mattress, which was stained in various places. There were no sheets and no pillows; nothing to indicate when it had last been slept in, or by whom.
What have I got for my time and my sore foot? Carlyle wondered. Sweet fuck-all, basically.
From the kitchen came the sound of breaking crockery, quickly followed by the sound of Shen cursing. ‘Shit!’
Smiling, Carlyle dropped to the floor and adopted a press-up position. Lowering his chest even further, he turned his head to check under the bed. Amid the thick dust were tiny pellets of what looked like mouse droppings, but on the far side, by the wall, was a rag or a piece of clothing. Grunting with the effort, he pushed himself back up and wiped the dirt off his hands, reminding himself that a trip to the gym was overdue. Walking round to the far side of the bed, he knelt on the mattress and slid his hand down to recover the item. It was a child’s T-shirt. He laid it out in front of him on the bed: the white cotton was grey with dirt, but you could still make out the legend
Hearing footsteps in the hallway, he quickly scrunched the T-shirt into a ball and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. Getting up from the bed, he turned to face Shen.
‘Find anything?’
‘Nope,’ Shen replied, scratching his head.
‘Okay,’ said Carlyle. ‘Sorry for wasting your time. Let’s call it a day.’
Rose Scripps sat in the windowless, airless video-review room, tightly gripping a Venti Gingerbread Latte in her left hand. The outsize cardboard cup was still more than half-full, but the coffee had long since gone cold. Rose now bitterly regretted spending?3.50 on it on her way in to the office. As a single mum living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, it was the kind of luxury that she couldn’t afford — especially if she didn’t actually drink the bloody thing. She took another sip and made a face. At least it was some sort of distraction from the appalling video material that she had been obliged to watch this morning.
Rose rolled her chair further away from the monitor, keeping her eyes focused on a spot eight inches above the screen on the wall behind it. That way, it looked as if she was still watching the footage, even though she wasn’t. She had seen enough.
What Rose continued hearing, however, was another matter. She couldn’t mute the sound and it was impossible to tune out, impossible to ignore. Even now, the incessant soundtrack of grunts, groans, cries and slaps affected her, got inside her head and messed with her brain. She could erase the images but not the sounds. They played in a loop inside her head until she could smell it, taste it, feel it.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Want to take a break?’ Detective Simon Merrett paused the video and dropped the remote on the desk nearby. ‘This stuff is heavy going. It’s okay for you to walk out if you want to.’
Rose nodded, biting her tongue in an attempt to stop the tears welling up. It wasn’t professional; she should be beyond crying by now. She had been doing this for a long time: five years as a child protection social worker for the NSPCC — the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — followed by two years on secondment to the Victim ID Team. There were still plenty of times like this, when she felt sick to her stomach, but it was a job that had to be done. Around 3,000 people a year were prosecuted for committing sex offences against children, including rape, assault and grooming. The people responsible for this morning’s video nasty were just the latest on the list.
Grabbing her bag with her free hand, she quickly got up and headed out the door. In the ladies’ toilet, she blew her nose and washed her face. Then she locked herself in one of the cubicles and sat down on the closed toilet lid and went through her coping routine. First, she got her breathing in order and cleared her head of all the images she had just seen, humming to herself to try and drown out those awful sounds as well. Then she went through the story of her day: Louise, her lovely, warm seven year old, jumping into bed with her at 6.32 a.m.; a rushed breakfast followed by the school run; then the journey to the office and her ridiculously decadent coffee purchase. Everything up to the moment she arrived at work. Everything, therefore, that reminded her that she was a normal person who did normal things; someone whose life wasn’t all about wading through an ocean of other people’s shit. Not
Then she thought about the rest of her day.
After more than two hours in the video suite, Rose wondered how much more of it she could take today. She glanced at her watch, then pulled her mobile out of her bag. Hitting the most recently dialled number, she waited for a connection and listened to it ring.
‘Hiya!’ The chirpy voice of Sasha, the gormless but likeable Hungarian au pair that Rose shared with three other mums, came on the line. Some heavy beat thumped in the background; it sounded like Sasha was in a disco although it was probably just a shoe shop or something.
‘Sasha, look, there’s a change of plan at my end. I’ll pick Louise up from school myself today.’
‘Are you sure?’ Sasha shouted back, over the music.
‘Yeah, I’m going to work through lunch and then I can get away from the office later this afternoon. I’ll do some more work at home tonight.’ Setting this out for her own benefit rather than Sasha’s, pre-empting any guilt she might feel at the thought of bunking off.
‘Okay.’
‘Are you still on for tomorrow?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Thanks. Speak then.’
‘Okay. Bye.’
Rose ended the call and dropped the phone back in her bag. A couple of women had entered the toilets and started complaining about the latest collapse of the office IT system. After flushing for the sake of authenticity, Rose unlocked the stall and headed over to the washbasins. She didn’t recognise the other two women and they ignored her. After washing her hands, she proceeded straight to her desk, giving the viewing room a wide berth.
About fifteen minutes later, Simon Merrett came and found her. He was a few years older than her, married, with two kids, one a couple of years older than Louise, and one a year younger. Merrett liked to hover by her desk, and Rose had the distinct impression that he was waiting for her to come on to him, but that was never going to happen. He was a good-looking guy but he was a colleague — and anyway, he was spoken for. Both of those were big red flags. Louise’s father had done a runner three years before. Since then, Rose’s ‘private’ life had been like a desert. But she could handle that. Apart from anything else, this job did nothing for your sex drive. If she got into another relationship, it would be with someone who had a boring job and could last the distance. That excluded any coppers and married men.
Coming closer, Merrett perched himself on the edge of her desk. In a pair of torn jeans and a Foo Fighters T- shirt, he looked thirty-five going on eighteen. Instinctively, she edged away from him slightly.
‘Had enough for today?’ he asked.
‘Is there much more?’
‘Nah, I’ve been through most of the rest of it.’ He looked around the room, an open-plan office full of empty desks. ‘Even by the standards of this place, it’s really quite bizarre stuff.’
Rose fiddled with a Bic pen. ‘At least we don’t have to try and guess where that event took place.’
‘No,’ he nodded, ‘we got lucky there. What kind of pervert has sex with a kid while on the London Eye?’
‘What kind of pervert has sex with a kid, full stop?’
‘Yes, but four hundred feet up in the air? In public?’
‘One who doesn’t have any concerns about getting caught,’ Rose said in disgust. ‘How many people complained?’
‘Out of the eight hundred riding on it at the time?’ Merrett scratched his head. ‘Only two. A retired couple from Swansea who were in the next capsule.’
‘Everyone else was looking at the view, I suppose. The House of Commons lit up at night is very nice.’
‘And people are very good at ignoring things they don’t want to see.’
