Authors: Michael Robotham
Kroger was kicked out of school at fifteen and arrested twice before his seventeenth birthday. There were no factory jobs. The mines had closed and the manufacturers had moved offshore. The state paid him welfare and wondered why a kid like this would turn to crime, when the only “paid work” on offer was coming from the drug dealers and crime gangs on the estates. So they hired more police and built more prisons and hoped the underclass would shrink and die.
Drury is behind me in the observation room. “What’s your take on this guy?”
“He’ll stonewall you,” I say. “He isn’t fazed by police interviews because he’s been here before.”
“I’m a patient man.”
“That won’t be enough. You have to shake him up. Keep him off balance. I can help with that. Let me sit in.”
The DCI doesn’t dismiss the idea. “Make your case.”
“Right now Kroger doesn’t know why he’s been arrested, but he must suspect this has something to do with the photographs. People get nervous around psychologists. They think I’m going to mess with their heads or read their thoughts. It might be enough to unsettle him.”
Drury ponders this for a moment. Makes a decision. “Let’s do this.”
Kroger doesn’t look up as we enter. I take my chair and move it around to his side of the table. He looks at me sideways and then to Drury.
“What’s he doing here?”
“Professor O’Loughlin is a psychologist. He’s here to observe you.”
“Can he do that?”
“Relax, Toby.”
“But why is he here?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Kroger looks at me again. The clock ticks through half a minute.
“I want him to stop doing that,” he moans.
“Doing what?”
“Make him stop staring at me.”
Ignoring him, Drury opens a folder and shuffles pages. Kroger picks up his chair and moves it further away from mine, crossing his arms. Enclosed. Defensive.
Another minute passes.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks.
“I’m giving you time to compose yourself,” says Drury.
“Huh?”
“I’m giving you time to come up with a story. It helps to have a good story when you’re going to be charged with sexual assault.”
“I didn’t touch anyone. If she said I did, she’s lying.”
Drury pauses. “Who do you think we’re talking about, Toby?”
Kroger hesitates. “I don’t know. Some bitch.”
“Natasha McBain. We found footage of her on your computer.”
Kroger falters and takes a moment to recover. “That’s not my laptop.”
“We found it in your flat. It’s linked to your email account.”
“A guy sold it to me.”
“When?”
“A few weeks back.”
“Where?”
“In a pub.”
“Which pub?”
“The Ox.”
“The Ox has been closed since March.”
“Must have been another pub. I can’t remember.”
Drury shakes his head. “I gave you extra time, Toby.”
“It’s true! A guy sold it to me. He was blond, fat, about forty. I think he was one of them problem gamblers you hear about, because he only wanted sixty quid.”
“And all the porn on the computer?”
Kroger grins, his gold tooth gleaming. “That’s not illegal.”
“The photographs you sold of Natasha McBain, who took them?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We have CCTV footage of you collecting the money from a journalist, who has just identified you as being the source.”
His grin fades. He glances nervously at me. “I found them on the computer. The guy didn’t wipe his hard drive.”
“You recognized Natasha McBain?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I saw an opportunity to make a few quid.”
“She was being sexually assaulted.”
“I didn’t watch the whole thing.”
“Maybe you think she deserved it.”
“None of my business.”
“Who took the footage?”
“I told you.”
“Some fat guy you met in the pub?”
“Yeah.”
“Last chance, Toby. I want the truth.”
Drury signals to the mirror. Moments later there is a knock. Dave Casey enters holding a mobile phone.
“Is this your phone, Toby?”
Kroger hesitates.
“It’s a pretty straightforward question,” says Drury. “It’s registered in your name. You took out the plan. What’s the security code?”
“I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Don’t worry—we’ve unlocked it already.”
Kroger is staring at the phone like it might detonate. “That’s my private property. You need a warrant or something for that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
The DCI slides his finger across the screen.
“We’ve searched the memory. We found the footage.”
He turns the screen longways. Footage begins playing. Natasha is dancing on the small screen. Kroger won’t look.
“There was no fat man in the pub, Toby. You took the footage. You filmed what happened. She was fifteen years old. I counted six grown men. Seven counting you.”
“I just filmed, I didn’t touch her.”
“You raped her.”
“No, no, no.” He shakes his head from side to side, pleading with Drury to understand. “We just frightened her. We flicked her with towels. We made her dance. Nobody raped her.”
“Bollocks!”
“It’s true. Nobody raped her. I swear.”
“Where was it taken?”
Again Kroger hesitates. Drury slaps his hand on the table.
“How long do you think it’s going to take us to triangulate the signals and find out exactly where you were? And how long will it take before we trace the signals from other mobile phones at the same place at the same time? We’re going to get the names of everyone on this video and we’re going to charge them with sexual assault and kidnapping and maybe even murder.”
“What? No, no, we didn’t murder anyone. We didn’t kidnap her. It was just a bit of fun. Payback for what she done.”
“What did she do?”
Kroger stops himself. He’s said too much.
“Payback for what?” Drury asks again.
“Nothing. I mean, she was a prick-tease, you know. She was asking for trouble.”
“So you raped her?”
“Will you stop saying that?” Kroger looks at me for understanding and reacts angrily. “And you can stop staring at me.” He folds his arms. “I want a lawyer.”
