The Spider's Web

by Ben Cheetham

  ‘I will. Thanks, Jim.’

  Jim’s gaze followed Reece from the room. Beyond the big detective’s shoulder he glimpsed Villiers. Anger replaced the concern in his eyes. Why did it always seem to be people like Reece and Staci who suffered, whilst scumbags like Villiers flourished? The guy was as dirty as used toilet paper. Jim knew it. Could almost smell it. And he felt sure he could prove it too, if only Garrett would allow him to delve deeper into Villiers’ life. Somewhere there was someone – a former or even a current resident of the children’s homes he’d worked at – who could expose that dirt. And if they could snag Villiers, maybe they could use him as bait to hook the other big fish in Herbert Winstanley’s book. But that wasn’t going to happen unless Garrett— Jim broke off his line of thought with a sharp shake of his head. He’d been thinking in circles for months now, wasting his time on ifs and maybes, dancing to Garrett’s tune. And where had it got him? Fucking nowhere. He frowned at the list of names. Maybe it was time to start dancing to his own music.

  There was a knock on the door. Miles Burnham shoved his head back into the room. ‘Can we hurry things up, Chief Inspector? My client’s a busy man.’

  Jim grimaced inwardly. Yes, Villiers was a busy man – busy running the home Edward Forester had helped him set up. The thought of it was like a kick in the gut. With deliberate slowness, Jim led Burnham and Villiers to a yard enclosed by the severe concrete façade of Police HQ, tall walls topped with spiked railings, and a three-metre steel gate. The yard was full of police vehicles, except for a Mercedes with tinted windows. As Burnham and Villiers approached the Mercedes, a camera was thrust through the gate’s vertical bars. Its flash went off and Villiers ducked down behind the car as though a sniper had taken a potshot at him.

  ‘Chief Inspector,’ exclaimed Burnham. ‘Did you see that?’

  Jim had seen it alright. He’d seen the face behind the camera too. It was one he’d known for years – twenty years, to be precise – but it had become especially familiar to him once again in the past few months. Under different circumstances, in a different life, it could have been a pretty face. But this life had made its eyes penetratingly direct, its lips thin and taut, its cheeks pale and sharp-boned. The woman it belonged to was in her mid-thirties, maybe five five or so, wearing heavy-duty Doc Martens, skinny black jeans and a black leather jacket. Her hair was blonde, short and as styleless as the black-framed glasses she always wore.

  Permitting himself a ghost of a smile at Villiers’ startled face, Jim called for the gate to be opened. ‘Stay there,’ he shouted at the woman. ‘I want a word with you.’

  A motor whirred into life and the gate slid sideways. As Jim crossed the yard, the woman spread her arms as if to say, What have I done wrong? Jim pointed to her camera. ‘Hand it over.’

  ‘Why should I?’ she responded. ‘This is public property.’

  Jim thumbed over his shoulder. ‘Yes, but that isn’t. And I’ve warned you before about what would happen if I caught you taking photos here.’

  The woman still hesitated to hand over her camera.

  ‘Do you really want to do this the hard way, Anna?’ Jim’s voice was authoritative, but there was an underlying tenderness in it.

  Reluctantly, Anna gave her camera to him. ‘You’ll get it back once the appropriate photos have been deleted,’ he assured her.

  ‘I’ll delete them for you right now.’

  ‘Sorry, but I have to make certain that deleted means gone for good.’

  Anna glanced past Jim at the Mercedes, behind which Villiers was still squatting. ‘He must really be someone important. Especially if he can afford a scumbag like Burnham.’

  ‘Go home. You’re wasting your time here.’

  ‘I disagree.’ An edge of frustration sharpened Anna’s voice. ‘I don’t understand why you refuse to see the connection between your case and my sister’s abduction.’

  ‘I don’t refuse to see it. I don’t see it because right now it doesn’t exist.’

  Anna began counting off points on her fingers. ‘Freddie Harding was abducting young girls in the early nineties. He used to drive a white van. Manchester United football shirts and match-day programmes were found at his house.’

  ‘Harding wasn’t opportunistically snatching kids off the street. He was taking prostitutes who he knew wouldn’t be easily missed. Granted, he drove a white van at the time of his 2005 arrest. But no such vehicle was registered to him in 1993. As for him being a Man U supporter, well, there are about half a billion of them out there. And anyway, you don’t know for certain that Jessica’s abductors were Man U supporters.’

