A sleeping PC sat on a small desk. She snapped on latex gloves from her pocket and touched a key, finding herself on the Katy Enigma site. She knew what this meant; either Stoppard had been lurking on the site, or Emma had posted her story from here.
Stevie racked through her shaky knowledge of computers and websites. As she thought she gazed through a porthole window at the inky water below. A floodlit fountain came to life in the middle of the lake. Must be controlled by a timer, she thought idly. The glowing orbs of protea blossoms caught her eye on the far side as the lake burst with prisms of colour.
But she wasn’t here to admire the view. Her eyes slipped back to the computer screen, noticing the various commands and codes in its margin. She realised then that she was in the administration panel, a page only accessible to the site owner.
Which meant Emma had posted her story from here. They had him.
Having not yet explored the entrance to the Chateau, Stevie opted to return through the front door. Evidence of a struggle greeted her as soon as she stepped into the entrance. Clearly, someone had attempted a clean up, but shards of broken pottery and lumps of soil and streaks of mud were still visible. Two sets of footprints, one large, one small, tracked down the passageway. Treading carefully, Stevie followed them, a grim smile upon her face. No way could that slimy bastard wriggle out of it now, no matter how much money he had.
Stoppard’s scream made her pull up short. She hugged the walls as she made her way down the passageway towards the light from the great hall. Gingerly, she peered around the doorframe.
She saw Stoppard bound to a chair with a curtain tie, struggling to break free. Tash stood over him brandishing one of the scalpels.
‘You can’t do this to me, you wouldn’t dare!’ Stoppard yelled.
‘I’ve done it before, mate and got away with it too,’ Tash said. ‘The last guy, one of your little crawling pals, got a bullet to the head. He was lucky, a helluva lot luckier than you’re gonna be.’
Christ, Tash.
Stevie’s hand went to the gun under her denim jacket. She held it loosely by her side and stepped into the room.
‘Put that down Hayward,’ she said, surprised at her own cool. She glanced at Stoppard and saw immediately that his fly was undone and gaping, but he was apparently unhurt.
Tash tossed the scalpel on to the table. ‘Stevie we haven’t got time for this. He’s actually admitted that she’s here somewhere in the Chateau, but not where. If she’s not dead already, she might soon well be.’
Stevie grabbed Tash by the arm and pulled her out of Stoppard’s earshot into the master bedroom. Then she didn’t hold back. ‘Jesus Christ Tash! Didn’t anything sink through your thick skull the last time—much as you might feel like it, you can’t do that to suspects!’
‘He said she’s here,’ Tash repeated. ‘If you’d given me just a bit longer, I’d have found out where.’
‘And how would you have done that?’
‘Gone for his balls.’
‘You’re bluffing.’
Tash washed her hands over her face, paused for a moment then looked into Stevie’s eyes. ‘Am I?’
Stevie’s gut twisted. This was not what she wanted to hear.
Suddenly Tash leapt up from the bed. ‘Shhh, Stevie, did you hear that?’
They both froze. Through the sounds of the cicadas and frogs from the lake a vague muffled thump reached their ears.
Stevie spun on her heels, looking around the room. ‘Where’s that coming from?’
‘You searched in here?’
She nodded.
Tash dropped to her knees and slithered under the bed, her cowboy boots scuffing on the tiles. Stevie tapped at the plaster wall behind the curtained wardrobe.
In a muffled voice Tash called out, ‘The wall feels hollow around here.’
Stevie continued to scan the room until her eyes settled on the bookcase with the faded paperbacks. Then they heard it again, a faint cry, a thump. It sounded close, and it was coming from behind the bedroom wall. Stevie called out louder, ‘Emma, Emma?’ Then she remembered.
If by some bad luck, one of them was to get into the castle, she could escape by the secret passageway hidden behind the bookcase in her bedroom.
Tash slid back out from under the bed.
‘She’s behind there!’ Stevie pointed to a bookcase on the wall. There was a decorated knob at the top; she pulled on it and the bookcase swung open like a door. Behind the bookcase they found another door, similar in design to the coal chute she’d seen outside. She drew the bolt and heaved the door open.
