Little Triggers (21 page)

Larkin rifled through his memory. With a snap of his fingers, it came to him.

“What,
the
Colin Harvey?” Larkin asked. “The one who wrote that textbook about how children in care are just gagging for it?”

Harvey said nothing. He dabbed uselessly at his face with a handkerchief, twisted his smashed glasses in his fingers.

“So what happened? They chucked you out when they found you tried to put your theories into practice?”

“I took early retirement …” Harvey muttered.

Larkin laughed bitterly. “All quietly hushed up, was it? No scandal? No nasty court case? Oh, yeah, I know how councils look after their own.” Larkin leaned in close again, a sardonic grin twisting the corners of his mouth. “No chance of keeping it quiet now.”

Andy marched back in, sat next to Larkin at the pine table, ignoring Harvey as if he were something way down the food chain. “I’ve checked the house out. Professional video duplication systems in the attic – darkroom – the lot. Nice little set-up our friend here’s got.”

Larkin nodded. “He hasn’t been idling away his retirement, that’s for sure. So come on, Colin – tell all.”

Harvey began to speak, haltingly at first, about his activities. Larkin’s suspicions had, unfortunately, been correct. One of the four men, usually Noble, acted as procurer, picking up runaways, latchkey kids, kids from council-run homes – the kind of kids who wouldn’t readily be missed. Kids who were vulnerable. The children would be brought back to the house; the men would drug them into passive compliancy, have sex with them, abuse them; all the while recording their degradation for posterity and for payment. What started out as a hobby had eventually – through contacts in Britain and abroad, and via the Internet – become a business. And a very lucrative one.

“And what happens to the boys after you’ve done with them?”

Harvey told them. Once the boys had out-grown their usefulness – once their voices had started to break – they were abandoned, left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives alone. By this time they were too deadened to the abuse to complain to the authorities. Or – if they had retained some freshness, some attraction – they were taken to Amsterdam and sold into child prostitution.

Larkin’s throat was dry when he spoke. “And how many times have you done this?”

“A few,” Harvey replied, reckless now. “Alan takes care of all that.”

“Who’s Alan?” demanded Larkin.

“Alan Haining. He lives in Amsterdam, comes over here for our – get-togethers. He was here this weekend.”

The man that Andy had seen leaving with Noble. Larkin pushed further. Alan Haining, he discovered, was an ex-teacher in a private
boys’ school: another one offered “early retirement”. Another one who’d got away with it.

Larkin asked Harvey how they had met; Harvey replied that it had been at college. They had been drawn together by their common interest, vowing mutual self-protection throughout their lives.

“If that’s the case,” asked Larkin, “how did you meet Noble? He’s an awful lot younger than you.”

Harvey’s head dropped. “He was … someone Alan and I have known for a long time.”

Larkin and Andy exchanged glances. The implication behind Harvey’s words was clear.

“One of yours or one of Haining’s?” asked Larkin, spitting out his disgust.

“I … can’t remember …”

“Tell me!”

“Alan knew him first,” Harvey said, with some difficulty. “He was such a nice boy … a beautiful boy …” He looked up, his eyes misting over. When he spoke his voice was impassioned with lost, misplaced love. “His parents left him in that school. They didn’t care what happened to him, they never visited … We … just gave him love …”

Larkin stood up, paced to the far side of the kitchen. “There’s another way of looking at it, isn’t there? He was left in the care of the school and Haining abused that trust, by fucking him!” Larkin walked back to the table, fists clenched, bent over Harvey. “In fact, Haining abused him so much, for so long, Noble became a child fucker himself!”

“It’s not that simple!” Harvey cried, eyes shining with tears.

“Oh, you reckon, do you? Well, I’ve got news for you,” shouted Larkin. “It fuckin’
is
!” He gave Harvey a vicious, left-handed slap; the man, emptied of all resistance now, was knocked from his chair. As soon as he hit the floor, Harvey curled up into a foetal ball, and lay there sobbing.

