Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

Daniells doesn’t ask him to elaborate. For all that he plays the fool, the cheerful, middle-aged detective has a good mind. He knows the names of the other potential victims off by heart. All were bright, attractive and somewhat naïve. In the weeks before they were last seen alive, each began communicating in secret with somebody whose identity was unknown to friends or family. And each hid or destroyed their recent correspondence. A few scraps of paper were recovered from a brazier at the bottom of one missing teenager’s garden. The paper was thick and creamy. Expensive. Possibly Italian. The fire had scorched most of the contents of the correspondence, but what was visible had been written with a quill, in a rich black ink. The only words that could still be made out were the final couplet of a work of ancient poetry. Daniells remembers it perfectly – had recognized it even before he finished the briefing notes from the NCA. It is a line from a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

… fix’d, she stands upon a bleakly hill,

There yet her marble cheeks eternal distil.

‘So we’re going to see him, I suppose,’ says Daniells, quietly.

‘Be rude not to,’ says Neilsen, staring into the blackness and not sure what to hope. He doesn’t want her to be down there. Doesn’t want any of them to have been deposited in the little sinkhole at the deep end of this field, not much more than half an hour from the home where her parents have kept her memory alive for more than two decades.

‘It’s all circumstantial,’ says Daniells. ‘He moved around. He was bound to have crossed paths with lots of people. He judged music competitions, gave talks at public schools. A decent defence barrister wouldn’t even break a sweat.’

‘That’s why we need something concrete. And the source says we’ll find it here.’

‘And they’re sure it’s the stepfather?’

Neilsen doesn’t feel able to answer accurately. All he knows is that three weeks ago, around the time Griffin Cox was being transferred to HMP Holderness, somebody left a post on a website set up by the family of Bronwen Roberts. It was at once a memorial, and a place for people to leave any information about her whereabouts. It had been sporadically maintained over the past few years but in the first week of March, this year, somebody instructed the family to dig in the sinkhole at Chappell’s Farm. The post was ignored. Then Crimestoppers received an anonymous tip. The information was the same. Their source claimed that they had been the accomplice of one Griffin Cox on the night he killed Bronwen Roberts, and disposed of her body in a place he knew nobody would think to look. The information was duly passed to the team responsible for looking into the teenager’s disappearance. It had already come to the attention of the Cold Case review team, under the auspices of the Serious and Organized Unit. It had then come to DC Daniells, who had made contact with the other investigative units who had all identified convicted child abductor Griffin Cox as a definite person of interest. All were of the same opinion: the tip-off had come from Cox’s guardian, Wilson Iveson. Now eighty-six and recently diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, the information was seen by many as being an attempt by a dying man to soothe his conscience. Three different sets of investigators have visited him at the old people’s home where he now resides. All have come away unsure what to believe. As well as the cancer, Iveson has advanced dementia. According to the care assistants, he didn’t even know how to use a computer.

‘He’s visited him every fortnight since he was locked up,’ says Daniells, quietly. ‘Regular correspondent. Only phone call he ever makes, save for his lawyer. And Iveson’s looked after the sod’s affairs for years. I don’t see why he would just turn on him. I just hope it leads somewhere. For all the stuff he’s linked to, he’s not far off the end of his sentence. He’s only got one black mark against him, and it’s cost him eight years. A long way to fall for a guy used to the finer things. Grew up in all kinds of luxury, bosom buddies with the Bullingdon boys, if you believe the papers. You should see the photos of the grounds of his house! Statues and cypress trees and waterfalls – like something from the Renaissance. That’s how him and Iveson met. He designed the gardens. Did the work in the 1960s when Cox’s mother was barking mad and opening up her stately home to any passing hippy willing to share a joint and give a day’s labour in the grounds. Weird environment for any kid. Not making excuses, but if Cox did go a bit bloody peculiar, you wouldn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to trace it back. Still, the idea that he’s done all of them … It’s hard to imagine.’

Neilsen agrees. He finds it hard to imagine. And yet, as his boss can’t resist telling him, stranger things have happened. He remembers her exact phrase. ‘Outlandish shit is our bread and butter, Ben’. She has always had a way with words.

‘He might not be wanting out,’ says Daniells, picking the head off a length of grass and throwing it into the cool air. ‘Not all the high-profile prisoners who get released from the vulnerable wing are going on to have much of a life. How many have been done, now? Eight? Nine? Questions in parliament, apparently.’

‘I don’t like vigilantes,’ says Neilsen, and means it. ‘It’s mob justice, however well intentioned. But I do understand the motivation. It’s that old question, isn’t it? What do you do with predators who can’t ever be rehabilitated? There’s no cure for paedophilia, is there? But you can’t lock people up forever and you can’t tell people murder is wrong when the