MisPer

By CJ Claxton

A woman’s life spirals out of control as she lives in fear of a faceless predator who may have already committed at least one murder . . .

Ten years ago, Sophie Shaw vanished. Kat, a DNA technician with a drinking problem, is still haunted by the unsolved disappearance, so when she notices a suspicious tweet online, she calls in a tip to the police. When Kat learns that a man is being questioned, she sends out a tweet of her own, boasting about her role in the development.

But when the man is released, Kat starts to receive abusive messages online, and becomes the focus of an angry exchange with the anonymous man she believes is the guilty person. Having failed to hide her real identity, Kat becomes paranoid about every man she encounters, and her life beings to fall apart.

Is someone really out to destroy her or is she destroying herself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504076791

Book preview

Prologue

2008

Icatch my cold breath and spin around, expecting to see him. The path stretches behind me, narrow and dark, ending in a black hole. No one in sight. There’s a smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation and a whiff of methane from the nearby landfill site. My boots crunch on the hard, frosted ground. The overhanging bushes bordering this narrow and dimly lit path swish in the shadowy gloom. The broken street lamp doesn’t help, crackling and flickering intermittent light. Three cars remain in the car park ahead. Everyone else has gone home to safety.

I hear a noise. A dull thud, then a screech. I stop and listen, twirling in every direction to check if someone’s there. My boots slide on the frosted surface. There is no one. Must have been a fox. I quicken my step, scanning the dense undergrowth, wary of a lurking threat.

I never wanted to go to this damn conference at Shire Hall. The timing was all wrong. After all, it’s Halloween and I should be dressing up in an outrageous fancy dress outfit, but my line manager had insisted. ‘It will enhance your skill base,’ she’d said. And now, because I agreed to go, I find myself in a dark, isolated car park and there is a killer on the loose. I say killer but nobody really knows. They just disappeared. Three women in the last year.

I don’t want to be the fourth.

There is something on the path ahead of me. A shopping bag. Apples and potatoes scattered on the ground as if someone has discarded them in a hurry. Instinct makes me run. My car keys are in my hand, gripped between my fingers, like a weapon. Just in case. My heart is thudding, not from exertion, but terror.

I really don’t want to be #4.

Hand trembling, I press the fob. Nothing happens. I press again. This time with panicked force. The car door clicks. I yank it open and get in, locking myself inside. I start up the engine and put the car into reverse. Tyres ruckle on gravel as I ram the gear stick into first. My foot slams on the accelerator and the car hurtles towards the exit. Plumes of blackened, toxic smoke billow from the exhaust, filling the car with the smell of burnt engine oil. The windscreen fogs, obscuring my view. I flick the wipers on and fumble for the demister switch.

At the barrier, I pull up sharp to feed the ticket into the machine. The car’s tyres scrape against the kerb as I make an ill-judged attempt to get as near to the ticket machine as possible. I really don’t want to get out of the car, and I usually have to because I have annoying short-arm syndrome. The window judders down in slow motion. A vision of a scary man, lunging at me through the opening, enters my head. I lean out and stretch my arm as far as it will go to feed the ticket into the machine.

‘Come on, come on,’ I yell when nothing happens.

The machine snatches the ticket from my outstretched arm and is sucked inside only to be spat out again.

‘You useless piece of shit.’

A desperate urge to crash through the barrier, like in an action movie, takes over but only momentarily. Instead, I feed the ticket in again. This time the recalcitrant machine accepts it. The car window grinds shut at a sluggish pace. The barrier, simultaneously, wobbles upwards.

‘Come on, for God’s sake. Could you go any slower?’ I shout at the inanimate object.

While I’m waiting, I hear the thump, thump of loud rock music behind me and glance in the rear-view mirror. The sight of a car so close makes me jump and I wonder why I didn’t hear it pull up. A man, on his own, behind the wheel, wearing thick-rimmed glasses, a full beard, and a deerstalker hat, flaps pulled down over his ears. I feel his eyes boring into the back of my neck. My insides contract and twist. My heart explodes in my chest. I swallow hard. Before the barrier is fully up, I press my foot on the accelerator and floor it. The engine roars. There’s a scraping sound as the roof of the car connects with the slow-moving barrier. My tyres scrunch over the gravel until I reach the smooth road ahead and speed up. I glance in my rear-view mirror again.

