by Dylan Young
A little.
* * *
Anna got home and went for a run knowing she’d feel 100% better afterwards. Always did. She showered, put one of her father’s old vinyls on the turntable and ate. The Average White Band were telling her to ‘walk on by’ when her work phone rang.
It wasn’t a number she recognised.
She accepted the call. ‘Anna Gwynne.’
‘Oh, hi. It’s Ben Hawley.’
Anna walked out of the kitchen and through the French doors into the tiny garden, away from the music, her mind suddenly fizzing. Hawley, of all people.
‘What can I do for you, Ben?’
‘I wasn’t sure who to ring—’
‘Everything OK? You sound distressed.’
‘That’s because I am. I got back to my digs in Bristol yesterday to find my room broken into and my iPad stolen.’
‘Have you reported it?’
She heard him snort. ‘What’s the point?’
‘Let me make a call—’
‘Oh please.’ His tone was curt. ‘We both know what this is, don’t we? I mean, if you’d asked I would have gladly let you search the place. There was no need to break the bloody lock and turn the place upside down.’
Suddenly, his brusqueness fell into place. ‘You think we did this?’
‘Yes, actually, I do.’
‘Dr Hawley, Ben, I—’ Anna’s words hit a wall in the shape of Woakes’ sullen face. No, no way, not even Woakes would be that stupid, would he?
Hawley didn’t wait for an answer.
‘I’d like to think you had nothing to do with it, Inspector, but you’re supposed to be the senior detective, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’ There were other things she could have, perhaps should have added along the lines of “None of my officers would ever contemplate such a thing”, but she held back because, damn it, she wasn’t sure.
‘Yeah well, I’d like my iPad back please, when you’ve finished with it. If you want the name of my ISP, you can have that too.’
She wanted to say that anything seized in an illegal search was inadmissible in a court of law, but it sounded too churlish. She should have been angry, raised her voice and shouted him down, but she couldn’t. Hawley had been cooperative. But there was one more thing she needed to know. ‘Ben, I’m going to ask you something and I want you to be totally honest with me. Don’t judge me. This is too important for that sort of bullshit.’
‘OK.’ Hawley sounded completely nonplussed.
‘If we were to drive back to your aunt’s bungalow now and I made you open the garden shed, the one with the new locks, would we find something there?’
Hawley didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was subdued. ‘Yes, you would.’
‘What would we find, Ben?’
‘You’d find a locked box,’ he said, his voice croaky. ‘A tool box, except there’re no tools in it. There’s a syringe driver instead. From the old hospital in Didcot, before they abandoned it completely. They had a room full of crap equipment they were throwing out. I was there on the last day and there was no one around. I took a couple of broken syringe drivers.’
‘What else is in the box?’
‘A couple of bags of saline. Borrowed from another A and E. IV cannulas and two vials of potassium chloride.’ He paused and then said, ‘It’s amazing what you can find in some of these old places. And then there’s some stuff I’ve picked up from overdose patients. The paramedics or sometimes relatives bring stuff in with them. Temazepam, Diazepam, Xanax. On a busy night, you can build up quite a collection.’
Anna nodded, feeling a surge of something, unsure if it was relief or sympathy. ‘A suicide kit.’
‘Yes,’ said Hawley, his voice barely audible. ‘I’ve kept one. Ever since the last time I was questioned. I was in a very dark place. I’m not proud of it. But I stay away from the shed now. I don’t want to face what I collected.’
‘Understandable.’
‘I’m probably breaking all kinds of laws. God knows what the GMC would say. So, there it is. My confession.’
‘Thanks for being honest.’
Another beat of silence followed. Eventually, Hawley said, ‘I’d still like my iPad back.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ was all she managed before ringing off.
Woakes! Could Hawley be right? Arm’s length, Shipwright had said. She was beginning to think she might be better off with a cattle prod.
She rang Woakes’ number, knowing she shouldn’t; phone messages left in the heat of the moment had a habit of coming back to bite you if you weren’t careful. But she was too angry to let things lie. It went straight to voicemail.
