He’s still outside the van, gesturing at a digital list that appears on the screen next to him. It must be a knack – being able to point at nothing and talk and talk so that even if the digital people messed up, we’d still be able to picture the glowing words and graphs in our mind’s eye – as if they were really there.
‘A recap of the facts on the case,’ Terry says. ‘On Boxing Day 1997, Daniel Wilson left his home for a walk. The house was full of relatives and he told his mother and father he wanted some fresh air. He left his house, and we know he made the long walk across the City to Avenham Park, where he approached two girls and asked for a cigarette. These two girls escaped him, and later took part in an award-winning reconstruction first broadcast on this programme in early 1998.
‘The next footage we have of Wilson is on the forecourt of a Texaco petrol station five miles away – it’s possible that he walked, but more likely that someone gave him a lift. That person has never been identified, despite appeals from both the police and Wilson’s parents.
‘At the time of his disappearance, the City was plagued with attacks and indecent exposures on young girls. I was not able to bring you the facts about the perpetrator at the time, but it is true that these attacks stopped at the same time as Daniel Wilson disappeared – which has led some sources to believe the anonymous attacker and this missing man are one and the same.’
‘There were two after that,’ I say in frustration. ‘Why does he always miss out those two?’
Emma looks at me strangely, as if to ask me why I care so much.
‘You can’t just make things up. You can’t just twist things any way you like and put it on the telly so everyone will think it’s true,’ I say. ‘That girl in the swimming baths. She was from our school. That happened afterwards.’
‘A copy-cat flasher,’ Emma says with sarcasm, ‘except he wasn’t just flashing.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I say. ‘They were constantly telling us he was going to get worse. And when it did get worse, when he tried to drag a girl into a car, Terry said it wasn’t him after all, but a copy-cat and we should discount it.’
Emma laughs. ‘Well if Terry says it, it must be true.’
Terry carries on, never letting the facts get in the way of how perfect and neat the story could be if he could prove it.
‘Was Wilson a victim of vigilante justice? Are you a father, brother or uncle of one of the young victims at the time? What do you think has gone on here?’
‘He’s the one who got away,’ I say, and Emma nods. ‘Even at the time I never thought it was him. I had this idea that because he was like he was, he wouldn’t be capable.’ I laugh. ‘I was fourteen, what did I know?’
‘You think Terry’s right? The last two were someone else?’
I have thought about this a lot. ‘I reckon it was that Video Man,’ I say. ‘He couldn’t wait to get in on that reconstruction, could he? Probably gave him all kinds of cheap thrills. Chloe told me Shanks drove a bunch of the Year Seven girls home one night, stopped off at the video shop for some pop and Video Man saw him, and reported him to the school. Who’d do that? Shanks got in bother for it because he’d left himself wide open to people saying he was the perv.’ I pause and think for a while longer. ‘On the other hand,’ I chopped my palm through the air, ‘it did stop. Just like that. The girl in the swimming baths was the last. Maybe Terry was right. Because it was Wilson who was doing it and then someone decided they liked the idea and wanted to give it a try themselves.’
He was obsessed with jailbait. I nearly say it, but I don’t. The video shop is closed now – has been for years. When people want to watch films they just type in their credit card number on their remote control and download whatever they want to watch then and there. The Video Man is obsolete. He is probably cleaning a shopping centre or something now, the same as me.
‘You don’t really think that,’ Emma says, and she’s right, I don’t – but I carry on anyway. Doing violence to the way things really are in order to make the story work can be addictive. I can see why Terry does it. I won’t get an award but it does make you feel safe.
‘It could make sense,’ I say. ‘He wouldn’t have thought he was doing anything wrong. Probably just his way of meeting girls. Chatting them up. They don’t think the same way as we do.’
‘No,’ Emma says.
‘Oh, I think so. In his mind, he was probably thirteen or fourteen himself. He wouldn’t have felt an age difference between him and the girls he was after, would he?’
Emma looks at me blankly.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says, and her voice is thick with contempt. ‘It was Carl.’
Chapter 28
She throws it out so casually I’m sure I’ve misunderstood, even though I know I haven’t. The tracks I think along in my mind creak and shift. It takes a while, and it hurts. My hands feel cold.
‘The man in the mask,’ I say, ‘behind the bandstand.’
Emma nods. ‘Yes,’ she says.
‘The toilets in the swimming baths?’
‘Yes.’
‘Chloe’s Carl?’
‘That’s how he met her,’ Emma says. ‘She was the only one who wasn’t scared. She told you the truth about that. She thought it was hilarious. Thought he’d picked her out special and surprising her like that was meant to be romantic. She thought it was, at first.’
‘How do you know?’ I say, and before I can think, ‘What makes you so sure?’
I am panicking and I don’t want to stop talking but she stares at me until I realise.
‘I knew him before Chloe did,’ she says slowly, and her eyes are angry and I realise she is looking at me, not in pity, but in disgust. ‘I met him first. I was the first one.’
‘Where?’
She smiles weakly but her face is pale and this isn’t the sort of smile that means she’s happy.
‘In the launderette,’ she said. ‘He helped me with the bags. He offered me a lift back to my house and I said no, and then he was there the week after and he brought me some pop and a magazine and I said yes, all right then. I thought he was being kind to me.’
‘And then he was Chloe’s boyfriend? She stole him from you?’
Emma shakes her head.
‘You stupid cow,’ she says. ‘Chloe could have told you he walked on water at the weekends and you’d have believed that as well, wouldn’t you? Never feel like using your own eyes? Your own head? It’s been fucking long enough.’
She turns away. Doesn’t talk. Pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. Her jaw is rattling.
‘Don’t get on at me about it,’ she says, ‘don’t you dare ask me questions. This isn’t a fucking phone-in. Not an interview. Soul mates. Where did you come up with that shit? He was bad news.’
She was scared of him. She leans forward and refills her glass. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t talk, but looks at the hem of the curtains, moving gently in the stream of hot air coming off the radiator. She contemplates them for a long time, as if they can tell her something about what to say next. I want to ask her why she’s waited this long to tell me, but I don’t dare.
‘He never went for you?’ she says eventually, without looking at me.