Spider's Web (8 page)

‘So anyway,’ continued Lance, ‘the next day Spider bought Ward some trainers he wanted. And that was the pattern from then on. The incidents continued and grew more serious, and after each one Spider would buy Ward a present. After a couple of months it must’ve been deemed that Ward was ready for the next step in the…’ His broken-veined nose wrinkled as he sought a suitable word. ‘Process. One night, after plying Ward with alcohol, Spider took him for a drive in his van.’

‘What type of van?’

‘It was a blue Peugeot that was provided by the home for Spider’s use. Ward was made to sit in the back so he couldn’t see where they were going. After what he reckoned to be an hour or so, they pulled up at a house. A big place. It was dark and Spider parked in a garage connected to the house, so Ward didn’t get a proper look at its exterior. There was a party going on, with lots of what Ward called “important-looking people in suits”. He was fed alcohol and drugs until he barely knew up from down. Then the poor sod was subjected to a series of sexual assaults, including multiple anal penetrations. Basically, they used him like a piece of meat. And when they were done he was given a couple of hundred quid and returned to the home. He was warned too that if he told anyone about what had happened, he would find himself facing prostitution charges. And he believed it. Over the next two years, Ward was taken to the house on eight or nine occasions. Sometimes there were only one or two people besides himself and Spider there. Other times parties were taking place, where he and other children, males and females, were – as he described it – passed around like joints.’

Jim felt a fist of anger pushing up his throat. The description was horribly apt. To their abusers, Ward and his fellow victims weren’t human beings. They were objects, things to be enjoyed and disposed of. He swallowed the feeling. Now wasn’t the time for anger. Now was the time for calm, rational thought. One thing Lance had said struck him as particularly relevant: the house Dave Ward had been taken to had a garage connected to it. Whereas the Winstanleys’ house had a detached garage. ‘Did you try to find the house?’

‘Of course. I took Ward out several times in search of it. But we never found it.’

‘What about the other children? Did you find out who they were?’

‘No. But I interviewed dozens of current and former residents of the Hopeland home, and I did manage to find others who were willing to talk about how they’d been groomed and abused by Spider.’

Lance withdrew three mugshot-type Polaroids from the folder and handed them to Jim. One was of a black boy of about fifteen or sixteen. ‘Jamal Jackson’ was written on the Polaroid’s margin. The others were of white girls. Both had blonde hair. Both also looked to be in their mid-teens. Their names were Heather Shanks and Debbie Tompkins. All three had the blank-eyed thousand-yard stare that Jim had seen so many times in abuse survivors. Again, the fist pushed up his throat. Again, he swallowed it back down.

‘I took those at the time I interviewed them,’ explained Lance. ‘Shanks was thirteen when the abuse began. Tompkins fourteen. They’d both been taken on separate occasions to parties at different houses to Ward. Jamal was twelve. Things hadn’t got that far along with him. He’d engaged in masturbatory and oral sex with Spider, but not penetrative sex. That seems to have been the final test, as it were. If they were willing to take part in penetrative sex, they were ready for the next step.’

‘I don’t suppose you found the houses the girls were taken to either?’

‘No. Not for want of looking.’

‘What about names? Did they give you any?’ When Lance replied in the negative again, Jim said, ‘So they didn’t implicate Villiers.’

‘Not directly. But he was well aware of what was going on. You see, not all the kids were willing to put up with Spider’s
accidental
touching. Some complained about it to Villiers. But their complaints fell on deaf ears.’

‘Did you speak to Villiers about the complaints?’

‘Yes. He claimed he’d investigated them and found them to be unjustified.’

Jim tapped the composite sketch. ‘And what about Mr Keyes? Did you speak to him too?’

‘That would have been difficult, unless I could talk to ghosts – which I can’t.’

‘He died?’

‘In ’83 in a car accident. Four years before Dave Ward was first abused.’

Confusion momentarily creased Jim’s face, then realisation gleamed in his eyes. ‘Spider was using a dead man’s identity.’

Lance nodded. ‘I first visited Hopeland three days after my initial interview of Ward, by which time Spider and all his belongings were gone.’

‘Did anyone there know you were coming?’

