The Spider's Web

by Ben Cheetham

Sharon hesitated a second, her face a mass of tear-streaked creases. Then she nodded again, more noticeably this time. Jim’s gaze travelled the kitchen, coming to rest on a crucifix hanging on the wall. He moved back around the table so that he was facing Sharon and Ronald. ‘You can’t save Gavin. He’s lost. But you can save Emily. All you need to do is tell me where they are.’

  No response. No eye contact.

  ‘Look inside yourselves,’ persisted Jim. ‘Look at what God would want you to do.’

  Sharon made a tortured little sound in her throat. Ronald curled an arm around her shoulders, held her tight and steady.

  Jim wheeled suddenly and left the room. He picked up the photo of Emily from the mantelpiece, returned to the kitchen and placed it on the table. Sharon turned her head away from it. ‘Look at her,’ Jim said angrily. ‘You know what Gavin’s going to do to her, don’t you? He’s going to rape her over and over again, like he did her mother. And when he’s bored with her, maybe a month, maybe five years from now, he’s going to kill her and bury her in some nameless hole. And you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you could have stopped him. And when you die and the day of your judgement comes, you’ll have to face God with that—’

  ‘Get out of my fucking house!’ broke in Ronald, springing to his feet, his face clenched with rage.

  Jim’s voice dropped back to a calm tone. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Mr Walsh. None of us are. So you might as well sit down.’

  ‘You can’t hold us here like this.’

  Jim leant towards him, resting his hands on the table. Can’t I? said his eyes. Try me. Ronald blinked and reluctantly sank onto his seat.

  Jim took out his phone and dialled Garrett. ‘I’m with the Walshes,’ he told him, holding Ronald’s gaze. ‘How’s that DNA warrant coming along?’

  ‘We should have it within the hour.’

  ‘Could you arrange for a forensics team to be at the house when it’s granted?’

  ‘Will do, Jim. Any news on Anna Young?’

  His eyes moved to Sharon, watching for her reaction as he replied, ‘I still haven’t heard from the hospital.’

  She lifted her tear-swimming eyes to his.

  ‘What about the Walshes?’ asked Garrett. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been able to get anything out of them?’

  ‘Not yet. But I get the sense that Mrs Walsh is a good woman. She knows the right thing to do.’

  As Jim lowered the phone, Sharon asked, ‘Has someone been hurt?’

  ‘Didn’t your beloved son tell you? He stabbed Anna Young.’

  ‘That’s impossible. Our son is dead,’ Ronald countered with obstinate vehemence.

  Keeping his gaze on Sharon, Jim said, ‘There’s a good chance she’ll die. If she does, that’ll make, what, three people we know of that Gavin’s killed.’ He counted the names off on his fingers. ‘There’s Alison Sullivan. She was sixteen when he stabbed her through the heart and stuffed her body in a hole under a tree in Leeds. Then there’s Jessica Young. She was only thirteen when he snatched her off the street near her home in Sheffield. Mind you, strictly speaking, I don’t suppose we can include her on the list yet. I mean, we don’t know for sure that the skeleton we found at Gavin’s house today is hers.’

  As Jim spoke, Sharon lowered her head and clasped her hands together in front of her face. Her lips moved in whispered prayer, ‘Forgive me my sins, O Lord. Forgive those sins which I know, and the sins which I know not…’

  ‘Then there’s Dave Ward,’ continued Jim. ‘He was one of the children from the Hopeland children’s home in Manchester that Gavin and others raped. Dave was going to testify against his abusers. That is, until he was conveniently found dead with a heroin needle in his arm. I guess you could say Gavin killed him too.’

  Sharon’s voice faltered, then rose in quavering appeal. ‘Forgive them, O Lord. Forgive them all of Thy great goodness—’

  Ronald silenced her with a slam of his fist against the table. ‘I have a right to contact a solicitor.’

  ‘And when forensics show up you’ll be allowed to exercise that right,’ said Jim. ‘Until then you can just sit there and fucking chew on it.’

