Detective Sergeant Charles Atkinson was hunched over the desk in the small tech
suite of the police HQ; the screen of the computer provided the only light. He was
staring obsessively at the images. He needed to come here now: it would have been more
convenient to use his own desk, but it had been quietly pointed out to him that what he
was watching tended to cause “unnecessary distress” to his colleagues. Atkinson had
almost replied that in his opinion the distress was anything but unnecessary, but had
bitten the retort back.
It was the first time he had seen this particular recording, but it was similar to
these others. They were made somewhere quiet – somewhere in the city, he was certain, but
isolated enough that the screams wouldn’t carry, that the comings and goings of the gang
wouldn’t be noticed. But so many of the victims were from the region that they had to be
based somewhere close.
He had a large collection of these films now. They came from a website, one whose
creators Atkinson had now spent over four months trying to track down. The website
offered films of young women – mostly little more than girls, some no older than his own
daughter, Emily – being brutalised and beaten. It boasted proudly that all its films were
specially produced for the site, and that all were genuine. The victims were abducted and
held for anything from a couple of hours to several days. During this time they were
filmed being stripped, humiliated, and repeatedly violated. Some time later, the edited
films would be offered to the website’s thousands of subscribers worldwide.
The girl in the latest video was a blonde in her late teens. She had been taken
on her way home from work. She hadn’t seen her abductors – or at least, claimed she had
not when he had attempted to question her. She remembered, she insisted, almost nothing
of what had been done to her. She would not be able to identify any of the four, and she
certainly wouldn’t testify.
He sympathised with her. But he was also frustrated. Every one of the victims he
had so far managed to identify and track down – there were plenty more he hadn’t – had
told the same story. Every single one wanted only to put the incident behind them. Even
the awareness that footage of them naked, being forced to perform perverse acts on
strangers, was available online to anyone with a credit card, did not sway them.
He ground his teeth unconsciously as he studied the footage for what seemed like
the hundredth time. The four members of the gang were, as always, careful to keep their
faces concealed beneath their grotesque animal masks – one a pig, one a snarling dog, one
a bird, one a cat. The furnishings of the room were simple: whitewashed walls, an old
bed, a few other grotty items of furniture, some chains. The girl was suspended by her
wrists while two of the men lifted her legs up and to the sides by the ankles, forcing
them almost horizontal. A third was behind her, his erect prick stabbing upwards into her
crotch. To the sound of her screams, the camera zoomed inward to display his manhood
delving in and out of her.
Atkinson was jolted from his bitter reverie by the sound of the door opening to
admit his colleague, DS Marshall. “Christ! Are you still in here?”
Atkinson nodded, a little guiltily. He was aware how obsessive he had become
about the case, but seemed unable to help himself.
Marshall glanced at the screen over Atkinson’s shoulder, and his face wrinkled
with distaste. “Fuck me. I don’t know how you can watch that stuff without going nuts.
And you a father, too. How is your girl, anyway? She still at school?”
“Finishes this year. Off to Cambridge in September, if she does well enough in
her A levels.”
Marshall whistled. “Bloody hell. Where did she get those brains from? The
milkman?” He chuckled at his own joke. Atkinson could not join in, despite himself. He
felt cramped, as though Marshall was invading his territory – not just in the small room,
but in asking about the case, by looking at the images of the tormented girl. Long time
friend and colleague though he was, Atkinson wished the man would simply leave him to his
thoughts. He reached for the mouse and closed the file.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t asked for more help, but with resources being what
they were – the need to keep policing visible on the streets, the lack of an actual
complaint by any of the girls, the complete failure to establish which country the website
was even based in – his requests had fallen on deaf ears. Until a body turned up – and to
the best of his knowledge, none of the girls had been murdered – the case would remain low
priority.
That was why he burned with frustration every time one of the girls refused to
report the crime. They weren’t chosen at random, he knew that – they were picked at times
when their disappearance would not be immediately noticed, and often returned before
friends or family had called the police. On occasion, someone panicked and reported a
daughter or housemate missing. Atkinson scoured such reports on a daily basis, desperate
to identify the latest victim, maybe using that information to find the gang.
So far, his search had been fruitless. But not unnoticed. An email had arrived
in his inbox a week ago, from an anonymous and immediately deleted hotmail account. It
had read: “Back off. Or she’s our next production.” They had attached a photo of Emily,
taken as she left their house the previous morning, probably from a car parked across the
street.
