One or two of the girls I contacted questioned the photo and asked me to post a better one. So I ignored them.
The majority just seemed to accept it.
You should have seen the pictures some of them sent to me, a total stranger. One girl sent me a selfie of herself in the bath. You couldn’t actually see much of her body, just one arm and a little leg, but all the same. I asked her to show some more, but she didn’t come back to me. But almost all of them sent provocative pictures. Or they were provocative to me, anyway. I mean what could be sexier than a picture of a girl who looks about twelve, heavily made up and pouting for the camera, even if she’s fully dressed?
They knew how to pose, these kids. It was extraordinary.
If I’d thought clearly about it, it was a foregone conclusion that I ultimately would not be able to control myself. That I would want to touch as well as look.
I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my fault. Really, it wasn’t.
Sixteen
The results of DNA analysis of samples taken from Melanie Cooke’s father and stepfather finally came through, four days after her murder. There was a direct match between the hair follicles found in Melanie’s fingernails and that of her father, Terry Cooke.
Saslow had been the first of the team to pick up the email from forensics. She printed it and brought it to Vogel, who was in the canteen with Willis. In an unusually ebullient display, Willis shouted ‘yes’ and smashed a clenched fist on the table.
‘There we are then, boss,’ he continued. ‘I told you I had a feeling about that man, didn’t I?’
Vogel nodded.
‘And it seems you were right,’ he said. ‘I must admit though, I wasn’t expecting this, particularly after the Al revelation. Sally Pearson actually told Saslow and Jenkins that Melanie had arranged to meet Al on the night she was murdered.’
‘Sally could have got it wrong,’ said Willis. ‘Indeed, it looks like she did. Maybe Melanie chickened out of meeting this Al or perhaps it was all bravado and she was always planning to meet her dad.’
Saslow looked puzzled. ‘Why would she lie about that to her mum and stepdad?’ she asked. ‘And why would a father, who allegedly adores his daughter, kill her?’
Willis shrugged. ‘Why do they ever?’ he responded. ‘Yet more often than not it’s a father or a stepfather, or sometimes an uncle, even a mum, rare but not unheard of, who is guilty when a girl of this age is murdered. We all know that.’
Saslow nodded. She wasn’t so very long out of police college. She still remembered much of what she had been taught verbatim, including statistics and crime figures.
‘“More than seventy per cent of murders in this country are committed by family members or people extremely close to the victim, like a sexual partner, and, therefore, less than thirty per cent are committed by someone the victim does not know,”’ she recited. ‘It’s just that the fact that Melanie had told her friend that she was meeting a man she’d met on the net, that very night, is such a coincidence.’
‘I agree with you,’ said Vogel. ‘But, what if her dad found out what she was planning to do? Perhaps he saw her dressed the way she was, maybe he bumped into her by chance, in the street, even. She wouldn’t have dressed like a young tart if she’d actually arranged to meet her father, surely? We know he didn’t like the way she was behaving and what she was getting up to. If he’d found out she was going to meet this Al, or indeed any man at all, looking the way she looked that night, he’d have been furious with her, wouldn’t he? Maybe he just lost his temper with her, and, like you said before, Willis, made it look as if there had been a sexual assault in order to cover his tracks.’
‘I suppose so, boss,’ said Saslow doubtfully. ‘Meeting her by chance though? That’s even more coincidental. It just doesn’t seem quite right. Any of it. And Sally Pearson telling us she’d arranged to meet this Al seemed such a good lead.’
Vogel wasn’t comfortable with any of this either and he told Saslow so.
‘I agree with you, Dawn,’ he said. ‘But it seems we must both be wrong. You can’t argue with a direct DNA match. Hair follicles found in a victim’s fingernails indicates a clear attempt at self-defence. Terry Cooke has to be our man. Come on. Let’s bring the bastard in.’
Saul
For about a week, things went very smoothly. I’d stocked the kitchen cupboards with everything a woman could want. I’d bought Manee perfume and a gold chain necklace.
She seemed almost happy.
I was fairly happy too. I had so far been able to avoid all physical contact, something I was very nervous about, of course. I continued to say that I respected her, that I wanted us to be married before we had sex. Unfortunately, however, Manee quickly seemed to grow frustrated with that; quite quickly, actually.
‘You not normal man, Saul,’ she proclaimed. Of course, she had no idea how accurate that assertion was.
‘Am I ugly?’ she asked. ‘You no want Manee?’
I assured her that she was not ugly and that I wanted her very much, which was true. I was just afraid. Afraid of the same old.
But when she began to kiss me, I kissed her back and it felt good, very good. Maybe this time it would be different, I told myself. I allowed her to lead me into her bedroom. Then it all started to go wrong, as usual. The foreplay was successful. I knew what was expected me, but there was, as usual, no way I could achieve full intercourse. My organ remained flaccid, even though I was so aroused I thought I might go crazy.
When I had been a young man, experimenting with girls, I had been able to manage half an erection. Indeed, bizarrely, I had got one of my girlfriends pregnant, almost as soon as we’d started trying to have sex. They say that impotent men are often exceptionally fertile. It had certainly seemed to be true in my case. As the years passed, things went from bad to worse for me. The fear took over. Every time, I was sure that I was going to fail and so I did. Totally.
And this time, it seemed, albeit with a young bride from another country and culture, was to be no different after all. I’d heard that Thai women had certain ways with them, ways that could work miracles for men like me. But Manee was more submissive than anything else and, to begin with, she was very sweet about my problem.
‘We try again in morning,’ she said. ‘Men always horny in morning.’
Well, it was quite likely that I would be horny in the morning but, no doubt, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I did sometimes wake with an erection. Like most men, as Manee said. It was when I tried to do something with it that the trouble started. My erection would deflate almost instantly, as would the last vestiges of the totally forced sense of self-belief that I was so desperately trying to cling to.
There was one thing that had occasionally helped me in the past.
I reached for her young bum.
‘Turn over,’ I croaked.
I was sure I felt a stir in my useless organ at the thought of it, just a twitch.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Manee good Catholic girl. No bums.’
‘Come on, please,’ I coaxed hoarsely.