  Jim lowered himself onto a chair opposite the Walshes. He crossed his arms, his gaze alternating between them. Ronald returned his stare with the seething anger of a man who wasn’t used to being ordered around. Sharon still appeared to be praying. Her hands were clasped together so tightly the knuckles showed white and red. Jim knew that if he could get her away from her husband there was a chance she would break down and open up to him. He also knew there was no way Ronald would let that happen unless he was physically forced to. And Jim wasn’t ready to cross that line. Not yet.

  Ten minutes crawled silently by. Twenty. ‘How long are you going to make us sit here?’ asked Ronald.

  ‘As long as it takes.’

  ‘Can I at least make myself a drink?’

  Jim retrieved a glass from the drainer, filled it with water and set it down in front of Ronald. ‘Thank you,’ Ronald said drily.

  More minutes dragged by. Jim’s phone rang. It was a Nottingham number he didn’t recognise. Steeling himself for the worst, he answered it. ‘This is Dr Marian Pierce of Queen’s Medical Centre,’ came the voice on the other end of the line. ‘I’m phoning about Anna Young.’

  ‘How’s she doing, Doctor?’

  ‘To be honest, things weren’t looking too good until just a short time ago. But she seems to have turned a corner now. It looks like she’s going to survive.’

  On the inside, Jim felt a surge of relief. On the outside, he kept his face poker-straight. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

  He hung up, sagging as though a great weight had been laid across his shoulders. Sharon looked at him anxiously. ‘Anna Young died a few minutes ago,’ he said.

  His words wrenched a loud sob from her. Ronald tried to put his arm around her again, but she pushed him away, crying out, ‘Oh God! Oh God!’

  As though he didn’t know what else to do, her husband proffered her the glass of water. ‘Here, Sharon, drink this and calm down.’ It was more of a plea than a demand.

  She slapped the glass out of his hand. ‘I don’t want to calm down.’ She reached haltingly for the school photo as though she didn’t dare or, perhaps more accurately, didn’t deserve to touch it. ‘I want my Emily. I want my beautiful little girl back.’

  ‘You can have her back,’ said Jim. ‘All you’ve got to do is tell me where Gavin is.’

  ‘Liar,’ exploded Ronald. ‘No matter what happens, you’ll never let her come back to us.’

  ‘So you admit she’s not your daughter.’

  ‘I admit nothing, you bastard.’ Eyes shining wildly, Ronald sprang to his feet. He wrenched open a cutlery drawer and reached for a knife.

  ‘Ronald!’ Sharon screamed in horror.

  Ronald hesitated. Go on, take it, thought Jim, his fingers curling around the grip of the Taser in his pocket. Give me an excuse to get you out of the way.

  There was a knock at the front door. Ronald flinched as if he’d been snapped out of a dream. He slowly turned and sat back down. ‘I’m sorry, Sharon.’ He avoided her eyes, his voice trembling with barely restrained anguish.

  The knock came again. Jim went to the door. It was the forensics team and a couple of detectives. He showed them his ID. ‘I was told you’d want to serve this,’ said one, handing Jim the warrant.

  ‘Wait here a moment.’

  Jim returned to the kitchen. He swore inwardly when he saw the Walshes. They were holding hands now and their faces were set into grim lines. As though in the brief moment he’d been out of the room, they’d found a renewed sense of togetherness, a fresh well of resolve. He placed the warrant on the table. ‘This gives us the legal authority to collect DNA samples from your property and you. One last chance. Help me and I’ll help you. If Emily survives this, I promise I’ll make sure she knows you did the right thing in the end.’

  Stony silence. They
looked through him as though he wasn’t there. He sighed and called a forensics officer into the kitchen. ‘Do Mrs Walsh first,’ he said.

  ‘Open your mouth, please,’ the officer instructed Sharon, taking a long cotton wool bud from a clear plastic tube. He ran the bud around the inside of her mouth and reinserted it into the tube. Then he plucked several hairs from her head with tweezers, checked to make sure the roots were attached and dropped them into a tube.

  As the officer turned to Ronald, Jim said to Sharon, ‘Would you come with me and show me Emily’s bedroom.’

  ‘She’s not going anywhere without me,’ said Ronald, his grip tightening on her hand.

  When the swabs were done, the Walshes led Jim and the forensics team upstairs to a typical teenage girl’s bedroom. The walls were papered with band posters, the dressing-table cluttered with cosmetics, the bed crowded with teddy bears and dolls. As the forensics officers set to work searching for usable hair samples, Jim nosed around the other rooms.

