by Jane Casey
‘I don’t think it’s fair to ask him that,’ I said, pointing to the last question. ‘He’s just a kid, and he’s totally dependent on his brother. What would you expect him to do? Call the police?’
Blake sighed. ‘Look, if he tells you he was too scared to say anything, or that he was threatened, that could help him. You’re right, he probably didn’t have any choice but to help, but we need to know that before we talk to his brother.’
‘All right.’
‘If you get the chance, we also want to know how they convinced Jennifer to go along with it and keep it a secret. Did they threaten her? Bribe her with presents? We didn’t find anything out of the ordinary when we searched the Shepherds’ house – no electronics that the parents hadn’t bought themselves, no jewellery. She tested negative for drugs, too.’ I must have looked surprised, because Blake explained, ‘Get them hooked on drugs and they’ll do pretty much anything for a fix.’
In spite of the stuffy atmosphere in the canteen, I shivered. ‘Maybe they used something you didn’t test for.’
‘Unlikely,’ Blake said shortly. ‘Anyway, there had to have been something that kept her coming back and kept her quiet. We need to know what it was.’ He stirred his tea. ‘We also want you to ask about the other abusers – we need to ID them as soon as possible, and so far we haven’t found anyone who recognises them. The computer experts are trying to undo the pixellation on their faces. In the meantime, we’re circulating some of the non-sexual images that feature them, to see if any coppers in other stations spot a familiar tattoo or birthmark, but there isn’t much to go on.’
I nodded. That was something I didn’t feel any reluctance about. The men who’d abused Jenny deserved everything they got.
Blake must have read something in my face, because he reached across the table and touched the back of my hand. ‘Hey – don’t get too caught up in all this. I know it’s hard.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, and tried to mean it.
‘Yeah, well, you might think that. But we’ve got you doing something that you’re not trained to do, and it’s a big responsibility. I told the boss I thought this was a bad idea.’
‘Why? Don’t you think I’m capable of asking a few questions?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s dealing with the answers that might cause you problems, Sarah. You’ve got to be prepared to hear some unpleasant things.’
‘I’ve seen and heard quite a bit today, thanks,’ I said levelly, thinking without wanting to of the glossy photographs that Grange had taken such pleasure in showing me.
‘Yeah, but you haven’t had to keep your composure. You haven’t had to pace the questions. You haven’t done an interview that didn’t go anywhere.’ He leaned back in the chair and stretched. ‘I know you think you’re going to go in there and he’s going to tell you everything that happened, up to and including how his brother killed Jennifer Shepherd, but I’ve got to tell you, more than likely you’ll get nothing from this. He has no real reason to trust you. He’s got a hell of a lot to lose if he’s honest with you. You aren’t exactly intimidating – and there’s no point in looking at me like that; I’m not quaking in my boots over here. Don’t take it personally. You just might not hear what you’re expecting to hear.’
I knew he was right, but it was still irritating to be told that I was going to fail. ‘Should we get back?’
Blake checked his watch. ‘Yeah. Finish your coffee.’
I eyed the half-cup I had left. Now that it had gone cold, it was even less appetising than it had been when freshly brewed, if that was the word for what they’d done to it. ‘No thanks.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
We didn’t talk on the way back. When the lift arrived on the fourth floor, Blake strode back to the paediatric wing while I wandered along behind him, reading through the questions, feeling the tingle of nerves down my spine and in my fingertips. The words seemed to dance on the page and I found myself slowing down, dragging my feet. Outside the door to Paul’s room, I ground to a halt, trying to pace my breathing. Blake looked around.
‘Come on. Sooner you go in, the sooner it’ll be over.’
‘I’m just … preparing.’
‘Get in there,’ he said gently, and pushed the door open. I took one more deep breath, as if I was diving into deep water, and went in.
1998
Five years, seven months missing
My father is late. Very late. I lie in bed and cuddle my toy pig, frowning at the clock on my bedside table. It’s nearly eleven o’clock and he hasn’t called. It’s not like him to be so late. Every time a car drives past our house, which isn’t often, I get up and look to see if it’s him. I don’t know why I care. Every two weeks, he comes, and every two weeks it’s exactly the same. He drives from Bristol on Friday night and comes to the house to say hello to me. He waits outside in his car, because Mum won’t let him come in. He spends that night and the Saturday night in a Travelodge, and on the Saturday we go out together and do something that’s supposed to be fun, like a walk in the country, or a trip to a stately home or safari park – something boring, something I would never choose to do if it wasn’t for Dad.
He shows me pictures of the flat in Bristol, of the room that he says is for me, and the cupboard I can fill with clothes. I’ve never been there. Mum won’t let me go. So Dad comes every two weeks instead, with this look on his face like a pleading dog, like he knows it’s not enough but he hopes I don’t mind.
I mind. And I’m old enough now to show it.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if I should tell him not to bother coming every two weeks – once a month would be enough for me. But I know it means a lot to him.
