“Only after the text- I mean your text...” Paige said.
“It was clearly about Ella, mentioning her lioness tattoo. That’s when she came to me. I’m sorry that I lied to you, saying that I only met her once. The truth is I met her many times at my dad’s. She was nice and very intelligent.”
“You were friendly with her?” Paige was still trying to wrap her mind around everything she was being told. So much had been held back before now that she didn’t know how to feel and what she had been told and what the truth had been revealed to be were blended in her mind.
“We always got on well at dad’s and we had similar taste in books and music. We had dinner at my parents once a week and got to know each other quite well. Then, during the summer and autumn of 2018, she was working a lot, research trips for my dad and university work, so I didn’t see her as much. She seemed to be having a tough time. Then in spring this year, she got back in touch. She trusted me, and so when she found that poem, she came to me and told me everything. She had taken photos of the poem and kept the names of the men she met on her phone. I told her not to carry on working my dad, and that I would get to the bottom of it.”
“So, these men, what did they do to her?” Paige asked, still unsure as to what Eckland was involved in. It was clear to her that even Leo didn’t know the full picture yet.
“They called themselves ‘The Angel Syndicate’, supposedly an academic organisation, but whenever Ella went to a party or conference that they attended, they were secretive. Some of those nights ended with her in my dad’s spare room with no recollection of the last few hours of the previous day. After that, expensive gifts started to show up at her doorstep with cryptic notes, none of them signed, just saying ‘had a great time with you’ or ‘nice to meet you’. At first, she brushed it off – she was new to academia, and my dad can be quite persuasive, especially with a shy girl like Ella. Sometimes it was an advanced copy of a book she wanted, other times designer clothes. He reassured her, encouraged her to chat to these people.”
“How often did she wake up not knowing about the day before?” Paige asked.
I’d say 6 or more, at least the ones she told me about. Perhaps she repressed it at first. But, as there were more and more unexplained ‘lost nights’ - sometimes hours were missing, sometimes half a day - she started to realise there was more to it than that. She wouldn’t dare speculate about what they did to her in those ‘lost’ moments, but sometimes she had bruises.”
“You think they raped her?” Paige gasped, catching up.
“Possibly, or something equally disgusting. Ella was considering going to the police the last time I saw her, but she was scared. She kept talking about powerful men and consequences, but I’m not sure what she thought would happen. I suppose her death seems even more suspicious to me because of those comments.”
“How did you end up with her phone?” Paige asked, wondering how any of this could be true.
“She went to a bar with her friends for a drink or two, and the same thing happened again. She woke up in her bed with no memory of the night before. She had texts from her friends asking her where she had gone. She was beside herself, as you can imagine and asked me to come over. She gave me her phone, paranoid that she wasn’t safe. I tried to encourage her to go to the police, but she was too scared. She wanted to go back to her parents to get away and said she would call me from her parents’ house, but she never did. Two weeks later, she was dead.”
“Shit...” Paige said under her breath. How can this be right? she thought, Eckland had always seem so slapdash, was he capable of this kind of thing? Was Leo telling the truth? How could she trust anything he told her?
“I know, it’s unbelievable. Until a month ago, I thought my parents were just two retired academics. Now I don’t know what to believe. It was hard for me to come to terms with the idea that my dad could be involved in something like this, but I don’t see why Ella would lie to me,” Leo was fidgeting now; he’d clearly been carrying this alone for some time.
“Leo, come on, how can I believe any of this?” Paige said.
“Because of Tom,” Leo said, “I have proof that he was involved in whatever my dad has been doing.”
Paige’s heart jumped, “What do you mean?” She asked.
“Ella and her friend Jade were sent on a ‘research trip’ to Greece last summer, funded by my dad. He wanted them to look at some manuscripts that a friend of his has. When they got there, they met one of my dad’s ‘associates’ who showed them round the towns and introduced them to some more people out there. Ella told me the man was named Tom.”
“That doesn’t prove it was my step-dad!” Paige snapped.
“No, but...” Leo breathed out deeply, “I’m sorry Paige, but there is a photo.”
He unlocked Ella’s phone and swiped the screen a couple of times. He started to come a little nearer, but Paige backed away again and so he threw the phone gently across the ground to her. Paige bent down and picked it up. The shock made her suck in
