I confirmed what I knew second-hand from Lucy and Sofia. Ash; suffocation; ancient Persian torture. As Lucy had said, the information was readily available. Anyone could have copied it.
In fact, when I typed ‘the Bl . . .’, Google autofilled ‘the Black Tongue’ from its own history. Gavin had been searching too, so word had spread a little further than I’d thought.
The reported murders were actually very spread out, with the first occurring three years ago (after Alan’s death), and the second eighteen months later.
Andy asked me to take a quick look at cryptocurrency values.
The first victims, Mark and Janine Williams, were from Brisbane. Mark was sixty-seven and Janine was seventy-one. They had been retired after having run a fish and chip shop in Brisbane for thirty years. The article took the ‘Life’s unfair’ angle, describing them as pillars of the community – volunteers, board members, fostering countless children because they were unable to have their own – which made their deaths all the more depressing. One article included a photo of their funeral, queues out the door. They’d been much loved. Not really A-grade gang member material, is my point. Sofia’s description of their deaths was accurate: they’d been zip-tied to the steering wheel of their car in their own garage, with ash circulated by the killer standing over the sunroof with a leaf-blower.
The second victim, Alison Humphreys, was found still alive in her Sydney apartment, in a bathroom with the window taped shut, ash poured through the ceiling fan. She’d died after five days in the hospital where Sofia worked (I noted this matched her information from the maintenance shed), when the decision had been made to turn off Alison’s life support systems. People had linked her death to Mark and Janine’s, and suddenly the task of naming a serial killer had fallen on a sub-editor, and the Black Tongue was born.
I checked my Facebook quickly.
According to Alison’s LinkedIn (there is nothing sadder than a posthumous LinkedIn account: employed 2010 – present), she was a former detective turned ‘consultant’. On what she had been consulting was unclear.
The listing price of Sky Lodge (I’d remembered the name of the real estate company I’d seen on the contracts) was by enquiry only. TripAdvisor gave the resort a 3.4, which I thought, corpses excepted, was a bit harsh.
I opened Lucy’s Instagram account, figuring if she’d gotten all the way up to the roof last night, the temptation of phone reception and social media would have been too high for her to resist. Sure enough, there was a new post: a screenshot of a deposit to her bank account, a few thousand and change, with the rest of the identifying details blurred out. The caption read: It’s hard work but it’s worth it in the end – contact me if you want to learn about financial independence. Swipe to see what this amazing company has provided for me #dailygrind #earningandlearning #corporateretreat #bossbabe. Swiping showed a second photo – a gorgeous mountain vista, taken from the rooftop – and a third – a photo of everyone (except me, running late) around the lunch table from the first day. I didn’t even have it in me to mock how she was pretending our reunion was a company retreat (#fakeittillyoumakeit would have been a better hashtag); I was too disappointed by the bright, sunny sky above the rocky peak. The photos had been posted the afternoon before the storm. It gave me no new information.