The Child Taker & Slow Burn (11 page)

“What?”

“You heard me the first time. Your wife told them.”

“I don’t understand why she would say that – it’s not true,” Karl lied.

“You don’t have to convince me, Karl.” Tank shrugged. “But while there is even a suspicion that it’s true then you’ll be a suspect.”

Karl’s jaw opened as if he was about to retaliate, but no words came out. He walked into the sitting room and flopped into a brown leather armchair.

“You can see why they think that, can’t you?”

Karl looked winded. He shook his head and his eyes filled with tears.

“We checked the woods where you found the speaker, Karl, and we think we know who put it there,” Tank said. “I’m asking you to give us until tomorrow morning to investigate this lead, and then we’ll give the police everything that we have.”

“What is it exactly that you and Hayley’s father do?” Karl was still reeling from the shock of being told that his dirty secret was out, but Tank’s revelation that they had impunity from the police had him intrigued. Hayley had said very little about her father’s military career throughout their marriage, but he had already come to his own conclusion that he wasn’t a Major in the regular army.

“All you need to know is that we’re very good at finding people that don’t want to be found.”

“I believe you,” he said shakily. “If you get nowhere then you promise to hand over your information to the police?”

“I promise that we’ll let them have anything relevant.”

“Find them, Tank. Find my kids.” Karl held out a shaking hand towards the big man, and Tank shook it.

“Go and see your wife,” Tank said.

The Major walked into the room. He looked through his son-in-law as if he wasn’t there. The betrayal of his daughter couldn’t be forgiven. Karl looked hunched and deflated, and Tank could only guess what turmoil there must be behind his reddened eyes.  

“Are we all square?” The Major said to Tank, ignoring Karl.

“Yes, Sir,” Tank replied.

“Hayley is sleeping, and I think she would appreciate you being there when she wakes up.” The Major said to Karl. He nodded and walked towards the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused and turned to say something, but then he thought again and climbed the stairs in silence.

“What have you told him?”

“That the police are wasting time looking at the family.” Tank headed back into the study.

“Is he calling the police?”

“I said that we’d hand over anything that we find to the police tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? That doesn’t give us much time.”

“I said anything relevant.”

“It gives us some time, let’s get back to Grace and see what information she has.” Tank closed the study door behind them and they sat down in front of the webcam. Graham Libby had gone from the screen and Grace was talking on her mobile.

“I’m sorry about that interruption, Grace,” the Major said.

Grace ended her call quickly. “No problem, Sir. It’s perfectly understandable.”

“Can we start at the beginning?” Grace scanned the papers that were in front of her to recount the information that she’d skimmed over earlier.

“Okay, he was given a life sentence with a twenty-year minimum term for the murder of the Catholic priest that ran the home he was in.” Grace began to fill in the gaps.

“A twenty year minimum term for a schoolboy sounds unusual,” the Major frowned.

“It was a particularly brutal murder, and according to the probation reports he never showed any remorse. There were accusations made against the priest of serious long term sexual abuse made by the boys in the home,” she continued.

“How many?”

“According to the police reports, all of them.”

“Was it investigated?”

“No, the local Chief Superintendant was a good friend of the Bishop of the Diocese, and from the records I have pulled it appears to have been brushed under the carpet to protect the integrity of the church.”

“That’s all very sad, but what do we know about him now?” Tank butted in. He couldn’t stomach all the psychobabble which excused sex offenders from their behaviour because they had been abused themselves. Tank was of the opinion that we all have choices, but not everyone makes the right ones. He was intelligent enough to appreciate that human sexuality is complicated. Gay men are attracted to men, simple. Gay women are attracted to other women, equally simple, but there were many people of both sexes that swung from one sex to the other, never settling into one specific group permanently. Society seemed to be embracing both gays and bi-sexuals as equals, but those born with internal mental wiring which made them sexually attracted to children could never be tolerated. The problem was that they could no more control their sexual orientation than anyone else could. He admired the policy for dealing with paedophiles adopted by the Chinese. They give the sex offender a nine-millimetre bullet through the base of the skull – job done.

“We need to know his recent history, and where to find him.”

“He was released under an extended supervision order which was in force for a period of five years. After that, his whereabouts are sketchy to say the least. He was free to travel wherever he liked.”

“Why is he not on a register?”

“Because he was convicted of murder, not a sexually related offence,” Grace answered. “There have been plenty of incidents over the years where his name has cropped up in police investigations, but nothing ever sticks.”

“How many investigations are we talking about?”

“Dozens of missing person reports and a handful of sexual assault cases.” Grace read from a computer report.

“Where is he based?”

“That’s why it’s so sketchy. They’re all over the country: two in Scotland, one outside of Dublin, two in Cork, Bristol, London, York, Warrington, Carlisle, the list goes on and on.” Grace turned the pages as she spoke.

“Any patterns at all?” Tank asked.

“Only one thread runs through it all from what I’ve seen so far.” She looked at a separate sheet.

“What is it?”

“The majority of these complaints have been made by gypsies and travellers.”

“That would explain why he keeps disappearing and evading the police,” the Major said.

“It’s very rare that travellers would trust the police, let alone make a formal complaint. It would make sense – if he’s moving in the travellers’ community he could prey on them without detection,” Tank added.

