What She Saw (24 page)

Rosen turned to the wall adjoining the bed. Girls galore. Pouting, puckering, bending over, looking directly at the viewer and blowing kisses into the void.

See we is many. See I are one
. The words invaded Rosen's head and refused to budge, like bad music.
See we is many. See I are one
. There was something in these words that gripped Rosen, that made him wonder,
Is this the key
? Or was it just wishful thinking?

Sour-faced at the task, Corrigan had starting putting the duvet, sheets and pillows in large transparent bags.

Rosen opened the double doors of a built-in closet, crammed with quality street clothes: American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and top-quality trainers lined up in the large space at the bottom of the closet.

‘Has he ever had paid employment, Mrs Trent?'

‘Jobseeker's Allowance.'

‘Take the clothes,' said Rosen. As he issued the instruction, his eyes fell on a dry cleaning ticket on the bottom of the closet: Speedy Clean, Lewisham High Street. He showed it to Trent's mother. ‘I'll collect his clothes from the cleaners.'

‘Move aside please.'

Rosen stepped away as Gold and Feldman lifted the bed away from the wall.

‘This time I'm going to the Police Complaints Commission.' Trent's mother stared directly at Rosen as she spoke, her brown eyes on fire with anger, her lashes flecked with small clusters of stale mascara. She smelt of McDonald's and cigarettes.

‘We need to talk to your younger son,' said Rosen. ‘Jay told us he was babysitting him two nights ago.'

‘Well, you'll have to go to his father's house to collect him. And that'll just be another point when I go to the IPCC. Harassing a little kid now, that's what this is.'

‘Where does his father live?'

‘Thirteen Woodstock Street.'

‘Isle of Dogs, not far from here. When'd he go to stay at his father's house?'

‘Today, when he came home from school.'

‘And where was he the night before that?'

‘I've told you, bonehead.'

‘Tell me again.'

‘He was here, with Jay looking after him.'

‘And where were you?'

‘The carpet in the corner, under the bed space, is really loose,' said Gold, kneeling down and turning the flap back. ‘Like it's well used to being turned back.'

‘I was in work, McDonald's, Bermondsey.'

‘So you weren't physically present in this house from, say, six o'clock onwards?'

‘I want my lawyer.'

‘Thanks, Mrs Trent, that's all I needed to know.'

Blake settled into position with his camera.

‘When you go to the IPCC, Mrs Trent, I wouldn't bother saying we planted evidence in your son's room because this is getting filmed as it happens.'

‘I've been around the perimeter of the room,' said Gold. ‘The rest of the carpet is tight, gripper-rodded into the skirting board.'

Rosen read the frustration in Gold's eyes. Since his wife had kicked him out, Gold had been forced to live in a shared house with five people he disliked and who disliked him. When Rosen had visited, with a house-warming gift of a bottle of Chivas Regal, he'd been disappointed at the state of the house.

Materially, Jay Trent, who'd never worked, had a better quality of everything than Gold, after his twenty years in the Met.

The remaining threads of Mrs Trent's composure snapped and she almost shrieked, ‘You can't do this!'

Rosen showed her the search warrant for the fifth time in twelve minutes with, ‘Yes, we can.'

Gold raised a loose board and propped it against the wall. He shone a torch into the darkness and moved aside to allow Blake to get a close-up.

‘It's a Tesco carrier bag,' said Gold. ‘I'm lifting it from beneath the boards. Inside it appears to be an envelope.'

He took a large brown envelope from the bag and showed it to Blake's camera.

Rosen clocked Mrs Trent. She looked genuinely perplexed.

Gold lifted the flap of the envelope and took out a collection of 10 × 7 photographs.

The top image showed a pleasant-looking teenage boy, dressed in a school uniform, standing in the sunshine against a brick wall. Gold handed the pictures to Rosen. He flicked through them, and his face darkened.

Rosen looked at Sylvia Trent and she stared back.

‘What?' she spat.

The action in the room fell still and all eyes turned to Rosen

‘Do you know this boy?' Rosen showed her the top picture.

‘No.'

‘Do you know why Jay has hidden these photographs?'

