The following morning, an image of Chloe similar to the one that had been paused on the screen of the superintendent’s office computer adorned the front page of one of the local newspapers. Alex stopped at a garage for petrol on the way into work and was stalled by the weatherproof plastic boxes on the forecourt that were home to the daily papers. She felt physically sickened.
Who could despise Chloe so much they’d want to make her suffer in this way?
Harry Blake had held off from speaking to Chloe about the video file he had been sent the day before, clearly uneasy about how to broach the subject. Now these images adorned the newspaper’s front page the entire station would be aware of it. The superintendent was bound to be furious this morning, wishing he had spoken with her yesterday. Alex’s heart ached for Chloe. She didn’t understand the images – she couldn’t imagine Chloe, who she had always known to be so sensible, allowing herself to be photographed or filmed in such a way – but until she had the facts, she didn’t want to judge. Over the past six months Alex had grown close to Chloe. But how well did she know her really?
How well could anyone know another person?
She grabbed a paper from the plastic display case and went inside to pay for her petrol. After leaving the forecourt, Alex pulled off the main road and into a side street. She cut the engine and drew the newspaper on to her lap.
Cop a Load of This
Those five words alone were enough to fill Alex with an anger so powerful it might have brought her to frustrated tears. It was typical tabloid wordplay, crass and unimaginative. No doubt the ‘journalist’ who had written it had been impressed with his or her own efforts.
This webcam stunner is twenty-eight-year-old Chloe Lane,
the ‘article’ began,
a Detective Constable with the South Wales Police.
Even in the first sentence they couldn’t get their facts right, Alex thought. Chloe was twenty-six. How reliable was the rest of the piece going to be in its presentation of the ‘facts’?
Taken several years ago, this still from a webcam shows the young DC writhing on a bed whilst accepting payment for her ‘services’. For more, see page six.
Alex felt anger course through her. Payment? For God’s sake, these parasites just made things up as they went along. What evidence did they have to suggest anything of the sort? Plenty of young women made the mistake of allowing boyfriends to photograph or film them in ways they might later regret, but revenge porn was no proof of anything more. Amidst the previous evening’s thoughts of Rob and of the children she had seen him with – the family it looked as if he had become a part of – Alex had kept returning to Chloe. She had come to the conclusion that her young colleague was the victim of revenge porn. It was an area where Alex had little experience, although the numbers of complaints filed to the police was increasing at an astonishing rate. She assumed that the number of incidents was likely to be far greater than the complaints. Many women – and, in an increasing number of cases, men – were likely to be too embarrassed or ashamed to admit what had been done.
The paper was breaking the law. It was an offence to make public any intimate or sexual image or video that was otherwise private. They should be held to account for this, Alex thought. Prosecuted. Yet again, the press seemed to consider itself above the law.
She turned to page six. The words that greeted her plunged her from righteous fury into confusion.
Sent to us by an anonymous user of the webcam site ‘GirlsOnline’, the two and a half minute footage shows DC Lane responding to requests she receives via the site’s chatroom. The recording – in which Chloe Lane appears more like a member of the cast of Geordie Shore than one of Her Majesty’s serving officers – sees the young woman accepting instruction from a paying member of the site. Some of the images that appear later in the footage are too graphic to be printed here. Using the alias Belle90, Chloe Lane’s profile cites her vital statistics as 32-26-34 (bra size C).
It was everything Alex hated about the modern press and about this publication in particular. She’d previously been pestered by journalists from the same paper. This wasn’t about professional conduct or public interest – it was merely about scandal and sex. No doubt the newspaper’s website article on the ‘story’ would feature countless different images from the footage in an attempt to exploit as much cheap titillation from the recording as possible; yet another excuse to flaunt naked flesh amidst the real headlines of the day.
Alex sat back and let the rest of the article swim on the page in front of her as she tried to arrange her thoughts. Had Chloe known this was going to happen? Yesterday morning she had been acting strangely, and though Alex realised she was bearing the weight of her brother’s death on her shoulders, she had talked about him over a week earlier without her mood being so suddenly affected. The footage had turned up in the superintendent’s email account the previous morning.
Did Chloe know he had received it?
She couldn’t make sense of anything the article reported. Chloe would never have done that, surely. And yet, it so clearly was her. A younger her, a different her, but undoubtedly her. Revenge porn; sadly, Alex could comprehend that. But this? Webcam sites. Payment. This was all too much for her to get her head around.
She started the engine back up and flung the paper on to the passenger seat, flipping it over so she would no longer have to be subjected to the sight of Chloe in her underwear.
Chapter Forty-Four
The tension in the room was tangible; it snagged at the edges of Superintendent Harry Blake’s office desk and caught on every inhalation Chloe took, suffocating her. Every time she opened her mouth to speak, she felt herself choking. She had known this was going to happen, but knowing was never going to be enough to help her prepare for it. How could she possibly have prepared? No matter what she said, she knew what was coming.
The superintendent had asked her to take a seat, which did little to calm Chloe’s anxieties. It was embarrassing enough to know what he had seen – to know what the entire station had no doubt by now seen – and now his awkwardness was making everything worse. She could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead, glistening on his pale grey skin.
What was he so panicked about, Chloe wondered? None of the papers had published pictures of him in his underwear.
‘Do you want to explain it?’
Of course she didn’t. She didn’t want to explain it any more than she wanted to be sitting in that office right there and then, burning beneath the heat of the office strip lighting. She could explain it, but what would that achieve? The outcome was going to be the same.