The man in the deerstalker is no longer behind me.

Chapter One

2018

Today is an anniversary.

The tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Sophie Shaw. They’re mentioning her case on the radio as I drive home from work. I turn up the volume.

The police have launched a new appeal in connection with the disappearance of Sophie Shaw. Sophie went missing on her way home from Shire Hall in Gloucester, where she worked as an administrator, on October 31, 2008. Her father, Thomas, has campaigned tirelessly for any information leading to her whereabouts and has raised a reward of £20,000 for any information leading to the discovery of her body. The police believe she has been murdered. Anyone with any information can contact CrimeStoppers on…

My hands feel clammy against the steering wheel, a slight tremor in my grip. The windscreen wipers make their dull thud and scrape across my vision to clear the rain that has started. Has it really been ten years?

That could have been me.

I was walking home that same evening at roughly the same time as Sophie. The police interviewed me. I was the only witness and not much help. I gave them a description of the man I saw behind me at the ticket barrier in the car park. They asked me what make of car it was, but I had no idea. I’m hopeless at identifying cars. For me, they are nothing more than a means of getting from A to B. I told them I thought it was dark-coloured, possibly red. I couldn’t give them anything else apart from his poor taste in loud music. It was dark and the car park poorly lit. They asked me if I’d seen or heard anything else. I told them I’d heard something like a scream but at the time thought it was a fox screeching because it didn’t sound human.

Was he the man they were looking for? Had I been that close to him? I’ve always wondered. Had I been ten minutes or even five minutes earlier that night, it could very well have been me rather than Sophie. The police appealed for the man leaving Castlemeads car park, at approximately 6.30pm on the night in question, to come forward so they could eliminate him from their enquiries, but no one came forward. I became more convinced that the man I saw in the deerstalker was the person who murdered Sophie Shaw. But I had no proof and neither did the police. Even ten years on.

I remember that year vividly. 2008. The terror we felt. Women, that is. That someone was abducting us off the streets, and nothing could be done about it. We tried. Women organised Reclaim the Night marches. They achieved nothing. The women were never seen again. Four women disappeared from four different locations in the space of a year. Police suspected at the time there was a link, but none could be found. Was it the same man doing these awful things? Picking women at random and making them disappear? Then the abductions stopped. Sophie was the last. That led the police to suspect the person responsible may have died or met with an accident, putting him out of action.

I waited for months to see if there would be a new case. Nothing. Unsolved missing persons cases are relatively rare, which is why these seemed more diabolic, more disturbing. It kept me awake at night. I was frightened to go home alone or be out late in the evening.

When there were no new cases, I gradually became less fearful.

But it didn’t stop me wanting to know who murdered Sophie Shaw.

Chapter Two

2008

She’s making it so easy. Walking home on her own. Late at night. Empty streets. Staggering around on high heels she can’t walk in. Wearing next to nothing. Even in winter. Glued to her phone. She has no idea I’m behind her. So far, I’ve only seen the back of her. Thunder thighs. A skirt barely covering her arse. Bare legs, pasty white, marked with ugly black bruises and cellulite dimpling the size of grapefruit peel. I’m so close now I can smell the trail of cloying cheap perfume she leaves behind her. All I have to do is walk up to her and ask if she needs my help.

She stops and sways a little. Looks towards a dark alley on her right.

Surely not?

She wobbles over to a dark corner, swivels her head to check no one is in sight. I duck behind a recess in the wall. Then pop my head out. She hitches her skirt up and squats. No knickers. Lets out a sigh of relief as a stream of piss trickles down the decline. Stands up. Shakes her arse, pulls down her skirt and wobbles toward me. I duck back into the shadows. She goes past without noticing me, her mobile phone pressed to her ear. I catch her up and walk beside her, falling into step. She stops and turns to me when she senses my presence.

‘What do you want, perv?’ she slurs.

I don’t answer. I get a close-up of her face. She looks like Mrs Potato Head. Painted-on eyebrows. False eyelashes, so heavy she can’t fully open her eyes and lips smothered in cerise lipstick. Bleary-eyed from drink.

‘Fuck off.’

