by L M Krier
Once again, Ted passed the word that he wanted miracles working and he wanted them in record time. Everyone from the station knew they were up against the clock on this one, desperate to find something to give Ted enough to charge Ross with, before he was obliged to let him go.
With luck, and the prospect of enough to make a serious charge stick, he could get an extension to hold him for up to ninety-six hours. If he didn't have enough to charge him with anything after that, he would have to release him, which was the last thing he wanted to do.
Mike and the rest of the team came back to the office at the end of the afternoon, looking tired and frustrated by the lack of further progress.
'It's like talking to a brick wall, interviewing the staff, sir,' the DS told him. 'They're clearly scared stiff and no one is willing to talk, which makes me think they do know something. I can't even get anyone to tell me who the owner is.'
'I've got that, sarge,' Steve piped up from in front of his computer. 'I did a Companies House search just now. I've done you a print-out.'
'Great, Steve, thanks,' the DS said, then continued, 'Forensics found lots of samples, human hair and the like. They've gone off with them all and have promised to pull out all of the stops for an early result. There were hair and blood samples in the boot of the waiter's car. Iosif Petrescu, his name was, we managed to find that much out, at least, but not much more.
''No one would talk to us about him, not at the hotel or his home. The problem at the house where he was living was we couldn't find anyone who seemed to speak much English. They were clearly scared when the police came calling,' the DS told them.
'Right, we've made a start. We've perhaps not made as much progress as most of us would have liked to, but at least we've got a bit more time to hold Ross. Time to wrap it up for today and we'll all hopefully start back fresh tomorrow,' Ted told the team.
As everyone was getting ready to go, Steve followed Ted into his office and said, 'Boss, can I show you something online before you leave?'
Ted smiled to himself at the informality, the first time ever Steve had called him boss instead of sir. At the same time he hoped it was not going to be anything requiring a lot of time. He'd promised Trev he'd try to be home in time to get to their karate club. As well as the training, there was going to be a get-together over a meal afterwards. Ted was trying hard to make sure that he and Trev got out together a bit more. A social life was never easy for a police officer, but it became nearly impossible at times with an ongoing serious crime case.
Ted followed Steve back to his workstation and pulled up a chair alongside his. Steve was already opening pages on his computer.
'We know that Rory the Raver was at the hotel, at least once from what you've told us about the photos,' he began. 'But from what you said, those photos date from before Aiden was killed. It made me wonder who else from the PIEdpiper site might have been in our area on the day of the murder. Nothing much locally going on at all, so I widened the search, and look what I found.'
He pulled up a saved page with a newspaper article from a town in the Midlands. The headline was about a royal visitor opening a new community centre.
'The Knave of Clubs?' Ted asked, looking at the photo.
'The very same. Just an hour or so's drive down the motorway from where young Aiden was murdered, later the same evening,' Steve told him. 'The photo's not brilliant, worse when I enlarge it, but do you recognise any other faces there?'
Ted looked a little more closely. He had good eyesight, never having needed glasses for either distance or close work. At the front of the picture was the minor royal, accompanied by his wife. There was a collection of dignitaries slightly behind and to either side of them. He spotted a police uniform, and saw the same senior police officer that Steve had pointed out to him on the PIEdpiper website.
'So, two people fingered by this blogger as being possibly implicated in child sex abuse, close to our patch, the night Aiden died,' Ted said.
'More than two, boss,' Steve told him, pointing to another figure in the group. 'This character is the local Member of Parliament for the town in the article. Now look.' He toggled between screens and pulled up a another page from the PIEdpiper website.
Ted quickly scanned down the page, with talk of various allegations against the MP never getting far. There were vague hints of processes being blocked by an unspecified high-ranking police officer.
'It's all just rumour, though,'Ted said, partly to reassure himself.
'Rumour, yes, until a decent, honest copper starts investigating,' Steve replied. He was now looking at Ted with expectation on his face. It was the kind of hero-worshipping look a boy might bestow on a father whom he believed could do anything, including walk on water.
'So tell me more about this Knave of Clubs,' Ted said, partially to change the subject. 'I don't know much about him at all, except I know he's a marginal royal. Do you know how far down the line of succession he is?' Ted asked.
'I've just started looking a bit more into him. Pretty much off the scale, I think,' Steve told him. 'Most references only list the first dozen or so, some of them up to fifty, although I gather in theory there are four thousand or more people with a claim. He's not listed by any source I've found so far, so he's too far down to count.'
'Does he work, or is he in the forces or anything?'
'Certainly not forces,they wouldn't even let him in, according to rumour,' Steve said quickly. 'This site says it's because of doubts about a certain sadistic streak he's said to have. As for work, I don't know yet, perhaps some consultancies somewhere. I'll check.'
'Thanks, Steve, but not tonight,' Ted told him. 'You've done incredible work again, thank you, it's time you were going. And if I don't turn up in time to take Trev to karate club tonight, you are likely to have to investigate my untimely death tomorrow.'