‘Dave. Ring me. I’ve had Ben Hawley on the line. Someone has broken into his apartment and stolen his iPad. He’s pissed off and understandably so. We need to talk about this. In the meantime, I am satisfied that Hawley is clean and you are not to go anywhere near him or approach him or his work colleagues? Is that clear? No more bish bloody bosh, Dave.’
She killed the call and almost immediately her phone pinged. A text message from a number she recognised. A DS in North Wales coordinating their investigation into the bodies unearthed by Shaw. Two sentences only, but enough to make her forget Dave Woakes in a heartbeat.
Europol confirm DNA match between Petran and Krastev. Your boy was right, they are one and the same.
Her boy.
That was the trigger she’d been waiting for. Time she paid him another visit.
Twenty-Nine
Thursday
She got to Whitmarsh early on Thursday, up with a pink dawn and the promise of more dry weather. On the way, she rang Holder.
‘Rosie’s father. What did you and Ryia make of him?’
‘He’s clean, ma’am. Nothing new and the original team went to all sorts of lengths to check his alibi. As for the man himself, I’d say he’s never recovered. He’s still in counselling with victim support. He was the breadwinner and he’s riddled with guilt about not protecting Rosie. Once we got him talking he re-ran the whole day, minute by minute, from when the police turned up on his shift to tell him. He moved out because he needed a little ‘distance’ to stay sane. His words, ma’am.’
‘Computer?’
‘Hates them. Doesn’t own one. Uses his stepson’s.’
‘Thanks, Justin. I’ll be on the mobile if you need me.’
The call confirmed what she’d expected they’d find. If they were going to get anywhere with Rosie’s case, it would be through intelligence around the images. She was sure of it. She rang Whitmarsh from her car to warn them that she was coming. No one objected. If this carried on she might end up with her own spot in the car park.
* * *
Shaw was waiting in the interview room, legs crossed at the ankle, his expression giving nothing away. The stench of the air freshener was strong this morning but failed miserably to mask the testosterone stink of sweat that had seeped over the years into the walls and the floor. Anna sat and took out a file.
‘Morning, Anna,’ Shaw said. ‘You’re looking better.’
Anna returned his gaze. ‘A little stronger every day.’
‘Good to hear.’
She took out a file and put it on the table. ‘It is Krastev,’ she said.
Shaw inclined his head and let it drop a few degrees in acknowledgement. ‘Not the sort of person you’d want to take home for tea with your mother, eh, Anna? But then again…’
She ignored the barb. ‘North Wales police will want to know how he died.’
Shaw nodded. ‘He had a bad accident.’
‘Forensics previously confirmed he had bled to death, but you say he was buried alive.’
Shaw nodded again. ‘The accident was that he ran into me.’ Shaw uncrossed his legs. ‘You haven’t got your nifty little recorder on, Anna. We both know what that means. Whatever I say here is off the record, right? Which tells me that perhaps you have another agenda.’
Anna smile
d. Shaw had seen through her within a minute. The rules with men like Shaw were not to let them inside. Not allow them anything they could try and manipulate you with. But Shaw had already crawled inside Anna’s life and there was no taking that back. She knew this was a very dangerous game and she was straying down a path she’d normally have avoided like the black death. Walking along it, moreover, hand in hand with a serial torturer and murderer. But today this was exactly the route she needed to take. Despite everything that had happened in the Willis case, Shaw had been instrumental in helping Anna see the patterns that eventually got Willis caught. Rainsford told her that when his supervisor at GCHQ in Manchester heard what Shaw had done, his initial and bizarre reaction was that Shaw would be difficult to replace. This was a man with expertise who, Anna suspected, was cooperating because he needed and wanted her help.
But cooperation was a two-way street.
‘You told me about Abbie and the Black Squid. You told me you’d spent some time on the Dark Web.’
Shaw watched her. ‘Too much time,’ he said.
Anna nodded. ‘There was a case recently in the press. A model who was tricked into a job in Milan and then drugged and abducted for auction on the Dark Web.’
