“Okay. I’ll give you a bell if I find anything.”
Ben waited restlessly at home, drinking tea until he heard Nikolas moving about upstairs. He slid out with the dog, checking his mobile every few minutes.
Kate called mid-morning. He was at the canal. She didn’t say much, but she sounded upset. He drove to her apartment and took the dog with him so he didn’t have to return home and face a meeting with Nikolas. He didn’t know what he was thinking himself yet, let alone trying to explain his concerns to Nikolas. Kate was standing at the window overlooking the river when Ben let himself in. She kept her back to him but waved at the open laptop on the coffee table. “He’d tried to delete everything as he went along—history, photos, videos. But it was all there, of course. I got it back.”
She turned, her eyes puffy and red from crying. “Oh, Ben, this job…” He went to her and put his arms around her, his chin able to rest on the top of her head. It felt so familiar. And he didn’t feel a single spark of desire. It may have been the unfortunate circumstances, but he attributed it to Nikolas—Nikolas was to blame for most else in Ben’s life currently, after all. Eventually, he pulled away and went to the computer and clicked the retrieved folder she’d set up. He knew what he’d see before he saw it: thousands of images of girls, very few even as old as ten, being degraded, raped, and abused. Radulf came over and laid his head on Ben’s knee, and for one moment he tried to shield the dog from the screen. Then he realised what he was doing. He couldn’t even laugh at his own stupidity. He stroked the dog’s head, glad that he, at least, was spared the understanding of what he was seeing. “How did you know?”
Ben’s eyes rose wearily at Kate’s question, and he accepted a cup of tea. “I saw the look he gave his stepdaughter. She’s ten.” It had also been the fact that Jeremy had left him with Felicity so easily. Ben didn’t explain this; he didn’t like drawing attention to himself. No man, however, would leave someone who looked like Ben with his attractive wife. They just wouldn’t.
Kate was watching Ben’s expression. “Is she on there?”
“Not so far. I’ll have to…” Resigned, he carried on, photo after photo. Finally, he came to a set that was high definition and time stamped, clearly taken on the same camera—and all of Alice. They were of her swimming, some in her ballet uniform, one or two in the bath with silly shampoo hair, and none of these would have looked wrong at all seen in isolation, but with the other images, they told a depressing story. They told the exact one Ben had seen in the house: a predatory paedophile marrying a vulnerable woman for access to her daughter. Ben prayed these photos were proof that the man was in the early stages of grooming, just gaining the girl’s trust—which he clearly had, given her smiling, innocent expressions in the photos. But Ben had seen the look Jeremy had given Alice as she went up for her bath. A hunger, a need that he had seen on faces before. He had seen it on faces that were looking athim.
“What are you going to do?”
“Honestly, Kate? I don’t know. I—There is an opportunity for her to go to her father.”
“Do you think he suspects?”
Ben shrugged. “What would you do if it was your daughter and you suspected this? I’d fucking kill him. I wouldn’t hire someone to take her and sit back for weeks waiting.”
“Not everyone is like you, Ben. Maybe he doesn’t want to make a bad situation worse by accusing this man when he has no proof.”
Ben nodded thoughtfully. “So, I take her to her father—to safety. What about this man? What about Jeremy? He just gets to continue, maybe with another girl? And what about the mother? I’m sure she knows—or suspects anyway. Does she deserve to get away with it?”
“Ben, don’t be so hard on her. Maybe she’s trapped.”
“Bull. Shit. She’s a cun—” He stopped and kept his thoughts about Felicity to himself. “Thanks for this, Kate. I owe you, and I won’t forget. Anything you need, anytime, and you only have to call me.”
“Make me a cup of tea when I come to work with you?”
“You’re going to take the job?”
“I’m considering it. Sir Nikolas made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Huh.He’d made Ben one of those, too. And Ben hadn’t refused him once, but Ben was fairly sure Kate meant salary, and as far as Ben knewhewasn’t being paid at all.
“Cute dog, by the way.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was mid-afternoon. He’d done as Nikolas had asked and investigated the stepfather, and now everything had changed. Clearly, Nikolas had been privy to information that Ben hadn’t been given. This and the slight niggle that Kate had been offered a job—a well-paying job—without Ben being consulted (or paid himself), made Ben reluctant to return home just yet. On a whim, he continued driving out of London and onto the M4. He was still driving when he hit the M5 interchange and still motoring when he reached Exeter. Radulf was clearly fascinated by Devon. He’d pulled his head in on the motorway, his jowls in imminent danger of detaching, but now, winding around the narrow lanes, he had his face to the wind with grinning trails of saliva streaming out and messing the rear window. Ben smiled at him in the mirror. He was relieved that he could still smile.
He reached the cottage by early evening. Clicking his fingers to the dog for him to follow, he rang the bell. Tim answered the door. They hadn’t seen each other for almost two months, and the last time they had, Tim had still been suffering the physical effects of his beating from the Mafferty brothers. “We have phones in Devon, stranger. You could always call first, you know.” Tim grinned. “Don’t ever see that as an imposition.”
“Dickhead.” Ben pushed past. “This is Radulf. He likes sausages. John home?” Tim shook his head.
“He’s at a conference in Bristol. You hungry?”
Ben was about to reply that he was always hungry, which was always true, except suddenly the thought of food made him feel sick. Tim saw the pale tinge around Ben’s eyes and made him sit. “Tea. I’ll make some tea.” He kept a wary eye on Ben as he boiled the kettle. “What’s up, Jaime? Joking aside, you don’t ring for two months? Two months and then you just turn up?”
Ben was playing with Radulf’s ears, turning them inside out so he had to flick them back, both enjoying the game. He sighed. “It’s Ben, and I need your advice.”
Tim’s eyebrows rose. “But you do know I’m a professor of ethics, right? I didn’t think you worried yourself overmuch with ethical dilemmas…Ben.”
“Maybe I don’t. Maybe I just need someone to agree with me. To agree with what I’m going to do.”
“And your…friend? The man you were working for…? He can’t help you with this?”