She carries on, her heels clacking on the pavement, her gait unstable.

I can see she’s on her phone and can hear her conversation. It’s with a boy. Trying to arrange a last-minute, drunken, hook-up. I know the type. Whoever she’s talking to ends the call abruptly.

‘Fuck off, tosser,’ she shouts at the phone as if her gentleman caller can hear her through the disconnected line.

She fumbles for the zip on her bag.

‘Here, let me help you.’

I take hold of her arm.

‘Oi,’ she slurs, ‘get off me.’

She tries to shrug me off, but I take a firm grip of her wrist. Take the phone from her hand. The heel on her unsuitable shoe snaps, her ankle gives way, and she falls against me. I heft her into a semi-upright position.

‘What the fuck…’

‘Had a little too much to drink, have we?’

I put my arm around her, enveloping her, like the tenebrous shadow of a winged hunter.

I’m surprised by her extensive vocabulary of expletives. Who knew there were so many? Top marks for Schrödinger’s Douchebag. She’s making too much noise and will attract attention. It’s either now or walk away. Opportunity is all. I scan the dimly lit street. It’s deserted. I grip her other arm and push her into the urine-smelling entrance of the multistorey car park. Vandals have smashed the lights. We are plunged into semi-darkness. I push her against the green slime dripping down the grey concrete wall and clamp my hand over her potty mouth.

Her bloodshot eyes widen, like a calf who’s about to be slaughtered.

Chapter Three

2018

Ipull up outside my cottage and scurry towards the front door, eager to get out of the icy, driving rain. It’s a small cottage down an unadopted road on the outskirts of Gloucester. Close enough to a sprawling modern estate so I’m not too isolated but far enough away from the city centre to be free of the screeching seagulls.

My cat, Nuggett, is asleep on the sofa. He splays his front paws, his claws unsheathed, and jumps off the chair to greet me, elongates his body in a languid stretch, then sidles over, wraps his warm body around my ankles and lets out a barrage of mewls.

‘Let me in the door, won’t you,’ I say to him, as though he’s a person.

I take off my wet coat, shake it out and hang it up, along with my handbag, then pull off my boots and head straight for the kitchen. I can feel the wet ends of my hair on the back of my shirt, but I must feed the cat before I do anything else. I’ll have no peace otherwise. Before I’ve set the food down on the floor, he sticks his moist nose in the bowl, and the kitchen is silent. Like magic. I run a cloth over the worktop, unlock the back door and head to the bin store to put the smelly cat-food pouch in the bin. The Halloweeners have started early. The air smells of gunpowder. The whoosh of a Catherine wheel and the explosive bang of the aptly named banger fires off in the distance followed by a louder explosion. I look upwards to a shimmering burst of colour directly above me. Silver, gold, blue and green. A succession of bursts, raining down on me, zooming toward me. Mesmerised, I stare until the last twinkle leaves the inky sky. The cold night air makes me shiver so I go back inside and lock the door behind me.

Nuggett has finished eating and is cleaning his paws. I run up the narrow open staircase that leads from the lounge to the upstairs and change into a pair of leggings and an oversized T-shirt. I run a brush through my unruly, damp hair and tie it back in a scrunchie. The reflection staring back at me from the bathroom mirror is of a thirty-something woman with a frizz of darkish-coloured hair, which has a life of its own and no make-up. A few fine lines are beginning to show beneath my blue eyes but other than that I have a youthful complexion. I don’t look my age or so people tell me. I suppose I have to thank my dad for that. Not that I’m ever likely to. I don’t know my dad. He left my mum when I was a baby. He’s a stranger to me. Only his ethnicity gives me a clue as to my youthful skin.

Since then Mum has found herself a husband, is happily married and is now fulfilling her dream of living in Spain which means I hardly see her.

Before I go back downstairs, I smooth out the slight ruffles in the bedcover. I can’t help myself. I thrive on neatness, order, and pernickety foibles.

Back in the kitchen a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc is waiting for me. It’s icy cold and as I pour it into a large wine glass it makes that comforting glugging sound. I swish it around the glass and stick my nose inside and sniff, then swallow. As usual I can’t smell or taste anything but wine. I take another sip and put the bottle back in the fridge. I’d never make a sommelier. Couldn’t bring myself to spit it out. Besides, when I swill it around my mouth, like you’re supposed to, it sends my parotid glands into citrusy hell.