Shaw nodded. ‘I read about it.’
‘How common is that sort of thing?’ She already knew the answer, but she wanted to draw Shaw in with this. See how far he was willing to go.
‘That’s just the tip of a dirty great iceberg, Anna, as you well know. Illegal arms, hackers for hire who can steal anyone’s identity, Nazi sympathiser sites, paedophile forums, and things for sale which should never be saleable. Exotic animals, people, children, weapons, all in the unindexed Deep Web. People were shocked by what happened to the model. Believe me, there are far worse things.’
Anna listened to Shaw’s Mancunian drawl listing the horrors and looked up at the guard sitting behind. He heard and saw everything. But the unwritten rule here was that he was the three wise monkeys rolled into one.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
‘When you say “worse things”… How much worse?’
Shaw’s eyes were half-closed. He opened them fully now and leaned forwards. ‘Why no minder today, Anna? Why did you come alone?’
Anna kept her eyes on the pad she was writing on. She didn’t want Shaw to see her react. ‘The others are all busy. We found some images.’ She slid out a printed sheet. A photocopy with two images. Rosie Dawson’s at the top, Blair Smeaton’s beneath.
Shaw looked at the images and frowned. ‘Krastev had these?’
She ignored his question. ‘Our Hi-Tech people have linked these to some forums. These were adverts. PPV with a promise of more to come. Pinocchio and Littlefeet. Do they mean anything to you?’
‘This is not Krastev, is it?’ Shaw said, studying the images.
‘What about #pogo?’
Shaw looked up then, a sharp movement, his expression unreadable, but Anna sensed something shifting behind his eyes. A flicker of anger? Disgust? ‘Anna, what have you got yourself involved in? Is this the case the others are busy with?’
Anna said, ‘We know paedophile rings operate on the Dark Web—’
Shaw interrupted her. ‘This isn’t a ring.’
‘What?’
‘Do you know what a red room is, Anna?’
‘I’ve read about them.’
‘Then you know they’re supposed to be an urban legend. Dark Web sites where people use cryptocurrency for pay per view access to live, streaming acts of the worst kind – murder, torture, acts of violence. Otherwise known as Hurtcore sites.’
The guard, the wise monkey, shifted in his seat.
‘Is this an advert for a red room? How do you know?’
Shaw shrugged. ‘I don’t. Not for certain. But #pogo… that’s not good. How well do you know your serial killer history, Anna?’
She heard her own heart beating fast, thudding in her ears. ‘Not well enough, obviously.’
‘No, well, I don’t blame you.’ Shaw looked at the images again and then said, ‘#pogo is a reference to John Wayne Gacy. He killed at least thirty young boys in the 1970s, burying the bodies under his house. When he killed, he sometimes dressed up as a clown. Pogo the clown. This hashtag is telling people what your man intends to do. What he’s probably done already.’
The room fell into silence. Even the distant prison noises, the slamming doors, the phones, seemed to fade out before fading back into Anna’s awareness. She finally found her voice. ‘Why do you say this isn’t a ring? What makes you so sure?’
‘If this is genuine, we’re talking about a rogue. One man, if you can call him a man, acting alone. Just like Gacy. The nonces, the real ones, the paedophiles that can’t help themselves, they always claim they’re misunderstood. That it’s love they have to share. Fucking Nabokov.’ Shaw’s expression was of a man tasting his own bile. ‘Most of them don’t want to harm their victims. Far from it. They wouldn’t sanction this sadistic shit.’
Anna forced herself back to the images. ‘There’s no reference to Pogo or any clown on Ros— on the first image.’
‘How long between?’ Shaw asked.
‘Nine years.’
Shaw nodded. ‘Remember Willis, Anna. Remember how the first time is either an accident or an experiment. But they see what they can get away with. It thrills them. And if it is successful, if they do get away with it, the seed is planted and it always grows. Always.’
Anna exhaled. It made a stuttering noise in her throat. She was getting lessons in serial murder from this man. She forced herself to press on.
