Forgetting the disturbing newspaper headline for a moment, Emma gave an excited little jump, which neither of her parents noticed. Every job meant more money for Josef and the Cause, more freedom and another step towards getting away from this place. Her toast popped and she smothered it in butter and lashings of honey. She was ready to make her escape when her mother said, ‘You’re not going to school dressed like that are you?’
Emma shrugged, causing her toast to fall from the plate and land honey side down on the faux marble floor.
‘Please, let’s not start again, Miranda,’ Christopher said with a long sigh. ‘Just let her wear what she likes.’
‘But she dresses like that just to spite me, she knows it upsets me. She knows it, but still she goes to school dressed like a tramp.’
‘The way kids dress these days is no reflection on their upbringing. Everyone knows Emma comes from a good home, that I have money.’
Miranda’s sigh was worthy of Greek tragedy. ‘Well I certainly haven’t seen much of your money recently. Besides, this isn’t
only
about you, or
only
about money, Christopher.’
‘Don’t worry, Miranda,’ Emma said as she mopped up the honey from the faux marble tiles. ‘Not too many people know I’m your daughter—it’s not something I care to advertise.’
‘For heaven’s sake, stop calling me by my first name!’
Emma glanced at her father. He looked up from his paper, met her eye and gave her a wink.
The doorbell rang but no one moved to answer it. Julian Holdsworth, Miranda’s photographer, let himself in and wandered through the house to the family room just as Emma was making her way back upstairs. One glance at his beaming face and droopy blond noodle of a moustache made her quicken her steps. ‘How’s my gorgeous girl then?’ he called up to her. The look he gave her as she beat her retreat made her relieved she wasn’t wearing a skirt. She pretended she hadn’t heard him and closed her bedroom door.
The voices had long since gone from downstairs, her parents and Julian having left for work. Emma looked at her watch; she still had half an hour before she was due at school.
The breakfast table had been left in disarray for the housekeeper. The paper lay where her father had left it, the finance pages spread across the dirty plates. She stopped for a moment, not daring to touch it. As she downed the half finished glass of orange juice her mother had left she thought how unusual it was for Miranda to leave any. The pervert at the modelling agency and mention of the police must really have left her rattled. The slippery smart of the vodka gave her the courage she needed to turn to the front page of the paper: ‘Missing girl’s body found at Midland building site.’
Another victim, another miserable story and this one with an ending of the worst kind. She read on until her glasses misted, and she was forced to remove and clean them on her T-shirt. Her hands shook. Breathing deeply, she tried to pull herself together—this was not the time for tears.
Back in her room, her fingers flew across the keyboard with little conscious thought from her. Emma hated to be late for school, but today she would have to make an exception. She would tell the teacher there’d been a trauma at home. Her father had run over their dog in the driveway and they’d had to make an emergency dash to the vet. In the car she’d held poor Snuffy in her arms, one side of his dear little head caved in and covered in gore. The vet was going to wire the dog’s jaw and set his broken leg, but he didn’t think he’d survive the operation. The tears Emma had held back while she read the newspaper would be allowed to gush freely. Everyone would believe her and everyone would feel sorry for her. Emma Breightling was a good actor; Emma Breightling was good at everything she chose to do.
And she was also an exceedingly good liar.
CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 100207
TIMTAM: did u get the pix of the mullets I sent?
ANGEL12: yeah thnx
TIMTAM: what do u think?
ANGEL12: squeeeeeee!!!!
TIMTAM: did they make u feel horny?
ANGEL12: ur baaaad lol!
Robert Mason had been denied bail. He would be held on remand at Hakea prison, pending trial.
‘The bus from Hakea will be here soon, but there’s a few more things we need to ask,’ Stevie said as a uniformed officer escorted Robert Mason into one of Central’s interview rooms.
She glanced at Tash and gave her a discreet nod. It would be interesting to see how she handled their pre-planned tactics, if she could strike the right balance in her ‘bad cop’ role. It would also be a good indication of how seriously Tash had taken her earlier warning. This was a fact-finding mission only and hard as it might be, it was paramount that they leave their personal prejudices outside the interview room door.
