Later, the verger was transferred out to a less claustrophobic parish. But the one good thing the old fiddler did was instil in him a love for bringing out the textures and elaborate carvings of gravestones. He loved it for its solitude, its craftsmanship, the sometimes poignant stories he unearthed. He’d begun in local churches, but as soon as he was old enough to drive, his hobby took him far and wide. He especially liked the overgrown graveyards and the forgotten cemeteries in abandoned churches. There he would find little gems. Stories of lives blighted by poverty, sometimes whole families from the last century or before struck down and decimated by disease. In the graveyards he at last found an outlet, a way of suppressing the wanton hunger that haunted his soul. And he was drawn to specific types of gravestones. Ones with memento mori in the form of skulls and bones carved into their surfaces. Reminders from the dead of the survivors’ own mortality. When all that is left after the flesh has rotted away is the hardened core of our beings. Solid, pure, white. He liked to touch the carved curves of the craniums and run his fingers along the straight long bones wrought with such care. He liked to touch the real thing even more. Dreamed of doing just that.
He turned back to the search engine and typed in another phrase. This time the screen changed and an image appeared. Innocuous. A flower under the title St Nicholas. Slowly, the petals on the flower all fell off to leave a naked stigma, style and ovule. Underneath was a single box with a flashing cursor. He typed in a password and once more the screen changed to a series of security questions. After a couple more layers, he got to a bulletin board on the Bopeep site. Various headlines and threads appeared. Some explicit, some less so, but all buyers and sellers. He chose one called ‘fresh daisies’. He typed, ‘New bloom available. Anyone have any suggestions?’
Within minutes, he had a dozen answers. He smiled and typed.
This one is special. I will post a verifying image. Thirty-second clips will be available for 0.1 bitcoin. The whole for 1 BTC. Special venue arranged. See here.
A link led to a YouTube video. A famous Game of Thrones scene in a dimly lit brothel where the girls, paraded in descending age for the punter’s delectation were all dismissed, in turn, as ‘too old’.
He sat back and watched the responses flow in. After a while he got bored and typed in a new address. A niche site. The place where he did most of his business now. Where like-minded individuals stumped up the PPV money. Where they’d pay for certain words to be spoken. Pay for close ups of the colour draining from a face with a final breath.
The modus operandi was always his and his alone. But watching him do it could be bought for a price.
He checked the bulletin boards, content in the knowledge that here, despite his own shame at the feelings he’d had for so many years, he shared a sense of belonging. There were no images here. This site was too extreme even for the most hardened of pornographers. He read words and descriptions instead that were almost medieval in their depictions.
He still wondered at a world where technology had enabled him to monetise his sickness. But this was his world.
Soon, he would introduce his new bloom, Blair, to it.
Fourteen
Tuesday
Woakes rang at seven thirty. Anna had dawdled in the shower, muzzy from a bad night’s sleep in which Shaw’s face kept swimming up into her consciousness, making her open her eyes every couple of hours to make sure he hadn’t manifested in her bedroom. The three or so hours of the good stuff didn’t make up for the bad. Not one bit.
She was out of the shower, her hair still wet, when the phone rang.
‘Morning, ma’am.’
‘Dave, where are you?’
‘At Hawley’s place, in the middle of nowhereshire.’
‘That won’t work with sat nav.’
‘Erm… over the bridge. Place called Sully near Penarth. Porlock Avenue. I can walk to the shore and wave to you across the Bristol Channel if you like.’
‘Have you been there all night? Where did you sleep?’
‘In the car. What does it matter? He’s well spooked, is Hawley. At about seven last night he started shipping bin bags out to the front door.’
‘I am not going to ask you how you know that.’
‘Baa, baa sodding black sheep, ma’am. This morning he’s gone out for a run. It’s the first chance I’ve had to take a look and it’s all gold. I told you we’d rattle him. I’ve sent you some snaps. Take a look and I’ll ring you back.’