He opened the set mid-way and his heart fell hard and fast.

‘What?' she screamed. ‘What? What is it? What are the pictures of?'

56

10.42 P.M.

R
osen dealt the top photo –
snap
– to the bottom of the pile to reveal the next image. It was the same teenager again, taken at a different angle. He showed the third image. The same teenager again, this time sitting on grass with a cricket score board in the background.

‘I wonder who this is?' said Rosen, examining the boy's face, feeling as if he'd breezed past the face quite recently.

The next picture showed the boy in a bedroom, dressed in his school uniform but seemingly unaware of the camera as he unknotted his tie, gazing at his own reflection in a full-length mirror on the wall. The pictures of the walls around were different to the ones in the bedroom in which they now stood.

Rosen showed the photo to Trent's mother and walked to the mirror screwed onto the wall of Trent's bedroom.

‘Not the same mirror?' asked Rosen. ‘Not the same room?'

He turned and turned, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and said, ‘The boy in the photographs is performing a striptease for the person holding the camera. The person holding the camera and taking the pictures is using a variety of angles.' Turn, turn, turn. Rosen paused on one image, noticed a crisscross pattern of old scar tissue on the boy's
arms, the marks of a self-harmer. ‘The boy is naked in this picture.' He showed the image to Sylvia Trent, who looked away. ‘The interesting thing about this one is that the photographer's identity is revealed in the mirror. It's your son, Mrs Trent. That's why he hides them,' said Rosen. ‘And I guess he took them. . .' Rosen looked around and saw an Olympus digital camera on a computer table next to a printer. ‘He took them with that camera, and printed them using that printer.'

Rosen looked at the next image, his face darkened with sorrow and anger.

‘It's not against the law,' said Mrs Trent.

‘The legal definition of a child is anyone under the age of eighteen. If he's under sixteen, and it looks like he could be, he's a minor. Making images like this is very much against the law, Mrs Trent. Do you understand that? I bet you Jay does. Does he use the internet a lot?'

Trent's mother looked like she was in the early stages of trauma and Rosen knew that the photographs had shocked her.

‘Gold, look through the rest of the pictures, see if there are any of Jay.' He turned to Mrs Trent. ‘Are you sure you don't know who this young person is? I mean, all this did take place in Jay's room, under
your
roof.'

‘Do you think I'd allow this?' She looked around the room but there was little support for her. ‘My son is not a paedophile. My son is not a queer. He hates them.'

‘Paedophiles or homosexuals?'

‘Paedophiles. And queers.'

‘He's a complicated human being, your son.' Rosen turned to the other officers in the room. ‘We'll have his computer, camera, phone, anything that can make and distribute indecent images. We'll issue one of the clothed pictures and ask the model or anyone who knows him to step forward. . .'

‘He's not a paedophile and he's not a queer, someone's set him up. . .' Her voice trailed away as she hurried downstairs.

Rosen turned to Corrigan. ‘Trent's younger brother. Get the father's phone number. Check out her so-called alibi.'

Corrigan followed her.

‘I'm going back to Isaac Street to see Trent. DC Gold, the pictures, please,' said Rosen.

As Rosen passed Mrs Trent at the bottom of the stairs, Corrigan asked her, ‘The phone number of the place your son is?'

She pulled a face at Corrigan, an attempt at intimidation. Corrigan stared back contemptuously and she backed down immediately. She rattled off a string of numbers.

Corrigan dialled the number and asked, ‘What's your son's name?'

At the front door, Rosen stopped, a gut feeling making him stay put.

She remained tight-lipped.

‘He can give Jay an alibi,' said Rosen. ‘If he does that, things may be a lot less serious for Jay.'

‘Chester, his name's Chester!'

‘Chester Adler?' asked Rosen.

Sylvia Trent looked astonished. ‘How do you know? I said, how do you know him?' she asked.

‘You were married to Jay's father, but not Chester's?' asked Rosen.

‘Mind your own damned business.'

‘Sure.'

After a few moments, the call connected and Corrigan introduced himself, then turned on the speakerphone. ‘We need to talk to your son, Chester.'