Or does it? I lie on my back and look at the shapes the trees make on the bedroom ceiling. I’ll have to draw the curtains before I can go to sleep. He isn’t coming. Maybe he’s fed up with driving all that way for two nights in a shitty hotel, even though this is supposed to be my birthday weekend. Maybe he just doesn’t care about me any more.
I let the tears slide down the sides of my face into my hair. After a while, I get distracted by the tears themselves. I’m trying to get them to fall equally on both sides. For some reason, my right eye is much more teary than the other one. I forget why I’m crying for a second, and then it all comes back. It’s stupid, anyway. I don’t even care.
Two seconds later I prove I’ve been lying to myself, as a car stops outside the house and I leap off the bed to look out the window. But it isn’t Dad’s crappy Rover. It’s a police car. And I stand by the window, unable to move, watching the policemen get out and put on their caps, then come slowly up the drive. They aren’t hurrying, and that worries me.
As the policemen disappear under the porch, I pad out to sit at the top of the stairs, out of sight but within earshot.
Mum answers the door and the first thing she says is, ‘Charlie!’
Stupid. They aren’t here about Charlie. Even I know that.
Mumble mumble mumble. Mrs Barnes. Mumble mumble. Mr Barnes was driving on the motorway. Very dark. Mumble mumble. Lorry driver couldn’t avoid him …
‘He didn’t have time to get himself out of trouble,’ I hear suddenly, clearly, from one of the officers.
I can’t help putting it all together. I don’t want to know what they’re saying. I can’t avoid it though. This isn’t what I want. This isn’t how I want it to be. My feet are bare and they have got very cold from being out of bed on a February night, especially when the front door is wide open. I hold on to my feet as tightly as I can and I clench my toes and I wish the police officers out of the house, back down the drive, into their car, as if I can rewind them and the rest of the day. I rewind and rewind to the last time Dad was here, to the time before that, to the time before he left. None of it has happened. None of it is real.
There’s still time to change everything so it all works out. There’s still time for everything to be OK after all.
Chapter 15
‘We’ve had some food,’ he announced, with a nod to indicate he was talking about Paul. ‘We haven’t felt much like talking, though.’
Paul’s eyelids flickered, but he kept gazing at the TV. There were only five channels on the hospital service, and absolutely nothing to watch on any of them, but that didn’t seem to be putting him off. One of the channels was showing a news bulletin, and I flinched as the high street appeared behind yet another reporter updating the nation on the latest developments in the hunt for Jenny’s murderer. Paul didn’t seem to react, just carried on. I guessed that the TV was a delaying tactic, that he wasn’t really seeing it. The Paul I had met on Friday – had it really been just a day ago? – was very far from mindless. The inane channel-hopping was a smokescreen.
His eyes were red, with blue puffy shadows under them, and now that he was sitting up I could see the mark on his neck – a raw, livid line that tracked across under his jaw and up to his ear. No cry for help; that had been the real deal. If he’d used a different kind of rope … if the police had been a little bit slower … it didn’t bear thinking about.
I felt a nudge in the small of my back: Blake, who frowned at me meaningfully.
‘OK, OK,’ I mouthed, glaring back. I walked slowly around the bed so I was standing between Paul and the TV.
‘Hi. It’s good to see you again, Paul. How are you feeling?’
He looked at me for a moment, then dropped his gaze.
‘There really aren’t enough chairs to go around, so do you mind if I sit on the bed? And can I turn the TV off so we can talk?’
He shrugged and I sat down, then took the remote control out of his hands and hit standby. The room was very quiet once the TV was off. I sat for a moment, listening to the air whistling in and out of Paul’s lungs. His throat had to be very sore if the bruising on his neck was anything to go by.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘Yes please,’ he croaked, and I poured him a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand by the bed. He took a sip, then fumbled the glass back down.
‘Paul, the police have asked me to talk to you because they think you’ll answer me if I ask you some questions.’
He looked up, then returned to staring at his hands without speaking.
‘I know you think you’re in trouble, but everything is going to be OK,’ I said, sounding confident, fairly sure that I was lying to him. ‘We just need to know what happened. Please, Paul, just tell me the truth if you can. If there’s anything you don’t want to answer, just say and I’ll move on, OK?’
I felt rather than heard Blake react to that, but Vickers raised one hand reprovingly and nodded to me when I glanced at him. I would ask the questions, but I wouldn’t browbeat Paul. And I knew as well as Vickers did that the questions he didn’t answer would give the game away.
Paul hadn’t said anything and I leaned in closer. ‘Is that OK?’
He nodded.
‘Right.’ I didn’t need to consult the sheet of paper in my hand to recall the first question. ‘How did you and your brother get to know Jenny?’
‘I told you that already.’ Paul spoke distinctly, slowly, biting off the end of each word. Colour washed up into his face and I knew he was annoyed.
‘I know you did,’ I said soothingly. ‘I remember, but these policemen don’t know about it. Just tell me for their sake.’
‘School,’ Paul said finally, having glared at me for a moment.
‘Primary school,’ I clarified.
‘Yeah. She was my friend in school. I helped her with her maths and she – she was nice to me.’
‘And you stayed in touch when she went to a different school?’