  ‘What about the red devil keyring? And why else would they have been driving around so close to Bramall Lane that afternoon? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it an accepted fact that in most abductions the perpetrator had a legitimate reason for being at the scene of the crime? They might work or live nearby. Or they might have been involved in a social activity, such as attending a sporting event.’

  ‘You know you’re not wrong. As I’m sure you also know that the majority of abductions are crimes of opportunity. And as I said, Harding wasn’t an opportunist.’

  ‘What about the girl he raped on Pitsmoor Road in 2005?’

  ‘Ellen Peterson was the exception.’

  ‘How do you know there weren’t other exceptions?’

  ‘I don’t,’ conceded Jim. ‘What I do know is that Harding has a thing for prostitutes who remind him of his mother. And your sister doesn’t fall into that category.’

  ‘But she was the type Edward Forester would’ve gone for.’

  ‘What’s taking so long, Chief Inspector?’ called Miles Burnham. ‘Can you please hurry up and get rid of that bloody woman?’

  Jim ignored the solicitor. Every opportunity to inconvenience Villiers was an opportunity not to be missed. ‘OK, look, let’s assume for a moment that you’re right. The man you saw grab Jessica was neither Harding nor Forester. Which means a third man was working with them. And that’s where the theory starts to fall apart. We’ve found no evidence to suggest an unidentified third man ever visited Forester’s bunker. Nor have we found a DNA match for your sister from the recovered remains of the victims.’ Recovered remains – the words seemed to echo in Jim’s head with added sardonic bitterness. What a fucking joke. Apart from two semi-gelatinous bodies in barrels, the only remains they’d recovered were from a jar containing thirty-eight torn and shrivelled nipples – one for each of the half-brothers’ dead victims, plus Melissa Doyle, the only girl known to have escaped the bunker.

  ‘Maybe Freddie Harding had an accomplice his brother didn’t know about.’

  Jim pushed his lower lip out thoughtfully. ‘It’s possible. But it’s pure speculation. And right now I don’t have much use for that.’ He raised a hand as Anna made to say something else. ‘I realise you’re perfectly within you’re rights to stand out here all day, Anna, but as a favour to me I’m asking you to move along.’

  ‘Alright, but it won’t make any difference.’ Anna jerked her chin – which bore a thin pearly white scar – towards the Mercedes. ‘Camera or no camera, I’ll find out who he is. And when I do I’ll put his face out there for the world to see.’

  Jim took hold of Anna’s arm and firmly guided her out of sight of the yard. ‘I’d think long and hard before doing that if I were you.’ His voice was low with concern. ‘Trust me, that man’s not someone you want to antagonise.’

  Anna’s lips curled into a contemptuous smile. ‘Oh yeah, what’s he going to do, sue me? You’d better tell him to get in line.’

  ‘Look, I know I can’t stop you from doing what you feel needs to be done. But just be careful how you go about it. Please. I’d hate to see you get hurt.’

  ‘Is that how you brought down Forester and Harding? By being careful?’ Anna held Jim’s hangdog brown eyes for a moment, letting the words sink in. She wrote her mobile number on a notepad and tore out the page for him. ‘You’d better not dam
age my camera, Chief Inspector, or you’ll be the one in trouble.’

  Jim waited for her to get into a beaten-up old VW camper van across the street and accelerate away, before heading back to the yard. ‘Is she gone?’ asked Burnham.

  ‘Yes.’

  With a nervous glance to make sure Jim was right, Villiers rose from behind the Mercedes. ‘Did she recognise me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Nobody you need worry about.’

  ‘For once I agree with the Chief Inspector,’ said Burnham. ‘She’s just some wannabe journalist. Her name’s Anna Young. She runs a blog called The Truth.’

  ‘The truth about what?’

  ‘About whatever gets her goat. She fancies herself as some kind of crusader exposing injustice. Personally I think she’s got a screw loose. What about you, Chief Inspector?’

  I think I’d like to slap the smugness off your face, thought Jim. He kept his voice neutral. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Villiers. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.’

  ‘Don’t bank on it,’ countered Burnham. ‘Not unless you’ve actually got something worth talking to him about.’

