Sorcerer (19 page)

Jeff felt sick. ‘Yes, this is all sounding horribly familiar. It’s what the Griffins did when they were still living in this country and managed a care home for boys’.

‘Well you could say that they exported their particular business model’.

‘Evil bastards’ said Jeff.

‘Yes my English is sufficiently good enough to agree with you there, Jeff. Now, recently, Dr. Smets has got himself into some difficulty with gambling debts. Amassed over the years it went up to a staggering amount that he was struggling to pay back and so he diversified. Or at least he was forced to because he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse’.

‘Either work for the gangs who control the casinos in Antwerp or end up at the bottom of the North Sea?’

‘That’s exactly it, yes’.

‘So is the paedophile ring an integral part of Antwerp’s criminal underworld?’

‘Oh yes’ Dirk confirmed. ‘And the city’s crime bosses told Dr. Smets that he had to issue false death certificates as part payment for his gambling debts. These were people who’d been bumped off because they’d fallen foul of the crime bosses in some way and Dr. Smets issued a death certificate to say they’d died of natural causes’.

‘Dirk, I suspect that the death of Mary Griffin isn’t as straightforward as it first seems’.

‘Yes and that is exactly our conclusion too. You see Jeff, the Griffins were lending money to Dr. Smets to help him get through his financial difficulties but at the same time their business was failing. They weren’t making the kind of sales anymore that they used to because most people of that kind of inclination can download what they need from the internet at a fraction of the cost of the films made by the Griffins and it’s also more convenient. But I’ve seen some of the Griffin films. They are pretty sick but they made enough out of them to finance a very lavish lifestyle in Spain over many years’.

Jeff was bristling with anger. When he thought of poor old Ronnie Wiseman and all the other boys at Pembroke whose lives were destroyed and then he thought of the Griffins living it up in the sun with a pool and a sea view … it made him want to kill them himself. But then lightening struck and all of a sudden some things were starting to make sense.

‘So with everything else going badly for them the Griffins themselves were in financial trouble?’

‘Yes they were’.

‘Mary Griffin asked her brother to lend them some money. He refused’.

‘I don’t blame him if he knew what they’ve been up to’.

‘Yes he does and I don’t blame him either. Dirk, I’m beginning to get a picture of what might be happening here. Can you tell me what the status of your investigation into Dr. Josef Smets is right now?’

‘We’re almost ready to move on the entire paedophile ring’.

‘Well I’ll be happy to place me and my squad in any co-ordinated effort. But you do know that George Griffin has jumped bail and we believe he’s abducted his granddaughter?’

‘Yes, I do know that’ Dirk confirmed. ‘It’s rather a nuisance to be honest. It might hold things back’.

‘I can well appreciate that but we are doing all we can to find them. In the meantime I’d be grateful if you could email over to me all you have on the Griffins including a copy of Mary Griffin’s death certificate that I think we both now believe was a fake?’

‘Indeed, yes and I have a whole dossier on Dr. Smets and his relationship with the Griffins to email over to you’.

‘Excellent, thank you. Now Mary Griffin was due to be buried but the funeral didn’t take place because George had absconded. So that’s where I’m going to start. I’m going to get the coffin opened up and if my inkling is right then I don’t think it will be Mary Griffin we find in there’.       

SORCERER FIFTEEN

Jeff asked Ollie Wright to join him and Rebecca in there morning progress meeting. He told them that he’d requested the coffin of Mary Griffin to be opened and he was waiting for the pathologist June Hawkins to report back once she’d seen the body if there was one.

‘We have to find Gabby Lake’ Jeff went on. ‘God only knows what Griffin is planning to do with her and I simply will not accept that we can’t pick up any leads on this. Somebody saw Griffin drive Gabby Lake away in his car. How’s the door to door going in the area?’

‘Poorly, sir’ said Wright. ‘Nobody has come forward with anything of any value to us. A couple of the houses in the street where Gabby Lake lives with her fiancé Owen Cunningham are empty but I think it also has to be remembered that most people in that street are out at work during the day. The woman who gave us the description of Griffin’s car just happened to be walking her dog down the street at that time and she actually lives a ten minute walk from there. Gabby was only at home because she was about to go and visit her father in hospital’.

