by Ed James
‘It’ll cost nothing, boss. We’ve got stacks and stacks of evidence against him.’
Docherty stopped at the corner and put his hands on his hips. ‘Si, I know you’ve really been through the wringer, but this is where the cowboy shite stops.’ He stepped aside to let some uniformed officers pass. ‘I’ve got my work cut out to clear your name, so no more.’
‘Guv, you switched off the recorder.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Docherty winked. ‘But no more of that, okay? You’re going on holiday as of tomorrow.’
No bloody way am I going on holiday. I need to—
Fenchurch caught himself. Tears filled his eyes.
I need to spend time with Abi, get over what’s happened. Work out how the hell to move on with our lives after all of this . . . all of this shit.
He smiled at Docherty. ‘Boss.’
‘Well, wonders will never cease.’ Docherty clapped him on the back. ‘I’ll see what I can do about making these allegations go away.’
The door behind them opened and another hulking Custody Officer stepped out, followed by Temple, his head bowed. His eyes widened.
The CO pointed into the vacant interview room. ‘We’ll be in there.’ He tugged at Temple’s collar like it was a dog’s lead. ‘Come on, sunshine.’
Fenchurch set off to follow, but Docherty grabbed him back. ‘You’re the last person who’s interviewing him.’
‘Can I speak to him before his lawyer turns up at least?’
‘Jesus, Si.’ Docherty let his grip go. ‘Right. But no monkey business, okay?’
‘Cross my heart.’
‘Go and light the brazier, then. I’ll see if I can find the brand.’
Fenchurch entered the room, leaving the door open. He hovered by Temple, waiting for the Custody Officer to leave them. The door clicked shut and he crouched next to Temple. ‘I’m not going to be interviewing you, Paul, but I just wanted a quick word.’
Temple shrugged. ‘You should leave right now if you want any chance of me seeing the inside of a court room.’
‘You’ve killed a cabbie.’ Fenchurch rested one hand on the floor and leaned forward into Temple’s face. ‘You’ve betrayed the trust of a lot of people, and for what? You make me sick. You’re Abi’s friend and you tried to kill her. You know what Ingham, Ogden and their cronies are doing, don’t you?’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘They’re paedophiles, kidnapping children off the street, having sex with them and—’
‘It’s not like that.’ Temple looked away.
‘Oh? Try me.’
Temple brushed at his hair, the cuffs rattling. ‘We didn’t harm anyone. Those children weren’t awake when they were . . .’
‘When they were what?’ Fenchurch grabbed his tie and pulled him close. ‘They abducted my daughter, you little shit!’
‘That was nothing to do with me.’
‘Oh, you were only following orders, were you?’ Fenchurch let the tie go. ‘How long have you been involved in this?’
‘I’m not telling you.’
‘So help me, I will use some of your tactics on you.’ Fenchurch grabbed the tie again and yanked it tight. ‘I’ll disappear you before you face trial. Just another missing person. A single man goes missing. Nobody will miss you.’
Temple held his gaze, his eyes narrow. ‘You don’t know anything.’
‘I just want to know what you did to my daughter. Now, you tell me everything and we’ll leave it at that.’
‘I did nothing to her. I was on holiday at the time.’
‘Single man in Thailand, was it? Buggering ladyboys?’
Temple snorted, tears welling in his eyes. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘Try me.’
Temple laughed, snot bubbling in his nose. ‘Piss off.’
‘I’m serious. I just want the truth.’ Fenchurch scraped the chair back, then sat opposite. ‘I’m guessing you’re one of them. Are you?’
Temple looked away, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
‘Paul, are you a paedophile?’ Fenchurch let the question ring around the interview room.
‘I never—’ Temple rubbed at his face, hands clawing all over it like he could change the past. ‘Yes.’
‘How long?’
Temple propped himself on his elbows, his face twisted up. ‘Since I was a student.’
‘At Southwark University?’ Fenchurch waited for the nod, rubbing his chin. ‘How did you get involved in that group? One wrong click and you’re in some Facebook group? Then you’re down some dark-web rabbit hole?’ He frowned. ‘Hang on, that’s twenty years ago. Before the internet. How did it work back then? You can’t just walk up to someone and say, “Oh, look at the lack of tits on that little girl?” or “I’d smash that little boy’s back doors in.” It doesn’t work like that, does it?’
