Exposed

by M. A. Hunter

  And with that thought, the tears quickly began to fall, and they didn’t stop until after the coffin had disappeared behind the curtain.

  Chapter Forty

  Now

  Chiswick, London

  Jack is sitting in his car outside the property when Rachel and I arrive. Neither of us has spoken much on the journey from Weymouth, such is the weight of the discovery resting on our shoulders. I’m worried I will never find happiness and joy in the world again. How can such pain and horror have been allowed to go on unpunished for so long? How can such monsters live and breathe the same air as me?

  Jack climbs out of his car and trots over to where Rachel has parked, and it breaks my heart a little that once I share the news with him, he will lose a little more of his innocence as well. It’s like a thick tar that spreads once it touches, and will never be removed. There’s a part of me that wants to just turn and drive back to Weymouth, destroying the drive in the process. The more who see it, the greater the infection of negativity will spread, and I will be the catalyst that caused it. How is Jack ever going to be the father Mila deserves once he sees the proof of how evil the world is?

  Jack hops from one foot to the other as he waits for Rachel and me to get out, but neither of us has any enthusiasm for what’s about to happen. I can see him staring in through the window, trying to work out if we’ve even removed our seatbelts yet.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ Rachel tells me, sensing my reticence. ‘Handing over the drive is the right thing to do. You’re just an investigative journalist; you can’t possibly bring these men to justice. And you can’t hold yourself responsible for what they did.’

  I meet her gaze, and even though my vision is misting, I want to tell her how grateful I am to have a friend who always seems to know the right thing to say in any given situation. I don’t think I would have held things together for as long as I have without her at my side. I haven’t yet started to contemplate how much our relationship will change once she marries Daniella, and whilst I wouldn’t ever begrudge her a happy ending, I do fear that things between us will never be the same again, and I need to make the most of our remaining time together. If these last few days have taught me anything, it’s that the sands of time are always slipping away, and if we don’t embrace the present, we’ll soon run out of grains.

  Jack taps his knuckle on my window and then shrugs in confusion when I look out at him. Rachel squeezes my hand, and it’s the strength I need to open the door and climb out.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Jack asks, the confusion spreading from his shoulders to his dark eyes.

  I can’t answer, but offer a less-than-reassuring nod instead. ‘Mum died yesterday morning,’ I tell him, though it’s hard to get the words out of my mouth without a little sob carrying on them.

  It’s only the second time I’ve uttered those words, and it still isn’t easier. Somewhere in the back of my head I’m still expecting a call from Pam telling me Mum’s having a good day and I should hurry to see her. But the good days are over, and all that remains is the memory of the good days we spent together. I’m so glad that Jack and Rachel got to see her at her best, so I can continue to remember those happier times.

  Jack is lost for words, and I don’t fight him as he pulls me into him, and wraps his arms around me. ‘Oh, Emma, I’m so sorry.’

  And that’s when the tears come, and despite clamping my eyes shut, I can feel them leaking out and my shoulders gently bobbing as the grief takes over. Jack holds me tight, and doesn’t offer false platitudes; he is the rock I need in this moment, and I know in my heart I don’t ever want to let him go. If I could freeze time, then this would be the moment I’d choose, even though it was born out of such sorrow.

  But as I hear Rachel’s door closing, reality crashes through the moment, and it is time for us to move on and bring an end to people whose names are listed on the drive.

  Jack keeps his arm around me and leads us to the front door of a four-bedroom detached property, where I recognise DCS Jagtar Rawani’s navy Jaguar parked in the driveway.

  ‘How much did you tell him?’ I ask, but Jack doesn’t answer. He knocks on the frosted window.

  Somewhere inside a deep bark sounds, and as a shadow appears behind the door, we can hear the scuttling of claws on a hard wood door as the bark’s owner is manhandled into another room and the door closed. Rawani answers the door a moment later in a shirt and tie, his turban as pressed and tight as ever. He looks from me to Jack to Rachel, and his brow furrows.

  ‘What are you all doing here? My retirement party isn’t until next week.’

  Before any of us answer, I reach into my bag and pull out the hard drive, thrusting it towards him, but he takes a nervous step backwards, shielding himself behind the door.

  ‘What is that?’ he asks, as if I might be holding some kind of incendiary device.

  ‘It’s the names, addresses, and credit card information of everyone involved in the ring, including those who have bought the filth these monsters pedal. It’s everything you need to bring down the operation once and for all.’

  His eyes don’t leave the drive. ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘It was stolen from the home of Ian Beauchamp late last night,’ I reply, without missing a beat.

  Jack, who didn’t know exactly why we’d come up today, lowers his arm, and I can see him now giving me a questioning glare, but I ignore it.

  ‘I believe he is one of the leaders – if not the leader – of the whole thing. We’ve spent so long trying to link all of this together, and now here it is, practically gift-wrapped with a bow on the top.’

  Rawani makes no effort to invite us in, almost as if he can sense the virus nearby, and he wants to protect himself from infection.

