‘How’s it going, David?’ Mary asked.
Vogel had left home before six that morning and made his way straight to the Melanie Cooke crime scene. He hadn’t called Mary since. He rarely did when embroiled in a major case, but neither would she expect him to. All she knew, so far, was that a girl’s body had been found in a Bristol backstreet.
When Vogel came home though, it was different. Mary was the DI’s sounding board, his release. She knew that he trusted her implicitly and that she was the only person in the world with whom he shared his innermost thoughts. Mary took her feet off the sofa and made room for her husband. He sat down next to her, allowing weariness to show for the first time that day, as he slumped backwards and gratefully kicked off his shoes.
‘It’s hard,’ he said. ‘The dead kid’s about the same age as our Rosamund. That was all I could think of, at first.’
Mary didn’t intend to let him dwell on that.
‘And since then?’ she asked. ‘Why don’t you tell me the rest of it? Shall I make a pot of tea first? Have you eaten?’
‘Not since lunchtime,’ Vogel admitted, which was better than it often was.
Mary retreated to the kitchen, where she made tea and a pile of cheese salad sandwiches, liberally laced with mayonnaise, the way she knew Vogel liked them. Meanwhile, he’d brought the log burner back to life, throwing a couple of firelighters at it and a handful of sticks, before stoking it up with bigger logs. Mary poured the tea and then sat down beside him. Vogel drank most of the first cup and hungrily bolted down one of the sandwiches, before he told his wife everything.
She was the only one who heard about his gut feelings, his worry about the lack of evidence so far and his fears of a random killing. Everyone David Vogel worked with thought he was totally self-contained and so he was, in public. But at home, Mary was his rock and on that first night after the discovery of Melanie Cooke’s body, Vogel needed her as much as he ever did. Mary rarely commented until her husband had finished, allowing him to talk everything through. He always told her how much it cleared his mind to do so.
When she did eventually speak her remarks were often significant and, not unusually, focused on an aspect of a case Vogel had not yet considered.
‘You said you interviewed the friend, what was she called? Sally? At her school?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘In the head mistress’ office.’
‘So was the head there?’
‘Yes, and Dawn Saslow.’
‘David, a best friend at school would never tell tales in front of the head mistress.’
‘Come on, Mary, it’s a murder investigation. I’m trying to find the bastard who killed the girl’s friend, I’m sure she understood that. It’s got nothing to do with telling tales.’
‘I really don’t think that’s how it would have seemed to Sally,’ Mary persisted gently. ‘Girls of that age are conditioned not to tell their teachers, their parents or anyone in authority, anything. Also, she would have been in shock too. I expect she just shut down, saying nothing and giving nothing away. She probably did it quite automatically, without thinking it through.’
Vogel looked thoughtful.
‘You think she could be holding something back?’
‘I think it’s very possible, particularly if Melanie was doing something all the girls know they shouldn’t – like, as you suspect, planning a date with someone she met on the net.’
Vogel smiled.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I expect you’re right, as usual. I’ll make sure we talk to her again. Away from school and without the head teacher.’
‘And who will you get to do that?’ Mary asked casually.
‘I’ll probably try to get round to her house myself, with Saslow, some time tomorrow,’ said Vogel. ‘She knows us now, after all.’
‘Might you think about sending Saslow on her own, or with another woman officer?’ Mary enquired in her most neutral voice.
Vogel was not fooled.
‘So now you don’t think I should even interview the girl, is that it? Honestly, Mary. I am a trained, senior police officer of many years’ experience, you know.’
‘Exactly,’ said Mary.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘David, you are a sensitive and caring person, you don’t even look like a copper, but you still are one. You’re a middle-aged man in a position of enormous authority. You say yourself you prefer your computer to dealing with the public. You hate outward displays of emotion and you’re well over six feet.’
‘So now I’m too tall?’
Mary raised one eyebrow.
‘Of course not. But if you put all that together, even you have to admit that you might appear more than a little intimidating to a fourteen-year-old girl.’
Vogel grunted. Mary was right of course. She almost always was.
But this time, this day, he did not get the feeling of release that usually came after talking with her. He knew exactly why. He was hiding something from his wife. Something very important. Something, unconnected with his work, which he had so far found himself unable to reveal.
AL
I tried to do what I always did. As soon as it was over, I did my best not to think about it again. I endeavoured to blot it out. I told myself it was already in the past.
I should never have tried to coax that child into my vehicle. It had definitely been in my head that I would drive away with her. Take her somewhere where I could do anything I wished with her.
But is that what I would have done? I no longer knew myself well enough to be sure either way. If I had been rash enough to do that, it could only have led to one end. I couldn’t have just let her go when I had finished with her. Or could I have?
I really didn’t know.
What I did know was that I’d entered into highly dangerous territory. Looking was one thing. Touching was another. And I knew, more than most men, just how different the two were.
I also knew that, in the future, I should content myself with what the internet had to offer.
