‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ Vickers said quietly. ‘There seem to be a lot of things belonging to you here, considering you haven’t been in contact with the inhabitants of this house until yesterday, by your own account.’
‘I can’t explain it,’ I said, totally confused. ‘I don’t get it. What
is
this room?’
Blake beckoned me over to the video camera and pointed to the viewfinder. ‘Don’t touch anything, but have a look through there and tell me what you see.’
‘It’s focused on the bed.’ As the words left my mouth, something clicked in my mind. ‘Oh … do you mean that they were making videos here? Home-made porn? How gross.’ I was suddenly glad I hadn’t been allowed to touch anything. ‘And Paul must have been here while they were making them. Poor kid. I hope Danny didn’t let him see anything.’ I looked at Vickers. ‘But why is all my stuff in here? What’s going on?’
He sighed. ‘Sarah, we’re going to have to assume that you were involved in this to some extent.’
‘What?’ I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. ‘I told you, my bag was stolen! These are my things but I didn’t leave them here – I don’t know how they got here.’
Blake had gone to the door, where he had been having a muttered conversation with one of the policemen who were searching the house. He turned back. ‘Sir, can I have a word?’
‘Don’t touch
anything
,’ Vickers reiterated forcefully, and waited until I nodded before following Blake out of the room. A uniformed officer came and stood in the doorway, watching me. He didn’t speak and I didn’t either. I just stood there and looked at the spare, bleak room, feeling ill.
When they finally came back, I said, ‘What’s going on?’
The two men looked even grimmer than they had before. Vickers leaned against the wall, looking like his legs were too weak to hold him up, and let Blake do the talking.
‘We’ve just been upstairs, where the officers have discovered a large amount of home-made child pornography. In one of the bedrooms upstairs, there’s an advanced set-up – computers, high-speed broadband, customised video software, stacks of DVDs.’ He pointed at the camera. ‘That thing records straight onto disc. They’d film down here, then go upstairs and upload it onto a host site. These things are pretty hard to trace. The people who run them are good at faking IP addresses, hacking into other people’s computers to use their details, so it’s hard for us to track back and find out who’s putting this shit out there.’
‘But why?’ I was starting to shake.
‘Money,’ Blake said briefly. ‘There’s a lot of cash in this business. If you’re coming up with good product, you can charge what you like. The same videos and images get swapped around all the time. The paedos get sick of seeing the same old kids and the same old rape and torture. Plenty of punters out there willing to pay to see fresh child abuse. The good suppliers will create it to order. You can commission them to make your fantasy come true. If you pay enough, you can even get the child to scream your name. Makes you feel like you’re actually there, not just watching on your computer.’
I flinched, hating the brutal tone he was using.
‘This is a professional set-up.’ Blake waved a hand at the room. ‘There’s nothing here to identify where the filming is taking place. This room has been cleaned out – nothing personal appears on camera. There’s just the bed and a blank bit of wall. Nothing for the police to go on if we do find these videos or images on the net. This room could be anywhere, pretty much. All we can do is pick up the customers, the idiots who use their own credit cards to pay for it.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Here? In this house? In the middle of a quiet little suburban cul-de-sac?’
Vickers spoke then, his voice quiet and flat, unemotional. ‘These things
can
go on without anyone knowing. It’s amazing what people don’t see if they don’t know what they’re supposed to be looking for. Look at Fred and Rose West. No one on Cromwell Street had the least idea what the Wests were doing, because they couldn’t even imagine
that
people could be so evil. Good people don’t think of these things. Evil people can’t think of anything else.’
He spoke of good and evil with all the force and severity of an Old Testament prophet, and I saw that he believed in evil, good old-fashioned evil, not the psychologist’s excuses of upbringing and circumstance.
‘It’s almost creative,’ he said, mostly to himself. ‘It’s their art, you could say. Think of all the effort this takes, all the organisation.’
Revolted, I turned back to Blake.
‘We’ve had a quick look at the images upstairs – stills and a couple of bits of the DVDs. It’ll take us a while to go through everything, but at this stage it looks like they had a bit of a theme for their work.’
