the couple who were running the Confession Room.’
‘Oh no, Emi –’
‘And I think I might have found them.’
‘I can’t do this. If you think you’ve found something, you just need to go to the team. Go to Wild and tell her what you think you know.’
‘I will, I promise. I’m not going to do anything stupid, and I’m going to go to Wild straightaway and let them do their jobs, but I need to know for myself if this last piece of the puzzle is correct. If it isn’t, they might not believe me and then there’s no point to any of this.’
He sighs. ‘What do you need to check?’
‘There was a suspect in the murder investigation of a girl called Lacey Reign. Were you working in homicide at the time?’
‘I think I remember her name … was she young? A teenager?’
‘Yes! She was fourteen.’
Tapping echoes from his end – he is searching on his computer.
‘No, her case was before me.’
‘Well, somebody was brought in for questioning but released without charge. I just need you to check if he’s been brought in for anything since, especially recently.’
‘How will this help you?’
‘It just will.’ She swallows loudly. ‘I know I ask too much of you, and I lied to you and I absolutely don’t deserve you. But I need this one last thing. Please.’
Silence. Ciaran doesn’t respond at all – in fact he is so quiet that Emilia squeezes the phone to her face, her cheek burning. Has he gone? Is this it? The swift kick that will send their friendship – their relationship, whatever it is – shattering into a million tiny pieces, too damaged to ever be repaired?
‘Ciaran?’ she says, a waver in her voice. ‘Are you still there?’
A hitched breath through the receiver sends a shiver of relief through her. ‘I’m here,’ he whispers. ‘And … I’ll do this for you, Emi. But I need you to promise me something.’
‘Okay …’
‘Once I do this, you’ll go straight to Wild, you’ll tell them whatever it is that you think you’ve discovered, and you’ll let them get on with their investigation.’
‘I will,’ she says firmly.
‘But really, Emi – you need to step away. You’ve been blaming yourself for everything, taking on too much responsibility, too much guilt, and if these people aren’t found … if they’re never found, I don’t want you to think that it’s your fault. And I know that you will. Just like you did before. With Sophie.’
Emilia holds her breath, fighting an urge to bite back. To exclaim that Sophie was her fault, that she could have done so much more. That she should have protected her: the police should have protected her. But she doesn’t. Instead, she lets go, exhaling the rising anger like blowing out a match before the flames lick your fingers.
‘I will. I promise.’
‘Okay.’ He clears his throat. ‘Give me two minutes.’
There is a gentle thud and Emilia closes her eyes, imagining Ciaran as he sets his phone down on the desk beside him. His fingers clattering on the keyboard tap rhythmically in her ear, followed by pauses as he reads, the whirring roll of the mouse as he scrolls downwards.
‘Emi? You there?’
‘I’m here,’ she whispers.
‘About four months after he was questioned in the investigation for the murder of Lacey Reign, the boy in question was given a warning about following a girl home from school. He was told that if he continued to behave that way, he could be arrested and charged with stalking offences.’
‘Anything else?’
He scrolls again and Emilia waits, her entire body, inside and out, falling still as she waits for some piece of information that might confirm the truth. Is this the case she is looking for? Is this the daughter she is looking for? Are they the parents she is looking for?
‘Ah.’ He sighs. ‘Well, if you were hoping to speak to this guy, it’s bad news, I’m afraid.’
Her eyes fly open, drawn instantly to the photograph that is still displayed on the screen of her laptop: the parents of Lacey Reign – their mournful faces and downward gaze. She shivers.
‘Why?’
‘Because he killed himself days after he was given the warning.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘Yes … I’m sorry –’
‘This is the information I needed. This was the key. Thank you, I’ve got to go –’
‘Emilia!’ Ciaran says, his voice a warning. ‘Straight to the police. Nothing stupid. Okay?’
‘I promise. Bye. Thank you!’
She ends the call, the phone falling from her shaking hands and to the floor. But that photo is still in her sight, her eyes narrowing, anger rising up again, stinging the back of her throat.
Got you.