Larkin stared at him for a couple of seconds, his expression unreadable. Then he turned to Andy. “Come on – we’ve got a story to write.”

“Ere, ’ang about,” Andy said. “We haven’t finished yet.”

“No?”

“There’s somethin’ more he can tell us, isn’t there? Give us a hand.”

Together, Larkin and Andy pulled Harvey off the floor and placed him back in the chair. The slap had started his nosebleed again; he held the red-stained handkerchief to his face protectively, like a shield.

“So who’s the third man?” asked Andy.

Harvey’s eyes flashed an instant of fear. “I … don’t know.”

“You know fine well,” said Larkin. “Who is he?”

“I … don’t know!” Harvey dropped the handkerchief and reached across the table towards Larkin, beseeching. “Please … I never saw him before. He didn’t give us his name. Please … you must believe me!”

“I don’t think he wants to tell us,” said Andy.

“He knows who he is,” said Larkin. “He’s just more scared of him than he is of us. Bad mistake. You’ve got one last chance. Harvey. Who is he?”

Harvey screwed his face up, pushed his hands so tightly into his face that his fingertips began to turn white from the pressure, and slow trickles of blood began to seep through the cracks between his fingers. A low whimpering, muffled by his fingers, started. And Harvey’s body began to contract until his head was on the table and his elbows were tucked into his chest.

Larkin reached over and grabbed hold of Harvey’s hands, attempting to prise them from his face. Harvey’s whining increased in pitch but he held on, tenaciously.

“Give it
up
!” hissed Larkin. With one last surge of strength he forced Harvey’s hands down. Harvey, face uncovered, began to cry, his body as limp as a ragdoll.

“Tell us his name,” Larkin commanded, steel in his eyes.

Harvey threw his head back. “I’m
dead
! I’m
dead
!” he shouted, stamping his feet furiously, shaking his shoulders, all control gone. “I’m dead! I’m dead …” He repeated it over and over, like a mantra. As Larkin and Andy watched, Harvey began to wag his head to and fro as if it had become loose; his eyes took on a glassy, distant look.

“Reckon we’ve lost him,” said Andy, sadly.

Larkin sighed. “Reckon you’re right. Let’s call the police.”

“What the hell happened to him?” the uniformed constable asked Larkin when he saw the state Harvey was in.

“Fell down the stairs,” Larkin replied.

“Pity he didn’t fall a bit harder,” the policeman said with a knowing smirk. “Will he be pressing charges, d’you think?”

“I doubt it very much,” said Larkin.

“Good. Makes it easier to see who the villains are. Mind you,” the constable leaned in conspiratorially, “once they get with their briefs it makes them brave.”

Larkin glanced at Harvey. The man, still sitting on a kitchen chair, seemed to have passed into a persistent vegetative state. “I don’t think this one’s going to give you any trouble.”

When the police had been mentioned, Harvey had freaked out. He had jumped up, made a pathetic, staggering run to the door, shouting the whole time. Larkin and Andy had grabbed hold of him; he had struggled, flailing his arms about like a madman. Larkin managed to pin the man’s arms by his side while Andy rooted through the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, eventually tugging a length of electrical flex from a lamp and binding his wrists together. Once bound, Harvey had become motionless, silent, as if the last remnants of his personality had been extinguished.

Larkin had initially tried to contact Moir, but was unable to reach the big man. He then dialled 999 and asked for police and an ambulance.

While waiting for the emergency services to arrive, Larkin and Andy checked out the tapes from the security cameras, hoping for clues as to the third man’s identity. But when they shoved the tape in the machine, the screen filled with nothing but static. They tried a different tape: same thing.

“Fuckin’ hell,” said Andy in exasperation, “the bastard’s wiped them. They don’t take any chances this lot, do they?”

“Bollocks,” said Larkin.

“Back to square one.”

Larkin’s eyes acquired a glint. “Maybe not.”