‘Where was Owen Cunningham at the time of Gabby’s disappearance?’

‘He was at the dentist, sir and then he went to his parents’ house in Salford. We have verified that’.

‘Okay but there’s got to be something somewhere that will move us forward on this. Rebecca, you’ve been going through the dossier sent to us by email from the Antwerp police?’

‘Yes, sir, and it makes for very interesting reading’ she replied. ‘The films made by the Griffins and all their associates on the continent have made so much cash that Griffin and the rest opened Swiss bank accounts several years ago. It’s estimated that they’ve stashed away thousands if not millions from their ill gotten gains’.

‘So how come they had bloody cash flow problems that were enough for Mary Griffin to ask her brother Jack White for money?’

‘Ah, well the Swiss authorities who are desperate to co-operate with EU moves to close down tax havens used by EU citizens, received a tipoff that the money in the accounts had been made from the sale of child pornography and they’ve frozen the accounts. Griffin and the rest can’t get anything out of them at the moment’.

‘And so added to that the money they were giving Dr. Smets to get him out of trouble with his gambling debts and I can see why they got into trouble themselves’.

‘But sir there’s something else you should know’ said Rebecca. ‘Someone else we know has been paid regular sums from those accounts’.

Jeff held her breath. ‘Who?’

‘Ian Hayward, sir’

‘Christ!’ Jeff exclaimed. ‘That’s how he’s managed to get such a fuck off house’.

‘So what do we do with this particular revelation?’ asked Rebecca.

‘I don’t know yet’ said Jeff. ‘But he won’t have anywhere to hide when the Europe-wide operation led by Inspector Van Miert goes live. Not even the protection he’s under at the moment will be able to save him’.

Jeff was just about to go and see Owen Cunningham and Jocelyn Holmes to bring them up to date on the investigation into Gabby Lake’s disappearance when the reception sergeant at the station told him that a woman called Anne Griffin was waiting to talk to him. She was adamant that she must speak to the senior investigating officer on the case.

‘You are the investigating officer?’ Anne asked once she was in the interview room with Jeff and Rebecca.

‘Yes, that’s me’ Jeff replied. ‘And this is my colleague, DI Stockton. Thank you for volunteering to speak to us, Miss Griffin’.

‘I expect you’re wondering what took me so long’ said Anne.

‘Well twenty years is a long time’.

‘I read about my father absconding in the papers and that he’s on the run because the police finally seem to be willing to believe that he’s an evil bastard. I’ve never been sure of that before and that meant I was too frightened to come back and see to it that he finally gets what he deserves’.

‘Okay’ said Jeff. She was an attractive woman, he thought, with long black hair but he could see a shadow across her face and a grey tinge to her skin. She wore black mascara and light red lipstick. Her dark eyes were restless, like there was something in front of her she desperately didn’t want to see. ‘We understand you’ve been living in London?’

‘Yes’ said Anne. ‘I rent a small flat in Chiswick. I’ve worked in a coffee bar, as a doctor’s receptionist, in a local cake shop. I’ve done stacks of different things to stop myself going insane from looking over my shoulder the whole time, wondering if my father had bothered to go out and find me’.

‘Boyfriends? Girlfriends?’ Rebecca asked

Anne looked at Rebecca with daggers. ‘I’ve had a few boyfriends over the years but they’ve never lasted because I’m difficult to be with. I make it hard work for them. I’m single at the moment. I’ve needed Uncle Jack’s money because I’ve never earned much and living in London is expensive. The flat I’m renting takes up over half of what Uncle Jack gives me and still it’s only a tiny place’.

‘You’ve not been back to Manchester before now?’ Jeff asked.

‘No’ said Anne. ‘It’s changed a lot. I hardly recognize some of it’.

‘What else have you been doing with your life?’

‘Trying to forget’ said Anne. ‘When I left Manchester that night all I knew was that I wanted to get as far away from everything that was familiar as I could. I wanted anonymity. I felt suffocated. I needed the oxygen of being somewhere nobody knew me’.

