Vanished

53

The inside of Pell’s house was cooler than the day before. Outside, the temperature had dropped to the mid teens and the rain had brought some relief from the heat. Inside, the stuffy, enclosed smell had been replaced by the stench of damp; deep in the walls, in the floor, in the ceiling. I made my way upstairs, into his bedroom, and went through his cupboards again. I’d been pretty thorough the first time, but I checked everything again anyway: every shelf, every drawer, under the bed, on top of the wardrobes. I moved across the hall to the second bedroom and did the same. The holdall was still in there, returned – along with the contents – to the way I’d first found it. Magic Trees swung gently as I searched the wardrobe, pushing clothes aside and sliding out shoeboxes. Jewellery was in one of them: some chains, a couple of rings, and the two stars of an army lieutenant, loose among the rest of the clutter. In the others were receipts and old bills. I’d been through it all already.

I stacked them back inside and then closed the wardrobe door. It rocked slightly, the legs unsteady, and on top – on the other side of the ornate, carved front panel – I heard something shift. I reached over, feeling around. I’d done the same the day before and not found anything, but now my fingers brushed the hard edges of another shoebox. I teased it towards me until I could get a proper grip, then brought it down and flipped it open.

Inside were a stack of blank DVDs, numbered one through to ten.

I headed downstairs into the living room, opened the disc tray on the DVD player and pulled the TV towards me. It was sitting on an old-fashioned stool, in the same dark wood as the wardrobe upstairs. I dropped the first disc in, closed the tray and hit Play. The television kicked into life.

A black screen.

And then a picture: video footage of the inside of a flat. I didn’t recognize it. It looked small and pokey, half lit, a couple of worn red sofas and a kitchen behind that, most of it in shadow. Two other doors, one left, one right. In the right-hand one, the light was on and I could see the edge of a bed and a dresser with a mirror on it. In the left one the light was off.

The camera moved around constantly, as if the operator was getting comfortable, but then, after a while, something clicked and the picture was still. Now it was on a tripod. From behind the camera came Duncan Pell. He was naked. He walked across the flat and stood in the centre, facing the room with the light on. He didn’t say anything; just watched the bedroom, his right hand opening and closing beside him. On his middle finger was the silver ring with the rune on it, the one I’d seen him wearing at the station. As his fingers moved, it caught the light rhythmically, like a bulb switching off and on.

A minute later, a woman emerged, dressed in her bra and panties, stockings on, but only half pulled up. At first it was difficult to make her out. As soon as she appeared, Pell shuffled across to his left, obscuring her, and started playing with himself. But then he used his other hand to beckon her over – like an order – and she stepped towards him.

And I realized who it was.

The girl I’d found in Adrian Wellis’s loft space.

My heart sank as I watched her edge closer, reluctance in every step. Everything she felt in that moment, all the fear and the panic, was written in her face.

Wellis reckoned she was sixteen, but she wasn’t even close.

Pell pulled her to the sofas, dragged the tripod to one end of it and made her face the camera as he moved around behind her. Then he started having sex with her. Halfway through, as he got more and more aggressive, he slapped her back and buttocks – and after a while, the slaps became fists and tears started rolling down her face. I could barely bring myself to watch it after that. I reached forward to turn it off just as he pressed her face down into the leather of the sofa, her expression becoming almost contorted: all pain and suffering, eyes wet, mouth pushed to one side, the skin at her cheeks stretched to breaking point.

‘Fucking hell,’ I said quietly, and hit Stop.

My eyes turned to disc two and I wondered, for a moment, whether I even had the capacity to watch any more. I’d seen the darkness in men, the things they were prepared to do to one another, but with kids it was harder to become detached. Where adults could disguise the pain and corruption that had been visited upon them, children wore it like a mark, branded by their suffering. All that would be left of this girl, whatever her name was and wherever she was from, would be a husk; a shadow of herself.

Finally, reluctantly, I put disc two in and pressed Play.

The same girl. The same flat.

As I watched, I remembered again what she’d said in the loft: Don’t let him hurt me. She hadn’t been talking about Adrian Wellis or Eric Gaishe.

She’d been talking about Duncan Pell.

And then I noticed something else.

I shifted closer to the TV. At the far side of the shot was the edge of a long mirror, its reflection casting back the rest of the room. The doors into the bedroom and the bathroom. The sofas. Pell with the camera in his hand this time, and the girl on all fours in front of him.

But they weren’t alone.

A ripple of unease passed through me as I leaned in even closer. To the side of the sofa, about seven feet from Pell and half out of shot, I could see a pair of legs, exactly parallel to one another.

Someone was watching them.