Horrified, Nina stumbled as he pushed her inside. ‘Shit, what kind of place is this? Do you live here?’
His eyes were shining brightly, and yes, those were tears she saw there… maybe she could still get out of this. Hope swelled painfully in her head.
‘Of course not.’ The indignation in his voice would have been funny in other circumstances. He hustled her down the unlit passageway. ‘This is all your fault. You’ve ruined everything. I have spent months, Nina, years, doing research, looking for those scumbag paedos, and it was going so well until you arrived and got the police involved. I’ve met a lot of – undesirable people, shall we say, and this place belongs to one of them. Oh, don’t worry. He’s in prison. So we’ll be safe enough in the meantime and more importantly, no one will find us.’
Paul pushed her into the kitchen at the back of the house and Nina felt a hysterical urge to laugh. She hadn’t been impressed by John Moore’s kitchen, but this one was ten million times worse. It was indescribably filthy and apart from an ancient-looking gas cooker there were no appliances at all. A thick, pungent smell hung about the place and made her eyes water. It obviously hadn’t been lived in properly for a very long time. Paul pointed to a greasy wooden chair and Nina sat, shuddering. Her legs had lost their strength again.
Paul laughed mirthlessly. ‘Not quite up to your standards, is it?’ he said, the sneer in his voice increasing Nina’s fear.
She looked at him bleakly, unsure how to reply. This kitchen wasn’t up to anyone’s standards. Normal people didn’t live like this.
‘Paul – please tell me why you’re doing this. What do you mean, you were looking for paedos?’
Keep him talking, try to get him back on your side, Nina. It was as if her own voice was inside her head now, Christ, was she going mad too? But if he didn’t tell her there was no way she could help either of them. Hell, she didn’t even know if she wanted to help him after this, but she had to help herself because she had a daughter out there waiting for her. Naomi, Naomi baby, it’s going to be all right, please, it must be all right…
He slumped into a second chair and sat staring at her. ‘You really don’t know what you’ve done, do you?’ he said, his voice a strange mixture of regret and contempt.
Suddenly Nina was angry. ‘No, I don’t. From where I’m sitting I’ve done everything right. I was trying to cooperate with the police when I came up against what seemed to be criminal activity. So tell me what I did wrong.’
He was sitting with his hands in the pockets of his jerkin, but now he leaned towards her, his expression malevolent. Nina shrank back into her chair. She would have to be more careful what she said, it would be a mistake to anger him more than she had already. She listened, horror growing inside her as he spoke.
‘I’ve found them, Nina. Most of them. Those dirty old men who paid our dads for – us. I was made redundant last year and I went to your dad for money – I reckoned he owed it to me – and after a little persuasion he gave me what I needed. But it started me thinking, remembering what happened in that house. Those filthy pigs… so I started to look for them. Your dad - ’
Nina recoiled at his last words, he said them with such venom, and he was doing it to hurt her. She could tell by the way he watched her response and smiled briefly. There was no way she could keep the anguish from her face.
‘- your dad gave me some names, after a little more persuasion, and I looked them up. And you know what? All they wanted was to save their own disgusting skins. Every single one of them. It was child’s play to get money from them, but that wasn’t the best bit, oh no – I got to see them squirm. They were terrified their dirty little secret was going to come out, and they were all prepared to give me more names as well as hard cash. But I haven’t finished, Nina, there are two more I definitely remember doing vile things to me, and I haven’t found them yet. And you, stupid interfering madam that you are, have upset the whole bloody thing.’
Nina closed her eyes momentarily, overwhelmed by the mental picture of what had happened in the attic at the hands of these men.
‘And is money and seeing them squirm enough for you?’ she whispered.
He laughed again, he actually laughed at that, and Nina began to sob, she couldn’t help it. His laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
‘Enough? Oh no – but you see I’m going to give their names to the papers. And my dad’s name too, and your dad’s, even though he’s out of it now. That way, the ones I haven’t found’ll still be terrified, like I – like we were, Nina. And it’s not just those creeps from your dad’s attic room I found. There are others, too, and some of them did a lot worse things to other kids, pretty little girls and nice little boys like you and I were. I confronted them too and got to see them squirm as well. I’m going to take all their money and then one day, when I’ve found a nice round number, maybe a hundred, maybe two, I’ll give every single name to the papers. Oh yes, that’ll be enough. One day. But for now you’ve buggered it all up.’
Nina stared bleakly. She was a victim of these crimes too. Was she to have no say in what they did with their abusers? Apparently not. But in an odd way she could even sympathise with Paul here.
‘If you give the police the names you have up to now they’ll be able to find the others.’
‘You might be right about that, little cousin. But that’s not what I want. I want to stand in front of these kiddy-fuckers first and watch the terror in their eyes. And I should be out looking for them before it’s too bloody late, not sitting in a disgusting kitchen talking to you.’
He stood up and rummaged in a cupboard under the sink, pulling out an old piece of rope. Panicking, Nina leapt to her feet and tried to run but he grabbed her arm and forced her to sit again. With all her strength she pushed against him, but he slapped her face with the rope and began to wind it round her middle, tying her to the chair.
‘Sit – still,’ he said, his voice hissing in her ear.
Nina flinched. She should do as she was told for the moment. She had to stay unharmed; if he injured her she might never be able to get out of here. Trembling, she sat enduring his touch as he went on to tie both her wrists to the struts where the back of the chair met the seat, and her ankles to the chair legs. Whistling between his teeth, he produced a rag, an old tea towel by the looks of it, and used it to gag her. By the smell it had been in contact with motor oil at some point and Nina spat and jerked her head away, but he was stronger. Saliva filled her mouth and the fumes from the rag made her eyes water; dear God, nothing in her life had ever been as disgusting as this.
When she was immobilised to his satisfaction he blinked down at her, and for a second she saw regret in his eyes.
‘What I have to do is keep the police occupied with you,’ he said. ‘If they’re looking for you they won’t be worrying about what my dad supposedly did, or even about sending bags of cash to the park tonight. Meantime, I’ll get on with looking for my last important two. I have to get them, Nina.’
Whistling again, he began to search through the cupboards. Nina was finding it impossible to breath calmly. The gag tasted gross, and it was cutting into the flesh at the corners of her lips. God knows what bacteria were swimming round in her mouth. Paul must be mad. Psychotic, whatever. His search for paedophiles had a terrible kind of logic, but why was he doing this to her? Why send the blackmail letters, why the phone calls? Maybe he’d thought she’d go running away home, leaving him to continue his ‘work’ in peace. But now? Holding her in a squalid kitchen was doing nothing to further his cause.