  ‘There’s no need for you to go in there,’ said Ronald as Jim reached for a door handle. Jim ignored him. The door led into a bedroom that looked as if it had been done over by a burglar. Clothes, blankets and jewellery were strewn across the carpet.

  ‘What happened here?’ Jim asked. Two possibilities occurred to him. Either Sharon had lost the plot after talking to Gavin and started flinging stuff around. Or Emily had made the mess earlier in the day searching for information about Gavin. If the latter were the case, she’d obviously found what she was looking for. If the former, then maybe Ronald had been too caught up in dealing with his wife to dispose of evidence. Either way it was worth requesting a full search warrant.

  Ronald closed the door without replying. There were two more doors on the landing. One led to a bathroom, the other to a study. A forensics officer was bagging the toothbrushes. Jim’s gaze travelled the study. Shelves of books, a small filing cabinet, a desk with a computer screen, keyboard and printer, but no sign of a hard drive. There was a tangle of unplugged wires and a dusty rectangular outline on the carpet under the desk. Jim mentally shelved the search warrant request. Clearly Ronald hadn’t had his hands too full. Jim treated him to a knowing glance. His composure fully regained, Ronald didn’t blink.

  Jim returned to the kitchen, followed closely by Ronald and Sharon. ‘I’m going to need this,’ he said, removing the photo of Emily from its frame.

  ‘Well you can’t have—’ Ronald started to say, but Sharon broke in.

  ‘Take it. I’ve got more copies if you need them too.’

  Jim nodded and Sharon retrieved an envelope containing several photos of varying sizes from the living room.

  ‘We’re done,’ a forensics officer called from the hallway.

  ‘You think we’re on different sides,’ Jim said to Sharon. ‘But we’re not.’ He held her gaze a moment longer, willing her to tell him what he wanted to know. But she stood stiffly, lips pressed tightly together.

  He placed his card on the table and said, ‘Thanks for the photos.’ Then he turned to head out of the front door. He gave the spare photos to one of the detectives. ‘This is Emily Walsh. The girl we believe is with Gavin Walsh.’

  ‘I’ll make sure these are circulated,’ promised the detective.

  Frustration gnawed at Jim as he drove back to Sherwood Forest. He searched his mind vainly for something else he might have said or done to make Sharon Walsh crack. He felt sure she’d come close to giving up Gavin. But close meant nothing in this game. Over four hours had slipped by since Gavin went on the run. He could be in London by now. Or even on a boat out of the country. He certainly had powerful enough contacts to arrange such a thing. ‘Fuck,’ Jim said through clenched teeth, driving the heel of his hand into the dashboard. He drew a deep breath and exhaled his anger, reminding himself that things could be worse. Much worse. Anna could be dead.

  He flashed his ID to a constable at the end of the lane leading to Gavin’s cottage. The constable drew back a cordon of tape. Jim left his car at the old farm gate and made his way somewhat wearily past a long line of police vehicles to the back garden. A forensics tent had been erected over the exposed bone. Excavated soil was piled on a tarp outside it. Officers were criss-crossing the garden and the woods beyond with German shepherds trained to sniff out decomposing corpses. More officers were visible sifting meticulously through the kitchen, bagging and tagging anything of interest.

  Reece emerged from the house. ‘Jim, how did it go?’

  He indicated it hadn’t gone well with a shake of his head. ‘There is one bit of good news. It looks like Anna’s going to pull through.’

  Reece puffed his cheeks. ‘Thank fuck.’

  ‘What’s the score with the bone?’

  ‘It was attached to the skeleton of an adolescent female. The pathologist estimates she’s been in the ground roughly two or three months.’

  ‘So it’s not Jessica Young.’ Jim’s eyes faded away from Reece as he wondered how Anna would feel to know yet again that her search wasn’t over.

  ‘There was a puncture wound to the left of the sternum.’

  ‘Sounds familiar. Any idea who she is?’

  ‘We’re checking recent missing person reports. So far there are seven possibilities.’

  ‘Show me.’ There was little chance that identifying the dead girl would lead them to Gavin, but it was better than sitting around waiting to see if the units involved in the manhunt struck lucky.

