The Business Of Dying

39

The following afternoon, at a hotel in Somerset, I put the tape from Raymond's car into the video recorder in my room, and watched for thirty seconds. It was enough. I have seen many dreadful things in my time. I've been an inner-city copper for close to twenty years so there aren't that many sights that can shock me. But this one did.

Molly Hagger was on the tape. She was sitting on a bed in a sparsely furnished room, her hands tied behind her back. She was naked but for a pair of black frilly knickers but she still looked thirteen, maybe even younger, and she was in great distress, sobbing fearfully. A naked man appeared in front of her, side-on to the camera. He was balding, middle-aged, and worryingly thin. I vaguely recognized his face. I think, perhaps, that I'd seen him before on the television. He had a hungry look in his eyes and an angry erection. As I watched he struck Molly round the face and called her a dirty little whore. There was an intense pleasure in his voice. He grabbed her by her curly hair and pulled her towards him, slapping her again. She cried out in pain as he forced her to her knees and thrust himself roughly into her mouth.

I switched off then. There was no point in watching any more. It was too distressing. And I knew, without a doubt, that he had ended up killing little Molly Hagger, and that Raymond had filmed it all in glorious technicolour. The hardest part was realizing that outwardly here was a respectable man who had probably shaken hands with royalty before now; the sort of person who appeared on television to give his weighty opinion on events in the world of Customs and Excise. The sort of man who underneath the façade is a foul, deceitful monster who can keep that fact hidden from almost everyone who knows him.

An hour later I posted the tape, along with a detailed report on what I believed had gone on, to DS Asif Malik. As promised, I also posted a briefer version of the report, careful to take out any mention of Nigel Grayley so as not to prejudice any future trial, to Roy Shelley at the North London Echo. In neither report did I mention my own part in the affair, although I had little doubt that that would become common knowledge soon enough.

An hour after that, I paid my bill and continued my drive westwards in the rental car I'd hired in the name of Mr Marcus Baxter, a travelling salesman from Swindon.