Reaching into his pocket, Ronnie pulled out the clear plastic bag the police had put his belongings in. He’d had to sign a piece of paper with text in a language that he didn’t understand before they would return it to him. Ronnie opened the Ziplock fastener and pulled out his main phone which was nestled next to his passport. It still had plenty of juice in the battery, and he knew that it was safe enough to use. He didn’t normally take it on meetings like the one he’d had last night, but by the time he remembered that he had it with him, it was too late anyway. He googled the name of the street into the maps app on the phone, realising as it zoomed in on his position that he was right in the middle of Denpasar. It wasn’t an area he recognised, but he put in the address of one of the Internet cafes he used to see how far away it was. When he saw that it was less than twenty minutes by foot, he set off.
As he walked down the street, he thought about his main phone. It was clean, in that he didn’t conduct any business on it. But it was now compromised. In fact, he thought, if the police were tracking the phone then they could know where he was heading now. Ronnie slowed, realising that he would have to get rid of it. The other phone he was carrying would definitely have to go. It was a burner phone, bought from a market stall for a few rupiah with the express intention of using it to communicate with the bitch McGuire. He reached into his pocket and powered it on, waiting with anticipation to see if there had been a reply to his e-mail while he’d been locked up. To his relief, there wasn’t. He fiddled with the phone and eventually got the back off to take the SIM card out. Ronnie bent it back and forth several times until the small piece of plastic snapped in two, and he threw the pieces in different directions. The battery went into a dumpster that he walked past a few moments later, and he dropped the body of the main phone into a storm drain a few hundred yards further down the road.
Ronnie thought back to his conversation with the policeman. How quickly Sukarba had managed to roll him over. Ronnie knew that he couldn’t really complain—that was exactly what he was doing to other people—but at the same time it was irritating beyond belief. The main problem was that Ronnie didn’t have anywhere near that amount of money, but he couldn’t afford for his personal details to get anywhere near the justice system. Would Sukarba continue trying to extort money from him? Probably, Ronnie thought. If the roles were reversed, he knew he would.
He needed money. Lots of it. He could either pay Sukarba his fee and hope for the best, or disappear somewhere else. Either way, he needed cash. Ronnie thought through his options as he walked. If his passport had a flag on it, he would struggle to go anywhere so wouldn’t be able to run away and regroup somewhere new. Ronnie didn’t like it, but he would have to trust the corrupt policeman. The minute they arrested him the previous evening, Ronnie knew that his time in Bali was coming to an end. But he needed time—and money—to safely relocate himself
On the other side of the road, Ronnie saw a line of ramshackle stalls, selling everything from vegetables to clothing. He ran his eyes down the row until he saw what he was looking for. There was a stall with a hand-printed sign leaning against the barrow that read A1 Techno Service. A bored looking callow man was leaning up against the stall, smoking and watching the world go by. Ronnie crossed the road, ignoring the indignant horns of moped drivers as he did so, and approached the stall.
“English?” Ronnie said as he looked at the array of electronic devices on the barrow, seeing the young man nod his head in reply. There was everything from cameras to dictaphones on the stall, as well as what he was looking for. Ronnie picked up a battered Nokia phone and held it up in the air. “How much?”
“Two hundred thousand rupiah,” the young man replied with an enthusiastic grin. Ronnie frowned. That was about a tenner, which was way more than the phone was worth. The man powered the phone up to show him it was working. Knowing that he didn’t have much choice, and couldn’t be bothered to barter anyway, Ronnie reached into the plastic bag to get his wallet. The minute he put his hands on it, he knew that someone at the police station had emptied it of cash.
He opened the wallet to find a couple of banknotes left. They were crumpled, purple, and had the dour face of an Indonesian politician staring from them. Ronnie swore under his breath. They were about the lowest denomination of notes available—ten thousand rupiah—which meant the police had left him with about a quid to his name. Ronnie never carried much money in his wallet as being a westerner, he knew he would be a target for pickpockets, but he hadn’t been expecting to be mugged by the police.
“Do you buy phones?” Ronnie asked the young man. He shook his head with an approximation of a sad expression on his face.
“One hundred fifty?” he replied, smiling again and pointing at the Nokia. “Good price?”
Ronnie looked at the other phones on the man’s barrow before selecting five of the better looking phones on it. Then he laid his own iPhone next to them. It was far from the latest model, but a thousand times better than the sorry collection he was trying to swap them for. He needed to get rid of the phone anyway, and he knew he couldn’t sell it in a proper shop as that would leave a trail.
“Exchange?” Ronnie asked. The young man’s face lit up in excitement as he regarded the iPhone.
A few moments later, Ronnie left the barrow owner playing with his new acquisition as he walked to the end of the street. It would be a long walk home, but at least the police had left him enough money for thirty minutes in an Internet cafe.
It was time to get in touch with the slut McGuire.
48
Laura pulled up outside Gareth’s office and parked her Mini. She could see him and Dave through the window of the office, both deep in conversation in front of a laptop. Neither of them had registered the fact that she was parked right outside the office, so she took a moment to watch them.