The uniformed officer pushed Mason into a chair and closed the door behind him. Mason leaned on the table and pushed his fingers through his spiky hair, looking first at Tash then at Stevie.
‘You two again?’ he whined. ‘I’ve admitted it, I’m gonna plead guilty, what more do you want?’ Swamped in regulation overalls, he looked ridiculously young, almost young enough to be a victim himself.
Stevie couldn’t have cared less.
‘Just a few more questions, that’s all,’ she said.
‘But shouldn’t my lawyer be here?’ Mason looked around the barren interview room as if his lawyer might appear out of one of the sludge green walls.
‘It’s okay, we’ve discussed this with him, it doesn’t involve your actual case.’
‘Then w-what...’
‘Cooperate with us now and I guarantee it will be taken into consideration during the trial,’ Stevie said.
He was interested; Stevie could tell by the way his deep brown eyes stopped flitting around the room to focus on hers. Tash had called them ‘gravy eyes’, but bottomless cesspools might be a more appropriate term, Stevie reflected, keeping her face blank.
He touched his brow. ‘I have a headache.’
‘I’ll get you something for it in a minute,’ she said. When she was ready to get him something, she would, and not before. To get the optimum amount of information from him he had to be shown that his every physical need was under their control.
‘How can I make this easier?’ he asked.
‘A young girl’s body was found in a builder’s skip yesterday. She was the victim of a paedophile,’ Stevie said.
His eyes widened with panic. ‘You had me locked up yesterday, I couldn’t have done it!’
‘No one’s saying you did, but this murderer and you seem to share a similar approach...’
‘So?’
‘Listen to Sergeant Hooper!’
Stevie tensed, expecting a barrage of Tash’s dirtiest insults:
rock spider, hanging Johnny, shit head, scum of the earth.
She let out a silent sigh of relief when none seemed forthcoming. Well done, Tash.
‘We think you’re involved with some kind of Internet club where people like you can swap information and methods of picking up kids,’ Stevie said.
Mason wriggled in his seat, adjusting his overalls in the crotch area. ‘There are groups like that all over the net.’
‘But this one is locally based and contains a list of chat rooms and websites frequented by Perth kids. In fact, I think you got the address of the
Stoned Mullets
chat room visited by Angel12 from this site, yeah?’
He looked away.
Tash circled the table like a shark. During an interrogation, detectives can move around as much as they like but they can insist the suspect remain seated. It was all a part of the tactics of maintaining control.
‘You can probably also obtain photographs from this site,’ Tash said, keeping her voice level. ‘You had two hundred and fifty photos of children on your computer ranging from soft to hardcore abuse and everything in between.’
‘They’re just pictures,’ Mason mumbled.
Tash placed her palms on the table and leaned in towards him. ‘Oh yeah, so they have no grounding in reality; that’s what you’re trying to say?’
‘Yeah, well kinda...’
Tash slammed her hands upon the table, making Mason start. Good one, Tash, Stevie thought, that’s just the right amount of fright we want from him. Too much and he’ll clam up all together. She caught Tash’s eye and mouthed, ‘My turn.’
Tash stepped back and leaned against the wall, rubbing her stinging palms.
‘Strangely enough it’s the soft stuff we’re interested in at the moment,’ Stevie said. ‘Our experts tell us that these photos bear a strong resemblance to each other, were taken in the same location and probably by the same photographer.’
‘Soft, what do you mean soft?’ He looked at the detectives blankly until realisation finally dawned. ‘Oh, you mean the
art
shots?’
Tash pushed herself from the wall. ‘That’s what you call them,
art shots?
Now it’s high culture is it? Give me a break!’
‘You can’t say there’s anything wrong with them—Jesus, what’s wrong with you people? The kids are dressed...’
‘Yes, Robert, most are dressed, but often in revealing, sexualised clothes and provocatively posed,’ Stevie said.
She saw the ‘art’ pictures lined up in her head, in particular a snap of a little girl sitting up proud and straight in her school uniform, like the one she had of Izzy on her mantelpiece. It was innocent, it was unsuspecting and it made her stomach lurch. ‘If we can find the source of these art shots we might also be able to nail the origin of the hardcore photos and videos,’ she said.
