Little Boy Lost

by J. P. Carter

  A gate to the side turned out to be unlocked so Sweeny and Mortimer were able to access the back garden while Anna rang the front doorbell. When there was no response she pressed it again and left her finger on it. Eventually a woman’s voice came from inside.

  ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ she said in a gruff voice.

  Anna suspected the woman was watching her through the peephole so she held up her warrant card.

  ‘I’m a detective with the Metropolitan Police,’ she said. ‘I’m here with my colleagues to speak to Mr Craig Sullivan.’

  ‘Nobody by that name lives here,’ the woman said.

  ‘That may well be so. But we know that Mr Sullivan is here at the moment because we saw him enter the property. And that’s his car on the driveway.’

  The woman didn’t reply, so Anna continued. ‘You might as well open the door because we won’t be leaving here until we’ve spoken to Mr Sullivan. And if that means forcing our way in then so be it.’

  ‘Have you got a warrant?’ the woman asked.

  ‘We don’t need one since we’re acting on information that Mr Sullivan may have committed a serious crime.’

  The woman fell silent, and for about twenty seconds nothing happened. Then suddenly they heard shouting coming from the rear of the house.

  Anna told Walker to stay put as she dashed over to the side gate, fearful that her two colleagues were in trouble. She pushed the gate open and ran along a path to the back garden.

  She arrived in time to see her two detectives grappling with Sullivan in the middle of a large paved patio. He was lashing out with his fists as they tried to pull him to the ground so that they could cuff him.

  As Anna approached them, a woman in jeans and a T-shirt stepped out through an open back door. She was brandishing a baseball bat in both hands and began screaming at the detectives to let Sullivan go.

  Anna threw herself forward and lunged at the woman just as she was about to strike Sweeny from behind. The woman was taken by surprise as Anna rammed into her, shoulder first. She lost her balance and tumbled sideways onto the patio, dropping the bat as she did so.

  Anna didn’t give her a chance to recover. She leaned over, grabbed the woman’s T-shirt, and rolled her onto her back before pinning her down with both knees. She then pulled her arms up her back, whipped out the cuffs she always carried in her jacket pocket, and slipped them on the woman’s wrists.

  Behind her Sweeny and Mortimer were managing to do the same to Sullivan.

  Anna stood up and hauled the woman to her feet. She was somewhere in her twenties with short black hair and a freckled face.

  ‘You have no right to do this,’ the woman cried out. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Then why wouldn’t you let us in?’

  ‘We thought …’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch,’ Sullivan yelled at her as he was being pulled up off the patio floor. ‘Don’t say another bloody word.’

  Anna looked at him and saw that his nose was bleeding and there was a swelling on his forehead above his left eye.

  ‘So what is your problem, Mr Sullivan?’ she said. ‘Do you have an aversion to talking to the police or have you got something to hide?’

  He glared at her, baring his teeth.

  ‘Go get fucked, copper,’ he fumed. ‘I’m saying nothing until I talk to my lawyer.’

  Just then Walker appeared in the doorway that Anna now saw led into a kitchen. He was holding on to the arm of a man in a grey overcoat, who Anna realised must be the guy Sullivan had picked up in Tulse Hill. He too had been placed in cuffs.

  ‘I caught this fellah trying to do a runner out the front door,’ Walker said. ‘I’ve checked all the downstairs rooms and they’re empty. But I think I heard a noise upstairs.’

  Anna turned back to Sullivan. ‘So who else is in the house, Mr Sullivan?’

  He swallowed, and Anna saw the anger in his eyes turn to fear. He opened his mouth to speak, but then decided not to and clamped his lips together.

  ‘We’ll find out for ourselves then,’ Anna said.

  She told Sweeny to hold on to the woman while she and DC Mortimer took Sullivan back inside. Mortimer was a big, beefy lad with more muscle than fat under his suit, and he had no difficulty forcing Sullivan through the kitchen and along the hall.

