Stuart Pawson - The Mushroom Man

"What time?"

"Oh, about… just before midnight to one o'clock."

"Same thing? Same people?"

"Yes."

"And now you're reporting it to me?"

"Er, yes."

I thought: You stupid, doddering old fool! You idiotic apology of a human being! I didn't say it, though. Instead I stood up and nodded towards the bar. "What'll it be, Norman? Pint of bitter?"

The girl on the switchboard told me that my contact had been made redundant at the last reorganisation, so I needed to cultivate a new one. I explained who I was and the nature of the investigation I was involved in, and they were very cooperative. People usually are. That was how, nine o'clock Tuesday morning, Sparky and I came to be dressed in green overalls and driving a gas board van towards Crowfield Street.

Paedophilia and child pornography must be at the sick end of the league table of of fences It's all around us all the time, but mostly it is spread so thinly it remains unnoticed and undetected. It's kept within the family, and the victims suffer in silence, repressed by fear, guilt and an ignorance of what is normality. Nobody ever complains, and without a complainant we have no crime.

We stumble across the evidence, and prosecute for possession of indecent material. In the various raids during the Georgina investigation we'd found more than we expected. All the owners claimed they had bought it mail-order from abroad, but our vice people were confident it was being produced locally.

There is a mythology around the subject, created in the dreams of the evil genie who lives inside all of us. For some, the genie takes over, and when we catch them we judge and vilify, then whisper a little prayer of thanks that it didn't happen to us. We hear the horror stories and dismiss them as fantasy. But we can't be sure.

Sparky parked the van and we walked along Crowfield Road, noting the house numbers. I was armed with a clipboard and the relevant page from the electoral roll.

"This looks like one of ours," he said, standing over a manhole cover.

I read the legend cast into the metal. "That's the water board," I told him. "We're gas."

"Are we?" He looked back at the van. "Oh aye."

Number twenty-six had the neatest garden in the street. Norman was a mainly a roses man, and the borders round the shaven lawn were a blaze of colour. It was like finding a smiling face at a disciplinary hearing. A gorgeous Nelly Moser was climbing up the wall round his front door.

"That looks gorgeous," I said.

"It's a Nelly Moser," Sparky replied. That's how I know. I wrote it on my board as he rang the bell.

Mr. Toft looked surprisingly dapper for the hour. We flashed our IDs and I made the introductions. Eventually recognition dawned on him like the sun rising out of Filey Bay on a balmy bank holiday and he invited us in.

"Cup of tea, lads?"

"No thanks."

"Yes please."

"Go on, then."

I followed him into the kitchen. "The garden looks a treat, Norman," I said. "It's a credit to you." Through the back window I could see rows of vegetables stretching down to the lane he'd told me about. Now I could understand his concern about thieves and vandals.

"Aye. It's all I've got to do, these days. Biscuits?"

I shook my head. "No thanks, a cup pa will be fine. How long have you been on your own?"

"Fifteen months. Do you both take milk?"

"I don't. It must be hard for you."

"I get by. Can you carry them through?"

I picked up the mugs and sugar bowl and we went back into the front room. A wizened little terrier was curled in a basket near the fireplace.

I sipped my tea and stared at the dog. The problem with drinking it black is that it comes boiling. I was still blowing and sipping when Sparky put his empty mug down and said: "Could you show us where you were when you saw the flashing, Mr. Toft?"

We trooped upstairs to the spare bedroom at the back of the house. It was as neat as expected, used to store a few spare pieces of furniture.

The wallpaper pattern looked like a huge dissected kidney, repeated in great diagonals across all four walls.

Through the window we could see the backs of the houses on Crowfield Street, about a hundred and twenty yards away. I picked up the pair of ten-by-fifty binoculars that were lying on the windowsill and looked through them. I was transported straight into the bedroom of the house opposite. The alarm clock was ten minutes fast and something black and lacy was dangling across the bedside cabinet. I could almost smell the bodies. You dirty old sod, I thought, as I fumbled with the focus control.

I handed the binocs to Sparky. "Which house was it?" I asked Norman.

He pointed. "That one, to the left, with the curtains closed."

"Are the bedroom curtains ever open?"

"No."

They didn't look like curtains. There were no folds or drapes. My guess was it was just a piece of material pinned over the window.

In my mind I was juggling with the various ways of handling this. First intention had been to set up twenty-four-hour surveillance of the house opposite, but now I was having second thoughts. It would have been satisfying to catch them in the act, but we had the welfare of the kid to consider.

I was satisfied that the little girl that Norman had seen leaving the house wasn't Georgina. He'd said she had long fair hair, whereas Georgina's was dark and short. There was probably no connection, but we couldn't be sure. We'd heard stories about the evils that these people perpetrated, and what one person is capable of imagining, another might be motivated to act out.

I turned to the old man. "Norman, would you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes?" I asked.

He looked crestfallen. "Oh, er, OK. I'll be downstairs if you want me."

When I'd heard him reach the bottom of the stairs I asked Sparky what he thought of things.

He lowered the binoculars and examined them. "He'd be better off with a pair of eight-by-thirties," he replied.

"Or a tripod," I suggested.

"Mmm, a tripod. Definitely."

"Is the dog stuffed?"

"No, I saw it flick an ear."

"Thank God for that. We've got four options," I said. "One we move in soon as pos.; two we wait till the flashing starts and move in; three we wait till the flashing finishes and move in."

"Number two, the little girl will be in the middle of things," said Sparky. "For three, we'll have put her through it all again, while we sit outside. I couldn't go along with that."

"I agree. And today's only Tuesday. They might not come back until Saturday, if then."

"What about option four?"

"I haven't thought of it yet."

"Me neither."

"There's bound to be one."

"Quite. And there might be a simple explanation."

"Quite."

"Shall we have a ride round and read his meter, then?"

"No," I said. "Let's not bother. We can do it in the morning, nice and early. C'mon, let's get back and arrange the paperwork."

We drove slowly round the block in the gas board's van and had a good look at number twenty-seven. A naked lightbulb glowed in the kitchen.

We were both itching to knock at the door, but resisted the temptation.

The garden was converted into a dog compound, and a smart caravan stood in it. A two-year-old Mitsubishi Shogun was parked in the road, registered to one Paul Darryl Lally, which was also the name shown on the electoral roll. The other name on the list was Fenella Smith.

As we reached the gas board depot, CRO were coming back to me with Lally's criminal record. It was longer and more depressing than a Moscow bread queue. Mainly petty theft and receiving. Nothing heroic.

"He drives a better car than me," stated Sparky.

"And me," I replied.

"Well, we can't have that, can we?"