Читать книгу DEAD GONE - Luca Veste, Luca Veste - Страница 11

There are two tunnels running underneath the River Mersey and into the Wirral Peninsula. Only separated by a mile and a half of water, the tunnels provide the only way into Liverpool which doesn’t involve a ninety mile round trip down the motorway and through Runcorn. Murphy could see a connection becoming closer each day, the sheer amount of traffic coming from the tunnels telling their own story. If you filled in the Mersey with concrete, most would barely recognise the difference. Coming from the city centre, the first tunnel you hit is Birkenhead tunnel. Carry on further, down a wide A road, Byrom Street, which runs directly from the city centre, pull into the left hand side, and a curved road takes you around to Wallasey tunnel. Stay on the right hand side and within minutes you’re on Scotland Road. Turn off onto Hunter Street and behind one of the four universities in the city is St Anne Street running parallel to the tunnel approach. Halfway down, over a dip in the road, amidst abandoned warehouses, converted offices and a small housing estate, was the police station which served Liverpool North division.

Murphy pulled up in the car park behind the station, and sat for a moment amongst the police vans, unmarked cars, and personal vehicles. The dirty red brick building, which loomed over the street five floors high, looked as ominous as ever. An old-style office building, repatriated as the hub of a policing section which served seven areas of Liverpool.

Scratch that, Murphy thought, it was eight now. Cuts meant they’d inherited part of Liverpool South. He sighed to himself. If that hadn’t been the case, the dead girl in Sefton Park would be someone else’s problem.

He ran through the last couple of hours in his head. He still hadn’t eaten. Probably a blessing in disguise. Even after almost twenty years he still felt a jolt at seeing someone with the life sucked out of them. He’d run on adrenaline until then, but he needed to eat. Plus, of course, if you let adrenaline take over this early, it could lead to mistakes.

He could do without any of them.

Murphy pushed his way into the major incident room, people bustling back and forth as the events of the morning took precedence over other cases. He spotted DCI Stephens barking orders at a number of DCs.

Rossi had beaten him back there. Hunched over the computer screen, A4 sheets of paper strewn about the desk, one pen in her hand, another behind her ear.

‘Anything?’

Rossi turned in her chair to face him. ‘Nothing yet. There’s been a number of missing women reported in the last month. Trying to narrow it down now.’

‘Good. I’m going to run Reeves through the system. Make sure he’s not a murderer and we’ve already screwed up.’

He moved over to his desk, noticed a post-it note stuck to his computer monitor.

CALL HOUGHTON

He picked up the phone on his desk and called the pathologist. He’d be at the hospital morgue, tucking the body away for the post-mortem later in the day.

‘We found something on the body when we removed her clothing. A letter. I think you’ll want to come see it.’

‘Right,’ Murphy replied, pleased the pathologist was getting straight to the point. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘I think it’s best you see it for yourself.’

EXPERIMENT THREE

To Whom It May Concern,

I don’t know you yet, but I will. The same applies both ways I suppose. You’ll be trying to find out my name. My reasons. Everything will become clearer over time. Just know, I do it all for a good cause. We need to be clear about that.

The young girl you have found isn’t the first experiment I’ve carried out.

She won’t be the last.

When the American government was experimenting on an unsuspecting public, we didn’t accuse them in the same manner you will be accusing me. They were the beginning of the end I feel. The last of my kind, willing to go to any lengths in order to study mankind.

What you have with this girl is a modern interpretation of one such experiment.

Part of the MK Ultra programme, Operation Midnight Climax was the first scientific exploration into the effects of LSD on unwitting humans. For example, men, on the pretext they were enjoying a private visit with a prostitute, were given LSD without their knowledge and studied. They experimented on their own men, federal marshals, employees within the CIA …

It went much further than that.

The results are astounding. What this girl was willing to do when dosed with the drug was way beyond my expectations. She became a different person.

Giving her more and more of the drug compounded her state of mind. An endless trip.

She wanted to die. She begged for an end. Not because she was in pain, or through fear. She believed she could see the afterlife.

I’m not one for silly fairytales, so it was probably the drugs talking. Possibly. That’s part of the experimentation. To find answers to these questions.

Her last dose ended fatally, unfortunately for her.

Throughout history, man has attempted to understand the complexities of life. Why are we here? What is our purpose? I am attempting to prove my answer to those questions.

We are here only to die.

Think of every funeral you’ve ever been to. The grief people exude from themselves. It becomes one with the atmosphere, an almost physical feeling in the air. Death is natural, yet people somehow make it unnatural. They say things such as ‘it wasn’t his time’ or ‘taken too soon’ as if that bears any relation to the fact that whether it be one year or a hundred, the result is still the same.