  Anna followed closely behind, dread pooling in her stomach. She had an awful feeling she knew what she was going to find.

  As they mounted the stairs, Sullivan started muttering curses and trying to free himself, but he was no match for Mortimer.

  When they reached the landing, they encountered five doors, all closed. Anna moved ahead of Mortimer and opened the first door. It led to a bathroom that was empty. But when she opened the next door and saw what was inside her heart exploded in her chest.

  Two boys wearing pyjamas were sitting on top of a made-up double bed, their faces pale and fearful. Anna asked them if they were all right and they both nodded.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ she said and hurried along the corridor to check on the other three rooms.

  They were all bedrooms, but only one of them was occupied by a girl who was no older than twelve. Chloe’s age. She was curled up in the foetal position on a king-size bed and sobbing quietly into a pillow.

  And she was completely naked.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  After helping the girl to get dressed, Anna called it in. As she expected, the case was immediately granted priority status and officers were going to be pulled off other duties – including the riots – to attend.

  Central control also said they would arrange for an ambulance to be sent to the house, along with a team from social services.

  ‘I want forensics here too,’ Anna said. ‘Along with local CID.’

  She phoned Nash to update him and to ask him to make sure that she got what she wanted in terms of resources. He promised to do what he could and said he hoped to be back at MIT HQ later in the day.

  Anna then confronted Sullivan, who was being held by Mortimer on the landing at the top of the stairs.

  ‘You’ve been using this place as a child brothel, haven’t you?’ she said, prodding him hard in the chest with her finger. ‘You sick, vile bastard.’

  He just stared back at her, saying nothing, his eyes flat and empty of all emotion.

  ‘Tell me why you didn’t bring Jacob Rossi straight here,’ she said. ‘Why did you leave him for so long in the pub cellar?’

  His eyebrows snapped together. ‘Are you talking about the kid who went missing in Bromley? The son of that TV bloke?’

  ‘You know I am.’

  ‘That had nothing to do with me. I only know about it because I saw it on the news.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘And I don’t give a fuck.’

  Anna had to resist the urge to punch him in the face.

  ‘Take him downstairs before I do something I’ll regret,’ she said to Mortimer. ‘Send Megan up here to help me with the kids and tell Max the cavalry will be here soon.’

  Anna then got the three children together in one of the bedrooms where she quickly discovered that only the girl was English. The two boys were from Romania.

  It wouldn’t be Anna’s job to delve into their backgrounds or to launch an investigation into the gang that had preyed on them. That would be the job of specialists working for the National Crime Agency. Her job was to find out if they had information that would help bring to justice whoever had been behind Jacob Rossi’s abduction.

  She found it hard to contain her emotions as she stood looking down on the three youngsters who were sat on the edge of the bed. They seemed confused rather than scared. Their eyes were wide but vacant, and the thought of how much they must have suffered tugged at Anna’s heartstrings.

  The boys were wearing T-shirts and Anna noticed some bruises on their arms. The girl, who was no longer crying, was now wearing shorts and a crew-neck jumper. She had short black
hair and delicate features. Anna hadn’t spotted any bruises or marks on her body when she’d helped her to get dressed.

  Anna began by asking them whether they were related to each other or to the people who had been in the house with them. They all shook their heads.

  She then asked them their names and ages. The girl said she was Vicky Woods and she was eleven, almost twelve. The boys were Christian Orban and Darius Anca. They were both thirteen and spoke pretty good English.

  Anna explained who she was and told them that they were now safe and would be properly looked after. But their reaction was muted. Even when she said that efforts would be made to contact their families, the only response was a weak smile from Vicky. It made her wonder if they had been given drugs to control their behaviour.

  When DC Sweeny entered the room, Anna introduced them to her and said that there were other police officers downstairs.

  ‘More will be arriving shortly and you’ll be taken to a place of safety,’ she said.