Before Andy could inquire further, the two boys were stretchered out; no permanent physical damage, one of the paramedics said, but as for the effect on their psyches, who could tell? Larkin then gave the CID men an account of his involvement that was nothing if not creative: playing down Andy’s surveillance, playing up the element of chance in finding the house. Larkin stressed the fact that they had been invited in, even threw Moir’s name into the conversation to add credibility. CID took full statements, saying they would have
the rest of the “ring” – meaning Haining and Noble – in custody by that evening.

After Harvey’s house had been securely locked and the police had left, Larkin turned to Andy. “We’d better get going – back to Newcastle.”

“Hold on a moment,” said Andy, puzzled.

Larkin, on his way to the car, stopped. “What?”

“I said this was a dead end, you said ‘Maybe not’. What do you know?”

Larkin smiled. “I know enough, Andy. I know who the third man is.”

“So come on then,” said Andy, at the wheel of the Vitara – they were travelling back to Warkworth to pick up the Golf. As soon as they were on the road and away from the ears of the police, Larkin had told Andy his suspicions about the third man’s identity. “Who is ’e?”

“Swanson,” said Larkin simply.

Andy laughed incredulously. “I thought it might be. You’re determined to nail that geezer one way or the other, aren’t you?”

“It makes perfect sense, Andy. I told you about the break-in, the computer disks going missing, the threat – all that. The only other thing apart from work I’ve been doing recently is shaking down councillors. And my partner in that little sideline is dead. So I’m either pissing off a politician, or a paedophile, or both. I’m starting to think the two things might be related, and Swanson makes the perfect link. He’s got good connections to protect him; he’s also got something significant to lose.”

Andy looked thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said at great length, “an’ I suppose this mysterious Third Man fits that an’ all. They’ve certainly done all they can to keep him under wraps.” He nodded. “Yeah. You might be right there.”

They drove for some time in silence, both lost in their own musings. Eventually Andy spoke.

“Of course,” he said, brow furrowed, “there’s always the chance you might be wrong.”

“I won’t be.”

Andy gave a snort of a laugh. “Let’s hope not,” he said, “or we’re both fucked.”

Back in his own car, Larkin slipped an Aretha Franklin tape into the deck and tuned out the day’s events. He tried to think of something positive and uplifting in his life; to blot out what he’d seen and heard at Harvey’s house; his mind latched instinctively onto Jane and he actually found himself smiling. He was really looking forward to seeing her again. He liked her – probably more than he would allow himself to admit. And then, into his head, like a ghost, came Charlotte. He remembered how fond he had been of her – how much he had loved her – and look where it had got him. He was taking it slowly with Jane, not pushing it. Letting it come easy.

He eased back in his seat and drove back to Newcastle, while Aretha sang about the lover she still said prayers for.

Once in the office of The News Agents, the real work began. Larkin wrote up the morning’s exploits, carefully skirting round what he couldn’t legally say, since the case was a long way off coming to trial and was therefore still
sub judice
. All he printed was the facts, and they were damning enough. Andy did overtime in the office’s photographic facilities, and the story was ready for the late editions of the
Chronicle
and the early editions of next morning’s nationals.

Bolland, needless to say, was over the moon. Apart from anything else, the money the story represented in splashes and spreads provided by his agency was major. He took them over to the pub to celebrate – a unique event in itself. The Blackie Boy, near the bottom of the Bigg Market, had been refurbished a few years ago in dark wood and stained glass, in an attempt to give it some history and character. It now held several years of use, but instead of looking lived-in it just looked worn-out. The three men got their drinks – at Bolland’s expense – and sat down at a window table.

“Well,” toasted Bolland expansively, pint raised in the air, “here’s to the successful conclusion of a job well done!” They clinked glasses, drank long and deep.

Then Larkin was assailed by a momentary mental image of the two boys lying in the cellar. He quickly blinked it – and the accompanying guilt for drinking a toast over their battered bodies – out of his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure it’s concluded,” he said, setting his glass down. “There’s still Noble, and this Haining guy to track down — ”