However, images and videos on the web never quite hit the spot with me. I liked my children in the flesh: laughing, playing and gyrating right in front of me. Sometimes I could smell them, or I thought I could anyway. Celluloid images did not have the same effect.
I told myself they would have to do. I had a life separate from this monstrous side of me. Oh yes, I recognised that side was monstrous, but that made no difference to me. It was part of me, a part I could not deny.
However, I wanted to protect my other everyday life. My job. My friends. Well, I didn’t really have friends, of course. I could never let people close. But there were those, mostly at work, who probably considered themselves my friends. There was family too, although I no longer had much to do with them.
I really would have to stick with the internet in order to satisfy my voyeuristic instincts. I would have to avoid chat rooms too, or any websites which encouraged people to correspond with children and then to meet them.
I couldn’t cope with that. I knew I couldn’t. I’d weaken. I would just have to be strong and stay away from those sort of sites. I had no choice.
But I wasn’t strong, was I? That was the whole point. I was a weak man. The internet was a smorgasbord to someone like me. I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself reaching out for more, not for long.
And that was what happened, I reached out to grasp what I longed for. I meant no harm. I never meant harm, but once a man like me has started on a certain course of action he cannot stop.
Now I had to deal with the consequences.
I am clever though, cleverer than almost anyone I know. Clever without necessarily seeming to be. I still believe that I can cover my tracks. I still believe that life can continue for me, in the way that it always has.
THIRTEEN
Mary knew, of course. She had probably known from the beginning. She was staring at him, in silence. Sometimes he thought
the expression she ‘could read him like a book’ had been invented for his wife.
‘David, something’s wrong isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘A young girl has died, the same age as our Rosamund, I’ve told you all about it …’ Vogel began.
He let his voice tail off. He could see that Mary was not taken in.
‘I know how involved you get in your work, David,’ she said. ‘But I also know what’s going on inside you, even though you give so little away. This is different. You haven’t been right for days. Won’t you tell me what it is? I can’t help you if you don’t.’
Vogel said nothing.
After a few seconds, he reached into the pocket of his old corduroy jacket and withdrew the letter which he’d kept with him constantly since its arrival nine days previously.
Puzzled, Mary took the letter from him. She glanced at the envelope. It was addressed to Vogel, care of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. She looked up at him again. His face bore little expression, as usual. If he were affected by anything, his first instinct was to fight against that emotion. Mary removed the letter and began to read.
When she’d finished she took her husband’s hand.
‘My God, David,’ she said. ‘Is it true?’
‘I have no idea,’ Vogel replied.
‘Well, you could ask your father.’
‘Yes,’ Vogel replied.
‘When did you get this?’
Vogel told her.
‘And you kept it from me, for nine days?’ Mary queried gently.
Vogel nodded.
‘David, I know that you’ve spoken to your father at least twice in that time. Didn’t you mention the letter?’
Vogel shook his head. Vogel’s father, Eytan, now lived in Israel with Vogel’s younger brother, Adam. David Vogel was a secular Jew. He believed in no god, actively practiced no religion and privately questioned the intelligence of anyone who did. His father was a devout Jew, who had never quite come to terms with his elder son’s rejection of the faith. Adam, on the other hand, was always so committed to the faith that he ultimately became a rabbi and moved to The Promised Land. After the atrocities against the Jewish race during the second world war, the Israeli Knesset passed the Law of Return in 1950. This allows all Jewish people, as their birthright, to resettle in Israel and become Israeli citizens. It had seemed quite natural that, when Vogel’s mother died a few years previously, the widowed Eytan had followed his rabbi son and gone to live in Tel Aviv.
Mary persisted, her tone even more gentle.
‘David, why haven’t you asked Eytan about it?’
Vogel blinked rapidly behind his spectacles.
‘Because I’m not at all sure I want to hear his answer,’ he said.
‘Oh David, it must be so difficult for you,’ responded Mary quietly. She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Look it’s nearly two a.m. Let’s go to bed. You must get some sleep, perhaps things will seem clearer in the morning.’
Vogel smiled wryly.
Mary knew he was unconvinced of that. She followed him out of the sitting room. As usual, when he was late home, he quietly opened the door of Rosamund’s bedroom and stood, for a minute or two, watching his sleeping daughter. He would now have very little time for sleep himself. Mary was well aware that he’d leave the house before six.
She also knew how disturbed her husband had been by the extraordinary revelation that he had just shared with her.
SAUL
The replies started coming in within days.
The first two girls didn’t sound right at all. I thought one, reading between the lines, was just after western money. I had seen a lot of warnings online about that happening. The other seemed like the sort of good-time girl, who were ten a penny in any pub or club in the UK. I hated that type. Six didn’t reply. Another two didn’t appeal to me, for reasons I couldn’t explain.
I entered into correspondence with the remaining two who had responded. Manee and Apinya. I didn’t know if those were their real names but, nonetheless, I looked up the meaning of both. All oriental names have meanings: Manee meant precious stone and Apinya meant magical power.