'Just before you go, boss,' Steve said. 'Parish's Pies. I've found a closed and very secretive group on social media which appears to relate to it. There's a newsletter, but I didn't want to sign up for it using a computer inside the station, in case it later compromises the enquiry.'
'Don't go doing it from your home computer either, Steve,' Ted told him firmly. 'I need to give this some thought, and talk to someone who knows more about this type of enquiry than I do. It's clearly your field of expertise, but it's a long way from mine. I need to be absolutely sure what the protocol is. As you say, there's no point in us working hard on this and getting within sight of an arrest, only to find we've blown it and our actions are deemed to be those of an agent provocateur.'
'Now I'm going to pass a pleasant hour or so kicking people, which is my way of unwinding at the end of a hard day. What's yours, Steve?'
'Playing on the computer, sir,' the TDC smiled, switching back to formal mode.
Ted laughed. 'Well, absolutely no going near any sites which might get you into trouble Not until I've found out how to cover your back when I unleash you as our secret weapon on this enquiry. And you can take that as a direct order.'
CHAPTER Twenty-seven
After the usual morning briefing, Ted called both sergeants, Mike and Jancis, into his office for a more in-depth discussion. He wanted to leave Ross cooling his heels a little longer. He was hoping he might just get some test results in soon, to help him to persuade the hotel manager to talk.
'Looking at the photos from Rory's computer was not a pleasant task. But it has at least given us a link to the Sorrento,' he told them. 'But the shot of him there is with a different little boy, not Aiden. This is where I have to ask a lot of you, Jan. Somebody needs to go through the stills we have, concentrating on the kids, to see if any of them are from our area, from one of the homes, or posted missing from there.'
'No problem at all, boss,' Jan said promptly. 'I'm trained for this sort of stuff. It's only right that I'm the one to do it. And I've seen a lot of these kids while I've been asking about Aiden, so there's a good chance I might recognise a face or two.'
'Thank you,' Ted said sincerely. 'Mike, we need to pin down which of the registered offenders we've spoken to is a possible suspect. I'm not convinced about any of those I've spoken to, even without alibis. Their form is not right for this sort of thing. I want to talk to the super about getting warrants to search the homes and computers of anyone we think may be involved.
'My money is firmly on David Evans, boss,' the DS told him. 'He has no alibi, he has form with little boys. But he doesn't seem bothered, almost as if he doesn't see that what he's done, what he's been convicted of in the past, is anything wrong. I personally would like to see what sort of things might pop up on his computer.'
Ted's hand subconsciously went up to loosen his collar and tie as the DS spoke. 'I'll see about getting a warrant then. Do you want to haul him in again, question him further? Or go round to his place to talk to him, see if he even has a computer?'
'Boss, what about showing Flip some photos, including this man Evans, see if he recognises anyone from the time he went with Aiden?' Jancis suggested. 'Worth a try?'
'Anything's worth a try on this, Jan,' Ted replied. 'Now this next bit I'm not sharing with all the team just yet because I need to go and talk to the super about it before I do. We've got information that some very high profile paedophiles might have been in our area the night that Aiden was killed. I'm talking the highest level, including one senior police officer, from outside our area.
'We have absolutely nothing concrete to back this up at the moment. I believe there is a way to access the content of someone's computer, and certainly to see what they are distributing, without their knowledge, but all of this is way over my head. I need to talk to the super to ask if it can be done. However, she may just dismiss the whole thing out of hand so we can't move any further forward on it. And she may just think I have totally lost the plot and send me to see a shrink.'
He grinned at the others, although he was not really feeling the humour. He knew he was way out on a limb and rather wished it was Jim Baker he was going to talk to, not the Ice Queen. He always felt like a complete moron in her presence, although he knew he wasn't.
Just as he was getting ready to wrap up the discussion and head down to see her, his desk phone rang and he took the call. He listened in silence, then turned to the other two.
'Getting closer,' he said. 'That was forensics. A definite tie-in on Aiden's DNA in one of the hotel bedrooms and in the boot of the car driven by the waiter. I'll let Ross sweat just a little longer, then I'll ask him how he explains those facts and see what else he has to say for himself.'
He headed down to the Ice Queen's office with a lighter step. He'd got Steve to print out for him the addresses for the websites that they had been looking at. He knew there was only a slim chance she would take any of it seriously, certainly not enough to look into ways of covertly accessing email accounts, but he felt he had to give it a try.
Like any honest copper, he was tired of reading in the papers about alleged cover-ups and corruption within police forces. The very people who should have been protecting the children, not those who might have been abusing them.
He started out with the news of the DNA match, as it was something positive and concrete. He also mentioned the possibility of Evans being involved and asked about getting a warrant to seize and search his computers.
'DS Hallam is on his way over there now to question him further, ma'am. He has no alibi for the night in question. We don't even know if Evans has a computer but at least if the DS talks to him in his home he might be able to find that out,' Ted told her.
'You're not interviewing this suspect yourself?' she asked curiously.
'I have enough on for now with Ross,' he told her. 'I also wanted to talk to you about something else, ma'am. It's highly speculative at this stage and I don't know how to take it forward, if indeed we can, but I thought you would know.'