Gareth looked angry about something, that much was plain to see even from this distance. As she watched, he jabbed a finger at the screen of the computer they were looking at. Dave said something to him, and Laura saw Gareth put his hand encouragingly on the younger man’s shoulder. At least whatever Gareth was wound up about, it wasn’t Dave. Although she’d been angry when she had found out it was him who had told Gareth about her and Kate in the club, when she’d had a chance to think about it, her initial anger had disappeared. He was looking out for his mate, that’s all it had been. If it had been her in the same situation, Laura hoped that she would have done the same thing.
She thought back over the events of the last few days. When she had gone into the office on Monday morning, she was exhausted—she had Gareth to thank for that, but hadn’t complained in the slightest—and then Paul had dropped his bombshell. It seemed so unfair, him getting sick like that. He didn’t deserve it. Not that anyone deserved a diagnosis like that one, but especially not him.
Laura’s thoughts turned to Gareth as she watched him unobserved through the window. She remembered the look on his face when she had suggested he come back to her flat. It had been a mixture of relief, anticipation, and fear. Much like Laura’s own feelings. It had taken them hours to actually get into bed, as if they were both putting off the inevitable for some reason. She hadn’t said anything to Gareth, but Laura wasn’t particularly experienced in that respect—with either gender—but when they finally made it that far, none of that had mattered.
What had surprised Laura when things did start to get properly serious was how attentive Gareth was. He’d seemed determined to make sure that Laura was satisfied before he was. And she had been, several times. She had never been with anyone like that before, and as she sat in the car watching him, she could feel her face flushing at the memory.
She watched as Gareth stretched, placing his arms behind his head and flexing his biceps. As he did so, he glanced out of the window and saw Laura’s car. Any trace of anger on his face disappeared in an instant, and he beckoned to her to come into the office. Laura opened the car door, trying to compose herself, and walk
ed over to the office.
“Hey, Laura,” Gareth said as she walked in. He took a couple of steps toward her and then seemed to change his mind at the last minute. “You finished early?”
“Yeah, I did,” Laura replied. “Any chance of a cuppa?”
“Sure,” Gareth replied, turning on his heel and walking toward the kitchenette. A few seconds later, she heard him banging mugs about.
“You okay, Dave?” Laura said, turning her attention.
“Um, yes,” he replied. “Listen, Laura? I’m sorry about the whole club thing. Telling Gareth what I saw, and all that.”
“Don’t, Dave,” she said. “Nothing to apologise about.” Laura waved a hand in Gareth’s direction. “We’re all cool, so don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, nice. So are you two, er…”
“Are we what?” Laura said, an image of Gareth in a particularly tender moment flashing across the back of her mind. She could feel her cheeks starting to colour again and blinked a couple of times to try to make the memory go away.
“Um, I mean, well. Okay?”
“Yes, Dave,” Laura replied with a smile. “We’re fine.”
Dave’s awkwardness was saved by Gareth walking back into the main office, two mugs of tea in his hands.
“Here you go,” he said as he put one of the mugs down on the desk in front of Laura. “Milk and two sugars.”
“Lovely job,” Laura replied. “Cheers.”
“Are you okay?” Gareth asked.
“Yep, fine. Why?”
“You just look a bit flushed, that’s all.”
“It was a bit warm in the car,” Laura replied, looking at him. He regarded her carefully, and she realised that he’d caught the lie.
“Really?” Gareth said, a faint smile crossing his face. “I’m sure I’ve seen that look before.”
“So,” Laura said quickly, keen to change the subject. She nodded at the laptop on the desk. “What are you two up to, then?” As she started walking around the desk to look at the screen of the computer, Dave closed the lid. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be nosy.”
“That’s fine, Laura,” Gareth replied. “It’s just a bit sensitive, that’s all. We’re looking at a client’s computer, and some of the stuff on it might be a little bit, well…” His voice tailed away.
“That doesn’t make sense, Gareth,” Laura said, mildly irritated that she was being taken for a fool. “If whatever’s on there is that bad, then your client wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place. Would he?”
“Dave, could you give me and Laura a few minutes, mate?” Gareth said. Laura watched Dave glance at his watch.
“I can finish this up at home if you want?”
“No,” Gareth said, sharply. Laura raised her eyebrows. Something wasn’t right, that much was obvious. He pointed at the computer. “That thing stays here.”
“Okay, well, I’ll just nip to the Costa over the road for a bit then.”
“You might as well knock off early, mate. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Laura pressed her lips together so that Gareth didn’t see her smiling. Dave’s not very surreptitious look at his watch had done the trick. She waited as he gathered his things together and disappeared through the back door of the office. A few moments later, she saw him cycling past the front, his hand raised as he waved at them.
She turned to face Gareth. He still looked angry, but it was more resignation than anger now.
“Spill the beans, Dawson,” Laura said, folding her arms across her chest and nodding at the still closed laptop. “Whose is that and what’s on it? Because it obviously doesn’t belong to a client.”
“It does, kind of,” he replied. “It’s Philip’s laptop.”