  ‘What will happen to Lorna?’ Vicky asked, her voice low, wary.

  ‘Is she the woman who’s been here in the house with you?’

  The girl nodded. ‘She’s the one who feeds us and tells us what we have to do when the men come. She says she’ll kill us if we tell anyone what happens here.’

  Anna balled her fists involuntarily and felt her entire body tense.

  ‘Well you won’t have to worry about Lorna any more,’ she said. ‘She’ll be going to prison for a long time. And the man too. What do you call him?’

  ‘Lorna calls him Craig,’ Vicky said. ‘We’re not allowed to talk to him.’

  ‘And what about the other man who arrived here a little while ago? Do you know who he is?’

  Vicky lowered her eyes and clasped her hands together in her lap.

  ‘He paid them so that he could do things to me,’ she said, and it shocked Anna that she was so matter-of-fact about it. ‘He was getting undressed when Lorna shouted that the police were here. So he ran out of the room.’

  Anna got Sweeny to take notes while she asked the questions. And the more she heard about how they had suffered the angrier she became.

  All three had met for the first time about four months ago when they were brought together at another house, which Vicky believed was somewhere in London. Before that Vicky had been living with her stepfather in Norwich. By the sound of it he was a brutal drug addict. Her mother was dead and she said she had no other relatives. The stepfather didn’t like having her around and sold her to two men he met in a pub. She had been abused by lots of different men ever since.

  The boys had been abducted from an orphanage just outside Bucharest in Romania and trafficked to the UK in the back of a lorry with five other children. The three had been moved to this house around two months ago and that was when they met Lorna. Since then they had been sexually abused and raped almost daily by a succession of men who had paid for the privilege.

  Anna learned that the woman, Lorna, resided in the house and the abusers were brought there by Craig Sullivan and sometimes other men.

  ‘They don’t let us go out except into the back garden, and if we cry Lorna hits us,’ Vicky said.

  It was a set-up that had become all too familiar in recent years in the UK and across Europe. Nobody knew for sure how many children were being cruelly exploited in this way, but unofficial estimates put the figure in the thousands.

  Anna continued to ask questions even as she heard reinforcements arrive at the house. Walker popped into the room to tell her that Sullivan and the other two had been arrested and cautioned and were about to be transferred to Wandsworth.

  ‘A forensics team is on its way,’ he said. ‘Meantime, I’ll organise a search of the house.’

  Anna sensed the children were becoming anxious and she wanted to get some more questions in before the social workers arrived.

  She took out her phone and showed them a photo of Jacob Rossi. All three said they had never seen him before. They also said they had never spent any time in a pub cellar.

  But both boys did recognise a photo of Neville Quinlan.

  ‘He’s been here many times,’ Darius said. ‘The last time was about a week ago. He told me I was his favourite, and when he was finished, he gave me some sweets.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  During the next hour no less than twenty more people converged on the house in Dulwich. They included patrol officers, local CID detectives, paramedics, a forensics team, and three social workers.

  The paramedics examined the children before whisking them away from the scene. Arrangements would be made for NCA officers to question the children further.

  The three perps were also taken away in separate vehicles. Craig Sullivan was seen as a real catch. The fact that he’d been collared purely by chance wouldn’t stop the Major Investigation Team taking full credit for it; Anna knew that Nash would see to that.

  Unfortunately Sullivan’s arrest, and the discovery of the child brothel, probably wouldn’t move them any closer to solving the Jacob Rossi case. They knew that Neville Quinlan had met up with Sullivan last Monday afternoon. But it now appeared that the pair hadn’t set off together to abduct Jacob on his way home from school. Instead, Sullivan had brought Quinlan to the house so that he could satisfy his lust for young male flesh.

  Both of them would be questioned further, of course, along with Sullivan’s accomplice, Lorna Fitzgerald. She hadn’t spoken since Anna had stopped her clobbering Sweeny with the baseball bat. But she’d been easily identified from the driving licence and credit cards in her purse. And a PNC check had revealed that, like her paymaster, she had form for dealing drugs.

