not heard this one before.
‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ Sally Hughes continued, laughing as she tried to take another drag on her cigarette, ‘look how serious you both are. Sorry lad, you’ve got the wrong house.’
Murphy breathed in. He’d seen the overall emotion of denial before – granted, it wasn’t usually accompanied by laughter, but once you got to the core of it, it was denial all the same. ‘Look at this picture for us, Sally,’ Murphy said, taking the blown-up, A4-sized photograph of Dean Hughes from the manila folder he was carrying. ‘Who do you see?’
Sally took a cursory glance at it, allowing her eyes to only alight on it for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, that’s not him.’
‘What about this tattoo?’ Murphy said, moving to another photograph which showed a tribal symbol found on the chest of the body.
‘Loads of lads his age have got the same thing,’ Sally said, still not looking at the photographs for more than a second.
Rossi moved out of the room beside Murphy, one quick glance passing between them. She’d be calling for support from family liaison officers, he hoped. Murphy leant forward, taking back the picture he’d handed to Sally and replacing it in the folder. ‘Sally, we think it is Dean, so someone is going to come and take you down the Royal to make an identification,’ – Murphy held up a hand to stop her interrupting – ‘and if it’s not him, then that’ll be it.’
‘It’s a waste of time, this. He can’t be there.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s only missing. Probably getting into all kinds of shit.’ She stubbed out the cigarette into a clean ashtray. ‘But I’d know if anything bad had happened.’ She banged an open palm against her chest. ‘I’d know in here. I’m his mum. I’d know.’
Murphy watched as her hands began shaking, struggling to pass a hand through her hair to brush it off her face. Her eyes betraying her as they filmed over.
‘Sally …’
‘Don’t.’ She interrupted as he began to speak. ‘I’ll go down there, but I’m telling you, it’s a big mistake. Have you got kids?’
Murphy shook his head.
‘Then you wouldn’t know. I’m telling you, I’d feel it if he was gone. And I’m not feeling anything.’
Murphy let the silence hang in the air, staring at the crown of Sally’s head as she leant forward, both hands grasping at her hair before sliding down and crossing over so she was hugging herself. Murphy blinked, and believed she’d aged ten years since they’d walked through the door, realising quickly it was a trick.
‘They’re on their way,’ Rossi said softly, returning to the room. ‘Be about fifteen minutes. Do you want a tea or something, Sally, while we wait?’
‘It’s all right,’ Sally replied, forcing herself upright, ‘I’ll do it. You want one?’
Murphy shook his head, leaning back as Rossi followed Sally through.
Denial. He was sure it was on one of those lists about grief he’d once read. He just hoped acceptance wasn’t too far behind.
Murphy and Rossi returned to the station, leaving the support officers with the task of taking Sally Hughes to the morgue to identify her son; Murphy hoped they’d managed to make Dean look presentable at least before showing his mother the body. Murphy was relieved that the next time they’d speak to her she might be more accepting of the reality. At the moment, they had little to go on without speaking to her, other than a list of people whom Dean Hughes might have spent most of his time with. He read through it as Rossi questioned the officers who had been going door 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