“Does Annette know you’ve got it?”
“Yeah, she gave it to us. There’s a complete copy of her laptop on that hard drive as well.” Gareth gestured to a small black portable hard drive on the desk.
“What’s going on?”
“She’s in trouble, Laura,” Gareth replied with a deep sigh. “That’s why we’re going through Philip’s computer and her stuff.”
“What sort of trouble?” Laura asked, frowning as she looked at him. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure, to be honest.”
“Gareth, stop bullshitting me and tell me the truth. What are you looking for?”
“Indecent images.”
“Pornography?” Gareth’s reply chilled Laura to the core.
“Indecent images,” he said, “of children.”
49
Annette doubled over the bowl of the toilet and retched, groaning as her stomach contracted again. She spat a stringy glob of bile into the bowl. There was nothing left in her stomach to throw up. She sat back on her haunches, a thin sheen of perspiration on her brow.
“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered, wondering if she was going to vomit again or if her body had decided that she’d had enough. When she decided it was the latter, she listened hard for a few seconds to see if the audio on her laptop had finished. Hearing nothing but silence, Annette got unsteadily to her feet and made her way to the kitchen to pour a glass of cold water.
Gareth and Dave had left a couple of hours previously, taking Philip’s laptop with them but leaving hers behind. Dave had said that he had everything he needed from it, but that he needed Philip’s actual computer to run some tests on it. Annette hadn’t been sure if he was bullshitting her or not, but it didn’t matter, anyway. She didn’t want Philip’s laptop, or indeed anything of his, still in the house.
Annette had sat down behind her laptop after they had gone and changed the password on her Gmail account. She’d overheard Dave and Gareth talking about it earlier before she had made them both promise that whatever software they had installed on her laptop was gone. They’d both seemed sincere enough in their promises that it had, and there was nothing else Annette could do but trust them.
She had been about to navigate away from her Gmail account when her computer pinged with a new e-mail. Her stomach dropped when she recognised the Protonmail address, but she had opened it, anyway.
Mrs McGuire.
I told you to text me, but you didn’t. How can we negotiate if you don’t even get in touch? It doesn’t matter anyway—your opportunity to negotiate has now expired. I required £20,000 to be wired to an account, the details of which I will give you via text. Note the new number below. If you don’t do this, then the attached video and all the others like it will find their way into the public domain.
You have 48 hours to raise the funds or I go public.
R.
The note was followed by another phone number with the same country code as the previous one, but a different string of digits after it. There was also an attachment. An MPEG movie file. Annette’s finger trembled over the trackpad button for a few seconds before she tapped it.
When the movie player on her laptop opened, it took Annette a few seconds to work out what, and who, was on the screen. She clapped her hand to her mouth as her diaphragm contracted, and felt the vomit rising into her mouth as she leapt to her feet to run to the bathroom, the desperate screaming on the soundtrack in her ears as she did so.
Annette returned to the bathroom to clean her teeth, glancing warily at the laptop as she walked past it. That poor child. That poor, poor child. When she had finished in the bathroom, she returned to the lounge and opened the screen, closing down the movie player. She couldn’t help but look at the frozen face of Philip as she did so. He was leering at the camera, having finished what he was doing, and it was all she could do not to punch the screen. Annette deleted the e-mail, emptied the trash, and closed the laptop again before sitting back in her chair to think.
She should go to the police. She absolutely should go to the police with the laptop. None of this was her fault. She’d had no idea what Philip was up to. Surely they would understand that? And what about the poor children? Maybe the po
lice could protect them somehow?
Annette sighed, knowing that the chances were they couldn’t. She and Philip had last gone to Bali a couple of months before he had died. While she had been sitting by the pool reading, he obviously hadn’t been scuba diving. Or if he had, not for long. She remembered one night during the holiday when he had come back to their hotel room half-cut. Annette had been nervous, knowing that he would probably want to play one of his games, but he’d passed out on the sofa in their suite. Now she knew why. He was already spent, and had nothing left for her. If she had known then what she knew now, she would have happily taken whatever punishment he wanted to dish out as it would have saved someone else. Someone else’s daughter.
Twenty thousand pounds was a lot of money. But, Annette thought, she could raise it if she really had to. It would be a stretch, but it was doable. Between their joint savings account and what she had in her own account, she could cover it. It might mean a trip to the bank to arrange an overdraft or maybe even a small loan to get her to the end of the month, but it could be done.
If the truth about Philip came out, she would be a pariah. There was no doubt about that. She would lose her job, or at best get shifted sideways into a non-customer facing role until she gave up. Annette would probably have to move, leaving Norwich behind to start somewhere fresh. Maybe, she thought, that would be a better use of the money she did have saved? Perhaps she should sell the house and start afresh somewhere new, maybe even with a new identity? Annette was pretty sure that Gareth would be able to help her with that. Annette’s crucial problem was that she couldn’t do that within the next forty-eight hours. And when the truth was out, then even her memory would be ruined. She would always be known as the wife of a paedophile who had run away.
Single Handed (Gareth Dawson Series Book 3) Page 18