Page 4 of Then She Vanished

Still, she hadn’t reported or shared any of the messages with her Detective Chief Inspector – and secret lover – Chris Briggs. She hadn’t wanted to ruin their closeness or their weekend getaway in Scotland the previous week. She knew Chris would be angry that she’d kept them from him.

Her mind wandered back to Stephen. He knew she wouldn’t report him because, in the past, Briggs had threatened to plant evidence of a crime on Stephen in order to protect her. The last thing Gina wanted was a war with Stephen and for all that to come out if Stephen decided to call their bluff. She looked at the message again. It seemed Stephen was prepared to risk it all to make her life a misery rather than just get on with his life.

She needed to deal with him all on her own without Briggs knowing. But while he had an army of online psychopaths and misogynists to help him, she had no one.

She reread the one particularly chilling subject line from Stephen, or VenMan, the name he’d used online in the past.

From: VenMan

To: GinaH

Subject: Bitch needs to pay. Likes it rough. (Dark web dox: call to action). Check out Men-R-Takin-It-Back.

She logged on to Men-R-Takin-It-Back using a VPN and began trawling the comments as MikeTheMan. Stephen had tried to get the group members to attack her over email several times, but they wanted more information and so far he hadn’t released her actual address or full identity. Stomach churning, she read some of the few and far between email headers.

My sex dungeon awaits you.

Whore deserves to be trashed from the inside like the garbage you R.

I will find you and I will shove it anywhere I want, BITCH.

Her heart banged away. She’d lived and breathed this type of misogyny back when she was married to Terry, until she had nudged him down the stairs to his death all those years ago to protect their baby daughter from his violence. She gnawed at the skin on the inside of her cheek. Stephen was doing his best to get Gina to confess to this. He only had a hunch, but it was the truth, and Gina had always struggled to keep the lie bottled up inside her, and he knew it.

So many years had passed for Gina – her daughter, Hannah, was all grown up now, with a child of her own – but her past would never stop haunting her. Terry’s brother, Stephen, would never move on until he had destroyed her.

It was coming, just not right this second. But, as always, that threat was carried in the breeze and one day it would turn into a cyclone.

Gina’s work phone buzzed in her hand, making her flinch. She pulled her quilt off her legs. Her cat, Ebony, jumped up on the end of the bed, meowing for food.

‘Jacob,’ she said as she answered.

Detective Sergeant Jacob Driscoll cleared his throat before speaking. ‘We have an incident, guv. Looks like a man died by suicide in his car, but there’s more. The officers who attended the scene found a few…disturbingthings.’

‘Like what?’ She placed her personal phone on her bedside table.

‘There were packets of sanitary towels and tampons in a bag in the back of his car. There were also some ready-made sandwiches and threeGoosebumpsbooks that had been taken out of Cleevesford Library on Saturday. There’s an old, scuffed library card without any personal details on it.’

‘Do we know roughly how old he is?’

‘The officer at the scene thought maybe he was in his forties.Goosebumpsbooks are normally read by kids, aren’t they?’

Gina recalled that Hannah used to love them. ‘Normally, yes.’

‘There’s more. There was also a sheet soaked in blood from what looks like a cut to his wrists… and a note. I struggled to read it as it’s scribbled but I can make out some of what it says, “Save her and tell her I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt her. I only ever wanted to love her, but I failed.” It looks like he tried to write more but the rest is illegible.’

‘Do we know who he’s referring to? Have we identified him?’

‘No to both, and the plates on the car are false. One of the officers managed to locate the Vehicle Identification Number on the car, and it matches the country of origin, the manufacturer and the vehicle type, but the registration is for a car that has been scrapped, and the plates belong to another scrapped car, not the blue Ford Fiesta they’re on here.’

‘I’m going to get up quickly and meet you at the scene. Can you message me the location?’

‘I’ll do it right now. I’ve been told that the land is owned by Cawley’s Farm, but the car and body are situated at the edge of their land. Their sixteen-year-old son found the body. He also broke the window thinking he could help the man, before realising he was dead. An officer will obviously need to speak to him, too.’

‘Has Bernard been called?’ She hoped crime scene manager, Bernard Small, was on his way with the forensics team.

‘Yes, he should be there by now, or at least close by. Officers were cordoning off the road when I last spoke to them, and they were preparing a board ready to be positioned on the roadside to appeal for witnesses.’

Gina scrunched her brow. ‘We can’t assume he died by suicide, obviously, and if anyone saw the car it might give a more accurate time of his death.’ Her phone beeped. ‘I’ve got the location.’

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