She rang Woakes’ number, knowing she shouldn’t; phone messages left in the heat of the moment had a habit of coming back to bite you if you weren’t careful. But she was too angry to let things lie. It went straight to voicemail.
‘Dave. Ring me. I’ve had Ben Hawley on the line. Someone has broken into his apartment and stolen his iPad. He’s pissed off and understandably so. We need to talk about this. In the meantime, I am satisfied that Hawley is clean and you are not to go anywhere near him or approach him or his work colleagues? Is that clear? No more bish bloody bosh, Dave.’
She killed the call and almost immediately her phone pinged. A text message from a number she recognised. A DS in North Wales coordinating their investigation into the bodies unearthed by Shaw. Two sentences only, but enough to make her forget Dave Woakes in a heartbeat.
Europol confirm DNA match between Petran and Krastev. Your boy was right, they are one and the same.
Her boy.
That was the trigger she’d been waiting for. Time she paid him another visit.
Twenty-Nine
Thursday
She got to Whitmarsh early on Thursday, up with a pink dawn and the promise of more dry weather. On the way, she rang Holder.
‘Rosie’s father. What did you and Ryia make of him?’
‘He’s clean, ma’am. Nothing new and the original team went to all sorts of lengths to check his alibi. As for the man himself, I’d say he’s never recovered. He’s still in counselling with victim support. He was the breadwinner and he’s riddled with guilt about not protecting Rosie. Once we got him talking he re-ran the whole day, minute by minute, from when the police turned up on his shift to tell him. He moved out because he needed a little ‘distance’ to stay sane. His words, ma’am.’
‘Computer?’
‘Hates them. Doesn’t own one. Uses his stepson’s.’
‘Thanks, Justin. I’ll be on the mobile if you need me.’
The call confirmed what she’d expected they’d find. If they were going to get anywhere with Rosie’s case, it would be through intelligence around the images. She was sure of it. She rang Whitmarsh from her car to warn them that she was coming. No one objected. If this carried on she might end up with her own spot in the car park.
* * *
Shaw was waiting in the interview room, legs crossed at the ankle, his expression giving nothing away. The stench of the air freshener was strong this morning but failed miserably to mask the testosterone stink of sweat that had seeped over the years into the walls and the floor. Anna sat and took out a file.
‘Morning, Anna,’ Shaw said. ‘You’re looking better.’
Anna returned his gaze. ‘A little stronger every day.’
‘Good to hear.’
She took out a file and put it on the table. ‘It is Krastev,’ she said.
Shaw inclined his head and let it drop a few degrees in acknowledgement. ‘Not the sort of person you’d want to take home for tea with your mother, eh, Anna? But then again…’
She ignored the barb. ‘North Wales police will want to know how he died.’
Shaw nodded. ‘He had a bad accident.’
‘Forensics previously confirmed he had bled to death, but you say he was buried alive.’
Shaw nodded again. ‘The accident was that he ran into me.’ Shaw uncrossed his legs. ‘You haven’t got your nifty little recorder on, Anna. We both know what that means. Whatever I say here is off the record, right? Which tells me that perhaps you have another agenda.’
Anna smiled. Shaw had seen through her within a minute. The rules with men like Shaw were not to let them inside. Not allow them anything they could try and manipulate you with. But Shaw had already crawled inside Anna’s life and there was no taking that back. She knew this was a very dangerous game and she was straying down a path she’d normally have avoided like the black death. Walking along it, moreover, hand in hand with a serial torturer and murderer. But today this was exactly the route she needed to take. Despite everything that had happened in the Willis case, Shaw had been instrumental in helping Anna see the patterns that eventually got Willis caught. Rainsford told her that when his supervisor at GCHQ in Manchester heard what Shaw had done, his initial and bizarre reaction was that Shaw would be difficult to replace. This was a man with expertise who, Anna suspected, was cooperating because he needed and wanted her help.
But cooperation was a two-way street.
‘You told me about Abbie and the Black Squid. You told me you’d spent some time on the Dark Web.’
Shaw watched her. ‘Too much time,’ he said.
Anna nodded. ‘There was a case recently in the press. A model who was tricked into a job in Milan and then drugged and abducted for auction on the Dark Web.’
Shaw nodded. ‘I read about it.’
‘How common is that sort of thing?’ She already knew the answer, but she wanted to draw Shaw in with this. See how far he was willing to go.
‘That’s just the tip of a dirty great iceberg, Anna, as you well know. Illegal arms, hackers for hire who can steal anyone’s identity, Nazi sympathiser sites, paedophile forums, and things for sale which should never be saleable. Exotic animals, people, children, weapons, all in the unindexed Deep Web. People were shocked by what happened to the model. Believe me, there are far worse things.’
Anna listened to Shaw’s Mancunian drawl listing the horrors and looked up at the guard sitting behind. He heard and saw everything. But the unwritten rule here was that he was the three wise monkeys rolled into one.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
‘When you say “worse things”… How much worse?’
Shaw’s eyes were half-closed. He opened them fully now and leaned forwards. ‘Why no minder today, Anna? Why did you come alone?’
Anna kept her eyes on the pad she was writing on. She didn’t want Shaw to see her react. ‘The others are all busy. We found some images.’ She slid out a printed sheet. A photocopy with two images. Rosie Dawson’s at the top, Blair Smeaton’s beneath.
Shaw looked at the images and frowned. ‘Krastev had these?’
She ignored his question. ‘Our Hi-Tech people have linked these to some forums. These were adverts. PPV with a promise of more to come. Pinocchio and Littlefeet. Do they mean anything to you?’
‘This is not Krastev, is it?’ Shaw said, studying the images.
‘What about #pogo?’
Shaw looked up then, a sharp movement, his expression unreadable, but Anna sensed something shifting behind his eyes. A flicker of anger? Disgust? ‘Anna, what have you got yourself involved in? Is this the case the others are busy with?’
Anna said, ‘We know paedophile rings operate on the Dark Web—’
Shaw interrupted her. ‘This isn’t a ring.’
‘What?’
‘Do you know what a red room is, Anna?’
‘I’ve read about them.’
‘Then you know they’re supposed to be an urban legend. Dark Web sites where people use cryptocurrency for pay per view access to live, streaming acts of the worst kind – murder, torture, acts of violence. Otherwise known as Hurtcore sites.’
The guard, the wise monkey, shifted in his seat.
‘Is this an advert for a red room? How do you know?’
Shaw shrugged. ‘I don’t. Not for certain. But #pogo… that’s not good. How well do you know your serial killer history, Anna?’
She heard her own heart beating fast, thudding in her ears. ‘Not well enough, obviously.’
‘No, well, I don’t blame you.’ Shaw looked at the images again and then said, ‘#pogo is a reference to John Wayne Gacy. He killed at least thirty young boys in the 1970s, burying the bodies under his house. When he killed, he sometimes dressed up as a clown. Pogo the clown. This hashtag is telling people what your man intends to do. What he’s probably done already.’