  ‘Why would you bring this to me?’ he asks. ‘I’m on gardening leave, ahead of my retirement from the Metropolitan Police. I can’t help you.’

  ‘You’re the only one who can help us,’ I counter. ‘Jack doesn’t have the seniority to launch the investigation this needs, and right now you are the only other detective in the world I trust. Please, Jagtar, don’t shut us out now. You were there in the beginning, and I can’t do this without you. We can’t do this without you.’

  The dog behind the door offers a solitary bark, and I can see Rawani weighing up his options. He’s always been pragmatic, but also one who follows the rules to the letter. Given his impending retirement, he’s going to need a lot more convincing, and the fact that he hasn’t invited us inside tells me he wants nothing to do with this drive.

  ‘There are thousands of video files on this drive,’ I continue. ‘Even more than what was found on Arthur Turgood’s computer. I could leak the names and addresses of the conspirators, and let the police forces across the south coast face questions about why action wasn’t taken to tighten the net around this group, but I don’t want to do that. I still believe in the police force. The vast majority of serving police officers do it for the right reasons, and just because there is the occasional bad apple, it doesn’t mean the whole force is tainted.’

  ‘Sir, it was my idea to come here,’ Jack offers. ‘I’m sorry, I should have phoned you, but I hadn’t realised exactly what Emma had found. This is what we spoke about so many times, sir, the keystone that will bring down the whole operation. It isn’t ideal that the intelligence within the drive was obtained by illegal means, but it doesn’t mean we can’t use it to broaden our original investigation. We owe it to Jemima Hooper, Aurélie Lebrun, Faye McKenna, Cormack Fitzpatrick, Zara Edwards, Freddie Mitchell, Anna Hunter, and all the other victims we’ve yet to identify on these files.’

  Rawani is frozen, the only movement the subtle bounce of his eyes. There are other avenues open to us if he refuses to help, but he was the one who first set Jack and me on this road, and it won’t feel right continuing without him.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he eventually relents, and holds the door open, allowing us to enter, before taking a g
lance outside as if checking to see if anybody is watching.

  He asks us to remove our shoes as the carpets in the rest of the property have just been cleaned, before he opens what turns out to be the kitchen door and lets an enormous, long-haired German Shepherd dog sniff each of us, before it trots happily away, curling up on the hearth in front of the fireplace in the main room. I’m not surprised that Rawani’s house is as pristine as his turban and office: the picture frames on the walls; the cushions on the three settees; the matching curtains hanging either side of the bi-fold doors, which open out into one of the largest residential gardens I think I’ve ever seen – almost as long as Beauchamp’s last night. It is a beautiful room, but I don’t feel comfortable, almost as if my being here is making the place look untidy.

  ‘Tell me again how you got hold of that drive,’ Rawani instructs, as Rachel and I sit together, while Jack and Rawani sit on separate settees.

  I proceed to explain to him how I was contacted by Yates and Oakley and how that led me to finding Anna, who in turn broke into Beauchamp’s house, while working with his abducted niece. By the time I’ve finished, he looks even paler than when I first showed him the drive on the doorstep.

  ‘Who else knows you have this?’ he asks.

  ‘Just us and Daisy Beauchamp, as far as I know. We came up here the moment she handed it over.’

  ‘Have you checked what’s on the device?’

  My chest tightens as I picture the windows opening on the screen and the thousands of files that appeared. ‘I had a brief look, but it isn’t easy viewing.’

  He stands and crosses the room in three strides, holding out his hand. ‘I want to see what’s on it.’

  The only way to fight an infection is to produce antibodies, and maybe that’s what Rawani sees himself as. I don’t argue, handing the drive over, before repeating my warning that it isn’t easy viewing.

  He turns the device over in his hands, contemplating the weight of his next actions, before turning and heading out of the room. He summons Jack to follow him, leaving just Rachel and me in the room, with the dog watching us.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Now

  Chiswick, London

  Jack and Rawani have yet to emerge from the room beyond the closed door, and I can’t help feeling out of place in this beautiful and well-organised living room. Rachel has been checking her phone for the last twenty minutes, and I too can’t be certain whether we’ve now served our purpose here. After all, what’s required next is real police work – investigation and detection, rather than the amateur deduction that I’ve specialised in for the last few years. I’ve dug up histories and I’ve followed clues to the best of my ability, but I’m not able to bring these victims the justice they deserve.

  I’ve never felt more redundant my entire life.

  My sister is alone and in a prison cell, and there’s nothing I can do to help her. Regardless of whether she was telling the truth when she said she hadn’t killed Tomlinson, she is in the frame for his murder, and if the CPS do agree to press charges along with any charges she might face for the abduction of Daisy, it will be a matter for a jury to determine her guilt, and I do fear for her long-term future. Daisy said she’d sacrificed herself to get the evidence to me, but surely she wouldn’t have reached out in Market Harborough if she didn’t at least hope I could keep her out of prison.

  And then there’s Mum, who battled for years to find Anna, but I didn’t manage to reunite them in time, and she died not knowing that her first daughter was still alive. I didn’t manage to tell her that it wasn’t her fault that Anna went missing that day; that she couldn’t have known an organisation of paedophiles and traffickers would stumble upon her. But then I think about her dying words to me: for years I’ve wondered whether I made the right choice.