‘It was a photography club. Ogden’s an alumnus and he sponsored it, paid for the darkroom there. Gave us money for film, donated some cameras.’ Temple scratched at his hair, like he was trying to tug the roots out. ‘We got to know each other over the first year. Ogden was in the darkroom one day, developing some photos of a child. They were arty, you know? Black and white. A kid on a beach. I liked them. And that’s when I think he knew.’
‘That you’re a paedophile?’
Temple let out a stuttering breath, eyes shut. ‘He was very subtle about it. Next time, the kid was naked. I spoke to him about it and he showed me some other stuff, Scandinavian stuff. Magazines.’
‘Porn?’ Fenchurch waited for the nod, barely got anything. ‘You could’ve got help, Paul.’
Temple pulled a tuft of hair from his fringe. ‘I have this . . .’ He snorted, his lips curling up. ‘. . . this disgusting urge, but I never acted on it. You’ve got to understand.’
‘So why didn’t you report him?’
‘Don’t you think I don’t ask myself that every single day?’ Temple wiped a tear from his eye. ‘Ogden invited me to dinner at his house in Vauxhall. There were a few others there.’
‘Lord Ingham?’
‘Amongst others.’ Temple scratched at his hair, tugging it into knots. ‘They must’ve spiked my drink, because I blacked out. I woke up in a spare room, completely naked. On the pillow there were photos . . .’ He pulled a tuft out. ‘I was abusing a girl. She was young. Thirteen. Maybe younger.’
‘Did you do it?’
‘I don’t remember.’ Temple looked Fenchurch in the eyes. He was telling the truth, no varnish. ‘This is before Photoshop. It wasn’t fake.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Ogden came into the room and told me there was more. He had a video of it.’ Temple’s cheek was slicked with tears. This must’ve been the first time he’d talked about it, the first time the dirtiest of all secrets had come out of that skull. ‘He told me one of the guys went to my flat. Put a load of child pornography on my computer. They had some cops on their payroll and they impounded it, but never charged me. It’s just sitting in evidence somewhere, connected to a closed case. One little admin tweak and . . .’
Fenchurch sighed. ‘They’ve used it to frame you ever since, haven’t they?’
‘They forced me to join the CPS as a trainee lawyer, helped me progress up the ladder. All so they could have power over me.’
‘You sure it’s just that one time, Paul?’
‘I swear.’
Fenchurch got to his feet and paced around. His skin crawled, like there were maggots under the surface. ‘I bet this blackmailing was a liberation for you. You were in the inner sanctum. You could now indulge yourself in it, fulfil your every whim, knowing that they had the worst on you. You couldn’t get any deeper into the shit.’
Temple’s chin dropped to his chest. ‘I’m as much of a victim as those children.’
‘What?’ Fenchurch stopped beside Temple and put his hand under his chin. ‘You’re not a victim, Paul. You’re a filthy pervert. You’ve ruined people’s lives. People like me.
People like Abi. You supported us through it, when you knew . . .’ His throat was thick with mucus. ‘When you knew what’d happened to Chloe. Where she’d gone. Who’d taken her. What they’d done with her.’ He twisted Temple’s head up, but his eyes looked away. ‘Why did you try and kill Abi?’
Temple tried to jerk his head away from Fenchurch’s grip.
Fenchurch tightened it. ‘Was it to punish me? Like you punished me through my father?’
‘You’re getting too close to the truth.’
‘About what? Abi didn’t know anything that could make it any worse for Ogden or Ingham.’
Temple broke free and huffed out a sigh, but didn’t speak.
‘What, then?’ Fenchurch crouched down to Temple’s eye level. ‘Close to what?’
‘Chloe.’
‘She’s dead. And knowing . . .’ Fenchurch swallowed the mucus down. ‘Knowing what happened is the hardest thing in the world, but it’s over.’
‘Simon.’ Temple shut his eyes and collapsed back into the chair. ‘She’s still alive.’
Chapter Forty-Three
What?’ Fenchurch almost toppled over backwards. He had to grab hold of the table to steady himself. ‘What did you just say?’
