Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

— When was the first one?

— About two weeks ago.

— So they’ve been coming in pretty regularly.

— Every couple of days.

Hawthorn read one of them.

Dear Fillfuck FakePEDO

Ur scum and I let them know u are.U pedo pervert.I will kill you and noone will care.Cos you are a pedo. D.I.E.. U fucke I have pictures.

Real Man

He handed it to Child and glanced through the others.

— We’ll need the long headers on these, he said.

— The what?

— At the top there. It gives the email address, but the system also gets the I.P. address. Which gives us the location of the computer it was sent from.

He looked blank.

— Your IT guys will do it for us.

— I haven’t told anyone here. Except my boss.

— OK. Well, we can be discreet about it. But it’s important that we get that information.

— OK.

He was about thirty. Skinny. He seemed very worried.

— You have no idea who this might be?

— No.

— Just to your work address?

— Yes.

— Nothing odd showing up on your Facebook or in chat or any other websites or anything?

— Nothing at all.

— You went to Poland?

— To a film festival, yes.

— He has that?

— Yes, he mentions it in one of them.

Child read it out.

— Did you like the polish girls you raped? You like them 12 and 13? I’m fucking watching you.

Child had his glasses perched on the top of his head. Hawthorn stared at him. He’d never seen that before. Child took the glasses down and put them back on to look at the guy.

— Who knew you were going to Poland?

— Well. Anyone here, obviously. I mentioned it to some friends. It’s not like it was a secret or anything.

Child did the thing with the glasses again. Sitting them on top of his head like sunglasses. Hawthorn smiled.

— He sort of bangs on about the paedophile thing, Child said.

Hawthorn looked back at the guy. Phil.

— I’m not a paedophile.

— Why would he say that?

— Because it’s a horrible thing to say? Child nodded.

— So you have no idea who this might be?

— None at all. Really none. I have tried to work it out. But I can’t. I don’t know.

— Are you involved in politics at all?

— No.

— Do you own property?

— No, I rent. Why?

— Not involved in any legal disputes or litigation of any sort?

— No, nothing.

— Do you have a relative who might be involved in anything like that? Any sort of dispute?

— Nothing I know about.

— Any ex-girlfriends or boyfriends you think might get into something like this?

— No.

— You’re sure.

— Yes. Completely sure.

— So you have no names to give us? To check out? No suspicions about anyone?

— You’re making me feel like it’s my fault that I don’t know who it is. I just don’t know. I haven’t the faintest idea.

Child nodded.

— OK. Thanks. If you could point us towards your IT guys. And we’ll get back to you when we know something.

They spent another hour there. Hawthorn wrote a lot of notes. It was warm in the building. He liked the cinema smell. As they were leaving he grabbed a programme for the LGBT Film Festival. Child rolled his eyes.

— Don’t leave that in my fucking car.

— It’s not your fucking car.

— You want to drive?

— What’s this thing with your glasses?

— What thing?

— Putting them on top of your head when you read.

— I read better without my glasses.

— How does that work?

— I don’t fucking know. It’s getting more and more difficult to read things with my glasses on.

— Maybe I should drive.

— It’s not my distance vision. That hasn’t changed. I just can’t fucking read with my glasses and I can’t see any distance without them. I’m getting fucking old.

— Yeah.

— You can’t drive.

— I can drive.

— No you can’t. He’s a paedo, you know.

— Who?

— That guy. Phil.

— You think?

— He is. I tell you. I bet fifty quid if we grabbed his home computer we’d get a stash of little girl pics. Bet you these I.P. addresses are from a bunch of Internet cafés within oozing distance of an RSO or three.

— In London, said Hawthorn.

— You are never more than nine feet away, said Child.

— From a registered sex offender, they said, together.

— What do they say?

— Not a lot.

— You see them all the time?

— No. Maybe once or twice a day.

— All your life?

— I think so. There was a time in my teens that I thought I’d stopped seeing them. But I think I just ignored them for a couple of years.

They lay on the bed in sunlight, looking out over the East End.

— Do you see them when you’re with other people?

— Yeah. I can see them any time.

— You see any now?

He glanced around the room. He looked out of the window.

— You see that building over to the left? The smaller one. With the balconies.

— Yeah.

— So, three floors down from the top, the centre balcony?

— Yeah.

— You see anyone there?

— No.

He smiled.

— Then I see one now.

They went to a hanging in Kentish Town.

Something odd about it. On the radio.

— This is the third this month.

— Fourth.

— Fourth this month.

Frank Lenton called.

— Rivers, he said.

— What about him?

— He knows this woman. Knew this woman. He turned up out of the blue when there was just Lowry and Chudasama there. Barged in and practically collapsed. He must have heard the address on the radio. He’s completely out of it. Lowry and Chuds had to take him back here, then home. So. You know. Sensitivity.

Child and Hawthorn looked at each other.

— What do you want us to do?

— Well. Nothing. The usual.

— Nothing different then?

— Nothing.

— Right.

It smelled horrible. From the front door they got a wave of barbecue and shit. They glanced at each other. They pulled on gloves. They pulled on shoe-bags. In the hallway it was a burned Sunday roast and something sharp like plastic. The uniforms weren’t happy. Forensics were there, hanging around, waiting. They didn’t look happy either.

It was a large three-storey house with a big basement kitchen. It was nice. Roomy, full of light. Recently redecorated. By the sink, over the cooker, beside the window to the back garden, something hung improbably, a bit like a deflated balloon.

They stared at it. A uniform stood in the doorway and told them various facts, which they applied to what they saw in front of them with limited success.

She was called Misha Palmer. At least they assumed that’s who it was. They’d no reason to believe it was anyone else. She was in her mid-forties. She shared with four other tenants. She had waited for everyone to go to work. Then she had gone to the kitchen, taken off her nightdress, which now lay crumpled in the sink, dismantled and removed the extractor hood over the cooker, attached a rope somehow to the wall, had fixed the other end around her neck, lit the rings on the gas hob, and she had knelt forward from the back wall, over the flames, asphyxiating herself as her flesh burned.

There was no note, the uniform told them.

Hawthorn went to throw up in the back garden and found the spot everyone else had used. That didn’t help. Child lasted another few minutes and then did the same.

— She has to hate her life.

— She has to hate herself.

— Yeah.

— I mean really, really hate herself.

— Yeah.

The uniform followed them. Giving them facts. The fire alarm and the smoke through the window brought neighbours, and the fire brigade, and firemen had broken in the front door and found her.