‘The first time…’ She hesitated, but there was now little point in trying to hide anything. ‘Rosie Dawson. The evidence suggests a well-prepared abduction. It wasn’t spontaneous. He knew the area.’
‘And the others? I presume there are others besides Blair Smeaton.’
‘How did you know about Blair—’
Shaw’s brows lowered a centimetre. ‘I read the papers, Anna.’
Anna swallowed. ‘There are others. At least three.’
‘All in the same area?’
‘No. That’s the point. None in the same area.’
‘So, he chose local to start with. Then he went wide to throw you off the scent. And it looks like it worked. Until now.’ Shaw sat back, lifting the images to study them more closely. ‘Abbie had a hearing aid for years, just like Blair,’ he said suddenly, his voice soft. ‘She was always breaking the bastard thing, too.’
Anna was only half-listening. Her mind was weighing up Shaw’s analysis. It made perfect sense and reinforced what she’d begun to think herself. That Blair’s abduction was not instigated by an organised paedophile ring. What if it was just one careful, sick, clever predator? He’d choose a different place and a different MO every time, knowing that would derail the investigation. And they’d missed linking the cases because they would naturally concentrate on exactly that. The method of abduction.
Shaw put down the sheet and sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Jesus, Anna. You know how to choose them. I can’t help you here.’
Oh, but you already have.
‘But if you want proof of how much a piece of dirt Krastev was, I can give you that. Say the word and we’ll go digging.’
Anna’s eyes refocused on Shaw. She knew what he was offering here. More buried treasure.
‘Come on, Anna. You must have enjoyed having all that praise poured over you after catching Willis?’
‘We both know it was more luck than judgement.’
‘Yeah, right. But you’d worked it all out by then, hadn’t you? You knew he was far too clever for his own fucking good. Most of them are. Maybe your child catcher isn’t as bright as he first seems to be. All he’s done is evade capture from the police…’
‘He’s clever enough,’ said Anna.
‘But not as clever as you, Anna.’ Shaw sat forward, his head low. ‘We both want the same thing, you and me. We want to be le
ft alone to wander around inside ourselves. But the world won’t let us, will it? The world is full of meddling arseholes. Never mind all that “the evil that men do” bullshit. It’s arseholes and cockroaches and us.’ Shaw laughed. ‘Me and you, Anna. We work things out and then do something about it. We either wipe the world’s arse or step on the fucking cockroaches.’
He’s identifying with me.
‘I don’t think I’m like you, Hector.’
‘Of course, you don’t. But it’s not a slur. Not in the way you think. Come on, tell me the truth. How many times have you wished they’d all just fuck off?’
It was a good question. An excellent question. One she’d asked herself hundreds of times when some social interaction had grated so badly that all she wanted to do was shut herself away and scream.
‘I’m not that egotistical.’
‘Ego’s got nothing to do with it. It’s all about difference, isn’t it? You’re different, Anna. I know I fucking well am. I pretended I wasn’t for a long, long time and look where it got me. Now I don’t pretend.’
‘But you’re in prison.’
Shaw nodded. ‘And they locked me away for it. But now I’ve got you, haven’t I?’
His words were almost tender. She wanted to protest but bit it back. There was unfinished business here and she was determined to see it through. Shaw understood like she knew he would.
‘We will, of course, look into Krastev’s activities. I’ll be in touch, Hector.’ She got up. Shaw didn’t move, but he let his eyes fall to the folded paper before he handed it back.
‘You want to catch the Pogo wannabe? Work out how he chooses which flowers to pick.’
Thirty
Echoes of the interview bounced around inside Anna’s head as she drove back towards Bristol. She’d played a dangerous game with Shaw and it had left her drained. She phoned through to Trisha and asked her to punch in some new search terms around ‘clown’ and ‘Gacy’ and ‘Pogo’, trying to find any cases in the HOLMES database with links. She was fishing, she knew. There was no hard evidence backing up her theories and she had no idea if what she’d done would be of any help, yet.