Tash found a light switch and Stevie felt an immediate flood of relief. The L-shaped room was lined with bench seats and colourful cushions, the walls filled with delicate pieces of Mexican art. And in the smaller part of the L, Emma lay on a rough wooden bed, hands and feet tied, mouth gagged with duct tape. She blinked back at them in the harsh light, eyes filling when she saw Stevie. Within seconds Stevie had her untied, back in the bedroom, crying and shaking in her arms.
Over the child’s shoulder, Stevie told Tash to take Stoppard out to the car and cuff him inside it.
She didn’t know how long she sat on the bed with Emma, clasping her until the sobs finally eased. Scraping the hair off the little damp face, she murmured, ‘Did he hurt you, Emma?’
The girl shook her head and spoke through hiccupping breaths. ‘He said he was saving me for someone, he said he had to get rid of me ... I told him the police were coming. He gave me something to drink which made me sleepy and then he made some phone calls, but I can’t remember much about them because I was half asleep. I think someone was going to come and get me. Stevie,’ the girl’s voice became very high. ‘He said the man was going to put me in the movies and then he was going to kill me!’
Stevie pulled the child close, felt the tears pricking her eyes. ‘Hush now, it’s okay, you’re safe.’
As she held Emma tight, her eyes travelled around the small room. Above the bed, tacked to the rough plaster wall, she saw the same crucifix as in the hardcore photographs seized from Mason and Kusak’s computers. The thin line she’d seen at the bottom of the cross turned out to be a price tag.
It seemed everything in this place had a price.
Stevie took the mobile from her pocket and called Angus. He told her they were about twenty minutes away. She explained that Stoppard might be expecting a visitor and suggested they remained out of sight near the entrance to the driveway to apprehend anyone turning into it.
‘Coffee’s ready!’ Tash called out from the kitchen.
Emma clung to Stevie’s hand and said in a breathless rush, ‘I hitched all the way here. I was so scared I didn’t even have time to grab my shoes.’ She pointed to a small cut on her toe and padded barefoot with Stevie into the great hall.
They sat around the table. Tash had found a tin of fruitcake and was hungrily eating a slice. Stevie couldn’t face even the thought of food.
‘Emma,’ she said gently, ‘I need you to tell us exactly what things are like between you and Aidan Stoppard, and I need to know what happened in your room last night.’
Emma picked at cake crumbs while she spoke. ‘I’ve known Uncle Aidan all my life. He used to watch me in the bath when I was little, scrub my back, that sort of thing, I thought it was normal. Miranda said that because he had no kids of his own, he just liked to play at being a dad. Then when I got older I realised it wasn’t normal, I didn’t need to be washed when I was seven or eight, but he kept on coming in, so I started locking the bathroom door.
‘Dad used to read me bedtime stories but when he was home late, Uncle Aidan read to me. He used to make a big thing of tucking me up and saying goodnight. At first it was okay, but as I got older it started to get, well, he seemed to want to get even more touchy feely.’
‘Did you ever mention this to either of your parents?’
‘I tried but they never listened. Miranda thinks the sun shines from his bum. And Christopher, I don’t know. Miranda says he’s going through some kind of mid-life male menopause crisis thing—I used to be able to talk to him,’ she shrugged. ‘But now it’s really hard, he’s always in a bad mood.
‘Anyway, I told Uncle Aidan I was too old for stories, but he still insisted on coming in to tuck me up. Then about a year ago he touched me, you know, down there, and I screamed like mad and Mum came in. Uncle Aidan told her I was having night terrors and she believed him. I knew then that I’d never be getting any help from her and I started locking the bedroom door after that. Whenever he stayed over after that, he’d turn the handle and try to come in. I always kept it locked but he never gave up...’ Her voice trailed off and she took a sip of coffee as if to steady her nerves. ‘Last night I decided not to lock it.’
‘Because you wanted him to follow you to the Chateau?’
Emma looked down at the table. ‘I guess so,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted to trap him.’
‘You wanted to hurt him?’
Emma couldn’t meet Stevie’s eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘That’s why I took the scalpels.’ She started to fidget and twist in her seat.
‘Are you okay?’ Stevie asked.
‘Can I go to the toilet? I’m busting.’
When she was out of earshot Tash shook her head. ‘She thought she could take on a grown man?’
‘She might not have been able to manage it, but her alter ego could have.’
‘You mean Katy Enigma?’
‘I haven’t questioned her about the site yet, but I’m pretty sure she’s Harum Scarum.’