‘So what happened to make you leave Manchester so suddenly, Miss Griffin?’

‘The last conversation I had was with a police officer called Ian Hayward. He was a friend of my father’

Rebecca leaned forward. ‘You mean to say that you spoke to the police about your father’s activities?’

Anne laughed but it wasn’t out of amusement. ‘Activities? Is that what you call them? Ian Hayward was the one I told everything to. And he did nothing. My father was mates with all the local police although it was only Hayward who knew what was really going on. The rest were too stupid to believe that there was an evil side to my father. They were too stupid and they didn’t care. Just like you don’t care now as you try and score points off my pain’

‘I’m not trying to do that, Miss Griffin’ said Rebecca.

‘You’re a lying heartless bitch’.

‘Miss Griffin, I do understand the strength of feeling but could we try and keep the tone civil?’ Jeff warned. ‘We’re on your side, Miss Griffin. We’re not the kind of police officer you dealt with before’.

Anne paused and then took a breath. ‘Okay’ she said. ‘Then I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.  It’s just difficult, you know. It’s difficult to trust after all this time of trying to live with what happened’.

‘Can you tell us about what did happen the night your baby died, Miss Griffin?’ Jeff asked.

‘You mean the night I killed my baby’ said Anne in a tone of voice so neutral she might be recalling a night she’d got drunk.

‘Your words, Miss Griffin’

‘And incriminating, I know, but it’s the truth. But I didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to murder my baby if that’s what you think. You need to understand what led up to it. You see, I never knew anything from my father except violence. When my mother died it got worse, not because he also used to hit my mother because he didn’t. His violence is only against children because it’s all about obedience. And with my mother gone he was the only one who could instill that sense of obedience in me and he did that with his fists. When he married Mary his price for obedience from my step-brother Ed became even more evil. I couldn’t stop him. Neither of us could. We were trapped’.

‘It can’t have been easy’.

‘It was Hell, detective’ said Anne. ‘It was Hell that Ed and I lived through every single day and you really have no comprehension of what it was like unless you’ve lived through the same sort of thing yourself. You see, you begin to wonder if it could all be your fault somehow. Or you wonder if it happens in other families. Then when you find out that it doesn’t happen in other families you feel like you must’ve been cursed because you’ve been bad. It’s a vicious circle that’s almost impossible to break’.

‘What happened that night, Miss Griffin?’

Anne swallowed hard. ‘We’d called my baby Nathan. He was a very placid little soul. He slept well and I knew that if he’d been born into a different family he’d have grown up to be a decent, kind human being. But that wasn’t to be. My father was dead against my relationship with Leroy’.

‘We know he had Leroy beaten up’ said Jeff, gently. 

‘Yes and the beatings Leroy got became ever more violent although that didn’t surprise me because I knew what my father was capable of’ said Anne. ‘But Leroy loved me and he stood by me and as the months rolled on, I became pregnant and we were planning to move out to the Caribbean where Leroy’s family were from. We thought it was the only way to stop my father from ruining our lives. But my father doesn’t give up. I’d been disobedient and I had to be taught a lesson. He asked me to go up and meet him at Pembroke House. He said that he had Leroy and Leroy’s son Ben and he would kill them if I didn’t go. I knew that he meant it. My father never makes idle threats. He said I had to bring the baby too. When I got there it was like something out of a horror film. Leroy was … Leroy had his hands tied behind his back and a noose round his neck that was attached to a ceiling beam in the dungeon place they had downstairs. His feet were bound at the ankles and he was standing on a chair. Poor little Ben was tied to a chair and gagged but as you can imagine, he was absolutely distraught. My father demanded that I give up the baby and never see Leroy again. All the time Leroy was shouting to Ben, telling him not to worry and to me telling me not to do what my father wanted, not to give in. My father turned to me and said that I’d had plenty of warnings and that I would now regret having ignored them. It all happened so fast. He kicked the chair from underneath Leroy and I heard Leroy’s neck … Ben was rocking back and forth in the chair and my father lunged at him with an iron bar. His little head fell forward and blood began pouring out of it …’