Lance shook his head, tilting his eyebrows into a crooked arch, as if to say,
Make of that what you will.
‘His room had been cleaned top to bottom too. I can still remember it now. Every surface sparkled. We didn’t manage to recover a single usable fingerprint. What’s more, all of the caretaker’s equipment had been replaced. The mops, the brushes, the cleaning fluids, the tools… everything was brand spanking new. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure no trace of Spider was left behind. And no one at the home knew anything about where Spider came from or where he’d gone. I spent months searching for the bastard without success. To all intents and purposes, he might as well have been a real ghost. So I decided to focus on building a case against Villiers. I didn’t do a bad job of it either. Spider had a reputation amongst the kids as a “toucher”. Three complaints had been made against him during the two years he worked at the home. All three complainants had subsequently been moved to other homes. There were no records of Villiers formally investigating their accusations. At best, Villiers’ actions amounted to criminal negligence. At worst, they implicated him as an accomplice to the abuse. I was ready to prosecute, but then…’ Lance’s voice and eyes trailed away. Lines gathered on the lines of his craggy face.

‘Then what?’ pressed Jim.

Lance heaved a sigh. ‘Ward was found dead with a needle hanging out of his arm. There was a coroner’s inquest. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure.’

‘But you thought otherwise.’

‘You bet I bloody did. Traces of heroin were found in his bedroom. It was ninety per cent pure. Potent enough to kill him before he could even remove the syringe from his vein.’

‘Someone sold him a hot-shot.’

‘Exactly. Of course, it was impossible to prove.’ Lance sighed again. He pulled out his hip flask and drank directly from it, before going on, ‘A few days after Ward’s death, Jamal Jackson withdrew his statement. Then Debbie Tompkins and Heather Shanks followed suit. It was as clear as day that they were being pressurised. They were all of them scared half to death. You could see it in their eyes. The final nail came when I was informed that the case was being dropped.’ Contempt drew his lips back from his yellowed teeth. ‘The powers that be had decided it wasn’t in the public interest to proceed with a prosecution. Insufficient evidence. So the file was marked “No Further Action” and shelved. But I wasn’t willing to take no further action. I kept on talking to former residents of Hopeland and following Villiers in my spare time. One day I went to consult the case-file on some detail or other and found it was gone. My superiors would only tell me it had been taken elsewhere for safe keeping. After a lot of asking around, I learnt a couple of Special Branch officers had shown up at the office and left with it. I called Special Branch and got stonewalled. They refused to even admit they’d been to the office.’

‘You’re saying they buried the file.’

Lance nodded. ‘That’s when I realised how big this thing was. The next thing I knew I was summoned to my Super’s office. He had photos of Villiers looking like he’d been ten rounds with a gorilla. The bastard claimed I’d done it to him. And he had a witness who’d seen me following him the night he said it happened. I was suspended from duty while an investigation was carried out. I was sure I was going to be cleared. After all, it came down to my word against Villiers’. And I was a copper with almost twenty years’ service. I thought that counted for something. I was wrong. It was decided there was enough evidence to charge me. But Villiers was willing not to press charges as long as I bowed out quietly. So that’s what I did.’

Lance’s gaze dropped, taking his head with it. Jim could almost feel the weight of shame pressing on the ex-detective. After a minute or so, Lance went on in a subdued tone, ‘That’s the one thing I can’t forgive myself. When I think about Villiers and those children and all the other children who must have come under his care since then, it’s like all the good things I did – the thieves, rapists and murderers I locked up – it’s like all that counts for nothing.’

Jim wondered if Lance was fishing for sympathy. If so, he was casting a hook in the wrong place. Jim understood why Lance had compromised in the way he did, but he had no respect for it. His own unwillingness to compromise had cost him a higher price than he could ever have imagined. He briefly wondered what he would do if he could go back in time, knowing what he knew now. Would he let Edward Forester off the hook if it saved Margaret? The question was arbitrary. There was no going back. ‘What else is in that file of yours?’

