CHAPTER 25
I gave Chris the details he needed, and he was off on his mercy errand. I called Diane over to my office door as I saw him off.

“Diane… this may sound like the most sexist request imaginable, but I want some cakes and some coffee sorted out”

“And you want me to do the runs?” she returned, with a sly smile.

“No, I want you to tee up a couple of PCSOs. What I am after is a couple of packs of filter coffee, milk, finger food. Once the footage starts coming in we are going to have a shitload of work to do, and I want people awake. This is your early warning: I am just about to go and ask for volunteers for working for the Queen. I’ll try and swing authorisation later, but this is live right now. Do you need cash up front? I’ve got forty quid here”

She laughed. “Definitely a step up from the last boss!”

“Well, hang on a tad, I want to brief the crew first”

We made our way down to the newly-christened incident control room, where my team was now gathered.

“Boys, girls, we now have a real lead on this one, but it has come a very shitty way”

There was a snigger from somewhere at the back, but it was quickly stifled under my glare.

“We have a young rape victim, with at least three attackers. They began with a severe beating, then multiple rape, and finally urinated all over the victim. Victim is twenty-two, and a local boy. Still awaiting his consent before we tell his next of kin. That’s right: best part of three days since he was raped, and he is still so ashamed that he won’t even go to his own mother for comfort.

“That is why Diane said what she did: he wasn’t just fucked, he was fucked up. Now, we don’t yet know how much we are going to be able to get from the victim, how much he remembers, whether he can ID anyone, but we have a lot of camera footage coming in. The pub has its own system, and I will be particularly interested in what comes off that. Particularly, people hanging around outside”

Blake had his hand up, so I nodded at him.

“Why they got outside cameras, ma’am?”

“They got twitchy after that nazi bombed the Admiral Duncan, lad. Anyway, they set it up to look both ways down the street, not just at the doorway”

Somebody muttered “Cost a bomb, that” and I replied with what passed just then for a laugh.

“I am sending out for coffee, cakes, whatever we need to stay sharp here, aye? You know the score: this is being done for the Queen just now. I will try and swing authority for overtime payments, but this is something we need to get done right now. The clock is ticking, and one thing I do NOT want is another rape, or worse, before we tuck this one away. Anyone not happy to stay on? Aye, Alun?”

“Missus will be late in, so I have to sort the kids, ma’am. If I can have half hour, just to get them round their Nan’s, aye”

“Nice one, lad. Anyone else?”

Nem con. I felt proud of my team, just then, felt like I was actually a proper leader, but I knew, or at least hoped, that they were really doing it for a broken kid lying in a hospital bed. I bowed my head.

“Thank you all. Diane, do the honours, aye? Anyone got a summary of what we have available?”

It was gruelling work. Not physically hard, just repetitive, and boring as hell, but a pattern began to emerge. Our boy left the pub, seen from at least six different angles, and showed up on two more cameras as a passing shadow in brilliantly white trainers. There was a flash of his oh-so-young face as he passed the pay station in the car park (mark that one for retention), one of him on the lift, and that was it. Then Blake spotted it. About five minutes after our boy had passed the camera the first time, there was a flash of white shoes just on the edge of the screen.

“Can you slo-mo that one, Blake?”

“Just a sec… he’s not walking, ma’am. He’s being dragged. Hang on… look. There”

Just the edge of another shoe, and part of a trouser leg, with the three stripes of Adidas sportswear running down it. Blake turned, grinning. “Latest Nike trainer, aye, and an Adidas shell suit, bottom half anyway”

I laughed. “No brand loyalty, these kids! You know what I want now, aye?”

It took six hours before we pulled a matching lower half from the Smugglers’ cameras, but it was there, along with half a shot of a face. The shit was wearing a hoody, but his chin had caught the light, and there was a goatee beard on it, and as he raised a cigarette to his lips there were at least four visible tattoos on his hand.

“Bloody well done, team. Get those enhanced and sort out a print of the tats. We’ve got a key to this one at last!”

It all sounds so simple, but so much of it is slog. I once saw a documentary on the solar system, and they showed how it was that they found Pluto. They flick two images backwards and forwards, two photos, and if there is something there it seems to move, because the pictures are taken hours apart. It’s relatively easy with that system, but before then it was like spot the difference competitions, looking for one small difference in two almost identical pictures without the flicker-box thing. That is what it is like with CCTV stuff, for you don’t always have a steady state to compare things with. It is hard, boring work, which is why Blake’s little clip was such a game changer. Now, we were looking for Something rather than just anything.

Diane called across. “Got him on two more, ma’am, one on the junction and another from the pub. Nobody next to him”

“Ma’am?”

“Aye, Alun?”

“Want me to pop down to the LIO and see what his little card index says?”

“Intel will be long gone now, butt”

“Aye, ma’am, but I used to work in there”

“And?”

The sod was almost blushing. “I sort of kept a set of keys…”

“What’s he got, then? Remember, this isn’t my nick, aye?”

He grinned. “Ray’s always been a bit of a trainspotter, innit, boys? Never throws anything away”

I nodded. “Bit of an asset in an intelligence officer”

“Aye, ma’am, but he had a real passion for ODFs. Tattoos in particular. He set out years ago to try and catalogue every tat on every scrote in the City. He got one lad with a scarf over his face for abusive behaviour at a home match, aye, just from the tattoo on the hand he was using to give two fingers to the camera!”

He paused, looking round the room again, like a cat with a very worried canary between his paws.

“Got descriptions of some, photos of some, drawings of the rest, aye? I could get these printed off and, well, as long as you can square my going into his stuff while he’s off. Oh, and not tell him I got the keys”

There was another reason there, but I left it aloe for there and then. “Go to, butt!”

Just then, our batphone rang. Diane took it.

“Your mate’s back, ma’am”

“Chris? Can you get him brought up? Ta”

Five minutes later and he was sniffing for the coffee and eying what was left of the cakes and other snacks.

“Dive in, butt. Girls, boys, gather round for a bit if you don’t mind. This is Chris, who has just spent some time with our victim. Chris, how is he?”

He cuddled his mug to his chin, looking down into the steam. “He’s a mess, people. If any of you have ever been in his position, you will understand. If not, well, it’s all his fault. He shouldn’t have gone out, he shouldn’t have pissed in a dark corner, he shouldn’t have come to Cardiff, he shouldn’t be gay, he shouldn’t be breathing. Everything is his fault. He--, no, that’s enough for now. He’s washed his hands raw; god knows what his private bits are like. He is going to need a lot of support, that’s obvious, but what I really think he needs most is to see three arseholes locked away for a bloody long time”

He took a long, slow drink. “They told him they know where he lives, where his family live, all the usual. He thinks they’ll do his kid sister next”

Shit. “Did they specifically threaten his sister, Chris?”

“No, Lainey. Just his family, but his paranoia’s on overdrive. We need to sort this out as soon as”

Blake coughed, “Who are you, exactly? I saw you on the sweetness and light seminar stuff, but I can’t remember what you do”

Chris smiled. “Oh, I’m the sacrificial goat you bloody well DON’T arrive too late for!”