  Villiers and Burnham ducked into the Mercedes. As Jim watched them drive away, Anna’s words stalked around his mind like a caged tiger. Is that how you brought down Forester and Harding? By being careful?

  2

  On the way home, Anna stopped to pick up some flowers. She bought two bunches – lilies for her mum and yellow roses for her dad. As she neared Queens Road, a familiar tightness rose into her throat. Her hands twitched with the urge to make a sharp left into the warren of back roads and rat runs she usually took. She resisted it. Not today, she told herself. Today she felt the need to see where it had happened. She pulled across two lanes of oncoming traffic and parked up in the same spot that the white van had done. A car beeped her. She didn’t notice. She was back in that terrible moment again, fighting for breath as the gloved hand covered her mouth, eyes bulging at the short, stocky figure of Jessica’s abductor. With the vividness of a lucid dream, she saw his chubby cheeks, his short-cropped hair, his dark, ugly eyes. She felt the fist driving into her stomach, felt herself lurching towards Jessica, grabbing for her. So close. So agonisingly close. Then the pain between her shoulder blades and she was falling. The keyring… distant shouts… the van speeding away… Jessica gone…

  Anna snapped into the present with a trembling intake of breath. She shoved the camper van into gear and accelerated away in the opposite direction to that which the white van had taken. There was one more stop she needed to make on the way home. She turned off Queens Road and, after a short distance, pulled over by some iron railings that enclosed a green space of lawns, trees and paths. She got out of the van and headed through a gate. She stopped by a bench shadowed by an oak tree. A small brass plaque on the bench read ‘IN LOVING MEMORY OF RICK YOUNG. DIED 13TH JUNE 2003, AGED 50’. This had been her father’s favourite spot to sit and think. After Jessica’s abduction, he would come here day after day and spend hours staring out across the River Sheaf and the terraced roofs towards his beloved Bramall Lane. And one day, when all hope had finally deserted him, when he could no longer endure the endless grief, he’d come here to die. He’d tied one end of a rope around a branch and the other end around his neck. And then he’d stepped off the bench. A dog-walker had found his lifeless body.

  The council had wanted to cut down the tree, almost as if it was guilty of some crime. Anna had convinced them not to. Removing the tree would solve nothing. Just as leaving Sheffield behind to start fresh somewhere else would solve nothing. You couldn’t outrun memories. And besides, she didn’t want to. She wanted to hold onto each and every tormenting memory and use them like batteries to power her search for Jessica.

  Anna laid the roses at the base of the tree. She closed her eyes briefly, then headed back to the VW. When she got home, she found her mum sitting in the living room, staring at a framed photo of her late husband. Anna put the lilies in a vase and placed them on a table at the side of her mum’s armchair.

  Fiona Young looked up at her daughter. Deep creases spread from the corners of her sad blue eyes as she smiled.

  ‘Hello, love.’

  ‘Have you been to the cemetery?’

  Fiona nodded. ‘I waited for you until four.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I was busy. I’ve left flowers in the park.’

  Fiona’s gaze returned to the photo in which Rick and she were sitting with their faces pressed together on a balcony overlooking the sea. It was an old photo, taken on a rare family holiday to Spain. Fiona looked tanned and healthy, her blonde hair shone in the sun, her eyes twinkled with the same cheeky spark that Jessica’s had done. That spark was gone now. Nor did her hair shine or her skin glow. There was a sallowness to her complexion and a greyness to her hair that she’d long since ceased to conceal with makeup and dye. ‘Ten years,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult to believe it’s been so long.’

  Anna stooped to kiss her mum’s head, then made her way upstairs to a bedroom that obviously doubled as an office. A desk with a PC on it was squeezed in between a wardrobe and an unmade single bed. Filing cabinets lined one wall. Cardboard boxes were stacked under the window. A set of shelves sagged under the weight of books on criminal psychology, law and investigative procedures. More books lay open on the carpet, their pages marked with post-it notes. There were no pictures or photos, no ornaments, no makeup. Next to a lamp on the desk was an ashtray brimful of cigarette butts. Shrugging off her jacket, Anna picked her way through the clutter. The room had long been difficult to move around. Her mum had suggested many times that she use the spare bedroom as her office. The very thought of it made Anna shudder. After her dad’s death, her mum had finally stripped the room of Jessica’s belongings. But it would always be Jessica’s bedroom to Anna. A sacred place. A haunted place.

