by Conrad Jones
He walked out of the lift into the government bunker. The bunker was carved from the red sandstone bedrock which was deep below the city and home to several hi-tech listening posts, tasked with monitoring communications between suspect terrorist cells the world over. It also housed the task force trace laboratory, where computer searches and email monitoring were carried out. Today, the team was working on something completely different. He waved a brief hello, and headed to a bank of screens which were being monitored by Tara and one of their boffins. Searching the net for ghost sites is a thankless task, and they had been at it all night. Tara looked tired, but her face lit up when she saw him coming.
“Have you found anything?” Tank smiled back at her.
“We’re making progress. We have eliminated thousands of sites which have been confusing our search, and we’ve narrowed it right down,” she replied.
“How can you tell which ones could be of interest?” Tank asked. There were nine screens processing information and he couldn’t make head or tail of any of it.
“Okay, let’s pretend that you’re someone who has a porn site or you’re a webcam studio owner, and you want to make your films or pictures available for anyone to view but you don’t want to charge any money, then we can filter you out immediately,” Tara explained.
“How many sites come up when you enter that domain name?” Tank asked.
“It would appear that ‘forbidden fruit’ is a keyword linked to over three million sites,” she frowned.
“Yes, but how many of them are child porn sites?”
“That’s the problem, Tank. We can’t tell because they ghost the pay-per-view sites, and it would appear that not all their broadcasts are child pornography.” She pointed to the screens as if it would all be made clear if he looked at them. He looked, and it was as clear as mud. “They broadcast everything from hardcore porn to live snuff videos.”
“You mean they are killing people in these broadcasts?” Tank shook his head in disbelief.
“It appears that all their broadcasts appeal to the most violent end of the sexual spectrum, and the snuff broadcasts that we have found look very convincing. I’m convinced they’re not actors.” Tara sounded tired. “They’re making millions out of these sites, and their customers are paying hundreds of Euros each to watch the real hard stuff, and even more if they want to join in,” she explained.
“Join in?”
“Yes, the sites are totally interactive, and the action is guided by a majority voting system, while the longer they watch the more they pay.”
“You wouldn’t believe there were that many sick bastards out there, would you?” Tank was sounding worried now. “How do these things work?”
“There is software available now which can allow a video stream to be broadcast by anyone with a webcam, from a full-blown agent or webmaster to a private individual. They can stream their images from multiple cameras and collect payments from all over the globe. They show the images, and then they shut it, take the money and close the whole show down and disappear.
“Can you trace them or not?” Tank wasn’t the most patient person in the world.
“I’ll cut a long story short,” Tara smiled again and tossed her blond hair.
“We’re looking for sites that have more than just standard interactive features, and if we can identify them then it will narrow down the search. A site like theirs needs webcam chat software that has lots of special functions like special show facility that allows them to have many cameras in one room, hot-or-not photo and video on demand, matched with an auto-translator that changes messages to and from ten different languages.”
“How many people watch these things?” Tank was amazed and sickened at the same time.
“Tens of thousands, world-wide,” Tara replied sadly.
“Once they take the site offline then you can’t trace it, right?”
“Right. They set up simulated streams, which are bounced off several stream servers at once, and they attach the streams to fake servers – it’s impossible once they stop broadcasting,” Tara finished explaining as best as she could.
“There’s no hope then?” Tank leaned on the desk, and Tara couldn’t help but look at his bulging triceps.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” she teased.
“Tara, what have you got?”
“Look here. This site went live yesterday, it has all the features that we would expect on that type of broadcast, and it has been set up to be a pay-per-minute channel,”
“What’s the significance of that?”
“A pay-per-minute site fitted with an interactive facility is used predominantly for live streaming, so that the action can be guided by the viewers’ wishes, or votes, and if they want to carry on watching then the price goes up and up as the action accelerates.” she stared at the screen.
“You mean as the level of violence accelerates?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got something here,” the boffin spoke for the first time. He was sat in front of a tray of chocolate-sprinkled donuts, which were half eaten, and he tucked into another one as he printed off some information.
“Please tell me it’s an address,” Tank said.
“Well, I have good news and bad news,” the tech guy said.
“What’s the good news?” Tank asked.
“I have a GPS position for four different servers in this country, but only one of the servers has been used for every broadcast,” he said. Tank took a print out from him and nearly walked away before he’d finished speaking. “The bad news is that they have started broadcasting a live feed.”
Tank stopped in his tracks and turned around. One of the screens showed a young girl, thirteen or so, Tank guessed. She was blindfolded and handcuffed by one hand to a metal link that was set into the wall behind her. The thin mattress that she was lying on was heavily stained, and by the coppery colour of the stains, Tank guessed that forensics would identify it as blood from several different secretors. Two hooded men appeared, one either side of the mattress. They were naked and aroused as they looked at the camera and then suddenly the screen changed completely. ‘Pay now to view the action live’ began flickering across the screen, along with the instructions on how to make a payment. For an extra fifty Euros the viewer could become a voting customer, which would give them the power to influence what horrors would be inflicted upon the young victim. Tank looked at the server address again and left the bunker without saying a word.