“Exactly, that’s what stood out to me,” Grace explained. “Jack Howarth’s name has been put forward as a suspect by the travelling community dozens of times over the last ten years.”

“Is he part of the travelling community?” The Major asked.

“No, I think not. He seems to find an unsuspecting group of travellers and then follows them to their sites. He’s befriended numerous groups of people over the years, gained their trust and then he disappears just as quickly when there’s a problem.”

“That would suggest that he’s using a caravan to live in,” Tank said. “The gypsies would have an instant affinity with a fellow traveller.”

“He could be using travelling fairgrounds as a disguise, or moving from campsite to campsite in a motor home,” the Major suggested.

“Are there any details about what type of vehicle he used to travel around, or live in?” Tank leaned forward to the screen.

“Our people are trawling through witness statements as we speak. I’m sure we’ll find something useful in them,” Grace answered.

“How much information do we have on the missing persons’ complaints?” Tank asked.

“We’re still collating and cross referencing information from every force in the country, as well as similar abduction incidents from holiday camps and gypsy communities over the last twenty years.” Grace shook her head as she spoke. Her facial expression was grim.

“I appreciate that, Grace, but what do we know for definite?”

“It’s not looking good, Major,” she replied, tight-lipped.

“We’re wasting time, Grace,” Tank pushed.

“Okay, out of the cases of abduction that we’ve looked at so far where Jack Howarth’s name is put forward none of the children were recovered.” Grace frowned and carried on. “There are several incidents where witnesses reported hearing children crying and went to investigate, only to find that their own children were missing upon their return.”

“The same modus operandi.” The Major’s face darkened. The wrinkles on his forehead furrowed as he mulled over the shocking news. “Why hasn’t this pattern been picked up, for God’s sake?”

“Travelling communities don’t hang around long enough to see out a full blown investigation, and witnesses are both reluctant to testify and impossible to trace once they move on,” said Tank. The counter-terrorist units across Europe and Asia had struggled for years trying to find terrorist suspects who melted into gypsy communities. They met a wall of silence every time they approached the travellers.

“It’s hard to believe he’s got away with this for so long,” the Major commented sadly.

“There were a few cases where he was arrested and interviewed, but a lack of evidence led to his release each time. All bar one.” Grace paused.

“From the information you have, what’s the difference?”

“I’ve only skimmed through the case, but it looks like a young boy aged nine was sexually assaulted by Howarth. The police arrested him and were set to press charges, but suddenly the family wanted the incident dropped and they moved on. The local Sexual Abuse Investigation Squad traced them and asked them why they had asked for the case to be shelved. The father became abusive and violent, and so the team closed the file. However, they did note that the family were living in a new caravan, which was being towed by a new Mercedes van. They also noted that the nine-year-old victim was riding around the site on a mini motorbike.”

Tank looked at the Major and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Someone paid them off?”

“It certainly sounds like they did.”

“I wonder how many others have taken a bung to drop charges against him?” Tank asked quietly.

“It would imply that Howarth has money to burn,” the Major added.

“And where would he get money like that to flash around?” Tank shrugged.

“Stealing children to order.” Grace interrupted their conversation. “I’ve looked into several witness statements and one of them started alarm bells ringing, Major.”

“Go on.”

“In 2005 a young gypsy girl was abducted from a caravan site in Rhyl, North Wales. She was one of a group of children who were playing in an inflatable paddling pool, which doesn’t sound unusual until you realise that none of the gypsy families on the site actually owned a paddling pool,” Grace explained.

“He used the paddling pool to attract the local children?” Tank asked, aghast.

“Someone placed it near the perimeter of the community, and everyone assumed it belonged to one of the other families.”

“This guy is planning every move,” the Major mumbled. He clenched his fists beneath the desk, and his stomach clenched into a tight ball. It was becoming obvious that the baby-crying decoy was not the first trap that he had used. The more he learned about this ‘Child Taker’ the more frightened he became about the safety of his grandchildren.

“Carry on, Grace,” Tank prompted her.

“According to the police files no one can actually pinpoint when she went missing. It was a sunny day, and her mother assumed that she was playing with the other children in the pool.”

“No witnesses then?”

“Not for the abduction. The key piece of information was received over a week after the event, and it was received from an interesting source,” Grace explained. “A convicted paedophile was being questioned at a police station in Leeds about a breach of his bail conditions. He had seen the media blitz about the missing girl, and offered up some information about her whereabouts in return for leniency.”

“Sounds to me like he was desperate?” Tank said.

“That’s what I thought at first, but when I looked further into the file there’s corroborative evidence,” Grace explained. “He said that a fellow paedophile had seen the girl being abused on a pay-per-view website.”

“Did they investigate?” The Major asked. He was shaking with anger now.

“They did but they couldn’t find the website. It had been removed and all its footprints erased as soon as the show had finished. They had nothing to follow, no electronic trail, no money trail, but they did get the name of the paedophile who said that he had watched the abuse.” Grace turned another page for the details.

“Did they find him?” Tank asked.

“Better than that, they interviewed him and he admitted watching it, which was a breach of his bail and he was returned to custody to finish his sentence, including another two years for the breach.” Grace looked worn out by the research. “They offered to lower the sentence if he could give them something that would prove that the missing gypsy girl in question and the abused child were one and the same person.”

“So, he’s yet another paedophile clutching at straws by offering up information in return for leniency?” Tank was sceptical.