Kruger nodded. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said.
‘ I’ll be okay and so will Kelly, I guess. He won’t do anything against us… but you’ll need to be careful, Steve. He might well come after you.’
Moments later, Myrna pulled away from the kerb.
Kruger let himself back into his house, totally exhausted.
It was 10 p.m. After pouring a beer down his throat and setting the house alarm, he crawled into bed, unmade since he and Myrna had been writhing ecstatically around on it.
The last thing he did before sleep was to reach out to the drawer in his bedside cabinet. He fumbled under a couple of paperbacks and his fingers found the butt of his. 38 police special. He pulled it out and placed it carefully on top of the cabinet, pointing away from his head.
Then he slept, secure in the knowledge that only another matter of feet away, in his wardrobe, were several other guns of various calibre and design which he could reach in seconds if necessary.
Trent openly cruised the bars and clubs of Blackpool, enjoying his newfound freedom, savouring the taste of alcohol and getting very drunk indeed. He was sure no one would recognise him. After all, he was nine years older, thinner and much more gaunt than he had been; his hair had shaded to grey and his facial features become narrow and pinched.
Nine years before he had looked like a predatory owl, now he looked like an evil weasel.
He drifted into a few pubs where he knew he could get some good information on where to go later. As it was his first night out of jail he wasn’t too bothered with the quality. All he wanted was a taster to whet his appetite.
Eventually he got word of something happening in the secure back room of a strip joint near to North Pier. He wasn’t sure what it would be — it was difficult to pin people down to specifics — but it would do.
When the clubs closed at two, he went to a cash machine and because it was another day, he was able to withdraw another?300 from the dead ambulanceman’s account.
With cash almost bursting out of his pockets, none of it his, he strolled to the club specified. He had been directed to go up the fire escape and knock gently on the first door he came to.
It would cost him fifty dabs.
He knocked, the money ready in his fist. The door opened. A gorilla/bouncer took the cash and counted it carefully. He directed Trent to the second door along a poorly lit corridor.
Trent went into a darkened room, illuminated by lights which had been dimmed almost to black. He paused on the threshold, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom.
He saw four rows of chairs arranged in a horseshoe shape facing a huge TV screen at the far end of the small room. About a dozen people, all men, were seated. Some conversed in a subdued way. Others were completely alone.
Trent weaved his way through the chairs and sat down on the front row to have an unrestricted view of the screen. He checked his watch — stolen from the ambulanceman — and saw the digital figures flicker onto 3.00 a.m.
What light there was in the room doused to black. Everyone’s attention focused on the screen, which flickered.
The image of a child, wide-eyed and beautiful, appeared.
A frisson of excitement captivated Trent’s body.
The films Trent saw that night were about half an hour each. They originated from Holland and had been dubbed poorly into English. The quality of the camerawork was shoddy, but the pictures were fairly sharp. The editing was questionable.
Both told much the same story.
One was based around a little boy who looked to be about nine years old.
The other was about a little blonde girl who looked slightly older.
They were both very graphic tales.
Each film began with what appeared to be the abduction off the street of the child. The story carried on with the captivity of the children, both of whom were tied naked to a bed. The story progressed to the sexual abuse of the kids. Sometimes by one person only, more often by a group of people. All men. During these scenes the children screamed and were allowed to do so. This seemed to fire the depraved lust of their captors and tormentors.
The climax of each mm was the rape of the child by one person, who with a noose around the neck of the child reached orgasm at the same time as apparently strangling the child to death. The deaths looked very real. Probably were.
Trent left the viewing room tremendously excited by what he had seen. It had been worth every penny.
He knew he had to go and repeat it.
Less than two miles away was the sea-front hotel on South Shore which belonged to the Lilton family. The hotel was quiet and in darkness. Outwardly it looked peaceful at four in the morning.
Inside was a different matter.
Ruth Lilton was in a deep, coma-like sleep on her bed. She lay on her back, mouth open, snoring. A cocktail of carefully administered alcohol and sleeping tablets had put her there. Virtually nothing could have woken her. Not even the whimpering cries and the deep male groans escaping from under the closed door of her daughter’s room.
Claire cried out in pain and shame each time her stepfather rammed his unprotected self into her. It was almost a blessed relief when he roughly turned her over, adjusted her loose limbs so she was on her hands and knees and carried on from the rear. The pain increased with deeper penetration, but at least she did not have to look up at his face, wasn’t obliged to inhale the intoxicant fumes he breathed all over her, or smell the sweat and body odour of him. She could bury her face in the pillow. It was also a relief because she knew he would finish quicker in this position.
He did. With fearsome, violent strokes.
It was all over. He collapsed exhausted across her, squeezing her young breasts roughly with his big, hard hands.
‘ That was great,’ he breathed.
He got off the bed and leaned towards her ear. ‘Don’t tell your mum, or I’ll fucking kill you,’ he warned her quietly. Then he left the room and returned to his marital bed.
Claire cried for a long, long time.
Finally her sobs subsided. She rolled off the bed and packed her bag. This time she wasn’t going to return.
‘ I thought you were never gonna answer,’ Steve Kruger’s voice boomed down the phone-line.
Mark Tapperman had had a busy day and night and was only an hour into what was going to be, at best, four hours’ sleep. He tried to force open his groggy eyelids. His wife uttered something unrepeatable next to him and dragged the single sheet over her head.
‘ Steve, what the hell do you want?’ Tapperman asked with some difficulty. Two reasons for that: his throat was bone dry (a sure sign he’d been snoring loudly) and it was hard work to coordinate the brain-speech function. ‘It’s… damn, I can’t even open my eyes to see the clock.’
‘ Four in the morning,’ Kruger informed him.
‘ Steve, you asshole, I’m shattered here. I’ve been on the go for twenty-four hours, as have you. In fact, why the hell aren’t you asleep? Anybody with any sense would be.’
‘ Okay, so I’ve woken you. Sorry and all that, but I couldn’t sleep and something came into my mind I needed clarifying.’
Tapperman sighed with reluctance. ‘Fire away.’
‘ You said that English guy, Gilbert, was catching a plane out of Miami. When, exactly?’
Tapperman shuffled his brain cells and sorted through them. ‘Er, gee… five or six o’clock this morning, I think it leaves… I’m not completely sure. Why?’