Lance pulled himself upright with a visible effort. ‘A few years after getting sacked, I decided to put together a file of my own on Hopeland. I already had copies of some of the victims’ statements. I rewrote the others and my own notes as best I could from memory. I hoped the file might one day be of help to someone. Although, to be honest, I stopped believing a long time ago that my hope would ever be fulfilled. Then, yesterday, my son rang me to tell me about the list.’ A spectre of guilt flickered in his expression again. ‘After cancer took his mother four years ago, I told him about the Hopeland case. I wanted to try and make him understand why things had gone so wrong for our family. Turns out he set up an alert on his computer to let him know if Villiers was mentioned on the internet. So here I am.’

Slowly, carefully, as if he was handing over a flaming torch, Lance proffered the file.

Jim accepted it. ‘Why bring this to me?’

‘I considered coming to you when it first came out about what went on at the Winstanleys’ house. But I had to be sure you weren’t just another puppet of the same bastards who did for me. Now I know you’ll do what I couldn’t and nail Villiers.’

Not just Villiers
, thought Jim.
All of them.
He rose to his feet. ‘I’d better phone my Super. He needs to hear your story.’

Lance stood up too. ‘You’ll have to tell him it for me. I’ve never had much liking for the brass.’ He indicated the case-file. ‘My number’s in there if you need me.’

They made their way to the front door. Lance held out his thick, dirty-nailed hand. His eyes were watery, pained. ‘If you do speak to the children, let them know how sorry I am.’

Jim wondered whether Lance was referring to Debbie, Heather and Jamal, who would be in their late thirties by now, or whether he meant all the children who’d ever come under Thomas Villiers’ care? He shook the ex-inspector’s hand. Lance shuffled away, stooped with regret. Still, no flicker of pity came into Jim’s heart. If anything, he felt a touch of envy. Lance had been given a choice, and as perhaps any right-minded person would, he’d chosen his family. That didn’t mean he’d made the right choice, if such a thing even existed. But whatever the rights or wrongs, his regret was a small price to pay for the knowledge that he wouldn’t live and die a lonely man. For many years Jim had thought of the police force as a kind of extended family. By the time he realised his mistake, Margaret had already walked out on him. He felt close to no one in the job now, apart from Reece. In some perverse way, the names from Herbert Winstanley’s book were more akin to family. They were bonded to him by blood. Margaret’s blood. There were no more choices. Only two things could part him from them – imprisonment or death.

He returned to the case-file. As Lance had said, there were photocopies of statements mixed in with seventy or so pages of handwritten notes. There was also a map of Manchester and the surrounding region with red lines drawn on it to indicate Lance’s fruitless search for the houses the children had been taken to.
Is this it?
he wondered.
Is this the break that will finally bring it all down?
As he skimmed through the pages, he reached for the phone and dialled Garrett. ‘What do you want?’ the DCS asked coldly upon picking up.

‘I need to speak to you.’

‘So speak.’

‘Face to face. Some new information’s come to light.’

A hesitant note entered Garrett’s voice. ‘What new information?’

Jim’s gaze moved back and forth over the notes, lingering on words and phrases like ‘inappropriate sexual contact’, ‘touching’, ‘oral sex’, ‘vaginal and anal penetration’. ‘I don’t want to say over the phone.’

‘OK, I’ll meet you at headquarters. But this had better be good.’

Good.
The inappropriateness of the word struck Jim. There was nothing
good
about any of this. He quickly showered and shaved. He considered putting on a work suit, but decided against it. Garrett was never more at ease than when they were wearing their respective uniforms. And he didn’t want him to be at ease. He wanted him to know – as if he didn’t already – that this was about more than simply doing the job.

When Jim arrived at Police HQ, he didn’t go directly to Garrett’s office. He stopped off first at the photocopy room and made a copy of the case-file. Then he locked the original in his desk drawer. He didn’t bother to knock on Garrett’s door. He stepped straight into the office – a dour room with the usual desk, computer, chairs, telephone and shelves of folders and manuals, and a window looking out on an equally soulless concrete building. Garrett was sitting behind the desk in full uniform. Unlike the previous day, he was shaved and composed. Only the faintest ripple of annoyance passed over his face at Jim’s unannounced entrance. Jim slapped the folder down on the desk. The DCS looked at it, but didn’t reach to pick it up. Again his voice came hesitantly, almost as if he feared he was being led into some kind of trap. ‘What’s this?’