Death is inevitable, yet people are always surprised when it happens.

What do we experience at the moment of death? How can we ever know that feeling? Without research, without experimentation, we are no nearer an answer to these questions.

So enjoy it.

This is just the beginning of my work. To discover more about life … through death.

‘Great. We need to find him fast.’ Murphy said as he’d finished reading the letter.

‘He?’ Houghton replied.

‘Just a guess. Could be her I suppose. This is my copy, yes?’

Houghton nodded, waved his hand away. ‘Yeah, original has gone to forensics. What is it then?’

‘You didn’t read it?’ Murphy said. ‘Thought you’d have had your nose right into this by now. Well, apart from some screwed-up talk about death, there’s something about the effects of LSD on humans, and some shite about something called MK Ultra and Operation Midnight Climax. Sounds like I’ve stumbled across a screenplay of the new James Bond film.’

‘I’ve heard of Operation Midnight Climax,’ Houghton replied. ‘It was a CIA thing. Linked with the whole MK Ultra deal. You must have heard about it.’

Murphy stared at Houghton, who looked as though he was trying to keep his round face straight. A trace of a smile threatened to break out, the lines on his face creasing further.

‘No I haven’t smartarse, what is it?’ Murphy said.

‘Touchy, aren’t you? You could just bow to my superior knowledge you know.’

‘Consider me bowed. Now explain.’

Murphy moved aside as Houghton scanned what he’d been reading. ‘From what I remember, Operation Midnight Climax was a psychology experiment to show the effects of LSD on people. They would give people doses of acid without their knowledge and then watch the effects of the drug on them through two-way mirrors. They filmed ordinary men with prostitutes in an attempt to see if anything could be used in conjunction with possible mind control efforts. All very secret and clandestine. It was shut down in the sixties, but some people think the US government still does this sort of thing.’

Murphy tried to take it all in. ‘So the government was giving acid to people without their knowledge, and then filmed them with prostitutes?’ Murphy said. ‘Seems pretty pointless.’

‘Yeah, all it did really was add to the growing acid usage in the sixties,’ Houghton replied.

‘What does this have to do with the girl though?’

‘Well, that’s for you to find out, you’re the detective.’

‘Okay, so we have a letter taped to a dead girl, about the government giving LSD to people in the sixties. It also talks about death and the way people react to it being unnatural.’

‘That about sums it up.’

‘We don’t know how she died yet.’

‘The PM will be done later on,’ Houghton said. ‘We’ll know more then.’

Murphy walked around the table, becoming aware of a pain growing behind his eyes. Another headache coming on probably.

‘So, she’s got strangulation marks around her neck, but this letter says she died of too much acid?’

‘I’m willing to bet that we find a large amount of LSD in the girl’s system, but it will have to be a ridiculously large amount to be the cause of death. Any luck with identifying her yet?’

‘Laura’s looking into it now. I should get back and help out.’

‘Okay, will one of you be coming for the show?’

Murphy gave him a sneer. ‘Show? Such class.’

‘Okay, sorry. The post-mortem.’ Houghton used his fingers to make quotation marks around his last two words, which made Murphy smile a little.

‘I’m sure I’ll draw the short straw of having to subject myself to being in your company for a lengthy amount of time.’

Murphy left Houghton’s office, once again thankful that no matter the pitfalls of life in the police, at least his office wasn’t located in a hospital. His energy began to return. His stomach still gurgled and growled, but it barely bothered him. Purpose. He had purpose again.

Righting wrongs, doing good – that kind of thing was why he’d joined the police twelve years earlier. Applied for CID as soon as he was allowed. Breaking up fights in town and dealing with domestic violence got tiring within months. It wasn’t for him. Murphy wanted to be Sherlock Holmes, not the local bobby.

Took him about three minutes on his first day in CID to realise no bugger there was Sherlock. Mostly, it was menial work, small things. Domestic cases, in the main. Of course, it wasn’t always as soft as all that. Some cases, they still stuck with him, forever marked in his mind. He bore the scars well for the most part. Sometimes he boiled over, but surely that was to be expected. That’s why this case was so important. He had much to make up for.

In the past, when his line of work was discussed at parties or barbeques, he had to dampen the expectations of the normals. With murder, it was almost always someone the victim knew. Much of the time, it was a partner, or ex. Domestic violence they call it. Carried out by vile little men, who are useless for anything other than using their power over women.

That’s why the letter didn’t bother him. He wanted to play the odds. Whoever had killed the girl was probably someone close to her. Someone she knew. The letter was probably some kind of distraction technique. Left to throw them off the scent.

Murphy had seen this kind of thing before.

Which meant that what was most important, was finding out who she was.