The Betrayed (22 page)

Rosie put her head in her hands and wept. She wept so hard, she had to force her face into the pillows to muffle the sound – just as Ruby had – so Andrew wouldn’t know she was there. She listened as he returned to his study. As she finally drifted off into a troubled sleep, he was still there.

The sound of the front door slamming woke her the next morning. Rosie lay motionless, staring up at the ceiling, and listened to the car start and pull away. She thanked God that he had left for a 10-day trip – to shoot footage for a documentary about tigers – so she wouldn’t have to face him.

Looking around the room, all Rosie could think about was Ruby, and what had happened. She quickly put on her shoes, went downstairs, and called a cab.

Aunt Madge and Ruby were watching GMTV when the doorbell rang. When Aunt Madge saw Rosie’s ashen face, she knew instantly that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Rosie ran through to the lounge, knelt down by her daughter, grabbed her tightly, and burst into tears. Ruby didn’t respond at first, just stayed stiffly locked in her mother’s embrace. But eventually the tears came – and when they did, they lasted for a very long time.

Eventually, when their tears began to subside, Rosie took Ruby’s face in her hands and, running her fingers through her hair, gently asked: ‘My dear, sweet Ruby. Can you tell me now? Can you tell me what happened?’

‘He’s not coming here?’ Ruby asked.

‘No, baby. He’s not coming anywhere near you.’

‘I hate him,’ Ruby said, hugging her mum tighter. ‘I
hate
him! I wish he was dead.’ She banged her fists against her mother. ‘You don’t understand… he made me…
do
things, Mum. He said it’s what I wanted, but I
didn’t
. I
hated
it when he touched me, and when he made me touch him.’

The words hit like a steam train. A thin, painful sound came from Aunt Madge.

‘He says it was
my
fault,’ Ruby choked desperately, her face was ravaged with confusion. ‘I want him to stop. Now.’

‘Just tell me what he did to you,’ Rosie said fiercely. ‘I need to know. You say he touched you? Where?’

‘Here,’ she said, putting her hand to her chest, ‘and here,’ moving it to her groin.

Rosie thought she was going to faint. ‘Did he… Rube, did he force himself on you?’ Her daughter’s eyes dropt to the floor. ‘Ruby, you have to tell me. Did he?’

Ruby nodded, and burst into tears.

Getting to her feet, her eyes blazing with rage, Rosie looked over at Aunt Madge, who stood, open-mouthed and shaking. Rosie went over and hugged her. Putting her head on the arm of the chair, Ruby’s sobbing reached a new pitch and, for what seemed like an age, the three of them all cried together.

Suddenly, Rosie remembered that Ruby had gone to visit her father in prison.

‘Baby,’ she said, kneeling down by the chair, ‘did you tell Daddy what happened to you?’

Wiping the tears from her eyes and blowing her nose, Ruby shook her head. ‘I wanted to tell him, I tried to tell him – but I just couldn’t.’

‘Thank God, Rube. Thank God.’

Once Ruby was tucked up in bed, Rosie sat down in front of the gas fire, reached over and gripped Aunt Madge’s hand. She was a wry old fox – the glue that kept the family together – and Rosie was happy that, out of all of the people she knew in the world, that she was the one with her that night. They sat up half the night discussing what had happened. Aunt Madge had told Rosie that she had a close friend in Britley House whose daughter was a doctor – she’d be able to check that Ruby would recover, physically at least.

As they talked, Rosie realised, to her great shame, that it was her desire to be ‘respectable’ – to change her life and get away from Johnny’s world – that had clouded her judgement. Her desire for what she believed Andrew stood for led her to miss what was going on right under her nose. Perhaps this was why Andrew’s first wife, Sophie, kept him away from her daughters? Perhaps he had done the same to them? Aunt Madge was convinced that was the case.

‘We can’t let that bastard get away with it,’ Aunt Madge said. ‘Whatever happens, he’s not going
near
another little girl ever again.’