  The perv who was about to have his way with Vicky Woods also had a criminal record. Samuel Broderick was a fifty-four-year-old accountant who had served time for molesting three underage girls some years ago. His profile was similar to that of Quinlan, and Anna guessed they were part of the same paedo network that made use of the services provided by human traffickers like Craig Sullivan.

  It was a lot for Anna to get her head around, even before the search of the house uncovered some disturbing pieces of evidence.

  Walker found a drawer full of medications that had clearly been used to control the children. There were sleeping pills, tablets that were known to cause listlessness, and batches of the notorious date rape drugs – Rohypnol and Ketamine.

  Far more incriminating evidence was found on Lorna Fitzpatrick’s laptop, which she had obviously been using when Anna and the team arrived. In her panic she’d neglected to switch it off.

  When a forensic technician fired it up, a shot of the bedroom that Vicky Woods had occupied filled the screen. It transpired that there were hidden cameras in all the bedrooms. This led to the discovery of a folder on the laptop containing fifteen video clips of ‘punters’ having sex with the children, presumably used for blackmailing the men or selling the clips to online paedophile sites.

  Among those caught on camera was Neville Quinlan, and the time and date stamp on the recording showed that he was abusing Darius when Jacob was snatched off the street.

  So on the one hand it seemed to clear him of direct involvement in the abduction. But on the other it was proof positive that he had been up to his old tricks.

  *

  Eventually everyone except the forensics officers moved outside the house in order to protect the integrity of what was now a crime scene.

  Anna welcomed the opportunity to light up a cigarette. She desperately needed a nicotine fix and the first drag went down a treat.

  She was anxious now to get back to Wandsworth so that she could put Quinlan on the spot and conduct a formal interview with Sullivan before handing him over to the NCA.

  She also wanted to get the team together for another status review. Quinlan had been their prime suspect in the Rossi case, and if he was no longer in the frame then it was a serious setback.

  She said as much to the group that was gathered around
her on the driveway. Walker, Mortimer and Sweeny had been joined by two detectives from the local CID and three uniforms.

  They all compared notes, and Anna passed on what Vicky Woods had told her. Walker mentioned the drugs, the cameras in the bedrooms and the video clips on the laptop. One of the local detectives said that he had spoken to several neighbours who’d had no idea what was going on in the house.

  ‘It’s owned by a bloke who lives in Spain with his wife,’ the detective said. ‘He lets it out fully furnished through an estate agent. We’ve found documents showing that the current tenant is one Lorna Fitzgerald and she’s leasing it for six months. The rent comes from a bank account that was set up in her name only three months ago.’

  ‘It’s an MO that’s often deployed by sex trafficking gangs,’ Walker pointed out. ‘They move between various rented properties so they don’t arouse suspicion by staying for too long in any one place. And they market the kids on the Dark Web or through personal contact with paedos like Quinlan who are known to them.’

  ‘It’s a sick fucking business,’ Sweeny said, and they all nodded in agreement.

  Anna then handed over responsibility for the crime scene to the locals and they said they would liaise with the NCA team.

  ‘We’ll question Sullivan and Fitzgerald first just to satisfy ourselves that they weren’t involved in Jacob’s kidnapping,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think they were. Then it’ll be over to you guys and the crime agency. With any luck this could be the beginning of the end for at least one of the child trafficking gangs who for too long have been operating in this city with impunity.’

  Minutes later they were heading back to Wandsworth and this time Walker was driving. Sweeny and Mortimer were following on behind.

  Anna stared out of the window, her mind stuck on what she had seen and heard in the house. The children’s stories had been upsetting enough, but those vile video clips had been burned onto her retinas. They would always be there, a gruesome reminder of the depths of depravity to which some men can sink.