Temple clenched his jaw, kept his mouth shut.
‘Paul . . .’
Temple’s lips twitched, seemingly out of control. ‘I said, she’s alive.’
‘So you gave the Simons my daughter?’ Fenchurch pushed himself up to full height, his guts churning, the drums thundering through the effect of the pills. ‘They let her die!’
‘That was a cover.’ Temple bit into his bottom lip. ‘The whole thing was a cover.’
‘You’re lying!’
‘Why would I lie?’ Temple placed his hands on the table. ‘I’ve got nothing left to lose.’
‘To twist the knife.’ Fenchurch batted at the light above the table, sending it spinning round, the glow wobbling over the dirty walls. ‘To put me and Abi through it all over again. As if we haven’t suffered enough.’
‘I don’t want you to suffer any more.’
Fenchurch crouched again as the light settled into the middle, slowing down. ‘You just tried to kill Abi, you little shit.’
‘That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I swear.’
‘I don’t believe anything that comes out of your mouth.’
‘Simon . . .’ Temple brushed a tear away from his eye. ‘I’ll tell you the whole, unvarnished truth, okay?’
Fenchurch tried to keep his voice level. ‘You’re getting nothing in return.’
‘I know that.’ Temple sniffed and tugged at his nose. ‘I want to give you something back to make up for what I tried to do to Abi. That’s all.’
‘I want everything. No lies. No skipping bits.’
‘Okay.’ Temple sucked in a deep breath, like he was about to dive into a deep pool. He released it slowly, like ancient sand sliding across a desert. ‘Cheryl Simon used to work as a City lawyer for Gerald Ogden. He caught her stealing a client’s money. Quite a whack of it. Enough to piss off abroad.’ His smirk betrayed some admiration. ‘She didn’t realise who she was messing with. Instead of going to the cops, he told her all she had to do was accompany someone in a car.’
‘One of Flick Knife’s child snatchers?’
‘If you put it that way.’ Temple wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘This was early on, so she had to kidnap the kid.’
‘And did she?’
Temple frowned at him. ‘Can I have my phone?’
Fenchurch reached over to a table at the side and snatched up a plastic ziplock bag. ‘I don’t want you wiping this.’ He tossed it onto the table. ‘What’s the code?’
‘1976.’ Temple looked away from the phone. ‘You need to go into the Dropbox app. I’ll show you what folder you need to look at.’
Fenchurch unlocked the phone and found Dropbox on the first page of icons. ‘Which folder?’
‘It’s called Household Bills, then Car, then Garage. There’s a video file in there.’
‘Is this you having—’
‘Just open it.’
Fenchurch tapped on the folders and opened up a list of video files. ‘Which one?’
‘It’s marked “MOT 1999-04-30”.’
Fenchurch found it at the bottom and tapped on it. A video opened up, taken from the inside of a car. Grainy camcorder footage.
Cheryl Simon sat on the back seat. She looked a lot younger but her Sloane mask slipped to reveal a lost girl underneath. She nodded at the driver and got out of the cab. The view swivelled round to track her into a park. Looked like Greenwich. The place was empty apart from a girl on a swing. Cheryl walked up to her and spoke to her. After a few seconds, she took her by the hand and led her back to the car. She stopped outside and waited. Then a voice said, ‘Get in!’ Cheryl nodded and helped the girl onto the back seat. The camera settled on the girl as the car drove off. The video faded to black.
Fenchurch looked up at Temple. ‘Who is this?’
‘You’ll recognise Cheryl Simon. The girl is Tasmin Healey. Six months after that, she was rehomed with a couple in Lincolnshire.’
Fenchurch’s stomach started bubbling, eating at him. ‘And in those six months . . .’
‘You’ve got it.’ Temple couldn’t keep his eyes off his phone. Like he could wipe it just by looking at it. ‘They changed how they did it after that. The other woman almost got caught, so they had the drivers do the abductions. Cheryl got in the second car and pretended to be their mother.’
Fenchurch swallowed the bile down, letting it mix with the raging torrent in his guts. He nodded at the phone. ‘That video was leverage, I get that. That and all the other kids she took. How did she get started?’
‘She owed Flick Knife a favour.’ Temple lifted his shoulders. ‘Can’t remember what it was. Money or sexual favours.’