They discussed going to the police, but Rosie knew that her word wouldn’t count for much with them, considering that she was a Mullins and that they were so suspicious of her that they already had someone following her. Also, the publicity that would surround such a sordid revelation would be too much for her and Ruby to handle. Plus, if Johnny read a story like that in the papers… God only knew what he would do. Reluctantly, at Aunt Madge’s recommendation, she decided to call Eddie.

The following morning, Rosie sat in her car, looking up at an ultra-modern block of flats in Canary Wharf in London’s Docklands. It was many, many years since she had been there… and, given the choice, she would never go there again.

Reaching the large, plate-glass front door of the block, she found Eddie’s buzzer and gave it a short sharp blast. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted someone, loitering far behind her – it was ‘Harris’.
Great, this is just what I need
. She’d been with Johnny long enough to know that this meant she was under surveillance, probably 24 hours a day. They would follow her
everywhere
. Although she knew that her visiting Eddie was exactly the kind of behaviour that the police were probably looking for, she had more important things to worry about.

Finally, the doors clicked and began sliding apart. Rosie walked into the marble lobby where a security guard was stationed behind a reception desk. He barely looked up as she passed, too engrossed in the Chelsea game that he was watching on a portable television to notice anything else. The lift rose so smoothly up to the 25th floor that Rosie hardly noticed it was moving.

When she knocked on Eddie’s door, it edged open and she stepped inside. The familiar scent of aftershave hit her immediately.

‘We’re in here,’ Eddie shouted, hearing footsteps on the marble floor.

Passing the plush bathroom and two more bedrooms, Rosie walked in to the sitting room. Standing in front of the large windows overlooking the churning brown waters of the Thames, stood Eddie and Hate-’em-all-Harry.

‘Well, girl,’ he said, ‘what the fuck’s going on?’

‘Eddie…’ Rosie began, as the familiar rush of tears came.

‘Well? What is it?’

‘It’s Ruby,’ she sobbed. ‘She’s… she’s… she’s been raped.’

Eddie took a sharp intake of breath.

‘She’s been
what
!’

twenty-five

R
osie sat, her head bowed and her highlighted auburn hair obscuring her face. She kept her gaze fixed at the floor as she explained, in a flat, monotonous voice no more than a whisper, just what had happened to Ruby.

Retelling the story, she went through the gamut of emotions, but the one she felt most sharply was guilt – guilt that she had been so blinded by her desire to escape from Johnny’s world… guilt that she had not got to know Andrew better before moving in with him.
How could I have
been
so stupid?
Surely the clues were there? An ex-wife who wouldn’t let him near her daughters… a private study that no one was ever allowed in. With hindsight – and hindsight is such a wonderful thing – the problem was very obvious.

Eddie and Hate-’em-all listened in shock as the story slowly unfolded. Compared to the news about Ruby, the revelation that she had been secretly living with Andrew – using Hewitt Way as just a mail drop – seemed just like background information. Deciding that it would be best to be completely up-front, Rosie gave them every last detail. They might not like to hear it, but they had the right to know.

When she had finished, Hate-’em-all-Harry got up and made his way to the window. Looking out over London, he started to speak. He was a man of very few words, so when he spoke, people always listened.

‘I’ve been around the block, and then some… and got the scars to prove it. I thought I’d seen it all. But this?’ The fury seemed to be seeping out of every pore in his body. ‘What sort of fucking
animal
… Johnny’s
daughter
.’

Rosie got up out of her seat but, as she tried to stand, her legs gave way beneath her. As she sank to the ground, Eddie caught her, wrapping his thick arms around her belly, and hauled her up.

‘Who else knows about this?’ he said in a hoarse whisper, so close that Rosie could feel his breath on her face.

‘Aunt Madge and me.’

‘Where is he? Where is this
bastard
?’

‘He’s in Thailand, on business.’

‘Thailand?’ said Eddie.

‘Yeah, right.
Business
,’ said Hate-’em-all, his voice thick with sarcasm.

‘He’s filming tigers,’ Rosie said.