Ted gave her the list of websites and carefully talked her through what he and Steve had been looking at. He half expected her to dismiss the mere suggestion but she remained impassive as she clicked from page to page, carefully reading what she saw there.
'This is all total speculation, of course, most of it actionable,' she said. 'What makes you think there is any grain of truth in it?'
'That most unscientific thing of all, a good old-fashioned hunch,' he said honestly. 'We have DNA to put Aiden in the Sorrento at some point. We have video evidence that a known paedophile, Rory the Raver, used the hotel, though nothing to put him there on that day. At the same time we have some alleged paedophiles just down the road from there on the right date. Is it just coincidence?'
Her phone rang at that moment and when she answered it, she handed it across to Ted. 'For you.'
Ted listened briefly then hung up. He tried hard to suppress a grin as he asked, 'Permission to punch the air and shout 'yes', ma'am?'
'As long as you never, in my presence, propose a high five,' she replied dryly.
Ted smiled. It was the nearest to a relaxed and friendly exchange they had ever shared. 'That call was to let me know that Ross's touch DNA is also on the sweatshirt Aiden was wearing when he was found. Just a trace, on his arm, but enough to show that Ross came into contact with the boy. Got 'im.'
'Let's not get carried away, especially with the calibre of brief he has,' she warned. 'You could perhaps go for an accessory charge on that but I agree, it's an encouraging start.
'Now, as to the other matter, are you seriously asking me if we should tap into the emails of all the people on this list? Even if I knew how to go about it, can you imagine the can of worms it would be opening up?'
'So we just look the other way when children are being sexually abused?' Ted asked defiantly.
'No, of course not,' the Ice Queen said sharply. 'But what we have here is nothing but rumour and speculation, nothing on which I could legitimately base any such request and, I repeat, that's even if I knew how to.'
'Ma'am, there have been constant stories circulating about bent police officers involved in cases like this,' Ted said, keeping his tone as moderate as he could. 'Should we not perhaps at least look a little more closely into this particular senior officer? How are we ever going to get justice for these kids unless one day decent police officers like you and me stand up and do something?'
The Ice Queen regarded him closely, so much so that it started to make him feel uncomfortable. 'You do know you can talk to me, in confidence, about anything, don't you?' she asked. When he didn't reply, she continued, 'Very well. I will see what can be done. I expect shutters to come down all around, but there's no reason why I can't at least find someone to peep through the cracks for us.
'Meanwhile, let's not have any procedural mistakes anywhere on any of this. Nothing which would mean that suspects would slip through our grasp at the eleventh hour. You may only have a sprat in custody at the moment, but if we start with the sprats, it hopefully won't be long before we start to reel in the mackerel.
'I'm very impressed with the work of the TDC. But working on cases like this is always difficult and harrowing. I hope you are making sure he's not getting in too deep with his online activities and putting himself at risk?'
'Trying my best, ma'am, but he's like a hound on the trail.'
The Ice Queen looked serious as she continued, 'It's alarming how many people have had personal experience of sexual abuse as children. A case like this can bring up long-buried and distressing memories for anyone on the team who has, sometimes the unlikeliest of people. Don't forget there is counselling available for anyone who needs it.
'Above all, as well as being supportive of our team members, we need to be making sure that the case is not compromised in any way, by anyone in this category.
'Now go catch your sprat. Good luck, and keep me posted of all developments.'
CHAPTER Twenty-eight
Suddenly Ted was on a roll. The good news kept coming. Another phone call told him that Ross's fingerprints were all over the hidden cameras, and th
e search of his home had revealed a large quantity of pornographic material on his computer. Some of it was the footage with Rory the Raver that they already had. There was none date-stamped for the night Aiden died but there was plenty of it from other dates before that.
Kevin Turner had agreed to go through it, to see if he could recognise anyone else in any of the shots. Ted didn't envy him the task. The team working on it were also going to pull off more stills in the hopes that they may be able to track down some of the adults in them.
Ted had asked the custody sergeant to get Ross's solicitor in for later that morning. He wanted to get as many results as possible to throw at them before he spoke to Ross again. He didn't expect Ross to say anything more, not with his solicitor keeping him on a tight leash, but with what he had so far, he was happy there was enough to charge him in connection with Aiden's murder, at least.
He wasn't sure about the dead waiter. Unless they found a gun or a red motorbike in the search of Ross's premises, he couldn't see anything there to pin that murder on him. But for now, he would be happy with anything which would keep Ross in custody and stop him contacting those higher up the chain. He strongly suspected, though, that the solicitor was already talking to anyone connected.
All of the team members, except for young Steve, were out, so Ted decided to prise him away from his computer to sit in with him on the interview. The young officer had shown in the past that not only was he adept at IT, he was also quick to pick up on minor details in interviews that could have an important bearing on a case.
The solicitor was prompt. Ted noticed he was wearing a different suit to the one that he had worn the previous day. Even Ted's untrained eye could tell that it had probably cost far more than all of his own modest new wardrobe put together.