I guess I leaned towards Manee from the start. I realised it was silly to be influenced by names, particularly when they may not even be real, but I felt it might be too dangerous for me to become involved with a woman whose name meant magical power. Who knows, she might see right through me.
Manee began to sound more and more like Sonia, I thought. But a Sonia who was prepared to travel halfway across the world to be with a man she’d never met. A woman who told me she’d been brought up in an orphanage, her only relative being a sister she hardly ever saw. A woman who was so desperate to start a new life, to have any sort of life at all, that I thought she might even put up with me. Just as I was, as I had to be.
‘I am not like western girl,’ she wrote. ‘I want to look after man. I want to have his children and look after them too. That all. I do not want partying. Manee hate partying. Want home with her man.’
She seemed very trusting too, which was absolutely necessary to me. She agreed at once to exchange email addresses, something the site warned against. I told her that was only because they wanted more money from us. She did, however, ask why I hadn’t posted a picture of myself on the site. I replied that I was a very private person, which was surprisingly near the truth. As we were now in direct contact via email, I sent her the same heavily Photoshopped picture I had posted on Marryme.com.
Things moved quickly then. I understand they often do.
I had circumnavigated Thaibrides-introductions.com protocol. I explained to Manee that I was too busy to travel to Thailand. We needed to move to the next step.
Manee agreed to fly to England to be with me. If we liked each other, we would be married. I became carried away by it all, just as I had with Sonia, but I told myself that this time would be different. Thai girls were different and Manee would have to rely on me totally, in a land that was foreign to her. This time there was hope, surely. This time maybe I could make it work. I could fulfil my dreams.
I sent Manee the money for her fare. I did wonder if I was being naïve, perhaps she would just take my money and I would never hear from her again. I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. But, within days, she emailed me to say she had booked her flight for the following week. Unlike Sonia, who’d wanted to speak to me on the phone before even agreeing to meet me – let alone flying across the world to me – Manee had not asked to speak to me at all. I wasn’t sure if I was glad or sorry about that. It did mean I was really thrown into the deep end.
I had a lot of planning to do and the short period of time, before she was due to arrive, flew by. As soon as the reality began to sink in, the realisation of what I’d done and what was about to happen overwhelmed me. I couldn’t bring Manee to my home, that was for sure.
I already had the basis of a false identity, which I’d started to build some years ago, just in case! I’d used the old Frederick Forsyth, Day of the Jackal trick to obtain a passport and taken it from there. I was aware of that idiot who faked his own death in a canoeing accident and had successfully done the same thing. It seemed crazy that the scam had still worked, more than forty years after Forsyth taught us all how do it. But, knowing that it had worked so much more recently for canoe man, I’d decided to give it a go. It worked for me too and hadn’t proved too difficult either.
I’d homed in on a male, who’d died as a child, but would have been about my age had he lived. and visited the national records office to gain the necessary papers, starting with a birth certificate. It was easy enough to follow through the required steps to acquire a passport, set up a bank account and so on. That gave me the debit card, which I used to pay for my online dating activities and anything else which necessitated plastic rather than cash. I’d opted for internet banking, of course, so all correspondence with my bank was online. Even acquiring a driving licence hadn’t been difficult, I’d just had
to apply for a provisional and take a test. I was a good driver and sailed through it.
I scanned the internet for affordable, rental properties in Bristol. Most of what was on offer was out of my budget and I was looking for a private rental; a property being advertised directly by the landlord. I wasn’t sure that my false identity would stand up to the scrutiny of a bona fide estate agent.
Eventually, I found a furnished, two-bedroomed flat, albeit in an area where I would not normally choose to live, which seemed suitable and was being advertised by a private individual. Apart from anything else, someone who wanted to avoid estate agent’s fees was more likely to bend the rules.
I arranged to meet the landlord at the property the same evening, it wasn’t much. The kitchen was dirty, the furniture had seen better days and the whole place needed redecorating. But, after a cursory glance around, I decided to take it. I didn’t have the time to be choosey. I just had to hope that Manee accepted the story I was planning to tell her.
As soon as the landlord began to talk about needing bank references, I offered him six months rent, at his asking price, in advance. Cash, if he liked.
I saw his eyes light up.
‘I’m in a hurry you see,’ I said, by way of explanation.
He didn’t seem to really need one by then.
I went to the bank, drew out the cash, and I was in. Then I hired a car, using my driving licence and the debit card from my phoney bank account. I didn’t want to risk using my own car, any more than I wanted to use my own home.
I did some shopping, bought flowers and made the apartment as nice as I could. I scrubbed the kitchen and even found the time to slap a new coat of paint on the walls in the sitting room, in order to brighten the place up. I wasn’t an insensitive man. Then I was ready, or as ready as I would ever be, to drive to Heathrow to pick up Manee.
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