‘Then she might be able to tell us more about Bianca Webster...’
‘I’ll talk to her about that later, let’s take one thing at a time.’ The toilet flushed. ‘Shhhhh...’
Emma reappeared. ‘Actually,’ she said as she wiped her hands on her tracksuit pants. ‘You were a bit slower at finding me than I thought you would. I left clues all over the place. Didn’t you notice the postcard and the Mexican blanket in my room?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Stevie couldn’t help smiling. ‘And the footprints in the flower beds pointing to the hills, silly me.’
Emma continued with her story. ‘I was ready for Uncle Aidan this time. I was lying under the bedclothes fully dressed with my softball bat. When he tried to touch me I whacked him over the head with it. I didn’t knock him out but I reckon he got a terrible shock. Then I climbed out of my bedroom window while he was rolling around on the floor and swearing.
‘A nice woman picked me up from the main road and I told her my mum and me had had a row in the car earlier in the day and I’d jumped out at the traffic lights. I told her I was really sorry I’d done that and that I wanted to go home. She took me to a house in Mundaring where I said I lived and dropped me off outside it. There was a bike on the back verandah and I took it and cycled here. It took ages and my legs were killing me by the time I arrived. I chucked the bike in the lake.’ She looked through her circular glasses, her large magnified eyes darting from one to the other of them. ‘But I’ll pay the owner back for it, I swear I will...’
‘Why didn’t you just beat him to death while he was lying on your floor?’ Tash asked, subtle as ever.
Emma squashed cake crumbs with her finger. ‘Well, I, err, I don’t really know...’
Stevie filled in the blanks.
Because Katy Enigma wouldn’t have done anything quite so banal.
‘I guess I wanted you to come to the Chateau too,’ Emma said. ‘Then you could see for yourself what else he was up to.’
‘Was Stoppard already here when you arrived?’ Tash asked.
‘No, but I was pretty sure he would come, so I prepared my...’ she hesitated. ‘My trap for him.’
Tash ruffled her hair with her hands, but said nothing, as if she still hadn’t come to terms with the idea of a thirteen year old girl taking on a grown man.
‘Well, you gave me the idea Stevie. You spoke about entrapment when you came to my school,’ Emma said defensively.
Shit,
Stevie wouldn’t be using that word again in a hurry. ‘You balanced a pot on the top of the door, hoping it would fall on his head,’ she said.
‘Yes, it was really heavy, I had to tip the soil out before I could put it on top of the door. Then I filled a bucket with water and put that in the pot to make it heavy again. Well anyway,’ she sighed. ‘The best laid plans ... it missed. He was ready for it.’
‘Then what happened?’ Stevie asked.
‘Then he took me to that secret room where you found me. He gave me something to drink that made me sleepy and then he started taking stuff out of the room and packing it up, to take away and hide I guess.’ She indicated the boxes on the table. ‘These boxes I think. Once when I stayed here I caught him watching one of his DVDs in the secret room when everyone was asleep, it was so gross I was nearly sick.’
‘I think the room where Emma was imprisoned was used for filming the hardcore porn,’ Stevie told Trash.
Emma nodded. ‘I reckon some of the people who came here with their families to buy his art were only pretending. They were actually hiring their own kids out for him to film.’
Tash cupped a hand over her mouth. Like Stevie, she was having difficulty coming to terms with the horror that had been going on in the Chateau. Tash met Stevie’s eye and mouthed, ‘Lolita.’
‘Anyway,’ Emma went on, ‘if you want to see, the TV’s over here.’ She sprang eagerly to her feet and went to the wood panelled wall next to the Mexican throne. Pushing on a discreet knob she opened up hidden wooden doors to reveal a flat screen TV.
Stevie glanced at Tash and cleared her throat. ‘It’s okay, Emma, we’ll watch them later when we try to identify the kids involved.’
A short, balding man turned his car into Stoppard’s driveway. When Angus and his team apprehended him, Andrew Bishop claimed he’d made a wrong turn and denied knowing anyone called Aidan Stoppard.
Angus led the man towards the unmarked police car in which Stoppard was still cuffed. The windows had steamed up, Stoppard only a vague blur behind the glass.
Tash and Stevie came out to meet them. Tash leaned over and said to Stevie through the side of her mouth, ‘Oh dear, looks like I forgot to leave a window open for him.’