‘So how did she end up in Dorchester instead of doing this?’
‘Because we had to use her as cover once. In 2002. Took a boy in Pinner. Undercover cops working a drug deal spotted it. Took her into the station, she gave them this story about losing her son outside a butcher. We had it all backed up and she got out.’ Temple’s breath hissed out slowly. ‘You can’t do it more than once.’
‘So you gave her a house in the countryside as a reward?’
Temple sighed as he shook his head. ‘We hooked her up with Flick Knife’s accountant.’
‘Larry Simon?’
‘That’s right. He’d helped set up Fresh Start. We had enough on him to keep him under our thumb.’
Fenchurch cracked his knuckles. ‘Was he abusing children?’
‘Not that.’ Temple’s dead eyes locked onto Fenchurch. ‘All the paperwork was in his name. If he tried to blow the whistle, he’d be implicated. Everything led to him.’ He held his gaze, blinking slowly. ‘And we helped them adopt a daughter. Amanda. As you know, she died in 2002.’
Fenchurch stood up, looking over at Docherty and getting a flick of the eyebrows in return. Then he crouched again, squatting in front of Temple. ‘So you gave them Chloe?’
‘Not as such.’ Temple huffed out a sigh. ‘When they kidnapped Chloe, they realised who she was pretty quickly. A call went out on the radio. Naismith heard it and connected the dots. He told Blunden who she was. The plan was to kill her. Blunden didn’t know who you were, didn’t care. They’re more than capable of losing people in the Thames or one of the many building sites around the city.’
That tallied with Johnson and Naismith’s stories.
Fenchurch’s knees groaned, but he stayed crouching. ‘So why didn’t they kill Chloe?’
Temple swallowed hard. ‘Because I told him to stop.’
‘And they just listened to you?’
‘Ingham did.’ Temple wiped another tear from his eye. ‘He prided himself on not killing their victims. Maybe helped him sleep at night.’ His lips twisted into a grimace. ‘No harm done.’
‘No
harm—’ Fenchurch stopped himself. Need to keep him talking . . . He pushed up tall and started pacing around the room. ‘How did you persuade him? You were in hock to him for abusing a child.’
‘I’d gained his trust by then.’ Temple’s tongue flicked over his lips. ‘I said they should keep Chloe safe, then they could use her as leverage against you or your father when the time came. Your old man was a DS in the murder squad at the time, you were a newly promoted DI. Always useful to have influence over people like that.’ He stared right at Fenchurch, drilling right down to the marrow. ‘Amazing how much of what seems like incompetence is actually more sinister.’
Fenchurch frowned. ‘The cop we spoke to mentioned a sister.’
‘Holliday?’
‘Not him. A local cop.’ Fenchurch made a note. ‘Is Holliday involved?’
‘Maybe.’
‘So, this sister?’
‘Right.’ Temple nodded slowly, his lips puckering tight. ‘The Simons were adopting another girl from Fresh Start. Jennifer Hay. We made them adopt Chloe as well. Didn’t give them a choice.’ He wiped snot off his nose with his sleeve. ‘The trouble was, Jennifer remembered what happened in the . . . sessions. She didn’t react well to the . . . medication we used to make them forget.’
Fenchurch’s gut lurched again. The depravity. The sickness. All thought through. All covered over, like entries in a ledger. ‘In Peckham?’
‘It was Vauxhall in those days, but yes.’ Temple drew a circle on the table with his finger, then clicked it with his nail. ‘Jennifer and Chloe looked pretty similar. Like fraternal twins. So when a bus hit them by accident, it was a chance—’
‘What?’ Fenchurch’s gut lurched. The drums cannoned around his head. ‘It hit them both?’
Temple nodded again. ‘Killed Jennifer there and then.’
‘What?’
‘Jennifer’s in Chloe’s grave, not that there’ll be enough left of her to prove it by now.’ Temple swallowed hard. ‘Chloe suffered a brain injury. She couldn’t remember anything. Larry called me up and I visited her in hospital. She didn’t recognise me.’ He drew the circle again. ‘I’d known Chloe all her life and she didn’t recognise me. Didn’t recognise her new parents.’