The threat to his beloved daughter had sent a chill through his heart. But
Atkinson was not a man to be threatened. It was for Emily that he was pursuing the case:
Emily, and all the others like her. He had worked to keep her safe all her life, even
more so since her mother had left, tired of his obsessive work and endless late nights on
the job. So he had asked for Emily to be watched, just discretely, and warned her to be
vigilant, to let him know where she was, not to walk home alone. She had smiled, and
promised she would. He hoped she meant it. He kept his work from her as much as
possible, and had decided not to share information about the threat. Let her enjoy her
youth and innocence: he would shoulder the evils of the world on her behalf.
Atkinson became aware that Marshall was talking to him again. “Christ, mate, are
you in there? I said, are you getting any closer to finding this lot?”
Atkinson shook his head. “No. No closer. But they’re somewhere round here, I’m
sure of it. Sooner or later, I’ll find them. I don’t give up easily.”
Marshall rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “No. No, you don’t.”
* * *
Emily Atkinson had promised her father that she wouldn’t walk home alone, but it
was over half an hour to the next bus, and walking was simply quicker. It was still
light, after all, and he did worry so much. She realised it came with his job – as a
policeman, he was bound to see the darker side of life. But things weren’t that bad all
the time, and violence was rare in most people’s lives. So she slung her bag over one
shoulder, put her iPod earphones in and set off.
She was an exceptionally attractive girl. At 18, she was just emerging from
adolescent prettiness to the full beauty of her young womanhood. Her strawberry blonde
hair, cut at shoulder length, her clear blue eyes and bee-stung lips would all be enough
to turn heads, even without her luscious figure. At just under five and half feet tall,
she was sweetly curved in a manner which suggested she might need to watch what she ate in
years to come. But for now, that slight bit of extra weight merely served to enhance the
contours of her breasts and hips.
Today, she wore a light jacket over a white blouse, a short blue skirt, black
tights, and fashionable calf-high boots. One or two men glanced at her as she passed, but
any that she noticed she simply averted her gaze from. On other occasions, she might have
had her boyfriend to walk her home, but he had been at home for the past couple of days
with a bad fever. She hoped he would get better soon. She missed him.
They had been dating for almost a year, and had slept together for the first time
about three months previously. The loss of her virginity was not news that Emily had
shared with her father, though in general she kept very little from him, and he might well
have guessed. But it was the kind of thing a girl likes to keep private. The sex had so
far been... nice, but perhaps no more than that. Emily had heard discussions of orgasms,
and how long sex was supposed to last, and suspected she was missing out on something.
She wondered occasionally if there was something wrong with her. The obvious answer –
that it was down to inexperience on both her and her boyfriend’s part – did not occur to
her.
Then a car pulled up alongside her, and the rear window wound down. Emily
realised that the man in the back was speaking to her; she pulled out the earphones,
keeping a slight distance back, just in case.
“Miss Atkinson? Miss Emily Atkinson?” he was asking. Emily nodded cautiously,
not recognising him. Immediately, the man opened the door and stepped onto the pavement,
opening a wallet to reveal a police ID.
“We’ve been looking for you, Miss Atkinson. It’s about your father.”
Emily looked from the ID – which seemed real – to the man. He was tall, with a
full beard and dark glasses which hid his eyes. “Why?” she asked. “Has something
happened?”
He nodded. “I’m afraid so. I don’t know the details, but he’s been rushed to
hospital.”
“Oh my God!” Emily’s eyes widened in alarm, and she rooted in her jacket pocket
for her phone. “I have to call him...”
“He can’t answer at the moment. But he’s been asking for you. They sent us to
try to pick you up. Miss Atkinson, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m afraid they
indicated that we should find you as soon as possible.”
Politely, he held the car door open for her. “Hop in. We’ll have you with him in
no time.”
Distressed at the unexpected news, Emily swiftly got into the car, the man
following her. As the driver moved away from the kerb, he closed the door and wound the
window up. She asked, “Do you have any idea what happened? Is he ill? Hurt?”
The man was looking straight ahead. “You care about you father very much, don’t
you, Emily?”
She was choking back tears. “Yes. Yes. We’ve been so close.”
He nodded. “I must say, that makes you very easy to kidnap.”
It took a moment for Emily to register this. “Easy to... what?”
Suddenly, before she could react, the man swung round to face her, something in
his hand. He pressed it hard to Emily’s stomach and pressed something on the side.
Immediately, a massive jolt of electricity burned into the girl’s body; she bucked
violently in her seat, her head thrown back, mouth stretched open even though she seemed
unable to scream. Then he turned off the device, and she slumped back, unconscious.
Her attacker sat back in his seat. “Piece of piss,” he remarked to the driver, as
he began to peel off his false beard.
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