Anna rang off and opened her messages. Woakes had sent three images. The first was of three black refuse bags tied and awaiting collection. The second showed one of the bags opened, full of newspapers and cuttings. The third had the newspapers spread out on the floor. She tapped and enlarged. Three different newspapers, but the same type of headline on each.
Police continue search for missing girl Hope dwindles for little Katelyn Mother asks for prayers for her little angel
‘Shit,’ Anna said and rang Woakes back. ‘When did he leave?’
‘Fifteen minutes ago.’
‘Stay there and do not do anything. Understood? I’m on my way.’
Fifteen miles was a damn site longer by road across the Severn Estuary. Anna knew the way. She’d mapped it dozens of times crossing the bridge between the two countries. Still travelled it when she visited Kate and her mother. Penarth had been a destination for her when she was growing up. They’d visit to walk the promenade or get fish and chips on the front and marvel at the huge captains’ houses with their rooftop lookouts. But its roots were in the profits of the heavy industry that had ripped the wealth from the valleys in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many of the houses had been built as retirement homes for the coal mine and steel plant owners, and around these bigger properties, the streets had spread and grown as money and people flowed from Cardiff. Its gold-star schools drew the upwardly mobile middle class like a cowpat drew blowflies. Sully she knew only vaguely as a spot along the coast between Penarth and its much brasher neighbour Barry. More retirement homes where you could watch the south westerlies bringing rain up the Channel and wave at the English across the water and know that your weather pain was quickly going to be shared by them.
She took the A4232 off the M4 and headed in towards Llandough and Lavernock Point. Sully was full of three-and four-bedroom detached modern houses and scattered bungalows. Porlock Avenue looked newer than the rest. Red-brick buildings with clay tiled roofs and lots of flowers in baskets and raised beds. The people who lived here had time on their hands, conscious though they might be of it passing too quickly. Woakes met her as she pulled up, and he got into her car. It looked like he’d slept in his suit.
‘Is he back yet?’
‘Ten minutes ago.’
‘Bags still out front?’
Woakes nodded towards the rest of the street. ‘They must be expecting a collection.’
‘What do you make of it?’ Anna asked.
‘We’ve rattled his cage, now we start poking.’
‘Didn’t you do that yesterday?’
Woakes let out a derisory laugh. ‘That was just a measly tremor. He’s been collecting newspaper cuttings about missing kids, for Christ’s sake. He’s continuing the fantasy. It stinks. He stinks.’
Woakes was right. Her antenna was twitching, too, but Woakes’ gung-ho approach bothered her almost as much as seeing those cuttings. ‘He’s done nothing illegal, Dave.’
‘Then he’s got nothing to worry about, has he?’
Woakes opened the car door but Anna put a hand on his arm. ‘We don’t know what this is yet, but we need to be careful. I don’t like scatterguns, Dave.’
Woakes held both hands up in supplication. ‘Fine. I’ll play nice.’
He moved to get out again but Anna held him back. ‘Make sure you do. The heavy-handed bad cop routine can wear thin very quickly.’
Shipwright had taught Anna a lot. He was old school but his theory about how you dealt with persons of interest had no paragraph entitled rubbing them up the wrong way until they bled.
Anna followed Woakes out and walked to the door of a small 1970s red-brick bungalow. This was not a cottage, as envisioned. No cosy porch. No wild flower garden. Instead, there were white, practical uPVC windows and doors and easy-to-water shrubs in tubs. It looked exactly the sort of place a retired spinster or widow might live with bay trees and chrysanthemums out front. The only incongruity was a newish Audi parked to one side with a surfboard strapped to the roof.
Woakes rang the bell.
Hawley answered dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
‘Dr Hawley,’ said Woakes. ‘Just a couple more questions, sir. Mind if we come in?’
Hawley didn’t move. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Isn’t this where you live?’
‘No. I have a place in Bristol. This is my aunt’s…’ The words tailed off as Hawley did the maths. ‘You followed me.’
‘All part of the service, sir. Now, can we come in?’