Whiteside loved London. North London anyway; he felt out of touch in East, West or South London. If he could have afforded it, Hampstead would be his ideal location, but it was way, way out of his price range, which is how he’d ended up here. Holloway is probably best known for its women’s prison but it had come into being as a Victorian middle-class suburb, large town houses in a then far-flung area of London.
In later years most of these houses had been divided into flats. Irish immigrants had moved in; Johnny Rotten, he seemed to remember, was from here. One of these days he’d get a blue plaque. Now there were more diverse incomers but the area still retained its architectural beauty despite the house conversions. The streets, by London standards, were wide. It had a spacious, airy feel. He’d come to like it very much. It was relaxing.
His phone beeped to say he had mail. He checked it. It was from the Shapiro Institute to say Dr Cohen had some documents for him that he was sending over. The text explained they couldn’t email them because they had to be signed for.
He texted back thanks, I’ll be in, and drank another mouthful of wine to toast the success of the day. He wondered what they could be about. Conquest, maybe. The Sauvignon was clean and robust against his palate. He thought of ‘Rabbit’ Bingham. He wasn’t clean and robust. He conjured up Bingham’s face, his scant fair hair brushed over his balding head. His pale, pudgy body. What was startling about Bingham was his charm. The word ‘monster’ normally follows ‘paedophile’ but Bingham wasn’t monstrous, he was utterly charming. That was the problem, really. Self-deprecating, witty, humorous; if Whiteside had children he’d probably have entrusted them to Bingham without a second’s thought.
He’d met Hanlon on that case, when he was working briefly for the Met’s child abuse unit. Hanlon had been investigating a child prostitution murder. Like many paedophiles, Bingham had been uncomfortably bright, and, now he remembered, quite wealthy. He thought of Conquest immediately. Money for services rendered? Was it possible that Conquest was a fellow paedophile? Bingham had worked in IT, he remembered that much. He remembered too that Hanlon had looked into the source of Bingham’s money and drawn a blank. There was a conspicuous gap between Bingham’s earned income and his lifestyle. Hanlon had been sure he was dealing in child porn via secure subscriber websites. The CPS hadn’t been interested in that. Everyone just wanted Bingham sent down with the maximum speed and the minimum fuss. Bingham, like many paedophiles, was very good at hiding things. They’d only arrested him because of a tip-off. Bingham would still be free if it hadn’t been for that.
Bingham had been jailed in the end for possessing several thousand graphic, sexual images of children and babies. Some of these were now irrevocably lodged in Whitehead’s own memory. Before he’d joined the unit he didn’t know how you had sex with a baby, now he did, and he would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life. He’d never really understood the true meaning of depravity until he had seen those images. Unfortunately, they had proved unforgettable. It was the only time in his life he had ever experienced such levels of rage and disgust at others that he’d felt truly murderous. He had looked into the face of true evil. The charming face of ‘Rabbit’ Bingham. For weeks, months even, after he left the unit he’d felt defiled.
Whiteside, however, was not telepathic. He had no way of reading minds. Other people too had been irrevocably affected by Bingham’s trial. Lord Justice Reece had been the trial judge. He too had seen the images but he’d drawn very different conclusions from Whiteside, very different indeed.
The judge had pored over them in the rooms reserved for him in the court building. For years he had fought against this side of his nature and refused to acknowledge it to himself. Only when he’d been drunk had he allowed himself to think about children. But now the forces inside him were too powerful to control and he felt as if this trial had been sent to free him, to liberate him. The serpent had proffered the apple: take, eat of this fruit of knowledge. And the judge did. And it was good. He could hear the old school song ‘Come Unto Me’ as they’d sung it in chapel all those years ago, ringing in his ears.
He’d stared at the pictures. The delicate, innocent flesh excited him tremendously. At first he’d resisted, but Bingham’s photo collections were the sexiest, most erotic things he had ever imagined in his life. The pictures gave him a window on a world he had never seen before. He’d intuited its existence but he had never dreamed that such nirvana was attainable, and Bingham had been there. They were the most arousing pictures he had ever seen. Bingham was like an explorer who had returned from an unknown continent that the judge longed to visit.
He was extremely grateful for the prosecuting QC who had insisted on the most extreme descriptions and illustrations of the degrading sexual acts that had been forced on the children. Bingham’s defence lawyer had kept up a barrage of ‘objection’, Reece a counter-offensive of ‘overruled’. The QC’s intention had been to ensure, without any shred of doubt, the hideous guilt of the defendant in the minds of the jury. The judge had found these commentaries and pictures incredibly erotic. He’d wanted more. He’d been profoundly grateful for the fact he wore long robes during the trial.
At one point his eyes had met Bingham’s. In the course of his legal career the judge had done this countless times. This was different. Bingham had recognized a true soulmate. He made no sign to the judge. There was no smile or nod of the head, it was just a look, but it had been enough. They both knew what it meant. The jury, the audience in the gallery, the lawyers and court officials all had seemed suddenly insubstantial. He knows, he’d thought with a shock, he knows. Like calls to like.
After the trial Reece had discreetly used his lobbying power and got himself appointed as the legal expert on a parliamentary committee to look into paedophilia. The authorities were delighted that such a senior figure had been so public spirited to volunteer for such a depressing job. He’d used it to engineer a meeting with Bingham.
‘Hello, Judge,’ Bingham had said with a knowing smirk when they finally met.
There was a ring at the doorbell in Whiteside’s flat. That must be Cohen’s messenger, he thought, and pressed the button to let them in.
21
The first time Clarissa had seen, felt and handled the Makarov handgun (Eastern European, as predicted by Corrigan) had been a moment of true love. She had never seen a handgun in real life before. She was so used to the visual reality from TV and film that she expected it to have no real resonance, for it to be just a tool, like a cooker or an iPod. Far from it.
First of all was the physical beauty of the weapon, which she hadn’t been expecting. Form follows function and good design has a timeless, classic grace. The gun had grace. It was a fairly standard-looking automatic and quite small, an ideal size for Clarissa. Its black metal body was sleek and functional. It smelt of oil, a scent she was unused to, slick and heavy. It gleamed dully when she held it to the light. She had balanced it in her palm and felt its weight with fascination: 700 grams, she learned later. That 700 grams was nearly the weight of a large bag of sugar, but concentrated in the small frame of the gun it felt supernaturally heavy.
Conquest had shown her how to load the magazine, sliding the 9 mm bullets into its spring-activated mechanism. He knew the Makarov well. It had been a standard-issue firearm in Eastern Europe in the old communist days, and a large number of the guns were still in circulation. They were cheap and reliable. This one had cost Conquest 300 pounds, coincidentally the same sum he’d spent on the same night entertaining a client at the Ritz.