“That’s your prerogative, Toby.”
“I’m not answering any more questions.”
“Fine. Have it your way. I am charging you with the imprisonment and sexual assault of Natasha McBain. You don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and can be used as evidence against you…”
Kroger tries to speak, but Drury drowns him out.
“You had your chance, Toby. Go back to the cells and come up with a better story. Be more creative. Amnesia maybe. Insanity. You’re going down for this. The Professor here has a daughter that age. That’s why he’s looking at you like that. He can see inside that festering little brain of yours. He knows you get off watching rape pornography.
“Imagine what it’s going to be like in prison—hundreds of blokes staring at you, wanting to cut your balls off for raping a minor. That makes you a kiddy fiddler, a pedo, a molester. They’ll be waiting for you, Toby.”
Kroger’s head is shaking from side to side. “I didn’t touch her, I tell you. I just took the footage. Nobody raped her.”
Drury leans closer. “You keep thinking that someone is going to save you. That this is all going to blow over. You’re wrong. You had your chance and you blew it. Your mate Craig Gould is downstairs and he’s going to sing like Amy Winehouse. He’ll cut a deal. Name names.”
Drury gets to his feet. I haven’t moved.
“I walk out that door and you spend the next twelve years inside.”
He doesn’t take more than three paces.
“OK, OK, sit down,” says Kroger, sniveling. “Nobody raped her, OK, but I’ll tell you what happened.”
Drury takes a seat. “Where was the film taken?”
“The changing rooms at Bingham Leisure Center.”
“What about Piper Hadley?”
“She was outside. We tied her up.”
“Where is she now?”
Kroger frowns. Shrugs. He raises his eyebrows, not understanding the question. The penny drops.
“We didn’t take them girls. We let ’em go.”
“Where?”
“At the swimming pool.” He makes it sound obvious. “We didn’t take them, I promise you.” He looks up at me again. “It’s the truth. Honest.”
“What did you do?”
“We roughed Tash up a little. Made her dance. Then we put her in the shower and cleaned her up, but that’s all. She was fine.”
“Fine?”
“You know what I mean.”
Drury tosses a pad onto the table.
“I want the names. Every last one of them.”
W
hen it was over,
I helped Tash put on her clothes and washed the blood from beneath her nose. She moved in slow motion, hurting in places I could never understand. There were red welts on her thighs and stomach, back and arms. Bruises coming.
They had warned us what would happen if we told anyone. There were photographs, they said, footage of Tash naked. They would upload it on the Internet and post the pictures on Facebook.
Then they told us to count to a thousand, so that’s what I did. I counted to a thousand and then I counted to two thousand.
Tash didn’t say anything. She could have been asleep.
Then I heard her voice, quiet and unsure. “Piper?” she said. “I want to leave now.”
I thought she meant go home, but she meant run away.
“I have five hundred pounds. How much can you get?”
I didn’t say right away.
“Don’t worry. I have enough.”
“We should tell the police.”
“No.”
“But you’re hurt.”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She made it sound as though someone had turned off a switch in her body and she couldn’t be hurt any more.
“What about Emily?”
“You go to her house. Tell her that we’ll meet her tomorrow morning, first thing. She doesn’t have to come, but I’m not changing my mind.”
My stomach twisted and coiled like a snake inside me. Tash looked at me as though I were made of glass and she could see right through me.
“I know you’re scared,” she said. “So am I.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say that would change things. In her mind, Tash was already running. She wanted me to catch up with her. It’s what I do, I told myself. I’m a runner.
A
n hour before first light on Christmas Eve, armed response teams gather at Abingdon Police Station. Seven addresses have been identified. Five more suspects are being sought. I’m barely awake when these men are dragged from warm beds, handcuffed in front of their families and bundled into police cars.
Theo Loach arrives at the station with his shoulders back and head up, shunning the offer of a coat to cover his head. His gunmetal hair is trimmed tight to his scalp and the only sign of disruption to his normal routine is the stubble on his chin.
Reuben Loach, Callum’s older brother, has a cyclist’s ropy build and trim black hair that clings to his skull like a helmet. He doesn’t stop talking, insisting there’s been a mistake.
Callum’s uncle, Thomas Rastani, is a fifty-year-old insurance salesman with a wife and three children. Overweight and sweating in the cold, he hammers on his cell door, pleading to speak to his wife.
Scott Everett is another of Callum’s friends. In his twenties, with a foppish fringe and eyes the color of pea soup, he crouches beneath the blanket as though hoping it might make him invisible. Within minutes his father has arrived, politeness personified, but dropping the name of the barrister he’s hiring.
The last suspect seems to have no obvious links to Aiden Foster or Callum Loach. Nelson Stokes, the former school caretaker, doesn’t seem surprised by his arrest. He knows the drill—when to duck his head, when to cover it, when to keep quiet.
The men are brought in separately. Fingerprinted. Photographed. Read their rights.
By 9:00 a.m. the mood at the station is a festive one. There is a sense of expectation—a major case about to be cracked, the suspects in custody, the truth only hours away, or days. Phone records will link each suspect to the scene of the attack and to each other. They will deny everything initially, until one of them breaks ranks and tries to cut a deal. Then they’ll turn on each other like guests on Jerry Springer.