Chapter Thirty-six
The Twins
Sarah had been awake for hours now and the effects of the drugs were wearing off. She reached for a plastic beaker, which was full of milk, and drank it greedily, leaving a white tidemark on her top lip. Zak giggled at her and clumsily wiped the milk from her mouth. She passed the beaker to him and he took his turn to drink from it. It was uncanny how the twins shared their food and drinks, preferring to use one cup and one plate between them rather than one each. Most twins have an emotional bond, and Sarah and Zak were no different. They’d taken great comfort from each other during their strange journey, sleeping close to each other and seeing their sibling there next to them when they awoke had reassured them. Sarah missed her mother terribly and she was teary and scared. Zak sensed her fear and he held her and tried to keep her occupied. He smiled at her despite feeling a terrible unease himself. They were five years old, but they knew that something was very wrong.
Their surroundings had changed dramatically. Sarah remembered the smells and sounds of horses, but the memories seemed dream-like and unclear. Now they were bathed and they had been fed well – spaghetti hoops on toast, and milk to drink. A DVD player played a myriad of their favourite programmes and there was an enviable toy collection, though it hadn’t been used much; neither of them felt much like playing with toys yet.
The door opened and the twins fell silent for a moment. They looked longingly towards the door, desperate for their mother to walk through it and take them home.
It wasn’t their mother, and Sarah began to cry again. Zak looked at his sister crying and patted her chubby leg to soothe her, but it didn’t work. The DVD player was turned off and Zak started to cry too.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Tarbock Green
John Tankersley left the bunker in his own vehicle, a dark metallic pick-up truck, and headed out of Liverpool on the main arterial route, the M62. The address that he’d been given by the tech team was a postcode which related to a group of buildings in a leafy greenbelt area of the county called Tarbock Green, and it was only twelve miles out of the city. He pulled up satellite pictures of the village that showed a small group of industrial units, two petrol stations, a pub, three big residential houses, and a large pig farm surrounded by a heavily wooded area. Tank had no idea which one of the structures could be housing the server, or if the film studio was actually situated there, but he had to investigate it as there was no time to lose. He had the image of the frightened young girl handcuffed to the wall in his mind, and the banner headline on the payment page had a digital timer counting down from sixty minutes. That meant he had one hour to stop anything happening to the girl. He could only assume that the twins would be used as the main event.
Tank was going to the village alone. Tara and the trace team were searching for any other possible server addresses, and Grace was charged with selecting and moving in on any other potential targets that appeared. They had decided to leave the Major out of the loop for now, as pressure from Westminster was mounting, especially since the task force vehicle had been found at the scene of the prison bus hijack. So far, the police had blown their cover every time they had moved in on the paedophile ring, and the Moroccans had proved to be slippery customers with access to inside information from informers within the police force. There wasn’t enough time to risk letting them know that they had found the main server, as if they did the Moroccans would be in the wind again and they would never find the twins.
Tank pulled off the motorway and within minutes he was driving down country lanes which weaved between acres and acres of bright yellow rapeseed crops. There was a sharp bend in the road and Tank saw a brass post box fixed to the wall of a thatched cottage, which was the post office for the surrounding area. Entering Tarbock Green was like stepping through a time warp. It was a rural oasis inhabited by a farming community unchanged by modern society for decades. The road straightened and to his right was a white-bricked pub called the Brick Wall Inn, opposite was one of the petrol stations that he’d seen on the map, and directly across the road was the way into the woods. Tank pulled into the pub, as it had a large car park and seemed to be the centre of the village. He pulled up the aerial pictures of the area, and looked around to get his bearings.
The industrial units were hidden from view behind the petrol station, and while they could easily be used as the site for the illicit studio, his attention was drawn to the pig farm. It was situated through the woods to his left, and was hidden from the road by residential properties. Tank could see the top of a large metal silo, which looked like it was part of the pig farm. The trees concealed the other buildings. Tara said that during their search they had seen evidence of snuff films being broadcasted from the server. If they were being made here, then the filmmakers would have the problem of disposing of their victim’s bodies. Pigs would eat anything that was put in front of them, and it was that fact which made the pig farm the favourite in Tank’s mind. He decided to investigate the farm first.
Tank opened a lock box that was situated between the front seats of his pickup, and he took out his spare Glock, slipping it into his waistband next to his standard issue weapon. It was rare that he’d ever needed two handguns, but losing his Glock during the hijack had left him feeling uneasy about carrying one weapon, especially as he was going in alone. He removed four full clips of nine-millimetre ammunition and slipped them into his pocket, before strapping a Smith and Wesson boot knife to his ankle. Tara and the team knew where he was approximately, but there were at least a dozen buildings which came under the same postcode so Tank activated a GPS tracker which fitted into his spare Glock. The task force would already be aware that the weapon had been removed from its safety box, and now they would know if it was discharged and how many times it was fired. Better safe than sorry, he thought. If the twins were in the pig farm then there was only one way he was going to get them out, and he didn’t believe that he’d be arresting anybody in the process. He was used to being judge, jury and executioner, but this time it was personal.