  Reece led Jim to the incident command vehicle and handed him a sheaf of printouts. There were four white girls, two Asian and one black. They ranged in age from thirteen to eighteen. Four had gone missing from London, one from Birmingham, one from Cardiff and one from Manchester. Most would be runaways from poor and unstable homes. Girls born with little or no future, ripe for exploitation by predators like Gavin. ‘These all went missing between February and April of this year,’ said Reece.

  ‘We need to go back much further than that. He keeps them alive, holds them prisoner.’ Jim pointed towards the barn. ‘That’s what the modified freezer’s about. Like with Edward Forester, it’s not the killing he gets off on. It’s the sex, the control.’ His phone rang. It was a mobile number he didn’t recognise. He answered the call. ‘This is DCI—’

  A woman’s whispered voice, so choked with emotion as to be barely coherent, cut him off, ‘I’ve tried… tried to make him a good person… Oh God how I’ve tried…’

  Jim’s heart was suddenly beating fast. He hurried from the incident command unit, glancing around to make sure there was no one to overhear him as he replied, ‘I know, Mrs Walsh, I know you’ve tried.’

  ‘How could this happen? How? Is it something I’ve done?’ Sharon’s voice rose in tormented incomprehension. Then quickly dropped back down low, as though she too was afraid of being overheard. ‘Or is it something else, something he was born with? Is there a demon inside him making him do these things?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Jim didn’t believe in demons – at least not in the supernatural sense. If there was a demon inside Gavin, it was of his own making. But he didn’t want to say anything that would put a barrier between himself and Sharon.

  ‘I’ve begged and begged him to come to my church and let us exorcise him. But he just laughs in my face. I…’ Tears clogged her voice. She sucked them back. ‘God forgive me, I wish he’d never been born.’

  For a moment, Sharon’s tearful breathing was the only sound on the line. Jim waited for her to continue. He knew this wasn’t the time to try and force anything from her. It was the time to let her make her choice. Suddenly, as if she had to get the words out fast or they wouldn’t get out at all, she reeled off a number at him. He jotted it down.

  ‘Is this Gavin’s mobile number?’

  Another pause, then a strangled, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve made the right choice, Mrs Walsh.’

  ‘Have I?’ Sharon’s tone was thick with a loathing that seemed more directed at herself than Jim. ‘Please
save your condescension, Mr Monahan. Just get Emily away from him before they leave the country.’

  ‘What makes you think Gavin intends to leave the country?’

  ‘Because he said he does.’

  ‘And did he also say where they’re going?’

  ‘No. I’ll be praying for you.’

  The line went dead. Jim didn’t need prayers when he had GPS. He phoned his contact in the Met. Considering Special Branch’s involvement, he’d rather not have risked it but he had no choice if he wanted to track Gavin’s phone without alerting Garrett. And he knew Garrett wouldn’t let him play things the way he wanted to. Not after what had happened to Anna. ‘I need a big favour, Harry. No questions asked.’

  ‘No can do, Jim. I’m still in the shit bin after the last one I did you.’

  ‘There’s a young girl’s life at stake. If you don’t help me, she’s as good as dead.’

  ‘Oh you bastard,’ grumbled Harry. ‘That’s a low blow.’

  ‘I’ll beg too, if it saves her life.’

  Harry heaved a breath down the line. ‘I’m almost tempted to take you up on that offer. But first tell me what you need.’

  ‘I need you to track my suspect’s mobile phone.’

  ‘I can’t do that without a court order.’

  ‘C’mon, Harry. We both know the Met has its ways of getting around little complications like court orders.’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Harry said, ‘Give me the number and I’ll see what I can do. No promises.’

  As Jim waited for Harry to get back to him, Reece approached him and asked, ‘Who was that? What’s going on?’

  Holding up a hand, Jim moved away from Reece. After what seemed more like hours than the minutes that had actually passed, Harry phoned and told him what he so desperately wanted to hear. ‘The phone’s stationary, close to the A169, about six miles north-east of Pickering and half a mile east of the turn-off for Lockton.’

  Jim rolled his eyes skywards as though offering up thanks. ‘I owe you big time, Harry.’

  ‘No kidding you do. I’ll let you know if the position changes.’