‘What do you mean?’ I whispered.
‘One victim, a few different abusers.’
‘Not Paul?’ I said, my heart breaking for him as I began to understand what had made him the way he was. No wonder he couldn’t live with his secret being found out.
Vickers shook his head. ‘No. Not Paul. Jenny Shepherd.’
I looked at the two men with complete incomprehension. ‘
Jenny?
But how? What was she doing in this house?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ Blake said, and I felt like Alice falling down and down the rabbit hole, the ground giving way beneath me. Nothing made sense any more, except that I could finally understand how the childish, underdeveloped girl who’d sat in my English classes could have been four months pregnant.
‘What about Paul?’ I said eventually. ‘You can’t think he was involved.’
Vickers looked troubled. ‘I know he’s a child, Sarah, and he’s not well, but the sad thing is that we do believe he played an active part.’
‘You said it yourself, he has the computer knowledge,’ Blake pointed out. ‘From the looks of it, he’s the one who runs the technological side. The computers were all in his bedroom.’
Vickers sighed. ‘If you possess any information that would either exonerate or implicate the boy, I’ll be glad to hear it, now or at the station.’
I stared into the middle distance, saying nothing. I couldn’t think what to say. I had a feeling that Paul wouldn’t have volunteered to be part of anything sordid and evil, but the evidence was stacking up against him.
‘I don’t know,’ I said eventually. ‘All I can tell you is that he seemed like a nice person.’
Blake stirred. ‘Lots of people seem nice. Lots of people seem innocent. Sometimes it’s hard for us to pick out the ones who are guilty at first, but we usually get there in the end.’ He gestured at the pile of things I had identified as mine. ‘Don’t you think you have some explaining to do?’
‘
Me?
Are you crazy? I didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t know anything about it.’ Even to my ears, I sounded as if I was lying. I looked from one to the other. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘You knew the girl,’ Vickers said. ‘You live in the same street. Your things are here. You are the link. As ever, Sarah, you are the link.’
‘You can’t seriously think I’m involved.’ There was nothing in their faces to suggest they believed me, though:
Vickers’
eyes were cold, arctic blue and Blake’s expression was grim. A jolt of pure panic ran through me and I fought it down. They were playing some kind of game – I just didn’t know the rules.
‘It would be better if you told us what happened, Sarah, before this goes any further.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. I can’t help you. And it’s been a long day already, and I’m tired.’ I sounded petulant; I didn’t care. ‘I’m going home. Why don’t you go and find out what really happened here, and when you do, let me know. Because
I
wasn’t involved, so I’m as much in the dark as you.’
It was all right, as exit lines go, and I turned to leave without waiting for a reply. I hadn’t got more than two steps towards the door when I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me back to where I had been standing.
‘Let go of me!’ I glared at Blake.
‘No chance.’
Vickers looked at me tiredly. ‘If you won’t talk to us, Sarah, we only have one option remaining to us.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘I mean that we have to compel you to come and talk to us.’
Vickers slipped out of the room then, pushing past me, leaving me to think about what he’d said. I heard him talking in an undertone in the hall to someone I couldn’t see.
‘You can’t really think I’m involved.’ I was trying to read Blake’s face, waiting for him to admit that it was all a big joke, that they didn’t mean it really.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said, and his voice sounded strange, harsh. I looked up at him and didn’t know him.
Before I could respond, Vickers came back with another man. He was balding and overweight, in his forties. Even if he hadn’t been standing beside Vickers, I think I would have known he was a cop immediately. There was something about his eyes, a deep-seated disillusionment and distrust that suggested he had heard too many lies. He began to speak in a flat, droning voice without inflection, running the words together as he ran through a recitation he had performed countless times before.
‘Sarah Finch, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Jenny Shepherd. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you say can be used in evidence. Do you understand?’
My mouth popped open involuntarily: the classic reaction to shock. I looked at Vickers, to see his reaction, but he had the thousand-yard stare firmly in place. Blake looked down at his feet, refusing to meet my eye.