‘Chester? Why?' replied the boy's father.

‘About Jay. . .'

‘That fucking arsehole. What's the deadbeat been up to now?'

‘We just need Chester to confirm Jay's alibi regarding his whereabouts the night before last.'

‘He's not here.'

‘He's not there?' Mrs Trent shrieked.

Corrigan ignored her. ‘His mother said he's with you in your house.'

‘He hasn't been here. Not for a week or so. If he was here, I'd put him on to you right now. But he ain't here.'

Corrigan thanked him and closed the call down.

A look of genuine distress overwhelmed Mrs Trent's hard-bitten face.

‘But he should've been there four hours ago. He phoned me, said he was just getting off the bus by his dad's. He goes to his dad's on his own all the time.'

‘I suggest you go to all the places where he may go. If you find him, call us, and we'll hear what he has to say. He's ten, isn't he?' said Rosen.

‘How do you know him?'

‘If you don't find him, call us and we'll issue a missing-child notification to all cars and stations on Chester Adler.'

‘How
do
you know him?'

‘This morning, we left his school as you were arriving,' said Rosen, walking out quickly into the rain. ‘The class pet. Very sad.'

57

11.35 P.M.

A
s he prepared to interview Trent again, Rosen surveyed the pictures on his desk: two dozen images of a young man performing a plethora of auto-erotic acts, his arms riddled with scars from wrist to shoulder. Rosen wondered what sorrows had driven this young person to self-harm and sighed profoundly as he returned the images to the envelope.

‘David!'

Rosen looked up at the sound of Henshaw's voice, urgent and hurried. Henshaw pulled up a chair.

‘Had any insights on the meaning of the graffiti?' asked Rosen.

‘See we is many, the eye – not as yet. But I've been through the photocopies of Macy Conner's school diary.' He produced a set of colour copies of her exercise book and lay the wad down on top of the pornography. ‘It's quite a read.'

‘Chester Adler's diary?'

‘He can barely hold a pencil. He writes like a four year old. But
Macy
,' emphasized Henshaw, ‘she worries me.'

Rosen looked at the top sheet, dated ‘3
^rd
September' in blue Berol pen handwriting and underlined with a black pencil line. The writing was neat but unlinked.

Rosen was torn. He was eager to get down to Trent and, at that moment, Macy's school diary felt simply like an interesting distraction. And yet, he was drawn by Henshaw's unease.

He read quietly to himself.

In the summer my grandmother come down from Scotland to stay with me because she is an old woman and has a bad heart and a sore chest and a lump on her spine. She is not well. She has come to live with me because I will take care of her. And that is what I did all summer long. She was kind and thankful to me and told me she had loved me from the moment I was born and would love me until the day I die. We prayed every day for her recovery, sometimes for a long time, but she seems to be growing weaker and weaker. I am very scared of losing her
.

Rosen's humanity was pricked. ‘She's a good kid.'

‘Look at this, David.' Henshaw lifted a set of top sheets and showed Rosen the diary entry for 30 September.

Rosen took a quick peep at his watch. The interview was due to start and his focus was shifting. ‘That's great,' said Rosen, observing the vast improvement in handwriting in the space of less than a single calendar month. It was almost perfect linked print.

‘Day by day,' observed Henshaw, ‘the quality of the handwriting matures visibly. I called Miss Harvey, who only started with the class in the following January. I found a written comment, mid-September, from a supply teacher. “It is good to work hard and be determined but you must take time to play.” Macy's comment back: “I'd rather improve my handwriting and I'll practise all playtimes and each night to do so.” Check out the entry for September the thirtieth. I will sacrifice time.'

Yesterday, I received the alarming and tragic news that my beloved grandmother is terminally ill. The illness is called cancer and she is being treated by an oncologist from St Thomas's Hospital in central
London, overlooking and overlooked by the Houses of Parliament, the seat of power in this hallowed Britain. This is how my grandmother has described things. She has a Macmillan nurse who calls to our humble flat to assist her. In the meantime, we have prayed together for her recovery and I have sacrificed time to help her get better
.