He shrugged. ‘She knew where I lived – we’d talked about it, cos we were the only ones in our class who lived on the estate. One day there was a knock at the door and it was her. She’d been having trouble with geometry – she just didn’t get it – and she asked if I’d give her a hand.’
‘And you did,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ His voice was gruff and low. Even allowing for the hoarseness, he sounded upset.
‘So, Paul, you and Jenny were spending time together at your house. And her parents didn’t know about it.’
‘Her dad didn’t like me. He called me a fat freak.’ Paul’s eyes swam in tears for a second and he blinked them away, sniffing.
‘How did she get to spend time at your house, then?’
‘She told them she was with her friends. There was some girl who lived nearby, and she’d cycle off to see her, supposedly. She had a mobile – her dad made her have one so they could track her down – and she’d tell them she was places she wasn’t.’ Paul laughed a little, remembering. ‘She’d ask if they wanted to speak to her friends’ mums when they rang her up and I’d be sitting there, shitting myself. She was like that – always laughing, always playing games.’
I nodded, and looked down at my list of questions. It was hard to make myself say the words, but I couldn’t avoid it for ever.
‘Paul, you know that the police found … things at your house. Images. Video. Pictures of Jenny, doing things. Did you – I mean, were you – did you think of it in the first place?’
He looked wounded and shook his head, cheeks quivering. ‘No. It was all them – him and her.’
‘Him?’
‘Danny. I told him it wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have gone near her, no matter what she said. He’s too old for her.’ Paul was struggling to sit up, lashing out with his legs, distressed. I stood up quickly to avoid getting kicked.
‘It’s OK, Paul. Just calm down. Have some more water.’
The boy took a few deep, quivering breaths, then drank obediently. The water gurgled as he swallowed it; there wasn’t a sound from anyone else in the room. I could feel the policemen willing me to stop pussyfooting around.
‘At some stage, something must have happened,’ I said quietly, sitting down again, ‘because she got involved with your brother, didn’t she?’
‘Dunno,’ Paul said. His face was very red.
‘Was she frightened by him?’ I tried to keep my voice as gentle as possible. ‘Was that why she kept coming back? Did he threaten her?’
‘No way,’ Paul said. ‘It wasn’t like that. She – she liked him.’
‘So as far as she was concerned, they were boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘I guess. Stupid, really, cos he’s loads older than her.’ Paul sighed. ‘Danny wasn’t interested in her. Not really. She just – she loved spending time with him. She’d do anything for him.’
That ‘anything’ meant a world of degradation. My mouth had gone dry and I swallowed, trying to concentrate on the job I had to do. Blake had thought I wouldn’t be able to handle this. I didn’t want him to be right. I took a few seconds to breathe, letting the images fade away, then started again.
‘Was it your idea to use the internet to sell the videos and pictures of her?’
Paul shook his head again, then shrugged. ‘Sort of. Danny thought of it, but it was me who had to work out how to do it – hide our IP, find sites to host the images, build the websites.’ In spite of everything, he sounded proud of what he had achieved. ‘We were making real money. People from all over the world were buying our stuff.’
I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘But Jenny suffered so that you could make those images.’
‘Whatever,’ Paul said, and his nose wrinkled.
‘No, not “whatever”. You’re talking about this like it was a legitimate business, but Jenny was being abused, Paul. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about it.�
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He wriggled. ‘I didn’t really know about a lot of the stuff that was going on. Danny made me stay in my room whenever they were – you know.’
I could guess.
‘Did you meet the other men who came to the house?’
‘No. I had to stay upstairs.’
‘Do you know what they were doing at your house?’
‘Having a party, sounded like.’ He was definitely looking uncomfortable. I wondered what he had heard. I wondered how hard it had been for Danny to persuade his ‘girlfriend’ to put herself at the disposal of those men. I wondered if she had screamed, now and then.
‘So you didn’t see anything when the pictures and videos were being made. Did you look at the pictures or watch the videos afterwards?’
‘No.’ That was an outright lie; his ears were flaming scarlet but his eyes never left mine. ‘Danny told me he’d stop the whole thing if he caught me looking. He told me he’d batter the living daylights out of me. I was just supposed to set everything up and let him upload it.’
‘Does he ever hit you?’ Grotesquely, I was hoping he would say yes. An abused Paul had a reason for going along with the plan.
‘Nah. All talk, that’s all he is. I’ll skin you alive, I’ll smash his skull in, I’ll rip her head off, fucking this and fucking that …’ Paul laughed. ‘He’s always having a rant about something. I just ignore him, mostly.’
‘You said he told you he’d stop if you looked at the images – didn’t you want him to stop?’
‘No way. It was really good, you know. Jenny was always round at ours. She was really happy, most of the time – blubbed now and then, but girls do, don’t they? And Danny was happy that we weren’t skint any more. And I was able to help. That was good – bringing in some cash. I wanted to do it, for Danny.’
I cleared my throat. ‘And was Jenny paid for her part in it?’
He looked vague. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think she wanted anything. She would have had to hide it from her parents and it was all a bit too much hassle, I think. She just wanted to be with Danny.’