‘Are you thick, or just plain stupid?’ Eddie asked, as he dropped Rosie back onto the sofa. His eyes were boring into her. ‘There aren’t any tigers in Thailand! They’re in… fucking India!’

Rosie looked at Eddie, then to Hate-’em-all. They could almost hear the cogs in her brain clicking into gear. The penny dropped.

‘Oh my God… Thailand?’ Rosie gasped. ‘You mean…’

‘Yes,’ Eddie said, ‘
Thailand
.’

Throughout their brief relationship, Andrew had taken many trips to Thailand and Cambodia. He always appeared to have a valid reason to go and, besides, Rosie never had any reason to question him… why should she? As far as she was concerned, he didn’t have any reason to lie. He was decent, respectable, a pillar of the community. Or, at least, that was what she had thought.

Eddie and Hate-’em-all looked at each other. They knew each other well enough to know what they were thinking – this bloke was the one thing that career criminals hated the most: a child rapist. A nonce. A pervert. To add insult to injury he had taken a liberty with a Mullins. When it came to business, if you crossed Johnny or Eddie and they found out, the retribution was terrifying. But this? This carried only one punishment, and both Eddie and Hate-’em-all knew that the punishment would neither be quick nor painless.

Rosie could guess what their silence meant.

‘I’m thinking of going to the police. They come down heavy on people like him.’

‘Oh yeah, is that right?’ Eddie said. ‘So what the fuck are you doing here, then? No, wait. Don’t answer that. I’ll tell you why – you don’t want the newspapers to get hold of the story. It might ruin your career, is that it?’

‘No!’ Rosie cried. ‘Of course not. What kind of person do you think I am? It’s because of Ruby. I just can’t put her through that. She’s been through enough. I don’t care about my career… it means nothing to me.
Nothing
. Don’t you know me at all?’

‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ said Eddie, his eyes narrowing. ‘I know little Ruby was abused –
raped
– by a nonce. A limp, dandelion-fucking nonce, that
you
slept in the same bed with. That’s what I know, Rosie!’

‘Eddie, do you think for one –’

‘Oi!’ Hate-’em-all’s thunderous voice cut the argument dead. ‘Listen a minute. Rosie, when you saw those messages on his computer, did you see the email address?’

‘It was a chatroom, but I remember his user name – “Corky”.’

‘Right,’ said Eddie, picking up on the idea and turning to Hate-’em-all. ‘Call Computer Terry. Tell him I want to see him. Now.’

‘Ok,’ said Hate-’em-all, reaching for his mobile.

‘We’ll catch that bastard,’ Eddie said. ‘I’ll make sure of that.’

‘What about Johnny?’ Rosie asked, aware that she had set events in motion that she could no longer control.

Eddie stopped dead. ‘Do you think I could tell him?
Do ya
?’ he screamed.

Rosie shrunk back in her seat. ‘Please! Don’t bark at me.’

‘I think there’s only one dog in this room, Rosie. Don’t you?’

Eddie paced like a caged animal until the buzzer sounded. Hate-’em-all got the door, and in walked a tall, skinny man in his early thirties who wore a tattered brown leather jacket and an AC/DC t-shirt. ‘Computer Terry’, as Johnny had christened him, was a real expert in electronics, and the only man that Eddie trusted to set up his computers.

There was no time for niceties or pleasantries – Terry just got straight down to business.

‘So, who are we after?’ he asked, opening his laptop on the glass-topped coffee table.

Within ten minutes he had hacked into the chatroom’s records and got hold of Andrew’s log-in details. Three minutes later, he was into his private email address. And within half-an-hour he had bypassed the security and was casually browsing Andrew’s private files.

‘Oh fucking ‘ell,’ exclaimed Terry, after clicking onto a file named ‘TL6’.

A collection of photographs flashed onto the screen that shocked them all – they were explicit images of a very young Thai girl being horribly abused. Although the man’s face was out of shot, Rosie knew without a doubt that it was Andrew.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. Terry accessed file after file, containing countless images of child pornography. Then Computer Terry uncovered a file of videos that Andrew had filmed, using a webcam, of himself ‘performing’.