‘You were naked?’
Sienna blushes and the details turn to dust in my mouth.
‘Tell me about the caravan?’
Her forehead furrows. ‘It had a bed and a little sink and a table that folded away.’
‘Did it have curtains?’
‘They were black and they were taped down.’
‘Did you ever manage to look outside?’
‘I woke up during the night. I was so thirsty. At first I was frightened because I couldn’t remember where I was and it was so dark.’
‘Where was Gordon?’
‘He must have gone out. My head was really heavy. I hooked my fingers beneath the tape on the windows and lifted a corner. I could see coloured lights and hear music. Kids were yelling. It was a fairground. It made me think of when I was eleven and we went to Blackpool. Lance won me a panda on the shooting gallery and I kissed a boy from Maidstone who Mum said was my cousin but he was just a friend of the family.’
Sienna smiles shyly.
‘This fairground, what rides could you see?’
‘I think it had a merry-go-round. I could see the coloured lights on the canopy. Is that important?’
‘It might be.’
47
The first pale suggestion of dawn has appeared on the horizon as a faint grey smudge. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the real dark night of the soul is always three o’clock in the morning, but that’s not right. The darkest part of the night is just before dawn when we wake and peer through the curtains and wonder where the world has gone.
Headlights appear and disappear on the M32. A rubbish truck is reversing into an alley. A shift worker hurries along the footpath. The day begins.
Visiting the bathroom, I squeeze the last urine from my bladder and take another few pills, before going in search of Ronnie Cray. I find her pacing the vehicle lock-up with an unlit cigarette in her lips. Like an obsessive compulsive, she is full of tics and routines. She taps the cigarette against her wrist and sucks it again.
The Novak Brennan trial resumes this morning. I haven’t asked her what she’s going to do about the photographs and the jury foreman.
‘So what have you got?’ she asks expectantly. I feel an acid surge in my stomach.
‘Ellis isn’t going to crack. He’s been here before - in police custody, under suspicion, interrogated - he won’t be tricked into making admissions. He believes he got away with murdering his first wife, which makes him cleverer than the police.’
I glance at my notes. Scrawled at the top of the page I have the name: Gordon Ellis Freeman.
Age: thirty-six.
Above average intelligence.
Forensically aware.
Technologically confident.
A practised manipulator and predator who uses a high degree of planning and has the ability to execute those plans.
His motivation isn’t particularly sexual. His satisfaction comes from the hunt rather than the conquest. Bending a young girl to his will. Having her fall in love with him. Offering herself to him unconditionally.
Cray is opening the hinged lid of her lighter and shutting it with a flick of her wrist.
‘You can call Ellis a nonce or a pervert or a paedophile, but that doesn’t explain him. Unless you can grasp the intense pleasure he gets from taking an underage girl and using her as the culmination of his fantasies, you’ll never understand him. Sienna was the punctuation mark for a perfect statement.’
I pause and wait. The detective is still listening.
‘You have to explore his account of events in fine detail. Don’t let him waffle or prevaricate. Ask direct questions; seek times, dates and places. Woven together in the right way, he might slip up.’
‘But you don’t believe he will?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me when the good news is coming,’ she mutters.
‘Sienna is his weak link - the one element he can’t control. Right now, Ellis thinks nobody will believe Sienna because she’s a murder suspect and she’s only fourteen, but he’s worried. That’s why he tried to silence her.
‘Remember the caravan? When his wife disappeared the police couldn’t find it. Ellis told them he’d lost it in a poker game, but that’s not true. He hid it from them or he’s managed to get another one.’
‘Why does he need a ’van?’
‘He needs somewhere isolated, somewhere he can be alone with his victims so he can savour the experience and make it last. Sienna went with him willingly, yet he still drugged her because he didn’t want her knowing the location. He also wanted to do things to her against her will.’
A vein in Cray’s temple is pulsing with her heartbeat. ‘You think he took souvenirs?’
‘Photographs. Maybe videos. He blacked out the windows of the van, which suggests he could have a darkroom.’
The DCI splays open her hand and wipes dirt off the heel of her palm with the tips of her fingers.
‘How do we find it?’
‘We don’t.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We have to convince Gordon that we’re getting close. Make him believe we’re unlocking his secret. He can’t afford to have us find the caravan. He’ll have to act.’
For the next fifteen minutes I outline a plan - just the bare bones. Most of the decisions can’t be made until I see how Ellis reacts. The more pressure he’s put under, the more likely he is to make a mistake.
‘I want you to tip off the media,’ I tell Cray. ‘Turn his arrest into a public event. A schoolteacher arrested over sex abuse allegations - the tabloids will be baying for his blood.’
‘He’ll accuse us of victimising him.’
‘Let him complain. Bring him through the front doors in the full glare of the TV lights. Make him run the gauntlet. Show him how society reacts to child molesters.’
‘Then what?’
‘Take him through Sienna’s statement. Every time, date and place. The one thing you don’t mention is the caravan. Leave it out completely. He’s going to wonder how you can have so much detail - but not that one.’
‘And then what?’
‘Leave the rest to me.’
***
The arrest warrant is served at 6 a.m. by a dozen detectives who push past Natasha Ellis and move quickly through the house. Gordon is made to wait in his underwear, shivering in a hallway. An hour later he’s handcuffed and led outside to a police car in front of his neighbours.
The siren sounds all the way to Trinity Road where a crowd of photographers, reporters and TV crews record his arrival. Blinking into the bright lights and flashguns, Gordon looks stunned by the speed of his changing circumstances.
They say a cruel story runs on wheels and this one has every hand oiling them as they turn. The arrest makes all the morning news bulletins on TV and radio, destined to be the defining story of the day, triggering talkback phone-ins and coffee-room discussions.
Gordon Ellis is told to stand in front of a height chart holding a whiteboard with his name and date of birth.
‘Look up.’
He raises his eyes and the flashgun fires.
‘Turn to the right.’
Pulling his shoulders back, he lifts one hand and smooths down his hair. The camera flashes again. His stitches are barely visible beneath his hairline, but one of his eyes is bruised and yellow.
Ellis was given time to dress before he left the house. The school teacher chose carefully - aware of what impression he wanted to make: spectacles instead of contacts, a business shirt, blue blazer and jeans. Smart casual. Studious. Relaxed.
The formal interviews begin just before nine. Ronnie Cray and Safari Roy enter the room with a dozen ring-bound folders. Ellis had wanted a lawyer from Scotland but was told to find someone closer. He settled on a short, stocky solicitor with the sort of nonchalant smile and cocky demeanour that irritates detectives.