‘So I can’t help her, can I?’ protested Sally, with more than a hint of stubbornness.
‘Oh yes, you can,’ said Jenkins. ‘You can help us catch the bastard who did her in. You owe that to Mel.’
Sally still looked doubtful.
‘You’re not that scared of your mother, are you?’ Jenkins persisted, rather to Saslow’s concern.
The promised tears came suddenly. Sally’s shoulders began to heave.
‘Well, are you?’ Jenkins repeated. She clearly wasn’t going to back off.
Sally shook her head, just as Mrs Pearson re-entered the room carrying two mugs of tea.
‘Now you’ve upset her,’ she said accusingly. ‘I hope it’s worth it, that’s all.’
‘I think your daughter has something to tell us, Mrs Pearson,’ Saslow interjected. ‘And I have a feeling it might prove to be quite important, isn’t that so, Sally?’
Sally nodded. She shot a nervous glance at her mother, but all the same began to speak.
‘Mel and me, well, we went online a lot, on her laptop because her mum and dad don’t know how to check it like mine do.’
Jenkins made encouraging noises.
‘We used to go on dating sites.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ interrupted Mrs Pearson thunderously. ‘After all we’ve said, all you’ve been told…’
Saslow gestured to the woman to be quiet.
‘It was a game really,’ Sally continued, almost as if her mother hadn’t spoken. ‘Neither of us ever intended to carry anything through. It was just a bit of fun.’
‘What were the sites?’ asked Saslow.
‘Oh we tried out any we could get for free. There was one called LetsMeet.com…’ Sally’s voice trailed away.
‘So did you actually meet anyone. Either of you?’ Saslow asked.
Sally shook her head. ‘I didn’t. I would have been too scared. Mum is always going on about the dangers of that sort of thing. Mel is, I mean… uh, she was… hardly ever afraid of anything. There was this man she’d been chatting to online for a bit. I didn’t know for certain, but I think she was going to meet him on Thursday night. She asked me to cover for her. She said it was a secret, but she’d tell me afterwards. She liked being mysterious, even with me.’
‘Do you know anything about this man?’
‘Not really,’ said Sally. ‘Except Mel said he sounded Scottish, and he’d told her he was nineteen and a student. But we both knew that older men lie about their age online, to get younger girls. I said she’d better be careful. That she shouldn’t meet him, not on her own anyway.’ Sally turned towards her mother, who had fallen mercifully silent. ‘I did, honestly. Anyway, she said I was a wuss and she was going to have some fun regardless and that I’d better cover for her, or she’d tell you what we’d been doing, mum.’
Mrs Pearson still didn’t speak, to Saslow’s relief.
Sally’s shoulders started to heave again. ‘It’s my fault, isn’t it? It’s my fault she’s dead. I should have snitched on her, like your best friend did.’ She glanced towards Jenkins. ‘I shouldn’t have cared about getting into trouble. If I’d snitched on her, she’d still be alive.’
‘You can’t know that, Sally,’ said Polly Jenkins. ‘You thought you were doing the best for your friend and you certainly are now. Did you know his name, this man you thought she might be planning to meet?’
‘Only a first name. He called himself Al. Just that. Al.’
As they left the Pearson house, Saslow asked Jenkins if her story about being rescued from an abusive childhood by her snitching best friend had been a true one.
‘Of course,’ replied Polly Jenkins, smiling an enigmatic smile.
Saslow wasn’t sure whether she believed her or not. The approach had certainly been effective.
She called Vogel to give him the news about Melanie Cooke’s online adventure. An adventure which now seemed likely to have led to her death. The all-out hunt for a paedophile called Al had begun.
Leo
We arranged to meet at the pub just off Leicester Square. The one with the conveniently situated gents’ toilets, right by the entrance, which I used as a place to change clothes. I felt safe there. Safer, perhaps bizarrely, than at The Freedom Bar, which Tim had suggested as a meeting place. There, I’d felt that both Tim and I had stuck out because of our awkwardness among the cool set. Or my awkwardness at any rate. I suggested one of those big, anonymous, Chinese restaurants, which was almost next door, for our dinner. Both the pub and the restaurant were close to The Premier Inn, therefore involving as little public appearance as possible.
As usual, I tried to keep the risk of being recognised by anyone from my day to day life, however unlikely that might be, to the minimum. I made sure I arrived at the pub early and, from just inside the doorway, had a good look around to make sure that there was no one around who might know me. I’d changed earlier, and already been to the restaurant and reserved a table that was close to the door and in a secluded corner booth.
Fortunately, Tim was tickled by the corner booth, which he seemed to find romantic. He did not appear to notice that I positioned myself as far away from him as possible. He talked and talked, and I talked too, rather a lot for me. I told him as much as I dared about myself.
‘If you disappear on me this time, if I suddenly can’t get hold of you, don’t even think about coming back to me again with tales of lost and stolen phones,’ he said sternly.
I could see that his eyes were twinkling, but I knew he meant it.
I’d given him my new mobile number and we’d been in touch again several times before this meeting. I hadn’t felt the need to confess that this was yet another pay-as-you-go phone.
‘No chance,’ I said.
Again, he didn’t seem to notice my determination not to get too close to him when we were outside, walking together to the hotel. I kept as much as possible of the pavement between us.
Having decided to give me another chance, he threw himself into the occasion with his customary enthusiasm. We were in each others arms as soon as the door to our room had closed behind us. If anything, our lovemaking was even better than before. There was a tenderness between us that I had never previously experienced, either with a man — or with a woman, which I had tried out in my all too frequent attempts to achieve conventionality — and yet there was excitement too.
So it was with a heavy heart that, in the early hours, when I was quite sure he was deeply asleep, I untangled myself from his arms, dressed stealthily in the bathroom and crept from the room as silently as possible.
Yet again he did not wake and that was a relief. I could not stay until morning as I had promised, of course, because then I would be expected to fulfil my other promise; my promise to take Tim home with me. That would never do.
I caught the first train of the day, just after 5 a.m. and spent the journey thinking over the wonderful time I had with Tim and the future. If indeed we could have any sort of future together. I so hoped that we could, although I knew it could never be the kind of future he hoped for.
This time I certainly did not intend to break off communication with him. The pay-as-you-go phone would stay. It was Tim’s phone now. I would allow Tim to be a part of my life, as long as he accepted that there had to be limitations.
Of course, I wasn’t at all sure that I could get Tim to go along with that. He was going to be pretty angry, when he discovered I had disappeared in the early hours yet again, that was for sure. It was quite possible that he would fulfil his threat to have nothing more to do with me. But I knew how much he cared for me, as indeed I did for him, in my own way. Every time we spent together enhanced those feelings.