‘I don’t know where any of the photos come from, the webmaster ups them.’ Mason’s voice rose. ‘But jeez, what’s the big deal about all this? I’ve never even touched a kid, all I do is look at pictures.’
‘But you were planning on doing more than look at Angel12, weren’t you?’ Tash asked.
‘Look, it was just an experiment, right? If anything had happened with her, it would have been what she wanted too.’
‘What, with the help of money, drugs, CDs?’ Tash said.
They were getting off the point; if the interrogation were to turn to Mason’s court case, they’d be obliged to turn the tape on. Stevie guided Mason back to where she wanted him.
‘We think the man who murdered Bianca Webster might belong to this Internet group of yours. Your computer log shows us you visit a site called the Dream Team—you may’ve run your files through a shredding program, making the information hard to access, but it’s not impossible.’
‘Next time buy a better shredding program, Mason—though I suppose there’s not much left in the coffers once you’re done spending up on kiddie porn,’ Tash said.
‘It’s not porn, why do you have to make it sound so degrading? It’s all just natural, kids are still sexual beings, they enjoy it, just like the rest of us,’ Mason said.
Tash clenched her fists at her sides. ‘Oh yeah, the girl being raped in the video looked like she was having the time of her life.’
‘I don’t know how that clip got there, someone must have planted it. I don’t do violence.’
Tash consciously unclenched her fists. ‘I was called to the hospital not long ago, to a toddler who’d been so brutally sodomised he’ll be wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.’
‘And I’m not into boys either.’
Tash slammed her fist onto the table again, ramming her face up close to his. The pulse throbbing through the flush at her neck looked fit to burst; she wasn’t playacting. ‘You just don’t get it do you? People like you should be burned alive!’
Stevie pulled her away from the table. Tash rubbed both hands over her face and took a breath. ‘I’m okay,’ she murmured, shaking her head when Stevie offered to continue.
To Stevie’s relief, Tash changed tack, dropping the subject of the rape video; they’d been through it with him before and maybe it was a one off. ‘Our experts will be able to piece together the data from your computer, but it would save time if you just gave us the information,’ Tash said, in control again.
‘I can give you the password, but I don’t think you’ll get much further than the home page. There’s all sorts of security there—even I couldn’t get through it.’
‘But we need to know where the soft photos have come from. Some shots are of a candid nature, of girls getting dressed in what looks like a change room,’ Tash said calmly.
‘There’s a hotmail address of a photographer,’ Mason said, shoulders slumped, mouth turned down in defeat. ‘We can buy the photos from him and download them from a file sharing site.’
‘How much?’
‘Twenty bucks a hit.’
‘Your habit doesn’t come cheap,’ Tash said.
Mason rested his chin on his hand and thought long and hard. ‘You said if I cooperated, the judge might be more lenient.’
‘We’re going to take you up to our ops room in a minute and you can show our experts as much about this site of yours as you can.’ Stevie flicked him a tight smile. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to add while we’re still down here?’
Mason pressed his fists into his eye sockets and sniffed. ‘Well, these photos I told you about that cost twenty bucks? For forty you can get the personal details of the kids in the art shots. Names, addresses, ages, email, the lot.’
Stevie and Tash exchanged glances.
Shit.
Mason narrowed his eyes and glared at Stevie, ‘But I wish I’d seen a genuine photo of Angel12 and not that fake one you sent me.’ He curled his lip. ‘Jesus, that was wishful thinking, eh? You’d never have looked like that in your dreams, baby!’
‘How’s it going?’ Stevie addressed the plump middle-aged constable hunched over her keyboard in the ops room. Clarissa D’Silva, computer nerd extraordinaire, was one of a bunch more than happy to sit behind a screen for eight hours a day, leaving active duty to the likes of the more physically inclined like Tash and herself.
‘It’s like Mason said, this website has a minefield of security measures. I’ve found the hotmail address of the photographer, but its ISP is listed as coming from Turkmenistan, so matters are somewhat complicated.’