The pick-up beeped and the indicator lights flashed as he walked away from the vehicle. He checked the road was clear and apart from the sound of music drifting from the jukebox in the pub everything was quiet. Suddenly there was a loud concussion noise which came from the direction of the pig farm, and it was followed quickly by the sound of a second blast. Tank thought that a twelve-gauge shotgun had been discharged, and a huge flock of starlings took to the air from the woods. They formed a huge black cloud, ducking and darting across the sky in a panic.
“Bird-scaring machine,” a voice said behind him.
“I beg your pardon?” Tank turned around surprised. The noise of a shotgun had startled him, and he was ready to draw his weapon in response. He eyed the man that had spoken, and relaxed.
“That noise, it’s a bird-scaring machine. I could see you were confused, most visitors are,” the old man said, drawing deeply on his hand rolled cigarette. He had obviously stepped out of the pub to have a smoke.
“I see,” Tank said. “Are you local then?”
“Lived here all my life, Sir,” the old man replied. “They have to keep the starlings away from the pigs’ food because they carry disease, you see.”
“Who owns the pig farm?”
“It used to be the Price brothers, until swine foot and mouth wiped out all the animals about five years ago. Everyone still calls it Price’s farm though,” the old man explained.
“Who owns it now?”
“Foreign company owns it now, brought their own herdsman too, and fired all the locals.”
“Do they keep any horses?”
“They do, couple of sheep in the back fields too, you should never keep horses and sheep together with pigs,” the old man began to explain, but his voice trailed off when the big man turned and walked into the woods. “Charming, I’m sure.”
Tank was fifty yards into the woods when he came to a fork in the path. There was a sign nailed to a tree that declared the land to the right as private property but he ignored the warning and ducked off the access road into the trees, heading towards the outer perimeter of the pig farm. He pulled out his mobile phone and texted Grace, telling her to run a check with the land registry department to find out who owned the pig farm, and more to the point where they were from. The results wouldn’t stop him from searching it himself but it might speed things up for the traditional law enforcement agencies, especially if there was a Moroccan connection. He pressed ‘send’ and then moved on through the woods.
To his left was a thicket of hedge which had grown unchecked to at least head height. Through it, he could see manicured lawns and the rear gardens of the houses that he’d seen earlier on the road. To his right the trees thickened, but he could see the shapes of farm buildings through them. He picked his way towards them, following narrow paths that had been flattened by woodland animals and the poachers that stalked them. The sunlight was filtered through the tree canopy into bright shafts of light, and squadrons of midges and gnats seemed to hang in the air enjoying the warmth of the sun. Five hundred yards further on he came to a small pond, and he kneeled down in the long grass to look at it. It was silted up, and polluted with pig excrement and green slime. It blocked his path and he looked for a way around it. As he progressed the bird-scaring machine retorted again. It had been fired every ten minutes or so, and although Tank knew what it was, it still made his nerves stand on end when the blank shotgun cartridges were discharged.
> He circumnavigated the pond and the thick brambles that grew on its banks and at the other side he reached the outbuildings that were on the periphery of the pig farm. Two rolls of razor wire spiralled their way as far as he could see in either direction, forming a barrier between him and the farm. Tank searched the immediate area and found a thick rotting tree trunk beneath the dark green foliage of a rhododendron bush. He slid his fingers underneath it and lifted the heavy log with ease. An army of woodlice and black beetles scurried for cover as their microscopic universe was exposed to the daylight. Tank shifted the tree trunk onto his shoulder, waiting for the bird-scaring machine to roar again, and then with a huge shrug he tossed it across the razor wire. The wire was flattened and it rattled and vibrated beneath the crushing weight of the trunk, but the bird-scaring machine smothered the noise. Tank stepped along the rotten tree, crossing the wire and breaching their defences.
The outbuildings were nothing more than wooden storage sheds which harped back to another era of farming. Hand-held sickles and scythes hung from rusted brackets on the walls, and huge swathes of spider silk hung from the ceilings. There were dust-covered workbenches laden with wooden planes, and metal vices, handsaws and chisels that looked like they had laid there untouched for decades. Tank moved quietly across the dusty floor and reached the doorway of the first building. He looked out across the main farmyard. To his right was a deep cesspit about one hundred yards wide, filled to the brim with pig sewage. The smell of excrement filled Tank’s nostrils and the strength of the ammonia in the urine made his eyes water. A loud gurgling sound turned his attention to a tall metal silo on his left. It was the one that he had seen from the road earlier. Beneath the silo a bulldozer was busy pushing tons of rotting vegetables and supermarket food waste into an enormous metal vat, were it was boiled into tons of liquid pigswill, before being piped into the silo. Tank knew that the two businesses could fit hand in glove. A human body could be dumped into the vat, and it would disappear in the boiling process in minutes. The gurgling sound became louder as thousands of gallons of pigswill poured through a network of pipes, finally being sloshed into over three hundred pig troughs across the farm. The pigs could smell the swill boiling and they anticipated their food being delivered. The hungry animals were becoming excited and the noise of the pigs squealing became a deafening cacophony of grunting sounds.