‘You can’t do this,’ I said, not really believing that it was happening. ‘You can’t think this is right.’
Vickers said, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘DC Smith, can I leave it to yourself and DC Freeman to take Miss Finch to the station? No need for cuffs, I’d have said. We’ll see you there.’
Smith nodded and beckoned to me. ‘Better get a move on.’
‘Aren’t you taking me in yourselves?’ I asked Blake and Vickers, and I didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
Vickers shook his head. ‘You won’t be dealing with us directly from now on. We know you, you see. It could cause us disclosure problems if this gets to trial.’ Blake turned away sharply, and I wondered if Vickers had picked up on something between us, or if it was really just routine. The chief inspector ignored his sergeant and finished, ‘Best to let other members of the team take it from here.’
‘Best for whom?’ I asked, but there was no response.
DC Smith put a meaty hand on my arm and pulled me into the hall, where we had to wait for a stream of policemen to pass by, carrying boxes and bags of evidence to the cars that were waiting outside. Computer hard drives, CDs, DVD cases and a webcam were visible through the heavy-duty clear plastic bags. One of the officers carried something long and heavy, wrapped in brown paper – a golf club? A poker? I couldn’t tell. He gave Vickers a meaningful look as he passed, and the chief inspector nodded soberly without speaking. Then there were more bags, personal stuff – clothes, toys that had to belong to Paul, photographs in frames, documents of various sorts. The whole house was being torn apart; there would be nothing left by the time they were finished.
And they were probably planning to do the same to me. I slid a look sideways at Vickers, noting the hard lines of his face and the resolute set of his mouth. There was no gentleness there. I couldn’t blame him. What had happened
in
that house didn’t bear thinking about. I literally couldn’t think about it.
I stood there like a zombie as the police worked around me, barely listening to their hurried conversations. To give them their due, no one seemed excited by the discoveries they were making. Troubled, if anything. It was hard, knowing that a child had suffered terribly in that very house, and no one had helped her.
For myself, I felt numb. I had abdicated responsibility. There didn’t seem to be any point in arguing any more. I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened. Even leaving aside the fact that I was apparently in serious trouble with the police, there was the question of why my possessions were in the house. OK, so Danny had been the one who attacked me and took my bag. That explained who had mugged me, but not why. And the other things – things I knew I hadn’t had in my bag, things I had missed over the previous weeks and months. How had they come to be there?
Blake had gone outside, and when he came back, he nodded to Vickers. ‘No press yet. I wouldn’t hang around, though – it won’t take them long to work out what they’re missing.’
What they were missing. A bitter taste flooded my mouth. What they were missing was an arrest. A real live suspect being taken in for questioning. And I was just starting to appreciate that I was almost certainly standing in the house where Jenny died.
Smith turned to me. ‘Come on. Let’s get a move on.’
I walked out of the dim, dank hall into the midday
sunshine
without looking back to see if Blake and Vickers were following, and the light dazzled me for a second. There was a beat, and then a strange susurration began, like wind in the trees. The sound built in volume, becoming characteristically human. Around the end of the road stood most of the neighbours – little kids with their mothers holding on to their shoulders protectively, elderly retirees who made thrice-daily trips to the local shops for some human contact, middle-aged women with sour, speculative expressions on their faces. I refused to make eye contact with any of them, even though I could feel them staring at me with bovine interest. The irritation prickled up and down my spine. They had missed out on the first sensational incident of the day because poor Geoff had been discovered at such an antisocial hour. They weren’t going to miss anything now. And neither was anyone else. In the absence of the media, the burden of capturing what was taking place had fallen on my neighbours, who were taking their responsibilities seriously. At first glance, I hadn’t understood why three or four of them held their arms in the air, but I soon realised that they were filming, using their mobile phones to capture the moment as I walked out of the house, Smith in front of me, another officer behind me, heading for the car. Without really thinking about it, I straightened my back. I wasn’t wearing handcuffs. I was not going to shuffle to the car trying to hide my face, like a guilty person. I would walk with my head held high, and no one would know I was under arrest. I had no reason to hide. But the colour beat in my face as I went down that path.