  Did she really go her entire life thinking that she was somehow culpable for Anna’s disappearance? Did she believe that on some level she’d chosen to protect me over Anna? Or was she just confused as her body fought to keep breathing? I feel like I may never know the truth, and if Anna has repressed that time like Zara Edwards did, then maybe the truth about that day is already lost.

  I’m not expecting my phone to ring, but it’s a welcome distraction from the troubling thoughts in my head. The number isn’t withheld, but isn’t one saved in the new SIM card.

  ‘Hello, Emma Hunter speaking,’ I say, answering the call, but moving over to the patio doors so that Rachel doesn’t have to listen to the conversation.

  ‘Hi, Emma, it’s Marina Oakley, can you hear me okay? Signal is terrible here.’

  ‘Yes, hi, I can hear you.’

  ‘G-good,’ comes the stuttered reply, followed by broken words that are indecipherable.

  ‘Um, Detective Oakley, I missed that because you broke up, can you repeat what you said?’

  There are more vocal sounds that leave me checking my own phone’s signal, which is only at two bars, so I fiddle with the key in the lock, and when the door opens, I step outside. An extra bar registers, but the call ends. I attempt to phone DI Oakley back, but the number goes straight to voicemail, and I don’t leave a message.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I hear Rachel say from behind me, and I offer her a smile and reassuring nod.

  ‘It was DI Oakley,’ I reply, waving the phone, ‘but we got disconnected.’

  She holds her phone out. ‘Do you want to try mine?’

  I shake my head. ‘Thanks, but I think the problem’s at her end. Are you okay?’

  Her eyes widen and she smiles warmly, but her eyes are artificially large and I’d say she’s trying to look happier than she is.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, things are fine.’

  ‘But…?’ I add, drawing out the vowel.

  ‘It’s nothing… It’s fine.’

  I tighten my lips, and cross my arms.

  ‘Okay, it’s Daniella,’ she yields. ‘She’s just landed at Heathrow, and she’s asking whether I’m free to meet her for afternoon tea. I’ve told her I’m not, but I’m just wondering how much longer you think the other two will be before they let us know what’s going on?’

  I don’t blame her for wanting to bail, and in fairness if I had a beautiful fiancée offering to distract me from the maelstrom we find ourselves in, I’m not sure I could ignore the offer.

  ‘You can go if you want,’ I tell her, but she’s quick to shake her head.

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not looking to ditch you, especially when you could be close to breaking what could be the story of the last decade! I just want to be able to let Daniella know whether she might see us today, or whether she should make other plans.’

  I’m about to ask her how long is a piece of string when the phone in my hand starts ringing again. I shrug as I answer Oakley’s call.

  ‘Hello, Emma? Is that better?’

  ‘Yes, I can hear you now.’

  ‘Oh good, I’ve come outside now, but it’s threatening to rain, so I might have to break off if the heavens open.’ The sound of a lighter being flicked is followed by a small sigh of satisfaction as she exhales from the freshly lit cigarette. ‘I wanted to give you an update on your sister, assuming her solicitor hasn’t already been in touch?’

  ‘I’m not sure she’d have my new number,’ I reply honestly, though I’m not entirely sure how Oakley has this number, unless Rachel gave it to her when she called yesterday.

  ‘Ah good, so my call isn’t wasted.’ She exhales again. ‘Have you been allowed to speak to Anna at all?’

  ‘No, but again, I don’t think she’d have my number anyway. Have you been in touch with her or the arresting officer? Do you know whether they’re planning on charging her with Daisy’s abduction, because they need to know that—’

  ‘I have no news about any of that, I’m afraid,’ she interjects. ‘I can make a call and see if the SIO will let me update you, but he has no reason to agree.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d appreciate it.’

  �
��Okay, I’ll try my best. And you? Are you okay?’

  I don’t know where to begin with answering that question honestly, and I’m not sure it isn’t rhetorical anyway, so I simply tell her I’m fine.

  ‘The reason I was calling,’ she says, ‘is to let you know we no longer believe Anna had anything to do with Anthony Tomlinson’s murder. I’m not usually in the habit of reaching out to suspects’ long-lost siblings, but this isn’t a traditional situation we find ourselves in, now, is it?’

  My throat is suddenly dry. ‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ I try to say, but the words are like tar on my tongue, and I’m not entirely sure what I say.

  ‘The Crime Scene Investigation team identified hidden security cameras all over the inside of Mr Tomlinson’s property, and although we were aware that power had been cut to the six visible cameras outside of the house – two at the front and four at the rear – an hour before the gunshots were heard, it appears they weren’t connected to the cameras inside. The type of devices and their locations would suggest that Mr Tomlinson was more than a little paranoid about his future, and with good reason based on the footage that was recovered.’

  My knees are like jelly, and although I fall back against the closed patio door, I’m not convinced I won’t simply slide down it to the damp concrete paving slab beneath my feet.