  As she dropped onto a chair, her elbow knocked over a tower of boxes. One burst open, scattering dozens of Red Devils keyrings across the carpet. ‘Shit,’ she muttered, gathering them up. Her conviction that Jessica’s abductors were Manchester United supporters had compelled her to visit sporting goods and memorabilia shops all over the country and scour the internet in search of the same keyring that had fallen from the man’s pocket. She’d never found an exact match. But if they even vaguely resembled a devil, she bought them anyway. Occasionally she would lay them all out in front of herself. It had become as much of a ritual as the yearly laying of roses at the tree. Yet another reminder, if one were needed, of what had happened and what needed to be done. She’d also spent many – too many – Saturdays and Sundays watching Man U supporters file in and out of Old Trafford and opponents’ grounds. All to no avail.

  Anna lit a cigarette and scanned through her emails. Over a hundred more had landed in her inbox during the afternoon. They came from all over the UK. All over the world. Many of their senders were people like herself. People whose loved ones had been abducted or gone missing. People stuck in a psychological limbo of endless suffering. People who spent their lives in pursuit of the truth about what had happened to their child, brother, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband or whoever. Most approached her for the same reason that she’d started up her blog – they wanted to raise awareness about a case, keep it from fading out of the public consciousness, as even the most shocking inevitably did. Others were seeking advice. And others still simply wanted to confide in someone who understood what they were going through. Not all the emails concerned abductions and missing persons. Over the years, her blog had grown to encompass almost every kind of crime and miscarriage of justice. In particular, she’d highlighted the cases of rape, abuse and domestic violence victims who’d been failed by the legal system, naming and shaming perpetrators who thought they could hide behind the law, encouraging her thousands of loyal readers to spread the word to every corner of the internet. And in doing so, she’d come into conflict with Miles Burnham a
nd his ilk. They’d brought dozens of civil and criminal cases against her. The fines had piled up until she was forced to declare herself bankrupt. She’d even served a couple of short prison sentences. She didn’t care. All she really cared about was finding Jessica – or rather, finding her abductors, for Jessica herself was surely long since dead.

  Who were they? That question had possessed Anna for twenty years, and would continue to do so until she answered it.

  She opened a filing cabinet drawer. Inside were dozens of folders containing newspaper clippings, dossiers she’d compiled on potential suspects, transcripts of police interviews, and anything and everything else she’d managed to get her hands on relating to Jessica’s case. She withdrew two time-faded composite sketches. One was of the chubby-faced man. It was a good likeness, except for the eyes. She’d had the man’s face sketched many times over the years by different artists. But none of them had ever truly managed to capture the ugliness that had shone through his eyes. The second sketch was of a more slimly built figure in a parka with the hood up. She navigated to her blog, clicked on ‘new post’ and typed ‘Ten years ago today these men killed my dad’ into the title box. She scanned the sketches into the main body of the post, before continuing typing, ‘They didn’t put the rope around his neck, but they killed him nonetheless…’

  When Anna was done writing, she took out her iPhone and touched the photo icon, bringing up the photos from outside Police HQ – photos which had been wirelessly transferred to her phone the instant she took them. ‘Now,’ she said, studying Villiers’ sharp, hawkish face, ‘let’s find out who you are.’

  Jim rested back in his chair, staring at the names pinned to the board. There were forty-four – all those from Herbert’s book, plus the author and his wife’s. Beneath each name there was a photograph and a few particulars. An interlacing web of lines had been drawn between some of the names, accompanied by a few words indicating how they were connected. More lines radiated from one name than any other – ‘Thomas Villiers. DOB 1955. Manager of Craig Thorpe Youth Trust Children’s Home.’ Jim’s gaze dropped to Anna’s camera. He scrolled through the photos of Villiers. There were three of them. In the first two, Villiers was focused on the Mercedes, his face as composed and smooth as usual. In the third, he was staring into the camera, his eyes wide with surprise. No, not just surprise. Fear. The bastard was terrified of public exposure. Of course, given the sensitive nature of his work, some would say he had good reason to be. But Jim had spent most of his life staring into the eyes of innocence and guilt. And he’d rarely seen that kind of fear in the eyes of the innocent.