In the lounge, I turn on the table lamp, ramp up the central heating, sit down at my desk and fire up my iMac. While it loads, I check my phone to see if there’s a message from Amber. I haven’t heard from her since yesterday. Probably hooked up with some swarthy local man and too busy fucking him to bother with her best friend.

I open up Safari and type ‘Sophie Shaw’ into the search bar. A stream of results appears on the screen. I trawl through them. There are the usual pictures of Sophie, taken ten years ago. Smiling. Happy. I know most of this already, but I read on just in case there’s something new or I’ve missed something. I need to know if there are any developments and what, if anything, is being done to find her.

Sophie left work and was last seen walking down a road leading away from Shire Hall, towards Castlemeads car park. Then nothing. She disappeared. After the alarm was raised the next day police found her car abandoned in the car park. It all pointed to an abduction. Police carried out a fingertip search of the surrounding undergrowth. They found a bag of shopping on the nearby path. The shopping bag was identified later as Sophie’s.

That’s when the guilt kicked in. I had stepped over her shopping bag. Why didn’t I stop? I might have been able to save her. When the odd-looking man appeared behind me why didn’t I take a note of his registration number? I’ve been plagued by self-recrimination ever since. Freighted with guilt. I have Survivor Syndrome. Why not me? I cannot shake the belief that I could have helped. If it were not for my selfishness, Sophie could be alive.

When her credit cards had not been used months following her disappearance, police believed she had been murdered but it remained an open missing persons’ case. Over the years there have been several male suspects, some of them arrested. All of them released without charge. That didn’t mean they were innocent, did it? Maybe just that the police didn’t have enough evidence. No forensic evidence. One of the suspects was a man from Wales. Do they wear deerstalkers in Wales? Is it a thing?

Ping. My phone lights up with a WhatsApp message from Amber. About time.

We still on for Friday? My plane lands tomorrow. Loads to tell you xx

She ends her message with a winky face. I smile to myself. She’s met someone. I message back:

Can’t wait to hear about your antics. See you Friday. xx

I end with a shocked cat face.

Next, I open up Twitter, the barometer of public opinion, to see if Sophie Shaw is trending on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance. The first tweet is from @missingpersons, a support organisation for missing people, with the hashtag #FindSophieShaw:

25 yr old Sophie Shaw went missing from #Gloucester ten years ago today. Sophie was last seen alive on October 31, 2008, on her way home from work. Our thoughts are with Sophie’s family and friends today on this tenth anniversary of her disappearance

I select the hashtag and scroll through the multitude of tweets. Everyone is having their twopenn’orth worth as usual. Who knew you could be so opinionated in 280 characters? A triumph for the English language. Some tweets are overly sentimental, a few are insightful. Some show anger toward the sick fuck who took her. One comment stands out amongst the others:

Someone, somewhere, knows something

Does this person know something? I click on their profile. There is a picture of a vintage red Jaguar XJS parked in a garden. No identifying photo. Just the emblem of Cardiff’s Rugby Club and a pinned tweet about Sophie. It’s a link to an article by the local newspaper in Gloucester, written when Sophie first went missing. Underneath the link, the hashtag is repeated:

#FindSophieShaw

#FindSophieShaw xx

The second hashtag is followed by two kisses. Two kisses? What do the kisses mean? I know it’s de rigueur for millennials and Gen Zs to end every communication with at least one kiss. Absolutely nothing sinister in that. But this seems different. I stare at the Twitter handle. It’s not immediately obvious:

@themaleego

The Male Ego.

Urgh.

Vomit-worthy.

In his profile he describes himself as:

Squat, unattractive, unlovable, good in bed. Exiled Welshman

He sounds like a prize.

Only a warped man could say he was good in bed in the same sentence he describes himself as unattractive and unlovable. I bet his views on women are Neanderthal. The Twittersphere is a strange and unfathomable world full of weirdos. Am I the only sane person on here?

I recheck @themaleego’s profile.

Exiled Welshman

Just over the border. Close enough to Gloucester to commit the crime, dispose of the body in the remote Welsh mountains…

Someone, somewhere,